1 WHY ARE WE HERE? Sermon preached by Pastor C. John Steer Autumn Ridge Church February 3-4, 2018 Scripture: Mark 12:28-34 Today I want to ask the question WHY ARE WE HERE? By that I mean Why are you and I here? Why have we been placed here on earth? What is our purpose in life? I also mean Why is our church here? because I believe the reason for our existence is essentially the same as the reason why the church exists. When I talk about the church I don t just mean Autumn Ridge but every Christian church. For there is only one church of Jesus Christ, although there are a number of manifestations of it. Once a month the evangelical pastors of Rochester meet to plan and pray together. We like to say there is just one church in Rochester. It may go by different names like Berean Church, or Calvary Evangelical Free Church, the Assembly of God Church, the Covenant Church, or Autumn Ridge. But together, along with Christians in churches all over the world, we make up the body of Christ and Jesus doesn t have many bodies but one. Now churches have their own particular distinctives, but these are relatively minor. This is why we can go to another fellowship and feel at home. So my question of WHY ARE WE HERE? is not just about our small corner of God s kingdom but it is a big picture view of the global church and the purpose God has for every human being on the planet. It is essential we know our purpose if we are going to enjoy a fulfilled life. Thankfully the Bible provides the answer. We discover that God has created us for great things that will WOW us. First, we are here for WORSHIP. Why is worship the most important? It goes back to a discussion that Jesus had with the religious scholars of his day. They had expanded the Old Testament laws into hundreds of thousands of rules and regulations. There was a huge debate about which of these was the most significant. So one day a teacher of the law came to Jesus and asked, Of all the commandments, which is the most important? (Mark 12:28) Jesus answered, The most important one is this Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:29&30)
2 That s a great description of worship. Notice how all-inclusive it is. It is the reason why the first part of our church mission statement is Loving God. Worship means to give worth. Every person worships for we all ascribe worth to something. For Christians we love to tell God his worth, for God is worth a lot to us. He has made us. He has saved us. So worship is the body of Christ recognizing and responding to its Creator and Savior. For the believer there is nothing more important than worship. The Westminster Catechism captures this when it asks: What is the chief end of man? In other words, what is the most important purpose we have in life? The answer is: To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. That is a great definition of worship. Theologian Karl Barth wrote, Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life. That s why we long that every person who comes to Autumn Ridge will be a daily worshiper. We were made for worship. In worship we fulfill our highest potential as human beings. Worship is important because things happen to us in worship that can happen in no other setting. Changes to us take place in worship that do not occur anywhere else. Paul tells us that genuine worship is a great means of evangelism. Writing to the Corinthians he describes an unbeliever coming in to a worship service. They fall down in wonder and exclaim, God is really among you! (1 Corinthians 14:25) I guess if we took a poll of how we came to Christ the majority of us would say it was during some type of worship service. Our worship at church includes songs, prayers, creeds, scripture readings, faith stories, baptisms, the Lord s Supper and the preaching of the word of God. But worship is not restricted to what we do for an hour a week. We continue to give God worth by our activities outside the church building. So we worship God at work by doing the very best job we can, by treating others well, by being ethical in our dealings. We worship in our homes when we recognize that Jesus is the unseen guest at every meal and the unseen listener to every conversation. Worship is important because it is an eternal activity. Most of what we do on earth will come to an end one day, but not worship.
3 When you read through the book of Revelation you discover that praising God is the main activity of heaven. In a sense our worship in this life is practice for the next. So if we don t much enjoy an hour of worship here it is unlikely that we are going to enjoy 10,000 years of it in glory. So first we are here for WORSHIP. Second we are here for OUTREACH. Having told the teacher of the law the most important commandment is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Jesus went on to say, The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:31) That s why the second part of our church mission statement is Serving people. Worship energizes us to serve. If we have no desire to serve we probably haven t worshiped because true worship turns us outward to the needs of the world. But it is important that worship comes first because it is our encounter with God that empowers us to reach out to others. Now who are these others? The nearest people to us are our family and so that s where we start. That is why the scriptures are filled with instructions to husbands and wives to love each other, for parents to teach their children about God and for children to honor their parents in the Lord. Sometimes pastors and church leaders can be so concerned for the world around them that they neglect the family they live with. It was Martin Luther who pointed out that our closest neighbors are our family. It is the reason that Paul says one of the qualifications for being a leader at the church is that we manage our own family well. So our outreach starts with our nearest and dearest. But it doesn t stop there. It moves outward like ripples on a pond. It embraces the people we come into contact with on a regular basis with whom we have built some sort of relationship. Now loving our neighbor takes different forms. When Jesus was asked the question Who is my neighbor? he told the story of the Good Samaritan. This Good Samaritan discovered a Jew who had been robbed and beaten up and left for dead. At that point the poor man lying in the road didn t need a presentation of the gospel. Rather he needed housing and medical care so that s what the Good Samaritan provided. As we look at the needs around us our outreach may be supplying food through the Backpacks for Kids program, or providing clean water by digging a well in Kenya, or giving medical care at Compassion Evangelical Hospital in Guinea, or offering a place to live at Next Chapter in Southeast Rochester.
4 While those are all good starting places they are not a place to finish because we know that people without Christ are eternally lost. They have no hope in the world. As we heard in our mission month last November, mission exists because worship doesn t. Our greatest desire is that people who don t know Jesus come to love him with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength. So how is that going to happen? It will take place when God s people share God s news. Our mission as a church is Loving God. Serving people. Our vision is In the power of the Spirit, we will equip Autumn Ridgers to be disciples where they live, work and play, and share our hope in Jesus. So our desire is to equip you so that you can seize the opportunities that God brings your way to share your hope in Jesus. We need to be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit in how we share God s good news. One of our members moved recently. He introduced himself to his neighbor. He mentioned he was a Christian. The neighbor was very dismissive saying he had no time at all for God. The Autumn Ridger asked Have you ever read the Bible? The neighbor replied Certainly not. I wouldn t waste my time. The Autumn Ridger inquired Would you be interested in reading the Bible with me? The neighbor said I might. So every Tuesday evening they meet to study the gospel of Luke. People are surprisingly open to an invitation to study the Bible. This year we are offering Life Groups for people who want to explore the Christian faith. They are called Starting Points with Jesus. We need people to host these or lead them. We will give you all the materials and training. If you would like to help please contact Pastor Paul McDonald. I wonder how many atheists we have in our circle of friends? It is important we have them because they are growing in number. I always enjoy meeting with atheists. I ask them to tell me their story of how they became an atheist. Sometimes it is because they have been disappointed with God, they had a hurtful church experience. I always apologize for this and say how very sorry I am. It is important we listen to them with respect. I like to ponder with them why we all have a longing for joy. That longing doesn t make sense from an evolutionary perspective. Why do we feel that our life matters and that we have some sort of significance? Why is it that virtually every tribal race that anthropologists have studied have some concept of a higher being. Where did this come from? Who put it there?
5 Now the atheist is usually not impressed with Bible verses because they think the Bible is a book of myths. So we need to find other areas of common ground like human compassion and the natural sympathy we have for the underdog. These virtues hardly make sense in the light of the survival of the fittest. So who placed them within us? Sometimes our outreach will take the form of prayer because prayer is the only thing we can do. North Korea has been in the news a lot recently. Did you know there are between 200,000 to 400,000 secret Christians living in North Korea? They can t even tell their children about their faith in case their children inadvertently blurt it out in school. These Korean believers are part of the body of Christ. They are not our enemies but our friends. Right now we can t reach out to them but we can pray for them. We can ask God to sustain them and release them. This is why prayer is so important. This year we are going to do some things to enhance our prayer life. In two weeks I am starting a new series on the Lord s Prayer. It is the model prayer that Jesus gave us to show us how to pray. There will be other events over the course of the year to help us develop a passion for communion with God so that prayer becomes as natural as breathing. So I would suggest that as individuals and as a church we are here for WORSHIP and OUTREACH. But there is a third purpose we are here and that is WORK. Now in a sense this is a summary of the first two. If we are going to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and all our strength and love our neighbor as our self, we have to work. To be a daily worshiper requires work. To do outreach involves hard work. But there is another aspect to this word work. We spend the majority of our life at work, whether that is working in the home, the school, the office, the factory, the hospital or the farm. These are the places where our faith can be expressed. My life s verse is Ephesians 2:10: For we are God s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. This verse tells us we were made to contribute not just to consume. We are here to make a difference in the world. What s important is not the duration of our life but the donation of our life for we are designed to give something back. To equip us for this task God has gifted us for service. Peter tells us Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others. (1 Peter 4:10)
6 The apostle makes the profound point that our talent is not for our benefit. God has given us gifts and abilities and experiences to be used for other people. The Bible calls this ministry. Ministry simply means using our gifts to help someone else in the name of God. Any time we use our talents to bless someone else we are ministering. At that moment we are a minister of the gospel of Christ. Because the church is a body each part serves a different purpose. But working together we get the job done. That is why some of us have a passion for overseas mission while others of us support the Barnabas program for special needs children. Some of us want to help people get out of debt by running Financial Peace University. Others of us are digging in the garden to provide fresh food for hungry people. Some of us like leading God s people in worship. Others like working with our students on Sunday nights. Every gift and every person is important. Now you may be thinking a church this size doesn t need my help. That is simply not the case. God brought you to Autumn Ridge because he knows you have something to give. None of us are meant to sit and soak. God brought all of us here to serve. Autumn Ridge depends on hundreds of people using their gifts to work for God. That s true of every church in this community, in this country and around the world. I wonder if you have found your spiritual gift. Are you using it for God? A few months ago Pastor Jason Motte told us about the need at Oak Terrace Trailer Park on Marion Road. We want to have a regular presence there this year helping repair homes and offering other assistance. This is a way we can be a force for good in our community and express our mission of serving people. Last September we had the Great Autumn Ridge Get-Together. It was a tremendous success and you said I hope we are going to do it again. We will this September but we need your help. This year we want to invite the community to join us. We need your ideas for how to do this and provide a welcoming atmosphere. We are starting to plan soon. If you are interested indicate this on your Connection Card. So why are we here? We are here to WORSHIP. We are here for OUTREACH. We are here to WORK. Taken together they spell WOW. What a calling God has given us. This fills our life with eternal significance.
7 A man who understood the WOW of his calling was John Wesley. He was the founder of the Methodist Church. He summed up the purpose of the Christian life like this: Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as you can. And that is why we are here.