Edward Klink: The Faithful Presence of the Church - Biola Chapel

good morning if you have your bibles turn to matthew 5. it's great to be with you today thanks for coming on a friday evening imagine that jesus speaks to the church in matthew 5 and i don't want us to miss this and we could spend a ton of time in matthew 5 13 through 16 and we could look at all the nuances and all the meanings of the words but i'm going to pick on one thing i'm going to reflect on that for a few minutes and i want to come back and end in this

text and jesus says in matthew 5 13 you are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses the saltiness how can it be made salty again it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot he goes on to say that you are the light of the world a town built on a hill cannot be hidden neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house in the same way jesus says

let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven this text is a call to the church and i'm not gonna have time to define what all this means i'm not gonna have time to define what we exactly mean by church i'm not gonna even make a huge appeal in this moment to kind of exhort you to be involved because i just want to just in summary say the bible is assuming you're involved so there's a whole host of other issues we'd have to address if you're

not and i want to say that with with with love and grace that god knows your situation your circumstances and the reasons why for some of us church life has not gone well or been easy i want to assume that i want to be careful about that i spoke on this uh a couple weeks ago at a at the chapel service for the new students and i actually had a parent come up after me i made a big appeal for these freshmen coming in to go to local church i had a parent come up to

me afterwards kind of weeping and a bit angry with me that wasn't a good start to the school year for their student and i think she was concerned that i was making this appeal to the church that just wasn't considering the fact that there are bad churches out there that are at least there are examples of churches that make mistakes and pastors that do things that are inappropriate and have control issues and as i talked to this mom and this dad i i addressed that there those circumstances exist there are times where you need to

pull out and find something new or just take a break in some sense from an abusive situation but i think the exception proves the rule that the church is where you're supposed to be in these passages though it's interesting how quickly we focus on the words salt and light and we can spend a lot of time there in fact one one aspect of salt that is important is that salt adds a both a positive and a negative effect and i think this richly amplifies this text salt has a positive effect that it adds flavor and

i'm going to play on that later in this in this in this service but it has a it has another effect in that it of it helps prevent decay just interesting things to think about out of these metaphors that you are being described as and god is calling you toward but we could spend all our time on those words salt and light and miss two words i think that are functioning synonymously that becomes so significant in this text notice he says you are the salt of the earth and he says you are the light of

the world what do those words mean maybe i won't even ask you this way what impressions come to mind when you hear the word world are they negative do you immediately kind of get nervous and concerned about the moral influences of the world this becomes an important question in fact i'm convinced this may be one of the most important questions we ask tozer is right when he says what we think when we hear the word god is the most important thought we're going to think and we spend a lot of time at this school for

good reason making sure that you have a theology of god that connects to everywhere in life that's why i love biola because that isn't just about this it's not just about god in bible classes or in chapel but in the sports teams right or in or in the general education classes or in the science laboratories god is the center of all things and we have to work hard to make sure that he is at the center of all things what we think about god is significant for how we're going to function in this world everything

we do everything we believe will be affected by what we think when we hear the word god but i've always kind of wondered if i could have asked tozer what's number two what are some other words or thoughts that would be important for me to define if i'm going to engage in life well i wonder if the world is one of those what i think when i hear the word world my reaction my paradigm is massively affected by what i think about that in fact i want to even this this morning just for the few

minutes we had is try to connect what my colleagues the last couple chapels before me have tried to do with real engagement they have posed dr birding talked about the glory of god being the motivation for what we do dr thomas talks about passion a passion for the gospel and for god that overcomes our own insecurities dr lundy talked about grace and the king and the servant these radical pictures of god that are true and biblical that should propel us to act a certain way but i think there's sometimes a disconnect because we can be

motivated by our theology of god to action but when we actually leave this building or leave this campus or leave the safety of our christian environment and enter into the world we meet something different and your paradigm for thinking about that world determines how well you connect your passion for god with the actual world itself james davidson hunter and a few others have recently examined the paradigms that they would argue the church has had over the last couple decades regarding world let me give you a few of those and maybe these hit home in some

way or another one is one paradigm the first one is called the fortification paradigm or the purity from this approach believes the church is called to guard the integrity of its spiritual practices and existence against the assaults of the world the basic task of the church is preservation and the basic thread against the church is the destructive character of the larger culture you can you for each of these first three we're going to talk about there are a lot of strengths and a lot of truths rooted in scripture a strength being god calls us to

be a particular people a people set apart to be holy as he is holy and that means we must do everything we can to avoid the unholy influences of our world it take the strength of the purity from approach is also that it takes seriously the bible's warning about the destructive nature of the world and its influences but there are some weaknesses this approach tends to view or portray god's relationship to the world almost entirely as opposition and it conceives of the church's relationship to the world as one of opposition also often expressed through anxiety

anger or fear in fact the purity from approach would actually make you feel like you're being victorious as a christian if you don't engage with the world at all the more you limit your involvement with the world the more accurately you've done the christian thing now that isn't to say my concern for this approach wouldn't be the concern to avoid the moral influence from the world but i don't think we stop the moral influence i think we actually can uproot ourselves and completely disassociate ourselves from the world and call that spirituality but see that's not

what god did god came in without ever corrupting his separateness and his values so i would be concerned that a purity from approach wouldn't be comprehensive enough wouldn't be the most helpful paradigm to cumulatively think about how we should engage the world second approach is the domination approach or the defense against approach the defense against approach believes the church is called to triumph over her cultural enemies the basic task of the church is to extend its own values into the world and the basic threat against the church is obviously the negative values or inappropriate values

that are out there in the world are strengths in this it engages culture it takes serious our location as part of a nation or part of improv a part of a movement or or and we think about values god has certain values that matter and we take those seriously it also takes serious the fact that there's that there's opposition right and that we need to be set apart and god's values are different than the values of the world but there are some weaknesses like the purity from approach it tends to view the world primarily in

oppositional categories it expresses this opposition though not by withdrawing but by aggression and almost always this is done politically it's moral majority kind of movements that have lots of strengths and maybe maybe it was a little bit before most of your time but the moral majority was a political activist movement very much done by biblical christians to engage the values of the world there's there's strength in that there's truth in that but is god's response is god's greatest concern just values is the battle over competing values or is the battle over sin in general and

whose king and what is the ultimate meaning of life and the things that the gospel would be concerned with our response must be one where we engage with values it must involve that but if that becomes the only paradigm for thinking of world we will actually feel comfortable fighting their values but not engaging with their their beings trying to win them in arguments about abortion and gay marriage important issues but those issues and their those positions are symptoms of a greater problem we may never get to if it's just through politics as if if we

had evangelical christians as congress and president and house of representatives all of our problems and this world would be over hardly the third approach different from the purity from or the defense against is simply simply called accommodation approach or relevance to the relevance to approach believes the church is called to collaborate with the world in the service of the larger good the basic task of the church then is partnership join in with the world for social renewal think of creation and and how god loves creation and called it good that's engaged with this we should

be fighting poverty because god cares about those things we should be we sh we should be caring for the hungry we should be dealing with social injustice and there's so many truths in that it takes seriously the the relevance to approach takes seriously the call to go into all the world it's not it's not separating purity from it's not just fighting from a paul afar with political engagement it's right there with the people it's in the world it shows compassion and attentiveness to the culture in which we live and the and the crises facing the

people around whom we share life but there's also some real concerns it tends to become indistinct this approach from the culture it is attempting to accommodate to in a sense it wants to partner with culture but forget the world doesn't need just a partner it needs a profit it needs somebody to come in and speak about the ultimate truth and the deep-seated problems that will not be resolved if everyone's belly is full and if all all sicknesses and diseases were cured there would still be something insurmountable that would need to be declared but those are

the three paradigms that james davis and hunter and several others have been arguing the last few years that are kind of paradigmatic for us and i raised these not because i think these holistically cover everything but i have a feeling as you look back at your church involvement or your family involvement that one or more of those might fit yours for me it's the first two it's the purity from and the defense against it's the involvement in thinking through political engagement values engagement and separation from the world less common in my own heritage is the

relevance to but all of these are interesting moving ways in which we might think about the world so when christ says you are the salt of the earth what are we supposed to think about like what in our mind comes to mind when he talks about the earth in a way that makes us in appropriately engage it what so comes to mind when we hear him say world am i immediately separating from well that doesn't fit exactly everything god would want am i just finding its values no that's not the only problem it has or

am i just trying to deal with it in its physical condition but and there's more to the world than that there's more concerns to the world than that james davis and hunter and a few others have argued for a fourth model it's not perfect and it's even worth discussing but i wanted to present it to you just as something to think about called faithful presence within not purity from not defense against all those of strengths not just relevance to but faithful presence within jesus says you are the salt of the earth if the salt loses

its saltiness how can it be made salty again that almost sounds like these other paradigms like the relevance to has the danger of actually not being salt anymore i don't want to put more meat on top of my meat i'd like a little salt but salt has to touch the meat i can't just leave the salt on the table and never actually pour it on top of it i wouldn't do much good it would have never touched or i'm not attacking the meat with my salt i'm not asking for my wife to grab the big

bucket out in the garage and dumping salt i can't even find the medium i've obliterated it that's not what i'm doing i'm wanting just the right mixture where salt remains salt and meat is affected exactly as it's supposed to be that's the paradigm i'm wanting us to think about this morning what does faithful presence within look like well just in my last last seven or eight minutes let me let me give you two expressions of that faithful presence within means is that the church extends is an is an extension of the grace of god the

church becomes an extension of the grace of god and i'd like to think of this in two ways and both of them have legitimacy that we extend both the common grace of god to the world and the special grace of god to the world and we don't choose between them we actually work hard to see the interrelation between common grace being present in our community loving people meeting their needs and the special grace being prophets in our community being people telling them about the real problems is not just a sex trade in orange county as

much as that's a real problem and we should try to meet that that's not the deeper problem at the same time we concerned about the sex trade and we respond to that too because we're faithful and we're present common grace is interesting and i like thinking of it that way because it feels like even the way god designed the church he has offices for both dealing with common grace and dealing with special grace for common grace he has deacons who care for the physical needs in the church and even in the community for special grace

he's got the pastors and the elders who are ministering the word and in prayer you almost see both of those graces of god are being ministered to by the church last month my family and i uh we went to visit my dad in georgia and my dad's a big guy like me and he has some horses now when you're a big guy like me you don't buy like simple 1200 pound riding horses right you buy real horses big draft horses he's got these 2 000 pound horses massive animal we woke up one morning and one

of them was laying on the ground not a good sign breathing heavily and laboring my dad called the equine vet and a bunch of us ran down near the barn where the horse was i took my oldest son who's seven i knew nothing about horses i was kind of there watching to see the equine vet take this glove it wasn't a glove it was like a body wrap right here you know what i'm about to say she shows up and she puts this thing on and like she keeps going i'm like please stop please it

keeps going it keeps going and she's talking to me like about how you're doing and she's inserting her hand in this horse i'm like dad you are crazy woman and she was caring for her she was so calm she had the expertise she was working but what fascinated me was how much of a role i played and even my son played in what i would almost want to say is the common grace of god in the world that there's an i don't think this is a human carry i think god loves this world and cares

for this world even horses and our response to that horse even by non-christians is actually reflection of the common grace of god but what's fascinating to me is i didn't think i or my son would have anything to do but that wasn't true at one point the equine vet couldn't get the horse to hold his head up the horse died a few hours later this 2 000 pound horse was having a hard time standing so my dad who's a big strong man put his shoulder under one side of the horse to hold it up and

he i see sweat coming down and i just see his arm go like this to me and i'm like what what am i supposed to do you're supposed to hold the head of this horse up i'm like you're kidding me right so i went under this his head was massive and it was laboring and i put my shoulder under this horse and i can just i don't know how many a couple hundred pounds or something is on me and i'm literally holding the head of this horse up so the doctor can try to work on

it to potentially save its life here's the thing another cool thing the horse wasn't calming down so the equine vet called my seven-year-old and said his name's jacob said jacob come here he's like what am i i'm not going on the back side like you did no no no come to the front so she brought him around and she said reach your hand up and just pet its head and i'm sitting there holding the horse and he looks at me i'm just nodding go ahead and he reaches up and when he touched the horse's nose

it began to relax i was blown away by how many people it took it took all of us it helped that there weren't small little just old children around but two men that could help hold the horse's head up that there was an expert who had precision to deal with the animal in its knee that a little boy petting the horse would make it calm down as she tried to check and feel do you see how god made the church's community you have no idea how god will use you you have no idea you think

i know nothing about this wrong put your hand right here put your life right here god made you specifically for this yet if you pull yourself out and live in individual christianity you are thwarting not just your own spiritual growth you're thwarting the mission of god in the world now after that incident my that horse died and i spent several several minutes in conversation with my son talking about life and death but i didn't just talk about loving animals i talk about life god special grace eternity how he loves us how we care for how

our care for that horse is not even close to god's care for us through jesus christ and my son and i in the conversation of being an expression of common grace to the world we're able to bring that to special grace the church is an extension of the grace of god in the world lastly the church is the embodiment of the grace of god in the world we embody this there are usually just in summary there are three kind of summary ways that you could say the church embodies the grace of god first as we

become recipients of the grace god gives his grace to us and our first task is just to receive what god has given to us the second task of the church embodiment is to be a foretaste of the grace of god we receive it and then we we become like a sample tray so the world watches oh that's what you're different why because you've been reconciled to the father you see a difference between how we deal with our creator how we deal with other people how maybe we even deal with creation it's a foretaste it's a

sample but for too long christians have stopped at foretaste they've fattened themselves on the grace of god and have not realized that it's not meant to stop with you how cool how corrosive is a christianity that stops at reception and foretaste and doesn't go to the third step which means you were a bearer a witness an announcer a prophet about the mission and work of god you don't just receive the grace you don't just give a sampling to those who might stop by you take it to them faithful presence last illustration and then we'll close

i our church had a mom and a son i shared this with a few students but it's it's fitting here i our church had a mom and son coming the dad wouldn't come to our church this family was from africa and the sun was really connecting he was in one of my son's sunday school classes and they were friends and playing together and this mom was just interested in the gospel and the people in the church gathered around them when they visited what we came to find out is that this mom she was dying of

cancer she was slowly dying of cancer and she's from a culture in africa where you don't talk about death so her seven-year-old son didn't know she was dying in fact she planned this big trip to new york the next year that she knew they wouldn't go to because of their cultural reasons we in the church we were concerned about that maneuver but that's what they did but this mom got sicker and sicker and sicker and she couldn't care for herself now interestingly the father wanted nothing to do with our church but you know what archer

i didn't know any of this you know what our church started to do it started to be faithfully present women in the church would see that this mom was too fatigued to make dinners for her son and husband so they would show up and say hey can i bring dinner on monday hey can so and she'll bring dinner on tuesday they started noticing she was too fatigued to clean house and to care for things they noticed that they needed she her son needed attention when he came home from school college students from the church women

people with extra finances doing whatever they can probably over 40 people just being faithful and being present investing in this woman and her son and ultimately investing in her husband and that mom died last semester and that little seven-year-old boy had had a pretty stark reality in front of him and he wanted to talk to people he had seen love him he wanted to talk to our church people i was overjoyed with with passion when i saw we had an all-church picnic and i'm walking with my seven-year-old son a few weeks after that mother had

passed away and i see that little boy walking up toward my son and you know who's right behind that little boy his dad and he walks up to me with tears in his eyes he says what is it with you people what is it with you that you would love my family so much see that's special grace and common grace colliding in the body of christ that's what you're called to that's what you might be missing if you're not plugged in let god finish his work thank you lord for giving us your son and your

spirit until the work here is done biola university offers a variety of biblically centered degree programs ranging from business to ministry to the arts and sciences visit biola.edu to find out how biola could make a difference in your life