Episode 198: September 15, 2024 - The Mission of God - Part 3

Eternity Church PodCast

A Sunday morning sermon by Mark Turney. In a little classroom a few miles from the Nile, I stood in front of my science students and explained potential energy. By day, I was a science and sociology teacher at the fourth best school in the country. In my classroom were children from affluent families. Sons and daughters of high-ranking military officers, ambassadors, and titans of industry sat in my lab. There were also students on scholarships, fortunate young people who were able to receive a solid education that equally prepared a potential pathway to the best schools in the West. Looking back at that moment, I see one brimming with significance. Those young men and women have now gone on to lives around the globe. Many of them are married with children of their own, thriving in their various fields. But back then, they were just a bunch of middle schoolers who would groan how they had recieved “too much” homework and struggled to memorize the periodic table. Stuck in this moment, their today was shrouded in the mystery of tomorrow. They were packed with invisible potential! How often we overcomplicate what it means to be the bearers of God’s blessing to all peoples! We know that God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, offering to us all the potential of belief (John 3.16). Like middle schoolers, we sweat trying to unpack divine mysteries, to comprehend the incomprehensible. All the while, we miss our immense potential energy as Christ’s blessing bearers! We get lost in condemnations, from within and without, forgetting that God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3.17)! Likewise, He sends us with His good news not to condemn the world but to offer the potential of salvation. Beloved, we have all the potential for the world to bear God’s blessing for all people! We have been crucified with Christ; therefore, it is not we that live, but Christ in us (Galatians 2.20)! This means we carry His mysterious and transformative Spirit into all places, among all peoples, by His power, not ours! Let’s follow the leading of the Spirit and put our potential to work! Dear brothers and sisters, let’s in the words of the Apostle Paul: “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain,” (1 Corinthians 15.58).