I need to tell you about one of the greatest scandals ever in my
hometown of, you know, Bidwell, Rodney Road or Rodney Bidwell
Rd. depending on whether you were in Bidwell or Rodney.
And, and that was Norma. Norma and I knew each other
growing up and Norma, Norma was the golden child.
Norma got all A's in school from from kindergarten all the way
through high school. Norma played sports.
She was varsity Letterman and you know, in, in four different
sports and we only had two girls sports at the time.
She was really, really good. And, and she went away to
college and she went to an Ivy League and she played
competitive sports there as well and majored in four different
things. She majored in physics, she
majored in pre Med, she majored in literature and she majored in
international economics and got got straight A's, graduated 4
point average. And all of those went on to
Graduate School and became a medical doctor, doctor of
physics, a doctor of economics and literature.
All of these things and, and everyone in my hometown, we put
all of our hopes and Norma that she was going to go out and do
great things in the world. She was going to change the
world when she, she was either going to figure out cold fusion
or she was going to cure cancer, or she was going to bring peace
to the, to the world or, or, or write the greatest novel ever
written so that everyone would, you know, become a better human
being. And, and, and that was Norma's
plan too. But Norma decided, she said, you
know what, it's been a lot of work.
I'm going to take a gap year. I'm going to travel.
And, and she was travelling around the world and she stopped
in Luxembourg and met the king of Luxembourg, oddly enough.
And, and the king of Luxembourg said, you know what best thing
about Luxembourg is my aquarium. I want you to come see my
aquarium. And she went to see as well.
It was more than just like a glass box.
It was like this whole water park kind of thing.
And his prized possession was his dolphin that that he named
Queenie. And Norma just fell in love with
Queenie and, and she did the rest of her trip around the
world, but she got to the end and she's like, I, I can't go
back to my previous life. I, I got to go back to
Luxembourg. She went back to Luxembourg,
said, Hey, I'd, I'd like to get a job taking care of Queenie if
I could, Mr. King and, and, and King said, well, you know,
you're not really qualified. You haven't been trained for
this. She said, I'm, I'm a quick
learner. And she did, she learned and
she, she, she fed Queenie and when Queenie got sick, gave
Queenie medicine and, and, and cleaned out Queenie's tank and
made sure Queenie had everything that she needed.
In the meantime, everyone in our town was just utterly
disappointed. We pinned all of our hopes that
she was going to be our claim to fame and, and, and, and we sent
a representative to meet with her there in Luxembourg.
And, and he went up to her and said, Norma, we don't
understand. We, you, you were had all these
brains and all of this skill and, and, and, and all of this
knowledge. You were going to change the
world. You were going to make a
difference. And, and, and now look what
you're doing. And Norma, stop.
She said well, I believe I'm serving a noble porpoise.
Here's the thing. We all have a noble porpoise.
We really do. We are all children of the King.
We are all followers of Jesus Christ, who is our King.
And being a follower of Jesus, the follower of the one who was
crucified and rose again from the dead, means living a life of
purpose. We live in a world that's been
turned upside down. We have to live by faith.
We live also with this sense. Well, that's the wrong way to
say it. Not necessarily with a sense of
purpose, but with the reality of purpose.
The Easter life is a life of purpose.
We are not here by accident. We, we are here on purpose and
we have, and this is dangerous for me because then I start, oh,
I'll look at the head to the next slide so I don't mess it
up. And then I get distracted by by
my next slide. So I'm just going to put it up
and, and stop looking at my computer.
Life isn't directionless. Life isn't meaningless.
Life isn't pointless and life isn't futile.
And there's so much in the philosophies of the world around
us and the cultures around us today that push us in that
direction that, that we're only here by accident by a random
occurrence of, of, of matter and energy and, and explosions and,
and, and, and we're only here by accident and there's no meaning.
And not only are we only here by accident, one day it's all going
to come to, to an end, You know, there'll be another, you know,
implosion and then another explosion.
And no matter what we've done in this life, it all comes to
nothing, period. It's pointless, it's
meaningless. There are philosophies out there
now that that are gaining great traction.
They they come and go over the ages.
There's not really any of them that's new.
But but that that say, you know what?
There is no truth. There's no, there's no, there's
no purpose. We just make up reality as we
go. Our our reality is a construct.
It's a human construct and we can make it into whatever we
want, which means there's no purpose.
There's none. If we're just making it all up,
if, if it's not going anywhere, if there's not a direction, if
there's not a destination, then nothing that we do matters.
But the Easter life says the exact opposite, that life is not
directionless, but life has purpose.
Whoops, jumped ahead too fast. It's what I do when I get, yeah,
there is purpose. And, and Jesus's death on the
cross, Good Friday and the Saturday that followed it made
it look like life was utterly meaningless.
Every hope that Jesus's disciples had, every hope that
the multitudes had, that God cared, that God loved, that God
had come, that Messiah was here, that all of the long generations
of waiting were finally being fulfilled.
And God is is bringing his Kingdom into this world and a
tangible, beautiful, wonderful world changing way.
And then Jesus died on the cross and the impression was this
chaos wins, violence wins, destruction wins.
There is no point. If Jesus of Nazareth, who can
heal the blind, heal the lame, raise the dead, cleanse the
lepers with a word and with a touch, If his life doesn't
matter, if he just ends up as a dead slave on a Roman cross, One
of thousands and thousands of dead slaves on Roman crosses,
then what do I, what chance do I have for there being purpose in
life? But then Easter happens and the
world is turned upside down and we're invited into this life of
faith, this life of purpose. But it's not two different ways.
Again, we can go off the rails when it comes to this purpose
thing. One way to go off the rails is
to say there is no purpose. Life is meaningless.
The other way to go off the rails is on the other side where
there is a purpose and I get to decide what it is.
My purpose is is making money. My purpose is is having a
family. My purpose is growing a great
business. My purpose is global domination.
If you're you know, or, or just the tri-state area, if your name
is Doofen Schmurz. But it's it.
We cannot we don't get to pick our own purpose.
This is important and and because God is the one that
decides on our purpose, not us, we don't get to make it up.
We don't get to pick and choose for ourselves.
We get lots of choices in life, but we don't get to decide what
the purpose of life is, not even our own life.
That is in God's hands. We're God's handiwork.
God is the designer, God is the creator, God is the Craftsman.
We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus.
Why? Paul says to do good works, the
works that God has decided are good.
God has made us, God has created us.
God has put us in his image for his purpose.
The Easter life is a life filled and directed by God's purpose.
Let's take a look at a couple of scripture passages here that
we've already read today. Jesus said to them, this is
right before he ascends into heaven.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and
you will be my witnesses. Power, that word power in the
Greek is is a specialized word. It's power in English is a very
generalized word, but the word there in Greek, it can be like a
firecracker or a stick of dynamite.
And I'm thinking about I saw the part of the trailer for the new
bugs Buddy Rd. you know, the Roadrunner show.
I got dynamite on my brain. This just goes anywhere.
Explosive power. Power in, in, in English doesn't
have to have a direction. It can.
It can be the power that's coming out of the power plant
that moves along the lines and, and operates machinery and many
other things throughout different parts of the country.
Or, or power can be a bomb that just explodes and and, and and
annihilates. But in Greek, the word has a
sense of direction to it. It's power operating in a
direction, it's directed energy, not simply explosive energy.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit is going to come with power, not
power for us to do whatever we want.
It's not he's not, he's not giving us all, you know, sticks
of dynamite and say go have fun, you know, go fishing, do
whatever you want to do with it. But just you have a good he's
giving his power with purpose, the power to do something.
And that purpose is his purpose. And here in Acts, as, as Luke
records Jesus's final words to the disciples in the book of
Acts, that purpose is to be Jesus's witnesses, to tell other
people what they see God doing, what we see Jesus doing, what we
have seen Jesus do in the past, what we see Jesus doing now, to
be witnesses. The witnesses in this is a legal
term. The witnesses are not the
investigators. And my Holy Spirit will come
upon you so you can investigate other people and make sure
they're living right. That is not what Jesus said.
Witnesses are not the prosecutors.
Your, your, your Holy Spirit will come upon you so you can,
you know, bring charges against other people when you know they.
That's not what Jesus said. Witnesses are not judges.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you so you can tell who should
be going to heaven and who should be going to hell.
That is not what Jesus said. You will have the power of the
Holy Spirit for this purpose, to be a witness, to tell what you
have seen and what you have heard, what you are seeing and
what you are hearing. And, and the, the present is at
least as important as the past in that, because without the
power of the Holy Spirit, we're not going to be able to tell
what God is doing now. The direction the Holy Spirit is
leading, the invitations Jesus is giving to us to step out in
faith and to love and serve and minister in his name.
We need that power of the Holy Spirit so we can see where God
is going, what God is leading us to.
And Matthew phrases it a little bit differently.
It puts a different nuance on it.
At the end of Matthew, Jesus says this all authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.
As a little more active here we hear Jesus saying not just be my
witnesses, but but you you need to be accomplishing something
and that we don't have a good English different when it comes
to translations. Almost no translation is a word
for word translation because different languages do things
differently and and Greek has a whole range of participles and
verb tenses that are very difficult to express in English.
Probably the most literal way to say this is all authority in
heaven on earth has been given to me, therefore go and disciple
all nations. The word disciple is the verb
itself rather than make disciples, but that doesn't
quite capture it either. Another way to phrase it would
be to say go in all nations and go out.
Therefore, go and bring disciples, bring people into
discipleship. But however we look at that,
it's active. There's something for us to be
doing. And that discipleship has three
parts. It's teaching them to baptizing
them, initiating them, bringing them into the family through the
sacrament of Holy Baptism, A sacrament that, unlike
circumcision and historic Judaism, that only males can
participate in, Baptism is something that everyone could
participate in. Unlike circumcision, which is an
outward physical sign, baptism can only be seen in our actions,
our attitudes, and in our hearts.
Whether a person has been baptized, we cannot prove that
except by the condition of their hearts and how they treat other
people, even if they've been dunked.
I don't mean to trivialize baptism, but but going
underwater is different than being baptized and having our
lives transformed and following that, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them
to obey everything I have commanded you.
Teaching people to live by faith, to recognize and hear
what God is saying, and to follow where God is leading.
And that is the work that we have to do.
That is the purpose that God puts in front of us.
Now, when it comes to this purpose thing, I've talked
enough with enough different people about purpose and purpose
in life to know that this is an important distinction to make.
There is a difference between sensing God's purpose and
acknowledging God's purpose. Some folks have a very strong
internal sense of purpose in their lives.
They're like, I, I know why I'm here.
I know why God made me. I know my role, I know my tasks.
They've got a very, very strong sense of God's purpose in their
lives. Other people don't, and too
often in the way I've taught about things like purpose, it
it, it. I have left it way too easy for
people that don't have a sense of God's purpose in their life
to feel like I must not have purpose in my life or I must not
be part of God's purpose in my life.
But there's a difference. And I now have the perfect
example to illustrate the difference between extensing
God's purpose and acknowledging God's purpose.
And that illustration is my dog Bruno.
Bruno is a knucklehead. Bruno's purpose.
I got Bruno for a purpose. I got Bruno to be my pal.
The best thing Bruno can do is lie on the couch with his head
on my lap and let me scratch his ears.
I really love that he's a 70 LB knucklehead.
He crawls up on my lap and I rub his tummy and, and, and I love
it. And he seems to enjoy it too.
That's Bruno's purpose. To hang out with me.
You need to do things with me. That's not what Bruno thinks his
purpose is. That's Bruno's purpose.
Bruno thinks his purpose is to defend us from the mortal threat
of Shelly, Renee's sister, who happens to be our mailman, who,
according to Bruno, is the most dangerous person in the world.
Every day she has to be chased off our front porch because we
got a mail slot. She comes all the way up there.
And Bruno, he's, he's ready to defend the house from Shelly.
It is, it is a thing of noble beauty, and he's not particular.
He defends us from everything that walks along the sidewalk in
front of her house, no matter how big or how small.
He he's convinced that's his purpose.
He will run from the backyard through the house to bark at
someone walking along the front sidewalk.
He won't go outside because he's also a chicken, so he has to
stay on the right side of the door where it's safe.
So he really does run inside and run to the front door to bark at
people. And he thinks he's fulfilling
his purpose, but he's not his. His purpose is not to defend us.
If my, my life depends. He tries, he really does.
He's he's mortally afraid of loud noises.
And, and, and there's our neighbors straight behind us.
They've got a big German shepherd.
I have no on the other side of the fence.
It sounds like a terror too. I have no idea whether it's
really a terror or whether it's just because it's on the other
side of the fence. But I was out mowing and, and I
had electric mower. So it's not real loud, but it
makes some noise. And I was out mowing and the
neighbor's dog was out and I was mowing back by the fence and
that dog was barking at me like it wanted to RIP my throat out.
And poor Bruno came running from the house to defend me and his
tail was between his legs and his ears were down and he ran
up, but he was afraid of the lawn mower.
He's like, got to help Dad. He tries, he tries, but that's
not why Bruno's there. It's not his purpose.
Bruno will never understand his purpose.
He'll never have a sense of that.
He's going to bark at things until the day he dies.
I am confident and think he's defending the family from all
sorts of threats. His purpose is just to be a
companion. It's just there to be my bud and
and he's doing all right with that.
He sheds a lot, but he's doing all right with that.
It's the same for us. It's not important that we sense
God's purpose. What is important is that we
acknowledge that we have a God who has a purpose for us, and
God will accomplish his purpose through us even when we can't
sense it, even when we get it wrong, even when we think, I
know God wants me doing this and God's like, very nice, bark
away, you're all right. And this other thing is really
what's happening. And sometimes we sense it and
sometimes we don't. What's important is to recognize
that God has a purpose for us. I got a, an illustration that I
want to share with you. And it's another one of those
amazing stories that I didn't hear about until recently.
I don't know if you're familiar with the website called I am
second iamsecond.com. It's a.
There's lots of video stories
there and, and it's it's an explicitly Christian based
website and the notion is God is first in my life and I am 2nd.
And, and there's some a whole range of different people
telling their stories. And one of the stories is the
story of Tiffany Whittier and Michael Kent.
And I'm just going to play. There's this is not their video
from that. Their video from I Am Second was
like 12 minutes long. It was too long to play this
morning. I'm playing a news report.
Once they were on I Am Second some some local news areas and
then some national news areas picked up on their story and
interviewed them. But let's meet Michael and
Tiffany. My name is Michael Kent.
I'm over here at Fallen Heroes to get a swastika covered up.
I've never, never, never been in a inside of a tattoo shop
getting a professional tattoo. It's a lot different than the
prison style one. It's not done with guitar
strings. It's painful to get it out, yes.
But it's going to be worth it. Tell me your story.
Behind that shirt is a lot of ink.
I was a part of a Skinhead group, a very violent group.
My first tattoo, the racial tattoo was my white pride when I
got 2 swastikas, 1 on my chest. How long have you had that on
your chest? Over 20 years.
Talk about that transformation process.
This is kind of a good story, but odd story.
I got my caseload transferred to a black woman.
She just marched up to my house, but if it wasn't for her I
probably would have been deep back into it.
You feel like she became much more than a probation officer.
Yes, she's much more than that, so I would look at her as
family. I'm Tiffany Whittier.
I haven't seen him in over a year.
He doesn't know that I'm here. We're going to surprise.
Him say hello. Hi.
She gave me a chance and it opened my eyes.
You 2 are unlikely friends. Yes, yes, I had a German war
flag, she says. You need to take that crap down
and start putting up more positive stuff, Put up smiley
faces so when you wake up, you see positive instead of hate.
That's a big difference. Yeah, that's a big change.
When you wake up and you see a :) you're going to go to work
and you're going to smile. Before all this, I wouldn't work
for anybody or with anybody that wasn't white. 13 people that
work with me, I'm the only white person there.
We have company parties or they have quinceaneras or barbecues
or birthday parties. I'm the only white guy there.
Last night we were with him and he got a tattoo taken up, he
said. Tiffany was one of the people
that helped me make this transition.
I'm not here to judge him. That's not my job to judge.
My job is to be that positive person in someone's life, try to
make a difference. I'm getting trucked up again.
If you got a strong support system and you have people that
believe in you in a positive way, you can change.
You're touching before and after.
Now did. You ever think they'd come off?
Did you be a part of that? Not a million years I would have
ever guessed that Michael changed his life for the better.
She gave me the strength and the courage to do what I'm doing and
changing my life because I know it, she can do it and she
believes in people, good in people.
I know I can't too. Now this is ABC News secular
news agency, which is not a judgement or it's just reality.
And and so we heard nothing of the faith story that is in this.
So I would encourage you go to YouTube, search for Michael
Kent, Tiffany Whittier. I am 2nd and and watch their
whole interview and and and Michael in that says to her, why
did you do this for me? I don't understand why, why you
did this. And and her first response was,
well, it was my job. And he's like, no, this wasn't
your job. She's like, it was my job.
But maybe you can see and and she went on to say it's God and
and and Michael, God loves you and God values you and God wants
to be part of your life and once you as part of his life.
And, and it changed Michael's life the way she went in there.
Now I've known probation officers sharing Jesus is not
the job of a probation officer. Loving people is not the job of
a probation officer. But Tiffany understood her job
and her purpose. She had a job to do, to work for
the probation authority, set goals, monitor people, keep
track of people. She had a purpose to share love
and hope and the transforming power of God with people.
Now, I don't know how many of Tiffany's probationers ever had
as dramatic experience as Michael Kent.
She's like most probation officers, she said.
Lots and lots of people, and lots and lots of them go back to
jail. Kent, who had done a lot of bad
stuff, again watched the interview.
His life was transformed. And do you know the things she
did that opened the door the most?
She went to his house alone. When she first got the file, she
read the file. She'd seen the pictures, she
knew the tattoos, she knew who he was, she knew what he was.
And she went to his house for the first visit alone.
And, and he said, she said that when she first got there, he
asked her, are you alone? And she was like, yes, I am
alone. Is that going to be a problem?
And he said, no, no one's ever had the courage to come to me
alone before. Not even white people come to me
alone. They always have backup.
And her courage and her faith and her love and her compassion
opened the door for his life to be transformed.
Because she saw her work in the world as more than just a job,
but the work that she was doing as part of the purpose that God
had for her of being a witness and bringing people into
discipleship. If you can do that as a
probation officer, you can do that in any role, in any role,
whether it's a desk job or a construction job or a, a, a, you
know, retail job, whatever, whatever the job, homemaker,
whatever it is, school teacher, to see our purpose within our
job and upon our job and not just the tasks that need to be
done. That's what it means to
acknowledge the purpose of God, even if you don't sense it.
I got the sense that Tiffany did not.
She really seemed genuinely perplexed that that she had had
the impact that she had on Michael because she felt like
I'm just doing my job. Whether she had a sense of that
purpose, she was living that purpose.
She acknowledged that purpose, and that makes all the
difference. And that's what God invites us
to, to acknowledge the purpose that he has for our lives, even
if we don't feel it, even if we don't sense it, to acknowledge
that it is there and trust that God will accomplish that.
The Easter life is a life of purpose in Jesus name.
Amen. Amen.