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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Self Interest and the Virtual Gospel

Testing, testing, thank you so much for that beautiful reminder that we can pray for each other And may we do that.

Lord, our lives are yours, bought with a price, created, and Lord, offered up to you today.

We want to present ourselves as a living sacrifice.

What that means, Lord, is something yet to be determined, but today you might reveal it.

And along the way you've been revealing it.

So when it costs something, Lord, may we not be unwilling to continue the journey, but may we walk with Jesus.

And may we lay down our lives as so many other faithful Christians have laid them down before us.

Entitled my message this morning, Self-Interest and the Virtual Gospel.

I am compelled to take this subject matter up again as the cultural ebb and flow of who we are to be in a time of pandemic, how to exercise our Christian faith, what that means in its impact on others both spiritually and physically, and what that free exercise of religion is about in its ability to benefit us, but more so in the church's obligation to benefit the lost.

Some of you may be aware of the battle that is shaped up in California between John MacArthur's church and the state of California.

It appears that in a journey to establish the ability to gather and to worship, he's found himself in court or his institution, grace to you, no less than 4 times.

When it's all said and done, the court has upheld their right to continue to gather and to worship, And it appears that that's not enough at the end of the day, that the law should actually afford them the privilege of meeting and worshipping, but the county of Los Angeles is seeking to revoke their lease on their parking lot.

So it appears that it's not enough to let the law settle what defines privilege and freedom and in their mind divine obligation to gather and to worship.

It appears that there is an irreconcilable sense of commitment to various ideas.

In other words, it's not enough that those at grace to you continue to worship, it's that if it doesn't go our way, we're going to make you pay.

And if you want to look into the details and you come up with a different understanding of what it means for a Superior Court judge to tell you you can worship, And then to have the county say, well, you can worship, but it might be a little hard to do if you can't park your cars.

And the Village Church, including myself as probably 1 of the main voices of the Village Church, are not outside of that dialogue.

We had, I get feedback from a lot of ways, some of it comes indirect, some of it comes direct, and I've received that feedback knowing that the role I'm in creates a certain amount of cross-current and sometimes strong winds from the side of the mountain that I'm operating on as I'm moving by God's grace to higher ground.

1 of our leaders communicated this week that someone in the community said your reputation in the community is is that you're rebels.

Now I want to make sure everybody understands something.

At this church, I suspect we've done as much or more, more than almost every other church that you're going to find, especially when it comes to the outlay of resources, try to make sure that we have a safe gathering place.

And including the tents that are up out front this morning and right through that window there and that are up over at our church school, along with the touchless faucets and water bottle fillers at our church school, along with all the hand sanitizer and the doors that get propped open, and the signs that say don't socially gather, and the separating in seating.

The 2 things that we're not doing that some wish we would do is require everybody that walks through these doors to wear a mask.

We respect everybody's decision to make a good decision for them, and then probably the singing.

And these 2 things appear to be reckless and inconsiderate in the mind of some.

The reminder that's come from the leadership of this church is that this is a voluntary place of gathering and most understand our philosophy before they come, so if they come, They're coming of their own free will, managing their own lives, and willingly entertaining the risks that are associated with this form of gathering.

When that was mentioned to 1 of the other leaders in our community, they said, you know, you're rebels.

The leader responded by saying, we're not rebels, we're leaders, and the conversation was over.

Now, whether you think that's appropriate or inappropriate, I'm here to suggest today, and this message entitled Self-Interest in the Virtual gospel is really a journey into what level of risk Christ himself brings into the life of a church and the individuals that constitute the church.

And so from the very beginning, I want you to understand that the premise of the message today will be that it is God's explicit intention to create environments that are risk, not risk averse, but actually risk laden in an effort to determine an understanding of His will, how to walk in it, and a faith that comes out of a corresponding understanding of that divine prerogative.

So for those that have sent me emails, for those that have sent word back to me on Facebook, if that was their intent or whatever, I've heard you.

But I'm here to suggest today that it appears that the church really is acting very little, with very little difference from the rest of the world.

And what I would distinguish there is the world has no mission, no mandate, no God, no sense of security from an outside source of power except their own contrived sense of what that would be.

God's people, however, are operating with a different understanding.

They're operating with the understanding that as birth pangs come upon a woman, so does trouble come upon the earth in, as an antecedent to deliverance.

And so this morning, what God is going to take us on a journey to do, I believe, as I've prayed my way to this moment, is to show you that God has a responsibility to actually take us through circumstances that require prayer, a determination of His will, and obedience in an environment of risk.

Now, how many of you know what the word fiduciary means?

Don't raise your hand, just ask yourself, do I know what the word fiduciary means?

Some of you have signed papers where either someone owes you a fiduciary interest or you owe somebody a fiduciary interest.

Fiduciary is a word that is a legal term that represents an incumbent, or don't wanna use other words, incumbent means it's yours, you've got it, but it represents an obligation you have to look out for somebody else's well-being.

So if I have a lot of money and I go to a financial advisor and he invests it for me, he has a fiduciary relationship to make sure he invests my money for my well-being, not for his.

Of course, we understand he's supposed to get some.

When you're a parent, you have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure your children are properly raised for success in a future life, for safety, for education, for food and clothing, and security.

And the concept of this sermon today is built on the idea that God actually has a fiduciary responsibility to us as children.

And what does that fiduciary responsibility involve?

Have any of you ever read the book of Daniel chapter 1, chapter 12, verse 1 and 2 and onward there where it says that at the end of the days, Michael stands up and there's a time of what coming?

And the time of trouble that's coming as such as never was on the face of the planet.

That time of trouble causes many people to have trouble before the trouble.

And there's a lot of Seventh-day Adventists that go around in fear and worry that somehow they're gonna go through something they can't handle.

And that somehow God's gonna let it be harder than it's supposed to be.

Well, I'm here to suggest to you, no, I'm here to directly proclaim to you this morning that God has a fiduciary responsibility to allow us to go through situations that actually create faith-sufficient encounters with his faithfulness, if I could say it another way, to where when that time comes, we are not the ones whose hearts are failing for fear.

God has not architected that somehow we should roll out of bed, roll into a bunch of trouble, and somehow anticipate crossing that spiritual Jordan, ending up on the other side without a little preparation.

I've told you the stories of some of my running experiences.

You know, back in 2009, I sent a group called the Chicago Marathon a large sum of money so I could go out and torture myself.

And that moment finally came in October, 11 years ago, And I've told you the story of the man running next to me as I went by the Silver Bean and then underneath the overpass there.

I told you, I knew he wasn't gonna finish the race.

I knew because he was running alongside of me in cowboy boots.

And you can't run 26.2 miles in cowboy boots without wounding yourself for the rest of your life, I think.

The truth of the matter is, is that after I sent them that money, my life changed.

I began getting up early in the morning and going out on those Indiana roads and making myself go just a little bit farther than I felt comfortable going every day.

And every Sunday after a day off, I would get out there and I would push it farther than I had ever done it before.

The goal is get up to about 20 miles before you go to take on the 26.

And eventually I arrived in Chicago and joined the 45, 000 other people that were there.

But the idea that God would not put us on a preparatory journey to prepare us with a greater confidence for a greater crisis is foolishness.

There's no parent here that knew that hard times were coming for their children that would not seek to give them a graduated preparation for the hard times.

And in those moments of difficulty, God would want to instill, as every parent would want to instill, a sense that it's going to be okay.

But it appears in the aura that we're in right now, that the modern church has bought the mantra of modern secularism, and that would be that without a higher power, a higher mandate, and a higher mission, we're simply supposed to cordon ourselves off, stay out of other people's lives, and hopefully be okay on the other side.

And yet it appears that there are others of a Protestant persuasion and a Catholic persuasion who have determined that really The church itself has a mission, a mandate, and a purpose that is not to be shut down by risk, at least without some sense of meaningfully, intellectually, responsibly operating inside the risk without presumption.

And you say, there, pastor, there's where the lines cross.

What is faith and what is presumption in a pandemic?

And that this morning, friends, is a very important question for all of us to answer.

Because in interaction with the fellow leaders of this church and the other pastors of this community, I find out that there's people out there doing all kinds of things on the weekend that are violating what I'd call an intellectual consistency.

In other words, they're being logically hypocritical.

They won't come to church because they think that somehow this is irresponsible, but they'll sit next to each other on jet skis, and they'll give each other hugs, and they'll have pizza with each other.

They're camping, they're going all kinds of other places, but when they gather to create a sense of what the church's mission and fellowship should look like.

Well those are the topics for a hyper caution.

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Self Interest and the Virtual Gospel

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