Read Acts 4:23-32 & Matthew 5:13-16 here.
Choosing Bold Over Mild
How many of
you saw today’s sermon title and wondered if I was going to talk about
salsa? So let’s talk about salsa. Do you prefer bold or mild?
Do you know what robots dip in
salsa? Microchips.
I tried to ask Google whether more
people buy bold or mild, but instead of salsa, I got information about coffee. So how about coffee…do you prefer bold or
mild? Or blonde?
In case you wondered, tortilla chips
do not taste good dipped in coffee, neither bold or mild.
Boldness is something the Bible encourages.
2 Timothy
1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of
power, love, and self-discipline.”
Msg version: “God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and
loving and sensible.”
In the letters to the churches in
Revelation, Jesus tells the church in Laodicea that their lack of boldness
makes him vomit. He says,
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor
hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither
hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev 3:16-17)
I don’t want to make Jesus vomit! Boldness doesn't mean rude, obnoxious, loud,
or disrespectful. Being bold is being confident, fearless, daring, strong, and
not easily intimidated.[1] Boldness makes us more effective in telling
what we know about Jesus.
When I was a customer service rep, I learned to be
bold when answering questions so a customer could have confidence in my
answer. If I answered mildly, “I think
it might be…” then they would ask to speak to someone else who really knew the
answer, which drove me nuts because I DID know the answer. I learned to say, “It is . . .” with
confidence.
Pray boldly.
The early Christians have a rather
dramatic experience in prayer. Prior to
this they had been teaching in the temple about what happened with Jesus, and
they were confronted by the priests and temple leaders who were disturbed that
Peter and John were teaching that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the
dead. (Acts 4:2) It’s pretty hard to tell people about Jesus without talking
about the resurrection, actually. Their
testimony was very effective, and that day 5,000 men, not counting the women
and children, became believers. (4:4)
The temple council, trying to keep the
peace, commanded Peter and John to never speak or teach in the name of Jesus
again. But Peter and John boldly
replied, “Do you think we will obey you
rather than God? We cannot stop telling about what we have seen and heard.” Despite this response, the council let them
go because they were afraid of a riot. (4:21)
When Peter and John told the other
believers what had happened with the council, we might expect they would go
into hiding and stop preaching about Jesus until everything settled down, or
that they would ask God to make everything peaceful, and keep them from having
any more trouble, but instead they pray for more boldness!
“Give us . . . great boldness in
preaching your word.” (4:29)
And then the place where they were
meeting shook. God responds boldly, confirming for them that God had heard
their prayer, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and went out and
preached the word of God with boldness. (4:31)
A bold prayer strengthens their
boldness. We, too, are called to pray
boldly. Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive.” (Matthew 7:7) As we seek to become more and more a
congregation that thrives, let’s ask God to make us bold and to give us clear vision for the words we
need to speak, the actions we need to take, and the ways we need to be
transformed, so that we might be fully committed disciples of Jesus, ever
growing in holiness and grace, and drawing others to him.
Along with praying boldly, we need to…
Trust boldly.
We see this trust in the prayer in
Acts 4. They begin their prayer,
“Sovereign Lord, you made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in
them…You anointed Jesus to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined
to take place.” (4:24, 27-28) They
trusted that God had a plan from the beginning
in sending Jesus, and that God would continue to strengthen them as they
continued to teach in the name of Jesus.
We also see
bold trust in the story in Daniel 3 of Shedrach, Meshach and Abednego. King Nebuchadnezzar had commanded that
everyone in the kingdom should worship the gold statue that he had had made of
himself. Shed, Mesh & Abe refused to
obey, and instead only worshipped God.
The punishment for refusing to worship the gold statue was to be thrown
into the furnace, but that didn’t scare these guys. Instead they make a bold statement of trust
in God: “If we are thrown into the furnace, the God whom we serve is able to
save us…but even if he doesn’t, we still won’t worship the gold statue.”
(Dan. 3:17-18)
God does save them and they
survive. They were even dancing in the
furnace. But before that, they were
already trusting, saying, “God is able to save us, but even if he doesn’t, we
will still trust in him and worship him alone.”
This is bold faith. God doesn’t
promise that things will go the way we want them to. Our call is to keep on trusting God anyway,
and to trust Him with our whole lives and our whole hearts.
Jesus demonstrated this most
dramatically in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away
from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Matthew 26:39) And Jesus taught us to pray similarly, "Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew
6:10)
We are to pray boldly, to trust
boldly, and to . . .
Live boldly.
Jesus demonstrated this in his life
and ministry, and in his death and resurrection. And he taught this in his preaching. The section of Matthew that we read this
morning comes from what is probably the most famous sermon, Jesus’ Sermon on
the Mount. Jesus says, “You are the salt
of the earth.” (5:13) “You are the light
of the world.” (5:14) Salt and light are
bold.
ßThis
It’s
striking to me that Jesus doesn’t say, “Go become salt” or “Go become
light.” He says, “You ARE salt.” “You ARE light.” He’s telling the disciples to be who they ARE
as his followers. To boldly live as the
bearers of the message, witnesses to the life of Jesus and the love of
God. To not be afraid to be who they
were called to be.
We don’t always realize how much we
are being transformed by spending time with Jesus, but people notice when we
respond to situations differently, or when we make different choices about our
lives. Salt and light are basic things that make a big difference in the world. Can you imagine if there were no salt or
light? Can you imagine if there were no
Christianity? If Jesus had never come?
My first funeral after I became a
pastor was for a longtime member of the church who had been in the hospital for
some time. In the hospital I had met one
of her friends, a Jewish man who was always wearing his yarmulke and prayer
shawl. As we were preparing for her
memorial service, I was concerned about offending him because I was going to be
talking a lot about Jesus and the resurrection, something that is an important
part of Christian funerals. I asked him
if that was going to be a problem, and he told me I should boldly proclaim what
was central to my faith. He said he
would step out of the room at that point because that was what his faith dictated,
but he also said that he could see how Christians had made the world a better
place when they were true to their beliefs. His words made it much easier for
me to be bold that day.
Sometimes being bold is more of a
risk, as we make choices that challenge us.
A woman named Sarah went with her husband on a business trip. She and her daughter enjoyed the mornings
while the husband attended workshops. One afternoon it was announced that there
would be elephant rides for the children in the hotel parking lot. Her
daughter, Katie, was delirious with excitement. Sarah told her, “Life is
always full of wonderful surprises if we’re open to them. Some mornings you get
up not knowing what will happen, and you get to ride an elephant that
day!” When they got home, there was an invitation for Sarah to
join a group of journalists on a trip to Ireland. She was tired of traveling,
and not really a spontaneous person, so she told them she would probably not
go. Her husband, overhearing her, said, “So, you’re not going to ride the
elephant?” She decided to go.[2]
Though God is powerful, he doesn’t
force us. We get to choose whether to
follow Jesus, and whether to be bold – whether to pray boldly, to trust God
boldly, and whether to live boldly.
Living boldly instead of living
fearfully and timidly means:
· Instead of shying away from showing someone
love, we take action. Love boldly.
· Instead of being too afraid of embarrassment,
we tell someone about how Jesus has changed us. Tell our stories boldly.
· Instead of holding a grudge, we offer someone forgiveness.
Give grace boldly.
· Instead of hiding our beliefs, we take a stand,
and we speak boldly.
Most of all, living boldly means
following the Lord’s guidance with faithfulness and obedience, regardless of
cost.[3] Choosing
mild is much easier. Mild is more
comfortable. Mild makes God spit us out. Mild doesn’t ask much of us. Bold asks everything of us. Jesus, who gave everything for us, asks us to
boldly give him nothing less.
How will you choose to pray and trust
and live boldly today?
---
Now
all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to
accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in
the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21)
[1]
Mike Yaconelli in You Don’t Have to be
Perfect to be a Christian
[3]
Lloyd Ogilvie, The Communicator’s
Commentary: Matthew (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 109.
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