Getting the Job Done // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Part 2

Christianityworks Official Podcast

There’s an old proverb – never put things off until tomorrow, that you can do today. Jesus was a master at that. In just three and a half years, He turned the world completely upside down.

A Team Player

Other people can be such a pain in the neck, have you noticed that? I don’t mean you I mean other people. It’s always those other people isn‘t it? Its never you its never me we always blame someone else. They’re the one that’s being difficult; they’re the one that’s got it so wrong again! We’re so full of ourselves aren’t we?

We imagine you and I, that we’re indispensable, that no one else can do it as well as you and I can. If you want a job done right, you just have to do it yourself, and to some extent that is true other people are a pain in the neck sometimes and deep down we’ll even admit that sometimes … ahh yeah ok, sometimes, yeah sometimes it is me. Sometimes it is you, and all the more reason then just do it then yourself! It’s so much easier without the other people and ok you don’t get quite as much done but there are far fewer headaches.

Now we don’t think like that all the time, but working with other people while it can be rewarding it can also be challenging, we’re looking this week at how to live an extraordinary life. We’re doing that by following Jesus around a bit like one of those twelve disciples, and watching Him, listening to Him, learning from Him, about how He lived His extraordinary life.

On our last program we saw that the very first thing He did in His public ministry was to submit to God through baptism. One of the next things He did was to build a team. He was baptised, He suffered in the wilderness and then He began proclaiming the Good News: "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near."

Well that’s all well and good, but the reason that there was no telly evangelists back then is that there were no tellies, there was no newspapers, there was no radio, there was no T.V, no internet, no mass medium of any sort. In fact, there weren’t even sound systems or bull horns to speak to a large crowd! Nothing. Just Jesus, this carpenters son from Nazareth, the self styled Messiah who’d come to save the world. His ministry was about walking the dusty highways and byways of first century Israel and building a following. That was the reality and to do that He needed some help.

So here it is, here is what He did. Mathew chapter 4, beginning at verse 18:

As He walked by the sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers Simon who is also called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting their nets into the sea for they were fishermen. And He said to them, look follow me and I’ll make you fishers of people. Immediately they left their nets and they followed Him. As He went from there He saw two other brothers James the son of Zeberdee and his brother John in the boat with their father Zeberdee mending their nets. And He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and they followed Jesus.

Now this was totally extraordinary in two regards. Firstly the rabbi went and called His followers, generally this was completely the other way around. You see some Rabbi’s were just a bit more prestigious than others, so young men only men, would try and climb the social ladder by following the highest pegged Rabbi in the social scale that they possibly could.

So it’s a bit like trying to get into Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard to study a PHD. They’re far more prestigious establishments than where I studied, you have to apply lots do only a few get in. That’s how it was with the most recognised of Rabbi’s. Whole families would caught them to try and leverage their social network to try and get their sons in as follows, as disciples – that’s what they were called – of the most prestigious Rabbi, because that would advance their prospects.

First extraordinary thing about Jesus team building approach was that He called disciples to follow Him, instead of the other way around where the disciples applied for kind of like an apprenticeship with him. And secondly, He went for fishermen to start with. Salt of the earth guys to be sure but very working class, very down the social order, very well … you know, fishermen. Smelly, not that educated, certainly not that well regarded and they came not from Judea, not from Jerusalem but from Galilee like Jesus. Really?!

You can just see how the religious establishment in Jerusalem the chaps, the chaps trust, would have looked down their nose at these uneducated bumpkins. I caught the bus the other day and ran into a man who I’d known years before so I sat next to him and for the next 20 minutes or so he told me about all the important people he’d been having dinner with, he was just about to head off to the US to attend Harvard, he’d just had this well known Politian stay at his place … it went on and on and on. He didn’t ask me about me, once! So I didn’t offer.

Sometimes I think that we think that a team if you’re going to have one at all has to be full of classy people: people who have their act together. People who are well known, well regarded, people who are rung or three above us on the social ladder. A few rungs higher, so that by associating with them we can climb up a bit further, but not too far away that they’re out of reach.

Sometimes I think that we think that we have to go and chase after people and grovel to them and follow them, surround ourselves with winners not losers. Jesus turned that whole thing completely on its head. He didn’t have people grovel to Him, He went and chose His team. He surrounded Himself with real salt of the earth people, almost deliberately picking the anti-establishment team. Tax collectors to sinners, the lot of them!

See Jesus didn’t go out there and pick the obviously "A" Team, He built an "A" Team. And what makes the Jesus model of team selection and team building so amazing is that this rag tag team of uneducated bumpkins founded what we today call the church, to which a couple of billion people still belong two thousand years on!

Now that’s an extraordinary life. Did having those twelve disciples have it’s moments? Absolutely! Remember once His disciples failed to heal a boy and Jesus exclaimed “how long must I be with this faithless and perverse generation?” sure it was frustrating! Sure these twelve guys required Jesus to pour Himself into them, Sure one of them even betrayed him. But Jesus life was made all the more extraordinary by this down to earth heart desire to part off to lead to disciple a team, no matter what it cost Him.

His life lives on still today through the Church all because He was passionate about the team, passionate about a community. Sounds like the makings of an extraordinary life doesn’t it? What do you think?

A Job to Do

Now not only was Jesus a team player, but He was focused. He new He had a job to do, and that’s what we’re going to look at next. A great part of that was preaching and teaching. So, how do you kick off a career as a preacher? That was the challenge for Jesus. He was an absolute unknown. He was poor, not rich. He came from rural not very upmarket Nazareth, not from religion central Jerusalem. He was a carpenter, not a highly qualified Rabbi. He had all those rumours of an illegitimate birth hanging over His head from His childhood. And then there was the stigma of Herod killing all those innocent children under two, because of Jesus.

See Jesus had a lot to contend with, and He had three and a half years to tell the world the Good News, to build a team that would go on to become the foundation the church for several millennia and to die and to rise again for you and me.

Now, when you think about it that’s a pretty tall order and a pretty short period of time. So how do you go about from being an unknown to becoming a respected teacher? Well oddly enough in my own little way, that’s something of a journey I’ve been on and I can tell ya … it ain’t easy! It involves a lot of hard work and a lot, I mean, a tonne of help and anointing and provision and empowerment by God. So let’s have a look at how Jesus went about it. Mathew chapter 4, beginning at verse 17:

From that time Jesus began to proclaim ‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!’ Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought to Him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and pains and demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics He cured them all! And great crowds followed Him from Galilee to the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and even from beyond the Jordan.

So, how does Jesus do it? Well to put it bluntly, He hit’s the road. He puts himself out there. He starts to proclaim to declare to preach what was he preaching, what was he declaring? Anyone who’s a Christian would have heard these words over and over again so that won’t be anything new. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."

But to the people listening, what He was preaching and proclaiming and heralding and saying and exhorting was outrageously radical! Here they were in this back water of the Roman Empire, this nowheresville if I can call it that, miles and light-years away from the seat of power in Rome. These people where less than pawns in the emporia’s chess game I mean had it suited him he could have whipped them all out and turned their precious farm land into a car park and a shopping mall! I mean that was the reality.

They’d been living this same subsistence life, just surviving boring insignificant little lives somehow believing that somehow because they were God’s chosen people, maybe one day He’d send another King like David to set them free or if not when they died they might go to a better life although the Sadducees who were the religious leaders and the social elites, they didn’t believe that. So who could be certain that if you were one of those poor uneducated farmers, or carpenters living there in bumpkins-ville Galilee and along comes this lunatic. Okay He was a very articulate lunatic and He starts crying out Repent! Just like that John the Baptist guy and look what happened to him! I mean, they chopped his head off!

Repent. What does that mean? it means change your mind. It means turn around, it means stop living the way you’re living. When you think about it that’s just what the prophets of old had been telling Gods chosen people but other than perhaps John the Baptist, God hadn’t sent one of them for 300-400 years! "Repent! The Kingdom of God has come near."

Hang on a minute. God’s in the temple over there in Jerusalem how could He possibly come near to us in Galilee? I mean only the high priest gets to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year and that’s a big deal on the Yom Kippur on the Day of Atonement. How can the Kingdom of God possibly have come near to us? Here in Galilee? Impossible. This was an outrageous message and yet they listened. He got their attention. He was pulling massive crowds. Why? Because not only was He proclaiming good albeit unsettling and confusing news, He was healing every disease so they brought their sick and lame from far and wide.

See the thing that got Him noticed was the power of God. God’s anointing on His ministry. Without that there’s no way He could have done what He did, and certainly not in such a short period of time - three and a half years - so what are you and I learn about Jesus, something that made His life extraordinary? He left the confines of His safe little carpenters shop in Nazareth, He hit the dusty road and went and did what God had called Him to do and what God had anointed Him to do. Was it safe? No! It got Him killed in fact. He always knew that’s how it would turn out. But He did it anyway. I saw a great Tweet the other day and it said this:

Many Christians worship on the alter of safety before they ask, ‘is this the will of God?’ They’ll ask, ‘is it safe?’

You and I aren’t called to precisely what Jesus was called to do in precisely the same way and yet in our own ways according to the gifts and the abilities and the resources that God’s given us, according to the place He’s put us in, we’re called to do exactly that. To get out of the safe comfort zone our own comfortable little carpenters shop whatever that is, and hit the track Jack, and go and tell people about Jesus.

And maybe you’re a builder or an accountant or a cleaner or a counsellor or a web developer or what are you? Well we’re using that. You and I are called to get out into this dangerous place and go and tell people the Good News. Not necessarily as preachers, perhaps a service as encouragers, as people who pull along side someone and proclaim Christ not with our mouths necessarily but with our hearts, with our hands, and with our lives.

What sort of life would Jesus have lived had He stayed silent in the confines of the carpenters shop in Nazareth, extraordinary? I don’t think so.

Gift Based Ministry

Over these past few programs we’ve seen that Jesus overcame His past which involved a pretty rocky start in life, we’ve seen that He drew a lot of His power from that fact that He humbled Himself and submitted Himself to His father in Heaven. We’ve seen that despite the initial cost to Him, He was a real team player and it’s the team He built that ended up impacting this world. And we saw how focused He was on mission and objectives. Some great insights there, if you missed any of them I’ll share with you at the end of today’s program how you can catch them again online.

But we’re going to finish off today’s message with an observation about how Jesus used His gifts to have an impact, because today in particular we’re seeing how He went about getting the job done, being that team player being focused on His mission and right now as we’re about to see, by using His gifts and abilities in the most extraordinary way. Lets pick up the story again, Mathew chapter 4, verses 23 - 25:

Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people so His fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought to Him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and pains and demoniacs and epileptics and paralytics, and he cured them. Great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis Jerusalem, Judea and from even beyond the Jordan.

Now you’re sitting there thinking, well, I don’t have the power to heal people, I don’t have the power to cast out demons, if I did I guess great crowds would follow me too! But I don’t, so they won’t. So Berni, what are you banging on about here? Am I right? Sure I am! We all think that. But let me tell you what I think are the two most powerful, most powerful words in that passage. And they’re not the words about curing every disease, every sickness; they’re not about His fame spreading or great crowds following Him. You want to know what I think the two most powerful words in the passage are? I think that they’re the first two words … "Jesus went”.

And the reason they’re so powerful is that unless He’d gone, unless He’d gotten up off the sofa, left His comfortable safe little carpenters shop and gone out throughout Galilee which by the way was the immediate surrounding area or region in which He lived, then none of what He did would have been done! And none of what He achieved would have been achieved! None of these people would have been healed, God wouldn’t’ have revealed Himself and it’s pretty certain you and I today, 2000 years on wouldn’t be talking about this Jesus. Would you agree?

It all happened because Jesus went. And would you please notice the other thing about this with me, He didn’t go to some far flung remote impossible place to start with. He didn’t’ even go up to Jerusalem in the beginning, He started in His own home region. Sometimes I think, that we think that in order to do something worthwhile for God we kind of have to set sail and go to the farthest place on this Earth.

Now sure, some people are called to do just that and we call them Missionaries but far more people are called to use their gifts, their gifts and abilities that God’s given them right in the place where they live, where they work where they socialise. It’s about just taking whatever we have in our hands and using it to benefit others.

I know some people who sit there and say, "Well how come God doesn’t use me to have an impact in other peoples lives?’ In my experience is that God is always up to something and if we’re not involved its probably a whole bunch more about us not going that God not doing.

There’s a great guy who works in Christian media in the UK is name is David Letterhue. He’s just one of those good guys, recently he tweets this:

The winds of God are always blowing, but you need to set the sails.

It’s about hoisting our sails, its about throwing our hat in the ring, its about getting up off the sofa and going and just using what we have to hand. It can be as simple as knowing that your neighbours just out of hospital and fronting up with a meal and taking it over to their house. It can be as simple as offering to have a cup of coffee with someone at work who’s looking a bit down and distracted.

Ok maybe, God hasn’t’ given us the gift of healing the way He did to Jesus, but when we take stock of the gifts and abilities and natural strengths and motivations and resources that we actually do have, we start to realise how much God really has given us.

I was sharing this story of the ministry of Christianity Works, this ministry that I work in producing these very radio programs with a group of business people just the other day. It’s an amazing story, from nothing to a weekly audience of around, well, over 10 million. They were impressed. Hey I’m totally gob smacked every time I think about it or tell people about it! But my point to them is always this: we have a massive team let me see … eight people world wide, a whole organisation plus a handful of dedicated volunteers. None of us, none of us is anything very special at all!

We just got together, we just each threw out our gifts in the ring, our abilities and our resources, we just believe that God was calling us and there’s something. We took some financial leaps of faith I have to tell you, other people might call them risks, and off we went. Did we have a strategic plan? … oh well I guess … but we never imagined that God would do what He’s done. We never dreamed for a moment that we’d be sharing the Good News of Jesus with so many people around the globe. The numbers and all the glory and the impact belong to God, because He did it, He’s still doing it, not us. We just kind of figured that if Jesus went, well maybe we could follow along after Him? Maybe we could step out of our comfort zones and go too?

So let me ask you, in your life, right where you live and where you work today, what are the opportunities, who are the people that you can go to with a helping hand? With your natural abilities and motivations and make a positive impact in their lives?

So exactly what are you waiting for?