The priests and the captain of the Temple guard
and the Sadducees came to Peter and
John while they were speaking to the people.
They were greatly disturbed because the
apostles were teaching the people and
proclaiming in
Jesus the resurrection of the dead.
They seized Peter and John, and because it was
evening, they put them in jail until the
next day.
But many who heard the message believed, and
the number of men grew to about 5,000.
The next day the rulers, elders, and teachers
of the law met in Jerusalem.
Annas the high priest was there, and so were
Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and other men of
the high priest's family.
They had Peter and John brought before them and
began to question them, by what power
or what name did you do this?
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said
to them, Rulers and elders of the people,
if we are being called to account today for an
act of kindness shown to a cripple and
or ask how he was healed, then know this, you
and all the people of Israel.
It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
whom you crucified, but whom God raised from
the dead, that this man stands before you healed.
He is the stone you builders rejected, which
has become the campstone.
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is
no other name under Heaven given to men
by which we must be saved.
And God bless the reading of his word.
I'm very happy to welcome Dean Smith to the campus.
Dean Smith is the preaching minister of the
University Avenue Church of Christ in Austin,
and it also serves on the faculty of the
Institute for Christian Studies in Austin.
He received undergraduate degrees from Michigan
Christian, which is now Rochester College,
and then from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.
He has had excellent tenure as a minister in
Detroit, in Chicago, in San Antonio, and
now in Austin.
I'm very pleased to introduce Dean because he
is one I know embodies what I would like
for our students of preaching to learn.
That is, he has a passion for telling the story
of God's word.
He is a reflective person who thinks and thinks
well on the craft of preaching, and he is
one very committed to the cause of Jesus Christ.
That commitment has been seen in his work in
various places, and he is the kind of person
I love to hear preach because I know his
passion and I know his reflection that goes
into the
task of preaching.
So it is a great privilege now to have Dean
Smith here and to address us on the topic
No Other Name.
Ever since I got the call from Bill Young and
the invitation, the gracious invitation
from this university to come and speak in this
place, the thought has been in the last
few weeks, what was I thinking?
But in the last few days when I realized that
James and others that I know would be up here
on this stage, then I really began to think,
what was I thinking?
These people know stories that because they are
such gracious people they have not told
today and I express my appreciation as well as
for this invitation.
The text that we have now read together is a
text about witness.
It's about whether those who have seen and
heard Jesus will be intimidated by those who
are prepared to silence them if they continue
to speak with boldness in Jesus' name.
Two thousand years later and there is still a
perceptible deadly threat to Christians
all over the world who speak with such boldness.
However, the witness of Christians in America
today isn't threatened by persecution or
by death, but rather we are threatened by our
own doubts and our own fears.
For many the bold confession of Peter and John
that day that there is no other name
under heaven by which we must be saved has
become little more than a private personal opinion.
How can we with any degree of confidence make
such an assertion in such a pluralistic and
postmodern culture?
Knowing what we do now about other religions,
how can we say that Jesus is the only path
to God, the only savior that humanity will ever know?
How can we be taken seriously in this culture
if we continue to make such an exclusive claim?
I originally thought as I prepared for this
that I might try to tackle some of those heady
questions and then I realized I'm not smart
enough to do this.
I certainly have some strong opinions about how
to do it, but it occurred to me in my
preparation that the most effective response to
these questions is probably not an intellectual
one, although that is certainly part of it.
According to Luke, at least as I read Luke in
Luke-Acts, the most effective response
is not the marshaling of well-reasoned
philosophical arguments, but rather the most convincing
proof that there is no other name by which we
must be saved is seen in the lives and
the service of those who live and work in that name.
In a world whose religious pluralism rivals our
own, those first Christians were willing
to risk everything for this conviction, and I
believe that Luke tells stories like this
in the book of Acts to remind his readers both
then and now of how it was that they
were able to do that and how, in fact, we might
do the same.
Our story begins actually in chapter 3 with an
ordinary trip to the temple to pray by
two of Jesus' disciples, Peter and John.
As they were about to enter the Temple gate,
they encounter a man who is reduced to begging
for his livelihood, and so he holds out his
hand and asks simply for a donation that day,
but he didn't get quite what he expected.
Peter and John look at the man and say, look at us.
We have no money, neither silver nor gold, but
we will give you what we do have.
In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise and walk.
Can you imagine what that man must have thought
when he first heard those words?
Hey, fine, buddy, if you don't want to give me
any money, that's fine, but don't humiliate
me in the process.
But then Peter reached down and took his hand
and helped him to his feet, and in those feet
he would begin to feel a surge of strength
until Miraculously there he was standing,
but not for long.
Pretty soon he was walking and jumping and
drawing all sorts of attention to himself
as they went through the temple that day,
praising God and drawing attention to his
witness and to the miracle that had just
occurred, and so soon a crowd is attracted
there in
the temple place, is attracted there in
Solomon's portico.
What else can Peter do except to once again
preach the gospel?
Why do you stare at us, he said to them, as if
by our own power or our own piety we were
the ones who made this man walk?
And so as he proclaimed the gospel of Jesus
Christ that day, he said to them, it is the
name of Jesus and faith in him that has granted
healing to this man.
Our reading picks up immediately after that,
after Peter's speech when the powerful Sanhedrin,
that council that ran the temple institution,
sent some soldiers to arrest these men and
bring them to the Temple court to be examined.
And the first thing we notice about that
confrontation is the contrast between the two,
this August
Council, and these two very ordinary men.
After all, the Sanhedrin was composed of the
best and the brightest, the most powerful,
the most highly educated, and the wealthiest
men in all of Judea.
These were the movers and shakers of 1st
century Palestine, at least among the Jewish people.
They were also the guardians of the temple
establishment and presided over all of its administration.
Who could help but be intimidated before such a body?
And yet it was the confidence of those two men
that impressed the leaders.
It was the boldness that they saw in these two
men that belied their lack of education
and status and wealth, and reminded them of
another man who had stood before them just
months before, a man that they had been so
intimidated by that they had condemned him
to die.
And they realized these two had been with him.
And maybe then it was that they realized that
the faith and boldness that these two men
possessed was more than they, with all of their
education and all of their wealth and
all of their status, could ever equal or ever control.
In the last century, churches of Christ have
lived the American dream.
We have gone from primarily a frontier rural
group of churches to those with all of the
social and cultural trappings of a
well-established religious tradition.
In other words, we crossed tracks.
We moved uptown, and we've never looked back.
As a movement, we went from the fastest-growing
churches in America to being among the wealthiest,
best-educated, and most prominent churches in
America, often more concerned with sending
our kids to Harvard than to Heaven.
And somewhere along the way, we stopped growing.
And that prompted us to begin to consolidate
our churches rather than propagating more
of them as we became preoccupied with church
growth, with all of its principles and all
of its poles.
And I'm afraid for too many of us, church
growth had more to do with large crowds and
booming budgets and cutting-edge technology
than it ever had to do with the life-transforming
power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I say that because we often use those standards
to measure our success or to excuse our failure.
Why are we so surprised depending on our own
power and our own education and our own status
and our own piety?
Why should we be so surprised that we have
failed to grow?
Why should we be surprised to hear the words of
Randy last night?
We're in trouble.
When I compare the culture of the early church
that they lived in with our own, I'm impressed
by many of the similarities, and we would do
well to recognize the connections between
the culture they lived in and the one we live in.
But then when I look at the differences in
circumstances, that difference is striking.
One could say that the early church depended
and lived and worked in the name of Jesus
because they didn't have any choice.
They had no education.
They had no status.
They had no wealth.
They had to depend upon this name of Jesus.
But if that is so, then one might wonder by the
same reasoning if our significantly improved
circumstances have tempted us to do ministry
apart from such utter dependence.
For as I listen to the conversation among us,
sometimes I wonder if we have exchanged
ministry in the name of Jesus, for ministry in
the name of wealth and education and status.
And I wonder more than once if we have become
more like that well-established, well-connected,
well-heeled Sanhedrin protecting the
institution than with those two ordinary men
with such
extraordinary boldness and faith.
Every time I read this story, I think to myself
what a non-event this would have been if Peter
and John had just had some spare change that day.
If they just thought ahead and thought, there's
going to be people who are asking for alms.
We need to take a coin or two with us.
Totally unprepared for that, they have nothing
to give.
They could have simply continued on their way.
Perhaps they could have gone and prayed for the poor.
And nothing in this man's life would have been
any different.
But when I think about that, it makes me wonder
how different our ministry might be if we
didn't enjoy all the prosperity that we do.
Would we simply fold our hands and complain
that there's nothing that we can do?
Or would we begin to give sacrificially, find
more personal hands-on ways to do ministry?
We would like to believe that our soaring
prosperity and status has led to a greater
commitment to ministry and missions in the
church, that we have given these things to
God and He has blessed us.
But I'm not sure that's the case.
It has, however, increased our attention to
money and to the power of money.
I think of that every time I go to the third
world country of Haiti.
I remember the day that I walked along the
streets of Haiti and thought to myself, I
have $300 cash in my pocket.
I have the equivalent of the average annual
wage of a native Haitian in my pocket.
And I could get rid of that and it wouldn't
make any difference to my life.
What impressed me indeed, what scared me at
that moment was it was a pretty heady feeling.
What does a preacher do in a country where so
many people are in such desperate need
of daily necessities?
What good is preaching if people don't have
enough to eat?
But over the last several years of visiting
several third world countries, I've discovered
that mission work like ministry requires that
we focus very intentionally on our ministry
in the name of Jesus or our wealth will
undermine our missions rather than empower them.
Every time I think of that, I think of the
story, the story that is told of the people
of God who have gathered about Mount Sinai.
Moses has gone off to Mount Sinai to hear from
God about the charter of Israel as a
nation, but he's been gone for a long time and
he didn't say when he'd be back.
And so these frightened people who are not sure
what's going to happen to them decide
in their impatience, they've got to find
themselves another leader and they look to Aaron.
And I confess to you, every time I've read the
story, I've always thought Aaron was
just hanging around waiting for this moment.
I can't wait.
And so in Moses' prolonged absence, Aaron got
his shot and he made the most of it.
Like a hotshot preacher in a dying church, he
started giving orders.
And the first order was we got to raise some money.
And so he ordered that the gold would be
brought and they brought it all there.
And you know the story, he formed it into a
golden calf, an idol that would restore
the attention and the confidence of the people.
But then listen to what he said to the people
when he carried that idol before them and
he laid it before them and it was gleaming and
it was beautiful and it was powerful.
Listen to his words, this is your God, O
Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.
I still feel a shiver every time I hear those words.
Can you imagine such arrogance?
After God has carried them out of the land of
Egypt on Eagle's wings, now they bring
before them and attribute their salvation to an
object of their own creation which they
are willing to carry all the way back to slavery.
It seems incredible to me that anyone could
make such an idolatrous error.
And yet sometimes when I listen to
conversations among us, I wonder if we are not
prone to
the very same kind of golden calf moments.
I think of the number of times that people have
sat in my office and I've sat across
the table from them to express concerns about
the church and waiting for them to lay their
Bible open on the table so that we might talk
about what is and is not the Lord's will.
Instead of a Bible, it's a wallet, it's a checkbook.
And I am reminded that it really doesn't matter
what the Lord wants.
It's what those who pay the bills want.
And somehow I hear the Lord's Prayer being
twisted and perverted into our will be done
because it can be done.
Christians will always face the temptation to
use wealth in a way that prevents us from
doing ministry in the name of the Lord, whether
it's our clever programs of special interest
giving that allow disgruntled members to be mad
at the church and mad at the elders but
still give to the budget or whether it's
holding up the business qualifications of a man for
leadership in the church without thinking about
his spiritual life and the depth of
his faith.
But far more troubling for me is not just the
wielding of money as some great weapon,
but believing and the growing belief among us
that it is power that will lead to the
proclamation and that it is the power of wealth
that will lead to the proclamation of the
gospel in the world.
In our two affluent churches it has become too
easy for us to believe that if we only
had more money then we could really do
ministry, then we could really proclaim the gospel.
For the truth is as it was then, evangelism has
always been each of us going to our neighbor
and sharing our lives and the gospel with them
and 2,000 years passing have not altered
that reality.
But living in an unusually prosperous era and
country has altered our perceptions until
too many of us are convinced that you can't
take the gospel to a lost world unless we
have a lot of money and I hear it unfortunately
from younger preachers.
There are so many good things about younger
preachers that I see and so many mistakes
that my generation have made in preaching and
I'm so glad to see them correcting them.
I'm so glad to see the correctives that have occurred.
But I see some younger preachers enamored with
the affluence among us and it is certainly
there who lament that they're being handcuffed
in their ministry.
Somehow the church needs to loosen its purse
strings and then I can really go out and preach
the gospel to the world.
I say that convinced and recognizing that one
of the main sources of that muddled thinking
is preachers like me, but it's still wrong.
And this particular fixation on wealth as a key
to ministry, as a key to evangelism
is as insidious a temptation as any we will
face in ministry.
Story is told one day of an audience that
Thomas Aquinas had with Pope Innocent II.
As he walked in the room that day he saw Pope
Innocent standing by a table with piles of
silver and gold.
He was obviously delighted with the take that
day and so he looked at Thomas Aquinas and
he said, look Thomas the church will never
again be able to say silver and gold have
I none.
To which Aquinas was said to reply, yes but
never again will the church be able to say
rise and walk.
Yes I wonder how much our witness in ministry
would change if we stopped believing that
money was the key, key to our success or the
reason for our failure to do God's work.
Another temptation in ministry is to do
ministry in the name of knowledge or education.
Historians of our fellowship are correct in
their assessment that one of the great blessings
we've experienced in the last generation is the
opportunity to obtain further training
college degrees because of the GI Bill.
Never before have so many preachers and
teachers, never before have so many Christians been
able to get higher advanced degrees.
In fact one has said I'm not sure if this is
true but some have speculated that among
religious groups in America we may have more
with advanced degrees per capita than any
fellowship in America.
Certainly one of the great blessings of my
ministry has been the opportunity to study
and get further training.
But that higher level of study can bring all
sorts of temptations and one of the greatest
of those temptations is the temptation of arrogance.
The temptation to believe that we know so much
more than other people.
The temptation to believe that by our sheer
ability to master the text we can bring about
the will of God.
That by our sheer mastery of the words and our
sheer mastery of the concepts that that's
all it takes for us to go out and convey the
gospel to the world and too quickly we move
to the place where we're more concerned about
mastering the word than we are being shaped
and mastered by it.
Not enough concern about standing under the
word as well as understanding it.
I'm pleased that in recent years we've given
greater attention to the integration of knowledge
and experience that I think is at the very
heart of what faith is all about.
That we're no longer naively assuming that
theological training automatically means faithful
discipleship and we're beginning to understand that.
I think it's healthy that we ask our leaders,
that we demand that our leaders be people
of faith who live out what they teach and who
give us an example of the things that
they say to us.
I think it's healthy that we be people who live
and serve not in the name of scholarship
or academic freedom or renown but people who
live and serve in the name of Jesus.
When Peter and John left the Sanhedrin that day
they knew Christ in a way that they had
not known him before because they had
experienced in the words of Paul the
partnership of sharing
in his sufferings.
Today we need to continue to insist on that
true meaning of discipleship, the experience
of actually following Jesus.
In the midst of all of our affluence we are in
danger as a generation of raising a generation
of ethnic Christians, children who've been
raised and educated in a Christian environment
but who lack the personal commitment to truly
be disciples of Jesus.
In the last few years some of us have come to
realize that even when we train and hire
the best and the brightest of all youth
ministers that money can buy we still are
unable to
bring our children to faith.
Too often we believe that the problem is a
solution and the solution is indeed the problem.
Finally we face the temptation to view our
upward mobility as a sign of our success and
use it to attract others to our churches.
Every day in my home I receive brochures,
beautiful glossy brochures from churches and
the line from the church is basically this, we
are just like you.
Come and be part of us.
We're good-looking, we're educated, we're
uppily mobile, we're fun-loving and we're casual.
You know when I read casual is the key word.
We're just like you.
We're casual.
I'm not really sure what that has to do with it.
But what a contrast the apostle Paul whose
opening line to churches might be.
The gospel is for people who've blown it.
The gospel is for people who can't get by.
The gospel is for the people who are clueless
about what life is all about.
The gospel is for those who've made horrible mistakes.
The gospel is for sinners just like me.
The truth is we're still struggling to
understand our status as an opportunity for obedience
rather than a reward for righteousness.
As Christians in America we have an even
greater responsibility.
We enjoy so much more freedom and prosperity
than most of the rest of the people on this earth.
In countries all over the world Christians face
official sanctions and persecution every
Sunday when they assemble for worship.
But in America the average Christian worships
with the church about twice a month.
In many third world countries most have never
heard the gospel once.
But what do we struggle with?
The boredom of having heard it again and again
and again.
All over the world Bibles are confiscated.
Church meetings are prohibited and Christians
languish in prisons while in America our greatest
concern is that we express our preferences and
our needs.
And all over again I hear the words of Jesus
and I'm reminded how right he was when he
said Dean the first thing is you've got to die.
We need to go back to the first step.
We're not working on the third floor of church growth.
We need to go back to the foundation.
So with all of our advantages in wealth and
education and status it seems like a good
time to stop and just ask a question or two.
Has our upward mobility made us more
compassionate to those who live on the margins
of life?
Or are we losing our sensitivity to the poor
simply because they're no longer our neighbors?
They're not people that we can identify with.
Has our vast accumulation of knowledge and
education led us to a closer relationship
to God or has it in fact led us away from God?
Has our rapid increase in prosperity been
matched by an increase in generosity and stewardship
or and correct me if I'm wrong are we
struggling more with rampant materialism than
we ever
have and are our young people struggling with
oppressive debt?
Do we need more money or do we need a change of
heart and life?
What would it mean for the church to witness in
the name of Jesus?
My wife says this in every one of my sermons,
great sermon Dean what would it look like?
She always writes my conclusions, I see her
face whenever I come to this point in my sermon.
What would it look like Dean?
Let me suggest three things, first surprisingly
I think we would become more a people of confidence
but in the Lord not in us.
The truth is that both our timidity and our
pride arises from the same source, our confidence
in ourselves rather than in God.
In too many large churches we put our trust
more in the ability to raise money for new
programs than the power of God to raise people
to new life.
And too many small churches wring their hands
and point to their seemingly limited resources
as an excuse for the failure to be light and
salt to the community.
Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord the
apostle Paul wrote to a supremely self-confident
and self-absorbed church in ancient Corinth.
But the message is the same for every church
that despairs of ever reaching the lost.
What would happen if we moved from fear and
doubts and division to faith?
What would happen if we really believe that God
is among us?
If we really believe that he who called us to
proclaim the gospel to the ends of the
earth would empower us to do it?
I believe we are a fellowship that has spent
entirely too long beating ourselves up for
all the wrong reasons.
We sit and we wring our hands convincing
ourselves that it's our beliefs and our
practices, you
know, like baptism by immersion, weekly
celebration of the Lord's Supper, plurality of elders.
Now that's our problem.
And if somehow we could free ourselves from the
baggage of that narrow, confining kind
of theology, then we could really grow.
I'm reminded of the young man who wrote me one
time after Sermon email.
That's how you send criticism is by email.
And after one sermon he wrote and he said, now
that was a real hellfire and brimstone
sermon and it wasn't a compliment.
I knew him very well and so I wrote back to him
and said that quite frankly he wasn't
old enough to know what a real hellfire and
brimstone was.
I suggested to him that probably what had
happened was he had heard the word judgment
several times in the sermon and in a positive light.
And that's why he thought it was a hellfire and
brimstone sermon.
The emphasis of salvation by grace has taken
hold, my friend, it has taken hold.
I know there may be churches and there may be
places in America where it seems to have
lagged behind, but the churches that I have
preached for and associated with, it has taken hold.
We've got the message.
What we need to understand now is the
obligations of grace, for somehow in our naive theology
we've come to believe that we are less
obligated now that we know it's all up to God, when
in fact we are more obligated than we have ever been.
But it is the obligation of gratitude and of faith.
In 25 or 26 years of preaching from Detroit to
Chicago to San Antonio to Austin, I've
yet to meet a person who wasn't already a
believer, who knew anything about the shady
side of our history.
I've not met one.
Maybe you have.
Maybe that's something you're struggling with,
but it's not something that I've ever encountered.
I remember once a young newlywed couple
recently graduated from Baylor University and they
came wanting to study the Bible, to explore our
church, and to talk some more about their
own faith and their own commitment to Christ,
and at one point in the conversation I just
couldn't help it.
I leaned over to them and said, didn't your mom
and Dad ever warn you about Campbellites?
Blank stares.
In fact, the wife looked at me and said, you
mean the soup?
Yeah, something like that.
The emphasis on salvation by grace, thank God,
has taken hold in our fellowship, but
we should be grateful for that, so grateful
that we stop reacting mindlessly to our past
and stop acting and start acting in the future
by our faith.
Baptism by immersion, celebration of the Lord's
Supper, plurality of elders, even a cappella
singing, these are not our problems and they're
certainly not barriers to evangelism, as some
would say, and we would do well to stop using
them to excuse our lack of faith and our lack
of faithfulness.
It's not that we don't have problems.
We do.
We have a lot of problems.
It's just these aren't our problems.
We need to celebrate the good things of our
tradition, especially our ongoing impulse
to be constantly examining ourselves as we
examine the scriptures, that we might know
the will of God, and we need to recover the
obvious meaning of Church of Christ before
we ever explore the distinctives.
We are a called-out people who serve Jesus.
Secondly, I think if we're this confident
people in God, we'd be more devoted to prayer.
I think that's a good point.
He's a very good priest, friend of mine.
And he went there and he noticed there was a
priest that was going down the paddocks
and appeared to be doing some ritual with the
horses, and he began to follow those
horses and realized they all came in first in
every race.
So he began to follow the men down, take note
of the horse that he was down there blessing,
and bet on the horse, and every time he won, at
the end of the day, he had a huge bit of winnings.
He decided, I'm going to bet everything in the
last race on that.
So he went down and he watched, and he noted
the paddock where the stall where the priest stopped.
He went upstairs and he put all his money on
that, and the horse not only didn't finish
first, it didn't even finish.
He was angry, and he went up to the man and he
said, I'm angry, I put all my faith in
your system.
And the priest just quietly looked at him and
said, you're not Catholic, are you?
He said, well, no, as a matter of fact, I'm a
lapsed Protestant.
He said, well, that's the problem with you
Protestants, you don't know the difference
between a blessing and the last rites.
I'm afraid that's the way we approach prayer sometimes.
I'm afraid that we go to God seeking
affirmation for what we've already planned
rather than
seeking guidance from God.
I'm not talking about the prayers that we go
seeking the blessings of God for our well
planned and well funded projects.
I'm talking about the prayer that may be
asking, should we be doing this in the first place?
I remember the time that a group of elders that
I was with in a crisis in the church
gathered together to try to sort out what are
we going to do to respond.
As we went around the room and each man tried
to give some response to that, he ended up
by saying, I have no idea what we're going to do.
And when it finally came around to me and
everyone had said, I have no answers, I said,
what a great opportunity, let's pray.
And we prayed that day in a way that I could
hear the inexpressible groans of those men
and I could feel the power of the spirit at
work in our prayers.
But even then, I wondered how long before our
self confidence would be restored and
we would cease to pray with such urgency and need.
Within a few weeks, our prayers were answered
and we never prayed that way again.
Finally we need to live out our witness like
disciples, not religious professionals.
This would mean among other things that our
leaders would themselves be those who are
led by the spirit of Christ.
I'm amazed at how many times elders are more
interested in the burning issues of the time
than really understanding and knowing Christ.
In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Henry Nowen
once wrote about these leaders who believe
that their most important responsibility is to
be up on the burning issues.
Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who
have well informed opinions about the
burning issues of their time.
Their leadership must be rooted in the
permanent intimate relationship with the
incarnate word
with Jesus.
And they need to find there the source for
their words, advice, and guidance.
Living with burning issues without being rooted
in a deep personal relationship with God easily
leads to divisiveness.
Do I need to give you an example?
If there is a burning issue in our churches, it
is the need for our hearts to be set aflame
by the power of Jesus' name.
And if leaders are to help us face the
challenges of living faithfully, they must be,
not as
an option, but as an absolute necessity rooted
in a relationship with God in Christ.
Our teachers would be constantly growing in the
grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, mediating
the Word of God to us as much and meditating on
that word as much as they are staying current
on some novel interpretation of scripture or
some spiritual technique.
Our ministers would be serving the Lord instead
of serving the church.
Paul makes that distinction in 2 Corinthians 4
when he says, we do not preach ourselves,
we preach Jesus Christ as Lord.
And then for Jesus' sake, we are your servants.
We ministers need to rediscover that.
I don't do ministry for the university church
in Austin.
I do ministry for Jesus' sake.
And that's what keeps me in ministry.
Now I know some youth minister is going to run
home to his next elders meeting and say,
I've been to the ACU lectures and I don't work
for you.
That's not my intent.
Intent, in fact, my intent is to say to that
youth minister or to any of the rest of us,
your responsibility doesn't decrease by
discovering that it increases.
For like my marriage and my faithfulness and
devotion to my wife whom I love dearly, there
are moments when that grows dry.
There are moments when my commitments may be shaky.
And what carries me through is my higher
devotion to Christ and the promises that I have made
in marriage.
The same thing is true in ministry.
And what will carry us through those moments of
disillusion and disappointment is when
I realize I don't work for you, I work for Christ.
We need to take a long look at ourselves.
We need to ask ourselves if we are really
willing to do the work of the kingdom in the
name of Jesus.
Leaders, you need to look into the mirror and
examine yourselves and ask, am I willing
to be led by the spirit of Christ daily?
And if not, why are you trying to lead his church?
Teachers, preachers, we need to look deep
inside ourselves and ask, do you know Jesus?
Several years ago, I heard Mike Cope talk about
the question that search committees
never ask.
And I'm glad to say some do now.
The one question they never ask preachers, and
that is, how's your faith?
Can you put a computer system together?
Can you run an office?
Can you do this?
Can you run a campaign?
Can you raise money?
We ask all those questions.
Nobody says, by the way, do you still believe
in Jesus?
Just thought we'd ask.
Do you know Jesus?
Are you growing in the grace and knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ?
And if you do, or if you don't, then why would
we care about anything else you know?
And we who minister the church need to be
asking ourselves, am I serving the church
or serving the Lord?
And if I'm not serving the Lord, then how can I
ever faithfully, in good times and bad,
serve the church?
In short, we need to recognize that our calling
is not simply to lead and to teach and to serve.
It is to lead and teach and serve in the name
of the Lord, and to recognize there is a world
of difference between the two.
And we can't turn our back on our progress.
I'm not asking you this morning to divest
yourself of all of your wealth, although if
you should have that inclination, I'm sure Dr.
Money would be happy to meet with you
after this lecture.
We can't pretend that we don't know what we know.
We can't pretend that we've not been elevated
to the status that we enjoy in this society.
But what we can do is recognize and put in
perspective and surrender those things to
the Lord, and that we can use all of those
gifts to His glory.
As we look forward to a new century, we would
do well to discover and rediscover the lessons
of the early church.
For that was a church that without any evidence
of privilege or power turned the world upside
down because they believed that the power of
God was demonstrated in their weakness
and their willingness to share in the
sufferings of Christ, even if that was embarrassment
and humiliation rather than any status that
they would enjoy in society.
They believed that the wisdom of God was
revealed in the folly of their preaching rather than
the level of their academic achievement.
And they trusted that the riches of God's grace
could be imparted to others if they
entrusted themselves to the one who, though he
was rich, yet for their sakes became poor.
We will never experience the growth that Randy
talked about last night.
We will never experience what the early church
did without all of those privileges, without
all of those preferences, until we surrender
ourselves to that same service and that same work.
And as Randy said last night, and let me
reiterate, and I believe it with all of my
heart, it
is not too late.
By the grace and the mercy and power of God, it
is not too late.