Piercing the Darkness - Our Hope: How God Works in History, Part 2

If you listen to the average newscast, you would think everything is terrible and dark and negative in the world. But did you know that right now 70,000 people are coming to Christ each and every day all across the world? There is hope, and there's a way that He does it, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

Stay with me. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip England. Chip's our Bible teacher for this international teaching and discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Today we're continuing our latest series, Piercing the Darkness, with the remainder of Chip's talk, Our Hope, How God Works in History. But before he gets going, 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, go to the broadcasts tab at livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap fill in notes. Now, last time Chip identified five realities or truths about our world. So with that in mind, he begins today by reminding us of the type of person God has used in the past and who He wants to use right now.

Well, let's dive in. When Jesus decided to pierce the darkness and change not just world history, but I mean change everything, He chose 12 very ordinary people. And He chose them from backgrounds that they would never get along on their own. And as you go through church history, I mean whether it was a Martin Luther or whether it was a Deborah in the Old Testament or an Old Testament, when things get really, really bad, He finds a man or a woman or a student whose heart is fully His who just can't stand the status quo, that is sick and tired of whining and complaining and blaming other people and just says, God, if there's something I could do, I will do whatever you want me to do. And He says, okay, I'll use you. And He seems to have this weird deal where He likes to take the most unlikely people that aren't necessarily the smartest, not always the best educated, don't always come from the best stock, so that when it happens, everyone knows it couldn't have been that person.

And He gets the glory. And here's the final part of this reality is that Jesus' life, what He actually did, launched His kingdom of light movement by starting small, dreaming big, and going deep. If you study Jesus' life, it's somewhere between three, three-and-a-half years of ministry. First six months, He kind of built some relationships, did enough miracles to get the people to hate Him in Jerusalem, so He went to the Galilee area. So the religious leaders then said, we don't want you. He's rejected as the king. And so He goes to His family and they reject Him. In fact, He ends up in a synagogue that we'll look at in just a minute, and He reads the Old Testament talking about Messiah and says, today in your hearing it's happened.

I'm Him. And they take Him out to a cliff and try to kill Him. And He walks past them because it's not His time.

But it's so interesting, 18 to 20 months of His whole time was with 12 men and a handful of women. And He went deep with them. It was very, very small. He said the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.

It was like a mustard seed conspiracy. You had this itinerant teacher that either you love Him or you hate Him. He claims to be God. He raises a few people from the dead. He's an amazing teacher.

You got a pretty good meal once with 5,000 other people. So I mean, He's a rock star on the one hand and despised on the other. And then when He's going to change the whole world instead of, hey, we've got to get as many. We've got to leverage this. We've got to scale this. We've got to go big or go home, right? No, no.

He says we're going to go small. Because at the end of the day, it was true of those disciples and it's true of you. You need to listen very carefully.

Who you are and who you become is 100x more important than anything you ever accomplish. When He chose these 12, it says He chose them that they might be with Him. They ate with Him. They walked with Him. They had private conversations with Him. They shared their struggles with Him. They watched His miracles. They were invited into and participated with Him. They saw how He responded to Samaritans and Jews and terrorists, how He reacted when He was attacked. And little by little by little, they became like Him. He knew the last 18 months, they need to have their heart sold out to the Father. They need to understand that it's going to be very challenging.

They need to face like I did. The Scripture in Isaiah says Jesus looked at the cross and set His face like a flint and knew this would be the price tag and every one of the disciples did as well. All were martyred but one and He was preserved to write the book called Revelation for us in exile.

He started very small but He dreamed big. But imagine if you're one of the, you know, one of the 11. Let's just take Judas out of it right now.

And you know, there's other people, maybe 120 or so that are really committed and He tells you, going up to heaven, I want you to take this message to the world. No technology, I mean, that we would think of. No satellites.

No printing press. An oral world. Can you imagine like one day in an honest moment, hey, John, yeah, Pete, this is nuts.

I mean, there's 11 of us. The whole world, I got to admit, man, He's a great teacher and we've seen a few people get raised from the dead but they did. It wasn't because they were great priests, they were ordinary. They didn't have the best theological education. They didn't come from the best places. They didn't have power.

So what was it? When they were being punished, observing the boldness of Peter and John, the religious leaders would say, and now we identify those as having been with Jesus, they recognized that they had been with Him because they thought like Him and they lived like Him and they had His convictions. And so they reproduced and they multiplied.

By the year 313, after a lot of big, big challenges, those 11 would become over 10% of the entire empire by 360, 50% of the human beings in the Roman Empire were followers of Jesus. Their commitment to the poor was outstanding. Those early disciples, they didn't talk about the poor.

They didn't talk about someone in the church might go do this or might go do this. They're a radical life and community with one another. They're willing to die for one another. That's just what it meant to be a Christian. And guess what?

Can I say this as nicely as I possibly can? What happens somehow over time, we got the idea that reading the Bible, coming to church 1.6 to two times a month, and then maybe if you're really committed, you get in a little group and discuss what the Bible says. Yeah, I believe this about Jesus.

What did you get on question six? The answer is Jesus. Oh, that's very good. And we put our kids over here and this goes over there and we all believe in Jesus and we come and hear someone talk and we worship and it's really, really good by the way. And then we try to be nicer people. 8.5 out of 10 people who say I'm a follower of Christ, values, money, dreams, and morality are no different than the rest of the world. We got the idea that what it meant to be a Christian was come and hear someone talk about Jesus, maybe get in a little group about Jesus, maybe try to be a little bit nicer person.

No, no, no. Jesus said, this is what it means to be a Christian. You come follow me. I want you to become like me. I want you to do what I did.

I want your values, your convictions, your perspective of the world, how you treat people that agree, disagree. I want you to be exactly like me. That's the bar. That's what changed the world. And so what's happened is, boy, some of you are looking like I just punched you in the mouth or something. Okay, let me do this.

With my arm around you, here's the deal. If you don't face reality, you can't solve the problems of where we are. We're in a mess. The church is in a mess.

We have a quality control problem. Christians don't even go to church anymore. 40% of evangelicals don't attend church at all. We don't live like Christ. Our lives are not holy. We're not raising our kids to follow Christ. Our priorities are out of whack. Our money is out of whack. And we have all these emerging problems.

And what we have done primarily is find someone else to blame. In fact, the pandemic was the great revealer. The pandemic was like in God's mercy, how does he use it for good? He pulls this pandemic and he says, if being a Christian is going to a weekend service and being a nice person and reading the Bible a little bit, what kind of Christians does that produce? Well, let's find out. I'll not let anyone go to church for a while. They can't meet.

So how do they act? And here primarily in America and some places around the world, but especially in America, guess what was more important than Jesus? More important than this may be. In the last hundred years, the greatest missional opportunity to help people that are hurting and afraid and dying and hearing the gospel.

Instead, it was mask or no mask. Open the church or don't open the church. Churches were divided. Families were divided. Guess where the focus was?

Me, me, me, me, me. What's good for me? Why aren't they opening the church? Why are they opening the church? Why isn't everyone wearing a mask? Why do we have to wear those masks? Vaccines, so-and-so says this or this cable says that. Well, the other cable says. And Christians became like little immature children who didn't reflect Jesus.

According to Jesus, God's looking for some ordinary people. Guess what? You're the solution. You're the light of the world.

That's the reality. And the fact that America is in the state that it's in tells us that we have not been the kind of followers that transform the culture. It starts small, dreams big. It goes deep. And now I'd like to be, in kindness, show you practically, okay, then what's it mean to do the things that Jesus did?

What did he actually do? You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll get back to our series piercing the darkness in just a minute. But first, if this teaching has ministered to you, consider becoming a monthly partner. Your regular financial support goes a long way to help us encourage pastors, create resources, and share Jesus with today's youth.

Visit livingontheedge.org to learn how to support us. Well, with that, here again is Chip. He modeled being surrendered to the Father. In the garden, he would surrender his will. Not my will, but yours be done. Jesus would model for the disciples, to follow me, you must let go of everything and everyone and be willing to do the will of the Father with no holes barred. There's power. Unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it remains by itself alone, Jesus said.

But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. You wonder why? Not a lot of people followed him. The second thing he modeled was being separate from the world. The next thing after his baptism, he went into the wilderness, right? And he's tempted by the evil one. If you are the Son of God, turn this stone to bread. If you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. The same three things that the garden, Adam and Eve, were tempted with, Jesus is tempted with, and he declares, it is written, it is written, it is written, and he defeats the enemy and he demonstrates being separate from the world's values. Third thing that happens is, he has a sober self-assessment. Jesus heard, you are my dearly loved son.

I'm pleased with you. His identity wasn't for God's favor, he lived his life from God's favor, and the New Testament teaches the same for all of us. As a believer, our identity comes from the Father's view of us and what the Word says. When he opened that scroll in Isaiah 61, he read, this is what the Messiah will be and do.

Good news, preach to the poor, the lame will walk, the blind will see, the dead will be raised, the prisoners will be set free. In your hearing, Word of God, this is what it says in the Messiah, this is who I am. His view of himself isn't what other people think, it's not what he owns, it's not how many likes he has, it's not where he lives, it's not how much money he has, comes from God. This is who I am, a son of the living God. Fourth, he serves in love, for the son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom of many. The last night he would pour the water and he would wash the disciples' feet and he would say to them, I being your Lord and teacher, observe, blessed are you if you in like manner serve, lay down your lives for one another. And then finally he would supernaturally respond to evil with good. He'd hang upon the cross and say, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. So when he said to them, take up your cross, deny yourself and follow me, he wasn't saying, hey I think I'll start going to church and I'm going to get really committed, I'm actually going to get a group and talk about what Jesus said.

By the way, those are important steps, that's how you learn these things. But what he was saying is, leave your fishing business and make me your priority. For others it would be, stay in your business and make me your priority.

We're going to start small, we're going to start a little Bible study in your neighborhood, you're going to start a little Bible study, invite your friends, we're going to start small, we're going to dream big but we're going to go deep. And he would say to the disciples, you're going to surrender like I surrendered, you're going to be separate from the world and it's a process and you'll fail and you'll have a clear sober self-assessment from scripture, this is who you are, the world will not identify, you're not a somebody because anything out there. And then he would say, we're going to love each other with such radical, sacrificial, other-centered love that cost us.

That means if a friend's in the hospital and you need to pay their bill, it doesn't matter whether you get a tax deduction. And the Christian life isn't about all these good people in my life so I become a better person. You will become a better person but the eyes are outward. It's caring for other people to the point of time and energy and money, whatever it takes and being as committed or more committed to them than you would a blood relative. That's what a disciple is. That's what he modeled and then notice what did he command? He commanded surrender all, take up your cross, follow me. Luke 9 23 and following he says, you can't be my disciple unless you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. He said to be separate from the world. Paul would say it in Romans 12 too but he says, it's not what goes into the mouth that makes you unholy, it's what comes out of your heart that righteousness is an internal issue. You've heard it said but I say to you.

Third, he would call them to have a sober self-assessment, to get accurate. Peter, I can do it. Everyone else will let you down, not me. Peter, let me give you some clarity about your own bravado. Before the cock crows, you'll deny me three times.

That's the negative and then the positive. Peter, you can't believe this about yourself yet but because your declaration and your convictions are the kind of man you're going to become, rock on which I'm going to build my church and everyone else is willing to declare that in the midst of a world that's going this way and you're going to go this way. That's who you are, Peter. It's not what your dad said, your mom said, your fishing business said, it's what I say. And then fourth, he calls them to serve and love, wash each other's feet.

That's how the world will know. Yeah, we need good books, we need apologists but here's the greatest apologetic, the way you guys treat each other. It's like a magnet. It's like honey that draws the bees when people have need and hurts and struggles like in a pandemic. It's not what you argue about. It's being willing to say, Jesus is and the mission is what's really important. We can agree, disagree mass, vaccines, politics, have lots of opinions. Wonderful, great. We're individuals.

It's America. Have your opinion. But in the church, we're missional. Jesus takes precedence over all of that and we can agree to disagree and I will speak and post grace and kindness. I will have my words be wholesome, upbuilding and finally, supernaturally responding to evil. Jesus told his disciples, think how radical, love your enemies, pray for those who use you and persecute you, do good to them.

See, here's the deal. You know what changed the world? It wasn't some rapid movement. What changed the world in the first century was discipleship. Discipleship is following Jesus. It's actually doing what he did and then teaching what he taught to help others learn how to do what he did and then you model it first and foremost very imperfectly like all the rest of us. The greatest need after evaluating the entire church all around the world is the lack of discipleship.

People living out their faith the way we might say it is Christians living like Christians. Here's the application and it's sobering. And this isn't just for you. It's me too. I'm with you. We must be what we want others to become. You want people to be kind and gentle, forgiving, generous? You want your kids to be that way? Putting them in a Christian school and bringing them to church? Great. Those are good steps.

Your kids are going to be like you. A disciple when he is fully trained according to Jesus will be just like his teacher. And so I would ask you these questions to ponder as we close and then trust that the Holy Spirit will guide and lead you. I believe God is up to something in this church and in other churches and it won't be by how many people we can get in a room or how many people get online and do this and do that. It will be how many people that actually do what Jesus did and speak like Jesus spoke and love like Jesus loved.

That's what's going to change things. So lest you have that some ethereal thought of what that might look like, here's some questions to ponder. Ask yourself, am I all in? Have I fully surrendered my life, my future, my career, my money, my dreams, my possessions to a good and loving Father who has my best in mind?

Have you? Am I living separate from the world's value? Has pleasure, power, position, popularity or pleasing people or pride become subtle barriers or idols in my life?

Is there anyone I need to forgive that's hurt me or betrayed me? Boy, that's a dead ringer for stopping your growth. And finally, do you know where you fit in God's body to make a difference? Are you engaged deeply with fellow believers to bring light and darkness? And here's the deal.

This isn't like, hey, everyone get up, rah, rah, rah. Start small. Start really small. Take a baby step of obedience, whatever it is. But dream big.

God could use you to do amazing things. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And the message you just heard, Our Hope, How God Works in History, is from our series, Piercing the Darkness. Chip will join us in studio to share some insights from today's talk in just a minute. The purpose of light is to illuminate and make things visible.

It's the opposite of darkness, right? In this series, we'll better understand our call as followers of Jesus to be a light in this dark world. Discover how the life Jesus modeled while on earth, along with the ideas of hope, faith, and love he taught, empowers us to be difference makers and pierce through the darkness we see all around us.

I hope you'll join us for every part of this series. But if you miss a message, you can always catch up through the Chip Ingram app. Chip's with us in studio now. And Chip, the goal of our ministry and thought-provoking messages like the one we heard today is to encourage Christians to be more authentic with their faith. Take a minute, if you would, and unpack why that's so important.

I'd be glad to, Dave. Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world where Christians really live like Christians? I mean, when you meet a Christian, they would actually be a person of integrity and live the holy life.

Not perfect, but holy and loved and cared about people. I mean, a whole world like that. Well, let me back off. Well, how about just your community? No, not even your community. How about just everybody in your church?

No, no, no, no. How about just you and your family and a handful of friends, and you really followed Christ with all your heart, and even with your struggles and ups and downs, your authentic life, can you imagine the impact in your home, your neighborhood, your work? I mean, the entire network of just you, your family, and to equip Christians to actually live like Christians. And you know, it started as something really small, and then it's grown like crazy. And you know what?

It can start really small with you and then grow like crazy as well. So if Living on the Edge has had an impact in your life, if it's blessed you, if it's helped you, or it's helped someone else, I'm asking you, would you partner with us financially? Would you get on the team and help Christians live like Christians here and all around the world? Well, if partnering with Living on the Edge is an idea that makes sense to you, we'd love to have you join us.

We believe encouraging Christians to live like Christians will radically change the world we live in. To send a gift, go to livingontheedge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003.

Or go to livingontheedge.org. App listeners, tap donate. Thanks for taking the time to help others benefit from the work of this ministry. Well, to wrap up, here again is Chip with some application for us to think about.

Thanks so much, Dave. I do realize as you listen to this message, and we talked about hope and how God works, I ask you four very penetrating questions. And the goal of these questions were in no way to make you feel bad. The goal was to help you get clarity. And so let me review these questions. I don't want you to really think about where you're at in your life, where you're at with your relationship with Jesus.

First, are you all in? Have you really surrendered? Does God have all of your heart? Are you willing and ready to do whatever He wants you to do? Second, are you living separate from the world's values?

The conflict and the lack of peace and the dysfunction that happens when we try and be a follower of Jesus but live in the world's values. It's a killer. Believe me, I know. I've been there. Third, do you need to forgive someone?

That becomes such a barrier. Is it a boss? Is it one of your kids? Is it your parent?

Is it an ex-mate? But have you really come and released them and forgiven them the way Jesus has forgiven you? And finally, do you know where you fit in the body of Christ? I mean, to make a difference.

Here's what I want you to know. You need to be connected to other believers in heart to heart, face to face fellowship. And God wants to do something through you, but it begins with what He wants to do in you. Almighty God, right now at this moment, I pray for every single person listening to my voice. Lord, would you speak?

Would you remind them that you want to do a great work in them and then through them? But we all have to get real. We need to surrender ourselves to you.

We need to break the patterns of the world that cause such guilt and dysfunction. And so Father, I pray you'll speak with great power, that you would draw your children, my brothers and my sisters to you right now. And Lord, help them to make a decision to go all in with you and to text or call someone that they know is a faithful Christian and say, I've just made a big decision and I need your help. In Christ's name, amen.

Amen. Thanks, Chip. And let me just say as we wrap up, if you're looking for a practical way to deepen your relationship with God, let me encourage you to sign up for Daily Discipleship with Chip. This is a free video resource we've created where you can learn the basics of personal Bible study. For the entire course, you'll spend no more than ten minutes with Chip in a particular passage of Scripture, then he'll challenge you to study ten more minutes on your own. It's so easy, you'll be blown away by how much you'll learn about God and His Word. So sign up for any of our Daily Discipleship sessions today. Just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org for more information. App listeners tap Discipleship. For Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Drouy thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge, and I hope you'll join us again next time.