Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - Witness

Series: Beyond Belief
Sermon: Witness (6.29.25)
Watch the messages HERE. 

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station.

The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew.

Some of the members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.

Now, the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired life-boat crews to do this work.

The life-saving motif still prevailed in this club’s decoration, and there was a symbolic life-boat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast.

They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another life-saving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

Is MCC a life-saving station or a club?
 
Do you go out looking for people who need the saving grace of Jesus or do you hang at the clubhouse thankful that you are not drowning?

The original purpose of the life-saving station was to save lives – what happened? People got comfortable.

What was the original purpose of the church of Jesus Christ? What has happened? We have gotten comfortable.

Where is our commitment?  What should we be committed to?

Ephesians 2:10: For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

What good works should we be doing? Fulfilling Jesus’ final command in Matthew 28:19:

“Therefore as you go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

As Christians and as a Church we are to be about the business of making disciples. That means sharing the grace of Jesus with others so they have the opportunity to accept Him and grow in Him and look forward to being with Him in Heaven for all eternity.

When was the last time you told someone about the grace of Jesus?

When was the last time you told someone the good news of Jesus?

As a Christ follower that is our joy and our responsibility. We are Christ’s ambassadors.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We have been made new in Jesus. We have been set free.

As Christians, God has commissioned us to be His ambassadors. God uses our lives and our voices to share the Good News of Jesus with our family and neighbors.

Don’t be scared to open your mouth for Jesus.

Jesus promised the apostles they would be given what to speak, in Luke 12:11:
"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say."

The Holy Spirit will give us what to speak if we are brave enough to open our mouths – pray for the person you want to talk to and ask God to give you the words to speak and for that person to have an open heart to hear the message of God’s grace.

You don’t have to have all the answers – you know why you accepted Christ, you know the sins you needed to repent of, you know the joy and relief of having your sins forgiven. Just tell someone your story of salvation. God loved you just the way you were, He cleansed you of your sins when you repented and was immersed into Jesus. Now you have the indwelling gift of God the Holy Spirit. Praise God!

Be a life saver.

Help MCC be a life-saving station.

- Pastor Jim