We’re It! We are the Sign! - Stand Alone Sermon

Matthew 12:38-40 & 1 Corinthians 15

Let’s Pray

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, in their book Total Church pointed out that, “The theology that MATTERS is not the theology that we PROFESS but the theology that we PRACTICE.” (Total Church, Page 18)

With that said, we are taking a break from the book of Mark tonight to address something that I have had put on my heart. But I will say at the outset, the book of Mark is connected to what we are going to talk about tonight.

See, the Gospel of Mark is not a book that is designed to simply allow us to KNOW more about God.

Instead it is a book that calls us to respond. It is a book that says, BELIEVE and then it spells out the ripple effects of belief in the daily life of the genuine Christian.

Tonight I want to talk about the action response to a genuine belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Before we get there, let me explain where I’m coming from and let me explain what brought me to THIS message.

Here’s the deal, on Thursday morning, as I was getting ready for work I was also in prayer. God had all of these lost people in my life pushing on my heart.
- Some were people who were in the church culture, but who drifted away because of their rebellion.
- Some were the fist shaking atheists and agnostics who are in my life.
- Some were the misled believers from other religions who believe in a “Higher Power” but who deny the exclusivity that Christ puts on faith in passages like John 4:16.
- Then there were other people that God had on my heart; other people who just don’t care about God. People who are content to go through life with seldom a thought spent on what’s after all of this; people who I love, who never think about who created all of this; people close to me who hardly ever try to wrap their minds around WHY there are concepts of good and evil that can be found in every culture across the world and throughout history. They don’t think those kinds of thoughts.

So God had all of these people from all those categories on my heart. People from my family, from my office, from the Church in the Grass, people from the Church, and people from our nation’s leadership all the way down to local politicians.

And listen, you know what it’s like to have one person on your heart right? But when face after face after face comes up, it just gets to be overwhelming.

So, I prayed I was praying for each individual until I got overwhelmed and then I prayed this, “God, I know that you said that it is a sinful and twisted generation that asks for a sign.” (Matthew 12:39 and 16:4) “But…”

I thought, that’s probably the wrong way to pray but it just spilled out, “I know you say it is a sinful generation to ask for a sign, but Father God, PLEASE make yourself known to all of these people on my heart – and truly all of the people in this world – people I love, people I can’t stand, people I don’t know – PLEASE make yourself known in an undeniable and unmistakable way before it is too late for them to repent and come to faith.”

That was the gist of my prayer.

And before the prayer was off of my heart the answer was given. I believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, made His response very, very clear. And it wasn’t a “soft pillow” of an answer.

Now, when I say that God made this clear to me. I’m not saying that the sky opened up or He knocked me down and spoke audibly.

It’s just, as Christians, the Spirit of God leads us. And in that “still small voice” the Spirit said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I’ve already made a way for it to be clear, and you’re it. You are the sign.”

Now hold on for a minute, if you look to Scriptures to confirm what you hear in the Spirit you will be a lot less likely to fall into heresy and blasphemy.

I don’t believe He meant I am the sign. He didn’t mean Ken is the sign for the world to see.

He wasn’t saying, Ken you are the sign. I believe He was prompting me to understand that Ken, you are part of the body. Ken you are a part of the Church and the Church is the sign to unbelievers.

And so here’s where we are camping tonight, WE are the church. WE are the sign. WE are the one’s who God placed here to be the unmistakable evidence of His existence. And the time is NOW to make sure WE are actively living that out.

Did you see how many people were listed in the obituaries this week? This was a tough week. I believe that some passed on to see Christ, and others who are doomed to Hell.

The time is NOW to actively live out our calling as the Church to be the sign of His glory, and the evidence of His grace.

It’s a call to action over intention. And it's a call to prayer. It's a call for us to do the spurring on of one another toward love and good deeds that we read about in Hebrews 10.
By saying action over intention, I mean that IF our beliefs are more than head knowledge, IF it is theology that results in the practice of living it out, then the call to action over intention is a call to actively seek the good of our city and our workplaces and our homes, and a call to actions that help, rather than hinder the Gospel.

And by saying it’s a call to prayer – I mean first and foremost it’s a call to prayers of repentance from our negligence.

Now I want to go to a couple places in the Scriptures tonight and first address what the sign WAS for the people when Jesus was in the flesh and walking among the people.

And secondly, I want to address what the signs ARE NOW to all those faces that came to my mind on Thursday morning and the masses of humanity who don’t know or accept Jesus today, let’s get to the text.

Let’s start by turning to Matthew 12:38-40.

38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you."
39 He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Okay remember earlier I said that all of these people – face after face after face – kept showing up on my mind and as I got overwhelmed I asked God to just show them a sign that would convince them to believe in Christ before it was too late.
And as I was praying, this passage came to mind and I said, “I know! I know it is a sinful generation that looks for a sign, but…”

And here’s what we see in the text. Jesus doesn’t tell the wicked Pharisees, or wicked Ken Ritchie that NO more signs would be given, He points to the ONE SIGN that matters most. He points them toward, and us back to, the resurrection!

But none (NO SIGN) will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Jesus was pointing the Pharisees toward (and points us back to) the three days that He would be in the tomb after His crucifixion.

In other words, Jesus, who had already shown sign after sign after sign: healing, casting out demons, etc. Jesus would show one more unmistakable sign to the people, but not before they crucified Him.

You see the resurrection was the sign that provided the ultimate confirmation of Jesus’ power and His authority.

Other leaders had come before Him, and other political and religious leaders have come after Him. But, only Jesus is still alive. Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, Joseph Smith, David Koresh and others, they are ALL dead. But, Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and three days later, he arose.

Do we, as Christians really believe that? If we say we do, let me ask the question, is our belief in the resurrection only part of a theology that we PROFESS, or is it a key doctrine in the theology that we PRACTICE?

I may be overstating this, but I would say that if the early church, that we read about in the book of Acts and the historical accounts of the first few centuries of the church that we get from extra-biblical accounts – if that early church practiced what they believed the same way that we practice what we believe in most churches in the Western nations today, then I wonder whether there would have still been a church around 2,000 years later.

In the Bible we see that once the Resurrection of Christ happened, the lives of those who witnessed it were undeniably changed.
- Christ doubters like Thomas, and Jesus’ half-brothers James and Jude no longer doubted.
- The disciples, who had been slow to understand and quick to run away before Jesus went to the cross, were fearlessly and clearly preaching the Gospel and bringing people into the freedom of Christ after the resurrection.
- Saul of Tarsus, who hated the Christians, and believed that they we blasphemous sinners for calling Jesus God; Saul, who had people from the early church imprisoned and killed because he DIDN’T believe in Jesus; that same person was converted by a seeing the Risen Christ with His own eyes. This former killer of Christians then lived out his new and corrected theology in practice because the theology that he PROFESSED was the theology that he actually POSSESSED.

And in one of the first written accounts of the Resurrection that we have, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul, formerly called Saul of Tarsus, just unpacks all of these truths about what the resurrection means.

It’s a long chapter, I would call you to read it through tonight and study it this week. We are just going to hit a couple of key passages here. In verses 1-9, Paul writes:

1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

He takes us back to the life-changing effect of the Gospel in verse 9.
And, in what is very typical for Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, he gives us two great “if this, then” arguments.

The first one was alluded to in verse 2 and is unpacked in verses 14-19:

14 And if Christ has not been raised, (then) our preaching is useless and (then) so is your faith. 15 More than that, (then) we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, (then) your faith is futile; (then) you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, (then) we are to be pitied more than all men.

Then Paul says, BUT Christ was raised! And then goes into detail after detail about the resurrection. And again, go home study that, e-mail or call with any questions and we’ll work through that. To stay on point, lets skip down to the last “if, then” argument.

Remember the first argument was if there was NO RESURRECTION, then our faith is pointless and we should be pitied for our faith.

The second argument that Paul unpacks for the rest of the chapter is, since the RESURRECTION DID HAPPEN – SINCE THERE IS VERIFIABLE PROOF, (then) verse 58.

… my dear brothers, (then) stand firm. (then) Let nothing move you. (then) Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

I would say to you and I was deeply convicted of this in my own life this week. IF you believe that the resurrection is true. IF we believe the truth claims of the Bible that Jesus is Lord, that He is God, that He came out of Heaven and down to earth and lived the sinless life that we could not live, that He died the death and took the punishment at the cross that was due to us for our sins, IF we believe that He was buried and that He rose again. IF THAT is all true, THEN Paul says, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we are called to ALWAYS, Give our LIVES FULLY TO THE WORK OF THE LORD.

The Resurrection is not a once a year message to be agreed upon when we gather at Easter. The Resurrection of Christ was the sign for the people of His time to propel the church from 12 misfits to the continually growing, spreading, thriving Kingdom movement that it is today across the globe.

If I want the people, the non-believers on my heart to believe the Gospel and be saved by grace through faith in Christ, then I and We the Church in the Grass and WE THE CHURCH OF ALL BELIEVERS EVERYWHERE need to put the theology that we PROFESS into an outward, tangible theology that is PRACTICED!

We cannot sit around complaining about the world.
We cannot keep on arguing about secondary issues with other believers.
We cannot keep on boycotting every new restaurant and media company.
We cannot keep on wasting our time - and closing people off from the message of the Gospel - and hindering our effectiveness by putting on publicity stunts like threatening to burn the Quran or other kinds of nonsense.
We cannot keep on spinning our wheels and pulling our hair out and acting like freaks when we see the sin of the World while at the same time ignoring or refusing to repent of our sin as believers.

We cannot pass this mission of spreading Christianity off to anyone else. Not to some dynamic speaker, not to the government, not to the bigger church up the street not to the para-church ministries and not to the media.

If you are a Christian, if you believe in the deity of Christ and His life, death, burial and resurrection to save sinners, then you are called and I am called to be the sign that people look to as the undeniable evidence of the truth claims that we hold to.

The Holy Spirit will still have to prepare their hearts, but we are the sign and Gospel messengers that are called to work with the Holy Spirit to do God’s work in this place and at this time.

And if like me, you have not been fulfilling your duty to live in this role as a sign of the truth as a messenger of the good News, then do not leave here throwing your hands up and saying woe is me or wondering what’s the use now.

No, remember, this message is a call to action over intention, but it is also a call to pray a prayer of repentance for our negligence leading up to tonight and a call to pray for God to do the work that only He can do.

Remember, He will not call you to anything that He is not equipping you for.

Wherever you have been living outside of His will, and in turn hindering the Gospel, pray for God to change your heart THERE now, tonight.

For some you have hindered the Gospel by not demonstrating a hope in Christ to conquer the large and small problems in your life and in the world, to some, it will be a prayer to defeat the historic sin in your life that keeps making you out to be the hypocrite.
For you it may be a prayer against lust, or drunkenness, or laziness and neglect as a parent, or greed, or whatever – You know your sin.

We are going to share in Communion tonight. It is for all believers in Christ, whether you are from the Church in the Grass or another church.

Before you eat the bread or drink from the cup. Go to the Lord pray a prayer of repentance. Turn away from your sin and turn to the risen Lord.

Let’s pray.