It’s Time…For Spiritual Formation
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
February 6, 2005
First Baptist Church, Wilson, NC

SERIES INTRODUCTION

I have appreciated your prayers, your curiosity and your excitement as we have been preparing for this seven week experience that begins today. For seven Sundays we will be all on the same pages, reading and discussing and digesting the booklet written by Daniel Vestal: It’s Time: An Urgent Call to Christian Missions. I am glad that you are finding Vestal’s words to be thoroughly grounded in the Bible, and thoroughly relevant to what we call our post-modern times. One crucial reality of our time in is this: it is a very religious time, but not a very Christian time. The vast majority of people in our land consider themselves to be spiritual persons. But not so many people bear any real resemblance to the way and the will of Jesus Christ. And far fewer people consider the church to have any relevance for their spiritual life. Frankly, a lot of people see the church as an institution that exists mainly to look out for itself. That is the attitude of post-modern culture toward the church.

Now, we could gripe and moan about the times we are in, but that would change nothing. What would change things would be for us the church to a hard look within ourselves and clarify our own purpose: "What mission is God calling our church to do?" God does have a purpose for us in God’s church. God is at work in us to transform us into a missional people. Now by missional people, I mean much more than a group that does missions activities from time to time. I mean a people who see themselves as sent by God on a mission. It is more than us sending missionaries. It is God is sending us. In that turn of the phrase, there is all the difference. It is time for an urgent call to Christian missions.

SERMON, SCULPTOR, AND SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION

On this first Sunday, we are declaring that IT’S TIME FOR SPIRITUAL FORMATION: it is time to let God spiritually transform us into a missional people. It is as if God were forming us and shaping us like a sculptor shapes clay until God has formed us into the people that God intended. Sometimes we sing about this:

Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

Thou are the potter; I am the clay.

Mold me and make me after Thy will,

While I am waiting, yielded and still.

Speaking of sculptors and clay, I have some good help in presenting this message today. Whitney Skinner Adams, the daughter of Carol and Henry, has brought with her some clay to work with while I talk with you today. As I describe how God forms and shapes us into a new creation. Whitney will be forming and shaping this clay into something new. As you watch, we hope you will begin to feel how God is molding and shaping you into the person God wills you to be. As you watch, we invite you to see how God is molding and shaping us together into the church God wills us to be. Listen now to the apostle Paul describe how God forms us into a new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.

MISSHAPEN LUMPS OF CLAY

Sometimes I think there should be a warning label affixed to what we call modern life -- Warning: modern life can be hazardous to your health. Think about how complex life has gotten. We have infinite choices before us. I mean, go to the grocery store to get soap and there are fifty different kinds. Go to the movies and there are ten different screens. Go to watch TV and there are 70, 100, 300 channels. The variety of moral values today are as numerous as TV channels, becoming more and more individualized, depending on what life channel you have chosen for yourself, as you do your own thing. And who does just one thing at a time anymore? No, we specialize in multitasking. We can hear the weather on the radio, check the latest stock quotes on our Blackberry, talk on the cell phone to the office, and drive our children to day care all at the same time. Technology moves so fast. Things become obsolete so quickly. We all watch our own program, we all listen to our own music, we all eat our own food, we all go by the beat of our own drum. Modern or post-modern life is quickly becoming a very individualized and lonely affair.

What does it do to us? It leaves us feeling less like human beings and more like misshapen lumps of clay. We feel broken, twisted, squeezed. We are broken by our blunders. We are twisted by relationships gone bad. We are squeezed by the web of materialism that ensnares all of us in an endless cycle of acquiring and consuming. And we think: there’s got to be more to all this…than this.

We look to the church, and usually it doesn’t look any better. The church is often just as broken and misshapen as the people who go there. Often church is merely about maintenance: just a collection of individual consumers who come to consume religious products, who come to be entertained by religious entertainment, who come to be kept busy by religious activities and service projects.

It is as Dan Vestal has described. We individuals and our churches are often a mile wide and an inch deep. There has got to be more to life than this. Certainly there has got to be more to life with God than this. Oh, that the hand of God might take hold of us and reshape our lives and our world and make us good and whole and new again!

GOD (THE CREATOR) IS AT WORK FORMING US

Actually, that is exactly what God has been doing all along, from the dawn of creation. When God first formed the human race, Genesis says (2:7) "then the Lord God FORMED man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."

Of course, no sooner had God formed us than we blew it and began to twist and deface the image that God had formed in us. The rest of the Bible is the story of God pursuing us, seeking to take hold of us again, so that God can remold and refashion us back into God’s image. That is the whole story of salvation history in the Bible. That is the point of Jesus coming among us as God in the flesh. In Jesus we see humanity as God had originally formed us to be. Through the power of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, we have a second chance to let God get hold of us once again and reshape our lives into the people we were meant to be all along.

And now we know what shape God is seeking to recreate us in. God is reshaping us until we look like Christ. Paul once told a church in Galatia, in what is now Turkey, that he was so in pain for them that he felt like a mother in childbirth with them, "until Christ is FORMED in you." To another church in southern Greece, in Corinth, Paul used the image of formation again (2 Corinthians 3:18) and wrote that all of us "are being TRANSFORMED into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."

In the scripture we read today, we see the same powerful picture of formation in 2 Corinthians 5:17:

Again and again we hear this promise that God has God’s hands upon us in spiritual formation, molding us and reshaping us, until we look more like Jesus Christ.

THERE ARE THREE DIMENSIONS OF THAT FORMATION

When a sculptor fashions a new creation, the sculptor operates in three dimensions. The sculptor gives the image height and breadth and depth. It is like that in spiritual formation too. When God’s hands are upon us to form us until we resemble Christ, God operates in three dimensions. God gives us the grace of Jesus Christ. God gives us the love of the Father. And God gives us the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. These three spiritual dimensions are to us what height and breadth and depth are to a sculpture.

A first dimension of our spiritual formation is: THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. When God gave us Jesus Christ — his life, his death, his resurrection — God gave us a gift that completely reshapes our life. This grace reshapes us so profoundly that we do not even see things the same as we did before. Once we saw ourselves and others and Jesus from a human point of view, but not anymore. The gift of the Christ event makes everything new.

It is a gift that we need desperately. We are broken people, but by the grace of Christ, God heals us. We are bound people, but by the grace of Christ, God frees us. We are burdened people, but by the grace of Christ, God lifts us up. The grace of Jesus Christ gives elevates us into a new creation. To be spiritually re-formed is to receive the grace of Jesus Christ. It give us new height.

A second dimension of our spiritual formation is: THE LOVE OF THE FATHER. To be formed into Christ is to receive the love of God and let God’s loving hands reshape our souls. God’s love for us is personal. God’s love for us is warm. And when we rest in that love, we no longer have anything to prove, no inadequacy to hide, no compulsion to perform. Our identity is no longer in what we do and achieve. Our identity is in what we receive: the love of God. If we would receive that gift, it would free us of a lot of sick religion that is more works performance than grace. Spiritual formation happens as we receive the love of the Father. It gives us breadth

A third dimension of our spiritual formation is: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. What is the Holy Spirit? It is simply the Spirit of God present with us here and now. To be formed into Christ is to receive that Holy Spirit. The indwelling and abiding presence of God reshapes us from the inside out. The Spirit empowers us and frees us and cleanses us and transforms us into a new creation. It gives us depth.

Paul once wrote a church in Ephesus about the multidimensional nature of God’s spiritual formation upon us:

Ephesians 3:16-19

These are the dimensions that God gives to us in spiritual formation. Like an artist gives a new creation height and breadth and depth, so God gives us the grace of Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual formation happens when we receive these from God.

All that we do in our praying and our and listening to scripture, all that we do in our serving and our worshipping, they are all the spiritual disciplines we employ to open ourselves as fully as possible to receive all the ways God’s hands will shape us.

AS GOD IS RESHAPING EACH OF US, GOD IS ALSO RESHAPING THE CHURCH

Remember, our postmodern age does not look kindly on the church, and no wonder. Too often the church is just a PLACE:

• a place where consumers come to consume religious products
• a place where consumers come to be entertained by religious entertainment
• a place where people come to be kept happily busy in religious activities

But around the world we see a great movement of God’s grace and love and Spirit at work to remolding the church into a body of people SENT by God as AMBASSADORS of God’s kingdom. Do you see the difference?

Not a place for religious consumers

But a people sent by God

The Church is not a retail point for spiritual services and goods.

The Church is a people who gather and scatter

The Church is not a locus of volunteers

The Church is a locus of sent people.

 

It all began when the Father sent the Son, and then Son sent the Spirit. And now they all, Father, Son and Spirit, send us!

What are we sent for? We are agents of God’s reconciliation. We are ambassadors of God’s kingdom. We are messengers of God with this message: "we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." The Greek word for messenger is angelos. We also translate that as angel. We are agents, ambassadors. We may even sometimes be the angels and messengers of God. For the next six weeks, we will be finding out what all that means.

But today, know this: God is at work forming you and me and this church into a new creation. God is reforming us, giving us height and breadth and depth. God is at work in us for spiritual formation, giving us the grace of Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

-- Douglas E. Murray

CONCLUDING BENEDICTION 2 Corinthians 13.14

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God

And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, Be with you all.