Imagine What God Can Do If We Kingdom-Think

A Sermon Preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, VA
November 2, 2003

Scripture:  Matt. 13; Luke 15; Luke 21.

On a day Jesus told a brief story likening his kingdom to a buried treasure.  The treasure had been there a long, long time, covered over, unnoticed, undiscovered.  But one day a guy or gal discovered it.  "Wow! I can't believe my eyes."  Looking around to make sure no one was looking, the treasure was covered up again.  The finder went about buying that field so he could own the treasure.  The Kingdom of God, says Jesus, is like finding a treasure in a field when you weren't looking for it.  But when you discover it, you want to make it your own.

I have known of this parable for so many years I can't count them.  But I'm not sure I experienced it - until this week.  Let me give you the background.

Two months ago on September 7, on a Communion Sunday like this one, we embarked upon an emphasis entitled Imagine What God Can Do.  Phil Mitchell had written a song with that theme.  I was all excited about it.  It was a new approach to Long Range Planning.  Praying came first, you see.  I was proud of us.  For once we were going to pray before we planned instead of planning and then finally turning to God and saying, "God, bless what we have planned."  September was to be prayer and listen month.  October was t

o be Imagine and Plan month, putting our thoughts on the vision boards in the hall.  In November we would put it all together.  By the end of the year we would have a vision for our church mapped out for the next several years.

But the responses tacked to the Imagine Boards have been few.  We were disappointed.  I suggested to my colleagues that we set a deadline.  "FBC people like deadlines," I said.  But then I began to listen to some of you.  As I read my emails, as I pondered the letters and notes you have written, as I listened to reports from groups, it became obvious God has really been at work in our church.  The Lord has really been stirring things up.  The only thing is, almost none of it has had to do with Long Range Planning!  It has to do with heart probing, and heart opening to the Savior.  Imagine What God Can Do has turned out not to be a theme for Long Range Planning, but the key to a spiritual style of life.

It reminded me of a distinguished community leader who came home from work, ate his evening meal, and then prepared to chair an important committee meeting that night.  On the way out he checked his tie in the hall mirror.  But he was a confident man.  He knew the drill.  He had chaired important meetings many times before.  So he waved goodbye to the family and headed for the car parked out front.  Then came the unexpected.  The sprinkler system turned on just as he walked down the front walk.  The spray was aimed directly at him.  It was baptism-city in the front yard.  His suit was wet, his shirt and tie were drenched, and his hair looked like he had been swimming.  Meeting or no meeting there was nothing to do but go back inside, dry off, change clothes and begin again.

This week it dawned on me that I have been all dressed up with my tie adjusted, confident of where we were going with our Long Range Planning exercise.  The only trouble was God turned the sprinklers on and said, "Wait a minute, young man, (to God the Ancient Lover of the our souls I am a young upstart!)  Wait a minute, young upstart, what is your hurry?  My people and I have some important things to do.  If you will just get out of the way, just imagine what I can do in their lives."  I have had a baptism in humility by the sprinkler system of the Holy Spirit.

I said, "Now wait a minute, Lord, we are about a very important Long Range Planning exercise here."  God answered, "Planning is easy.  Entering the hearts of people and changing their lives, that is what I am about."  I answered, "But God, we've got some important choices to make."  God answered, "No choice is more important than for one of my children to truly answer, 'I wonder what God could do with my life if I let him.'  You are worried about planning for a decade.  I am helping people prepare for eternity.  Now go sit down."

To make matters complete, I remembered the Scripture in Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and then all these things will be added."  The Kingdom of God is within you and me.  It is not about planning, it is about a daily presence that walks with us and talks with us and reminds us that we are his own.  When the Kingdom has done its work within us, planning comes easy, just like the Lord said.

God has been stirring around in our hearts, sometimes prodding,  sometimes riding like a surfer on this wave of possibility:  Imagine what I could do with your life!  God has been at work, all right, but;

It hasn't been about planning, but about the hearts of people.

It hasn't been about the church, it has been about you.

It hasn't been about the future, it has been about now.

It hasn't been about dates on the calendar, but about disciples on a spiritual journey.

God has said two things to me while that sprinkler system of the Spirit was drenching me with "What's your hurry, young upstart."

Imagine What God Can Do Is a key to a Kingdom Style of Life.

Just imagine what would happen if every morning we got up and said, "This is your day, Lord Jesus, I wonder what you are going to do in my life today?"  We would get rid of this practical atheism which stumbles out of bed, gets dressed, gobbles some breakfast, and goes out to meet the day with no expectation at all except to survive it.  Wow!  Just think about what would happen if we asked at the beginning of every day:  "I wonder what God is going to do in my life and in my world today?"

See, the Kingdom of God isn't the institutional church, it isn't Israel, or Mecca, or America.  It isn't a local church, or a denomination, or a tradition.  The Kingdom of God is not even the Bible, although the Bible tells you about the Kingdom.  The location of the Kingdom of God is your heart and mine, if we have invited the Lord in.  Your heart and my heart.  Imagine what God can do in your heart and mine - that is about the Kingdom.

Think Tiny

But to notice the kingdom you have to think small.  You have to notice the tiny, the unnoticed, the overlooked.  Look at the parables of the Kingdom.  Look at Matt. 13:31:  Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, tiny, tiny seed, but when it grows it is big enough for birds to nest there.  Then Jesus follows it up with yeast.  Here is dough.  Enough dough for many loaves of bread.  But the one who bakes the bread takes a small amount of leaven and works it into the big amount of dough and it affects everything.  Let me coin a phrase:  Think Kingdom Tiny!  Look at Luke 15 - three parables.  The first is about a man who has 100 sheep but loses one.  The one captures his attention.  The second is about a woman who has 10 coins, but she loses one and the one lost gets the search and when she finds it the great joy.  And the lost son who loses everything and winds up knee deep in pigs.  How humiliating for a Jewish man to be working with pigs.  But he comes to himself.  A forgotten son in a pig-sty - forgotten to everyone but God.  Think small.  Think Kingdom tiny.

But one of my favorite stories is in Luke 21, a few pages down.  Jesus sees a woman, a widow.  She had the unmistakable look of poverty:  poor, ragged clothes, layered one upon another because like many elderly, she was always cold.  Showing her age she now walks with a shuffle as she moves from the shadows, drops her two coppers, and then is lost in the shadows again.  In the midst of all the fund raising reports, she is unnoticed, worse yet, no one cares to notice.  In the world she lives in, she is part of the wall paper, unnoticed and unimportant.  But Jesus, who has a great eye for the tiniest faithful response, says, "There is your real hero."  Her theme is not success but faithfulness.  And I can almost hear her say as she drops her two coppers in the offering plate - "Imagine what God can do with two coppers."

Jesus was trying to tell us something, trying to tell me something:  the spiritual life is a tiny life, filled with little decisions, tiny steps toward God, tiny glimpses of his presence, little changes and small movings, tiny successes and invisible stirrings.  And with a still small voice we hear the words, "Imagine what God Can Do."  And when the small all comes together it is amazing.

Morehead, Minnesota, is the home of Concordia College, small for its size but with a marvelous music school.  All year the community anticipates Concordia's annual Christmas concert which is given each year with a huge choir and a full orchestra at the concert hall at the college.

Every year, the people in Morehead create a unique background for the concert - a one-hundred-by-thirty-foot mosaic.  Each summer artists imagine the mosaic and then break it down into little pieces, each piece with a number on it and a color that is supposed to be painted there.  Six months prior to the concert the community rents an empty building and the painting begins.  Thousands of people, from children to senior citizens, begin to paint by number, tiny piece by tiny piece.  Day by day, month after month, one little painted piece at a time, the picture on the mosaic takes shape.

When it is finished an artist goes over the entire mosaic, smoothing out the rough parts and bringing it all together.  When the mosaic is completed, they place it behind the choir.  It has the appearance of an enormous, beautiful stained glass window.  The weekend of the concert people begin to arrive early along with their friends and neighbors.  Throughout the building you can hear people say, "See that little green spot below the camel's foot?  I painted it."

Every year in the middle of the summer in Morehead, Minnesota, thousands of unknown, ordinary people paint a tiny insignificant tile.  Six months later, the result is a spectacularly beautiful masterpiece.

We are at the paint a tiny tile stage.  But one of these days we will have a masterpiece.  Our tiny choices and tiny moves toward God may not seem like much.  But someday you and I will stand together in the great cathedral of heaven, and up front, by Jesus, will hang the most magnificent mosaic we could ever imagine, made up of thousands and thousands of our tiny daily responses to God's love in our lives.

The Kingdom is about NOW.  Imagine what God Can Do with this communion time, you making some tiny responses to the God you love and who loves you.  It's not about planning, its about you and its about now.