In her amazing book entitled, Not Ashamed, Rev. Fleming Rutledge makes this profound statement:
“It can’t be said too often: if the story of Jesus of Nazareth had ended with the Crucifixion, we would never have heard of him.” – Rev. Fleming Rutledge
That’s been the fundamental idea behind this entire series. And it’s because something happened on that Sunday after the darkest Friday that we have to ask the question:
What’s Next?
I don’t know about you, but the kids at my house are pretty excited that what’s next is that we’re coming to the end of the school year.
I know that this school year hasn’t ended the way any of us wanted or imagined, and I want to express my thanks to all our teachers and administrators who had to shift in a BIG way without much time to begin teaching their students in a whole new way. Our kid’s teachers have been extraordinary and I’m thankful to all of you who teach who have gone the second and third mile to help your students, love your students, and teach your students. This has not been easy for anyone.
Some of you know my wife is a teacher. She teaches Kindergarten. So just imagine trying to teach about 20 kindergartners through Zoom and Online learning!
A week or two ago I could hear her in another part of the house on a Zoom call with her class. They were doing Show and Tell. Each kid would take one of of their favorite things from their house and show the class on Zoom and talk about it.
It was a great idea but you can imagine what this was like with a Zoom call of 20 kindergartner’s! Everyone wanted to share! But not everyone could share at once. So she would have to mute everyone and let one kid at a time talk.
I thought I had a tough job!
It’s a Show and Tell World
We live in a Show and Tell world. Maybe now more than ever before. The only difference is that now we’re not standing up in front of our kindergarten class to share our favorite toy, but we sure do want people to know, to SEE and to HEAR, about what’s important to us.
Social Media has made it easy for us to do Show and Tell for all of us who are out of Kindergarten but still want people to SEE and HEAR about what we have, how good we are, and all the good things going on in our lives. And please hear me, I’m not knocking Social Media. I’m just making the observation, this is the platform where many of us SHOW people and TELL people what matters most to us.
If that’s true, then I think it might be important to ask the question, What is it that we are SHOWING people and TELLING people matters most to us?
What are we DEMONSTRATING and DECLARING with our lives that is of supreme importance?
You may not do this with social media, but I imagine all of us in different ways are showing the people around us and communicating to the people around us what matters most to us.
So, what do the people who spend the most time around us think matters most to us?
Called to be Show and Tell People
The Good News is that as believers in Jesus we are called to be SHOW and TELL people. We are called to DEMONSTRATE and DECLARE with our lives, through our lives, what matters most.
If you believe something happened some 2000 years ago that changes everything, then you have to ask yourself how are you SHOWING people and TELLING people about this revolutionary GOOD NEWS that you believe is true?
If this isn’t what you believe, you still communicate to the world around you what is most important to you. My question for you is… Is the story your showing and telling the world around you WORTHY of you giving it all of your life?
We believe THIS STORY about Jesus IS WORTHY of us giving the entirety of our lives to SHOW and TELL others about this Good News.
If you rewind to 2000 years ago, in the aftermath of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, what you find is that those first followers of Jesus believed so deeply in the story of Jesus that they, too, were willing to give their lives to SHOW and TELL the world around them about this Good News. So much so that every single one of them gave their lives to DEMONSTRATE and DECLARE that this message was true.
A Show and Tell Story from the Start
If you have your Bible or your Bible app, I want to invite you to read one of my favorite stories found in Acts 5.12-42.
There’s a lot going on here in this story, but what I want you to see today is the BIG picture. Here are some of the first followers of Jesus whose lives are having such a dramatic impact on their community that the local religious leaders have them locked up and put in jail!
WHY?
Because they couldn’t stop talking about Jesus. Every day for them was SHOW and TELL. And they were DEMONSTRATING and DECLARING the difference that Jesus of Nazareth makes in the lives of those who believe in Him.
And this is precisely what God wanted them to do. Did you hear what the angel said the night they were freed from the jail cell? v20 – “Go to the Temple and give the people this message of life!”
In other words, Go SHOW and TELL people about Jesus. Go Demonstrate and Declare what this Life is all about.
And they did. Without fear. Without hesitation. Fresh out of a jail cell right back at what got them arrested in the first place. They couldn’t keep quiet about Jesus!
And what was their message? This is what the apostle Peter said standing before the court…
v30-31 – “The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by hanging him on a cross. Then God put him in the place of honor at his right hand as Prince and Savior.”
This is the Good News… something has happened that changes everything.
And after the whole encounter was over, after they were brutally beaten for SHOWING and TELLING everyone about Jesus…
v41-42 – “The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and PREACH this message: ‘Jesus is the Messiah.’”
Nouns and Verbs
Now here’s what I want you to notice, the word for preach here is the word euaggelizo. If you remember all the way back to week 1 of this series, we talked about the word for Gospel in the New Testament, in the Greek language, the word that means Good News, is the word euagellion. It’s a noun.
This is what would happen when a herald would travel to your town to announce the good news about a battle that had been won, or the crowning of a new king. This was euagellion. This was good news. And that word is a noun. And if you remember your English classes at school, a noun is simply a person, place, or thing. Euagellion is a noun. It’s someTHING that happened. It’s good news. And what the writers of the New Testament have done is taken that word to talk about the ultimate Good News about Jesus of Nazareth!
Now, if you’ll let me go into geek mode just for a moment, the word euagellion is used 75 times as a noun by the NT writers to talk about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
But that’s not what Luke does here in Acts 5.42. When he writes… “And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and PREACH this message: ‘Jesus is the Messiah.’” The word he uses for PREACH is euaggelizo. It’s the VERB form of the word for gospel, euagellion!
In other words, they were gospeling in the Temple that Jesus is the Messiah!
The Gospel, the Good News, isn’t just a noun, it’s a VERB! In fact, the writers of the New Testament use the word gospel as a VERB 56 different times!
Are You Gospeling?
So maybe the question for you today is this, “Are you gospeling?”
I know it’s bad english, but I think you see the point.
Are you SHOWING and TELLING others about what matters most to you? Are you DEMONSTRATING and DECLARING that you believe Jesus is who He says He is and because of that, it changes everything for you?
How do you do that?
The answer to that question is as different as the number of people who are watching this because the Spirit of God has gifted each of us differently to SHOW and TELL others about him. To DEMONSTRATE and DECLARE what we believe about Jesus.
Some of you have the ability to befriend the people around you to the point you can share your faith with them and pray for them. Some of you have the ability to plan and lead mission teams to other parts of the world. Some of you know how to build things and fix things and help people in need and leverage that to share your faith with people who are broken and need to be restored. Some of you know how to make massive amounts of money and you give it away to help spread the gospel.
Some of you are teachers, some of you are doers, but all of us are gifted by the Spirit of God to SHOW ad TELL others about Jesus. All of us are equipped and empowered by the Spirit of God to DEMONSTRATE and DECLARE that we believe Jesus is who He says He is and because of that, it changes everything about us.
And this the Good News I want to end the series with today…
The Good News is that you are the Good News.
Or maybe better said, the Good News is that you are Good News people.
NT Wright said it this way: “Our calling is not simply to believe the good news. It is to become good news people.”
And that’s what we want to do. That’s the answer to the question, “What’s Next?”
What’s Next is for us to become Good News people, showing and telling others about Jesus, who He is and what He means to us. It’s us demonstrating and declaring that we believe Jesus is who he says he is, that something happened some 2000 years ago that changes everything, and come what may that Good news changes everything for us.
And not just that, it changes us.
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