This week’s sermon at Calvary Chapel
Celebrating 30 Years of Doing Something for the Lord Jesus Christ
This month, we as a church family will celebrate our 30th Anniversary. We will mark this special event with much fanfare including a cruise and a powerful service on Sept 28th at 11:15 A.M. Our LORD has been so very good to us we just can’t help but praise Him and dedicate ourselves to His service.
When we say we are celebrating 30 years of doing something for the Lord a very natural question arises: “Just what exactly have we been doing?” The short answer is… A LOT. The long answer would require a book. For the purpose of this article I want to identify five things we have been and will continue to do for the Lord. We have embraced these things for the last thirty years because we believe they are God’s priorities for His church.
From our very beginning, our church; Calvary Chapel, has been doing something and that something has been proclaiming the life-changing message of salvation through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our efforts have taken many different forms. We’ve gone door to door in our communities, been involved in evangelistic crusades and sponsored all kinds of specialized events for all kinds of people. In addition, we have given people of all ages the opportunity to give their heart to Christ through the work of the various ministries of Calvary. Something that we’ve been doing for thirty years is evangelizing.
In addition to outreach, from day one at Calvary we have been involved in the process of the discipleship of believers. The something we have been doing in this area is training the followers of Jesus Christ on how to be followers of Jesus Christ. This process involves Bible classes for young and old. It has involved systematic teaching from Calvary’s pulpit. In recent years, it has taken a more formal shape in the form of The New York Institute for Biblical Studies, the Bible Institute we founded for the purpose of equipping God’s people for God’s service in the 21st Century. Something we have been doing for thirty years is equipping believers.
In a city as large as New York it is easy to feel lost and uncared for. Calvary, from its earliest years, has sought to provide the warmth and Christian fellowship that we all greatly need. We’ve tried to be more than an army of workers. We have endeavored to be the family God has called us to be. We’ve supported one another in our losses and honored one another in our wins. We’ve worked together, we’ve wept together, we’ve rejoiced together and we’ve eaten together, my oh my, have we eaten together. This whole process is called building one another up or edification. Something we have been doing for thirty years is edifying.
What our world needs is Jesus Christ. The people of our world need His salvation. They also need His healing and restoration. God refers to His church as “the body of Christ”. If I understand this correctly, Calvary Chapel is to be the arms, the feet, the ears, the mouth and the heart of Jesus Christ to our city, our borough, our neighborhood, and our world. For thirty years, we have sought to be the embodiment of Jesus locally by feeding the hungry through food distributions, by supporting and counseling the hurting, by honoring neighborhood heroes – firefighters, cops and teachers, and by standing for and with the most vulnerable, the unborn. We have sought to be Jesus to our world by regularly supporting ministry partners in several foreign countries and by sending Calvary teams on ministry trips to Haiti, Mississippi, and New Orleans. In short, we have sought to embody what it means to be the body of Christ. Calvary has been, for almost every moment of its existence, multi-ethnic, just like the churches in the New Testament were. This, we believe, has enabled us to embody Christ to all people regardless of their ethnicity or culture. Something we have been doing for thirty years is embodying.
Calvary Chapel was not founded for the glory of any individual or group. Our Church is God’s Church and it was founded for His glory. Our awesome LORD is what it is all about. In every service, imperfect as we may be, we have sought to point not at ourselves but to the One who has done so much for us. Whatever we have done we have sought to do for the glory of God. It is His name we want exalted above everything else. Something we have been doing for thirty years is exalting.
Evangelizing those without Christ, equipping those with Christ, edifying fellow believers, embodying what it means to be the body of Christ to our world and exalting the living and true God. Linking arms and hands together to accomplish God’s purposes…this is what we have endeavored to do for thirty years. Thanks for celebrating with us. By His grace and strength might we do something for at least for 30 more years.
In His Service,
Pastor Dave
For Just Today
For Just Today
Someday soon and I really wish it were today, we all, and by “all” I mean Americans in general and those living in the New York York metro area in particular, need a day. Let’s call it a day of silence. A moment will not do.
Today is a day of solemn remembrance. For today or one day soon can we put aside the politics? Can we just for 24 hours not blame Bush or Obama or both? Could we for a few hours stop hating on Cheney or Biden. Can the commentators get the day off with pay if they will be silent? Today or one day soon can we cease talking from sun up to sunset about what an athlete did in an elevator to a woman who later chose to marry him? Can we just shut up about when the NFL got a video tape for one day? Can we stop for one day our griping and harping and our criticizing for everything from Foreign Policy to who is going to play third base next year for the Yankees. For one day can we stop the second guessing and spin? Oh I wish it was for today.
Thirteen years ago we suffered a national tragedy. We were attacked and we were wounded. That wound runs deep and the scab has been opened many times over the years. Between Washington, New York and Shanksville PA., over three thousand souls lost their lives that day. Obviously not everyone lost someone but we all lost something that day. We lost our innocence, we lost our sense of security, and we lost our peace of mind. We all lost something that day. Since then in Afghanistan and Iraq among other places we’ve lost many other American heroes. For today, maybe just for today, can we really remember them? Can we honor their memory with a day of quiet reflection not just a few brief seconds of silence?
For today, just for today, I ask us all to layside most everything else and grieve with those who still grieve. I am tired of trying to multi-task concern and grief. It doesn’t really work. We need to forget ourselves and our agendas and cry with the young lady who was 5 years old when September 11th first got famous and who entered college this fall driven by her grandparents because her mom died that day. We need to be silent and remember that young man who can’t watch Derek Jeter’s last game with his dad because his pop didn’t make it out of Tower One. We need to remember the 70 year old retired firefighter who has a lung disease because he wouldn’t leave “the pile” because he was looking for his boy. We need a day.
We need to pray for those who are still scarred with the memory of cries from co-workers or massive oppressive smoke or jumpers or messages left on answering machines from loved ones. We need to remember the FDNY which lost 343 men in the space of a couple of hours. This holds true for the NYPD (they lost 23 officers) and Port Authority Police (they lost 37 officers) as well. We need to remember the soldiers who lost their lives as well as those whose limps and lives was shattered by an improvised explosive device in a war fought to make sure 9-11 never happens again.
We need a day of silence for a moment won’t due. I wish it were today. We need to attend or watch a 9-11 memorial event on TV or the internet. We need to call a friend who had a 9-11 related loss (20 percent of American know someone who died or was hurt in 9-11) and remind them we are there for them and mean it. We need to bring dinner to a firehouse or cookies to the precinct and the only words out of our mouths should be “thank you”. We need to salute a veteran or buy lunch for an enlisted man or woman. We need a day.
We need a day. We need to get before our God and give thanks for those in charge with protecting us every day and we need to pray for them. We need to ask that same God what would He have us to do since we survived on 9-11. We need to have dinner with our family and maybe invite some friends over. We need to say where we were and how we felt on that day. Then we need to hug each other. We need to gather around our dinner tables, hold hands and say grace, thanking our Lord above that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave and praying that it will ever be so. We need a day.
Tomorrow we can bicker and blame and fill the room with our flawed and biased opinions. On the 12th we can act like it is business as usual and go on our merry way. We need a day and I really wish it were today.
Blessings
Pastor Dave Watson
Audio link to yesterday’s sermon at Calvary Chapel on Staten Island, New York, outline link as well.
Temptation Island: Strive, Survive of Thrive – Pt. 2 – Overcoming Temptations So They Don’t Overcome Me
Video link to today’s service and message today at Calvary Chapel – Temptation Island
Addressing our Stressing – Finding God in What’s Freaking Us Out
Addressing our Stressing – Finding God in What’s Freaking Us Out
Stress is literally killing us. Everybody knows it but we rarely address it properly. We only address its symptoms. We take Xanax for our anxiety. We take ace inhibiters to get our blood pressure down. We have Prozac for our depression and Pepcid for our ulcers. We see psychologists, psychiatrists and psychics and we still have stress issues. Stress really is killing us.
We have so many arenas of stress it is impossible to avoid. There is the financial stress, family stress, work stress, wedding stress, divorce stress and even vacation stress. It causes us to be angry, fleshly and paralyzed. Yes, we are stressed out and we can’t get away from it.
Stress is killing us. It is killing our joy, destroying our peace, ruining our happiness, depressing our love and hindering our faith. I don’t think that is what God intended for our lives. The thief comes to rob and kill and to destroy. Jesus came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly (John10:10). Jesus came so that stress doesn’t have to kill us.
Because stress is so prevalent in our lives, over the next four weeks in July we will be looking at how we as followers of Christ can deal with stress. We will see how we can handle it in a way that pleases God and blesses us as well. We will see that the Scriptures give us clear guidance for addressing our stressing.
Christians should be the best people at handling stress in a stress-filled society. Because we often handle it in a manner no different than the rest of the world the effects of stress are the same for us as they are for anyone else. This makes others think less of our Christian faith and rightly so. Part of my testimony needs to be that Jesus Christ makes an impact in every aspect of my everyday life, even in my stressful times.
I know that summer is a time to kick back and relax and believe me I want you to do that. It is also however a time to be refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated. Unless we take intentional steps and learn to make some changes in our lives regarding stress, we in all likelihood will come out of summer just as stressed as we went into it.
Over the next four weeks we will be talking about: Stressing Over the Little Stuff of Life, Stressing Over the Decisions of Life, Stressing Over the Injustices of Life, and Stressing Over the Big Stuff of Life. Let me encourage you right now to make every effort for the next few weeks to hear these four messages. This series would also be a good one to invite a friend to because this topic speaks to a universal problem. Who isn’t feeling a little stressed out? The Scriptures, rightly applied can make a difference in all of us. There is hope for us in addressing our stressing. I am looking forward to seeing you this week.
In His Service, Pastor Dave
A response to World Vision’s decision to embrace same sex marriage
“The Whole Gospel”
In Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 22, verses 37-39 Jesus responds to the question asked by a Pharisee to test him, “What is the greatest commandment?” His answer comes from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. He says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This statement is a major theological underpinning for Christian charity and world relief.
As Christians, because of the words of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior found here we believe we are compelled to intervene in the plight of children and adults all over the world. They are our neighbors; we must love them as we do ourselves. That is why in the name of Jesus we provide plane loads and boat loads of food all over the world. They are our neighbors; that is why doctors and nurses and health care professionals are supported and sent to remote places throughout the world to bring relief and healing to those in pain. They are our neighbors. Jesus said so! That is why we raise millions of dollars for villages in far away places to have clean drinking water. We do to them as we would have them do to us because that is what Jesus would have us do (Matthew 7:12).
Few Christian organizations have gone to greater lengths to carry out the concept of loving your neighbor as yourself than World Vision. Founded in 1950 by evangelist Bob Pierce, World Vision has grown into a major relief organization sponsoring over 4 million children worldwide. They also put boots on the ground after every disaster in every part of the globe. They are, by all accounts, a deeply compassionate organization motivated by the words of Christ in Matthew 25:40 – “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Because of their long history of following the words of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, this week’s announcement by Director Richard Stearns is particularly puzzling. Christianity Today, which interviewed Stearns for their story, reported as follows:
World Vision’s American branch will no longer require its more than 1,100 employees to restrict their sexual activity to marriage between one man and one woman. Abstinence outside of marriage remains a rule. But a policy change announced Monday [March 24] will now permit gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages to be employed at one of America’s largest Christian charities.
Later in the same article Stearns said the following :
Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues,” he said. “It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.
So now it is acceptable at World Vision for same-sex couples to date and marry. Because this is, in World Vision’s mind, a controversial issue they will not exercise judgment as to whether or not marriage can be defined as between a man and a woman or whether a same sex marriage is right or wrong. For the sake of “unity” they’ll vote present and move on.
Here is why their decision is so puzzling to me. In Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 19, verses 4-6, Jesus responds to the question asked by a Pharisee to test him, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” Jesus once again quotes from the Pentateuch. He says , “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” These verses are a major theological underpinning for defining marriage and the sanctity of marriage itself. These words are the reason that for centuries Christians trumpeted marriage to be between one man and one woman for one lifetime.
The major underpinning of World Vision, and for that matter, all of Christendom’s work and ministry, are the words of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. He is the One we answer to. He is the One who is to be pre-eminent in our lives. How can we decide we will embrace His word fervently in Matthew 22 and ignore His words casually in Matthew 19? We cannot do so and call ourselves Christ followers. Following Jesus is not like going to a diner and ordering the meal on the menu that we prefer and find most appealing. Following Jesus is like going to your parent’s house for a meal in the old days and hearing, “eat what’s put before you!” Who are we to pick and choose which words of Jesus we will partake of and which we will disregard?
Furthermore, when we teach those who want to know what Jesus said, as I presume we must in order to carry out the Great Commission, (“teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” Matthew 28:19) what will we share from the teachings of Christ? Will we teach the Sermon on the Mount ? – Of course. The Parable of the Talents? Absolutely. The Parable of the Sower? Sure. Let’s look at Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19 again, “Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” What is it about the word “all” that we do not get? Some of Jesus’ words are tough and at times unpopular. His words about discipleship and commitment are serious. His words about marriage regarding its definition and permanence may not be popular, but they are His words. We must teach all things that He said.
I am praying for Richard Stearns and the board and staff of World Vision. I am praying. But, unless they change their hearts and minds about following all the words of Jesus neither I nor the organization I lead will ever again support them. Stearns famously wrote the book entitled The Hole in Our Gospel. I urge him today to embrace “the whole gospel.” I cannot imagine that our Lord is pleased with World Vision, so, neither am I. I have lost all confidence in them as a Christian organization. We take Jesus’ words about loving your neighbor as yourself seriously though. Therefore, we will find other ways to support children and families around the globe who are in need. I would recommend that other Christ followers to do the same.
In His Service, Pastor Dave Watson
