Renewing The Vision [PART 3] | Love Extravagantly | Mark Pugh | Sunday 26th July

[00:00:03] Well, we are. [00:00:06] We are in the middle of a series looking at a reset or renewing of the vision of the church. If you've missed the last two weeks, I really encourage you to catch up online. [00:00:18] You'll find the context of those previous two weeks to be helpful to you and it will give some context to what we're going to look at today. So I really encourage you to do that. But can we just pray together? [00:00:36] Holy Spirit, your word is a lamp to our feet. [00:00:43] It's a light to our path. [00:00:47] Would you illuminate the pathway before our individual sets of feet and also our corporate sense of direction as a church? [00:00:59] Would you illuminate and make clear we pray? [00:01:04] Bring your word alive to our hearts now. [00:01:09] In Jesus name, amen. [00:01:15] Renewing the vision Part 32 weeks ago I shared how we are renewing the vision. It's not a new vision, it's a renewal of that which has been in place for quite some time and that is to reveal the glory of God to the Southwest and beyond. [00:01:34] And last week we looked at living courageously, one of those ways that we live out the values of DNA and the culture, the way that we demonstrate the glory of God to the world around us. [00:01:47] The first of these values, living courageously, we unpack them. We spend a bit of time looking at that together. See, our DNA is meant to not just be something we do, it's meant to be something we are. It's meant to flow out of every fiber of our being. And we're called to be a church, to live courageously. [00:02:05] But today we're going to move on to the second strand of our DNA, and that is love extravagantly. [00:02:13] Now, one of the difficulties of looking at this is in that word love, because it's been said so many times, it's been heard so often, it's been used in so many contexts in our life that it almost feels like a soft, wishy washy word in our mouths. [00:02:31] It sounds safe, it sounds warm and comforting. [00:02:36] Love. [00:02:38] No one has ever been accused of being too loving. [00:02:43] Love feels like it's a cozy place, a comforting place. [00:02:49] But the word in our values isn't just love. [00:02:53] It's love extravagantly. [00:02:58] An extravagant is not a safe word. [00:03:01] Extravagant means to be wasteful by the standards of the world. [00:03:07] It takes the calculations of normality and it breaks it. [00:03:13] Extravagant means that it's more than reasonable, more than is required, more than makes sense on a spreadsheet. [00:03:25] If you last we looked at living courageously and that was to do with overcoming fear in our life. Extravagant love is about what you do with the calculation of being reasonable. [00:03:41] That part of us that measures out love carefully. [00:03:47] This is the portion for them. [00:03:50] This is the portion for them. [00:03:53] This is the portion for them. [00:03:56] And extravagantly comes in and says, no, I'm not going to be reasonable. [00:04:04] I am going to break those rules. [00:04:08] It's about not giving in proportion to what's deserved or what's safe or what you will get back in return. [00:04:18] You see, God's love doesn't proportion out what we deserve. [00:04:25] And as a result of the standard that he sets, we're not called to love others according to the proportions of what they deserve either. [00:04:36] And there's a scene in John 12 that is among the single best picture that I could paint of what extravagant love looks like. [00:04:51] It's probably one of the greatest illustrations in all of Scripture. [00:04:56] And it takes place six days before the cross. [00:05:01] Jesus is having dinner in Bethany and many Mary, Lazarus, sister, the one whose brother Jesus had just raised from the dead some time before, comes in carrying something. [00:05:19] She is carrying something very special, something very valuable. [00:05:27] She's carrying a jar. We call it the alabaster jar. [00:05:31] Contained within this alabaster jar was a precious nard of perfume. [00:05:40] Scripture tells us what it was worth. Let's look at John 12. 3. It says, Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. [00:06:01] The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. [00:06:10] A pound of pure nard. [00:06:15] Judas does the calculations and we read this a verse later. [00:06:22] He calculates that this pure nard is worth 300 denarii. [00:06:28] That's roughly the equivalent of a year's laborer's salary. [00:06:35] Mary, she doesn't keep a portion of it. She doesn't sell a portion of it. [00:06:42] She doesn't dilute it. [00:06:45] She doesn't save some for later. [00:06:48] She breaks it open and she pours it onto the feet of Jesus. [00:06:56] The whole thing. [00:07:00] There is a wildness to this, there's a craziness to this, there is an extravagance to this. [00:07:11] And then she wipes his feet with her hair, symbol of her own dignity and her own crowning glory, just wiping his feet like a cloth. [00:07:25] Judas calls it waste, says verse 5. Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? [00:07:36] Now, by every reasonable, responsible spreadsheet measure, Judas is right. [00:07:45] It was wasteful. [00:07:49] That's not a misreading of the story. [00:07:53] It genuinely was more than was needed for her worship. [00:07:58] It was more than made financial sense. [00:08:02] It was more than anyone could have required of her. [00:08:07] But notice that Jesus doesn't correct her maths. [00:08:12] He defends the waste. [00:08:15] He says in Mark 14, leave her alone. [00:08:20] She has done a beautiful thing. [00:08:26] And that's the whole of this sermon in one sentence. [00:08:30] Extravagant love will always look wasteful to someone who's doing the sums, but Jesus calls it beautiful. [00:08:43] Notice this, that something happened as Mary poured out this nod. [00:08:51] It said the whole house was filled with the fragrance. [00:08:59] It filled the whole of the house. [00:09:04] Imagine sitting here and someone breaks open a bottle of perfume and suddenly the aroma begins to spread and fill the entire room. [00:09:13] That detail really matters because extravagant love doesn't just stay contained to the person that it's poured on. It fills the room. [00:09:26] Everyone in that house that night came out smelling different. [00:09:31] You remember those days when people used to smoke in pubs and you'd come out of the pub and you've never smoked a cigarette, but you'd get home and you'd smell of cigarettes. You smell different. [00:09:43] Well, everyone left this house not smelling of something that they didn't want to smell of. Smell of something beautiful. Because of this incredible act of extravagant love, Mary's worship went home with them. [00:10:00] Whether they understood or not what they did, her worship impacted their life. [00:10:08] This is the grace of God. The worship of Mary even smelt on Judas. [00:10:19] So what does it actually look like for you and I to pour out that kind of love? [00:10:27] Well, our values, our DNA. [00:10:32] They name five particular shapes or expressions of loving extravagantly. [00:10:40] Let's look at them together. [00:10:44] The first is that we love God with everything. [00:10:50] There's a subtitle to that. It says, as we increasingly discover his benchmark of extravagant love before. This is about loving other people extravagantly. It is all about loving Jesus extravagantly. [00:11:10] It's about the direction that Mary's love was pointed straight at Jesus himself, nothing measured out. [00:11:19] Mark 12 puts it this way. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. [00:11:34] Notice that word, all four times in one sentence. [00:11:40] Not a portion, not what's left over after your week has taken what it wants. [00:11:47] All. [00:11:50] Most of us haven't stopped loving God. [00:11:54] We've just started rationing him a bit on a Sunday, a bit of a quiet time in the week, a bit of obedience where it doesn't cost too much. [00:12:09] But that's not the love that this scripture describes. Love the Lord your God with all it's not the love that Mary modelled. She modelled all she was in all she gave her all. [00:12:28] She didn't calculate what portion of the perfume God deserved, she broke the whole jar. The question that's good to sit with is this. [00:12:38] Is there a jar in my life that I've been keeping sealed, giving God the smell of it through the stopper? Every Sunday in worship, do we bring our alabaster jars in and just open and say, smell that, God? [00:12:54] Get a whiff of that. [00:13:00] All our gatherings should smell beautiful. [00:13:09] I know saying that in July when we've been having a heat wave and we're lifting our hands, there is no deodorant that's worship proof. [00:13:20] I don't care how many guarantees of 48 hours. They say they should test it on worshipers, But the extravagance, even through the sweat and the tears, smells beautiful when we bring our all. [00:13:43] Second part of how we describe loving extravagantly within our DNA is that we welcome everyone. [00:13:52] It's got this subtitle that says showing God's love, care and compassion to everyone, irrespective of background, culture or identity. [00:14:07] Jesus tells a story about a great banquet where the invited guests all made excuses and didn't come. [00:14:21] So the host of this great banquet said something remarkable. [00:14:27] He said to his servants, go out to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. [00:14:40] Not the respectable guest list, the highways and. And the hedges. [00:14:47] Not the castles and the palaces, the highways and the hedges. Not the council chambers, but the highways and the hedges. Not the places of influence and the places of importance and power in society, but the highways and the hedges, the people that nobody expected to see at the table. [00:15:10] And Paul tells the Roman Church the standard of how we God's people are meant to welcome. [00:15:18] Romans 15 says, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. [00:15:26] That's a high bar. [00:15:30] Because Christ's welcome wasn't cautious. [00:15:36] He welcomed, as we looked at a few weeks ago, the woman at the well, woman that the religious people wouldn't speak to. He welcomed a tax collector that was a pariah in his society. [00:15:50] He pointed to him hiding in a tree and said, I'm coming to your house. [00:15:55] He welcomed the very people whose lives made the religious people flinch. [00:16:04] Here's a question I'd like us to consider as a church and as individuals in the church. [00:16:10] Who causes you to flinch? [00:16:14] What background, what past, whose culture or identity would make it harder for you to welcome someone the way that Christ has welcomed Us Extravagant Love goes looking for those people on purpose rather than hoping that they will wander in. [00:16:39] We go looking for them. [00:16:42] We have some remarkable people in this church who go looking for those that others have rejected. [00:16:50] I think of Richard and Sarah in Teen Challenge and the work that they do to reach out to some of those lives of the most shattered and broken. [00:16:59] Yesterday we were at the wedding of Des's son Sam, and Sam had loads of groomsmen and quite a number of them he's led to Jesus in the last few years. [00:17:12] He had a house share with some other guys who weren't Christians. And rather than him backslide, they came to Christ. [00:17:20] There are remarkable stories in this church of people that work among some of those who are in their hedges on the highways. [00:17:30] I think of we've got a number of people here who work at the ymca, and the glory of the Lord is shining through your life to touch and then extend a welcome, not just to do a job, but to give a welcome. I've often said that our welcome team are among the first prophetic people that we should encounter when we come to church. Because most of society seems to tell people that you're unlovely, you're unworthy, that you don't live up to the standards of everyone else. And the world is divided between those who accept that and those who refuse to accept it and try to push everyone down to make themselves look and feel better. [00:18:08] And yet we have an opportunity as soon as people walk through these doors to put a red carpet metaphorically down and say, we love and welcome you. [00:18:20] That's what we're called to be as a church. Do you know when we take a moment in our service, say hi to people around you? [00:18:26] I know in this room we've got introverts. I'm one of them. [00:18:31] But get over yourself. [00:18:34] Don't use that as an excuse to not welcome other people as Christ loved you. [00:18:41] Allow that spirit of God that's in us to extend to cross the room. [00:18:49] Do you know, over the years, I don't do what I do naturally. I do it because I've learned that it makes a difference in people's lives, if you will walk across the room, that it makes a difference when you step into their world and their circumstances and you offer welcome. [00:19:11] Do you know, this would be phenomenal if every single one of us learned to get over our sense of concern about stepping out of our comfort zone and we just stepped forward into someone else's life and world and we said, hey, we want to love and welcome you as Christ. Don't use these words. Be a bit freaky if they've never been here before. We want to welcome you as Christ has welcomed us. Bit intense. Bring it down a little bit. [00:19:40] Hey, welcome. Lovely to see you. [00:19:44] We're delighted you're here today. [00:19:49] I'm amazed how it seems like conversation is a dying art form in society. [00:19:58] When I sort of go into various contexts and settings, I think if I wasn't asking the question, we'd all be sitting there silent. [00:20:06] People just have lost that art of reaching into the world of other people. [00:20:12] Learn it because I'm pretty sure if Christ sat next to you, he would not ignore you. [00:20:22] And I think he would show lots of interest in your life. [00:20:27] Don't use conversation to talk about you. [00:20:33] Use it to inquire about them and to love them and to help find a connection point. [00:20:42] We love extravagantly by welcoming everybody. [00:20:49] Thirdly, in our DNA values, one of the shapes of how we love extravagantly is that we demonstrate grace. [00:21:00] The subtitle says redemptively, prophetically and practically through word and through deed, to everyone we come in contact with. [00:21:13] In John 8, there's a woman that's dragged before Jesus. [00:21:17] She has been caught in the act of adultery and she's thrown down literally at his feet. [00:21:27] And there are people surrounding her, all holding stones in their hand, because in that society at that time, the punishment for committing adultery was death. [00:21:41] And they were ready to enact that law. [00:21:45] And by every measure of the justice that they had in society, she was finished. [00:21:53] And Jesus doesn't argue with the law. He doesn't say, well, you know, can you tell? Did she start it? Did he start it? [00:22:01] Don't know where he is in the picture, but he didn't get involved in any of that. Didn't say, just tell me, how long has this affair been going on? Is this just a one off? [00:22:10] Didn't ask any of those questions. [00:22:14] He doesn't talk about the technicalities of the moment. [00:22:19] He just begins to draw on the ground and he says these words, let the person who is without sin throw the first stone. [00:22:38] And one by one, as people knew that they weren't without sin and their stones dropped and they walked off. [00:22:51] And this frenzied moment a few minutes earlier, the crowd had now gone, the frenzy had dissipated and there were just two people in the scene. [00:23:03] There was this woman laying on the ground, distressed. [00:23:08] All she can hear is these rocks falling to the ground and not striking her. [00:23:16] And then there's just her and Jesus. [00:23:20] And he says, These words, the only one that was without sin, the only one who could have used his own words to have destroyed her. [00:23:33] And he says these words, neither do I condemn you. [00:23:44] Everything changed in her life at that moment. [00:23:48] Grace changed everything said, from now on, sin no more. [00:23:57] But grace picked her up and set her on a trajectory of fresh hope and life. [00:24:08] Grace isn't grace if it's measured out to match what someone deserves. [00:24:14] That's called fairness. [00:24:17] And fairness is never going to save us. [00:24:21] Paul said it plainly in Titus 2. He said, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to people. [00:24:31] The grace of God has appeared. [00:24:34] Do you remember the day when the grace of God appeared, when he transformed, when the stones around you all fell and you were left looking at Jesus face to face? And he said, I don't condemn you. Get up, take up your mat and walk. I am going to bring fresh life, fresh hope, fresh purpose into your life. [00:24:55] Today. Salvation has come to this house. [00:25:01] Grace, by definition, is extravagant. [00:25:07] It's unreasonable. [00:25:10] It's the stone that doesn't get thrown. [00:25:13] Extravagant love means we become people who are known for putting our stones down, not picking them up. [00:25:25] In our words about people, our judgments of people, the way we talk about others. [00:25:32] The moment they leave their room, put the stones down. [00:25:38] It's not about fairness. [00:25:40] It's about grace. [00:25:43] Fourthly, fourth expression of loving extravagantly is be generous. [00:25:51] The subheading says, giving all we have and all we are to bless what God is desiring to do in the earth. [00:26:02] In all expressions of his one church. [00:26:09] Paul writes to the Corinthians about churches in Macedonia. [00:26:15] These were people who had almost nothing. [00:26:19] And he describes what happened when they gave. [00:26:24] 2 Corinthians 8 says these words of the people who gave to those in Macedonia. It says, for they gave according to their means, as I can testify. [00:26:38] Listen to this. And beyond their means, of their own accord. [00:26:47] And listen to this goes on to say, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints beyond their means and begging for the privilege of giving more, not less. [00:27:03] That's not a fundraising strategy. [00:27:06] That's what happens when people have actually caught what extravagant love looks like in their life, and when they've rearranged what they think their life, their resources, their gifts, their talents, their time and their money is for many of you in this room have caught this, and there are many illustrations of generous giving that I could draw upon in this church. [00:27:31] It would be easy to use some financial examples of some large gifts that have been given at various points on the journey and the adventures that we've had here in Rediscover or. I remember when we were going through Covid, we had a number of people giving really generously into our well being fund. Do you know, over the space of like 18 months, we gave probably £100,000 away to help people in need. [00:27:56] Those were beautiful moments and they were beyond expectation. They weren't. I remember somebody came and said, hey, I've had a, you know, I've had a particularly profitable year. And we want to give a big sum into just helping those who are more unfortunate this Christmas. Can you help distribute it to families? [00:28:15] They didn't. It wasn't an offering that they felt compelled to give. It was. It was extravagant love. [00:28:21] It was. God has been generous with me, I want to be generous with others. They got it. [00:28:27] But the problem, if I use some of those examples, is that it makes it look like it's all about big gifts and it isn't. It isn't so much about the size of the gift that you give. It's about the desire to extravagantly give yourself fully in the context of your means. [00:28:43] Mary's jar cost a year's wages, but the Widow in Mark 12 gave just two small coins. [00:28:52] It said this of those two coins, it was all she had to live on. [00:29:02] Jesus said that those two small coins were more extravagant in their generosity than those who brought in significant bags of large sums. [00:29:15] Generosity isn't measured by the size of the gift. It's measured by what it costs the giver. [00:29:22] It's measured by are we holding anything back? [00:29:28] One of our values here in the church is that we live generously. [00:29:35] And fifthly, the final point of our love extravagantly is scatter and gather. [00:29:46] The subheading says these words be expressions of God's radical love in every sphere of influence which opens up to us daily in our lives. [00:30:00] In Acts 8, Stephen is the first Christian martyr whose life is taken because of his love for Jesus. [00:30:11] As a result of that moment, great persecution spread on the church and the church who had been enjoying the peace. And they had been growing daily in number and in influence at that point. Suddenly the persecution caused them to be unsafe where they were, and they scattered. [00:30:31] They went to all sorts of locations and places. [00:30:35] But it said this of those who were scattered. In Acts 8, 4 it says those who were scattered went about preaching the word. [00:30:51] Imagine if you had to move a house next week because of your faith, no other reason. [00:30:59] I wonder what your first instinct would be. [00:31:03] Of course there'd be the Insecurity, the instability. [00:31:06] There might be the legal protest, there might be all sorts of petitions. [00:31:11] In the New Testament, their priority was preaching the word because they recognized that scattering wasn't the setback that it looked like. [00:31:23] It was the mechanism that God was going to use to further the gospel across the earth. [00:31:32] A comfortable church wouldn't have got the gospel out in the same way that a persecuted, scattered church was able to do. [00:31:43] And this is a rhythm that you and I are called to live. [00:31:48] We're called to gather genuinely, deeply, to love as a family, to care for one another, to build relationships. [00:32:01] And I hope, as I look around this beautiful gathering, I hope that you're not content to just come for an hour and a half or an hour and three quarters, or maybe three hours if I go on a bit longer today. [00:32:21] I hope you're not content at the sum of your fellowship being the person who sat next to you today for that period of time. [00:32:33] I hope the family of God means more to you than that. [00:32:39] I hope that there is a desire. Now, listen, I know that there'll be some here and you might feel a bit uncomfortable about that. In fact, you intentionally come late so that you can sit at the back. Although it doesn't work as if you. You have to come early to get a back seat to church, don't you? Everyone knows that. [00:32:59] But there is a sense of, I am going to maybe not get close to people. [00:33:06] And you leave just before the end. Don't want to hang around for all that coffee stuff. [00:33:12] And then the barbecue sounds like a nightmare. [00:33:16] Like, why would I want to talk to people? [00:33:24] I'll go and I'll get my drive through McDonald's on my way home, and I'll have a burger that way and I'll sit in my car and I will just enjoy the fellowship of me. [00:33:41] Introvert heaven. [00:33:48] But we're not just called to gather to worship. We're called to gather, to connect, to deepen, to love. [00:33:59] We're called to have an understanding of one another's hearts, to know the pressures, the stresses and the strains. Now, you can't do that with everybody in a room of this. In a church of this size. [00:34:14] You can't. I get really embarrassed. I forget names all the time now, and it's difficult, isn't it? [00:34:24] I was speaking to someone a few weeks ago and I was really embarrassed thinking, oh, God, give me a word of knowledge. I can't remember their name. [00:34:31] And then after a while I thought, I've just got to have to come out with this. I'm really sorry. I love to remember names if I can, but I can you remind me of your name again. [00:34:41] And then they told me their name and they said, by the way, what's your name? [00:34:44] So I didn't feel so bad. [00:34:52] When they asked me. Have I been coming long to the church? [00:34:57] Is this your first time? [00:35:03] We're called to be a family, and that's difficult because, you know, a family of five can fall out a family of hundreds. How do we do that? [00:35:21] Well, I know it's impossible unless it contains this DNA of loving extravagantly. [00:35:30] And when we gather, we're meant to sharpen each other, to enrich each other, to encourage each other. [00:35:38] And that might take every ounce of extravagant generosity in you. [00:35:44] If you don't know what it is you can encourage in them, then ask them questions about their life until you find something. [00:35:51] If somebody feels really boring to you, then you've just not learned to ask the right questions yet. [00:36:00] There'll be something you get them on that will help them come alive. [00:36:06] Try to get close to people, try to work out what's going on in their life and try to extravagantly love. [00:36:15] We're meant to be more than a gathering on a Sunday. We're meant to be an ecclesiastical people of God. [00:36:24] His people on earth, his family on earth. [00:36:28] But then we are called not just to live in a monastery together. [00:36:34] And this is where the New Testament we see this dynamic. [00:36:40] Gather, scatter, gather, scatter. [00:36:43] Because tomorrow you might be the only Christian that you will see for the next few days. [00:36:50] You might work in an industry, in an office, or in a workspace or a university, that no one else in your group is a Christian. [00:36:59] You are scattered. [00:37:01] Do you know what you're called to do in those moments? [00:37:05] To reveal the glory of God, to live your life built upon the word of God, to be people that love extravagantly. [00:37:17] A church that only gathers and never scatters is a church that keeps the perfume sealed in its jar. [00:37:25] You can bring your alabaster jars on a Sunday and let your worship extravagantly flow out. And you can take your alabaster jar to work. [00:37:34] And you can extravagantly love the Lord by blessing those around you. [00:37:40] So in our final moments, I want to look at asking you some questions about how this works in your life. [00:37:51] You see every one of these five loving God with everything, welcoming everyone, demonstrating grace, being generous, and scattering and gathering. They will all look like waste to someone who's doing the sums. [00:38:05] That's not the flaw of extravagant love. That's the whole point of extravagant love. [00:38:11] Judas did the calculations and got the numbers right, but completely missed what mattered. [00:38:16] Don't let a right calculation talk you out of a beautiful thing. [00:38:20] And here are five questions I'd like to ask you. [00:38:25] I'd like you to invite them to search you, not just to pass over them. Here are the five questions. Number one what jar have I been keeping sealed instead of pouring out to God with everything I have? [00:38:44] Question 2 who would I struggle to welcome the way that Christ welcomed me? [00:38:53] Question 3 Where have I been picking up stones instead of putting them down? [00:39:02] Question 4 what has a fear of beyond my means stopped me from giving? [00:39:12] And finally, am I gathering only or am I scattering, carrying this into the actual spaces of my week? [00:39:23] Maybe we can keep those questions on the screen a moment. [00:39:28] Mary's act of love for filled the whole home with her fragrance. [00:39:34] Nobody in that room left smelling the same as when they walked in. [00:39:39] That's what extravagant love does. [00:39:42] It doesn't stay contained to the person it's poured out on. It fills whatever room it's poured out in. [00:39:49] And I want to invite you to respond to those questions in your own heart, to break open your jars and to love extravagantly. [00:40:04] If we can do that, I believe we can fill the southwest with the fragrance of the glory of the Lord. [00:40:13] It will take all of our culminative jars together to make one beautiful sacrificial aroma. [00:40:24] So name in your heart the jar that you've been keeping sealed, the personal group that you've been keeping at arm's length, the stone that you've been holding against someone. [00:40:37] Maybe the threat of throwing that that you've held and has defined your relationship. [00:40:42] The gift of time, money, and of yourself and your talents that go beyond your means, that you've been holding back from giving and the room in your week that needs this fragrance poured out.