Episode 8 - Evangelizing Believers?

This week we're in the parable of the vineyard, talking about what it looks like when people close themselves off to Jesus and what he does in response. Spoiler: it's not what you'd expect. We've got a Spurgeon quote, a zoom in on Isaiah, some thoughts on rooting out indifference in our lives, and a conversation about what it actually means to evangelize believers and disciple non-believers.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back to the Disappointingly Normal podcast. I'm your host, Paul Stiver. This podcast is a project of Hope Community Church North Lakes that meets in Shoreview, Minnesota. We are disappointingly normal. We're not trying to be overly impressive and think that uh we're awesome. We're not trying to be weird. We're trying to be disappointingly normal. And in order to do that, we want to see the gospel impact our lives, but we want to take discipleship beyond Sundays to the rest of the week and all of life. That is the point of this podcast. Want to get started with a fun story, just share a little bit about uh what my life was like growing up. And so growing up, I played a lot of travel baseball. I was on the traveling team for our local hometown, Merrill, Wisconsin. We had a traveling team, number of players I remember trying out for it, getting on the team, and we would travel all around uh different cities in Wisconsin. I don't know if we ever ventured outside Wisconsin, play baseball on the weekends, and that was kind of normal life for me. A lot of my early growing up, and so as a result of it, we stayed in a lot of hotels on that traveling and uh started to learn some things about I loved staying in hotels. You go to the pool and you always felt rich, although we were always told, like, don't swim, don't do hot tub before games because you'll get tired out. But felt rich going to the hotel pool. I don't have a pool at home. It's an awesome experience. And uh, but as we started to stay at these hotels, we got some running jokes. We would do, I came up with, I think, as a kid, like never stay at a hotel with a number in the name. Now, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm just saying when you think about like a Super 8 of Motel 6, that was our running joke. Never stay at a hotel with a number in the name. Maybe a double tree is okay. That's not quite, it's double. Um, but we had uh we would stay a lot of times, then we started to stay in hotel rooms that were suites, and so you'd have like the separated kids and parent space, and then occasionally we'd even have like a kitchenette. And uh, we have one famous story where we went into the hotel room, you know, you're just checking in, right? That check-in feeling where you're like, we made it, we're here, we're maybe all a little perturbed, a little upset with each other. And so we're traveling, and nothing like traveling to just get people frustrated for some reason, or maybe just me. But uh we walk in and there's a kitchenette and there's a sink right on the counter. And we walk up to the sink and it is filled to the brim. And uh, let's just say it wasn't water in there. And uh we were like, okay, this is not good. It's kind of hilarious, but also disgusting. And uh we got moved to another room immediately, but we came across a sink filled with uh, I think you can fill in the blanks there, what was in there, but uh maybe a disgruntled employee checking out for that final time that said, like, we're I'm gonna leave my mark here in this in the sink of this room. But anyway, it was one of those experiences where we formed a memory together as a family. Now, if you meet us, it's likely a story you are gonna hear from our family. It's a story that uh we share together as a family. It reminds us of our shared history, and um, so much of what Jesus is doing in the New Testament is telling these kind of shared history stories to people to try to appeal to them. He he uses stories so much in the gospels to appeal to the hearts of his hearers. And sadly, the we see in Mark, we saw in Mark that the religious leaders have become so indignant, so closed off, so unreceptive, so unwilling to know Jesus, that they instead of receiving him, they reject him, and they actually are okay with even rejecting him to the point that he will die. Um, and so jumping into Sunday recap and just looking at, I just want to call us back to this Charles Spurgeon quote that was so timely, so fitting for what we see. Jesus appealing to the hearts of his hearers, to those who are most indignant at him, most unreceptive to him. He tries to remind them of their story, he tries to locate them in their story to help them see that he is that final word of God, come to declare that they can be rescued. All they have to do is repent and believe the gospel, turn back to God, seek God for forgiveness, come to him through Jesus, who is actually the Son of God standing before them, and they reject him. Listen to what Charles Spurgeon says about Jesus here. He says, If you reject him, he answers you with tears. If you wound him, he bleeds out cleansing. If you kill him, he dies to redeem. If you bury him, he rises again to bring resurrection. Jesus is love made manifest. We saw the marvel of God's plan from Psalm 118. As Spurgeon says here, if you reject him is how he starts this quote, he rises again to bring resurrection is how he ends this quote. That the plan of God from Psalm 118 was that Jesus the cornerstone would be rejected, but that it would actually be the foundation of God's kingdom being built. Jesus the cornerstone who's rejected and now is the way to God, the cornerstone and foundation of our lives. If you reject him, he answers you with tears. If you wound him, he bleeds out cleansing. If you kill him, he dies to redeem. If you bury him, he rises again to bring resurrection. Jesus, friends, is love made manifest. So then think about your life and how he thinks about you. He's not ignorant of you, he knows you, and he knows actually your sin. He knows what you've done wrong, he knows how you have not trusted him, not followed him, the same for me. He knows how I have not trusted him, not followed him, chosen things other than him in my life. But he's not ignorant of us, he knows us, he knows us more than we know ourselves. He's not indifferent to us. He doesn't look at us with this cool, millennial, detached and disinterested vibe where he says that, oh yeah, they could do better. Actually, I'm gonna kind of, you know, Jesus doesn't protect his heart and say, I'm just gonna distance myself from them because that way I'll be safe and uh they can't hurt me. He's not indifferent to us. Jesus is not indignant at us. Friends, he doesn't sit over us like some HOA where we live in our neighborhood, and the HOA is always watching to make sure our shrubs are perfectly cut and that there's no extra uh things in our yard that shouldn't be there, that our trees are the right height, our hedges are the right height, our fences are the right height. He doesn't look at us with an indignant heart watching for us to fail. He looks at us and loves us like he did to the rich young ruler. And finally, he's not in process on us. Jesus isn't like waiting for us to just do a little better, then he's gonna love us. He's not waiting for us to have a little more success or uh put that one nagging sin to bed, finally, then he'll love us. Jesus looks at us and loves us. He's not in process on us, he's in on us. And he shows us that by going to the cross for us. Uh, the way wanted to get into just a little bit of theology corner here, wanted to dig back into the Old Testament. And we talked about how Jesus appeals to the story. He tells the story of a vineyard, which would have really helped locate for the people he was talking to themselves. They saw themselves as God's vineyard. And so when we see this kind of thing, we saw the word vineyard. What we can do is do something like grab that word, look for it in the Bible. Where does that theme emerge in the Bible? And if we do that, it would take us back to Isaiah 5, and that would help us have more context on the parable that Jesus was sharing. And I only shared Isaiah 5.4, but I wanted to read the entire chapter of Isaiah 5 as far as it relates to the vineyard. So verses 1 through 7, just for us to get a fuller picture of why Jesus was telling the story that he was telling. So it says here in Isaiah 5, Let me sing for my beloved, my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I tell you, what will I do to my vineyard? I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured, I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down, I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up, I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting, and he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold an outcry. What is God saying here? He's saying, I have done everything for the people of Israel, the people of Judah, these two tribes that are together my people. I've done everything, and all they've done is yield wild grapes. The way he describes the wild grapes here is that he looked for justice and got bloodshed for righteousness but an outcry that he is not seeing from his people the justice and righteousness that looks like him. They don't walk in his ways, they don't obey his commands or do what he says, they don't show off who he is to a watching world, and he promises that he will bring judgment upon this vineyard that he has so beloved and so cared for. Now Jesus, when he tells the story in Mark, is saying, Here's where you guys are in the story. You are building a foundation on things that are not God, that are not his cornerstone, his son. You have rejected God's message time and time again, and you will not uphold justice or righteousness. You go your own way. Even though you are the religious leaders and think you know God the best, you actually know him the least. This is the parable of the vineyard, and we must not miss something when we look at that parable of the tenant farmers, the farmers who are the religious leaders and how they don't follow after God, and how they reject the servants that are the prophets, and so God says, I will send my son. One thing we have to see in that, and because we sometimes tend to see God as just a God of judgment, or we might make that mistake and say, Oh, God just judges his people and he doesn't um leave room for anything but judgment. And even if you read the Isaiah passage, it almost feels that way. But what we have to see is that the this owner in the story says, I will send my beloved son. I will send my beloved son. He did not have to do that. We've got to understand that about God, he did not have to do that. He was just in having declared his word over and over to the people, they had ample opportunity to respond by repenting, by asking for forgiveness, by turning back to God. But look at the compassion of this owner, of God himself, that he sends his son, not just to destroy the tenant farmers, or not to destroy them, but to actually win them back to him by being destroyed himself. The son is the one who is destroyed, who is cast out of the vineyard in the story. Now, will they respond to that? And we see obviously that they don't. That's one of the main themes here of the end of Mark is that the people that should have responded, that should have seen most clearly, are the ones who reject Jesus and hand him over to death. And why Psalm 118 comes in and says that is God actually saw that. He knew that would happen, he saw that would happen, he planned that, and he knew he used that rejection as a part of his redemption plan. What a sovereign Lord we have who can turn even rejection and death into life for those of us who believe. Moving into just some cultural engagement, I want to think about something that I heard uh in my discipleship journey, which I'm still on, but I heard this quote a while ago and as it pertains to church life, and I thought it was intriguing. I wanted to put it in front of us. So here's the idea: uh one author said, you evangelize believers and you disciple non-believers. You evangelize believers and you disciple nonbelievers. Now, everybody believes in something, but do they believe in Jesus? That's a non-believer, right? And then a believer is someone who believes in Jesus. Now, this is where it's compelling. Because what we would tend to think, or what feels intuitive, is that we evangelize to non-believers, to people that don't know Jesus, we go to them, we share the gospel with them, we evangelize to them. And to Christians who already believe the gospel, who are already in on Jesus, if you will, we disciple them. But here's what this author says: you evangelize believers and you disciple non-believers. What does that mean? It means that actually it's Christians, it's people who already know Jesus, who need to be reminded of Jesus, of his gospel, of the work that he's accomplished. That's actually the primary thing that we need to be reminded of. And secondary then is how to follow him, because that flows downstream from how what we think about him and being reminded of the gospel. What we do always emerges from what we think. And so, therefore, we evangelize believers to remind us about what we think, what we believe about Jesus, and then what we do flows from it. And then, interestingly enough, the author says, you disciple non-believers. So, what you're doing there is you're actually sharing more about what the Christian faith looks like to someone who doesn't engage with the faith. You're saying, here's what it looks like to forgive as a follower of Christ. Here's what it looks like to suffer as a follower of Christ, here's what it looks like to pray as a follower of Christ, to be generous as a follower of Christ, to serve others, to consider them first as a follower of Christ. You're doing all kinds of things from a discipleship standpoint, you're showing them what a life with Christ looks like before you move toward that evangelism conversation about surrendering their life to Christ, to following Christ. Now, where I've seen this play out, do you disagree with that? Do you agree with that? Evangelize believers, disciple, non-believers, give them snippets and ideas about what the Christian faith is before they hear the gospel or as they're hearing the gospel? Do you agree or disagree with that? I will say that how I've seen that play out from a personal standpoint is uh I felt like I at hope, when I came to faith, was discipled before I was evangelized, or even as I was evangelized. So I remember learning more and more Sunday in and Sunday out about the Christian faith before I ever trusted in Christ. So perhaps if that's true, if that carries out for others who don't know Jesus like I didn't at the time, perhaps what we can do is not only share the gospel with them, but also just share how God is moving in our lives. Share what it means to be a follower of Him. Tell stories about how we are seeking to follow Jesus, whether it's how we're seeking to forgive, how we're seeking to process through a difficult decision, how we're seeking to steward our resources, whether it's money or children that we have, or relationships, friendships, or uh how we're seeking to think about uh the modern cultural issues, uh, whatever it is, we can share and say my faith is informing that. It's actually not just informing that, it's central to how I think about that. As we do that, we are discipling non-believers. We're giving people that would put themselves in those camps we talked about in the sermon, ignorant, indignant, in process, indifferent. Wherever someone falls that doesn't know Jesus, they're somewhere in those camps of indignant, indifferent in process or ignorant of Jesus. We're giving them that chance to gain more of an understanding of Jesus, gain more of an understanding of the full picture of Jesus, who he really is, what he really calls people to look like and live like, and how he actually is the one who died so that we could be saved, how he is the one who lived the perfect life in all the ways that we fail. And you're giving them people then a way to understand the gospel before they actually believe the gospel. Does that make sense? That's kind of a fascinating concept. You evangelize believers and you disciple non-believers. I'd be curious to see how you've seen that play out in your own life or how you've seen that play out in the lives of people you're talking to and uh and sharing things with. I want to go beyond Sundays now in a personal standpoint and just think about application, bringing the sermon home to our hearts, uh, bringing the ideas home to our hearts, and and really what does it look like to root out indifference in our life as a follower of Jesus? Now, here's what I mean: there's ways that we follow Jesus where we say, yes, I'm giving Jesus that part of my life, whether it's my sexuality or my finances or my um way that I've pursue relationships and forgive others, I really am giving that over to Jesus. I really am seeking to be a forgiving person. But maybe there's another place where you're indifferent to Jesus. I know Jesus wants me to give up that one thing, or maybe just even, I you know, he wants me to not just live on my phone or you name it, right? What is that thing that where we feel it's easier to kind of be indifferent to Jesus, to kind of keep him hands-off, detached, distant from our lives? How do we root out that indifference? And the way we root it out is actually by doing what he says. The way we root out our indifference to Jesus actually starts with obeying Jesus, maybe even before we're feeling it. Hear me on that. What if rooting out indifference on our in our lives toward Jesus means believing and doing what he says and listening to him, obeying him, before we even feel it or see any fruit in our lives about it? Now, here's what I mean: obedience can train us to be more uh full of praise toward God. We actually might obey God and His commands before we understand why they're bearing fruit in our lives. So here's an example. In Psalm 119, verse 7, it says, I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. Someone Psalm 119, seven. Now, here's what's happening here. This is really fascinating. It says, Here's what's going to happen, God. I'm going to respond to you with praise. My heart is actually going to be upright toward you. I'm going to praise you. And here's when that praise is going to occur. When I learn your righteous rules. Now, how do we learn God's righteous rules? How do we learn uh what it means to follow Jesus and to follow those righteous rules, to do what he says? We learn those righteous rules, one by reading them and understanding them for sure. Of course, when I read, be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. I'm learning about how God views anger. But I also and further learn when I obey. When I obey God in that area, when I learn that righteous rule, not only by coming to understand it at the thought level, but at the heart and life level, now something clicks, now something changes. Here's what I mean. When I learn your righteous rules, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And I'm having a conflict with someone in my life. I'm angry at them. It's it's maybe even wanting to fester. And I say, okay, I know that rule. I know what you've said about anger. And I am actually gonna, before I go to sleep tonight, I'm gonna pursue that person. I'm gonna share that I'm frustrated. I'm gonna ask for forgiveness. I'm gonna ask for them to consider asking me for forgiveness. I'm gonna work through this conflict with someone. As you practice that righteous rule, you're learning the ways of God. You're learning his righteous rules. And when that happens, our hearts bubble over with praise. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn of your righteous rules. So as we follow God, sometimes we might know what he says, but it's in the doing what he says that we actually come to learn why he calls us to that and how it bears fruit in our lives. He gives us that fuller picture. Maybe we see that relationship where we work through conflict becomes actually a beautiful friendship because we obeyed his righteous rules, even when it didn't make sense to us immediately or we didn't know what fruit would come from it. Now, what is it for you? What is God then if you're thinking about areas of interest? Difference in your life? What is God calling you to cut out of your life for him? It might be things that are in your life that are causing you to become detached or distant from God, disinterested in God. What would he call you to cut out of your life for him? Or on the contrary or on the inverse, what would God be calling you to add into your life for him? For me, it's just I want to be more in God's word. And uh I was thinking about, especially early in my faith, where I was reading the Bible so aggressively, like aggressively, uh, want to get be back in God's word in a way that looks like that, just devouring God's word, coming back across old verses and seeing new things. And and so here's about how we know we're walking out of our indifference when we do what God says, no matter the perceived costs. And it will, friends, as we are reminded or hopefully reminded, it always turns out better for us. Obeying God always turns out better for us than going our own way. So be reminded of that. And sometimes it just might look like putting into practice things before we see the full playing field of how he is actually going to use that obedience in our lives. Want to close then with the Beyond Sundays for church application and think about our Sunday service. Why do we always leave an opportunity for someone to start their relationship with Jesus in the service? Presumably on a Sunday, the bulk of the people there are already followers of Jesus. We've talked about that you are wanting to evangelize, wanting to remind of the gospel, also wanting to disciple, wanting to use that sermon to learn more about God, to be reminded of who he is, all of those things. But why would leave an opportunity for someone to start the relationship with Jesus in the service? Of course, it is so that someone has an opportunity for a clear next step of faith. Sometimes we just need that clear next step to take. Here's what you can do. You can do business with God right now, personally, in the spirit, in your heart, and here's a next step you can take to have someone follow up with you because we don't follow Jesus alone, and they can help you walk on that next journey. At hope, we've always had a value of removing every obstacle from the gospel for people. And so to give a clear next step is to give another opportunity to remove obstacles. Sometimes you hear a gospel presentation and you don't know where to go or what to do next. This gives you that opportunity to say you can start that relationship with Jesus. And here's a couple ways that you could move forward with that. Um, we also are encountering people that are coming into our services, just like in our lives, who are indifferent to God, indignant at God, ignorant of God, or in process on God. One of the beautiful things about uh creating a culture that's welcoming, authentic, clear, and engaging is that anyone can come into our church and and be in any of those spots and learn more about God and hopefully move toward being all in on Jesus. And the beautiful thing about the gospel is that God works by his spirit and he can move in someone's life on the spot to a point of decision, to a point of trust to start that relationship. I know for many of us that we actually needed that moment where someone said, here it's time to own your faith, or it's time to take a next step. And that clear next step really enabled someone to move forward in their relationship with Jesus. For others, it's been that gradual, you know, you almost just you don't know anything else, and then all of a sudden you're like, hey, I actually follow Jesus. He's central. I build my life on him, he I trust in him. I he's central to me. And even in those stories, though, it's really interesting. There is a moment where so often I've talked to you and I'll hear the stories of that I got to that place, and a lot of times it's high school, college where it's like I really decided to own my faith. And so just offering that opportunity for someone to start that relationship with Jesus reminds us of how we have had that same opportunity to come into a relationship with Jesus. We keep both realities at the forefront. And friends, that's really one of the big things we are about as a church. We want to see the twin cities in the north suburbs of the twin cities changed by the gospel of Jesus. We want to see more people start and strengthen their relationship with Jesus in the North Suburbs. That's what we're doing at Hope North Lakes. That's what we're about. And we want to be reminded of that at all times because that's how we locate ourselves in God's story. We're actually playing our part right now as a church in carrying that gospel forward, not only to our generation, but to the next generation. And so I'm just going to pray actually for that as we wrap the podcast here. Heavenly Father, we do just come before you and acknowledge that you can work in anyone's life to bring them to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We pray that you would do that more and more in our midst as a church, that you would help us to disciple non-believers, to invite them, to engage the gospel in ways they previously haven't, that we would see fruit in our lives as we follow you and as we step out in faith for you and obey you before it even makes sense, or before we even see you how you're going to use it. God, do far more abundantly than all that we ask or imagine, for we ask in Jesus' name. Friends, that wraps up this week on the Disappointingly Normal podcast. Thanks for joining us as always. The news is good, the grace is free. Have a great week.