Advertising Your Faith: Actions Speak Louder

If my life is a commercial or if your life is a commercial, and I mean, you've got your temperament, your personality, and your gifts and your job and you've got a lot of stuff going on, but when you come to mind or when I come to mind, when people kind of do the one sentence thing, I know Frank, he's you know, I know Trisha, Trish, she's, if your life is a commercial, and I guess and say all of our lives are commercials about something, I wonder what are you advertising? [00:27:49]

The Christian faith, not all faith systems and not even theism, but Christianity specifically rises and falls on the identity of a single individual, Jesus of Nazareth. So when it comes to the veracity of Christianity, specifically the question to wrestle to the ground, the question that you have to wrestle with, especially if you're considering faith or maybe you're losing faith or you grew up with faith and now you're not so sure because your childhood faith is not doing so well with the trauma that comes and the pressures that come along with being an adult and your kind of things are up in the air, the question to wrestle with when it comes to is there anything to the Christian faith is not the question, is there a God, although it's fun to talk about is there a God and there's lots of books written about is there a God, that's kind of fun to talk about, but that's not the main question when it comes to Christianity. [01:30:73]

If any one of these much less all four of these are reliable accounts of actual events, then it means that what Jesus said about Himself is true and what Jesus did are things that really happen. And if what these Gospels or these ancient documents say about Jesus is true regardless of your background and regardless of what you've thought before, you should sit up straight and pay attention. We should all sit up straight and pay attention regardless of what you think about religion, the existence of God or even the Bible, if any one of these is a reliable account of actual events, game on. [02:55:89]

Luke is not writing religious literature, he's not writing religious literature. And as we discussed last time, if you missed last time, you gotta go back and catch up, he's also not writing the Bible. Luke doesn't have any idea there will ever be a the Bible, the Bible which is the title given to the collection of the Hebrew Scriptures along with the Gospels and the writings of Paul's and letters, that happened in the early fourth century. Luke has no idea there's ever gonna be a the Bible. So he's not writing religious literature, he's certainly not writing the Bible. You know what he's doing? He's documenting someone's life, he's telling someone's story, a story that took place in his lifetime. [06:11:51]

John the Baptist is not a Bible character, John the Baptist is a historical character that shows up in this Gospel, and in fact, in the other Gospels as well, because he had a specific role to play when it came to Jesus. But John the Baptist is known of outside of biblical literature. The Roman historian that I, excuse me, the Jewish historian that I quote sometimes, Josephus, every once in a while you hear somebody talk about Josephus, Josephus wrote three big pieces of literature, "The Jewish War" which is a fabulous piece of literature, you can get all this stuff on Amazon, is almost free, it's so old. But he also wrote a document, I've read all of these, "The Antiquities or The History of the Jews" where he goes all the way back to Adam and tells the whole history of the Jews. [11:03:65]

And John went into all the country around the Jordan River specifically preaching, and this was his message, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, one of the reasons John the Baptist caused such a stir, this is a problem, because the Jewish people had an entire system built around how to get forgiven of your sin. And it happened in Jerusalem at the temple. And lo and behold, this crazy man comes out of the desert saying, you don't need to go there, the whole thing is corrupt, you need to come to me and I'm gonna baptize you and I'm gonna call you to repentance of your sin so you can begin to live out what you're supposed to live out. [15:10:64]

If you wanna be right with God, if you wanna be prepared for what God is about to do, you have to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. That is you gotta change your evil ways and you gotta walk your talk, you gotta put some wheels on it, you gotta be doers of the Torah, not just believers and teachers of the Torah, because the day of reducing religion to tradition are over, the days of a personalized, internalized only religion, they're over. And if you don't repent of that kind of approach, and if you don't repent of your lack of compassion, your lack of generosity, your lack of others first, if you don't repent, when the new that God does shows up, you're gonna miss it because you won't see it because you won't be living in sync with it. [17:41:74]

Produce fruit, he said, fruit, not belief, fruit, not you got it all worked out theologically, fruit in keeping with repentance. Here's our version, Produce fruit in keeping with what you say you believe and who you claim to believe in. Again, if this is disturbing, it's like, but what about, then you get it, you get the emotion he's trying to stir in all of us. Because at times, we get so settled into our way of thinking and our way of believing and our way of behaving that we think, well, we're fine, aren't we? And maybe you are fine, but maybe some of us aren't. [21:15:74]

What should we do to prepare for what God is about to do among us? What should we do so that when it happens, we recognize it? What should we do that when we see it, we understand this is God's work in the world. We don't wanna miss it. If God's about to do something new, how can we best prepare ourselves? And they were of course waiting for some religious answer. If you're gonna prepare, if you're gonna get ready for what God's about to do, you gotta do something difficult, you gotta do something unusual, you gotta do something religious. And John's answer surprised them and it will surprise us as well. [25:21:45]

If you see a need you can meet, meet it, when you see a need you can meet and it cost you, meet it, when you have more of what you have, you have more of what somebody else has has and they need it, then you step in, whether they're Judean, Galilean, Samaritan, it doesn't matter. When you see a need, you step in and you mean it because the thing that God is about to do is exactly that, He is about to meet the need of the entire world, a need they can't meet on their own. And if you're not living that out, you're gonna miss it when it comes. [27:05:57]

Doing is deep. You know why doing is deep, because when you follow Jesus, when you begin to ask the question, this is a challenging question, when you begin to say to your heavenly Father, what do you want me to do, He is going to draw you out into a place where you can't touch the bottom, that's the definition of deep. By the way, there's the shallow end, I can touch the bottom, I'm safe, there's the deep end, I can't touch the bottom, I'm having to exert energy and I'm a little bit afraid and I'm over my head. And that's where your heavenly Father is going to invite you because that's where His son went and that's how the world is changed. [35:51:08]

Believers didn't change the world, doers changed the world, followers changed the world. The men and women, the men and women whose lives advertise the kingdom of God, the men and women whose lives advertise thy kingdom come, thy will be done right here right now in my world. So will you ask it, Heavenly Father, what should I do? If you do, your eyes and your heart will be open to what God has next for you and what God has now for your world. [40:15:37]