Coram Deo Video Transcript

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Lesson 8: The Church as a Window

Video 1 of 4: Does the Church Have Good News for This Broken World Today?

Presenter: Bob Moffitt

In this session what we want to do is look at the church through several metaphors. The primary metaphor we are going to use is the church as a window, but I want to begin by looking at our evangelical churches as they primarily are around the world and let’s look at a scripture that we are all very familiar with. Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to Romans 12:1 and either look at the screen or read with me.

This what Paul says in the 21 verse of chapter 1. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Not very good news. Not very good news at all, but what we want to do is look at what is God’s attitude towards this broken man. And we look at the slide, we have a diagram that basically illustrates man and his brokenness. The little stick figure that has got a bandage wrapped around his head. He is crying. He has got a broken arm, a broken foot. He is in bad shape and this man represents humankind in its brokenness, but we want to ask the question, what is God’s attitude toward this man and his brokenness?

We are going to look at several scriptures together to find out that God’s attitude towards this broken man is primarily found in two scriptures, John 3:17, that Jesus came not to condemn, but to save. And then Philippians chapter 2 verses 5 through 11 we find that we are to have the same attitude that God, the Jesus had when he came incarnationally in human flesh, God’s attitude towards this broken creation. This creation that he created perfectly, but sinned and he became broken, what was God’s attitude toward him? We find in this slide a number of scriptures, six scriptures, that basically tell us what God’s intentions are for this broken man in the future.

Isaiah 11:4-9 tells us that God’s intentions for this broken man is that eventually in the future there will not be famine that there will be peace and plenty. No war, enough to eat, Shalom; that’s God’s intention. Then we look in Isaiah 61 verses 1-4 we see that those who Jesus redeems are going to have the opportunity to participate in the restoration of the brokenness, not only for broken man, but also for the broken creation.

In John 14:1-4, we see that in the future God’s intentions are to prepare a place for us. Actually we know from scripture that he is preparing a place for us right now. It is going to be a pretty good place.

In Romans 8:21, we see that all creation is going to be liberated from its brokenness. No more tsunamis, earthquakes, pretty special. Revelations 21 in verses 1-4 says no tears, no death, no pain. These are wonderful intentions of God for us in the future. Then we see finally in Matthew 19:28 the Jesus is going to return as king. That’s the best news of all. Our creator, our loving creator who created a perfect world is going to return to us as reigning king. Is this good news? It is very good news.

Let me tell you a story. When I began the ministry that we are leading in 1980, I had the opportunity to visit Lima, Peru. There was a young man who I had heard of and I knew that he was there and he said after I contacted, “Could we meet for breakfast and talk?” I said, “Sure.” We sat at a small table like this for a cup of coffee and his name was Rudy Kaiser and he said, “Bob, I used to be a Communist. I grew up in a Christian home. My family were members of a mainline denominational church. They had a big Bible in the living room that hardly ever got opened.

My father was a businessman. We were fairly well off as a family and as a young man growing up in the home I was concerned that my folks did not seem to really even notice, let alone care about the vast majority of the people in our city who were extremely poor and it really bothered me. One day some Communist young people came to our high school and they talked to us about their philosophy, their philosophy of reaching out to the poor and even overthrowing the rich to be able to distribute their resources to the people, that lived in slums.

I was attracted to that and I joined the Communist party. I was a quick learner. I learned the philosophy. I became a leader and one day, maybe the next year, there was a group that came to our high school and they showed the Jesus film. And I was incensed because I knew that this whole business about Jesus was not true and they were talking about this Jesus as somebody that cared about the poor. I knew it wasn’t true because my parents were Christians and they certainly didn’t care about the poor. But, when I got home I thought okay I am going to prove to myself that this isn’t true and went and I picked up this huge Bible that we had sort of a coffee table decoration.

I blew the dust off the covers and I opened this book and I happened to open to the book of John and I began to read and as I read there was something in my spirit that made me think, “What if this is true? What if there really is a historic person named Jesus and what if he really lived the way…?” What I was reading talked about the way he lived and the more I read there was something in my spirit that said maybe this is true and I started to question what I had been learning as a Communist young person.

I got on my knees and I looked up the heaven and I said, “God, if are you real and if Jesus is real I want to follow Him.” And something happened. I don’t know what it was, but I felt like he is real. I went out right away and I began to look for a church work and learn about this Jesus and who he is and how he operated and what his plans were for the so many thousands, tens of thousands of poor people that lived on the outskirts of my city in shacks with no running water, no latrines, very few jobs and this church taught me how to do evangelism and I became very good at the practice sessions and when I was ready they said, “Okay you are ready to go out on the streets,” and I did.

I stacked my pocketful of tracts and got into the bus and I rode out to the villages on the outskirts of the city and I got off the bus. I started walking into the villages and I saw a young man. He was standing leaning against the side of a building and I walked up to him. I said, “Hi my name is Rudy”. He looked at me, actually he didn’t look at me, rather. He just stared and said, “Hi I am Juan.” I said, “Juan what are you doing here?” He said, “What do you mean what I am doing here? I don’t have a job.” I said, “You know what. I know someone who really loves you and can help you find a job.” He said, “I will bet you are one of those Jesus people.” I said, “Jesus is the person I am talking about. He can help you, Juan. He can help you find a job.” He said, “Look, I am hungry. I don’t need your trying to convert me into Christianity.”

When he said, “I am hungry,” I remembered that in church I learned Jesus is the bread of life. I took out a tract from my pocket and handed it to him. He said, “I don’t need your Jesus. I need bread”. I said, “Jesus is the bread of life. Here at least take it”. He reached out and he took it from my hand. Then he ripped it in little pieces. He crumpled it up. My tract, he crumpled it up, the torn pieces of my tract in his hand and then he put it in his mouth and he began to masticate it. Until it was masticated well enough that he swallowed it and he looked me right in the eyes and he said, “I told you. I don’t need your Jesus. I need bread”.

As Rudy told me the story, he was crying. I said, “Rudy, what did you do?” He said, I went back to my church and I told them that how they trained me wasn’t working and I had a bunch of young people that had become my close friends and we talked about my experience of going out trying to do evangelism and so what happened? He said, we organized. We started a bakery and we made bread. We got back on the bus and rode with our tracts with bread and we went to the Juans that we could meet and we said, “Jesus loves you and he sent us here with this bread for you.”

You know the world is looking, not for somebody named Jesus that they never heard about, and they are not looking for the message that many churches give good news about their future. “God has a wonderful plan for your life and when you die you will go to heaven and you will be with Him.” They say, “You know what? My husband is an alcoholic and he beats me now. Does God have any good news for me now? My son is a drug addict. Does God have good news for my son now?” The world sometimes looks at us as Christians and they say you have all kinds of good news about the future. What about now? In this break, I want to ask you to ask yourselves among yourself this question. Does God have good news now and if he does what might that good news be?