Richard Trussell passed onto me several months ago a series of articles from a Newsweek magazine dated March 29, 1999. The series was entitled, "2000 Years of Jesus." That series contains a main article by Kenneth L. Woodward on the ways that the teachings of Jesus have impacted the world. There are also two short articles, one by Billy Graham entitled, "God’s Hand on My Life," and another by a writer named Cal Thomas. The one by Mr. Thomas on page 60 is the one I want to briefly survey this morning.

Thomas begins this article by telling the reader that he was working for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority at the time of the 1980 election when Ronald Reagan won the White House. He says that after that election, "The marriage of church and state was looking better all the time." He also says that "[t]he hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ took on an entirely new meaning."

But Thomas’s very next paragraph begins this way. "That was 2O years ago. Now the movement appears dispirited, even despondent. Politics has failed to deliver what we thought it promised." He goes onto say, "true believers––including me––are beginning to sense that the kingdom of this world, which regularly demands compromise, cannot be reconciled to a kingdom not of this world that allows for no compromise." Thomas then says that "Jesus understood this. Consider John 15:36, when Jesus tells Pilate: ‘My kingdom is not of this world . . . my kingdom is from another place.’" Thomas then writes another paragraph that ends this way, "The lesson: by and large, the Christian mission should be to change hearts, not laws" (emphasis is mine).

The article continues on for two more paragraphs, but it is Thomas’s line about how God’s people effect change that has caused me to think back to Scripture. That line has caused me to think a great deal about the way God has worked to change the world and the people in it. For the next three Sundays mornings, I want us to think together about God’s calling for this church. How does God want to use Broadway to change the world?

I know of no better way to begin to answer that question than to look back at Scripture and to see how God worked in the past to effect change. We will begin this morning by looking at how God sought to effect change during the Old Testament period of biblical history. Next Sunday morning we will look at the way God worked through Jesus to effect change during the First Century. Then, on the last Sunday in August, we will look at the way Jesus dreamed of His disciples effecting change in the world until the end of time.

In the first book of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, God often refers to changing the world with the language of blessing. That way of referring to changing the world is first found in Genesis 12:1-3 when God issues a special calling to a man named Abram who would become Abraham. Please take your Bibles, turn to that passage, and follow along as I read.

Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

"So that you will be a blessing" and "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." God was somehow going to change the world by blessing the world through this man Abram. In Genesis 18:18 God repeats that in Abraham "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." In Genesis 22:18 and in Genesis 26:4 the promise is reiterated with a slight change in the way it is stated. In those passages we read, "by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves." God’s desire was for Abraham and Abraham’s offspring to somehow bless the world––to effect change in the world by being a conduit of God’s blessing.

And we see that desire of God being carried out in real life through Abraham’s early descendants. Most of you know of Abraham’s great-grandson, Joseph. He was the one sold into slavery by his own brothers. Joseph ended up in Egypt and was a great blessing to people there. Joseph was sold to a man named Potiphar, and in Genesis 39:5 we read, "From the time that [Potiphar] made [Joseph] overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field." Joseph eventually blessed the Egyptians as a whole and their ruler by preparing them so that they successfully survived a severe famine. And Joseph was not the only one of Abraham’s descendants who was a blessing in Egypt. In Genesis 47:7-10, we read of Jacob, Joseph’s father, blessing Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt.

When we come to the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus, we find that God is still interested in effecting change in the nation of Egypt. This time God’s goal is that the Egyptians come to know something about the God of Israel. In Exodus 7:5 we read these words from the Lord, "The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out from among them." Just a few verses later, Moses is told by God to say to Pharaoh just before turning the waters of the Nile into blood, "By this you shall know that I am the Lord." Plagues that come later are accompanied by similar words from the Lord. In Exodus 8 Moses even agrees to end a plague at an agreed upon time so that Pharaoh would see it end at that time and know that the Lord was the one who ended it. Moses’ words to Pharaoh with regard to that agreement are, "As you say! So that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God, the frogs shall leave you and your houses and your officials and your people; they shall be left only in the Nile." There are more occurrences of God’s stated goal that the Egyptians would "know" something about the Lord, but I want to go to the last one in Exodus. It is found in Exodus 14:18. This verse contains a statement from the Lord that comes not long before the Egyptian army is drowned in the sea. God says, "the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers." God wanted the Egyptians to know that the real power in the world is not soldiers and chariots but the power of the Lord, the God of Israel.

There are many more passages in the Old Testament that we could study with regard to God’s plan to effect change in the world, but we do not have time to look at all of them. I want to conclude this survey by looking at the book of Isaiah. In that book we have three passages that convey God’s desire to effect change in the world through the people of Israel. Those three passages are Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:3. The first two of these passages relate specifically to the "Servant of the Lord," but that servant’s purpose is closely connected to God’s purpose for the nation as a whole. Isaiah 42:6 says, "I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations." In Isaiah 49:6 God says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." In Isaiah 60:3 the prophet writes, "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn." God dreamed of Israel and individual Israelites being so alive with God’s righteousness that people would be drawn to God by what they saw of God in God’s people.

What we see in these examples from Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah is that God’s way of effecting change in the world is to do it through God’s people. God wants to shine forth with blessing and righteousness and power through the people who are known to wear God’s name. It is what God does with, through, and for God’s people that will cause those who see to be drawn, to be drawn to God, and to be changed as a result. But what we learn through the history of Israel is that Israel turned away, over and over again, from that purpose. They could not be used by God for the effecting of godly change in the world because they refused to take on that role. In Isaiah 29:13 we find words that express the problem with Israel with sharp clarity. The Lord says, "these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote." For God to use a people to effect change in the world that people must be focused upon God. Their hearts must belong to God. Israel’s hearts were rarely given over to following God; that failure negated their ability to be the "light to the nations" that God desired them to be.

Are we different? Don’t we also struggle with the distractions of this world, distractions that cause us to forget how God wants to use us? God wants the people of Jesus to be a light to the nations, a light to the world, a city set upon a hill that cannot be hid. But we so often forget what matters most to God, and we negate God’s purpose for us.

I want the ushers and the servers now to please distribute the "Vision Plus" documents to everyone? While they are doing that, let me tell you a bit about these documents.

Broadway’s elders and staff know that God wants to bless the world through this church, and we want God to achieve that purpose, to achieve it in a powerful way. As a result, over a year ago we went to work on a statement of foundational beliefs, of mission, of vision, and of goals. We did that for the express purpose of keeping before all of us what we believe is God’s calling/God’s dream for this church. We have referred to this statement as "Vision Plus," because it is tightly connected to Broadway’s vision statement: "Ever Becoming a People of Love," a vision statement that God has used to bless this church family for some time. And we worked and worked on Vision Plus. It went through about seven editions before it reached its final form and was approved by the elders in the Spring of this year. We have waited until the last three weeks of August to unveil it because we wanted to use it as part of the build-up to Friends Day on October the third.

Please look at this statement with me. Notice first that the full statement divides into four major sections. The first is comprised of our foundational beliefs. The second section declares what we believe is God’s mission for Broadway. The third section declares the vision statement of "Ever Becoming a People of Love." And the fourth section articulates our goals.

This morning I want to try and imprint upon us the foundational beliefs and the mission. Notice that the foundational focus on God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and the Church. These foundational beliefs do not and cannot express everything we believe. These foundational beliefs do express powerful and motivating truths that we all believe. And everything else we believe grows out of these foundational beliefs.

The first foundational belief is, "We believe in the living God who actively works to redeem all people from sin in order to give them abundant life." The second one is, "We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who is the perfect model of God’s abundant life and whose own life, death, resurrection, and ascension is the culmination of God’s redemptive work." The third one affirms that "We believe in the Holy Spirit of God who works within all Christians in order to advance God’s redemptive and life-giving work." The fourth foundational belief is, "We believe in the Bible as the inspired revelation of God’s redemptive work in the world and the inspired revelation of the abundant life that God gives." The fifth one says, "We believe in the Church as the united body of Christ comprised of those who have been redeemed by God and who have received from God a Spirit-empowered life of active participation in God’s redemptive and life-giving work.

I am fairly confident that in our minds we all believe these statements without reservation. But the biblical concept of belief is to trust in, to have faith in; and to trust in something and to have faith in something is to allow that belief to impact profoundly one’s day-to-day existence. We go about life on the basis of these beliefs if they truly are believed and not just assented to.

To say, "We believe in the living God who actively works to redeem all people from sin in order to give them abundant life" is to say that we trust in and have been profoundly impacted by a living God who wants to redeem people for the purpose of giving them abundant life. To truly believe in that kind of God is to participate in that God’s redemptive efforts. Broadway’s participation in God’s redemptive efforts should mean that everything we do has a clear connection to those who have not yet been converted to God’s abundant life.

I realized several months ago that the decisions I make for my ministry here have everything to do with the people who already come and almost nothing to do with the lost. I am trying to change the way I conduct my ministry. I could not possibly forget your desires; I love you far too much to do that. But sisters and brothers, we have been saved by God’s abundant life. We are to do what we do to reach those who are not saved, who do not have this abundant life. Let’s truly "believe in the living God who actively works to redeem all people from sin in order to give them abundant life." Let’s be transformed by that belief. Let’s live according to that belief.

This same kind of transformation power is possessed by the four other foundational beliefs. Please do not just assent to these; live these beliefs. As we do that we will be used by God to effect change in the world. And we will be effecting that change, not according to the power of the world, but according to the powerful plan of our God.

Now let’s briefly look at Broadway’s mission statement. It is, "The Broadway church of Christ exists to call all people to God through Jesus Christ; to equip all members with a faith that works in real life; and to send those members into the world for service in Jesus’ Name." Call, Equip, Send––those three verbs define our mission. The more we actualize the energy and dynamism of these verbs the more we can be used by God to bless the nations. The more we actualize those verbs the more we can be "a light to the nations," a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden, and "the light of the world."

May God plant God’s vision for this church in our hearts. May we dream God’s dream and give our lives to the fulfillment of it. May we shine with the light of Jesus so the whole world can be changed to the glory of our God! Amen! Amen!!