The Real Lord's Prayer, Part 3

Tom Shrader expounds on Jesus' prayer in John 17, focusing on verses 15 and 18, where Christ sends His disciples into the world just as the Father sent Him. Drawing on John Stott's 'Christian Mission in the Modern World' and other sources, Shrader challenges believers to resist the instincts to cocoon, feel superior, or give up, and instead to live incarnationally among their neighbors, coworkers, and communities. The teaching argues that mission is not an event or individual effort but a lifelong, collaborative engagement with a spiritually needy world, modeled after Christ's own incarnational presence among people.

“Jesus is not calling us to come out for an event, and then rush back in. He's saying, no, no, you're in here for the long haul. You're in here till you die. You're engaged with the culture till you die.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: John: The Essence of Life (2007)

Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 46 min

Themes: missions, incarnation, evangelism, community, sending, neighbors, courage, purpose, feeling isolated from the world, struggling to engage unbelievers, new believer, wanting to give up on outreach, working professional, feeling spiritually superior, young adult, someone afraid to share their faith

Scripture: John 17:1-26, John 17:3, John 17:11, John 17:12, John 17:15, John 17:17, John 17:18, John 15:12, John 15:17-18, 1 Peter 5:8-9, Mark 10:45, Matthew 28:19-20, 1 Thessalonians 1:5, Philippians 2:5-8, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Theological Themes: incarnational ministry, missio dei, sanctification, biblical mission, John 17, being sent, Christian witness, discipleship

Full Transcript

Introduction

Will you open your Bibles to John chapter 17? We are going to spend some time here this morning. I was not here last Sunday — we were at the marriage getaway and had a wonderful time. The previous Sunday I taught in the morning, and that afternoon Susan and I had a four o'clock flight to Iowa. We got to the airport at 2:00 or 2:15, got through security pretty quickly, and got down to the gate.

There were actually three flights to Denver that afternoon — one leaving at 3:00, one at 3:45, and one at 5:35. We were on the four o'clock flight, but when we arrived at the gate, a new time was posted: 4:45. That pushed us dangerously close to missing our connection to Moline, which is a tough place to get to. Then it became 5:00, then 5:15, then 5:20, and it was apparent to even the casual observer that we had issues.

So I did something that I have learned to do in those moments — I got to the front of the line first, because there are never many options and you do not want to be at the end of it. I went up to the gate agent and said, "Listen, I have real empathy for you. I can see these people are frustrated and angry, and I just want to make your day easier. I am here to help you figure out how to get me where I am going, and I am going to do it with a smile." You never know exactly who you are dealing with or whether they know you.

By this point there were three agents working the counter. The man behind me asked, "Are you from Iowa?" I used to say to my dad that you could stand at the baggage terminal and spot the people from Iowa the moment they got off the plane. I said yes, and he asked, "Are you from Davenport?" I said I was. He said, "Are you Tom Schrader?" I said I was. And he said, "I'm Bob Walter." That name means nothing to you, but I graduated in 1968 and he graduated in 1966. He was the quarterback, all-state, a basketball player — he was everything. He said he had recognized me, though I had not recognized him, and it was just a wonderful, beautiful moment. He proved to be a genuinely sweet and kind man.

Now all of us stranded passengers trying to get to Moline had the competitive juices going. Long story short, we decided to fly to Denver, then on to O'Hare, and spend the night in the airport rather than take a hotel for two or three hours and go back through O'Hare security. While we were sitting there, Bob told us they had paged us. We went back to the counter, and the gate agent said she was going to move us off the delayed flight onto the 5:30. I said, "Whatever you think is best." When we reached Denver, we learned that the original four o'clock flight was still sitting at Sky Harbor at eleven that night. That lady did us a wonderful favor, and I am grateful for it.

We spent the night at O'Hare on those cold airport chairs without a blanket — that is, until Susan went and acquired a blanket from a Homeland Security checkpoint. Apparently they were not watching quite as closely as one might hope, at least not once you were already inside the secure area. We eventually made it, had a wonderful time with my mom, and she is doing well. We were going to play golf on the Fourth of July morning, but it rained four and a half inches in six hours overnight — though not quite enough to stop the fireworks, which remain my least favorite holiday tradition. But none of that is why you are here.

Overview of John 17

John chapter 17 — Jesus' prayer. He has prepared the disciples for His departure, and now He turns and prays. Throughout Scripture we frequently see references to Jesus praying — going away and praying all night, for instance — but we almost never receive the content of those prayers. Here, we do. In the first five verses He prays for Himself. In verses 6 through 19 He prays for the eleven, and also for us — specifically for them in ways that apply generally to us as well. In the last five or six verses He prays for us specifically.

In verse 1, He prays acknowledging that the hour has come. If you read through John's gospel, you know that as soon as chapter 17 ends, Judas betrays Him, He stands on trial, He appears before Pilate, He is scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified. That is the hour that has come. He prays that the Father would glorify the Son, and that the Son would glorify the Father — that God would be made manifest in Jesus' obedience, and that the Son would be glorified in the Father's acceptance of His sacrifice.

He also prays that we would have eternal life. Do you see that in verse 3? "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

Living in the World, Pointing to God

In the midst of where God has placed you, the hope is that your life becomes filled with conversations about spiritual things, and people begin to ask you questions. In the course of that dialogue, you will talk to people and ask, "What do you think?" Hopefully, you ask more and more questions and invite a dialogue, not a monologue of you just trying to answer every question with a Bible verse. Truth is important, but first there is connection.

You might ask someone, "Who do you think God is?" and they will talk about that, and often you will ask, "Where did that come from?" Sometimes the answer is Oprah, or Rush, or some other source. One night, unable to sleep with indigestion, I found myself listening to Coast to Coast with George Noory — some remarkable program about whether dogs are actually reincarnations of people who have had a bad life. There are a lot of opinions about God out there.

As you ask these questions, you start to probe the source: "How do we know the truth?" We find it in God's Word. This is eternal life, that you might know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.

Creation as the First Missionary

How are you going to know God? He makes Himself visible to you. Consider this: what was the first missionary to the earth? The earth itself. All you have to do is look around, and creation screams of a Creator. It points us to the existence of a Creator, and then that Creator makes Himself known — through the Old Testament, through Christ, through the Scripture we have before us.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

How do I know the one true God in Jesus Christ? I know His Word. Jesus prays, "Father, I have glorified You, having accomplished what You gave Me to do. I have completed the task. I have finished the very reason that You sent Me." Then He turns and prays for His disciples. In verse 11, He prays for three things: unity, protection, and sanctification.

Praying for Unity

He prays that we would be one — that there would be unity, soundness, and commonness of purpose. There would be those essentials upon which we remain united, even as the outward expression of that unity looks different from life to life. The vast majority of what we do in our Christian life, in a church, or in the body of Christ is preferential. But there are fundamental things, and Jesus is saying, do not ever waver on these fundamental things.

Praying for Protection

Then He prays for protection. In verse 12, He prays: "While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name, which You have given Me, and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition, so that Scripture would be fulfilled." The only one who left was Judas, and that was to fulfill Scripture — he was never truly one of them. Jesus continues, "But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

Turning back to chapter 15, Jesus has already told them in verse 12 that they are to love one another, and He repeats it in verse 17. That is how they are to relate to each other. But regarding the world, verse 18 says: "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well."

Jesus is not naive. He understands the incredible trouble and peril that these men would face, and that you and I will face as well. We know the world hates Him, and we know there is an enemy that hates Him. Turning to 1 Peter chapter 5 — and this is roughly where we stopped last week — Peter writes: "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world."

Be sober. Be on the alert. That is a command. Be ready. Satan is portrayed in one of three ways in Scripture: an angel of light, a subtle serpent, or a roaring lion — and the roaring lion is the picture Peter chooses here. He is out to devour you, to gulp you down. Stand firm. Resist. Guard your position in the faith. Know that others are suffering alongside you for a purpose, and your standing firm is how you resist the devil.

Praying for Sanctification

So Jesus prays for their unity, He prays for their protection, and in verse 17 He prays: "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth." Sanctification sounds like one of those grand theological words, but here is what it means: to put something to its intended use. When you came into the chapel today, you sanctified the pews. When no one is sitting in them, they are simply bolted to the ground, but that is not their intended purpose — their intended purpose is for you to sit in them. The chairs in the conference center are sanctified when you occupy them. This pulpit sits empty until books and notes and a cup are brought to it and it is put to its intended use.

Sanctification and the Word of God

We are sanctified when we are used for our intended purpose. What is our intended purpose? That we would glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and then the specifics of that begin to get worked out. How do we know what God would have for us? Verse 17 answers this: "Your word is truth." I begin to understand what God would have me do and how He would have me live and fulfill this purpose when I read His Word, which is good for teaching and reproof and correction and training in righteousness. So God's Word tells me what is right, what is not right, how to get right, and how to stay right.

Two Key Verses

There are two verses I want to camp on today, and I am speaking to myself as much as I am speaking to you. Verse 15 — and now this is Jesus praying to the Father — "I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but keep them from the evil one." And verse 18: "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world."

A Book Worth Reading

Early this year I read a book that had a huge impact on my thinking. As is so often the case with books I find most impactful, it was not filling me with new information so much as pulling things together. The book is titled *Christian Mission in the Modern World*. Not exactly a snappy title. I love the book for a couple of reasons — before I ever get to content, I love the fact that it is 128 pages.

I mentioned to Aaron that I liked the book, and he ordered some for the bookstore. I would suggest this would be a wonderful book for you to read. My guess is that if you go over to the bookstore after the service they may already be gone, but if you speak to them they can order one, and they can likely be here by next Sunday for you to pick up. The author is John Stott — S-T-O-T-T — and the copyright is 1975. There is another book I read around the same time, also an older book, copyrighted 1992, called *Church Without Walls* by Jim Peterson.

In the church world today the hot word is mission, and if you go back to the genesis of that conversation, much of it traces to what John Stott is writing about in this book. I have a friend who frequently listens to a certain teacher, and he says the man drives him nuts because all he does is book reports — all he is doing is talking about what he read last. There is a sense in which a bit of this morning is a book report, though hopefully it is way more than that. If you buy and read this book, much of what we talk about will be in there, and much more.

The World Is Spiraling in Two Directions

So here is what I want to talk about: verse 15 — "I do not ask You to take them out of the world." The other night we had a terrific evening with Barry Asimov. We were done around 8:45, and by 9:30 people were still standing in line. After everyone left, Barry and I sat and talked for about an hour and fifteen minutes. He was wound up — those of you who were there would understand that — and I was wound up just playing off his energy, and we were talking about all sorts of things.

He offered this observation: as he looks at the world, materially, almost every country is getting better. We are spiraling up. Even workers in China earning wages far below ours are seeing their lives improve. We certainly see that here as well. When I was a young lad, we had one television — black and white, two channels. I counted this morning: Susan and I now have five televisions. One just blew up, so it is imperative we get it replaced, because the other four certainly are not sufficient — and it is not appropriate to replace it with what it was; it has to be one of those large ones so we can watch football.

In 1900, around the turn of the century, you were spending roughly forty-two percent of your disposable income on food. Now that number is about seventeen percent. So you may not feel it, but you have more money to spend. And here is the problem — there is more stuff. Radio Shack had a tagline in a commercial years ago that captured it perfectly: "We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." That is exactly where the money goes.

Barry said we are spiraling up materially, and simultaneously we are spiraling down morally. We get a sense of that. When I went to my news page this morning, the top story was that sixty-six people in Spain had been arrested in a child pornography ring — something that would not have been possible, or at least not visible, without the Internet ten or fifteen years ago. All of our sin is simply more visible now. As followers of Christ, understanding how God would have us live, we begin to see that the world is down-cycling morally.

To that discussion I added: the moral down-cycle will eventually overtake the material up-cycle. The material up-cycle will produce nothing but emptiness in the end. And as I look at that world as a follower of Christ, my instinct — and likely yours too — is frequently to withdraw from it. That is what makes it almost shocking that Jesus would say this: I am sending them into the world. I am not telling them to get out of the world. I am telling them to get into the world.

Sent Into the World

I understand the world is dangerous. I understand that it is scary and terrifying. But we do not go alone. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. Yet our almost instinctive flinch is to cocoon, to withdraw, to construct a kind of Christian fortress mentality. We create in our own lives a Christian ghetto of Christian music, Christian radio, and only Christian authors — Swindoll, MacArthur, Sproul, all day long. Those are all fine things, all good things. But here is the deal: Jesus did not tell you to live that way. He did not tell you to withdraw into your Christian community, though we do need that, and we need the one-anothers.

When things feel scary, one flinch is to cocoon. Here is another flinch, and some of you are really guilty of this: you develop a sense and air of superiority. There are dirty, rotten sinners out there, and you tell yourself you are not one of those. But I remind you that you were one of those, and the only reason you are not now is because of God's grace — unmerited favor that you had nothing to do with. You are not superior to anyone. And here is the problem: if I have a sense of superiority toward the lost people around me, I can never serve them with the right motive and the right heart. I may serve them in some pandering way, but never with a genuine heart.

So we have cocooning, we have a sense of superiority, and here is a third response I find a lot of times: giving up entirely. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, that is just the way it is, and there is nothing I can do about it. Jesus says no to all three of those. He says do not cocoon, you certainly do not feel superior, and do not give up. He says, "I am sending you into this world."

Missional Living Defined

When you hear people talking about missional or missional living or purposeful living, this is what He means: I am sending you there for a reason. Leonard Sweet defines the word missional this way — to participate in the mission of Jesus in the world, to incarnate in the experiences of our lives and our communities the good news of God's love for the world. It is not simply that I am going to go and evangelize. Rather, I am going to go live in that community, be part of that community, and flesh out the gospel.

In some instances, I will never even be allowed to get to a verbal proclamation of the gospel, and in that sense it is still okay. There are people who are hungry and need to be fed. There are people who are thirsty and need drink. There are people who are naked and need to be clothed. There are hurting people who are suffering and who need the touch of Christ's people in their lives. If I have an opportunity to proclaim the gospel, that is terrific — that is certainly part of it — but it is not all of it.

John Stott writes, "All of us should be able to agree that mission arises primarily out of the nature, not of the church, but of God Himself. The living God of the Bible is a sending God." Certainly you are familiar with Matthew 28: "Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; lo, I am with you always." The Great Commission and the Great Commandment — love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself — combine the love of Christ, the love of neighbor, and the proclamation of truth.

The Fatal Mistake of Withdrawal

There is no question, from verse 18, that God is sending you into the world. We make a fatal mistake — in fact, we act in an unchristian manner — when we withdraw from the world. Now clearly there is a tension there. We are not to think like the world or be part of the world's system. But He said, "I am sending you into the world." We still need the one-anothers, we still need to be together, we still need the Christian music and the Christian encouragement, but you are to be part of that world.

How should you go into the world? Verse 18 answers that: "As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world." Jesus becomes the model. Clearly there is something unique and distinctive about Jesus' mission in the world — He came to save His people from their sins, and we cannot do that. You are not little saviors; He is not saying that. As Jesus Himself spoke in Mark chapter 10, verse 45, "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, to give His life a ransom for many." What Christ does ultimately, in the ultimate act of service, is save His people from their sin. But you are here to serve. As you go into this world, you are going to serve.

Servants and Ministers

What is another word for service? Ministry. Two hundred and fifty times in the New Testament we see one of the six Greek words used almost synonymously with minister and serve. You are here to go and to serve, and there are endless service opportunities around you. There are hurting people who need a touch of love and care and concern.

One author, writing of that early church, puts it this way: "They cared for their poor and for those of their number that were imprisoned for the faith, and the churches would help anyone by gifts of money or food. A Christian would be among friends in whatever city or town he found others of his communion." You and I are servants and ministers.

The Incarnational Model

Here is the second way we go into the world: it is incarnational. Remember what John wrote of Jesus — "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory." Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica, in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 5, "Our gospel came to you..."

Incarnational Living

Not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, with deep convictions. We didn't just come in and drop our load and then leave. It was incarnational living. It was purposeful living in the community.

Jesus didn't just come down in the morning and then go back to His throne at night. No, He became one of us. Isn't that what Paul writes about in Philippians chapter 2? He admonishes and encourages us: "Have the attitude in yourself that was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in the appearance of man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." He became incarnational. He became one of us.

As you and I go and we begin to serve in this world, we need to live incarnationally. Let me give you two examples — bad examples.

I was talking to a fellow one night about a guy in the mission field, and he was describing life in a foreign city, a foreign land, with lots of missionaries there. He said the missionaries lived in a compound within the city — a walled compound where all the missionaries lived. To me, that seems exactly wrong. That I would live in a little compound, run out to be a little missionary, then run back at night — Jesus didn't do that. Did He retreat at moments to be with the Father? For sure. But He didn't leave. He was with the people.

I was talking to a young man the other day about planting a church in downtown Phoenix — roughly the area from Seventh Avenue to 24th Street, from Washington to Camelback. He was talking about the need for churches down there, and I said, are you telling me there aren't churches down there? He said there are some being planted, but of the ones he knew about, the men planting them were coming from Scottsdale and Tempe and Ahwatukee, and then going home to those same places at night. That makes absolutely no sense to me. If you want to plant a church in downtown Phoenix, you need to go and live in downtown Phoenix.

Sent Into the World

When He says, "I'm sending you into the world," He's saying go. And when He says, "I'm sending you just as the Father sent Me," it means incarnational. It means being involved in people's lives — their hurt and pain and suffering and anguish. All of those things are part of that, and that was the key to the early church.

One historian looking at the early church asked how eleven men became hundreds, then thousands. How did Christianity spread like that? He concluded that the feat of Christianity was accomplished by means of informal missionaries. That's you. Not a title, not a card that says missionary — that is what you are. You are an ambassador for Christ to this world.

Edward Gibbon, in *The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire*, observes this: "It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to disperse among his friends and neighbors the blessing that he had received." In other words, his life, her life, their lives had been transformed, and now they take that transformation to their community — incarnationally.

James Boyce, speaking about John the Baptist, says one of the crucial mistakes we make is to think that John is somehow unique or peculiar in his task to proclaim his message. Boyce says no — that is an error, and a serious one. Witnessing is every Christian's job. Then he adds this: if we are to work for Jesus, we must first forget about ourselves and think about other people and their need for a Savior.

So when He says, "I'm sending you into the world," He is saying He's sending us in there to serve, to live incarnationally. And He wants us to understand it is everybody's job. Everyone is to be an ambassador to their world. Everyone has received a spiritual gift. Jim Peterson writes: "Another truth that becomes apparent in this context is that ministry really belongs to every believer. We are all to be sown into the world. We all have the life of the Holy Spirit in us, which makes us good seed."

The World Has Hijacked Our Language

What I found interesting was a third book I read by Leonard Sweet. He was talking about this whole idea of incarnational living, and he made the observation that the world has hijacked some of our terms. Howard Schultz, chief executive officer of Starbucks, identifies himself as a coffee evangelist. One of Japan's hottest wireless vendors describes himself as a phone evangelist. Larry Gibson, a former West Virginia mining maintenance worker who has done a turnabout, now calls himself an evangelist of an environmental cause. John Bates, co-founder of BigWords.com, has a calling card that reads "John Bates, Evangelist." Karen Allen, who represents the Recording Industry of America, holds a job title called Internet Evangelist.

One company that screens workers in the internet and web-related industry asks six questions of candidates. One of them is this: "Are you more evangelical than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?" I picked up my copy of *Business 2.0*, and the cover was talking about the fifty most influential people in the world — people who

Engaging a Hostile World

When I read verse 15 — "I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them in it" — and then verse 18 — "As You sent Me into the world, I also send them into the world" — I begin to understand the gravity of the call that God has placed on your life and mine, to go into a very hostile environment.

You live at a time of ever-increasing relativism, the sense that there are no absolutes. In his somewhat classic book *The Closing of the American Mind*, Alan Bloom writes: "There is one thing a professor can absolutely be certain of. Almost every student entering university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight, but a moral postulate." In other words, all these students are saying, "It's true for you, it's true for you, it's true for you." And then you come along and say, "Here is the truth."

Time: The World's Most Precious Commodity

In a world that is becoming ever more hostile to truth, you need to understand the world you are entering. And what does that world hold as its most precious commodity? It is not gold or silver, real estate, stocks and bonds, or even knowledge. The most precious commodity we have — the non-renewable resource in our lives — is time.

In 1969, I took a sociology class. In that class, they asked us to think about the year 2000. They said two things would result from the proliferation of the computer. First, the only way to maintain full employment would be to cut the work week back to thirty hours, because the computer would be doing so many things there would not be enough left for people to do. Second, we would need to find creative ways for people to invest all the extra leisure time they would have.

What they did not understand was the microchip and what it would do to the laptop, the Blackberry, the iPhone, and every device like them. I do not find today that people have more time, more leisure, and are working less. That is not my experience, and I suspect it is not yours either. We are consumed and engaged by all of these things. That is the world you live in.

The World You Are Sent Into

You enter a world consumed with self-fulfillment, security, and happiness — a world, and I am speaking of our culture specifically, that has redefined the family. In 1950, the family was essentially a biological mother and father living with their children, with the father working and the mother at home. Today that household structure represents only twelve percent of families in this country.

Not only that, you live at a time when people are engaged in increasingly destructive behavior. A gentleman recently led a retreat for high school students and asked them to name the three biggest problems in their lives. Here is what they said: drugs, sexual abuse, and suicide. That is the world you live in.

Everything in you — especially for those of you who are parents — wants to cocoon and pull away from that world. But Jesus says no. That is precisely the unbiblical response. You are to engage that community. You are to go and be salt and light in the midst of it. You are engaged in spiritual warfare. You have an enemy who wants to destroy you. He is not playing around. He hates you, he hates Christ, and he hates the truth.

Incarnational Living

You are called to live incarnationally — to communicate to people not merely information, but to live among them. I wrote this thought this morning, so I have not had the chance to fully think it through. I offer it carefully, and if it is wrong, I pray you forget it.

When Paul writes to the church at Corinth, he says, "Do not be deceived — the kingdom of God is not" occupied by the unrighteous, and then he lists them. Remember, in 1 Corinthians, he names idolaters, adulterers, and others, and says none of those will inherit the kingdom of God. The reason he lists those, I believe, is what he says immediately after: "And such were some of you." The Corinthian church reflected the mindset of Corinth itself.

In the same way, you and I, though we have come out of this world, can bring with us the mindset of the world. And one of the most destructive of those mindsets is the idea that the Christian life is either an event or an individual effort. We are results-oriented, so when it comes to evangelism, we want to count decisions and responses. That is how we are driven.

A Decade, Not a Day

If you have a T-shirt from the tenth anniversary of East Valley Bible Church, the back of it carries a saying I love: "Most of us overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in a decade." Jesus is not calling us to show up for an event and then rush back in. He is saying something far more than that.

Engaging the World as a Lifestyle

You are in this for the long haul. You are engaged with the culture until you die. The people around you are not just a case study, and this is not something you do by dropping your pearls and retreating, or by going through the motions without genuinely caring. The first thing culture wants to know, and lost people want to know, is that you really love them and care for them — that they are not pawns in your evangelistic game. This whole thing is a process, not an event.

The Myth of Self-Reliance

It is also a team effort, a body effort. We live in a very individualistic society that says, "I can do it. I'm self-reliant. It's up to me." I would identify myself as somewhat conservative, but one of the mindsets I resist in people like me is this idea that anybody can do whatever they want, pull themselves up, work hard, and if you can dream it, you can achieve it. That is simply not true. Life really is a collaborative effort.

Someone said to me today, "I want to meet with you about marriage and why your marriage works." I can tell you why our marriage works — it is a collaborative effort. It is not Susan trying to make it work for her, or me trying to make it work for me. It works because we are trying to make it work together.

Setting Up Camp in the World

When Jesus says to go into the world, He does not mean go in, come back, go in, come back. He means set up camp in that world. There should be in your life a consistent cycle of men and women — or, if you are a student, students — who do not know Christ, so that they can see a transformed life. You go to them not because they are tools or pawns in your desire to share the gospel, though sharing the gospel is good, but because they are needy and they hurt.

You have what this world is looking for. People are going from thing to thing to thing, searching for security — the idea that material possessions will make life better — and we know that is a lie. You have the answer to that. You can say, "My security is in Christ and nowhere and no one else."

Personal Accountability

I say this as much to myself as I do to you. I find that I engage the lost people in my life reasonably well, but I do not necessarily do well in my own neighborhood, and I am committed to changing that. The house next door has been for sale for a while, and yesterday a sign went up that said "Sold." So my first venture into infiltrating my neighborhood is this poor, unsuspecting person moving in next door — God help them.

But do not dismiss what we have just talked about. This is who we are to be, and it is very important. There should be something in place so that if this campus disappeared today, the people of Chandler and Gilbert would say, "We are really missing something from our community." And it would be more than just the ministry programs. It would be that these people were engaged in the city — on the city council, on the school board, the best merchants and the best citizens.

Incarnational, Not Institutional

The goal is not to invade culture with the cause of Christ in order to take back the schools. It is to let people see how Jesus lives, and to let them see what a real Christian is. Jesus does not say withdraw. He does not say cocoon. He does not say be intimidated or be afraid. He says it is a scary world, so stay close to Him, stay in His Word, know that the Spirit of God lives in you and fuel that — but go into that world and let them see Jesus. Let them hear the gospel.

We are serious about this, because I do not think my generation was particularly serious about it. For us, evangelism meant sitting someone down and presenting a bridge illustration, or walking through a framework of need and the cross. It was more about arguing and convincing. But Scripture is saying there is a place for that, while also calling us to something incarnational. Just as the Father sent Jesus, He sends us into the world.

No Exemptions

It is a great challenge. Looking out at you, I will make an observation: the younger you are, the more responsive you are to this message — you can see it on your faces. Those of us who are older, and I include myself here, hear this and think, "I don't want to do that. I don't want the messiness. I don't want people calling me. I want to go home." But that is not how Jesus called us to live.

This is not generational. Whether you are living at Sun Lakes, at Trilogy, at Leisure World, or anywhere else — wherever He has placed you, no one is exempt. Maybe the world you are called to infiltrate is a retirement community. Wherever He has placed you, that is your mission field.

Closing Prayer

Father, for that truth, will You take it and apply it to our lives? There are parts of it we love, all of it we understand, but some of it we simply do not want to do — we do not want to live that way. Give us a heart for this community. Give us a heart as a church to be used by You in a significant way. We pray You do that work.