Here's my understanding of what the prophecy is teaching us. And as always, I have placed links after the video for anyone who wishes to utilize my manuscript or outlines.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here for audio only.

Documents to Download:

Sermon Outlines - Exegesis and Expositional - Word Doc - PDF File

Sermon Manuscript - Word Doc - PDF File

INTRODUCTION:

Sunday morning. The worship team had finished and the congregation was seated, anxiously awaiting God’s Word. But Charles Stanley approached the pulpit that morning without a sermon. No Word from God. Sunday morning. Hundreds of people watching. No sermon. He had studied the Word all throughout the week…Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday…and received no Word from God. Now here he was, nothing to preach.

I don't know about you, but that's the opposite of the situation I hope to find myself in as I enter the ministry. I envision myself as extremely successful as I take on a ministry position in the future. Don't get me wrong, I expect ministry to be a challenge endeavor, but between my education at DTS and my strong work ethic and some good resources at my disposal, I figure that I'll do pretty well. I don't expect to fail. In fact, I am confident that if I am just given the right opportunity, I'll prove myself.

How about you? Are you anxious to take the next step beyond DTS? Are you hoping to prove yourself and the value of your education? Are you confident that success awaits you in your future endeavors?

If so, then I am glad you are here with me today. We need to have this talk. You see, God pulled me aside recently and made me aware of a crucial factor that I needed to be aware of when it comes to success in ministry. He showed me that our mentality, can actually guarantee the opposite result from what we are expecting! This approach to our future ministry may be causing God to thrust us toward failure.

With so much knowledge and so many resources at our disposal, the tendency can be for us to feel prepared to succeed—and rightly so in many respects. But the direction of our trust is what will determine our success or failure, not our knowledge, our resources, or our hard work. Focusing on our knowledge, resources, and hard work in the midst of challenging situations only makes the problem worse when our dependence is misplaced.  We need to understand that God actually thrusts us toward failure when our mentality is incorrect in this respect. We need to understand that the direction of our trust is paramount in determining our success or failure. [Pause]

Today I want to challenge you to avoid trusting in your knowledge, resources, or work ethics—to recognize that God crafts life’s circumstances in a way that drives us toward dependence upon Him and away from those things. My assertion is that spiritual failure precedes failure in life and ministry. True Failure, is failure to depend on God.

This is a lesson we can learn from Isaiah 19 as it describes Egypt’s past devastation and their future deliverance. Through the text, we will see these two events separated by a shift in the direction of their dependence. And we will learn that Failure is unavoidable when dependence is misplaced [1-15], but God is intimately involved in the affairs of those who depend on Him [16-25]. [Repeat]

BODY:

Chapter 19 of Isaiah is an oracle regarding the nation of Egypt, per verse 1. As is often the case in Isaiah, the first fifteen verses describe the devastation of one of Israel’s enemies, Egypt. Uniquely, they never describe evil actions for which Egypt is being judged. Rather, the purpose of God’s devastation of Egypt is announced twice, at the beginning of each section of the text, first in verse 1 and then again in verse 16. Note the key concept in these verses, trembling. Trembling is what people do when they are without hope in a situation. When there is nowhere to turn. They tremble. Israel trembles in fear when the Lord comes down on Mount Sinai. Isaac trembles before Esau when he realizes that Jacob has stolen the blessing from his eldest son. And Egypt trembles before God, because they recognize that they have nowhere else to turn. That’s what God’s judgment in verses 1-15 accomplishes. It destroys all the things that Egypt trusts in.

In verse 2, God causes dissension at every level of their society, thwarting the counsel Egypt seeks as they turn to their spiritual leaders. Verse 3 reads, “and the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out, and I will confound their counsel; and they will inquire of the idols and the sorcerers, and the mediums and the necromancers.” Then God thwarts the counsel of Egypt’s wise men, giving the Egyptians a harsh ruler in verse 4 and causing the economy of Egypt to crash at every level by drying up the Nile in verses 5-10. These events prove the wisdom of Egypt’s counselors to be foolish. As verses 13 and 14 read, “The princes of Zoan have become fools, and the princes of Memphis are deluded; those who are the cornerstones of her tribes have made Egypt stagger. The Lord has mingled within her a spirit of confusion, and they will make Egypt stagger in all its deeds, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.”

Without unity, under an oppressive ruler, and economically devastated, Egypt trembles. They finally come to a place where all the things they depend on are proved useless. God drives them there because their dependence is misplaced. As the section concludes with a summary of this destroyed dependence in verse 15, “There will be nothing for Egypt that head or tail, palm branch or reed, may do.” In essence, the prophet is saying that there is NOTHING left for the Egyptians to depend on. [Pause]

The question we must ask from the text at this point is, “If God will do this to an enemy nation when their dependence is misplaced, what can we expect of Him as our Father?” [Pause] Can we really expect to succeed in ministry—to have God work through our human efforts to change lives—if we are depending on our knowledge or resources or hard work, rather than Him? I am pretty sure that God would rather drive us into utter failure than allow us to succeed in this respect. After all, in the New Testament His Spirit drives Jesus, the one who trusts Him the most, into the wilderness to be tempted. He also gives Paul the “thorn in the flesh” to ensure that he relies upon God’s strength, rather than his own.

God may choose to put “Murphy’s Law” into effect over your ministry, where one thing after another goes poorly. Kinda like that time you got your car back from the repair shop, only to have something else on it break on your drive home. If your church follows the pattern of Egypt, then:

• Counsel will cause dissension: Your staff will look for ministry advice all over the place but no one will be able to agree within the church.
• The leadership will become oppressive: You’ll fall under the influence of a harsh elder/bishop/pastor.
• The Congregational economy will crash: Congregants of all statures will lose their jobs and be unable to tithe and major repairs will suddenly be needed to the building.
• Ultimately the leadership will look foolish in the midst of organizational failure.

So before you take that next step into a larger ministry role, you need to ask yourself: where might you be depending on something other than God in your life? You may seek to rely upon your academic training or some dynamic mega-church model, just as Egypt trusted in the wisdom of its spiritual and political leaders, rather than listening for God’s direction. As the New Testament attests, God often uses the foolish things of this world to trump the wise. He may wish to proclaim His most impactful message through the garbage man who attends your church, rather than through you. Let Him. Don’t forget to set your agenda aside when God prompts you to do so. Let Him work outside of the box, when it seems He desires to do so. Depend on God to provide the direction for your ministry.

You may seek to please a few wealthy congregants in your church because they provide a substantial portion of your church budget, just like Israel was tempted to trust in Egypt’s support when their part of the world was in turmoil. Don’t let the financial security they provide let them deter you from doing the things that allow the Holy Spirit to move in your congregation and community. Depend on God to provide the finances for your ministry.

Don’t make Egypt’s mistake. Don’t depend on your knowledge, resources, or work ethic to provide success. Those things must always defer to God’s guidance. Egypt’s devastation was unavoidable because their dependence was misplaced. Our failure is unavoidable when our dependence is misplaced. Nationally, Organizationally, and Individually—when we depend on things other than God, we invite Him to drive us to devastation. God crafts life’s circumstances in a way that drives us away from depending on things other than God. Spiritual failure precedes failure in life. True Failure, is failure to depend on God. Failure is unavoidable when dependence is misplaced. [Pause]

The shock factor of the second half of this chapter cannot be overlooked. While Israel would have expected God’s judgment on Egypt, they could not have anticipated the result—that Egypt AND ASSYRIA would one day worship alongside them. This is one of few remarkable, jaw-dropping passages of Scripture that should leave us in utter awe of God’s capacity for doing the unexpected and undeserved. And it teaches us that God is intimately involved in the affairs of those who depend on Him. [Repeat]

God’s judgment on Egypt has stripped them of their dependence upon everything else, and left them trembling before God and His people, as verse 16 and 17 remind us. But with nowhere else to turn, Egypt turns toward God and His people. The repetition of the phrase “in that day” as well as the transition from poetry to prose help distinguish this change in tone. The phrase appears again in verse 18, where Isaiah tells us that the Egyptians adopt the language of God’s people in Canaan. Verse 23 speaks of the Egyptians and Assyrians worshipping together. And verse 24 gives each of the three nations a covenant name from the Lord, with Egypt taking the title “my people” that is normally reserved for Israel.

Perhaps most instructive for us however, are verses 19-22, where Egypt experiences deliverance—their pattern of devastation is ended. Read along with me, and let’s hear the shift in dependence that ultimately changes Egypt’s destination. “In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD near its border. It will become a sign and a witness of the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they will cry to the LORD because of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the LORD will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day. They will even worship with sacrifice and offering, and will make a vow to the LORD and perform it. The LORD will strike Egypt, striking but healing; so they will return to the LORD, and He will respond to them and will heal them.”

Wow. Doesn’t that almost sound as if we are reading a passage in the book of Judges? And yet God is working that pattern for Egypt, rather than Israel. His purpose in devastating them was ultimately redemptive—bringing them to Himself. Egypt—and Assyria (modern day Iraq) will one day worship the Lord on a national scale. In 1979 Iran established an oppressive government sought to impose “pure Islam” on their people. The result of that oppression has been to have many people turn away from Islam after suffering under the cruelty of their government. Some hope the same series of events might also be taking place in Egypt as their government shifts toward imposing a strictly Islamic code upon their citizens. [Pause]

Egypt’s story reminds me of the experience of Jim Lovell from the Apollo missions to space. On one of his wartime flight missions, a series of events kept him from being able to find his aircraft carrier. The lights were off on the carrier so that it could avoid detection. His radar had been jammed. Someone else in the area was using the same homing signal frequency. And when he turned on his map light, the cockpit’s lighting completely shorted out, making his instruments unreadable. Running low on fuel and lacking instruments, with almost all hope lost, Jim was facing the doom of ejecting from the cockpit, likely giving both the chopper and his life to the sea. And that’s when he saw his salvation—a bright green glowing path on the sea. Florescent algae churned up by the carrier’s props, leading him straight to his ship. Something he would never had seen, had the lights not shorted out. That’s what happened to Egypt. When at last God’s judgment darkened all the other options for them to consider, they saw the path home. They saw God.

If dependence is that important to God, then we need to model that dependence personally and organizationally. It needs to be woven into the fabric of who we are and what our church is, so that the attractiveness and enticement of wisdom, resources, and work ethic don’t draw us away from God and cause us to be driven toward spiritual failure. My advice to you is, follow Egypt’s example and cry out to God. Don’t neglect prayer. It is the most powerful, passive expression of our dependence upon God that we can make. It needs to be a both daily discipline for you personally, and for your church collectively. If you are not praying daily, you are probably depending too much on your own means of accomplishing the task God has given you. Prayer has a tendency to remind us to depend on God. It’s as good a discipline for us—reminding us to depend on Him, as it a means of ensuring that God hears our pleas. Daniel had three set times of prayer a day for his life. Let’s start with one for us, and one for the church body. Round up the staff during the workday if that works for you, or set a meeting time for the congregation. Pray.

My second applicational thought comes from the context: God is doing something near Israel, not in Israel. Often times, God is working mightily nearby, and we need the encouragement that seeing Him at work in the world provides. My challenge for you is to worship with and support God’s people in other gatherings. As a local pastor, interact with other pastors in the area. Support and rejoice with them as God works among their congregation. As a member of the body of Christ, support and rejoice as you watch God at work in the peoples and nations of the world. The example of one nation’s change of dependence and deliverance, like Egypt’s, might remind you to renew your dependence on Him, as Israel was called to do through Isaiah’s prophecy.

When Egypt cried out to God, He sent them a deliverer. If God will do that for those who were once His enemies, how much more will He do for His church when we cry out to Him? When we depend on Him, He will refine our knowledge, supply ample resources, and strengthen us in our hard work to make great advances for the kingdom. He who has already sent us the ultimate deliverer in Jesus Christ is thrilled to empower us as we advance His kingdom. When Egypt gave their whole hearts to worship God, He drew them into an intimate relationship. God is intimately involved in the affairs of those who depend on Him. [Repeat]

CONCLUSION:

Remember that failure is unavoidable when dependence is misplaced. [1-15]

Remember that God is intimately involved in the affairs of those who depend on Him. [16-25]

God crafts life’s circumstances in a way that drives us toward dependence upon Him. He usually acts in such a way that we could not have succeeded without His intervention. If we maintain that perspective, we can avoid Egypt’s mistake. We can avoid being driven into failure in order to learn that lesson.

When Charles Stanley stepped up to the pulpit that Sunday morning without a sermon, he was not relying upon his own skill or resources. He was relying on God. It was an act of dependence. Charles would be the first to tell you that he had studied hard all that week. He would tell you that he could have written and delivered a sermon, if he had wanted to. He was skilled at writing, and he had more than enough resources to use in putting one together. But he wasn’t there to give a speech. He was there to speak God’s Word, and God had not yet given him a Word to speak. As he opened his Bible that morning, He felt the Spirit come. And He spoke, a Word from God.

On a rare occasion in Charles’ life, God arranged the circumstances to ensure that His servant was still depending on Him. May we also pass this same test.

As always, I am sharing my work here for your benefit. There’s no need to give me credit for the material, take it and allow God to use it in your work however you see fit.

Download the Sermon Manuscript here: Word Document       PDF

Download the Sermon Research and Outlines Here: Word Document         PDF

Original Manuscript by Patrick S. Fowler

Free for use and changes…freely I have received, freely I give.

Image: Buzz Lightyear…I never knew he was so popular! Then a few weeks ago, my wife and her coworkers dressed up as Toy Story figures for a conference at work, and it seemed like everyone there jumped at the opportunity to get a picture with Buzz Lightyear. Everyone knows Buzz. Most people I talk to have seen at least one of the movies. Usually the first one. Do you remember Buzz’s dilemma in the first movie? He thinks he can fly. There’s an iconic scene at the beginning where Woody and Buzz are arguing over whether or not that’s true with the typical childish, “yes I can! No you can’t. Can! Ca-a-an’t!” rhetoric, before Buzz proceeds to jump off the bed and “fly” around the room with his eyes closed. Buzz spends most of the movie believing that he is a real space ranger who can fly, rather than a space ranger action figure who can’t. He is totally convinced that he can do something—but the reality is, he can’t. And his self-deception leads him into a lot of trouble, in fact, it almost gets him killed.

[from him to us] Have you ever felt that way? Ever been convinced you would have no problem accomplishing something before you actually tried it? Did you feel that way the before you got behind the wheel of a car for the first time? Piece of cake, right? I bet you were as smooth as sandpaper that first time out. How about your first time with a camera or camcorder? Just point and shoot, right? Yeah, right! Not exactly professional quality results, I’d bet. Or your first time bowling? The first time you picked up the Wii controller.

Need: Well, we may grow into some humility as we become adults when it comes to our physical abilities, but when it comes to spiritual self-assessment, we still tend to blow our performance way out of proportion…and that’s a problem. I don’t think I have to convince you that there are billions of people in the world today who think they are going to heaven, most of whom are probably mistaken, thinking that they’re in because they’re basically good people. Most of us learned that lesson the first time we talked about evangelism. But I propose that there is an equally problematic issue when it comes to the way we read the so called “golden rule.” When it comes to loving others, we tend to blow our performance way out of proportion. We think of ourselves as first rate draft picks in that department, because we have friends and family and a spouse and children that we love. But unfortunately our real lack of performance is holding us back spiritually in a major way. Like Buzz, we’re leading ourselves into a lot of trouble because we lack perspective. Subject: Today I want to talk to you about measuring up to the Golden Rule. I want us to get a proper view of ourselves as it comes to loving others in a way that characterizes a right relationship with God—about truly loving your neighbor as yourself.

Text: The text that we will work through together is in Leviticus 19 and Luke 10, so feel free to mark those spots in your Bibles so that we can look at them in a few moments. Preview: For the sake of understanding God’s revelation of this great principle to us, I want to break our view of the command to love your neighbor as yourself into three perspectives: The obscurity of the command, the centrality of the command, and the proper application of the command.

The Obscurity of the Command comes from its original use: The Origin of Love your Neighbor as Yourself. You see, the amazing thing about the phrase, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is that it was lifted out of a long list of other commands in the middle of the book of Leviticus—Leviticus, a book focused on sacrifice and priestly obligations. Let’s read starting in verse 15 together and see for ourselves. It reads, “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Our key phrase really doesn’t stand out in the passage, does it? If this were a truly crucial phrase, we would expect it to appear in Exodus 21 or Deuteronomy 6, marked by the language as a central precept of the Law as the Ten Commandments or the Shema is. We’d expect to hear the deep voice of James Earl Jones in our heads as we encounter such a crucial passage. Instead, it is hidden away in a book concerned with sacrificial procedures and priestly purity. [Pause] The most significant thing about this phrase is that it ends the last of seven short sections of precepts marked by the repeated phrase, “I am the Lord.”

[Soft] Or perhaps the obscurity is what makes this phrase so significant. Perhaps its location and its lack of emphasis are intended to draw us into the theme of the section and the book, rather than highlight some memorable idiom. Holiness is the subject of Leviticus, the word appears 76x in the book. And the phrase, “I am the Lord” is given as the reason for holiness, as well as the reason for the actions commanded in this section of the book—commands to love. It seems that love is bound to holiness. God exhibits love and holiness as two aspects of His character, and God’s character, according to Leviticus, binds us to both love and holiness as well. Love is bound up in who God is. And if we are those who seek God, it must be bound up on who we are too. The point is that love is not something we are to do, but something we are to be. It is a part of who God is. And because we are created in His image, it is part of who we are. It’s built into the imago dei. It is something God has naturally programmed into us, but something that must also be developed by constant practice. We practice love because we are compelled by God’s example and design for us, not because we are simply obeying a command.

It’s kind of like being an IT guy. I do a lot of computer stuff and I am good at computer stuff, but I don’t have a single certification in technology. It is not simply my knowledge that makes me good at computer stuff. It is something I am. IT is not something that can be taught to anyone. It takes a certain skill set that comes naturally and is then developed by knowledge and experience. I have natural talents that I have developed through lots of practice. That’s why I am an IT guy.

Buzz Lightyear’s real dilemma was not whether or not he could fly, it was wrapped up in his identity. Was he a hero, or a toy meant to resemble the hero? Buzz struggled to realize the significance of being a toy made in the image of a hero. Likewise, we often fail to recognize the significance of being made in the image of God. Buzz may not have been built to fly, but we are built to love…and to fail to love is misuse the design that God intended in making us the way He did. So the question this text compels us to ask is, “do people describe me as loving? Does love define who I am?” The Obscurity of the Command teaches us that loving others is who we are intended to be, not just what we are to do. Love is wrapped up in who we are, not what we do. That’s the lesson the obscurity of the command teaches.

Now let’s look at the Centrality of the Command: the way this text came to be viewed as one of the greatest commands, the “Golden Rule” if you will. In the New Testament gospels and epistles, this obscure phrase comes to be the second greatest commandment and the summary of the Law…but not entirely because of Jesus. In fact, if you read only Luke’s gospel, Romans, Galatians, or James, you would hear the command, but you would not know that this came from Jesus, only that it was important to the early church. Only Matthew, Mark, and 1 John clearly associate this command’s origin with Jesus’ teaching.

Jewish history records that the use of the command to summarize the Law comes from the generation before Jesus, from Rabbi Hillel who died about the time Jesus was being born. In a famous confrontation where he was asked to summarize the Law in brevity, he responded, “What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary.” Because Hillel was influential at the time before Jesus and his status as a religious expert was passed on to his grandson, Gamaliel, who led a prominent school for the Pharisees in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, this saying was likely well known to the Jews at the time, refined and spoken in the language of Leviticus. We might even assume that it had taken on the significance of John 3:16 for the Jews.

So in the synoptic gospels, Jesus is not inventing a new command or summary statement, He is rather putting a unique twist on a popular command. First, He links it to the Shema. Then He uses both commands as the means of attaining eternal life. Let’s read Luke 10:25-28 together. “And behold, a scribe stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And the scribe answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

It might have been powerful and insightful when Hillel taught it, but when Jesus affirms it in the New Testament, it takes on the authority of God’s Son—His Word. And Jesus’ assertion is clear: salvation is bound up in these commands. If we do not have love in these two respects, we must question our salvation. [Pause, Repeat]

It is interesting that as popular as this theme is throughout the New Testament, we never discuss loving God and loving our neighbor when we discuss salvation today. We don’t cover this perspective when talking to others about salvation. And yet this passage alone should cause us to evaluate our own spiritual lives in light of our love for others.

[Validation] Another voice from the New Testament says it this way in 1 John 4:20-21 - If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

While accepting the work that Jesus did in His life and death—to redeem us from the penalty of our disobedience—remains central to understanding of salvation, Christ’s work was ultimately an expression of and restoration to God’s love. We have not grasped salvation until it transforms us into those who express love toward God and others. Loving God and not loving others is kind of like saying we love our spouse, but not wanting to have anything to do with any of her friends. Love means that we value not only the person, but that we extend some of that value to the things that the person loves. That’s what The Centrality of the Command teaches us—that love is an indication of the salvific work of God in our lives. The love of God and others marks the path of salvation. And that assertion leads us to the Application of the Command: How do we know if we truly love others? How can we be sure that we are not overrating our performance? How do we know how well we are walking in the path of salvation?

The intriguing part of Luke’s use of this pericope is that the main emphasis in his gospel is not related to the greatest commandments themselves…the commandments lead the scribe to ask a second question. Let’s read this interaction for ourselves, starting in verse 27:

27 And the scribe answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But the scribe, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied,

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’

36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Even with all the commands of the Law to listen to, the Jewish expert in the Law is still worried that he has not applied it correctly. The scribe is uneasy with his application. He asks a follow up question seeking justification that he has applied the second command correctly. He wants assurance. He asks Jesus to define the people that He is obligated to love. He wants to know who his neighbor is. He considers himself to be a loving person—but not toward everyone. The Jews had lots of people they also loved to hate—Romans, Samaritans, Gentiles, and crazy Rabbis who claimed to be God.

Jesus, in his response, throws him somewhat of a curve ball…he defines what it means to be loving, rather than defining who to love. The neighbor in Jesus’ story is anonymous. Jesus ends his story by asking the question, “which one was a friend to his neighbor?” and exhorting the man to “go and do likewise.”

Rather, Jesus spends three of the five verses in his story describing the Samaritans actions toward a stranger. The Samaritan is so filled with compassion that he gives of his own resources to attend to dress stranger’s wounds, transport him, monitor him overnight, and provide extended lodging and care for the man without knowledge of how much it will ultimately cost. In the same way, we need to sacrificially give and serve others who are in great need.

If we are to see ourselves as justified through the lens of Jesus command, we must be sacrificially compassionate toward others in need—not just toward our family and friends, but toward complete strangers. The love that we carry inside of us should compel us to give our time, our money, and our resources at random moments of our day, when we find ourselves confronted with great need in the lives of others. And so we must ask ourselves, “do I feel moved to compassion by the needs of strangers?”

Do you know the names of the people in your church who are struggling financially? Do you see your local body serving the needs of single moms or people in run-down housing nearby? My inability to answer questions like this make me seem pretty unloving. Have you even thought to pull over and help someone whose car is off on the shoulder of the road? How many times have you justified passing a need like that by with an excuse like: “they will just waste any money I give them,” or “there is a shelter nearby if they really need help,” or “I am sure a tow truck or policeman will be by and help them soon.” My unwillingness to interrupt my day—my use of excuses like this makes me seem pretty unloving. I think the challenge Jesus extends here to us is a challenge for us to exercise a lot more compassion than we currently do on a regular basis.

I suggest that to apply this text, the expression of love in this way should almost take the form of a spiritual discipline. Loving our neighbors in bold ways should be a habit. We need to establish a routine of regularly reaching beyond ourselves to serve others in need, so that we become someone who is this loving. And our service should affect us/hurt us/stretch us, not simply be a painless gift of money or old possessions.

For example, in Atlanta there was a soup kitchen that served the homeless every Saturday. Anyone who wanted could go and volunteer. The guy who ran the operation would assign jobs on the fly, so you might end up serving food or cleaning tables, giving haircuts or making conversation over the table. Stacy and I always felt like our hearts had grown whenever we served there. It wasn’t anything amazing for the homeless people. It was just another meal. But for us, just serving people who didn’t know us, who didn’t care about us, giving love away made us better at loving. And it is those type of experiences that we need to pursue on a regular basis…whether life gives you those opportunities at random often enough, or you have to intentionally seek them out. We grow more loving by loving others.

The love that we carry inside of us should compel us to give our time, our money, and our resources—if it does not, we probably still face self-deceit in this area. Love should compel us to respond at random, inconvenient moments of our day, when we find ourselves confronted with great need in the lives of others. If we are to see ourselves as justified through the lens of Jesus command, we must be sacrificially compassionate toward others in need. That’s the lesson we learn from the application of the command.

Remember the Obscurity of the Command: Love is wrapped up in who we are, not what we do. Buzz Lightyear’s real dilemma was wrapped up in his identity. He failed to realize the significance of being made in the image of a hero. Likewise, we often fail to recognize the significance of being made in the image of God. We are built to love…to fail to do so is misuse the design that God intended in making us the way He did. Our capacity to love needs expression, and it needs to be developed through regular practice.

Remember the Centrality of the Command: Love of God and Others marks the path of salvation. Buzz Lightyear came to realize his misperceptions before it cost him everything. That is my prayer for myself and for those I see all around me. Our lack of perspective is costing us—costing us the fullness of who we are meant to be—costing many eternal life, and costing believers spiritual vitality.

And remember the Application of the Command: We are justified when we are sacrificially compassionate toward those in need. Like Buzz, we need to be all that we were created to be. We need to love better. We need to love strangers. We need to be sacrificially compassionate. Only then can we truly saw that we have fulfilled the greatest commandments. Only then will we truly love our neighbor as ourselves.

“…the experience is incredible, unlike any operating system I've ever used. It's the perfect hybrid of old and new. While Apple attempts slowly to merge its mobile operating system into the desktop with new iPhone-like features, Microsoft made a bold move and jumped ahead to the future where most computing takes place on touch-friendly smartphones and tablets. It's enough to make an Apple fan like me drool.”

from Steve Kovach, Business Insider

Read the full article here.

"We should not think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, and optional addition to the exercises of private devotions. Fellowship is one of the great words of the New Testament: it denotes something that is vital to a Christian’s spiritual health, and central to the Church’s true life…The church will flourish and Christians will be strong only when there is fellowship." ~ J.I. Packer

"It is both foolish and wicked to suppose that we will make much progress in sanctification if we isolate ourselves from the visible church. Indeed, it is commonplace to hear people declare that they don’t need to unite with a church to be a Christian. They claim that their devotion is personal and private, not institutional or corporate. This is not the testimony of the great saints of history, it is the confession of fools." ~ R.C. Sproul

I have a passion to equip and encourage small group leadership in the church.

It seems that every church I hear about has adopted a small group strategy--so there are a lot of people doing small groups--but I fear that most of them are not doing small groups WELL. Small groups can be a bad strategy if they are not done well. Think about it for a moment, and I'm sure you will agree. Most people don't leave the church because of the sermons, the worship, or the children's program...they leave the church because someone hurt them, violated their trust, or even "stabbed them in the back." And where does that hurt come from? Not from Sunday morning, but from small group environments.

In response to the need of churches everywhere, I took last summer to refine a lot of my thoughts on group leadership, to read some more books on the subject, and to package a class into notes and a PowerPoint presentation. This past Saturday, I taught the class through DTS's Lay Institute for the second time. Now that these notes have been tested and received a good response, I want to pass them along to you as well. PLEASE--use these! I don't want credit or fame, I just want to build up the body of Christ...and I hope you find these notes to be a key resource in your own life and ministry, to that end.

Let me leave you with one other quote that I believe sums up my thoughts on Small Groups.

There is no passage in the Bible that says, ‘You must have a small group for people to grow in their faith.’ Instead, what is in the Bible is an understanding, from beginning to end, that people need an authentic, intimate community in which to grow.

Click here for the Word Document of the notes

Click here for the PDF version of the notes

Click here for the Power Point Presentation

One Strategy is Poor Strategy

Just as the Mass Effect universe is made up of different races of beings, our world is made up of diverse and unique cultures and languages. When the Protheans in Mass Effect attempted to enslave all the races in their time to defeat their enemies, they failed to grasp that unity is both a strength and weakness. When their enemies figured out their strategy and overcame it, the Protheans were defeated. It is the same with our church. Our world does not need one super-mega-ultra church model and strategy. There is not one form of worship that is demanded of all the world. That would be a very inspiring organization to look at, but it would also be one that Satan could easily corrupt and defeat. God, who created our world's diversity, intends His church to reflect it. We should enjoy the unique expressions each culture gives to the teachings of Christ. Different songs, different ways of gathering, and different emphasis in the way that they appear to the outside world. Morality and belief's should be consistent, but consistency in those areas does not demand precision in worship.In Revelation God has worshipers from every tribe, tongue, and nation. We shouldn't think that they are all singing the same Chris Tomlin tune. Diversity is strength...diversity is beauty. Our unity is in Christ's redemptive work, not our form of worship.

Choices Matter

Having played through three consecutive games, my choices from long ago are beginning to have HUGE consequences. Some consequences were foreseen, others were not. Some are helping me greatly, others are costing me dearly. People I chose to save are showing up after 3 years in the Mass Effect world, some trying to kill me, and some saving my life. Sexuality, traumatic events, and actions expressed out of intense anger can follow a person for ages in this life. We can't simply let go of things we did in a moment of foolishness decades ago...they mark us like tattoos and scars. They won't fully heal until God redeems the world in the last days. Make careful choices. Remember that God's way is the best way for reasons you cannot yet see.