Change
- Jake Chambers
- Jul 11, 2010
- Series: SDSU
Acts 20:22-24 Changing for the Ephesians. What has changed? Two types of change: individual and communal.
What’s changed for you this year? The gospel changes everything. Grown to maturity. For how many of us was puberty transforming for us? Desires changed, looks changed, voices change. Christian puberty is the same way. Matthew 12:34. Our voice changes, our desires change, looks change. This is the same for us.
Acts? What were some changes the church experiences in Acts? The gift of the Holy Spirit, bringing the gospel to Gentiles, local church plants raising up elders and sending elders, all things in common, priorities change.
Things change and you will change. But will you be daily changed in the image of Christ for the sake of the gospel to have an eternal impact on your family, community, city and world or will you change for the sake of your self? Everything will change around you. Will you change humbly and patiently with God’s people to reach the culture for the sake of the world or will you change in isolation and be shaped by the world?
Paul, a model of change. He leaves the church of Ephesus. Your job, education, savings, lifestyle - all should constantly be changing by the gospel in order to follow the priorities that move Paul to leave Ephesus. What are you primarily influenced and changed by? TV, coworkers, God’s people, the word?
Matthew 16:21-23 Who in your life encourages gospel change and who in your life fights it? Things are going to change drastically for Jesus for the sake of the gospel and the one who nay says against Jesus’ calling is Peter and Jesus calls him Satan! Satan is always preaching, and he may preach change, but he NEVER preaches change for the sake of the gospel. Are you changing to stay comfortable and to get security from other things or for the sake of the gospel! This verse is extreme - we need to talk about this.
Here is the question. Will our change be motivated by the gospel, led by the Holy Spirit for the sake of the gospel? Will we, like Paul, not count our life of any value or precious to our self for the sake of the gospel or will our change be for our own comfort and counting of our life as valuable and precious to our self? We will all change our minds, we are being renewed and transformed daily. We are being preached to. Whose sermon will we listen to? Satan’s, the worlds, ours, or Gods? Will we change to stay comfortable, chase worldly security or will our life change come out of considering our life nothing and Christ as everything! To live is Christ, to die is gain. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose" – Jim Elliot Shadow of the Almighty.
Do you hate change? Why? More than likely it is that you do not trust that God is great that we don’t have to be in control. We don’t have to be the ones trying to keep everything from changing.
I like to play a game at the beach with sandcastles. I am always entertained by this battle with the tide but some of us are trying to do this with God and it isn’t out of fun but frustration and it is hopeless. But God is great, so it is great that he is in control. He is great like the waves and we have no power to control the change he brings into our lives, but would be better resting in it.
Are you trying to force change? Many of us find ourselves in repetitive habitual sin and we want to stop sinning and we want to do it ourselves. And we believe we can. Or we can make others stop sinning. But we can’t. And we get so frustrated by it. We can’t because we don’t have power over sin. We don’t have power over our sin or others sin. But guess what, we worship the one who does. Jesus lived a life of no sin. He conquered sin and he conquered the penalty of sin – Death. We need to stop trying to change ourselves and others and instead trust the one with the power to change us. Trust in the work he did on our behalf to defeat sin. And we need to point others to trust in his work too.
If you are obsessed with changing others without pointing them to the gospel, all you are really trying to do is manipulate and take control. And you need to rest in the fact that God is great, so we don’t have to be in control. This includes control of others' lives.
Some of us are addicted to change, but it is surface change in order to avoid heart change. You get to know God’s people just well enough, but as soon as they get close enough to help gospel change be made in your life, you run. And you use the excuse that you just like change.
Communal change: Movement, organization, Institution, Museum.
Kaleo is a movement. We are working to become an organized movement. We must become all things to all people so we might win some. This means methodology changes to reach the people we are around. Meaning, if tracts all of the sudden were the way people would respond to the gospel (which they were at one) time we would embrace that and tract bomb our whole city. But if tracts are offensive and pews are offensive we cannot let ANYTHING besides the gospel offend. Not our tastes, traditions but only the gospel should offend. Now, we are offensive people, so we will offend with our personalities, hobbies, opinions etc. but it is our goal to do everything we can be “in the world” but not “of the world.” To change for the sake of change but change for the sake of the gospel.
End of an era. What should a church body filled with believers constantly changing, transforming and being renewed by the sake of the gospel look like? See the church is a body, it is a family. Our bodies change, our families grow and change. Will some of our houses, lifestyles and time change if we have kids? What if we as a church have spiritual babies? Everything changes. The church is going to radically change. Families change and send out adults to leave their parents and become one flesh and start new families. The church’s goal is the same - equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Spiritual babies grow up, become spiritual men and women, and they leave to start and spread more gospel work. 5 years from now – new DNA’s, MCs, hosts, church plants. The family grows and sends. Buildings change, life changes, style changes but the fact that we are a family doesn’t change.
What doesn’t change?
1. God and the gospel. See some of us will die for secondary things that will change. Like MCs replicating. We will fight, lose sleep and be frustrated over it. But it is natural growth. But the gospel never changes. God and his character never change. If you hate change, well then you should love God! He doesn’t change. If you love change you should love God because loving him changes everything!
2. The gospel doesn’t change. Galatians 1:8-9. Paul is so insistent that the gospel doesn’t change that he says even if a glowing angel tries to change it, don’t listen. God is unchanging and his good news changes us though Jesus is unchanging. The unchanging promise that it is not us that have to change ourselves but it is belief in God and his gospel to change us. God changes us. God builds his church. It is not our responsibility to change us or save ourselves or make us like Jesus. Jesus the unchanging one changes us to be like him. This is good news. Rest in your unchanging God. You see, God always keeps his promises so if he has always kept his promises and his character is unchanging then he won’t all of the sudden not keep his promises.
3. The church’s gospel identity and gospel dependency never changes. We are dependent on who God is and what he has done. The gospel. We are a one trick pony dependent on Jesus and his work for all of eternity. If we become dependent on a cause, mission trip, pastor, program, building or anything else then we cease to be the church because the church is God’s people that he has formed by his gospel. It is a people united in its unchanging dependency on Him. And He forms our identity by the gospel, and we the church must remind each other of this identity and dependency constantly.
For all of us to live out the life we are called to live out, to be who we are in Christ, to be conformed by his will, it will take drastic lifestyle change. It will take transformation. But many of us work so hard to change our hearts and we cannot. It is the power of God that changes us. The gospel. We don’t have to do all the work to change ourselves, we can trust the unchanging work of Jesus.
Ephesians 4,5,6 will drastically change our life.
A world of change. Revelations 21:1-7 … Brady, pink bottle-nosed dolphins, oil spill. We can try with all our might to create that world but on our own it will never happen since we are the one who made this mess. But we can trust Jesus to make this world because he rose from the grave. He rose from the grave and inaugurated in a whole new life. And he sent his Spirit to his people, the church, to transform everything and live this new life for his glory. And now we get to be a part of this work. We get to point others to the power of the gospel for the glory of Jesus, the world’s good and our joy.
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