MESSAGE TITLE: Dan Clark
TEXT: James 5:1-5
SPEAKER: Dan Clark
BIG IDEA: Convoy of Hope
Convoy’s distinct purpose has been to ensure that Jesus has representation
Convoy is a first responder
We set out on a mission to meet desperate physical needs, with the help of the local church
THE GREAT DIVIDE
One of the great tensions in the church, perhaps the preeminent tension, over the last 100 years, has been between evangelism and social action.
More conservative members of the Church would say we’re just rearranging the chairs on the titanic. They’d ask: why are you wasting time feeding hungry people? We need to go out and save souls!
And at the other extreme, liberal churches would say just the opposite: what are you doing with all this preaching? We need to be helping people and addressing their suffering. There are people dying and you’re preaching.
We say, why not both?
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR
If you asked first-century Jews what it looked like to love God, they would say “Obey his commands.” It was what Andy Stanley describes as a “vertical morality”. Keep God’s laws and you keep God happy.
Matthew 22:36, 37
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment”
Matthew 22:39
“And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Both/and.
1. Love God with all your heart.
2.Love your neighbor as yourself
OLD IDEAS MADE NEW
The ten commandments: the first four concern our relationship with God, the remaining six concern our relationship with one another. Both/and.
But it’s important to understand that this was the first time in recorded history that the two were combined.
Jesus was
Remember, Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He came to make things clear for us. And he was making it clear that there wasn’t one greatest commandment. There were two. And according to Jesus, they summed it all up:
Matthew 22:40
“All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
WHO’S MY NEIGHBOR?
Lev 19:18
*“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” *
Jesus saw this as the perfect opportunity to redraw the lines, to disrupt the status quo and reconstruct this audience’s concept of neighbor
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Luke 10:30
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead”.
Luke 10:33
“But a Samaritan, who was on the journey, came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds… and brought him to an inn and took care of him”.
Luke 10:35
“The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you’”.
Jesus
The church has always been at its best when we practice both/and Christianity.
PERSONAL SIN AND SOCIAL SIN
When we look at these two parables, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, we see both/and Christianity at its best.
Prodigal Son - why was the son starving? Victim of his own sin. So often, when we ask why people are in the situation they are in, we conclude that they are the victim of their own choices. And sometimes that’s true.
Good Samaritan - what happened to the guy in the road? He was a victim of the sins of others