Mission Sunday – Ryan Verghese

Introduction

When I was around seven or eight years old, my grandfather sat me down to tell me that he was praying for me, which is a pretty encouraging thing to hear. He said, “Let me tell you what I’m praying for you.” My grandfather was a Christian minister. My father was a Christian minister. I am a Christian minister. You can see him there in the robes. My son, the guy in the suit in the bottom photo, he is a Christian minister. But no one in their grandchildren generation seems to be interested in Christian Ministry. Four generations of Christian ministers, and none in the fifth seems to be interested in it. So I’m praying that you, Ryan, would go into Christian Ministry.

Now, I was gobsmacked. I was seven or eight years old, and I was like, why is he praying such lofty prayers for me? All I wanted to do was be a train driver or maybe an astronaut, and here he was praying that I would be a Christian minister. For most of my life, I thought he was saying this to all the grandkids and hoping it would stick with one of us, and then he’d get his dream of five generations. But my cousin recently told me, no, he was targeting you. He had laser focused his prayers for Christian Ministry just on you for some reason. It was hard to feel like I had to live up to that. Imagine if all you had in life was this kind of big expectation for you, a lofty challenge, a heavy responsibility.

My grandfather, he was a man I respected deeply. He was a man of great integrity. He lived a real Christian faith out. I was a normal seven or eight year old. I’d take more than my fair share of cookies, as can still be seen. I would fight with my brother. I thought, how could I be someone like him someday? The expectation to be someone significant, it can be something that’s crushing, impossible to live up to. I do think that somehow through his prayers, God was actually working through my heart and my love for God’s word, for God, for God’s people. It wasn’t like I had thought about it as an active thing for the last 20 something years of I got to do this because my grandfather was praying for me. It was some way that God was just at work in my heart.

As I reflect on the prayers of my grandfather, they really put my own kind of middle class prayers to shame. So often when I pray for my kids, I kind of stop at praying that they would be comfortable, that they would be emotionally, mentally stable, that they might have a comfortable life, and that they at best might have a Christian faith that they would follow Jesus. But I don’t go further and pray that they would be bold in the way that they live out their Christian faith. I don’t pray that they would be sacrificial and desire to give up the Comforts of this world to follow Jesus. The prayers of my grandfather put my middle class prayers to shame because my grandfather, he was captured by a love for Christ. It was captured by a love that permeated his heart and his soul and his strength. It’s something that Echoes what I think is coming out of this passage today in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 1 to 9.

The key idea that comes out of this passage is that the only God requires a wholehearted worship. That’s something that’s important for our family as we go to Seychelles, but it’s something that we think is going to be important for Seychelles to hear. We think it’s important for Riverstone, for Sydney, for Australia to know and worship God in this way. Let me pray for us as we look at this passage a bit more closely. Heavenly Father, we bow in your presence. Let your word be our Rule and guide, your spirit our teacher, and your greater glory a supreme concern through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Wholehearted Worship

More Than Mere Attendance

When you see this phrase wholehearted worship, I wonder what it evokes for you, what kind of images you have in your head. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that it’s more than our mere attendance to things, isn’t it? It’s more than showing up on Sunday. It’s more than showing up at Bible study. If we do a bit more kind of soul searching, we know that it’s actually even more than our devotional life, our Bible reading, or our prayer. This wholehearted worship, particularly what’s being spoken about in this passage, is something that needs to permeate our whole life. When we read and hear something like Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 1 to 9, we feel the weighty responsibility of trying to live up to that, don’t we?

The book of Deuteronomy, it’s one of the most significant books in the Bible. In Deuteronomy, Moses, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament people, he is preaching a series of sermons before he dies. It’s kind of his Farewell kind of address to his people. He’s preaching to a new generation of Israelites, these group of people who’ve spent their whole life 40 years wandering around in the desert. His encouragement to them, his reminder throughout this book, is that they have an exclusive relationship with the god of the universe, and they are to live in light of that relationship.

When Moses starts the book of Deuteronomy, he reminds them right at the beginning that God has saved them from slavery out of Egypt and that he loves them like a father loves his children. The law is given to them later, and it’s given to them as a way to show how they might live in light of this God, but it’s not meant to be a way that they can save themselves. They’ve already been saved by God. They didn’t do anything to deserve that. God out of his love for them has already saved them out of slavery in Egypt. Keeping the law was never meant to be a way to get God’s favor, but it was a way for them to know how to live before the god of the universe. Here in chapter 6 and verse 1, it begins by talking about the book as a whole as these laws that God has told Moses to teach his people before they enter into the Promised Land.

The Land Flowing with Milk and Honey

Throughout this chapter, he reminds them that the laws they’re good laws that God has given them in preparation for the good land that God has given them as well. Did you hear as Emily read out the metaphor used to describe the land? It was supposed to be this land flowing with milk and honey. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand metaphors, and I used to think Israel was quite a messy place. You’d walk for a bit, and you’d get your feet wet with all the milk that’s flowing around. Then you’d walk a bit more, and it’d get all sticky because all the honey would stick onto the milk. Maybe that’s why Jesus had to wash his disciples feet because they were so dirty with all this milk and honey. I figured out later in life that this is a metaphor. It’s this picture of abundance.

I used to live in Kuwait in the Middle East, and it was Desert. We didn’t have green spaces. We had yellow spaces. We played soccer on the sand. That was our field. These people have wandered around desert for 40 years, and God is promising them that they’d be in this land that would be flourishing, that would prove that would produce in abundance. It was this great promise to them that they would be in a place where things would grow and they could Thrive as a people. In verse two to three, he says that this promise, it’s not just for them, it’s for their future Generations as well. He says there are four key actions that they are supposed to do. They are to fear, to keep, to hear, and to obey. Moses reminded to them is that if they do these things, if they fear, keep, hear, and obey, then they will be abundant, they will be numerous as well as a people, just as God promises.

Hear, O Israel

It’s in light of this that he reveals who he is. He gives them the million dollar verse for a Jew. Jewish people even today, they would recite this verse twice a day. Hear from verse four. It’s called the Shema. If you might have heard that phrase before, it just means here. This is the phrase in the Shema. It says, Hear o Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is one. The god of the universe is revealing himself to his people. In the Shema, he’s revealing that he is one God. He’s not like the Nations around them that think they are all these other gods. He’s saying there is only one God, and he is the only one God. All those other gods are false. When he Reveals His character to them, he also encourages them to live in light of who he is in verse 5. He said that they are to love him with their heart, with their soul, and with their strengths.

In verses 6 to 9, Moses says that he wants these truths to be everywhere in Jewish Society. He wants it to be there when they go to sleep and when they wake up. He wants it to be in their house as they’re just hanging out as a family. He wants it to be out in the marketplace, in their workplace, out in the streets, in the fields. He wants it to be throughout their society and not just an add-on on Saturday or on Sunday. Some Jews when they heard this, they took it quite literally. Some Jewish people even today, they have these things called phylacteries, which they wear on their heads, which are these little boxes containing a scroll with the Shema because it says in the passage you have to keep it on your mind wherever you go. Other Jewish people, they have these little boxes on their doors called mezuzahs. Again, in these mezuz is a scroll containing the Shema because it says you’re supposed to keep it on the doorpost of your house.

This kind of literal interpretation, it’s not bad in and of itself, especially if it points to the reality of God and his character and how they’re supposed to live in light of it. The danger often of these kind of external things is that it turns into superstition. Some people think, oh, they’re safe because they’ve got this box on their head. Some people think if I kiss the mezuzah or touch it as I enter someone’s house, I’ll get God’s blessing on myself. That wasn’t the purpose that God that Moses had in describing this to them to be a part of their society was for it to be a constant reminder both together as a community, but also something that sprang out of their hearts that he wanted them to worship God wholeheartedly.

The Main Game of Mission

The Greatest Commandment

As we think about Deuteronomy chapter six, we might be wondering why is a Mission partner here today preaching on this passage? Why doesn’t he choose one of the gold standards? Why not Matthew 28, the Great Commission, or Romans 10, where Paul says, how can they hear unless someone goes to preach to them? Why preach on this instead? I think because this is actually the main game of mission, not just Mission and Seychelles, but Mission everywhere in Riverstone as well as Sydney and Australia. In Matthew chapter 22 verse 34 to 40, Jesus describes this as the greatest commandment, the worship wholehearted worship of God. That’s the main game of mission everywhere. It’s the thing we want to hold tightly to as we go, but it’s also the thing that we want to make sure that is being preached that is encouraging people in their witness to Jesus here in Sydney as we leave.

As Lynn mentioned earlier, this is a truth that we think Seychelles will need to hear time and time again. We haven’t been there yet. We are going for the first time in January next year, but we’ve read a bit, we’ve researched, we’ve talked to people on zoom and things like that, and all our research suggests that there’s lots of nominal Christians. People might call themselves Christians because of their parents or maybe their grandparents face, but they don’t have any kind of wholehearted worship of God. Some people who come to church on Sunday, but one of the local church leaders mentioned that sometimes people are either too drunk or too busy playing cards to show up to church, but on the census, they’ll say they’re Anglican. They’re on paper Anglican, but they’re not there on a Sunday. Then there’s that whole interaction with witchcraft that Lynn talked about, that mixing of their faith in Jesus with these other traditional religions that don’t really make sense of a wholehearted worship of God. We think they will need to be reminded of this time and time again.

If we’re honest again with ourselves, we’ll know that we too need to be reminded regularly about wholeheartedly worshiping God, don’t we? It’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to fall back into those sinful patterns of life and forget what permeating God’s love through our lives looks like. When we think of a passage like this, you might be wondering how do we apply this? How do we make that make this make sense of us in 21st century Riverstone? As Christians have wrestled and thought about how they read the Bible, there’s lots of different ways that people have tried to interpret the Bible. I want to start with one that I think is wrong. I’m gonna apply this passage with in a wrong way, and hopefully you’re not too swayed by my false application.

The Law Reveals Our Sin

One of the things that can happen when we look at a passage like this is that we can start to feel guilty. When we feel the weight of this challenge, we realize we fail to love God as we ought, that we need to do better. We’ve fallen short of God’s standards. Maybe the reason we don’t have all of God’s blessings is because we haven’t kept our end of the bargain. Maybe that’s why we have some health problems, some family problems, some other kind of mental health problems. That’s because we’re not doing our part. I wonder what ways you’ve failed God’s standards of obedience recently. Maybe instead of loving him with all your heart, you’ve let your heart wander and be corroded by a love of money instead. Maybe instead of loving him with all your mind, you’ve let your mind get distracted and start to fantasize about that co-worker. Maybe instead of loving him with all your strengths, you’ve spent all your strengths and energy playing soccer on Saturday, and so you’re exhausted when you come to church, and you can barely keep your eyes open, and it’s just a good time to catch up on some sleep. Well, this is your wake-up call. Give away all your money, quit your job, stop playing soccer so you can focus on wholeheartedly following God instead. Are you feeling encouraged? No, that’s not a real application.

It’s not a real application because if we think the solution is to try to do better in ourselves, we won’t be able to. The weight of the law is this burden that we just can’t lift in our own strength. I want to encourage you that actually the Christian way to read the Bible is much more encouraging. It’s freeing because we can’t take a passage that was written to Israel all those thousands of years ago and apply it to us today in 21st century Riverstone. There’s a better way to read the Bible. It’s called biblical theology. It basically sees the whole Bible as this Grand Story all about how God is Redeeming the world through Jesus. Hopefully as you’ve been doing your Series in Ezra Nehemiah, you’ve been doing this too. You haven’t been thinking how am I a priest like Ezra? How am I a governor like Neymar? This actually a way for us to understand the Old Testament to understand the whole Bible in Light of Christ. We look to him first as the author and Perfecter of our face. One of the reasons why the Archbishop has invited us to come to Seychelles while he’s been asking CMS Australia for years for help is because this is the strength of Australian theology, the way we do biblical theology. It’s not that people in Seychelles are uneducated or foolish. It’s that they’ve not been trained to read the whole Bible with Jesus at the center. The Archbishop, James Wong, wants people in his context to be trained in this method that we take for granted.

I’m gonna steal some language from Von Roberts God’s big picture, and he talks about three things that the Law’s purpose is for the Christian, three ways that the law helps us. The first is that the law reveals our sin. Our sin does get in the way of loving God rightly. We keep distracting ourselves, and we don’t give God our wholehearted worship because we are distracted by our own Pride, our love of possessions, or maybe our worldly passions that are getting in the way. Deuteronomy chapter 27 verse 26 says that unless you live out the law in every detail, every single one of the 600 plus Commandments, if you keep every bit of every one of those, unless you do that, then you are cursed. If we try to do better on our own, if we try to keep this on our own strengths and we fail inevitably, well, we put a curse on ourselves.

The second thing that the law reveals is God’s standards that we can’t meet them. The Bible talks about this in Romans. It says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every single one of us, even me, we’ve all sinned and falls short of God’s glory. 99 percent is not as good as a hundred percent. We can never once we sin even one time, we can’t balance the scales and make ourselves right with God. Once we sin, we fall short of his glory, and we can’t ever meet his standards again through our own strengths. What does God do? The promise in Galatians chapter 3 verse 13 to 14 is that Christ redeems us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us and that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus. The final purpose of the law, it’s to point us to our need of a savior that we can’t do it in our own strength. It’s not in keeping the law that we’re safe. It wasn’t even true for Israel. They were already saved out of their slavery by God from Egypt. It’s the same thing for us. It’s in belonging to Christ that we’re safe. It’s not in keeping the law we’re saved from our slavery to sin by his death on the cross for us.

A Spiritual Heart Transplant

Jesus is the only one who has ever loved God perfectly. He’s the only one who obeyed him at every Point even to the point of death on a cross. What he earned his righteousness, we get that through faith in him. The promise for a Christian is not that we can somehow do better in our own strengths. The promise for us is a spiritual heart transplant. Our natural Hearts, they’re stubborn, they’re sinful, they’re unable to love God rightly. His promise is that he will take our hearts and give us hearts that can worship Him. Here’s what he says in Ezekiel 36 26. He says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you Your Heart of Stone and give you a heart of Flesh. Wholehearted worship looks like God working in us through his spirit to worship Him. When we look at the law, well, there’s wisdom in there. It reveals our sin, God’s standards, and our need for a savior. It’s good for us, but we don’t have to keep it to get God’s blessings. We already have all of God’s blessings through his spirit in US.

Let me tell you a secret about our family. We don’t somehow have greater access to God than the rest of you. We’re not somehow holier than you. We’re not like more obedient than you or something like that. It’s not that we have some greater truth of the Gospel that the rest of you haven’t graduated to yet. The thing that we know is the same truth that you know. It’s the same truth that my grandfather knew. It’s not about how wholeheartedly we can worship God. It’s actually about how wholeheartedly he loved us. God so loved us that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God loves us and sends a son to die for us. God forgives our failure to worship Him wholeheartedly, and he transforms us every single one of us. God is able to use helpless people like the vagisas and make them useful for his service in this particular way, but he’s able to make you useful for his service in lots of different ways. That’s why he has this church that many parts work together for the good of the whole to grow into maturity in Christ.

When you see a passage like this, it ought to actually not it shouldn’t put a burden on us. It should stimulate our gratitude to Christ. The weight of the law has been lifted and in ought to motivate us to love him rightly in all things. It’s not about putting phylacteries on our heads and mezuzahs and our doors to remind us to love God, but to remember that loving God Springs out of a changed heart. It’s his work of his spirit in us that enables us to love God. In this passage, there’s Promises to the Next Generation and these encouragement to pass it on to their sons and their grandsons. That’s not an obligation for us, but there is great wisdom in passing This Love On to the Next Generation, both within our church family, but also in this Greater Community of Riverstone. Our joy is not to keep this great news hidden under a basket, but to show the great treasure, the pearl of great price that is Christ to the world around us and to encourage the disciple young people to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. I hope that would stop our middle class press.

My grandfather, he might have challenged me, but the thing that he did that was more important was that he prayed. He prayed bold prayers. He prayed daily bold prayers for his grandson, and it was those prayers that transformed my life to respond rightly to Jesus. The hope that we have this great good news of the Gospel, it’s what we want to take and share with the people in Seychelles. We want to show them the goodness of the Gospel all throughout the Bible that they can trace from the law to the gospel the goodness of Jesus. We would love for you as you pray for us not just to pray for our comfort, but to pray bold prayers that God would work through the power of His Spirit to revive this nation of Seychelles. As Dan mentioned, we can’t go unless people generously financially partner with us. If that’s you, if you have the capacity, we would love for you to consider being generous with the money that God has entrusted you with to send us in your place to be the arms and legs of Riverstone Anglican in this place in Seychelles to be your ministers in a distance. We’re part of your ministry staff team. We’re just an outpost a little bit further away. We would love to remind Seychelles of the goodness of the gospel for as long as God would have us there to remind them as we want to remember here that the only God requires our wholehearted worship, and he makes a way for that to happen through his son Jesus. He wants that to be true of people here in Riverstone, not just those gathered here today this morning, but to the community around us for Australia for the Seychelles. Know that we’ll be praying for you and say shells. We’ll be praying that God will keep growing you in your likeness to Christ and your witness to the watching world around us. We would love for you to partner with us and pray with us for us and for the seychella to know Jesus in this way as well. Let me pray for us now. I thank you Father for the reminder to wholehearted worship. Thank you that you have made a way for us to be able to love you with our whole selves as we ought through Christ’s work of dying and rising to life and through his spirit’s work in Transforming Our Hearts to be able to love God rightly. Please help us as we partner together in bringing this good news of Jesus to a dying world that doesn’t know him yet both here in Riverstone as well as when we go to Seychelles in Jesus name we pray amen.