The one about the Pente-Costs

Yesterday i preached a message at Mercy Vineyard and figured some people might be interested in reading it here:

Leading up to the preach one of the people who asked me to preach said it was Pentecost.

Then as i was preparing my preach and decided to check, Google told me that Pentecost is on 15th May, a week from now.

So i decided to compromise and kinda speak on Pentecost, but also kinda not speak about Pentecost.

As famed theologian Jack Handey once taught us, sometimes to understand a word you need to look at the meaning behind the two words that make it up:

Pente meaning five… as in Penteteuch, meaning five… um… teuchs?

And Cost meaning Cost.

So today i want to briefly look at 5 Costs of Being a Christ Follower

i put this to you in the form of a theorem: So not so much “thus sayeth the Lord” but more “here are some thoughts i had” in the hope that you will make like good Bereans and hold these thoughts against scripture and wrestle with these ideas and see if they hold up.

i invited four people to read the whole of Acts 2 and i don’t want to quote the whole passage here because it is long but it is worth opening up and reading before you continue, although here are the last few verses:

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke breadin their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Luke 9.23 was another foundation verse for this talk. Where Jesus talking to His disciples says to them, “If anyone wants to follow Me they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow Me.” 

I: THE COST OF LOSS OF PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY

i imagine this might be seen as a bit of a controversial one because we grow up in a world that suggests completely the opposite and we are thoroughly conditioned to believe the lie that “This is all about me!” 

Right? Maybe it’s just me, but whenever i think of life, i tend to think of it as the story of me… Who am i? What am i doing? Where is my money coming from? Who am i in relationship with? Who is offending me? How does God work in my life?

Yet Jesus clearly says, “Deny yourself” and in effect He is calling us to refocus and He is saying to us, “Actually this story is about Me!”

II: THE COST OF PERSONAL EXCLUSION

The idea that i cannot be affected by or feel any responsibility to affect others. This is kind of the idea of living in a bit of a bubble. My journey is unrelated to the journeys of all of those around me. This is particularly true in South Africa where we have to adopt a certain detachment from those living in absolute poverty, because otherwise we might feel compelled to actively do something about it.

But in Acts 1.8 we read, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the world.” 

In Matthew 28, we see Jesus saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” 

We have been called into an interconnectedness with other people where our lives are tied to other peoples. i cannot live disconnectedly.

III: THE COST OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Jump to Acts 4 and you see a similar passage to Acts 2 describing the early church behaviour:

³² All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.³³ With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrectionof the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all³⁴ that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales ³⁵ and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

There were no needy persons among them. Just take a moment on that one and dream of what it looks like for your family, your community, your country.

Then in Acts 6 we see the choosing of the seven as a result of some widows who were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. And it says that they chose Stephen: “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” as part of this team. The same Stephen who we see shortly afterwards being stoned for his faith in God.

What is interesting to note is that with a task as simple and some would say unspiritual as distributing food to the widows, the person chosen to head things up was full of faith and the Holy Spirit. It looks like they were really taking it seriously. Whereas typically in churches we would reserve that kind of esteemed role for the pastor or worship leader or something. We would let anyone take care of the money and distribution of resources.

In South Africa at the moment as 20 years on we still live in the huge and very real aftermath and debris of apartheid… if a very real part of the church is about reaching out to the marginalised and least of these then i believe it is IMPOSSIBLE for us both as individuals and church communities to not be engaging in these conversations and actions of RACE and RECONCILIATION and RESTITUTION…

Much of the church in South Africa was fast asleep during apartheid and we cannot afford to be caught doing that now. How are you [and your community] engaging with justice issues in South Africa right now?

Also just as a bit of a side note, i CANNOT see Jesus showing up this week, calling all the Christ-followers together and saying, “You know, I’m really disappointed in all of you that you didn’t put more effort into the war of being able to hit your own children.” i do however suspect that if He did pitch up in human form this week and gather us all together, that He might have something to say about us all sipping lattes while people in Khayelitsha live in abject poverty that doesn’t really seem to be concerning us actively too much.

IV: THE COST OF PERSONAL CALLING

i strongly suspect that one of the costs of following Jesus might be the need to let go of the idea slash idol of personal calling.

i am reminded of the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt. The time comes for God’s people to be set free and Moses gets a personal calling from God. Aaron might possibly get one as well as he becomes the mouthpiece for Moses. But for the hundreds of thousands of other Israelites, all they got was a text message in the morning saying: Hey we’re leaving, are you coming?

Or something like that. But it’s a great example and there are many throughout the bible of God calling individuals to do specific works for Him, but the majority of the people, being given a collective calling that related to all of them.

Let me spell it out for you. As a Christ follower you have been called [collectively] to:

[A] Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind [yes, your mind, Christians are allowed to think/reason/wrestle/engage and in fact encouraged to]

[B] Love your neighbour as yourself. And who is your neighbour? Everyone, including your enemy.

[C] Forgive everyone – in Matthew 6 we are cautioned that if we refuse to forgive others then God cannot forgive us.

[D] Be witnesses as we read earlier. 

[E] Make disciples and baptise them and teach them to obey everything Jesus taught us.

[F] The parable of the sheep and goats reminds us that we are called to look after the marginalised in very practical ways, taking care of their needs, as a reflection of everything God has done for us.

And there are more. But those are definitive ways in which you have been called as a follower of Jesus. Finish those and then i imagine God will give you a personal calling.

But the world and the mindset we have been indoctrinated into caused us to glorify the idea of personal calling whereas God calls His church to be the church: the body and the bride of Christ.

[i will add a little p.s. to this which may feel a touch contradictory, but i don’t think it is. The idea that before Jesus died He said He would send the Holy Spirit to guide and counsel and live in us – Christ in us, the hope of glory. And so within that there is space for the Holy Spirit to nudge and direct and call which may come across as personal calling. i love this passage i discovered recently in Exodus 31:

Then the Lord said to Moses, ² “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, ³ and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— ⁴ to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, ⁵ to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.

We tend to think of the Holy Spirit inspiring sermons and worship moments, but here we see it being used to inform the arts – and wow could the sphere of Christian Arts use that right now? But God’s Spirit touching people for specific moments and activities.]

So maybe there is space within the body for God to work through us individually, but the chief call on every believer is a church-to-be-church call.

[V] THE COST OF A PERSONAL HEART SALVATION

Finally i think we are challenged to give up the idea of Christianity being about “giving my heart to Jesus” so that one day when i die i can “go to heaven”.

We see four relationships involving man in the garden in Genesis:

# Man and God

# Man and Woman [Family]

# Man and Man [Mankind]

# Man and Nature

When man turns his back on God and rejects His rule and reason, each of those four relationships are deeply damaged and i don’t need to convince you of how messed up they are. Pick up a newspaper.

But the story of the Bible is the journey towards repairing those relationships and bringing them back into harmony.

When we choose to follow Jesus, we are not responding to simply giving our heart to Him, but we acknowledge that we have been called into a holistic salvation where we have given our heart to Jesus, but we have also given Him our:

• Our mind
• Our wallet
• Our engagement with the planet
• Our lifestyle
• Our relationships
• Our attitudes

And so on…

So Pente-Cost… 5 Costs of being a follower of Jesus.

Personal Individuality

Personal Exclusion

Personal Responsibility

Personal Calling

Personal Heart Salvation

Which one of these do you find has felt like the biggest cost for you? Do you feel like God has been challenging you about any of them particularly? Come and share some thoughts in the comments below…