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Sermon Reources available here...

                      

Interdependence Day! In the Old Testament there is a great story of a man who had an encounter with God. This encounter would change his life forever. This encounter would change the world around him forever.

The God encounter that he experienced is an example or pattern of what happen when God crosses your pathway of life. Isaiah was a prophet. If you were to read the first six chapters of Isaiah you would hear the words of a condemning prophet.

Chapter five alone is filled with Isaiah prophecies of doom and gloom. His favorite word is woe.

        “Woe to those who join house to house...”
        “Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink...”
        “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity and sin as if with a cart rope...”
        “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil...”
        “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes...”
        “Woe to men mighty at drinking wine...”
        “Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink...”

Isaiah spends his time pronouncing woe and warning on everyone else. He was doing God’s work. He was speaking for God but he had a problem. Isaiah had lost sight of God’s mission for him in the world.

He had become really good at telling bad news but something was wrong in his own relationship with God and with the people he lived with and around.

There are some scholars that have suggested that Isaiah enjoyed a friendship with King Uzziah. When the king died Isaiah began searching for answers. We all do that when something traumatic happens.

Often our greatest opportunities for change come when we experience some kind of a challenge or tragedy in our lives. An event that shakes our world will often cause us to reevaluate our lives and influences. This is what happened to Isaiah.

We are declaring our interdependence today. We are interdependent on God and others. Let me show you a simple plan of how interdependence works and why it is so important.

1. He looked upward. He saw God!

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”

You will never understand the vision of God until you see Him for yourself. You will never understand your purpose on this earth until you have an encounter with God.

God will go to great lengths to communicate with people he wants to use.

Moses: burning bush.
Balaam: donkey
Saul (Paul): blind for three days.
Jesus to the disciples: “Follow me.”

Have you ever seen Him? I’m not talking literally for we know that no man has seen God. But have you witnessed His moving in your life? Have you come face to face with God in a life changing way?

Have you had an encounter with God that is life-changing and lifestyle altering?

You need to see God.
You need to experience God.
You need to recognize that God wants to have an encounter with you.
He wants to communicate with you because He has something for you to do.

Do you know what God wants you to do? Do you have a sense of calling in your life that you are pursuing?

Elie Wiesel, the Jewish Nobel Prize laureate, has written, “The Jew may love God, or he may fight with God, but he may not ignore God.” How true! A person who genuinely desires truth cannot ignore the reality of God. Times of Discovery, July 1996, p. 1

I call on your to look upward today and see God.

There’s another step that Isaiah took.

2. He looked inward. He saw himself!

Isaiah had become proficient at pronouncing woe’s on everybody else but after encountering God he only has one woe to say.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

This is critical before you can ever be of value to others. If you have not allowed God to change you from the inside out you are missing something huge in your life. You see God has a plan for you.

“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.” Psalm 33:11

        When you see God you will not want to see yourself.
        When you see God you will realize your own inadequacies.
        When you see God you know how bad you need a Savior.
        When you see God something will have to change in your life.

Did you notice the words of verse 5? "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

When you see God and see yourself and allow God to do His work in your life you are ready to accept the challenge of interdependence.

3. He looked outward. He saw others!

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

This has to be one of my favorite passages of the Bible. It is the message of the Bible in eight short verses.

It is the message of confession, cleansing and commissioning.

It is the message of height, depth and breadth. (He saw God up high and saw into the deepest parts of his heart and then he saw the world in need.)

What I am about to share with you is the heart of this message.

If you have experienced an upward vision and inward vision that is for real you will have no way to resist the outward vision for a world in need.

The life of the church is the heart of God and the heart of God is to serve a broken world. When Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist and washed the disciple’s feet he reminded them and us that only he can wash away our sin. The church cannot live when the heart of God is not beating within her. God’s heartbeat is to seek and to save that which is lost.

The church exists to serve as the body of Christ, and it is through this commitment to serve that we are forced to engage our culture. The serving that we called to requires direct contact. You cannot wash the feet of a dirty world if you refuse to touch it.

On the surface, you might look at this church by purely human standards declare it to be an incredible success. We have nearly tripled in attendance in the last three years. The income and giving has increased. Staff has been hired. New programs have been put in place. We are out of parking and out of room on many Sundays. Please don’t rejoice.

We have a calling that is clear. In the midst of all the momentum of numbers and people coming it gets a little obscure. We start dreaming of the big time: big buildings and big this and big that but somewhere in all of the hoopla if you listen real closely you can hear the voices of people all over this city calling out for help.

They are in need. There lives are in jeopardy. Marriages haven’t just failed the institution of marriage is not even important. Homes are divided. Children are being abused, abandoned and left to raise themselves. Drug and alcohol abuse leave wrecked lives and hurting lost souls who have so lost touch with reality that they can’t even help themselves.

The question that has to be asked is not are we growing as a church but are we bearing the kind of fruit that God is pleased with? The life cycle of a church is like a bell curve. Decline begins right after the highest point. In a church’s peak moment, she has the most people, the most money. We are in the gravest danger right where we are at this very moment in our churches history.

We have some huge choices to make. They are personal choices. They are choices that include hearing the voice of God saying to us, “Who will go for us and who will I send.”

Do you remember when the only time you ever heard that preached was on missionary day?

I have said this and said this repeatedly and I’m going to keep on saying it until we believe it. WE LIVE ON THE MISSION FIELD. The question is not do we live on the mission field but the question comes ringing from God Himself:

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

Erwin McManus: “The indictment that we must receive is that the Chirstian fatih as we express it is no longer seen as a viable spiritual option. Masses gave the church a try and left wanting. We accuse them of not being willing to surrender to God; they accuse of not knowing Him. People are rejecting Christ because of the church! Once we were called Christians by an unbelieving world, and now we call ourselves Christians and the world calls us hypocrites. Is it possible that it possible that it wasn’t the nation that was becoming dangerously secular but the church? We were neither relevant nor transcendent. We are the founders of the secular nation.”

If you have come to this church from some other church looking for a church that will meet all your needs I may have some bad news for you. While we are going to seek to meet the needs of unchurched people and the needs of new Christians who need to be discipled and taught the word of God, we are probably not going to meet every little need of the overfed, over-preached, over-worshipped, over-saturated believer who should be worried about how to reach others instead of consuming more for themselves. We can meet the need that most Christians in America have and that is finding a place for you to interact with the unchurched and give you a chance to share the good news of the gospel.

It’s time to quit worrying about getting fed and time to start exercising your faith. Live it out in the office, the classroom, the plant or factory, the store, and the restaurant.

I think it might do us well to remember that 60% of Americans are overweight or even obese. Is it possible that is also true in the arena of personal spirituality? Are we too much about getting fed and to little about using the gifts that God has given us to reach out to others?

Isaiah saw God, He saw himself and then he saw others.

I know that we are celebrating those who serve today but the point has to be made that we have a huge unemployment problem. There is a job for you to do.

We are celebrating today by saying thanks to all those who serve as unpaid servants in the ministry of this church. WE ARE INTERDEPENDENT on them. This community and the people we currently reach out to as well as those we will touch in the future are depending on all of us to do our part.

At the close of this service we ask you to visit the big tent in the front yard and look at the ministry opportunities that are available for you to be a part of. I ask that you would please take a few minutes to walk through the tent and then prayerfully consider what God wants you to do.

The Declaration of Interdependence

When in the course of church growth it becomes necessary for one people to strengthen the spiritual bands which connect them together and to assume the rightful responsibilities to which the laws of God direct them, it is only proper that they should declare the causes which compel them to meet the needs of this community.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all Christians are endowed by their Creator with certain indispensable gifts, that among these are apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, gifts of healing, helps and administration. Given are these gifts for the common good. Also wisdom, knowledge and faith, he gives them to each, just as He determines; given to edify, build up even this Church, instituted by God, Who grants thePowers to each to perform their services.

The arrangement of parts in the Body of Christ are necessary to sustain and grow, and critical to the joy of each follower of Christ. We must utilize these gifts to fulfill Christ's mission: making disciples of all nations, His Kingdom a current reality.We, therefore, the delegates of the Interdependent Party Convention, fellow citizens and members of God's household, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the Universe do, in the name and authority of Jesus Christ, the Chief Cornerstone, In Him the whole building is joined together, hereby declare that this church is, and ought to be, Interdependent, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.

I would invite those ministry leaders who have been asked to come forward and sign this interdependence document.

2004/06/27