Why We Exist, Part 2

How much of what you do to expand the glorious reputation of God? According to God's Word, everything you do should be done to the glory of God. That truth is something that you as a Christian are supposed to apply to each and every aspect of your life.

But you know what? It also applies to believers who join together in the context of the local church. Churches have ministries and programs and activities and everything that the church does should be done to the glory of God. How can we know if a church is bringing glory to God and how can we do it well? We'll look more closely at that idea in today's Bible lesson. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen's in a series on the church called Upon This Rock. This lesson is called Why We Exist. Here's Stephen. If a child, while I am away, and it is a boy, let it live.

If it is a girl, expose it and let it die. That would have been illegal. Seneca, in fact, one of Nero's court advisors, wrote these words that give us a little hint into how little human life was valued during the days of the early church. He wrote these words.

He was a brilliant senator and court advisor. He said as he simply exposed their culture, quote, we slaughter a fierce ox, we strangle a mad dog, and the child who is born weak or deformed, we drown. And this is the generation when God effectively says, you know, this is the perfect time to create the New Testament church. There's no better time than now to sprinkle the earth with people like salt, to have them shine like light. What a perfect time to reveal that there is a way out of enslavement to the darkness of the world and into the kingdom of light. Peter would motivate us all to proclaim the excellencies of the one who's called us out of darkness into a marvelous light, 1 Peter 2 9. Paul reminded the Corinthians that they had received the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the person of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4 6. Paul described the Ephesian believers as those who once belonged to the darkness but are now light in the Lord. And to the Roman Christians, he challenged them to put on the armor of light.

Shine. This is why we exist, Jesus says here. You are the light of the world. The word for world in this text is cosmos, which refers to the world system. You might write that on the margin of your Bible. The world system. And we know that Satan is the chief ruler. He has delegated authority, has given permission by God to do whatever he does for the purposes of God. But he has created this incredible complex kingdom. We call it the kingdom of darkness. And we have this world system rule that's under his thumb, as it were.

We have the organization of, Paul writes to the Ephesians, of rulers. Speaking of Satan and his hierarchy, rulers and powers and world forces of this darkness. So you and I are light, individually and collectively, light in the midst of a world system under the influence of Satan. And our world system is wandering around in the darkness of sin. It is lost. It is entirely confused.

It was ironic to me in the midst of studying for this sermon that I got this past week's edition of Time magazine. Its front cover, if you saw it, it's red. Completely red. And then all over the cover are question marks. All these question marks. And underneath each question mark is a little question. The headline at the top cover reads, Is monogamy over?

Question mark. And the subtitle reads, 21 other questions about the way we live now. The world is open about its questions. Are we open about the answers? I found it interesting, the question that provoked me.

In fact, there were several, by the way. I read through the whole article. They're dealing with questions, some important, some not so important. But one of the questions is related to public nudity. And authors weigh in on why it's good or why it's bad. Is there a way to call offensive art, blasphemous art, good? And they weigh in on that.

Is polygamy to be accepted? And authors weighed in on that on both sides. But the one question that really stood out to me on the front cover down near the bottom, and they didn't deal with it on the inside, but it is the question, What will we regret? Let me answer that. Everything.

Everything. Listen to the darker the world system, the more necessary and more distinctive and more dramatic and more different and more disliked your light will be. Culture's response, in fact, is going to be like you shining a flashlight in someone's face. They're going to tell you, Turn off that light. Get that light out of my eye. Our culture, though, you know, it's so dark. What are we going to do?

Let's stop crying in our soup for one thing. There's no better time to be light than in a dark place. God is as much on the throne today as he was in first century Rome.

Right? Yes, Satan is loose, but he's on a leash. And that leash is held in the hand of our sovereign Lord, and he has chosen us to be in this generation, in this location, in this world, in this country with this influence now to shine and to be salt. The church doesn't need freedom in order to be fruitful, and I think it's important to remember, talk to our brothers and sisters in China where evangelical believers are now estimated to outnumber members of the Communist Party. The church doesn't need approval from its culture in order to receive the approval of God.

And can I say the church is way off the mark when all it wants to do is receive the approval of man and not the approval of God. But just as in Rome, let's not play down the darkness. Let's not play down the darkness. We're not going to ignore it. But we do need to say that the issues of our generation are far greater than any political system can ever solve. It needs the gospel. The issues of our generation are deeper than any other false religion can ever hope to address.

It needs the gospel. In fact, we need nothing less today than an awakening by means of the Spirit of God in the church first and foremost. And as the church stops living like the unbelieving man and stops pursuing life like the unbelieving man and stops seeking to fit into culture like the unbelieving man and gaining the approval of unbelieving man, and we become salt and light and we understand what that's going to mean, and perhaps then God will choose to use us to deter some of the decay and dispel some of the darkness in the lives and arts of those who might believe by his grace. To this end, we pray, we offer no solution to the world or no answer if we exist for anything other than to exhibit spiritual reality and expose sinful corruption and expel satanic darkness. And here's another, number four, we exist to expand the glorious reputation of God. Do you ever think about that when you get up in the morning that my mission today is to expand the glorious reputation of God?

Look at verse 16 of Matthew 5, the end of the paragraph. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So what are you shining?

Here's a clue. What are you shining to the world? Your good works. Your good work. You know what good works include?

It includes working so well doing such a good job that your supervisor or that secretary or CEO sees the work you do and says wow, that's good. We think of good works as somehow related to what we do in here. The world doesn't care how many times we meet. The world doesn't care how many verses you memorize, how many times you get up early in the morning to pray or read. It's not interested nor will it ever see that. But it does see your work that is good.

What kind of worker are you? See, Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Whatever you do, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10, 31. That means the way you write that term paper, student. That means the way you teach that class, teacher. That means the way you keep house and manage that family, housewife. That means the way you deliver that report, the way you show up, the way you stay late, no matter what it is.

I mean, it might even be the way you grill that hamburger, that cookout. I inspect it weekly and you're doing a great job, by the way, if you're part of that crew. Whatever, do we get that? Whatever you do can expand the glorious reputation of God. Your good work, do you dress good? Do you talk good?

Do you invest good? What do you do? Your good works build a bridge of credibility over which you carry the gospel of God. If you don't do good work, just please don't tell them where you go to church. In fact, don't tell them you belong to Christ, right? You build a bridge and if you're good and dedicated and diligent and honest and pure and wholesome and humble and kind and you explain to them you're doing all of that, not so much because of them but because you belong to a father who is in heaven or over the heavens, as it were, they're going to say, you know what, I'd like to know more about him.

And that kind of bridge gives you the credibility where ultimately God's glorious reputation has expanded. The individual members of the church have to resurrect a 500-year-old Reformation doctrine we've talked about before called vocation. That gives us our word vocation. Vocation means sacred calling, sacred calling. Over the years, that had been lost prior to the Reformation and in many ways has been lost today because when people think of a sacred vocation, they think of what I'm doing. Yeah, Stephen, you got the sacred job.

I'm doing all the other stuff. Now Martin Luther, the converted Roman Catholic monk who wrote this, resurrects this idea of vocation, which Calvin and Luther and others, Beza, all resurrected, he said it this way, all our work in the field, I mean he's talking to farmers, all our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in government, these are the masks of God behind which he is hidden yet does all things. He even wrote it this way and I quote, God himself is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid, sacred. Paul told the Colossian believers the very same thing, do your work heartily as unto the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive your reward, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Colossians 3 verse 23 and verse 24, in other words, you literally demonstrate the glory of God in your diligence at work. Do you work good?

Are you a good worker? Good works of course expand to doing things for others that are kind or compassion or good. This carries the idea of Shalom, it's a wonderful concept and we've got to change a little bit of our vocabulary. The idea is of Jews bringing Shalom, peace into Babylon where they were exiled. Babylon of all places was to experience the goodness of Jewish labor and effort and investment like Daniel in his pagan court was benefited by his integrity. The prophet Jeremiah tells the Jewish exiles as they're heading into Babylon that they are to seek the peace of Babylon, the prosperity of Babylon and to pray to the Lord for it. Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 7 and in that paragraph you discover that they are told to build houses and grow gardens, get married, raise families, whatever they do, it is the bringing of Shalom into that city. That wasn't simply, by the way, to plant trees and grow gardens. You know, because Babylon needed some shade and Babylonians like fresh vegetables, that really wasn't the core of it. Shalom was building houses and planting good gardens and raising families and the core purpose was the fact that God's people were effectively bringing into a fallen, corrupt culture a faithful presence and testimony of integrity which was so remarkably different from the Babylonians that the glory of God would be revealed. People around would see how they lived and to this day see how you take care of all your things, see how you take care of your money and how you manage your household and see how you prioritize your time and they can tell if you're different. One author wrote that these Jews in Babylon were to live and we today as God's people placed in, deposited in our culture and yet in there reflecting in our daily practices our distinctive identity as believers in Christ. And the darker culture becomes, the easier it becomes for us to be distinctive.

Let me say the same thing a little differently. This is number five. We're turning the last lap here.

Number five. We exist to exemplify spiritual passion and purpose. Here's the principle in the form of a question. What is it about your life and mine that if under close observation would lead someone to believe or come to the conclusion that we have a different kind of passion? We have a different kind of purpose than everybody else.

Is there something different? Is there something compelling us? Is there something that we believe is so compelling? Is there something that we believe is so interesting that we live it and communicate it? Is the gospel compelling enough?

We can talk about the latest athletic event or the diet or the automobile or the house or whatever it is, the job. And we all circulate in that world, but is there anything beyond that that is compelling to us, that is interesting to us? Because the world picks that up.

They can smell it and sense it. Harnack, the German church historian, wrote that the early church advanced so dramatically in the first century because every member believed they were informal missionaries. And when the church is first created, understand you've got three thousand believers, soon six, soon seven, eight thousand believers surrounded by millions of unbelievers. Oh, what are we going to do now?

Everyone sensed this compelling interest. We call them tentmakers. I like that term. Or marketplace ministers. Good term.

Love that vocabulary. I think we need to go ahead and change the way we think and talk. In our last discussion together, I suggested that we needed to change our terminology so that we didn't talk about being members, but owners. Now, obviously, the owner of the church is Christ. He said, I've come to build my church.

However, he gave us to one another and we talked about why we belong and I can't rehearse it for the sake of time. But the effectiveness of any local church is based upon dependent upon its members having an ownership mentality. So this isn't just a church or the church or this church. This is your church. This is our church. This is how God is demonstrating and living in and through us the gospel of Christ uniquely to us. We need to shift from thinking that we attend or we're even members to being owners.

I think we need to make another change in our vocabulary. I think we don't need to think of ourselves so much as members as much as tentmakers. Now, the term tentmaker originally comes out of the apostle Paul's own life experience. He's a tentmaker. He's a literal maker of tents. He stitched together canvas.

His fingers would have been deeply calloused if you had met him. He made tents and he used that industry when he could to support himself, to pay the bills, and then to subsidize what he wanted to do in traveling and delivering the gospel of Christ around his particular world. Acts chapter 18. So that term tentmaker became a term for us. And over the last many decades, it's been used for someone who will leave this culture and take their particular skill as an engineer or a teacher or computer technician or a painter or whatever it might be to another culture and get a job in that field, knowing fully well that that job is a front.

It's a front. It's simply something you do that opens the door to influence people in that world. You never think of your job in that situation as what you're living for.

That's totally foreign. You're not living for that job. You're living for that job to open the door into those people's lives. That job pays the bill so you can do what you really want to live for.

Here's what we've got to change. You are tentmakers here. You don't have to go to China to be a tentmaker. Where is it that the church and church members began to think that they live for their job? That it wasn't anything more than God's special, unique endowment and gifting and training to place you in an area where people live and that's all they live for. They're scrambling to go up one more rung and you arrive and that job to you is nothing more than a front to gain you entrance in the lives of people who will never come here to hear the gospel. Beloved, this is why we exist, to exhibit spiritual reality, to expose sinful corruption, to expel satanic darkness, to expand the glorious reputation of God, to exemplify spiritual passion and purpose. If you have a job in what we traditionally call the secular market, now you understand what I mean. Your job is a sacred vocation but you work in what we would call the secular world. In other words, you're not working for a ministry. You're not working in a mission whose primary purpose is to promote the gospel and you're going to enter that rat race tomorrow, right?

If you work in that kind of environment, it might be IBM, it might be SAS, it might be some mechanic shop, whatever. If you work with one of those kinds of vocations in that kind of role and you belong to Jesus Christ, I want you to stand. If you're back on Monday morning to go back into that job and you belong to Christ, wow. You know, we talk about commissioning mission teams and we talk about commissioning missionaries and we talk about commissioning church planters. I think we ought to commission you because in a very real sense, you're on the front lines. You're a tent maker. Your job is a front. Don't tell them out there that's true, okay? That's for us in here to know. It's a front.

It isn't something you live for. It is something where God has placed you to cross over that threshold and reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I think we ought to commission you. Father, I pray that you would give every one of them courage and tact and grace to know when to speak and how to speak and to whom to speak. For every CEO or perhaps business owner or partner, if they have the ability to determine what kind of music plays over the loudspeakers in that waiting room that they would put on Christian music and in that testify to your grace. If they choose and have the power to choose the magazine to go out on the coffee tables or people will wait that they put Christian magazines out there, literature that introduces people to the gospel. That you allow them the creativity and the courage to accompany it. To know that they are not there to just get another paycheck. They are there as your ministers of the gospel of Christ.

We commission them together as a body. And everyone said, Amen. Thank you so much for joining us today here on Wisdom for the Heart.

This was part two of a sermon called Why We Exist as Stephen continues through his series on the church entitled Upon This Rock. Stephen is here in the studio with me today. Stephen, we live in a day and age when politics is on everyone's mind. Here in America, it's getting close to an election. What are you hearing from people? What's on your heart on this topic? Well, that's a good question. I will tell you, it is indeed on everybody's mind.

And I get a lot of questions. Should I even vote? And I would say absolutely. We have a tremendous privilege living in a free society. As bad as we might think our culture or our society is, I'd rather live here than anywhere else on the planet. This is an amazing country.

And I love this country. And we ought to enjoy the benefits of the society we have by being good citizens as the Word of God encourages us, in fact, as good stewards of what God has given us. It's our responsibility to engage with our culture.

One of the ways I engage is voting. When I look at the apostle Paul, for instance, he exercised his right as a Roman citizen. You remember when they were going to beat him in prison and he said, I don't think you're supposed to do that to a Roman citizen. But I will add, Paul didn't make it his life's mission to stop prisoners from being beaten. He didn't say that the church's mission is to keep this from happening.

He understood that as a person, he could exercise his rights. But the mission of the church, as we talked about today, why does the church exist? Why do we exist?

That's actually a bigger question. Thank you, Stephen. And friends, I want to make you aware of two resources that Stephen has available and that we want to make available to you today. We have a new monthly magazine, relatively new, Stephen. I guess we've been doing this since April.

It still feels new. But this month we published an issue on politics where you address some of these key issues regarding how the Christians should think about politics. And friends, even though October is almost done, we still have a few extra copies here in our office. If you would like to receive one free of charge, just give us a call today at 866-48-BIBLE. We want you to see this and have this resource. Let me give you that number one more time. That's 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. Tomorrow at this same time, Stephen's going to continue through this series on the church called Upon This Rock. Join us for that right here on Wisdom for the Heart. .