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Today is Christ the King Sunday. Christ the King—our purpose in gathering here is to worship King Jesus. Our purpose every time we gather here is to worship King Jesus. All around the world people are gathering in churches today to worship King Jesus. But how well do we really know this Jesus that we worship? And what does it mean to worship Him?

For the third time LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries have examined what evangelicals believe. An evangelical is defined as someone who believes that the Bible is the highest authority, evangelism, or sharing the gospel, is very important, that sin can only be removed by Jesus’ death, and that salvation comes only through trusting Jesus as Savior.

Christianity Today in its December issue shares some of the results, pointing to our favorite heresies. Heresy, of course, is a belief contrary to established church doctrine. And the greatest heresy in the church today, according to this study, is the belief by 73% that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” If you add in those who somewhat agreed or weren’t sure, more than 80% of evangelical Christians think that Jesus is a created being.

Of course Jesus is not a created being—Jesus is the Creator. God the Father didn’t decide at some point to create Jesus. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have all existed together for all eternity—without beginning and without end. Perhaps it’s because this mystery is so profound that we have so much trouble understanding, or even believing it.

In light of the fact that so many of us apparently don’t understand that Jesus Christ is and always has been King of the universe, perhaps it’s not surprising that nearly half of us either believe or aren’t sure whether worshiping alone or with one’s family is a way to replace church. Or that more than half believe that the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, from the very first page of Scripture, we find a God in community—a perfect community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a community that has been coexisting in perfect relationship forever. With no beginning and no end. And we are created in the image of God—God created man and then He created woman, a helper for him. And God’s instructions to the couple were, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). “Go and grow the community.”

The Son and the Spirit were with the Father at creation—they have been with Him always. Neither is either a created being or simply a force.

In the same survey, about a third of evangelicals either believe or aren’t certain whether modern science disproves the Bible. So if you haven’t seen this news story, I’d like to tell you that over the past few days it’s been reported that scientists in the U.S. and Switzerland, working together, have discovered through their study of DNA that all human beings living today are descended from a single set of parents. Further, they discovered that the same is true for at least 90% of animals living today. They believe that this happened about 100,000 years ago.

Their theory is that life existed long before that—because otherwise they can’t hang onto their idea that the earth is billions, or at least millions, of years old nor can they hold onto the whole idea of evolution. They think that some catastrophic event wiped out all life on earth and then it began again—in some kind of sudden big bang kind of way, with all life appearing at once.

For those of you who doubt—could it be that the Bible really is true? All of it—including the first chapters of Genesis?

Getting back to Christ the King—we’re created in God’s image and so created to live in community. 2000 years ago, God sent His only Son to live among us. And one of the reasons Jesus came was to form a new community—to form a new family. To form a body, a people—a people that we know as the church.

God Almighty, Creator of the universe and all that is in it—including you and me—has invited us into His family. Because He loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. Wants to fellowship with us. He wants His family to gather at His house to worship Him, to spend time with Him. He’s given us the family history and He wants us to get to know Him—to love Him and to love all our brothers and sisters in this amazing family.

This is what we find in the 10^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus has gathered a group of men to be with Him—a group of men that we know by name. A group of men to be the beginning of His new family. Later, in Chapter 12, when Jesus’ mother and brothers come and want to speak to Jesus, Matthew tells us what happened: “And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, Jesus said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’” (Matthew 12:49-50). We find these exact words repeated in the gospels of Mark and Luke as well.

And at the end of all four gospels, when Jesus and His disciples gather in the upper room to share the Passover meal, we see this even more clearly. Because the Passover has been from the very beginning, according to the instructions given by God, a family event. An event celebrated “according to their father’ houses” (Exodus 12:3). Jesus has called the Twelve away from their families to celebrate Passover with Him—a new family has been created.

And as at the beginning of creation, this new family is to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” In this morning’s gospel passage, we find Jesus calling His new family to join the family business—the business of proclaiming the kingdom of God—or the kingdom of heaven, as Matthew calls it. Jesus is giving instructions and sending the Twelve out—sending them to invite others to join the family. “To be fruitful and multiply.”

We have become so comfortable in our faith here in this country that we’ve forgotten how important it is to be a part of this family. We’ve forgotten what it is to not be a part of it.

A few weeks ago, when Denny and I spent a few days on the North Shore of Lake Superior, we visited Gooseberry State Park. This is the most visited state park in Minnesota and it’s beautiful and wild and can be dangerous. There’s a wonderful visitor’s center where there are lots of great exhibits that teach visitors about the park. There’s a small theater where films are shown explaining the park and how it came to be.

The Gooseberry River runs through the park, emptying into Lake Superior. And there are five waterfalls on the river. The last is the largest and it is truly magnificent, especially in years like this one, where the summer has been rainy. There are trails going to all five falls, but as you hike back to the fifth fall, the terrain becomes increasingly difficult. While the first fall is always crowded with visitors, the crowd rapidly decreases as you make your way back to the other falls.

The park is large and some trails run dangerously close to drop-offs. There are many signs reminding parents to watch children closely. At the same time, the park is continually adding wooden boardwalks, railings, and steps to what once were much more primitive trails. Making it safer and more easily accessible.

Kind of like the church in this country. If you become a Christian is China or Pakistan or Iran or Nigeria or in many other countries, you know that there’s a very good chance that by choosing to commit your life to King Jesus, you’ll be disowned by brothers and sisters and parents. If your family is Muslim, they’ll not only disown you—they might actually try to kill you. In all these countries, your church family is of vital importance because you have lost the family you grew up in.

This is what happened to Jesus—His family thought He had lost His mind. They came and wanted to take Him home. He was an embarrassment to them. And so He walked away from them—because for King Jesus, He was committed to His Father in heaven.

We can come to church when it’s convenient and we can enjoy a lot of the blessings of being part of God’s family. But when all we do is come when it works out for us, come when we don’t have a family dinner to prepare for or a ball game to attend or relatives visiting—when almost anything comes ahead of worshiping King Jesus together with our brothers and sisters in the faith, then perhaps we’re fooling ourselves. Perhaps we’re no really worshiping Him.

Perhaps we’re like those people who go to Gooseberry State Park and sit in the visitor’s center looking at exhibits and watching movies about the park. They don’t want to exert themselves by actually going out and walking on the trails to enjoy the beauty of God’s magnificent creation. They don’t want to be challenged by the rocky terrain, by the sometimes steep climb. They go away thinking that they’ve experienced the park, but really all they experienced was a pale imitation.

Jesus wanted His followers to understand right from the beginning that there was more to being a part of His family than just watching Him do miracles. He wanted them to understand that the family business is saving souls. Not the world—just souls.

A few weeks ago I told you about a lighthouse. Today I want to tell you a parable ….

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a humble little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat and not very many members, but they were devoted to their mission. They kept a constant watch over the sea and, with no thought to their own safety, they went out day or night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, and its reputation spread. Some of those who were saved, as well as others from the surrounding area, wanted to become part of the station. They wanted to donate their time and money and effort to support the life saving work. New boats were purchased and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the new members were unhappy that the building was so small and poorly equipped. They thought that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea.

So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in a new and bigger building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they redecorated it beautifully and furnished it as a sort of club.

Fewer of the members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work.

They still talked a lot about lifesaving but most were too busy or lacked the necessary commitment to actually take part in the lifesaving activities.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast and the hired crews brought in boat loads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people.

They were dirty and sick; some of them had colored skin; some of them spoke a foreign language—and the beautiful new building was considerably messed up. So the property committee had a separate shower house built where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a division among the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities, saying they were too unpleasant and disrupted the normal life pattern of  the club.

But some members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. They were, however, finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in these waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. They evolved into a club and yet another lifesaving station was founded.

If you visit that seacoast today, you’ll find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are still frequent in those waters, only now most of the people drown.

This is a picture of the American church. When new churches are planted, everyone is excited about bringing others into the family. They work hard at it. But eventually we become complacent; our house gets more comfortable and we’re comfortable with the people in it. We’re not really even certain that we want those people out there to join us—they might not want to do things the way we want to do them. They might want us to do things for them.

We’ve become more about being a comfortable club than about being a lifesaving station.

But the question then is: are we really here to worship King Jesus? Are we really even a part of His family? Or are we fooling ourselves into believing that we are? Because Jesus said,  “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Not: “Whoever accepts my invitation to join the family.” Not “whoever shows up when it’s convenient.” Not “whoever’s been baptized as a baby.”

But “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus has great expectations. He expects us to be about the family business of proclaiming the kingdom of heaven. He doesn’t promise that it will be easy. In fact He says that “you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Some of those who might hate us, He says, are even brothers and parents. But if we recognize Jesus as our King, He says we must continue His work.

A few weeks ago, I told you about Split Rock lighthouse, which was built on a rock high above Lake Superior north of Duluth. Built because on November 28, 1905, a horrific storm wrecked 29 ships and took the lives of more than 60 sailors. As a result, the U.S. Lighthouse Service sent an assistant lighthouse engineer named Ralph Russell Tinkham to determine the best location and then to design and build the lighthouse.

Tinkham knew immediately that the top of Split Rock, which rose 130 feet above the lake was the place where the lighthouse needed to be. But there were a lot of problems to overcome, the first of which was that the location was accessible only by boat. There was no roads and no way at that time even to build roads to Split Rock. If you’ve ever driven Highway 61 along the North Shore, you can understand why. Some sections of the highway run between high walls of rock; other sections are tunnels, literally blasted right through the rock.

So the first problem with building this lighthouse was how to get supplies and building materials to the site. A steam powered hoist and derrick system was created to haul goods up the rock, but the frequent high winds and waves often made it impossible to use. So in 1916, an elevated railway was constructed. It was the only way for both supplies and people to go to and from the lighthouse until the highway was completed in 1924.

The lighthouse was commissioned in 1905, but took until 1910 to complete. Tinkham could have looked at the site and decided that, although it was clearly the best possible place for the light, that the problems were too overwhelming—he might have given up on Split Rock and just moved on to a less desirable location. But he didn’t. Tinkham knew that more lives would be saved if the light was placed at the top of Split Rock—and so he persevered.

Ralph Russell Tinkham didn’t know it then, but his willingness to do whatever it took to build the best possible lighthouse in the best possible location would catapult him to the position of chief engineer in the entire U. S. Lighthouse Service.

Like our farmers bringing in the harvest, Tinkham was committed to getting the job done. Not a single life was lost along the North Shore of Lake Superior following the completion of Split Rock Lighthouse.

We, unlike farmers and lighthouse builders, have the most important call of all—to save lost souls.

But when the labor gets hard, we often turn away. We decide to stay safely inside our lifesaving station. Like people in the visitors center at Gooseberry State Park, we think that we can experience what it is to truly live for King Jesus without ever leaving the house.

But brothers and sisters in Christ, King Jesus has great expectations. He wants His family to increase and multiply. He knows that the only way that will happen is if you and I are willing to go out into the world to share the good news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. To share it with lost people. And then to invite them into the safety of our lifesaving station to be disciples, to grow in their knowledge of Jesus Christ. To get to know Him enough to truly love Him and long to serve Him.

To love Him more than we love ourselves or our reputations. More than we love our own families. More than we love all the idols that fill our own homes.

Being a part of the family of King Jesus was never intended to be comfortable or easy—but the rewards are beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

Let us pray.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

Today is harvest Sunday. We’re here to thank and praise God for the harvest He has provided for our farmers. And one of the things that continually amazes me about God is how He uses the ordinary things of this world to teach us important lessons.

It’s been a long and challenging harvest season. But it appears that most of the crops are out of the field—and any that are still out there will eventually be harvested. Because farmers don’t give up when conditions aren’t good. You’ve invested a lot of time and money in those fields and you do whatever you have to do to bring in the harvest.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

It seems that we in the church are much less committed when it comes to harvesting lost souls.

Or maybe it’s not so much that we’re less committed as it is that we just don’t understand how to go about it. We read in the book of Acts and throughout the New Testament how lives were being changed continually as Jesus’ disciples and others went about preaching the gospel. Peter preaches one sermon on Pentecost and three thousand souls were added to their number. The church that has 120 members in the morning had 3000 more by the end of the day.

It sounds so easy—and we wonder why it’s not easy for us. We wonder why the church in this country today, and even our church right here, so often seems to be ineffective. We have the same Holy Spirit that Peter had—why aren’t we continually seeing lives be changed around us?

When we compare our efforts in the church to the efforts of our farmers, I think we begin to see the problem. Farmers know exactly what they need to do to arrive at the point of harvest—they know that there will be no harvest without planting. They know that harvest is affected by how well the ground is prepared before planting. They know that while they can control a lot of things, the biggest thing, the weather, is completely beyond their control. So they control the things that they can control and leave the rest up to God.

They also know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to manage the things they can control. They can decide whether to plant corn or soybeans in a given field, but they know that to mix a bunch of corn and soybean seeds together and then plant them all in the same field would probably not work out very well.

I think it would be hard to be a farmer and not recognize just how much they are not in control.

The church is the Body of Christ, and God is just as much in control here as He is in the business of farming. But I think we often forget that—we think we’re in control. We think that as long as we’re doing things that seem good to us, we can expect God to bless our efforts.

We’re running our churches a lot more according to the theology of Frank Sinatra than we are according to God’s Word—according to the specific instructions given by Jesus. We want to do it our way. The culture we live in tells us that we should do it our way.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

The disciples understood two important things that we forget—or maybe just ignore. The first is that timing matters, and that God is in charge of timing. And the second has to do with spiritual gifts. God gives us gifting for the job that He calls us to do—and those jobs are specific.

It’s a lot more important for us to understand the job that we’re called to than it is to be sure we know what our spiritual gifts are. Because whatever job God’s called us to is the job that He’s gifted us for.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

God works according to His timing—our ability to plan ahead is really quite limited. God, however, can see down the centuries. The whole thing about farming, for example, was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning of Creation. And He didn’t just plan the whole process of growing and harvesting crops so that we would have food to eat—He planned the whole process of growing and harvesting crops so that we could learn more about God. So that Jesus could use farming as an illustration. So that the church could better understand the importance of timing.

Think about your life—and about how God has been at work in you. I can look back and see how God was speaking into my life from childhood, how He was preparing me long before I ever even recognized that He was at work in me. He had a specific plan for me.

I had specific plans for me, too—somehow God managed to change them all. During the years that I was raising my children, He had me teaching Sunday School, serving in various leadership positions in the church, leading Vacation Bible School. And when sexuality and then Called to Common Mission became issues in the church, He had me searching Scripture to discover what God had to say about these things.

At the second or third LCMC Annual Gathering, Denny and I went to a breakout session that talked about a new way to educate pastors and about a new seminary that was putting this into practice, a seminary called The Master’s Institute. We went because we knew the presenter, and when we left I remember saying to Denny, “That was kind of a waste of time. Somebody should have told me that it was just about training pastors.”

A year or two later when God suddenly called me to be a pastor, I was telling Him all the reasons I could never do that: “Do you see a seminary anywhere around here, Lord?” “I can’t move somewhere for three years to go to school.” In the midst of all this, I got a newsletter in the mail from The Master’s Institute—and God said, “This is where you will go.”

Pam, and all of you who’ve worked for the Post Office: I wonder if you’ve ever stopped to think that sometimes that mail you’re delivering includes messages from God.

 Then when my argument was that even if I didn’t have to move, even if I only had to be away two nights a week, I’d still need a place to stay, God pointed out that my newly married daughter Kristine and her husband Mark were now living five minutes away from the seminary—I could stay with them.

All of these different pieces that just seemed to fall into place were things that God had been arranging for years. Not me—I had no idea that any of it was going to happen. God had been arranging my seminary housing when he led Mark to buy a house in St. Paul before he ever knew he was going to marry my daughter. He’d been arranging it when he brought Mark to graduate school at the University of Minnesota so he could meet my daughter. He arranged for all this to happen as soon as my youngest daughter was happily beginning her second year of college in a new school—the school where almost immediately God introduced her to the young man who would become her future husband.

This is the way God works. He has a plan, He has the timing—all we need to do is listen and obey. When we look at the effectiveness of the early church, we see that the church listened. Listened and obeyed.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

In our gospel reading, Jesus calls twelve men to be His disciples. But His mission really began when He called His first disciples in 4:19—the very first act in His public ministry. Unlike the other gospels, Matthew doesn’t just say, “Follow me” He says, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” He tells them why He wants them to follow Him. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gives the Great Commission to His disciples—saying, essentially, “Now go and be fishers of men.”

And here in the middle of his gospel, Matthew reminds us that fishing for men, making disciples, is our task, too. It’s the task of every single member of the body of Christ.

Jesus tells us that His mission involves teaching the word, healing and caring for social needs and exhibiting His power. He says we should expect God to demonstrate His power among us. We should make teaching a priority. We should expect healings from time to time. And we should claim the power of Jesus over all the dark forces of the demonic.

We should expect these things to happen when we listen to Him and do what He tells us to do—even when it makes no sense. He has a plan for each one of us and His plan always involves His timing.

So … do we? Are we continually expecting God to show up and direct us?

In the very next verse in chapter 10 of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus sends the twelve out, telling them to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans.”  Why did He do this? it wasn’t that He didn’t care about the Gentiles and the Samaritans. He did—Jesus cares about everybody. But it was not the right time. Jesus had a very specific purpose in sending out the twelve. His purpose was not only about sharing the kingdom of God with others—it was also about what they would learn in the process. He gives detailed instructions, which we’ll talk more about in coming weeks.

We want to go out and make disciples—but we often go with only some kind of vague purpose. We think that it doesn’t really matter where we go or how we go—as long as we go.

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

We often think that as long as we’re doing something, we’re good. This is not at all what Scripture teaches. Later, in the book of Acts, we find Peter preaching the gospel to a centurion named Cornelius. He ends up baptizing not only Cornelius, but the whole household of Cornelius. But he’s there because he’s received a vision from God—a vision that he doesn’t understand until men show up to ask him to come to Cornelius. Cornelius, who has also received a vision from “an angel of God” telling him to send for Peter, telling him exactly where he’ll find Peter.

Peter goes because he knows that this is what God wants him to do at that particular time. The time is right and he’s where God wants him to be—and so the body grows.

In our reading from chapter 13 of the book of Acts, the church in Antioch had four “prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul” (Acts 13:1). “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnaba and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:2-3).

They don’t sit around saying, “Let’s see … where would we like to go? And who should we send?”

If we had to decide, we might send Manaen, who was a lifelong friend of King Herod, thinking that he would have more influence. But after “worshiping the Lord and fasting,” the church hears the Holy Spirit tell them that it’s Barnabas and Saul who are to go. They go where God sends them—to the island of Cyprus, where there’s a magician named Bar-Jesus, who wants to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Paul, however, recognized the demon in the man and cast it out.

He did what Jesus told the Twelve to do: “Heal every disease and affliction. Cast out demons.”

And when they get to the island of Cyprus, “they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.” But then they encounter a Jewish false prophet, a magician named Bar-Jesus. Paul proclaimed that the hand of the Lord would blind the man—and it did.

And not only did Jews believe, but also the proconsul (governor)—the head of the local government believed.

“Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction” (Matthew 9:35). He demonstrated what He wanted His followers to do—and that’s what Paul did. He preached the gospel of the kingdom and he healed Bar-Jesus, casting out the demon that was afflicting him.

Later, in Acts 16, we find that Paul was “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” But then Paul received a vision, in which he heard a Macedonian man say, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:6-9).

Paul went and met Lydia, who became a believer and then he and Silas converted the Philippian jailer and his entire family.

Bringing people into the kingdom can be easy when we let God lead us. But all too often, we decide what we think is a good thing—we decide by congregational or council vote. Without listening to God. And then we work and work and work and good results are either nonexistent or they’re very small.

When we have a big God—a God who we know from Scripture wants us to go out and make disciples, wants us to grow His kingdom.

Farmers, that’s not how you grow your crops. You don’t just decide on a date to plant and a date to harvest and then go ahead regardless of weather conditions. If you decide to plant on April 20, and we get a foot of snow on April 19, you don’t just say, “Well, today’s the day.”

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to get a lot more serious about prayer. We need to get a lot more serious about listen to God. As the Nominating Committee begins to prepare a new slate of officers, as we plan how to move forward with our daycare, as we think about how potential mission trips and benevolence support, as we do all the things that we do here—how might we be more effective if we really operated as if God is in charge. And not us. If we really took the time to listen, if we stopped putting up all kinds of qualifiers—anything except that, Lord. No, not that either.

We need to be praying individually about what God wants us to do—because His plan for you isn’t just that you do something. His plan is very specific.

Last week, as you know, things were really busy around here. I had a wedding and two funerals and I was really tired. I spoke to God and said, “Can’t you find somebody else to do some of this, Lord? It’s not like I wouldn’t do something—I could go downstairs and help in the kitchen if you could just call somebody else to write some of these sermons, to do some of this work.”

Have you ever heard God laugh?

He said, “No. This is what I’ve called you to do.”

If God’s plan for me is specific—don’t you think that His plan for you is specific, too? “Just do something” has never been God’s plan for any of us.

God doesn’t care if your husband or your wife doesn’t like the plan He has for you. He doesn’t care if it interferes with your plans for yourself. He doesn’t care if His plan will cause you to miss out on things that seem really important to you.

He cares about His relationship with you—He cares about growing your faith, He cares about growing your love for others. He cares about those lost souls that He has prepared to hear you proclaim the kingdom of God.

God has a plan for this congregation—and He’s given us everything we need to carry out that plan. The people, the resources—everything. When are we going to be willing to set aside our plans and begin to listen to His? When are we going to set aside our timetables and be willing to wait for God? When are we going to be willing to allow the Holy Spirit to really be at work in our lives and in our church?

When?

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful—but the laborers are few.”