I See God!

Text: Luke 24:13-35

Focus: Knowing God

Function: To help people understand the passions that drive God (as if I could know His mind).

Form: Storytelling.

Intro: I heard in a sermon illustration somewhere that a shepherd, especially with a wayward lamb, would carry the lamb around his neck so that the lamb would imprint on the shepherd and continue to follow him.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice...”

Every lamb is important to Jesus.

One of my philosophies of ministry is that Churches hire pastors to be witnesses to the good news to their own communities.

Evangelism is the responsibility of the Church. Actually, it is God's only plan for redeeming the world.

The message is shared by us.

A healthy Church sends its pastor out into the community.

And the Church has a duty to love the world around it so that the world comes back into the family of God.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, He calls us each by name, and then He makes all of us shepherds to the lost world.

And the importance of the lost sheep is throughout Jesus' teaching, but perhaps the best is the story of the 1 and the 99.

He leaves the 99, who are safe within the flock, in order to rescue the 1. (Matthew 18:12-14)

And the passage says, He is happier about the 1 who is restored than the 99 who never strayed.

Sometimes, that seems like an insult to the 99.

Especially when the 99 are paying the salary and the shepherd is off rescuing the 1.

But we get over that when we see the passion of God.

It is not His will that any of these perish.

Today is part 2 of Jesus the Shepherd.

Last week we saw that the under-shepherds, you and I, lead people to God.

Today we see Jesus, the Good Shepherd, showing us what God is like.

I have probably done around 100 funerals in my career and I can only think of one where I did not read, or have the scripture read: “In My Father's house are many mansions...”

But the passage is more than just a passage to comfort us when we die.

In the passage, Jesus is preparing the disciples for the hard life to come. He tells them to live for their eternal reward. He is implying that Christian service includes risk, sometimes fatal risks and He wants them to focus on showing God to people instead of merely focusing on their own luxuries.

God is love. And to show God, for others to say, when they see us “I see God” we need to focus on loving others.

The Christian world for love, agape, is not tied to a romantic or erotic feeling. It is a choice. That is why I like the KJV translation “Charity.”

We are commanded to love. This is how people see God. And it times it requires sacrifice. That is why Jesus is preparing the disciples for in these verses.

Jerry Brenneman told me this week that carrying out Jesus' mission of love for the world becomes a lot easier when we see people and their needs and realize sometimes their needs are so desperate that they are more important than our comfort. Christian love holds in tension their desperation and our luxury.

This passage is a passage about the ultimate comfort of heaven, but the whole context is preparing us, as Christians, for a life of service to God.

Thomas answers, we don't know where you are going, how can we know the way?

Jesus tells him another great mystery, I am the Way, The Truth and The Life.

He gives them three absolutes about Himself. He is the way to God. He is the truth. There is absolute truth in this world and Jesus is part of it. And in Him is life.

Life, eternal life, and reward in heaven are oftentimes interchanged in scripture.

This time it isn't Thomas who doubts, but Philip: “Show us the Father and it will be enough...”

And here we get to the meat of this morning's message.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and the Good Shepherd shows the Father by His life.

Remember, Jesus spent three years teaching people about God. He spent three years as God's representative instructing people how to love each another.

In so doing, He condemns excessive materialism, He condemned racism, He helped everyone and gave mercy to every single person who asked Him and the only people that He ever criticized were those who were so religious that they resented His love toward others.

In this passage, Jesus says, the works that He does show us the Father.

He fed 5,000. He fed 4,000.

The Good Shepherd shows us what God is like.

We, as under-shepherds must do the same.

What impresses me about Jesus is the way He loved unconditionally.

The only real criticism that He meets out, face to face against anyone are those who refuse to love their neighbor as themselves. But for the sinners and the desperate, Jesus just graces them and loves them until they are healed and set free.

His actions, His complete generosity, shows us who God is.

God is love and Jesus showed us God's love.

So why was it, miracle after miracle that Jesus performed, He told the people not to talk about the miracle?

The other day my youngest son asked me just what I could do to grow a Church bigger.

I jokingly said to him, well maybe I could pray and raise someone from the dead, or heal some huge disease or feed thousands of people with just a few small loaves of bread.

He laughed because he knew that this wasn't what Jesus expected of us.

Only Jesus was Jesus.

But in this passage Jesus Himself says that those who trust in Him will pray and do greater miracles than He did.

In 2,000 years of Church history there have been many miracles that happened as a result of believers praying, but no one has ever done anything close to what Jesus has done.

Now, I have seen miracles happen.

But I hope most of you caught what was wrong with the question and what was wrong with my answer.

“Dad, what can you do to grow a church?”

I can do nothing except... ...Show people God's love.

So why did Jesus order people not to talk about His miracles?

Because He wants them, us, talking about His love.

Jesus didn't do miracles to show off His power, He did them to communicate His love.

I can't grow a church and no church ministry is about me, or about the pastor. It is always about Jesus.

When these miracles happened, they happened because Jesus loved the people that He helped.

My first ministry was planting a Church in the ghetto of Atlantic City, NJ.

We showed up in a playground in a ghetto with a guitar and a tambourine and started praising the Lord. A few people came out to see us because nobody really cared for anybody in that neighborhood.

A woman in her 50's who was heavy set and walked with a walker came up to us and asked us to pray for her.

We prayed, left and told them we would be back the next week.

Next week, we started singing and a crowd came running toward us.

We were shocked until a man told us that the woman we prayed for was miraculously healed.

We are nobody. But God loved that community.

The ministry went on and about 9 months later that same lady asked us to come and pray for her son who was going for a medical procedure.

Now the kid was hard to control. He would ride his bicycle right through our little meetings in the playground. Some would call him a brat. At least, that is what I thought. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury that had left him blind in his right eye.

So, we are there praying for the young man and he makes another request.

He says: “can you pray that I would do better in school?”

God forgive me, but I too, can be judgmental. And I looked at him and told him that if he wanted to do better in school, he needed to sit still and listen to his teacher.

“I know, I know” he replied, but please pray for me as well.

Two days later his mother calls very excited because her son, who was blind in his right eye all of a sudden had 20/20 vision.

God loved that little boy.

Half of his schoolwork problem was his inability to see the board. So God healed him.

The greater works are the works of love.

Jesus didn't want His miracles shouted about, He wanted His love proclaimed.

He shows us Father God, and God is love.

And God loves you.

Let me finish with one more story about God's love for Agape Church.

When I was a student here at Bible College, God showed me something that blew me away.

I made friends with a Brethren minister while I was a student there.

So, when the man took a vacation, he asked me to fill the pulpit for him.

Now we ministry track students were always preaching somewhere while pastors were gone. It was nothing new.

But the search committee from another COB came to hear me and asked the DE if they could pursue hiring me.

He was against the idea because I was not raised Brethren.

And my friend was keeping me informed of how the process was going.

One Wednesday, right before Chapel service, he told me that my name was out of consideration.

I tried to be kind and I said to him: “well, God loves that Church, God knows what they need and God will send the right person to pastor them. Don't worry about me.”

During the chapel service I was called out for a phone call.

It was the board chairman of that Church and he asked me to preach for them that Sunday.

So, on Saturdays, I had this prayer group of these young men that I was mentoring.

We would share prayer concerns and then pray for each other.

I told them this: “I have been asked to fill the pulpit in a little Church of the Brethren...”

Before I finish, I need to give you a little detail about my perspective.

Because of a non-denominational Church that I attended a few years before, I felt like Job 1 for me was to fight the liberal influence that was infecting Churches.

So, when I asked them to pray for me, and forgive me Agape Church, but I said to them: “I'm afraid that the Church of the Brethren is pretty liberal, I hope they hear the gospel from me.”

The man who prayed for me, and his name was actually Rhett Butler prayed this way: “Lord, I pray that you will fill Phil with the Holy Spirit and give him love for the Church he is preaching in tomorrow.”

I guess, in my pride and arrogance, the message that came across in my prayer request was that I thought that I was better than “those liberals.”

And guess what happened? The moment I stood up to preach, God answered his prayer. I was overwhelmed with a sense of love for that congregation.

Remember, when we show the Father, we show love.

Now, it was more than usual, I had filled the pulpit in 30 or so churches during my tenure at the College and never felt this. This was special.

They asked me back, Sunday after Sunday until they hired me as their preacher.

Now, the fruit of the Spirit is love, it is a choice, not a feeling.

So, I am going to call this a miracle of love because I was overwhelmed with this genuine care for the congregation.

And this is what I take away from the miracle of love.

God loves everyone. At the time, I have been erroneously taught, and I believed it, that God only loved conservatives. God loves everyone.

So, I pray for you all a lot. Oftentimes, I pace the sanctuary and lay hands on every single chair in the room and pray that God will bless everyone who is sitting in these chairs.

I pray that their preacher will point them only to Jesus.

About a month ago, I was doing that and God reminded me of how he changed my mind about who is in and who is out.

He said, I love everyone, Phil, not just the people that agree with you. I love them all.

And then last week, when visiting the Andersons and Shirley shared the story that she shared in testimony time about how God spoke to her to comfort her before her surgery it was reinforced again to me. God loves this Church and God loves you people.

If you get nothing from my short tenure here, please get this: God loves you.

God Loves the Agape Church and God has great plans for this Church and her people.

And since you know that God loves you, keep on showing His love to everyone. That is how people see God.