Move It

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. That's a matter of character. Andy Stanley says this, character is the will to do what is right as defined by God, regardless of personal cost.

That's about as good a definition as I've ever read. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. The survey was done that the average Christian in the United States gives 20 cents a week to missions.

Twenty cents. See, missions, missio, Latin, it just means to send. That's all it means. Someone who sent. By the way, that's not unusual in the Bible.

I mean, but we have this tendency to think of something else. An apostle. Now, there were capital-A apostles. But apostolos, you know what it means. One who sent. Angels. Angels.

Angelos. Malak in Hebrew. You know what it means? A messenger. You know what a messenger is?

Someone who sent. I mean, you start getting the idea that God's an ascending business. That's what he does. God sent his son. Jesus said in John 20, as the Father has sent me, I send you. You see, do we see ourselves that way? This whole idea of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we say, across the street and around the world, being part of that.

Seeing ourselves that way. You know the passage, but let me just simply say what Paul writes in Romans 10. He said, whoever will call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And then he puts four questions in a row after that. He says, but how will they call if they haven't believed? And how will they believe if they haven't heard? And how will they hear if there's no preacher? And that's a bad word. We think again, preachers are like missionaries.

It simply means a proclaimer. You see, the gospel is proclaimed. Ravi Zacharias says it is beyond opinion. The gospel is just proclaimed.

That's all. Now, what people think about it, you can discuss. But the gospel itself is the gospel. And then he said, and how will they preach if they aren't sent? And so often, churches around our country, we have this whole idea of let's get together and send somebody.

There's nothing wrong with that at all. Let's send Dr. Joe Harvey to the Congo. We're part of that. But I think Jesus has something else in mind. I think he has a lot more in mind than that. I think he would say we're all sent by God. I think he says we're all missionaries. As I've told you in the past, if God has a big missions map in heaven, there is a pin in that map with your name on it where you are. You're a believer in Jesus Christ.

You see, and that sort of then begs a couple of questions if that's the truth. How can you be sent if you don't go? And how can you go if you don't move? God sent Jesus. Jesus did go. Because Jesus moved. God sent John. John did go because John moved.

OK, let me be clear and specific. Move it. Move it. It's time for all of us to move it. You see, it's not really that our church has a missions program, but that God's missions program has our church. You see, we have this tendency to think that we're doing something almost like it's down here.

Lane Yap. This is one of our programs. God is about mission. He's about sending. He's about sending. Sending his son, sending disciples, sending apostles, sending missionaries, sending you and sending me.

That's the business. We're products of the mission. The mission is not a product of the church. Alan Hirsch writes this because the Holy Spirit lives in us and we are all bearers of the gospel message. We are all agents of the king right here, right now, and willing to go any time and anywhere for his kingdom. We are a sent people. The daily bread and an excerpt, but it said a missionary in Africa was once asked if he really liked what he was doing, and his response was, do I like this work?

No. He said, my wife and I don't like the dirt. We have reasonably refined sensibilities. We don't like crawling in vow huts through goat refuge. He said, but it is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like. God pity him.

He said, if not, liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to go and we go. Love constrains us. Move it. You see, I want to say this morning, there are four ways to move it. It's a process.

All four are necessary. They are obvious. It shouldn't be shocking to you. But I hope it sort of burrows down into you and you say, you know, am I moving it?

Am I acting at all like one who was sent? Turn to Matthew 28, a very famous passage. Verse 18. The first specific way we have to move it is simply this. We must be willing to move out.

We must be willing to move out. Matthew ends his gospel by saying in verse 18, And Jesus came up and he spoke to them and said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the people groups, all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Go. What is he doing there? He's sending us. He's sending us. Go.

We have to be willing to move out. Mark ends his gospel by saying, Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. I want you to think about that for a moment. If we're to go in all the world to proclaim the gospel, doesn't that include your world? Isn't that your world?

If it's all the world, then it has to be your world. We have to be willing to move out. You see, I don't have to go to Africa.

I will if he calls. But I have to see myself as sent by God to my world. You have to do that, folks.

You have to be willing to move out and then you have to be willing to move in. Turn to First Corinthians chapter nine in verse 16. Paul says, For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion.

See, Paul's whole point of view, it's not even a discussion. I'm under compulsion. He said, Go.

So I went. He says, For woe to me if I do not preach the gospel, for if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward, but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. He said, You know, it really doesn't even matter what I'm motivated by. If I want to do it, that'll be great. He'll reward it.

And if I don't want to do it, I still have to do it. He said, What then is my reward? He said that I proclaim the gospel, that I may offer the gospel without charge so as to make full use of my right in the gospel. He said, For though I am free of all men, I have made myself the slave of all so that I may win more. He said to the Jews, I become as a Jew.

He said, So that I may win the Jews to those under the law is under the law, though not myself, he said, under the law, that I might win those who are under the law, to those who are without the law, as without the law, though not being without the law of God, he said, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those, he said, who are without the law. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

Pulses I have to engage. It's not just a matter I'm willing to move out, Lord. I'm willing to move out for you. He said, Are you willing to move in? You see, are you willing to move in? And our culture is so diverse. You see, that's the whole idea.

Am I willing to move in? You know the passage in the Sermon on Mount Jesus said, You're the light of the world. That's a statement. Now, he said, There's only one thing you can do to mess this up.

Stick your light under basket, he said, because if you stick your light under a basket, no one's going to see your light. In other words, we have to move into our world. Willing to move out for God and willing to move into the world in which we live. The culture is so diverse. The ministries are so diverse.

This congregation is so diverse. Young people and old people. Rich people, poor people, black people, white people. Professionals and blue collars. Couples with young children and empty nesters.

People who have vacation homes and people who live in convalescent homes. That's who we are. Do we move into those areas? You see, do I become that? Whatever it is. Paul said, I become whatever it is I need to become in order to win some, because I'm willing to move in.

Are you? Willing to move out, willing to move in. And then willing to move alongside. Turn to the book of Acts, chapter 17. And again, the apostle Paul and we'll look at verse 17.

But I want you to see what he did. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God fearing Gentiles and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be present. Paul finds himself in Athens, cultural capital of the world. He's a Jew. Not that well thought of in Athens, but he goes to the Jews. And by the way, when he went to the Jews, how do you think he acted? Jewish. Very Jewish. After all, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, so he could do that well.

But watch. He said, and also some of the Epicureans and the Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Wow. Philosophers. By the way, there are only really two kinds of philosophers, Stoics and Epicureans. I mean, that's pretty much it. I mean, Stoics are pretty much like the precursors of modern day existentialists. You know, their whole view is, you know, you really got to be sober about life.

You know, and if you really think about it, it kind of stinks. That kind of approach. Epicureans were, hey, maybe so. Eat drinking to be merry for tomorrow we die. I mean, that's their mantra.

So you have these two groups. Now, notice they're talking to Paul. Some were saying, what would this idle babbler wish to say? Others were saying he seemed strange to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus in the resurrection. And they took him and they brought him, he said, to the Areopagus and saying, may we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming, for you are bringing some strange things to our ears.

And so we want to know what these things mean. Now, all Athenians and the strangers visiting are used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new. You've got to love that. That's Luke's opinion. By the way, it's a lot like a college campus. That's pretty much what everybody does. You waste all of your time just talking hypothetically about something that might be new. And that's called, by the way, in America, intellectualism.

OK. So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and he said, men of Athens, I have observed that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God. Therefore, he said, what you worship in ignorance, this is what I proclaim to you. The God who has made the world and all the things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he says, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having, he says, determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitation. And he said that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him, he says, we live and we move and exist. And even some of your own poets have said, for we also are as children.

Wow. Paul's a Jew. He's talking to stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens. And he knows them. And he knows about them. He's read their poet. He's come alongside them. He understands that they have a statute to an unknown God. He's going to take advantage of that. In other words, he looks for common ground. And he finds it. He builds a bridge to them.

Because that's how the Great Commission is carried out. Ravi Zacharias says this. Paul's approach to reaching the lost requires us to adapt our style and paradigm of doing evangelism and apologetics according to the cultural context specific to the audience and the people we are engaging. Therefore, it is critical to learn how we can respectfully ask probing questions of genuine interest. He said earlier, I propose that we take the study of other religions and worldviews seriously. He said this knowledge should not merely be the facts about the beliefs and their practices. It is equally crucial that we establish vibrant relationships with people of other cultures and religions. He said, as Netland, another writer, rightly stresses, our knowledge of other cultural traditions should involve actually knowing followers of other religions in a personal manner where the humanity and the intrinsic dignity of the other person is experienced. This requires us to identify with the questions and the struggles that confront our friends in their native cultures.

Then hopefully we will be able to walk alongside them and lead them to consider the truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I'm talking about. Come alongside. You see, you have to be able to come alongside. By the way, Ravi Zacharias comes alongside sort of the best intellectuals of our day.

That's his particular gift. God's not asking me to do that, and he hasn't asked you to do that. Now, just think about this. Do you know that the people that work where you work are pretty much like you? They pretty much are. The people that live in your neighborhood, they're pretty much like you.

You see, the parents of the kids that go to school with your kids, they're pretty much like you are. By the way, that gives you a tremendous advantage. You see, that gives you a tremendous advantage.

By the way, as was said earlier in the testimony, almost all of the people that you associate with or we do in the context of the culture in which we live is almost all your family and friends who don't know Christ are Roman Catholic, just like you were. That's a tremendous advantage. There's a dialogue. You see, you have something to say. You have to come in alongside them. That's what he is saying. You see, we have to be able to do that.

The relationships that we have. When Matthew got saved in Matthew Chapter 9, the Lord called him. Do you know what the first thing Matthew did was? He had a party. You know he invited? Tax gatherers.

You know why? He knows tax gatherers. You see, in this whole view, what resonated with me, I'm sure can resonate with my friends.

I'm certain Zacchaeus did the same thing. I know these people. Let's get them together.

You see, something just as meaningful and significant can happen in a backyard barbecue that can happen in the Congo. Somebody can come to Jesus Christ. We have to see ourselves. We are sent people. And if he's sending us, we have to go. But the only way we go is we have to move it. We have to move out, we have to move in, and we have to move alongside.

We also have to move from. Turn to 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1. Great church, but I love what Paul writes to them beginning in verse 2. He said, We give thanks to God always for all of you. Making mention of you in our prayers. Constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence of our God and Father. Knowing, brethren, beloved by God, His choice of you. He said, For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full convictions. In other words, it's clear that Paul says we proclaim the gospel to you.

But then he says this. He said, Just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. He said, You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all believers in Macedonia and Achaia. He said, For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth so that we have no need to say anything. He says, You became examples.

You know what kind of people we were. What's he talking about? He's talking about character. You see, it's one thing to move out and then move into the world, then move alongside the world. But one thing I've got to do is I've got to be careful.

I move from the world as well. Scripture says you're in the world, but you don't need to be of the world. You have to have character.

C.S. Lewis basically said this. He said, Non-Christians, by and large, respect people who tell the truth, do good for others, and live moral lives. Non-Christians, by and large, respect people who tell the truth, do good to others, and live moral lives. It's true. There's respect. There's character. You see, one of the problems I have seen with folks, I know people. I've known people in our own church, especially young people, that say, I'm ready to move out. I'm ready to move in and I'm ready to move alongside.

But I don't move from because I'm afraid my friends won't like me. No character. Boy, that has an enormous effect on your message. You see, it's a matter of character. Andy Stanley says this. Character is the will to do what is right, as defined by God, regardless of personal cost. That's about as good a definition as I've ever read. Character is the will to do what is right, as defined by God, regardless of personal cost. And then he says this.

Just look around your neighborhood, your office, your family. It doesn't take a great deal of observation to recognize that God's standard for character was designed for the preservation of relationships. He says those who follow it intentionally or unintentionally will be rewarded relationally. Those who don't, either by stubbornness or ignorance, will forfeit the joy of authentic relationships. He said where there is character, there is compatibility. Where character is lacking, there is conflict.

You see, you have to be distinct. That distinction, though, becomes part of being salt and light. You see, without character, Jesus said on the Sermon on Mount, not just that you're the light of the world, but he said you are the salt of the earth. But then what did he say?

What happens if you lose your saltiness? He said you're not good for anything. You see, we are under orders in a sense to not only go, but we are under clear orders to be, like our Lord and Savior. And so it's a matter of whether we're willing to move. The mission is for all of us, not just the missionaries that we support.

He has sent us to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Some people we know have gone all over the world. Some of us have only gone across the street. Some of you may only have to go across the hall. But you've got to go. You see, you have to go. If you're going to go, you have to move. You've got to move it, move it.

Move out, move in, move alongside, and move from. The only limitation, the only limitation is your own willingness. God has already saved you, so apparently you know the gospel. God has empowered you with his Spirit.

He indwells you. As Paul said, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And God has placed you right where you are.

Isn't that amazing? You are placed right where you are. That seems so simple, but on another level, that's so profound. You are strategic to the plan of God. All that he asks you to do is that at the right time, in the right place, if you move out, move in, move alongside, and move from, to give an account for the hope that's in you, you'll be amazed what God can do.

In fact, you'll simply be a missionary. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org. That's F-B-C-N-O-L-A dot O-R-G. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online. Or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.