Purpose

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, June 19, 2011

Last week, Pastor Tim revealed one of my passions in life, which is collecting and restoring antique radios. Now there is a thing about passion. When you’re passionate about something, well, you tend to talk a lot about it. In fact, you kind of go on and on and on about the subject. In fact, I’m not positive about this because I haven’t been able to check but I suspect that if you come and see me in my office, as you’re heading down the hallway, one of the staff members will pull you aside and whisper in your ear, “Don’t ask about the radio. Really, trust me on this.” And it’s true. I’ll admit it. If you ask me about one of them, I will probably tell you more than you ever wanted or needed to know about a 1938 Zenith Compo, the 16”. . . No, see? It just doesn’t stop. That’s what passion is about.

That’s what the early church had. The early church had a passion for Jesus Christ. They had a passion for being His witnesses, and there was no stopping them. They would talk to anyone and to everyone, whether they would listen or they wouldn’t listen. They had a passion for Christ. Now imagine with me if you can take that kind of passion and if you can link it to a purpose, now you have an incredible combination.

You see, purpose is direction and focus to your passion. I’ll give you an example. Let me go back to my radios just for a minute. Honest, just for a minute. I don’t just like old radios. I don’t like to just collect old radios. No, no, no. My passion has a purpose to it. I like to restore them. In other words, when I get them, no matter what they look like, I want to bring them back so that they look as if they were on the showroom floor. I don’t want them to just sit there un-working. No, no, no. I want them to work. I want to hear big band sounds coming out of that big speaker once again. You see, that’s the passion, but now I have a purpose in mind and that focuses my energy and it can become all consuming. I have suffered through sparks flying, burnt fingers from soldering iron and frustrations because I couldn’t diagnose the problem correctly.

Let me give you one example. This past week, I put a radio on my bench. Whenever I get one, I can’t wait to get it on there and tear into it and figure out what’s wrong. So on Tuesday night, I dug into it. I had limited success. It was working. It was playing, kinda. It had real low volume to it. I wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. “I will leave it alone for a week,” I told myself. So I turned off all the lights. I left my shop. Thursday, I come home. I have an evening at home. “I think I’m going to watch a movie tonight.” That’s because Michelle and the girls were going to watch some ridiculous show upstairs, So You Think You Can Dance. Yeah, like I’m going to watch that. No. So I rented the movie, went downstairs, movie in hand, walked right past the T.V., set the movie down, into my shop. You see, I’d been thinking about this thing since Tuesday and there were just a couple of voltages that I wanted to check and I was pretty sure I had a theory what was wrong. “I would just spend a couple of minutes in there, that’s all.”

Two hours later, I appeared upstairs triumphant, announcing to the family, “I fixed it.” Now, one, they don’t care and, two, Madison looked at me and says, “I thought you were going to watch a movie.” That passion linked with purpose, it’s an incredible combination.

The early church had it. We need to recapture it. The early church had a passion, but they also had a purpose given to them. The purpose was given to them by Jesus Himself. He said, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in my name.” Now those early followers, they had a passion in their hearts because they were convinced beyond all doubt, they were convicted to their very soul that Jesus was the Son of God, that He was the long-awaited Messiah and they knew to their core that salvation was found only in Him.

But now Jesus gives them direction. He gives them purpose. He focuses them. He says, “Forgive them. Repentance will be preached in my name.” They have their marching order. That purpose brought great meaning to their lives. No longer were they just fishermen or carpenters or tax collectors. They were instruments of God to make an eternal difference in people’s lives. They saw themselves as Christ’s ambassadors, to be His hands, His feet and His mouth as He reached out into the world. They heard Him say, “You’ll be my witnesses.” They listened when He said, “I want you to go and make disciples.” That purpose brought great meaning to their lives. They now had a holy passion with a holy purpose. And now they had a higher calling.

How else can you explain this? They’re arrested for the second time. They’re standing before the Sanhedrin. They want to kill them. They dodge the bullet one more time and then we sort of pass by, “So they had them flogged.” Yeah. That means it’s 39 lashes to their backs, 39 times they were hit with the whip and, I don’t want to be too graphic, that ripped flesh off of them. This is no easy thing they endured. Thirty-nine of them, they had been flogged and how do they react? It says, “So the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing.” Say what? Rejoicing, because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. Unless you have a higher calling, you can’t rejoice over being flogged. Unless you know that you’re on a mission from God, you can’t rejoice after being flogged. But you see, they had a deeper meaning to their lives. They had a higher calling for their lives. Their passion was linked with a purpose of preaching repentance and forgiveness in Jesus’ name. That brought deep meaning to their lives.

It also gave them great courage. Think with me for a moment the courage of these men. They’re standing before the Sanhedrin for the second time. This is the same group of people, along with the high priests, that managed to convince Pontius Pilate to have Jesus crucified. That is no easy task, to convince a Roman governor to crucify one of their own but they did. They convinced him to crucify Jesus. This is the same group of people and now they’re standing in front of them for the second time and the high priest is like the top dog in their religious circle. You don’t get any higher than that. He looks them eyeball to eyeball and says, “Boys, what are you doing? I told you last time to stop this. You disobeyed me. You went out there. You’re still talking about this guy. I’m telling you right here and right now cease and desist talking about this guy named Jesus.” And Peter goes toe to toe with him and says, “Yeah, right, um, we have to follow God, not you.” He just told the high priest that he’s following God and not him. “We have to follow God.” Now is that courage? That’s incredible courage. That’s because they were on a mission. They had a purpose. Their passion had been funneled and focused. There was going to be no stopping them. You see, it’s that passion linked with purpose, that’s an incredible combination.

And it did give them focus. If you think about the early church. They had a single-minded tenacity about them. They would stop at nothing to preach the gospel. So they get flogged, they’re rejoicing and then it says, “Day after day, in the temple court and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.” Day after day and then they went house to house and it says never stopping, proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ. They’re focused on what they’re supposed to do and nothing will stop them from fulfilling their mission, fulfilling their purpose of proclaiming forgiveness and repentance in Jesus’ name. They had passion linked with purpose, and it was an incredible combination.

The early church got it. We need to recapture it. Gloria Dei, we need to recapture it. We need to recapture that passion and that purpose. We need to have a burning inside of us. Ask yourself, “Do you know and believe to your very core that Jesus is the Son of God? Are you convicted to your very soul that He lived and He died for you? Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when He bled and died on the cross, He made payment for your sin and He set you free from guilt? Do you know absolutely sure that when you die, because of Jesus, you’ll spend an eternity in heaven?” If that is in your soul, you have a holy passion. You can’t contain news like that.

And if that holy passion is burning inside of you, then link that up with a purpose, the purpose that we have as a body of believers, that we have as Gloria Dei, which is to bring Jesus Christ to people for the first time and for a lifetime. That’s our mission. That’s what God has called us to do. That is, we’re going to bring the good news of Jesus to people for the first time, that we could be His instruments, that His Holy Spirit could work through us to capture hearts and to bring them to faith or reignite a faith that has gone stagnant.

But we won’t stop there. We will be God’s tools to equip people, to have a lifelong journey with Christ, to continue to grow and mature in their faith and their relationship with Jesus. That’s what it means to bring Jesus to people for the first time and for a lifetime. That is our purpose. That is our mission. And that brings meaning to our congregation. It brings deep meaning. That means we have a holy passion and a holy purpose and we have a higher calling. We’re not a club. We’re not just some organization. We get together once a week. We sing some happy songs and then we go home? Nothing more than that?

God has given us His purpose. He’s given us His mission to bring the news of His Son to people for the first time and a lifetime. It means that you and I have been called upon to be the hands and the feet and the mouth of Jesus. It means that we have the privilege of making an eternal difference in people’s lives.

Gloria Dei, every time we witness a baptism, we are on mission. Every time our young people gather up here and on confirmation Sunday, profess their faith in Jesus, we are on mission. Every time we celebrate prayers being answered, every time that broken lives are restored, every time that hope is given, we are on mission. Every time that we can gather together at the loss of a loved one and through our tears and through our grief, we can have a sense of joy and celebration because we know that through Jesus, they are in heaven. We are on mission.

We have a higher calling. There’s a deeper meaning to us. That’s what happens when you have passion and purpose. That should give us incredible courage, courage to know that what we’re about is of God. It is not of human origin. As Gamaliel told the early church, if it’s of human origin, it will come to nothing. What we are about is not of human origin. It is of divine origin. I am convinced to my core that God has called upon this place, Gloria Dei, to bring the news of His Son to people, to be the instrument so He can capture their hearts and call them to faith, to be His tools that we could equip them for a lifelong journey with Jesus.

And that should give us incredible courage that what we’re about is God’s work. It’s that kind of courage that led people in the 1960’s to plant this place and to say that there should be a congregation here. It’s that kind of courage that throughout the decades and throughout the years, this congregation has stepped out in faith, that they have stretched themselves, that they’ve gone the next effort. Every time we’ve expanded, every time we’ve looked to expand the kingdom of God and to reach out into our community and to our friends and to our family, it means we were on mission and that gave us courage. It gave us courage to step out. We have to recapture that, to have the kind of tenacity about us, to have that kind of boldness about us because God has given us that mission and it should focus us, an unwavering focus in what we’re supposed to do.

Every time we gather, every program we have, every activity we’re involved in, does it either help people come to know Jesus or help them grow in Jesus? It’s as simple as that. It’s that focus and that kind of focus is power. When you focus like that, you have power. For example, I want you to think of the sun. I know, you have to get in your memory banks. You haven’t seen it for awhile but think of the sun. Remember back what it looked like? Okay, now think of the sun as it cascades over your lawn and it brings warmth and light to your entire lawn. Now pull out a magnifying glass and focus those rays on just one blade. What’s going to happen? It’s going to ignite because you focused.

Gloria Dei, if we can focus, we will ignite. We will have a holy fire inside of us and it will spread to the community around us. When we’re on mission and we’re fulfilling our purpose and we’re focused on that, we will ignite a holy fire here within us and for those around us. It’s passion linked with purpose. That’s an incredible combination. Amen.