Luke 4:14-21 (The
Message)
Genesis 39:1-23 (NIV)
(preached at three
services of Brook
Hill United
Methodist Church,
September 4, 2011)
Ten Sundays ago, I was in Nicaragua
with four other men from Brook
Hill Church.
We had asked God to break our hearts for Nicaragua, and our hearts were
breaking.
Team Nicaragua
(as we called it) grew out of BH’s Tuesday early morning
men’s group, and after two years of talking about it, we were finally there.
In five full days of ministry, we visited nine churches and
preached at seven of them. We visited a prison and a jail to share Christ. We
waded across a river to help with a feeding program at a village with several
hundred free-range pigs. We visited a beautiful children’s home run by folks who
used to live in Frederick.
Nicaragua is the second poorest
country in the Western hemisphere, and our hearts were broken by the extreme
poverty. On Wednesday night we stopped at a small supermarket. I noticed a woman standing on the front steps with a piece of
paper in her hand. I asked Irving
our translator to talk with her. She had a prescription for asthma medicine for
her child, and the cost was less than two dollars. She was waiting for someone
to see her need and to help her. So we paid for the prescription.
Our hearts were broken by the poverty, but we were also glad for
the joy we saw on the faces of Nicaraguan believers.
It was wonderful to hear them sing as
they worshiped, and to feel a spiritual kinship with them because we serve the
same Savior and partake of the same Holy Spirit. The number of devoted Christians in Nicaragua is
increasing rapidly, and much of that growth is seen in thousands
of little neighborhood churches among the poor.
We donated almost $3000 in money and material to various churches:
3 piano keyboards; one P.A. system; $320 for two beautiful wooden doors and a
window for a church building that still has a packed-earth floor; 120 Spanish
language Bibles; $300 worth of soccer balls, softball equipment and toys for
kids; 30 plastic chairs for seating in a church sanctuary; five mattresses for
a pastor’s family to sleep on, and more.
In Nicaragua
we were very aware that God is building His kingdom. He is building His kingdom
among the poor and neglected peoples of the earth.
In fact, God is building His kingdom wherever people bow to the
Lordship of Jesus, and take up their cross to follow Him. This is not some
fantasy kingdom, or a kingdom that we enter after we die. This is the kingdom
that Jesus announced when He quoted Isaiah (61:1-2): “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news
to the poor, and freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the
blind, to release the oppressed, to set the burdened and battered free, to
announce ‘This is God’s year to act!’” [Luke 4:18-19 (NIV & The Message)]
This morning I want to think with you about God’s kingdom, and I
want us to think about the Upside Down nature of that kingdom.
God’s kingdom is an Upside Down Kingdom. It operates under
different rules than the nations of this world. There’s really something subversive about it.
Jesus said that in this kingdom the last will be first, and the
first will be last.
He said that, to enter this kingdom, we must become as little children.
Jesus said that it’s very hard for a rich person to enter this
kingdom.
He said that if I want to be great in this kingdom, I must become
the servant of all.
God’s kingdom is an Upside
Down Kingdom.
It’s a kingdom where forgiveness is extended 70 times 7 – 490 times.
It’s a kingdom where thieves and prostitutes and broken people are
welcomed in from the streets to sit at the King’s table. I want to be a part of
that kind of kingdom!
God’s kingdom is an Upside
Down Kingdom.
Jesus said this kingdom is like a pearl of great price – it’s
worth selling all you have to obtain it.
He said it’s like a mustard seed – so
small that you ignore it until it grows to become the biggest plant in the
garden.
We get a glimpse of the Upside
Down Kingdom
in the life of Joseph, the son of Jacob,
in the book of Genesis. Here was a young man hated by his brothers, sold to
slave-traders who brought him down to Egypt.
(Genesis 39) 2 The LORD was with
Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his
Egyptian master. 3 When
his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him
success in everything he did, 4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his
attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his
care everything he owned. 5 From
the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the
LORD blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The
blessing of the LORD was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and
in the field. 6 So
Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did
not concern himself with anything except the food he ate…
God prospered Joseph and gave him success. But it’s a very strange,
upside-down kind of success. As far as his family knew, he was dead. Joseph was
obeying God in a place hidden from almost everybody. Only the people in
Potiphar’s house knew of him at all.
Some of you may be in a similar place today. You are faithful to
God in a hidden place where no one seems to notice. I want to encourage you – God
sees your faithfulness. He is with you, and He calls you successful as you
serve Him there.
Then Joseph’s situation goes from bad to worse. He’s falsely
accused of sexual assault and thrown into prison. Again, what kind of success
is this?
(Genesis 39) 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison... But
while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and
granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. 22 …the warden put Joseph
in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all
that was done there. 23 The
warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD
was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
This doesn’t really look like success: Joseph is still a slave, and
now he’s in prison. He is even more hidden from view than he was before.
Some of God’s most faithful people labor all their lives in hidden
places. There is no earthly glory where they serve.
We met some of them in Nicaragua. We met Roberto, a faithful
man who has now started three different churches. He’s in his mid-40s and has
never had a bank account. If his parishioners can find work, they earn a dollar
or two a day. He will never be seen as successful by the Trumps and Kardassians
of the world. But God is with him. God sees him, and calls him a success.
As followers of Jesus, we are citizens
of this kingdom. It’s a spiritual kingdom, and it takes awhile to get our
bearings in this upside down world. God wants to reproduce the character of
Jesus in us. He wants to change our way
of thinking. He wants to change our attitudes. He wants to live within our
spirits, changing our very nature so that
we are available to iHimmHim and
useful for His kingdom purposes.
How will we learn to live as God’s
people in this Upside Down World? We need
all the help we can get!
God has provided a powerful blueprint
for us in the life of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit of God is our living and
active teacher. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. It will help us if we take some time at the
beginning of every day to listen to what God’s Spirit is saying to us…
Right now I’m working on GENEROSITY. I’m
a miser by birth, but I want to be a generous man. God has given me several
friends who model generosity well.
My friend Chris tells me about a man: when
he eats at a restaurant, the amount of his tip for the waitress is the same
amount as his meal.
And my friend Dan tells me about a
young couple: every time they go to buy groceries,
they buy an equal amount of groceries
to give away. That challenges me! This young couple is also saving money to buy
a house. Their plan is to buy 2 houses, and give one away to a needy family.
This is one example of the kind of
radical living that God may call us to when we really take up our crosses and
begin to follow Jesus. Are you ready for it? God help us!
Each Sunday, we pray the Lord’s Prayer
together. There’s a phrase from it that I want us to pray together right now, as
we think about the place God has for us in His kingdom: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!”
