Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor
September 07, 2008
(more sermons)

Ugly feet

My feet are definitely not beautiful. Ask my daughters. When they sit next to me on the couch in the den and look down, they tend to exclaim something profound like, "Gross!" Pedicure is not a priority for me -- and probably not for most humans of my gender.

I do currently have one "beautiful" spot on my feet. A few weeks ago one of my daughters was painting her toe nails and, while I was looking the other way (maybe at a sporting event on TV?) dabbed a small spot of pink polish on my big toe nail.

That one spot reminds me of a story the late Dr. Ken Mulholland used to enjoy telling. When he was dean of the Reformed seminary in Honduras, Central America, he could only recall one time during his tenure when there was a foot washing service. A chapel speaker surprised the community by bringing along a basin and towels. The night before, in a wonderful, providential coincidence, Dr. Mulholland's youngest daughter had persuaded him through great effort to allow her to paint one of his toenails bright red!

The Apostle Paul gives me a whole new paradigm by which to evaluate feet. Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, whose book is a contrast of bad news and good news, Paul says those who bring good news have "beautiful feet."

Today's sermon is about sharing good news. Our church's motto is, "good news is for sharing." We should be people who are passionate about spreading the good news of Jesus. Sometimes we lose that passion. This series of sermons on community is designed to remind us of some essential elements of community. One of those is having beautiful feet, feet that share good news.

Today is "Friend Sunday," and some of you have invited friends to share this day of worship and learning with you. That's one way we share our faith, of course. But I want all of us -- member, regular visitor, or first-time guest -- to think a little more deeply about going further and deeper with sharing the good news.

You may say, "Well, I share my faith with my actions. I don't need to talk about it." What Paul talks about in the verse prior to the text that we read today is the importance of words. "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart -- the word of faith we are proclaiming." Let's talk about why and then how we share our faith.

Jesus is Lord

First, why. Every person who has been received into the membership of this church since I've been pastor has heard verse 9 read on the Sunday they joined. "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

The "why" is really very simple. We need to share our faith because the only way people can be saved is by confessing that Jesus is Lord. Christ is the only way of salvation.

I realize that's not particularly politically correct, and some of you may find that statement uncomfortable. Whether or not you agree with it intellectually, probably every one us has had or does have questions about it. Questions I normally hear sound like this....

• What about sincere, good people who believe in other religions?
• What about people who have never heard of Jesus, who never have a chance to believe in him?

Whatever your question in any one of those areas, my answer is the same two-fold response. First, I believe that God will do what is right in the end, and neither you nor I will be arguing with his decision. Second, and this is because I'm a very pragmatic person, I suppose, who knows I can't do anything about what God will or won't do at the last judgment, my job is to tell as many people as I can about the only way God has revealed to have eternal life -- Jesus Christ. My role -- not only as a pastor but as a Christian -- is not to theorize about other possibilities or second chances. My solemn responsibility is to preach faith in Christ as the way to God.

The "why" of sharing the good news is because Jesus is the way of salvation. Salvation, though, is a broad word. It's not just eternal fire insurance. It's not just about knowing you'll go to heaven. Salvation in the Bible is a holistic term.

In other words, we are not just talking about meeting "spiritual" needs -- although we see the spiritual component as not only part of the list, but the hub of our needs. Whatever the needs -- broken relationships, depression, addictions, abuse, financial mismanagement, guilt, confusion, lack of direction and purpose -- we point people to the Savior. He made us, so whatever questions we have, he is the answer. Whatever problems we have, he is the solution. Whatever brokenness we have, he can fix it.

I just finished reading a marvelous novel called The Shack. The book is somewhat controversial, but I found it intriguing. It's one of those books that once you start reading, you find excuses to set aside every other priority until you're finished. You'll find it in our church library. In the book, a man named Mack experiences what he calls "the great sadness" -- a terrible tragedy. As happens so often with tragedies, this one affects every member of Mack's family, and every relationship in the family.

Four years after "the great sadness," Mack receives an invitation from God to spend a weekend at "the shack." There Mack brings all of his hurt, anger, denial, guilt, and questions into face-to-face conversations with the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. He finds wholeness again -- the wholeness that comes when we stop trying to handle life's pain by creating distance from God or by casting blame on God -- but by looking to him is the only way to be saved from sin, from self, from the insanity of repeated efforts to find meaning in life anywhere else but through the Savior. I commend this book to you as one way to refresh yourself on the "why" of sharing your faith.

Questions

Let's turn, then, to the "how" question of sharing our faith. This is "Friend Sunday" at Corinth, and obviously one way we share our faith is by inviting others to share our church experience, to join us in a place where we can all be challenged by the Message of Jesus and the Word of God.

But again, even that good step can be a cover for being unwilling to risk sharing our faith. So Paul in our text asks us, "But how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven't heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them?" (Romans 10:14-15, The Message)

Why don't we share our faith more often, more personally, more directly? There could be many reasons. One is that we're not really sure it's that important. (I addressed this issue in the "why" section of the sermon.) Another is that we think everyone already knows. (Who in the Bible belt hasn't heard about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins?) Still another reason is that we don't feel qualified. (What if they ask questions I can't answer? I'm no theologian, no counselor.) Maybe even the problem is that we don't feel confident about our own faith. (I feel like a hypocrite telling someone else how to find something I haven't found yet.)

Then there's the problem of guilt by association with evangelistic methods that are offensive, even counterproductive. I don't want to be like the guy holding the "Repent -- Doomsday is Near" sign. Or the televangelist smacking people on the forehead. Or whoever leaves gospel tracts on the urinal at Bojangles. Or the wethead, in-your-face Bible thumper asking, "Are you saved?" Or the "trained evangelist" with a canned set of points and illustrations she learned in her Sunday School class. More people have been turned off than brought in by such means, even if they are well-intentioned.

What's the alternative? It can't be to say nothing. That's disobedience to Jesus, and it's ingratitude for his gift of salvation. We talk about what matters to us. The Carolina Panthers matter to me, and I find ways to inject the team into my conversations, because my team is headed to the Super Bowl this year. I even found a way to get them into the sermon on the first Sunday of the season.

The starting point for "how" is to check my heart. Do I care? Do I see other people's spiritual blindness as "their own problem," or is their brokenness my call from God. Does it matter to me that they are on the path that leads to destruction, in this life and the next?

A second strategic point is understanding people. Part of the reason that old strategies of evangelism are not effective any more is that people have changed. Hardly anyone anymore responds to a message that sounds like, "I'm an authority on spiritual matters and you're obviously messed up, so let me straighten you out."

We live in a culture where people value their autonomy and justify their beliefs and behaviors, even if they're severely misguided. We start out with the assumption that we are right, and we feel threatened by those who differ.

When it comes to a relationship with God, most people assume on some level they have it all together -- or at least together enough. Even in a personal crisis, people rarely come to me asking, "What I am missing? What don't I see here?" Instead, they come wanting me to validate their feelings and provide encouragement to stay on the path they're already on.

So how do we respond when people simply are not ready to hear truth? Patience, for one thing. As Jesus' parable of the Sower reminds us, not all soil is ready at any given moment to germinate the seed. But in our patience we need to be ready for those "teachable moments" when people are vulnerable enough to hear the Word.

Even at those moments, though, it seems to me that our culture does not respond well to direct teaching that feels authoritative. People resist what they perceive as a message of, "I have the only way and you're not on it, so let me straighten you out."

Then how do you get through? I find my cue right here in Romans 10. Paul, in stressing the joy of "beautiful feet," makes his case with questions. "How can they believe unless they hear? How can they hear unless someone tells them?"

I would suggest that we all keep a supply of good questions to ask that will initiate a conversation about faith. Questions like these....

• Do you ever think about heaven? Do you think you'll go there? Why or why not?
• What in your life gives you the greatest meaning?
• Do you ever wonder what you're missing?
• And, one of my personal favorites, especially for someone who is arrogant in misery, "How's that working for you?"

The point is just to find a way to engage a conversation, to share the story of your own faith. As I said earlier, that in itself can feel intimidating. But that's not all bad. The process of sharing our faith can itself be a way to "examine yourself, to see if you are in the faith," as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:5. If you have nothing of value to share with someone else, let's talk.

One of the reasons I like the novel, The Shack, is that it's so refreshingly honest about life's struggle. It also asks great questions.

In one chapter, Mack is on a stroll with Jesus. They come to a lake, where Jesus asks Mack to join him on a walk across the water. Mack isn't so sure. "Why is this so hard for me," Mack asks Jesus.

"Tell me what you're afraid of, Mack."

"Well, let me see. What am I afraid of?" began Mack. "Well, I am afraid of looking like an idiot. I am afraid that you are making fun of me and that I will sink like a rock...."

Jesus answers with another question. "Do you think humans were designed to live in the present or the past or the future?"

Mack thinks it's the present, so Jesus probes further, "Where do you spend most of your time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, in the past, or in the future?"

Mack admits that he spends most of his time trying to figure out the future. Jesus asks another question: "Mack, do you realize that your imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?"

It's Mack's turn to ask a question: "Why do I do that?" Do you think I'm going to read you the whole book? Use the book to ask profound questions. Share it with others to make your feet beautiful.

Copyright 2008 by Robert M. Thompson, Pastor. Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.