What Now? What Next? - Christ Not Causes, Part 2

It's not too far-fetched to say we're living in one of the most disruptive and confusing times in world history. You know, evil is everywhere.

We hear stories day after day of corruption and difficulty and pain and injustice. What I want you to know is there's hope. That there's a model for us in the 21st century that Jesus gave us in the first century. Stay with me.

That's today. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Druey, and Chip's our Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry. In this program, Chip picks up where he left off last time in his new series, What Now, What Next, with his call for unity among believers.

You know, too often we as Christians let political, social, or personal beliefs divide us. Chip pushes us to lay aside those secondary issues and focus on loving Jesus together. Before he continues, let me encourage you to use Chip's message notes while you listen. They include his brief outline and all the supporting scripture he references. To download these message notes, just go to the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge.org.

App listeners tap fill in notes. Let's join Chip now for part two of his message, Christ Not Causes. I would say that it's very important to think we are living in a day that's much more like the first century than the last century. In the last century, a good portion of it, there was a, in America at least, a collective worldview and culture that actually supported your faith. You know, being an honest person, telling the truth, having a marriage and staying married, basic morality.

I remember my dad selling a car, and he shook a guy's hand. There weren't paperwork. There weren't lawyers. And so to be a Christian was to be esteemed. Now we're in a day where if you're interviewed for a job on a court and you're a female who says, because of her faith, says, I believe the life of the unborn is very, very important, then two senators say, we could never have a judge like that because she's dangerous.

How do you get to be dangerous because you just care about an unborn child? Well, then what's our model? I'm going to suggest our model and our mandate is Jesus himself. Here's the good news. If you're taking notes, I left this one blank, I think.

There's hope. Luke chapter 4, do you remember it? Do you remember? Jesus is starting his ministry. He's been tempted. He goes back to Nazareth where he had been brought up and was asked his custom. He stood up in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and they gave him a scroll, and he unrolled the scroll, the book of Isaiah. And the Spirit of the Lord, he says, is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives, to recover the sight of the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the favor, the favorable year, the good news of Yahweh the Lord. And he closed the book, he gave it back to the attendant, and he sat down, and the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today, this has been fulfilled in your hearing. What I want you to know is the world's looking for a Messiah memo. He came. We have one. He's our hope. We need to just follow him and proclaim him. But it gets better than that. There's help. It's not just his motto.

Remember his mandate? You know, we often talk about going to all the world. Literally, it's as you go. This wasn't for some little group of people and you have to go on a trip.

This is participle. As you go to work, as you go around the block, as you go to get your coffee, as you go to pick up your dry cleaning, as you go to, wherever you go, make followers of Jesus, authentic, fully devoted, Romans 12 as we read, followers of Jesus. Of who? Not just of nations out there. The word is ethnos, to every people group.

And what are you supposed to do? Well, I want you to baptize them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit. And in that day, that primarily was, help them move their identity from their darkness into light.

And this moment of baptism is when they say, I'm a brand new person and my alignment and my family is the church, the supernatural community. Well, then teach them. Well, what do you want us to teach them? Teach them it's not about coming to a service and listening to someone and singing three or four songs and trying to be a nice person. Teach them to obey everything I taught you. Well, where's that? It's this. And what I love is, here's the help. Before he gave that in verse 19, he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

We got all the power we need. And then when he finished, he said, and I am with you always, even to the end of the age. His presence. But his presence isn't manifested to everyone. His presence is manifested to people that are about making disciples. It's making disciples in a disrupted world. So the question then raises, well, how do you introduce Christ to our disrupted world?

And there's a little acronym that the Lord gave me as I was processing this that we'll walk through. But if you look at Jesus' life, he proclaimed Christ, not causes. There were lots of causes. The cause of women, infanticide, slavery. And it was those people who followed Jesus with all their heart that addressed those biggest causes.

But they focused on him first and foremost. They were a healing community. They weren't hostile and angry over what Rome was doing. They focused on relationships, not real estate.

There weren't even cathedrals built or places to go to for 300 years. They met in homes and catacombs. They just loved each other. They ate meals. They did innovation, new wine and new wineskins. They weren't indignant. They were people that focused on substance, not success.

I don't think they were counting all the numbers. I think it was Yahweh. He's the Lord our God. We're going to teach people the great truth. We're going to be men and women who know God's word, who share God's word, who teach our children, fathers that when we rise up and when we go to bed and when we walk by the way, who impart and model what it means to be a follower, the substance of authentic followers. And finally, they were people who weren't waiting for the next technology. You know, they had their technology, the Roman roads, the aqueducts.

They had lots of technology. It's interesting when someone said, Lord, will you tell us what's the work of God? I mean, how are we really going to do this? John 6. This is the work of God that you believe on him who he has sent. There's a lot of things we can do, but without faith, without trusting him, it's impossible to please God. The blessing of being in countries and places where the gospel is not well received and it's very hostile is people have to trust God. The challenge of being Americans who are wealthy and affluent like all of us who live in nice places like this, we have to choose to trust God. And it's hard, even among fellow Christians, to really trust God?

I mean, really trust him with everything? You're swimming upstream. So what's next? Let's get started very, very practically as I wrap our time up. I believe what's next is there is a question to ask, there is a decision to make, and there's a path to follow.

And I'm going to tell you on the front end, it's going to be a process. But here's the question to ask. It's the question that Jesus asked to one of his favorite, favorite churches. If you know the history of the church and how it came to be in Ephesus, it grew and it had such impact. And now Jesus, about 30, 35 years later, through the apostle John, is going to go back to that church.

He says, I know the things that you do. I've seen your hard work and your patient endurance. So they were active. They were doing good stuff.

They didn't give up. But I have this complaint against you. You do not love me or each other as you did at first. Oh, Lord, you know, we've got services gone, got a lot of impact, given money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've lost your first love. I've become a compartment. I've become a part of your life. I've become an appendage. I've become maybe even an important part of your life, but not your life. He says, look. Pause. Just back away and kind of look at your life and all the stuff and get perspective. See how far you've fallen. Turn back.

The word literally is repent. Turn back to me and do the works that you did at first. Lean back and just try and remember. Remember what it was like when you first tasted grace? Remember when you were obnoxious because you were telling everybody about Jesus? And, you know, it wasn't like I gotta, oughta, shoulda read the Bible. It was like, oh, man, this is so exciting. And you were memorizing passages and it was bubbling up. And you were just like this crazy person that needed a little maturity.

I think we got a lot of dry maturity. Jesus said, I want to ask you a question. Not is your doctrine right? Not are you faithful to church?

Not are you a bit more moral than most people? Have you lost your first love, your passion for me? If you do not repent, I'll come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches. Lampstand is a picture. It's his presence. You do understand there's lots of churches that Jesus doesn't show up at.

They're all across the world and they're all across America and I've been in a lot of them. I mean, you just, you start to teach and you just realize it's like BB's off of a tank. There's no openness. There's no sense of God's Spirit. There's no presence. There's no power.

Oh, they're religious. Do some good things. So let me ask you, how about you?

Have you lost your first love? That's the question to ask. Then there's a decision to make. We read about it.

The Apostle Paul, after the clearest presentation of 11 chapters of what the gospel is and what it means, says, And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Literally the word is offer. It's a tense in the verb that means at a certain day, on a certain time. It's punctiliar. It's not just some general thought.

On a certain day, on a certain time, have you ever said? This isn't salvation. That's chapters 3 and 4 of Romans. This is lordship. This is the question, am I all in?

Give your bodies to God as a living sacrifice. Well, why? Is it to earn his favor? Is it because there's a transaction?

Is it to get his blessing? What's it saying? Look at your notes. Look at the passage. Because of all that he's done for you. It says mercy.

It says love. Let it be a living and holy sacrifice. So it's not something you do one day, although it happens. It's a lot like marriage.

You do it on a specific day and then you live it out every day. This is truly the way to worship him. If you ever wanted to pause and ask a really big question, it's how I came to Christ actually. If there is a God and if he actually exists, what do you want from me? I didn't grow up as a believer. I was just around enough hypocritical Christians and watched just enough of the really bad Christian TV. The best I could tell, all they want is your money and to use you. And then I met a group of real believers and I had never opened the Bible.

And the first passage I opened to was Romans 12. And the question I'd ask, if there's a God, what do you really want from me? I realize it's not my money. It's not what I can do for him. He wants me. He wants you. All of you.

Every ounce of you. He wants your heart. He wants your dreams. He wants your family. He wants your future.

He wants your money. And it's not to take something away. He wants you to take it and entrust it to him in light of all that he's done for you because surrender is the channel through which God's biggest and best blessings flow. For you to experience the life that God wants to do in you and then through you means that you need to get the controls over here and you become the co-pilot.

And finally there's a path to follow. And after that moment of surrender, he says, don't copy the behavior and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Literally, grammatically, stop allowing the current world system, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, to mold you. In the vernacular, stop letting sex and salary and status be the goals in your life that shape what you do and why you do it. Stop letting pleasure and position and power to be the things that, forget what your mouth says or what you say in your mind, it's what your behavior is saying. And instead, it's not about trying harder, it's about renewing your mind.

It's putting a pause on the news, a pause on Netflix, a pause on the phone, maybe doing a three-day media fast from everything and going back to some of those key passages and renewing your mind and just saying, God, I need a fresh wind from you because the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and makes it alive in your heart. And notice the promise and the desire. Then you'll learn God's will for you, that which is good, pleasing, and perfect. Three questions I think we have.

Have I lost my first love? Am I all in? And is the world conforming me or am I transforming the world around me? And I realize it's a strong challenge. And I would just say when Jesus gave this challenge, hear his heart.

They were living in the same world, the same problems, the same issues as us. And that's the agenda because we get it in the New Testament. But Jesus is saying to you, what he's saying to you, on this day, come. Come. Come unto me right now, all of you that are labored and heavy-laden, that are stressed out, that are overwhelmed, that are confused, that don't know what to make of it, don't know about the future and have deep and overwhelming concerns. Come to me and I will give you rest.

Rest for your soul. Let me take over. And then he goes on to say, take my yoke upon you. Let's do this together.

My yoke is light. Just let's hook up and let's do life together. And here's what I want you to know. This isn't me pounding you. It's not going to take the best things away from you because I'm gentle.

This is Jesus describing himself. I'm humble. I put your needs ahead of my own.

Remember? I went to the cross. And I'm gentle. And I'll give you rest. And so my encouragement is for you to take this very, very seriously. And even if it's just a baby step, Lord, I'm going to look at my life.

Don't make some knee-jerk emotional response to anything. Look at your life. Where is my first love?

And if you're not sure, get out your financial statement and get out your calendar and it'll tell you exactly where your first love is. And maybe the great step would just be, oh, Lord, I'm sorry. He loves you. He's not down on you.

Lord, I'm, gosh, I spend so much time playing these silly games and impressing people and doing things and worrying about that and anxious about that and consumed with how much I've lost and blah, blah, blah. And then for some of you, it may be today, but where he would say to you, if he played Texas Hold'em, sorry, I had a gambling addiction before I came to Christ, I think in gambling terms, he would say to you and me, I want to give you the best and greatest life ever. I want you to take the stack of chips of family, the stack of chips of business, the stack of marriage, the stack of your future, all your money, all your dreams, and I want you to push him to the middle of the table. And then I want you to say to the holy God of the universe, you deal. I trust you. He that spared not his own son, how will he not with him freely give me all things? Oh God, you're a son and a shield. No good thing will you withhold from those who walk uprightly. Is it fearful?

Of course it is. But God, the world's crumbling. All that I am and all that I have, I want to be yours.

Because the very last line, and this will be a journey for some, it'll be a moment in time for others. God must work deeply in us before he will work significantly through us. Lord, we love you.

We do it very poorly. But God, we're so grateful that you love us. And you do it so infinitely good. We have nothing to fear. Help us now on this journey to be Christians that live like Christians. Amen.

Before we do anything else today, I want to pause. It was a very tender moment when I taught this message. And I could see on the faces of people when I asked that question, have you lost your first love? Could it be that we've gotten so distracted and pulled in so many different ways and have become so anxious and at times so fearful that we've lost sight of Jesus, the hope of the world, that the power that raised him from the dead dwells in us, that he's given us a mission and he's given us the power to do it? Can I ask you, where are you at in your first love for the Lord Jesus? I'm sure that the great majority of you listening to my voice right now are saying, you know, I can still remember when I was on fire for God or where I just got up in the morning and I couldn't wait to open my Bible or I had this sense, this just compulsion within to share the love of Christ with others.

And over time, it happens to all of us, you start to drift and family issues change and lives change and what I want you to know is the greatest thing that you can do for you, for those you love, for your family, and for the Lord Jesus is to pause and come back to the very beginning and say, Lord, right now on this day, I can't control the world, but I can control my response to it and my response to you. And what I know for sure, it is your will that I offer my body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to you. The Lord, I say to you right now, I'm all in.

Yes, I'm afraid, but I'm all yours. I'll do whatever you want. I'll say whatever you want me to say.

I'll not say things that I want to say. Lord, my life, my money, my family, my dreams, my future, I want to recommit that to you right now. Would you pray that in your heart of hearts? Would you shift your focus off the things you cannot change and in a world that feels absolutely out of control and get your focus on the one that has it in control and know that he wants to work in you and me deeply and that he's going to work through us mightily? Right now, tell the Lord Jesus, I'm all in.

I'm all yours. Rekindle your first love. Make the first thing you do each and every day is to open his word. Get into the Psalms. Get into the book of John and just ask the Lord to tenderize your heart again, to enjoy him and to love him. And then each and every day, one little prompting, Lord, what do you want me to do? Act on that and see if the Lord doesn't work in a powerful way in your life. That's a great word, Chip.

Thanks. The message you've been listening to, Christ Not Causes, is from Chip's new series, What Now? What Next? When the world gets turned upside down, it becomes really obvious how much people need Jesus. The anger, the hostility, the division, it's devastating. So the question is, how do we tell people about the peace only Jesus offers? Where do we start? In this brand new teaching from Chip, he challenges us to authentically live out our faith by identifying six biblical mindsets we have to adopt. When you invest time in this series, you'll learn what it means to be a genuine Christian in a world that's crumbling all around us. To listen to this entire series, What Now?

What Next? Making Disciples in a Disrupted World, The Chip Ingram Map is a great way to get plugged in. Well, Chip, today's the first day of our year-end match. We've been blown away by the ways God has used this ministry in the last 12 months, and we're looking forward to what's ahead in 2022. You know, it feels like we've all been through the ringer, and the fact is there's a lot of chaos still going on, but you seem pretty optimistic. Why is that?

Absolutely, Dave. Don't get me wrong. The chaos, the difficulty, the things that you've described, I don't dismiss those in any way, but there's something that always happens. A momentous moment is when people and the world and institutions are open to change. Jesus came at a momentous moment.

It was a time when the Roman Empire and culture and philosophies and religions were bankrupt, and we're in that time. We've never seen people more responsive to the gospel. We've never seen people cry out for God's word and be hungry like they do today. We've introduced some new things like the daily discipleship or some teaching to pastors around the world. The response has been beyond anything we could have ever thought or imagined. And so what we're doing is we're responding, and God does great things in the midst of hard things. And so what we're asking this month is for people to help us. The opportunities are beyond anything we've ever seen, but it requires finances, staff, resources, as God has opened these doors all across America and around the world. And so let me just ask you, if you've been benefiting from the teaching of Living on the Edge, if you have a heart for people that are in need here in America and around the world, this is a great time to give. Every dollar you give up to December 31st at midnight will be doubled dollar for dollar. I like the words, seize this divine moment. That's what we want to do, and I'm asking for your help to do it.

What a great challenge. Well, if you want to help us pursue our mission to teach God's word, now's a great time for you to become a financial partner. Because right now, thanks to a small group of friends of the ministry, every gift we receive between now and December 31st will be doubled.

Your 40 becomes 80, 400 becomes 800. To make a donation, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Or if you prefer to give online, our web address is livingontheedge.org. App listeners, just tap donate.

And thank you for praying and doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. As we close, I want to remind you of a great way to stay engaged and connected to Chip and Living on the Edge, the Chip Ingram app. You'll get free access to all of Chip's recent messages, his message notes, and much more.

And not only that, but it couldn't be easier to call or email us directly from the app. We'll be with us again next time when Chip continues his series, What Now? What Next? Until then, this is Dave Drouie saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. See you next time.