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God’s Change Agents

Rev. Paul Fahnestock — October 4, 2009
 

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Introduction
After his baptism by John the Baptist and, then, being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to face the temptations of Satan for forty days, Jesus began his public ministry. Luke records Jesus’ announcement of his mission statement in chapter 4 of the Gospel of Luke, verses 16-21:

¹⁶When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. ¹⁷The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:
      ¹⁸“The Spirit of the LORD is upon me,
                for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
          He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
                that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free,
      ¹⁹and that the time of the LORD’s favor has come.”
²⁰He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. ²¹Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” (New Living Translation)

This passage from Isaiah that Jesus read to his hometown crowd was a messianic prophecy envisioning a future messiah, the long-awaited Savior of God’s people. Jesus revealed himself as that Messiah and what he had come to do. His mission statement had three main components: First, he came to proclaim the good news of salvation, with an emphasis to offer salvation to the poor. Second, the good news is more than the message of personal salvation – repent and believe. The good news also includes a concern for the sick and the poor. Jesus demonstrated the good news by addressing poverty, disease, and human brokenness. Third, Jesus mission was also to give freedom to the oppressed. He was committed to justice.

What is the Good News?
The good news of God’s kingdom is inviting people to repent and receive Jesus by faith as Savior and Lord, and it is also about real acts of compassion in behalf of the sick and poor. It is concerned with biblical justice, righting the wrongs in our world that cause oppression. God is concerned about the spiritual, physical, and social dimensions.

Imagine today you are watching a football game and this news flash interrupts the game: 100 jetliners crashed today killing 26,500. Imagine how stunned and shocked you would be. Imagine the frantic response of every world government and agency? Would we ever hear the last of it on CNN? The investigation to find the cause and the response to address it would be intense and immediate.

What if it happened again the next day! And the next! And the next!!

In fact this tragedy does happen every day. Not because airplanes are falling out of the sky, but 26,500 children die everyday from preventable causes related to poverty. That’s almost 10 million children per year.

Where is the outcry? Where is the response? From our government? From the other governments of the world? From the United Nations? Why isn’t this headline news on CNN or FOX every day? Where is the Church? What about you and me?

This is an illustration from a book I recently read entitled The Hole in Our Gospel. The author is Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian charity working in 100 countries dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision serves alongside the poor and oppressed as a demonstration of God’s unconditional love for all people.

Richard has a way of getting your attention, and this book really challenged me in what it means to love God and love my neighbor. My message this morning is inspired by this book. It is available in the FPC Book Center.

I am so very blessed. I was born to a middle class family in the USA. I grew up in a nice home, good food, nice clothes, and great healthcare. I had the opportunity to go to school, college, and post-graduate studies. I am free to worship as a Christian. I live in SW Florida. I have already had a business career, missionary career, and, now, a wonderful pastoral ministry at FPC. My home has electricity, air conditioning, plentiful, clean, healthy water, indoor toilets. I have health insurance and access to the best healthcare. I live in a safe neighborhood free from overt violence, terrorism, and war.

I am so very blessed. I was not born in a place where there is no clean water and where one in four children die before their fifth birthday from a preventable, poverty related cause. I was not born in a place where hunger is constant and as a result I was weak and lethargic for lack of adequate calories. I am so very blessed because I was not born where there was no health care, where I had no protection from preventable disease and an infection from a cut was a death sentence. I did not grow up in an environment where I did not attend school because I had to spend hours each day going after a few gallons of water (and that water was full of parasites), or there was no school to attend. I was not born in the chaos of war or rebel armies who killed my parents and siblings and forced me to live in a refugee camp.

Yes, I am blessed and I did not earn or deserve my good fortune. It is only the wondrous providence of God that I was born where I was born which made so many wonderful possibilities open to me. I know you want to remind me that I have had to work hard to experience the good success. That’s true.

Hard work and success are a part of our American culture, but not necessarily a part of the culture of the rest of the world. For the 3.6 billion people of the world (a little over half the population of the world) who earn $2 or less per day, there is no correlation between their hard work and hope for an improved lifestyle. Their hard work doesn’t matter, and there is no escape from their grinding poverty.

Richard Stearns writes in his book:

These are the daily realities of the world’s poor. No matter how hard they work, how gifted and talented they are, or how big their dreams, the poor have few choices and even fewer opportunities to fulfill their God-given potential. These precious human beings created in God’s image have been left behind and cast on the garbage dump of history by circumstances they cannot change. We must never say it is their fault.

I agree with Stearns when he says that it is also not our fault that people are poor. And I agree with him that the Bible clearly teaches that it is our responsibility to do something about it.

Our American culture promotes an attitude about time and money that says: “It is my time and money; I have worked hard to earn what I have; my time and my money are just that – mine to do with as I please.”

Attitudes About Time and Money
Our culture promotes that we are entitled to do what we want with what is ours. But this is not what God promotes and teaches us about our time, money, and possessions – this is not Kingdom culture. Luke records Jesus’ teaching about God’s expectation of a faithful servant. Jesus taught, “When someone is given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” (Luke 12:48)

The Bible teaches that all that we have comes from God, and he has made us stewards of these things. The time, talents, and money we have, according to God, are not our own. It all belongs to him.

We are like God’s stockbrokers, and he has entrusted a certain amount of time, talents, and financial resources to us to be used skillfully and wisely in behalf of God’s kingdom work. Most stockbrokers would be pretty excited if their clients paid them a 10% commission, but God is a very generous Client. God tells us we, the stewards of what He gives us, can use 90% for our own needs, and God only wants 10% return for His Kingdom plans and purposes.

God invites us to be his change agents. But this requires an intentional decision on our part. If you have ever been on a diet, you know that weight loss will not just happen. You must make a choice and change your behavior. Following Christ is the same. You will not be a change agent for Christ until you make some intentional choices about your own priorities and behavior.

In his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, Stearns hopes we will remember three things:

• Every hurting impoverished person is created in the image of God and loved by him.
• Every challenge of poverty has a solution.
• Every one of us can make a difference.

Making a Difference
In 1948, Bob Pierce was a missionary sharing the Good News of God’s love in Jesus Christ in various cities and villages in Korea with Youth for a Mission. A young Korean girl, White Jade, attended one such meeting, heard the message, and accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior.

When White Jade told her family of her decision, they were extremely upset, her father beat her, and she was put out of her house. She went to the mission school in her city and told the school director her story. That same day, Bob Pierce paid a visit to the school. The director brought White Jade (bruised and sobbing) to him and said, “She did what you asked her to do. She accepted Christ.” And the director gave White Jade to Bob. “I already have six children living with me, and I can’t feed another. Bob, what are you going to do about it?”

Bob was stunned. What could he do about it? Yet, he knew he must do something. He discussed with the director what White Jade would need to be cared for, and he promised he would get help as soon as he returned to the USA.

And so, upon his return to the USA, Bob shared the story of White Jade with his supporting partners, and he raised the funds to send for White Jade’s care. Bob began to tell the stories of many other orphaned and needy children in Korea and asking others, “What are you going to do about it?”

This is how the organization World Vision was born in the heart of an ordinary man. Today, World Vision works in 100 countries, impacting the lives of 100 million people.

I encourage you to read Stearns’ book, The Hole in Our Gospel, to see how God called him ten years ago to lead World Vision. It’s an amazing story.

Leon McLaughlin has a shoe shine stand in an office building in Seattle. On a trip to Mexico, Leon came into contact with one family and saw how a lack of clean water caused them to suffer. Leon was motivated to learn more about the problem, and he discovered that most developing countries had this problem, impacting the lives of millions. He studied about water distribution and filtration on the internet, and he became involved with a company that manufactures a filtration machine that can produce 740 gallons of clean water per hour.

Then, Leon heard that 1000s of people were without clean water in Bolivia after a flood. He contacted World Vision to see if they could use one of the water-filtration systems. World Vision told Leon they could, but he would have to provide the machine, and pay to transport it, the cost to set it up, and ongoing maintenance.

Leon was not deterred. He taped photos of the flooded Bolivian community to the walls around his shoe shine stand. And his clients began to ask about them. He talked to these lawyers and business executives about the crisis and the need, and Leon funded that machine to Bolivia.

Leon was hooked. He discovered that helping others brought him a lot of satisfaction. To date, Leon has funded fifteen machines, and he is looking at the needs in other countries. Leon responded to the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

In 2004, Austin Gutwein watched a video about children in Africa orphaned by AIDS. He was 9 years old. Austin felt that God called him to do something about it.

On World AIDS Day of 2004, he decided he would get sponsors and he would shoot free throws. He shot 2,057 free throws – that’s the number of children that are orphaned by AIDS every day. He raised $3,000 which was used to support 8 orphaned children.

Today, thousands of people participate in the Hoop of Hope shoot-a-thon in 200 different locations in the USA and in other countries. Almost $1 million has been raised to help orphaned children with food, clothing, and shelter. A school has been built, and a medical lab where people are tested for AIDS and receive medication. Nine-year-old Austin responded to the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

Every one of us can make a difference. As Christians, it is our moral duty to help our neighbors in need. We cannot look at the situation of the worlds poor and say, “It is not my problem.” God has not left us with that option. If we are willing, God will use each of us in his wonderful plan to transform the world.

The Social Revolution
The social revolution Jesus started, he has entrusted to us, his followers. God has called us to be his change agents – to be salt and light in a world of violence, poverty, injustice, disease, corruption, and human suffering. A changed world requires change agents, and change agents are people who have first experienced the new reality in their own hearts and minds through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is the vision of God’s people, God’s change agents, transforming God’s world according to God’s plan. This is the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Justice, equity, mercy, and love are the characteristics of the kingdom of God that our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ instituted in his own ministry and commanded us to carry on.

Jesus’ mission set the foundation for a social revolution that will change the world. And he said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” (John 20:21) Jesus’ mission is the mission of those who call him Savior and Lord. It is my mission, it is your mission, and it is the mission of the Church. What are we going to do about it?