+ One (2017) Sermon #2: The Power of the Gospel, Romans 1:16 Dr. Matt Cassidy --- January 8, 2017 This is a breakthrough year for us at Grace Covenant Church. I could go on for a long time about how strategic this year is in the history of our church, but I ll just say for no other reason than that we have room, finally. We have room in this auditorium and in education space for adults and our children s ministry. I don t know if we ve ever actually been confident that everyone could bring someone. And they finally finished the road construction. That s a good thing, too. Our leadership is in a super healthy position and the ministries are almost in full swing of being able to care for people. And I ll just say it another way: Aslan is walking amongst us. Aslan is on the prowl. He s on the move here at Grace Covenant Church. It s a good time to be at Grace. It s a safe time to be at this church. So do this: add one; plus one. Here s what I m asking you to do; consider this. Bring someone to church this year. Bring a friend and consider that God has arranged relationships ahead of time for you to be involved in bringing the good works of God into their lives; that you would display the good works of God so that you could bring that into their lives. Talk about Jesus, tell them your story, bring them to church. Threatening, right? It s so hard to do that and I wanted to just review what we talked about last week, why you should be confident about doing ministry. Three reasons --- I ll add another one --- but three reasons very quickly I ll review why you should be confident to do ministry, to bring the goodness of God into people s lives. Power.Gospel.cassidy 1
1 Peter 2:9 1. Status as Priest for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for He called you out of the darkness into His wonderful light. One is your status as a priest. 1 Peter says this: For you are a chosen people. You re royal priests, a holy nation, God s very own possession. And as a result you can show others the goodness of God. So He called you out of darkness and into His wonderful light. We have this status that we re a royal priesthood. At Grace we say that every believer s a minister --- every believer s a minister/priest. That s an office, that you get to be the person to talk to people about God. That s what priests do; they talk to God about people and to people about God. And that s why at Grace we say regularly, I m just a pastor but you guys are the that s right, you re the ministers. And there s ministry out there to be had. If you look at that passage in 1 Peter it says --- vision this. Just picture it like being on a team. We are one holy nation. That s the name of our team: One Holy Nation. Our uniforms are a possession of God, chosen by God, his own possession. We have a position to play. A royal priesthood. We re on a team, we ve got our uniforms, royal priesthood, and then it says: so that you can sit on the bench and wait until Jesus comes back. No. It says, so that you can demonstrate the goodness of God to people s lives. So if I were the coach, I d say, Get out there and do goodness. Get out there and tell people about Jesus Christ. 2. Set Up to Win Still nervous? What if I told you that the game is rigged? That He s already set up plays for you to succeed? Now you want to play? It s easier to play, right? Because the second thing we learned last week is that He s setting us up to win. Power.Gospel.cassidy 2
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Look what it says in Ephesians 2: For we are God s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Before the foundations of the world, He was calling in a play for you to play as a priest and you re going to go along and He s going to throw the ball to you --- good works in Christ before time for you to display the goodness of God to your neighbors. 3. Ministry Success And if that weren t enough, to have this status as a player, a priest, and then the game is rigged --- let me give you a third reason why you should have confidence in doing ministry. Don t be bashful, be confident. It s because of the way God keeps score. Ministry success the way God does it makes us desire to be involved in this because God has allowed the hard work to be done by the Holy Spirit. We just do the easy stuff. Jesus said before He left, Look, I have to leave, but the Spirit s coming so He can convict men of sin. That s the hard stuff. You can t do that. Yelling doesn t work. Nagging doesn t work. That s God s spirit. All we do is the easy stuff. We re just the messengers. It s out of our pay grade to do much more than display the goodness of God. 1 Corinthians 3:6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. Paul puts it like this; it s an analogy with the fundamentals of farming. He s just kind of doing what he has to do. So he says this: I planted --- that was the easy stuff, I just stuck the seed in the ground; Apollos, (that s this other guy), he watered --- that s easy stuff --- God was causing the growth. God was doing the hard stuff. Power.Gospel.cassidy 3
So we need to be confident in our ministry because God has given us the status as priests --- every believer s a minister --- we re royal priests at that; the game is rigged before the foundations of the world; and then this is ministry success, this is how to keep score: you do the easy stuff, leave the hard stuff to the Spirit. Those are the three reasons we looked at last week about why you would be involved in ministry and why you should be confident in the ministry that God has given you. I want to bring up the fourth reason today. This is the fourth reason you should be adventurous in your desire to pray and care and share the gospel: it is the power of the gospel. Romans 1:16 4. Power of the Gospel For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Look what it says in Romans, one of my favorite verses: For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the power of God for salvation. Why should you be confident? Because you re the messenger, absolutely. You re just doing the easy stuff. What s your message? Your message is the power of God for salvation. It s the only thing that can change a person in his or her soul. Because when it says the power of God for salvation, salvation is this holistic term. It s not just referring to --- absolutely, by the way, it refers to the forgiveness of sins where Jesus takes on our debt and we receive His righteousness. You bet. No guilt. But it also includes things that saturate the soul, where in His experience as a shame-filled death --- that s our shame --- and we receive His honor. And so again, we get this status as a royal priest. We don t hang our heads and mope around. That changes a person s soul. And besides forgiveness and honor He also gives us power. He became powerless so that we might inherit the Holy Spirit of God. And the reason Paul is not ashamed of the gospel, the reason he does ministry with confidence, is because He knows the power of God for salvation is in this message. And the gospel message is the only way a person s life can change. The gospel message is the only way a soul can change from the inside out. The truths that Power.Gospel.cassidy 4
are found there are the only things that can undo the crazy things that we do with our lives. Only God s gospel can do that --- the power of God in salvation. I wanted you to see the power of salvation today. I want to bring a friend up on stage and she was part of a network of people, unbeknownst to her, that were all minister/priests and they were all praying for her and they were caring for her and they were looking for opportunities to share with her. So Jaime, come up here. Jaime works for the Austin Police Department. We ve got a clip of her training sessions here. This is what she went through joining the department. Video Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iepbuujlg7t6txg/cops-busterkeaton-1922-clip.mp4?dl=0 Matt: Did it look like that? Jaime: A little bit. Matt: It was the power of the gospel that changed your life? Jaime: Absolutely. Matt: It changed your marriage, changed your family. Jaime: Absolutely. Matt: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Why don t you introduce yourself first and then we ll tell your story. Jaime: Good morning, Grace. I m Jaime. I m a police officer. I ve worked with Austin Police Department for almost ten years now. I m currently assigned to the mental health unit and I m also a mother and a wife. Matt: And there are some pictures of your family. There are the two boys and Gunther. Gunther was up here last week. The truth be told, Gunther and Gary told the story about how to do ministry. It was mostly about how God placed Gary in Gunther s life during a very difficult time and how they were able to pray for him and care for him and talk to him about the goodness of God. And I had different plans for this Sunday, but when people started telling me about your side of the power of Power.Gospel.cassidy 5
the gospel, they said, You have to let Jaime tell the other part of the power of God s love in their lives. And so that s why Jaime s here. And there s some happy pictures of you and Gunther happily married. But it s not always that way. Jaime: No. Matt: Not even close. So what we want to do today is I want you to fill in some of the details that we didn t hear last week about where you were in this story of people being ministers in your life and how it invaded your life. In other words, tell us about how you came to Christ and what that meant. Jaime: So in the fall of 2010 my marriage was falling apart. Gunther and I were a mess and although we d been married for thirteen years at the time, we weren t even staying in the same room. Years of insecurity and deceit had led to infidelity and we were so self-absorbed that our two boys that were in elementary school at the time were practically raising themselves. It was so bad that on two different occasions I had packed the car with our things and the two boys and I was going to leave Gunther. Matt: And then you were asked to a Christmas Tea by your friend Janelle? Jaime: Yes. Janelle, Gary s wife, invited me to the women s Christmas tea that year and it happened to fall on December 1 st, which was supposed to be our thirteenth anniversary. But because we didn t have anything to celebrate, I decided to go to the event. Matt: What was that like? Jaime: I walked in the room and it was beautiful. All the tables were set up very gorgeous and I sat down at a table with some women I really didn t know and I looked on the table and in front of me was this little gift. And I opened it and inside was this bracelet and the bracelet had an inscription and the inscription said Hope. I remember looking at that bracelet and starting to cry, because I didn t have any. Matt: So God has some special things planned for you that night. Jaime: I didn t know what God s plan was for me, that He had put people in my life, women that were at this table in my life, to help me along this journey. And one of those special women was named Dawn Patterson. It was her table I was at. And I didn t know her at all and during the closing prayer she actually reached across and she grabbed my hand. And she held on so tight. And she Power.Gospel.cassidy 6
didn t stop holding on. We continued to talk for days after that about my marriage, our issues, about her own brokenness and how she came to Christ. One conversation we had --- pretty much up to that point my life had been void of God ---- so I asked point blank, What is this Lord and Savior stuff? And she told me the ABC s: you admit your sins, you believe that Jesus died for those sins, and you commit your life to serving Christ. That sounded really good, but I wasn t ready. I wasn t ready until about three days later when I was driving in my car, of all places. I was stopped at a stoplight and I just started crying and I knew that at that moment I needed to accept Christ and He needed to become the center of my life; that I couldn t go on one second longer without Him taking the reins. Matt: I bet that stoplight is kind of sentimental to you even now? I don t know. But now this is your birthday, right there under the traffic light. So life gets better for you and things turn around no, okay they get worse? Jaime: Absolutely not. No. Matt: This is going to be a happy story at the end though, right? Come on Go ahead. What happened next? Jaime: So eleven days after the Christmas Tea by husband devastated me with his second confession of infidelity just minutes before we were supposed to board a plane to go visit his family in Germany for three weeks. I remember grabbing his phone and I ran to the bathroom and I fell on the floor of the nasty bathroom stall and I began to cry. And I called my mom and my mom told me to leave him, to get the boys and come home. I hung up the phone. And this voice inside of me said, NO. Don t do it. Don t quit. So I got up, I walked to the gate, and there was Gunther standing there with the boys and they were boarding the plane. I had seconds to decide. So I obeyed and I got on the plane. Matt: That must have been some plane ride. Right? I mean, it s got to be ten hours at least. Jaime: Eleven. Matt: Eleven? Yeah, that s uncomfortable. Jaime: Yeah. So actually we look at it now as God s perfect timing. At the time we really didn t think so. We weren t able to just get up and run off. Nobody was there to interject their opinions on what we should do. And I remember a couple of days into the trip I took this long walk in the snow. Power.Gospel.cassidy 7
It was really cold. And I fell to my knees and I looked to the sky. And I begged God for a huge sign --- something huge so that I wouldn t miss it, because I m not a subtle kind of girl. Matt: So you do the plane ride and two days later you re walking in the snow, you fall to your knees, Give me something to stay involved in this, right? Jaime: Yeah. Matt: So do you feel like God answered that prayer? Jaime: Absolutely, about two hours later. I walked in and Gunther --- here s this man I ve known most of my life and he s strong and he s a firefighter, he s valiant, he runs into burning buildings when everyone else is running out. I ve seen him repel from buildings downtown and cut people out of cars. And here he was just sobbing, crying from the depths of his soul, begging me for forgiveness. Matt: And I guess that was your sign. And you knew that had to be real. In the context of your profession I would imagine that you re able to see when people are telling you what you want to hear to get them out of something, or they re lying. You didn t see that in Gunther. Jaime: No, I knew this was coming from the depths of his soul. This kind of anguish, this kind of crying out, it could have only been from God. And from that moment God kind of ignited something inside of me, just this prompting to extend my hand. And so I did and I asked Gunther and I told him that we could do it together. Matt: So you chose to forgive him? Jaime: Absolutely. Matt: Why? Jaime: I d been learning a lot about God through my Bible reading. I forgot to tell you guys that on the night of the Christmas Tea, Janelle had actually given me my very first Bible. And so I had started reading it. And the conversations I had and the things I had been reading said that God doesn t count one person s sin more than another s. So my sin costs the same as Gunther s. It was Jesus death on the cross. And the whole time God just kept putting it inside my heart that there s so much more to this man. Power.Gospel.cassidy 8
Matt: So you re still in Germany, you have a three-week trip, you re two days into this, and Gunther has had this soul-wrenching apology, and you forgive him. And what happens for the rest of the trip? What s going on then? Jaime: So it was brutal, but it was beautiful at the same time. We kind of spent the next three weeks pulling everything out from underneath the carpet that we d pushed and stuffed under there for thirteen years. I started to read him excerpts from my Bible and I found a lot of hope. Matt: Yeah, I love the idea that you get this brand new Bible and the Bible only has your first name on it, by the way. We brought that up last week, that they didn t think you d still have the same last name when they gave you that Bible. So they just put your first name on it, you bring it on this trip, you pack it not knowing what you ll be greeted with at the gate, and then you get over there and here you are, cracking open this brand new Bible, and you guys are starting to study it. You get hope back. Your bracelet is telling the truth now. It s a hope bracelet. So what did you see? Did you see something change in Gunther while you were over there? Jaime: Absolutely. In the three weeks our love was strengthened and when we got back we had decided that the old habits that we had, they needed to change. So we started attending Grace and at the time, God had really surrounded us with a cushion of transparent believers, just people willing to care for us. And along with his friendship with Gary, He also put another Christian man in his life that had experienced very similar circumstances in his marriage. So shortly after we got back from Germany, Gunther had lunch with him and he came back having given his life to Christ. Matt: There were a lot of people on this team --- one holy nation. There are a lot of ministers/priests out there and again, you had been surrounded, Gunther had been surrounded by people caring for him and praying for him. We re not alone in our work. As things went on, now that Gunther s a believer, you are a believer, what things did you see happen then? Jaime: Well, I saw God just change this man from being cold and callous to just warm and loving and devoted. And we started to marriage ministry. We got marriage ministers in Dawn and John Patterson and He really just changed our lives dramatically. Our children --- we started praying with our children and they started smiling. And He s really given me the greatest gift of all --- salvation. He saved my marriage. I mean, I think we would have been happy with just an average marriage, but God has gone above and beyond, because that s what He does, right? And He has given us a phenomenal marriage. Power.Gospel.cassidy 9
Matt: That s great. That is the power of salvation from God. That s what we re talking about. The power of God in salvation. I want Gunther to come on up here. This guy --- you guys are awesome. So what do you feel like has changed the most when you go back to 2011 when all the miracles started happening. How do you think things have changed? How has God developed you? Gunther: So I think one of the biggest things is that while we were living outside of God s will before, now it s just everything we do, we pray about it. We follow His lead on every choice, every decision we have to make, whether that s with family, parenting, finances, career choices, anything like that. Both of our kids have given their lives to Christ and over the last few years, both wanted to be baptized. So I got to baptize our youngest one --- he s sitting right there. And our oldest one actually asked Gary to baptize him. So the guy who got the whole ball rolling --- it was really neat how he got to baptize him a few years back at church camp. Matt: Awesome. What about you, Jaime? Jaime: I know what trust is for the first time in my life. And I trust God with the direction of my life. I know it s going to be an adventure ride, but I trust the plans that He has for me. Matt: An abundant life, He promised an abundant life. What advice would you give the congregation in light of your experience together and your experience with God so that maybe anybody could take away an application here? Jaime: You know, we both know the pain of living outside of God s will. And I would say obedience --- obedience is the key. I trust God s promptings and follow them and it just makes sense. And it s always worth it. Matt: Your first act of obedience was a very difficult one, maybe your hardest. It was on the bathroom of that airport. Jaime: Yeah. So that phone call to my mother --- to tell you a little bit about my mom. she s a very strong woman. She raised me as a single mom, she is a sergeant in the army and a black belt in Aikido. She s a force to be reckoned with. And she always taught me, You don t need a man. So when I was on the bathroom floor and my mom told me to leave him, I had to choose between everything my flesh was telling me to do and God s will. And so, I chose God s will. Matt: And it had the greatest blessing. Jaime: Absolutely. Power.Gospel.cassidy 10
Matt: The greatest act of obedience has a nice return on that. Anyway, you guys are awesome. Thank you for coming and sharing your story with us. The power of God for salvation, right there. The special type of courage that motivates a man to run into a burning building, the type to motivate a woman to chase a bad guy --- they have that. There s a different type of courage that says, You know what? I m going to deal with what s true in my life, that I do not have a relationship with God and has something has to be done outside of me. It takes a different type of courage that says, I need help with my marriage. I m going to go seek advice for that. It takes a special type of courage to say, There is the power of God in salvation that s not being applied and I need to do this. So I hope you heard about that kind of courage today. It s 2017 at Grace Covenant Church. I hope, it s our prayer, that it will be a breakthrough year, not just for our church, but for the people of our church. We re trying to do whatever we can to help people understand how to live a life that s worthy of the Lord. That s what we do here. And let me just tell you how we re going to start off. Starting next week we re going to start a series together called Resolve. And the purpose of the series Resolve is to find out, a lot like what Jaime was talking about, what motivates us? What causes us to be who we are? Maybe the way we re made and maybe sometimes experiences that we ve had or the way we were raised. Whatever it might be --- but we re going to go into this --- we re going to have a resolve to have God s power of salvation touch those parts of our lives that can absolutely change us. Resolve is based on book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. We went through this about five years ago or so, six years in the leaderships, and we went, Wow. It s based on these beliefs. One is a prayer by St. Augustine who prayed, Lord, grant me the ability to know myself, so that I can know you. John Calvin put it another way. He said, Our wisdom consists almost entirely of two aspects: one, our knowledge or ourselves, and two, our knowledge of God. In the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, in the Resolve series that we ll do, we ll go into those places and experience how God can customize grace in our lives so that we might be transformed. That s what we re going to do. Here s what we re asking people to do to get involved in that. One --- buy the book. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality is on sale in the lobby. We re going Power.Gospel.cassidy 11
to lose 68 cents every time we re going to sell one of those books. We want you to buy one. Start reading chapter 6, believe it or not. We ll look at chapter 6 next week. I like to start in the middle. The second thing, besides buying the book and participating in our six-week series together, is to get involved in some kind of group so that we can apply and discuss the material. If you re involved in some kind of midweek group already, then we want you to change your curriculum and join us for six weeks. If you want to start something at work or in your neighborhood, or whatever it might be, let s go. Let s do the questions. And then --- the first time we ve been able to do this. We haven t been able to do it before. If you want to join a group here on campus on Sunday, come to the 9:15 service, hear the sermon, cross the hallway into our old auditorium. We ll have tables set up with discussion group leaders and we can get on it right then and there. Starting next week, if you want to come and do a discussion with us, by all means, do that. You can come at 9:15 and then walk right into a discussion itself. Make plans for that. Plan to resolve. What is the goal for all of this? At Grace, if you look carefully, you might find that our vision statement is considerably different. Honestly, if you go into the depths of it, it s considerably different from a lot of churches. And the reason is that most churches have some kind of vision statement, some big plan to reach the world or city, whatever it might be. And we ve chosen not to do that, even over the evolution of our vision statements. We ve chosen instead to make the vision the prayers of the apostles. If you look at the epistles --- the apostles wrote those, right, the saints that wrote those --- and their prayers are almost entirely about the maturation of the saints, not about everything. It s about souls being made whole. In other words, the prayers of Peter and Paul in the epistles, the letters to the churches, their greatest anguish and energy and concern towards maturity, completeness, fullness of who you are meant to be. Colossians 1:9-10 We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. Power.Gospel.cassidy 12
Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1. He says: We continually --- here s his prayer --- We continually ask God to fill you with knowledge of His will through the wisdom and understanding of gifts so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing in every way, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. That s what we want to do. In many ways that s the vision of our church. Whether it s connected to relationships or transformed by God s grace or committed to service, those things are a means to making us complete and whole. And we want that for you. That s what we do here. That s our vision. Now what are you to do? I would say this. Seize this moment. This is a very special time at this church. It s for such a time as this. Don t miss this. Aslan is on the roam here. The Spirit of God is moving in special ways. So be holy like they were talking about. Honestly, just obey --- it s easier. It s faster, it s better, you ll be blessed by it. Obey. Let s just say we re going to spend this year obeying and see what happens. Be praying. Be praying for you to hear God s voice and how you might be able to apply the power of salvation to aspects of your life that need to be altered, that need to be set free --- shame that needs to be brought out into the light, that needs to be set free --- be praying for that. I want you to be praying for your friends and your neighbors. Pray for the people on your row, that they will hear God s voice as well. And last, be willing to change. Be willing to hear. Be willing to be a minister. You have a status as a high priest, a royal priest, rather. Play that status. It s a funny time to be here. We have a lot of people coming, a lot of people visiting. A number of you are bringing your friends ---- that s the very best way for people to come to church. We have a lot of people --- the second most common way people come to this church is they just see it on the freeway. God s doing the heavy lifting, He s convicting them of something --- I need to get back to church. Where should I go? Oh, yeah, I drive by this twice a day. And they come in here. There s a lot of funny stories that I get to hear about people that were just led here and then they couldn t not come. They just felt like they had to come back the next week. We heard it over Christmas Eve. This one woman came all three services Christmas Eve. She s from New Jersey --- and she came back the next week too and said, How do I watch this online? How did you find us? I just drove here and then I couldn t leave. She was the last one to leave. I had to walk her out at 8:30. She was here longer than I was. She was here before I was, and I walked her out. Those are the stories we hear. Power.Gospel.cassidy 13
So here s the point. Here s the point of people just visiting randomly. You are the director of first impressions for people like that. Just a happy smile, a good greeting, a desire to hear God --- there s a story of someone in here that they just felt led to say to someone on their row, Are you okay? Can I pray for you? And it changed a life. Could you just hear God s voice? That you would come to church and say, I m here to do ministry. I m looking for someone to care for. Prayer, care, share. That s what we do at Grace. I tell you what. Just like last week, let s start with practice. Let s stand up, greet one another and say, You have a great ministry this year. Hey, let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we ask that this would be a breakthrough year at Grace Covenant Church, for the church, but because of all the souls that are in this church, I d ask that you cause us to have a fullness of the expression of your power that is in salvation and in our relationship with you. I pray Paul s prayer. When he was thinking of Grace, he said, For this reason, since the day I heard of Grace, we never stop praying for you. We are continually asking that God would fill you with the knowledge of His will through all wisdom and all the understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you might live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that we would have great endurance and have great patience towards one another. Lord, I d ask that You d be giving us joyful thanks to the Father, who qualified us to share in the inheritance of all the holy people that are part of this one holy nation, this kingdom of light. Lord, I d ask that we would appreciate that You sent Your Son to rescue us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son, who loved us and gave His life to redeem us, and forgave us of our sins. We d ask that You d bless this church and bless her indeed. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Power.Gospel.cassidy 14
Power.Gospel.cassidy 15