Sharing your original moment, I have a question for you.
Why do people climb mountains? Is it just to reach the top and
see the view? Well, I'll tell you something.
Every rock and every river, every sore and every splinter, I
would climb every mountain with you.
Isn't that sweet? But it's not mine.
It's top house band. And it's the very words that
Nathaniel and Jenny came down the aisle with these words.
Why do people climb mountains? I don't know if you've ever been
halfway up a mountain and wondered why am I climbing this
mountain? As you huffed and you puffed,
someone here was doing the grouse grind this past week for
the first time. Yes, Michael, how'd it go?
At any point did you ask yourself, why am I climbing this
mountain? Can I finish it?
Can I get it done? Do you know, that's very much a
question for us? It's a question for us in terms
of why do people talk about Jesus with those who don't know
Jesus? Why do we seek, why does the
church seek to do that thing called evangelism to talk about
Jesus with those who don't know Jesus?
Why would we climb that mountain of unbelief?
Why would we climb that mountain of terrible awkwardness?
Why would we climb that mountain of great risk?
Why would we rise up and do such a thing?
The Apostle Paul said that he did it because of an intense
longing in his heart for others to know the one who loved him
and who loved them. We're going to read that passage
in Romans chapter 10 and just keep in mind this question of
why do people climb mountains? Brothers and sisters, he says,
my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that
they may be saved. For I can testify about them
that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on
knowledge. Since they do not know the
righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did
not submit to God's righteousness.
Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be
righteousness for everyone who believes.
Moses writes about this righteousness that is by the
Law. The person who does these things
will live by them. But the righteousness that is by
faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into
heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into
the deep, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.
But what does it say? The Word is near you.
It is in your mouth and in your hearts.
That is the message concerning faith that we proclaim.
If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. For it is with your heart that
you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that
you profess your faith and are saved.
As the Scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never
be put to shame. For there is no difference
between Jew and Gentile, the same Lord as Lord of all, and
richly blesses all who call on him.
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
How? How then can they call on the
1:00 they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the
one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without
someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless
they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of
those who bring good news. But not all the Israelites
accepted the good news for Isaiah, says Lord, who has
believed our message. Consequently, faith comes from
hearing the message and the message is heard through the
word about Christ. Paul describes his deep longing.
He says I desire intensely that the Israelites, that is his
people of origin, the family of legacy that he found himself
coming from, he's really praying and hoping that they would know
Jesus it he's using language that says it pains him deeply
that they don't know the righteousness of God.
It is his longing that they would come to faith.
Now he recognizes that they have many good qualities.
In fact, they have a zeal for God.
He just says it's misinformed zeal.
And this can be troubling for us as well at times where we can
say that's a really good person, that person has a lot of
sincerity about what they believe.
But Paul presses in here to say that neither zeal nor sincerity
of belief is enough if the object of belief is false, if
it's wrong, if it's inadequate. And it pained him deeply that
the whole adequacy of God explained and expressed in Jesus
Christ had not been embraced by them.
In fact, it was a deep disappointment to him.
And he says this is so wrong because God would include
everyone who believes in Jesus, who entrusts themself to Jesus
for righteousness, for inclusion in the family of God.
God would accept all Jew and Gentile.
It's his deep longing. This is why Paul would climb a
mountain. He would climb a mountain so
that they might believe, so that they might receive Jesus into
their life and the love of God into their lives.
Have you ever looked out as a Christian at some of your family
or the country from which you came, and long in your heart
that I think their lives would be different if they really knew
Jesus? Maybe you've wondered about that
for yourself because you're not quite there yet either.
And so you're wondering for yourself, would my life really
be all that different and better if I received Jesus as Lord into
my life? Paul would suggest that there
was a longing even in Israel that only God could satisfy for.
He says, I know that they are zealous for God, but having been
there himself, he would suggest it's not satisfactory.
It's not enough to just make yourself follow all the rules
and laws of the Scripture as they had been doing.
It's not enough to just be spiritual.
It's not enough to just be religious if the object of your
religiosity does not bring true life.
And so Paul's longing is one that could inform our own
movement, our own desire to climb that mountain.
And I wonder, is it possible for evangelism to be done well?
Evangelism is using this word that speaks of speaking or
proclaiming good news, announcing good news.
It was just a common Greek word. In fact, they had a whole group
of people who were called Heralds.
Hark the Herald, Angels sing. His name is not Harold.
He It was his role to be a herald and announcer of good
news. Is it possible to announce good
news? Well, we've probably all had
those moments in the mall or on the mall, UBC mall, when someone
comes up to us to have a conversation and we realize, oh,
this is the evangelist who's come for me.
Been there. I've been that person, the
evangelist who's come for you. Is it possible to do that well?
I really like this line from Theo of Golden that speaks of
what could be done well and could art be done well?
Asher looked at the old man. Theo, I get the impression
you've thought about this before.
What do you think makes for good art?
Theo rested his chin on his right thumb and placed a bent
index finger over his bottom lip.
Yes, I've thought about it. In fact, I've thought about it a
great deal, and I've asked others about it, but I don't
know if I have an answer either, other than this.
It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be
good, truly good, there must be love in it.
I'm not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I
get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift
itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story
being told, and love for the audience, whether the art is
sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or
raising a child. If love is not in it at the very
heart of it, it might be skillful, marketable, or
popular, but I doubt it is truly good.
Nothing is what it's supposed to be.
If love is not at the core, can Allen Levy get an Amen?
Amen. He's, He's on to something
there, isn't he? And if evangelism is an art, a
craft, an expression of a longing, that longing must
actually be formed and shaped by love.
That's when it's at its best. You see, the Scripture tells us
that Jesus has come to form a new family of faith in him.
He did not come to form that family with force.
He came to form that family with love.
He did not come to form that love with a hammer, even though
they were asking him on the day that he marched into Jerusalem
riding a donkey. They were looking for hammer
time. And he says no, it's humble
time. His way was so different, for it
was truly informed and shaped by the love of God, and so he comes
to form a family. Paul speaks of this movement as
the move of God to come near. He doesn't treat God as one that
we need to climb up into the heavens to get to, because
somehow God, the perfect one who forms us in love, is just up in
the heavens, just out of reach from us.
He says no, Christ has come out of the heavens to us, but Christ
died on the cross. He says you don't even have to
go down into the depths. You don't have to go into death
itself to die and find a home and a family with God.
He says no, Christ has risen from the dead.
Whatever move that you might construct to say, that's what I
have to do to get close to God, God has done more.
He has come close. We celebrate the incarnation of
Jesus, of him coming close at Christmas.
We celebrate Jesus laying his life down on the cross and going
down into the depths of Sheol because he is forming his family
and he has the power of life that is expressed because he
went through Friday and made it good and so he has the power to
give life to those who are dead. Jesus is forming his new family,
and so the signs of faith that are actually signs of being in
the family. Paul expresses here as very
simple. He says if you declare with your
mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God
raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
That's it. The union of speech with belief.
Jesus is Lord. The simplest confession of the
church, The simplest confession of baptism, that if you have
entered into the waters of baptism, you were asked the
question, who is your Savior and Lord Jesus Christ Jesus is Lord.
This is the confession of the Church.
It is the confession of a will and life surrendered to Him.
You are Lord, and what I believe is that you have conquered death
and have been raised from the dead.
What I believe is that you have paid the price and cost of my
sin, and so you died and were raised from the dead.
What I believe is that Jesus has been raised from the dead and
now I have a living relationship with him.
Not with the memory of a dead man, but I have the membership
of life with a living God. And so this is where in
resurrection, in the celebration of Easter, here in our Easter
Tide Sundays, we see the essential nature of belief and
faith about the resurrection of Jesus as essential to our life
and inclusion in his family. Do you believe in your heart, in
the depths of your mind to accept this mystery that Jesus
has been raised from the dead? He says while you will be saved,
you are being saved, you are saved.
Salvation has come to this house.
Herein is the assurance of our salvation.
It was bought and paid for by Christ and somehow by some
mysterious move of life, I've come to believe and entrust my
life to him. I've repented of my way.
I've changed my mind and said, Lord Jesus, you are Lord and you
have risen. You have conquered death.
To be in your family is to be free.
And now we are in a new family of faith.
Read this with me. It says as the scripture says,
Are you ready? Anyone who believes in him will
never be put to shame, for there's no difference between
Jew and Gentile. The same Lord of all and richly
blesses all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord will be saved. Welcome to the new family of
those who call out on Jesus and have found that he answered.
Paul says this is a move made by God that is not centered in the
temple of Jerusalem. In fact, now it is pushed out to
a table that can go around the world.
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Do you know this morning we prayed together with Ryan the
prayer of the people. And in the prayer of the people
we practiced what is said in the Psalms.
Do not forget his benefits. We gave an account of the
benefits of salvation, the benefits of being brought into
the family of God by grace, for we said maybe you prayed it with
him. You have provided the word, the
word. You have provided the word that
delivers us from the evil one. That's a great benefit.
Did anybody get away from an evil person this week?
Did you get away from the devil this week?
Maybe you don't even know it. You can just say, yeah, it
happens. I'm so glad I didn't even have
that kind of trouble this week. He delivered us from the evil 1.
Did anyone experience healing of diseases?
A cold, a virus? He heals us of our diseases.
Did anyone experience comfort in your pain?
The comfort of God in disappointment or pain?
Did anyone experience the forgiveness of sin?
Father, you are perfect. Did any of you experience the
courage to take a stand? Did you feel like the Lord gave
you a word that lets you comfortably, confidently take a
stand? To hold your boundaries, To be
non anxious? Forget not the benefits of the
Lord. Did any of you feel like the
Lord gave you wisdom when you thought you were going to be a
fool? Did you experience love when you
thought you were unlovely? Did you experience the ability
to give love to someone who was unlovely?
Did you celebrate and delight in this word that says you have
been transferred from death to life, from the Kingdom of
darkness to light, from the Kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom
of the Son of God? Forget not his benefits.
He is a family and He draws us into a family with benefits.
The Spirit of God is calling and, and This is why he says
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
And the Spirit of God is calling people to himself and to God.
We believe this. We believe that before we go out
from here, the Spirit of God has been calling some to himself
before we go and gather at a family dinner that the Spirit of
God has been working there before.
We as a church showed up 16 years ago believing that God
would form a church here at UBC. We believe that God was ahead of
us. The Spirit of God was calling.
Paul believes that. He believes that the Spirit of
God is calling his family of origin to faith in Jesus.
And yet he knows that God is also calling us.
So he brings us into the logic, the beauty and the mystery of
the mission. The logic of the mission goes
this way. How?
Say it with me how? It's a terrible question.
How? Like this is the question that
gets us all uptight. How can that be done?
It's as bad as the child who asks why, how?
How is this going to happen? How can they call on the one
they've not believed in? How can my neighbor call on
Jesus if they've not believed in him?
There must be a mustard seed of belief.
How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?
What if they've never heard? How many of us have asked that
of our family of origin at times, knowing that we were the
first generation to trust Jesus? How and how can they hear
without someone preaching to them?
And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?
And now he's gotten down to The Who, How, not who, not how.
Who? This is where it's headed.
Who is going to preach? Who is God going to send?
This is the logic of mission. These four questions haunted my
life for a season in university, and it all started with this
one. This how?
Which was no question at all, but in a way it is.
It's a statement. How beautiful are the feet of
those who bring good news? Well, how beautiful are they?
When I was just graduated from high school, I started working
at a bank. I worked there for a week and
then I took a holiday. Unheard of.
But I was young and had asked when they hired me.
I'm not going on the senior trip.
My senior trip is to go on mission to New Orleans.
And for some reason the VP of this division in the bank took
mercy on me and said go take your senior trip, do something
good in New Orleans. And so I went to New Orleans
with a group of other teenagers and we served in the city.
I tell you, it was my first experience of inner city life.
There were bars everywhere, not places to drink.
There were bars on the windows, there were bars on the doors.
There were bars around the park. I was like, who locks up their
park at night? And I started to feel scared.
I was out of my comfort zone. And over the course of that
week, I even learned how to drink coffee for the first time.
I was so tired. Every day was full of going out,
cleaning parks, cleaning places, going out, greeting people,
taking groceries to people's homes, going out, playing with
the kids, going out, asking to pray with people, going out and
announcing Jesus. I was tired.
I was stretched and on the last day the director of the center
looked at us and she said you have beautiful feet.
And the smart aleck 17 year old that I was said my feet stink,
they're terrible, it's ugly. What do you mean I have
beautiful feet? And then she said it's the
highest compliment I ever pay to a group and I only say it
rarely. Now she had my attention.
You have beautiful feet. And then she read those
questions. How can they call on the one
they've not believed in? And how can they believe in the
one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without
someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless
they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of
those who bring good news? And in that moment, God set a
truth and a question and a call deep in my heart that I fought
for almost my full first year of university.
And God kept bringing those questions and then the promise,
how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?
And I was like, God, that's just seems so awkward and not who I
am. But how beautiful are the feet
of those who bring good news? Do you know this passage is
first in Isaiah 52? It's the passage we read during
the service. How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, Who to say
to Zion your God reigns? Do you see, it was the practice
that when the armies of Israel went out from Jerusalem, went
over the mountains and would fight a battle, If they won,
they would send a messenger. If they lost, they would send a
messenger. Get ready, the armies of Assyria
are coming. That's bad news.
But if they sent good news, these were the original runners.
I wonder if those who ran with good news ran like our marathon
runner in London today, if they could run a marathon under 2
hours just flying with good news beating in their hearts.
Peace for you, good tidings for you, salvation for you, God is
for you. How beautiful are the feet of
those who bring good news. And the Watchmen on the walls of
Jerusalem would look over the mountains where they knew they
would be coming from, and they could say, oh, there's a
messenger running. Look at that messenger coming.
And they were waiting. Why do people climb mountains?
That's the question we started with today.
Why did Jesus climb the mountain of your unbelief?
Why did Jesus climb the mountain of our sin?
Why did Jesus let that sin rest on him as great violence and
suffering, a cup of bitterness and pain?
Because of love, The Church will have beautiful feet when we
enter and accept the mystery of the mission.
Some of you are anxious about the mystery of the mission, and
the mystery of the mission goes like this.
But not all the Israelites accepted the good news.
Paul was an Israelite who accepted the good news.
Peter, Josh, Mary, Nathaniel. These were people who accepted
the good news. Clopas, Mary Simon, the Zealot,
they accepted the good news, but there were many who did not
accept the good news of Jesus as the person of God who had come
to give them life. But Isaiah's foretold and saw
this saying, Lord, who has believed our message, the
prophets have come, even the Messiah has come, and who
believed? Consequently, faith comes from
hearing the message, and the message is heard through the
word of Christ. Friends, you must also accept
the mystery of the mission, and that is that you and I are never
in charge of someone else's believing.
You are never in charge of someone else surrendering their
life to God. This is the Holy Spirit's work.
This is the mystery of Word and Spirit, where the message is
heard through the Word about Christ.
So when you climb that mountain to share with another the
mountain of your fear, to share with another the good news of
Jesus, and you feel out of breath because your heart's
going, don't do, don't do. And your hands feel tingly and
anxious. Anybody been there in that
moment? My friend DJ said this about at
UBC. He says my experience at UBC was
that every time I got ready to say the name of Jesus, my pulse
went up. But as soon as I said the name
of Jesus out loud, something changed in the air around me.
The mystery of the mission is that you and I are not in charge
of others believing. We're just in charge of
dispensing that which has been charged to us as the messenger
climbing that mountain, coming down the mountain to meet
another person and share with them the invitation of Jesus.
How many of you had an original moment today?
What did you all talk about? You talked about the weak.
Your original moment is actually a pre practice of sharing your
testimony. When did you love God, love
people, share the gospel, delight in the gospel?
When did you experience the love of God, the love of people, of
the power of the gospel in your life?
This week that is preloading good news.
If you heard another peace person share their story, it's
your story. Now you can say, well, you know,
I met someone who was so anxious about their test that they
prayed before they did it and they asked Jesus for peace and
he gave it to them. That wasn't your story, but it's
the story of the church on the day you heard it.
You have been preloaded with good news that points to Jesus.
At some point you may have to just say the good news.
And the best story that's ever changed my life is that God has
come in the person of Jesus Christ.
He lived in a place called Israel, and he died on a cross
in outside Jerusalem. But God raised him from the dead
to announce that all of my sin could be forgiven, to announce
that I will never be ashamed to be in front of God if I am in
Christ. So many aspects of good news.
At some point you'll have to share the story.
Let's stand together in a moment.
We're going to come to the table.
We have not been invited to the temple in Jerusalem.
Instead, God says, I want to make my temple in you, and I'm
going to invite you to my table as a foretaste of the banquet at
the end of the age. And Jesus has paved the way for
us to share this table. Isaiah said in the temple that
he saw a great vision and there he heard the heavenly creature
saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, holy, holy
holy is the Lord God Almighty, holy holy holy is the Lord God
Almighty. This really shook Isaiah up
because then it says the glory of the Lord has filled the whole
earth. Mind blowing if he thought the
glory of God was going to be just contained in that temple.
But no, the glory of God has been extended over the whole
earth as if the Lord was saying the whole earth is mine.
And so we pray Lord, your Kingdom come on earth as it is
in heaven. We already acknowledged this,
that there is no God forsaken place on earth, but Isaiah was
really stressed out. In fact, it says he, he says I'm
undone, I'm falling apart God as I'm standing here in front of
you. He says because I am a man of
unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.
In other words, he's saying the things that we say out of our
mouth actually reflect what's in our heart, and it reflects an
emptiness, a profaneness, a sewerness.
He's got a sewer mouth because he has a sewer heart.
And he says, God, I'm in trouble.
I'm in trouble. It's almost as if God says do
not fear, because then one of the heavenly creatures comes
down and goes to the altar and grabs with tongs.
A live coal burning hot coal and comes up to Isaiah, touches him
on the lips. I wonder if he heard it sizzle
as it came up and said do not fear.
He cleansed. Friends, I tell you that every
altar that we see today is meant to be a table, and Jesus is the
live coal that comes from that table and transforms our lives,
transforms our lips, transforms our hearts so that what comes
from our lips actually reflects a heart that is at home with
God. And it came at a great cost as
Jesus gave his body, as Jesus poured out his blood so that we
could be at home with him. And that's what we're going to
celebrate as we come into this moment.
So if you're helping with the Lord's Supper, if you would come
as we continue to worship and we're going to share this table
with each other with the bread.