2022 12 27 Photobombing Jesus

The speaker discusses the concept of "photobombing" Jesus, where people unintentionally shift the focus away from Jesus and onto themselves. They emphasize that everything we do should make people notice Jesus instead of us, as our lives belong to Him. They explain that our actions should point to Jesus and that our evangelism should also focus on Him rather than ourselves. Additionally, they mention that our weaknesses should also point to Jesus, as we should acknowledge His strength and not focus on our own insecurities. The speaker concludes by stating that we are background characters in God's story and should keep the focus on Him rather than ourselves. So tonight, I want to talk to you about photo bombing Jesus. Have you guys heard of photo bombing, right? It's essentially a prank, if you will, where you either stand in front of someone who's trying to take a photo, or you sneak your way into the background. And I've got a few examples, some celebrity examples for you here that I thought would be fun to see. So these two young ladies were just taking a selfie, didn't realize they got the queen in the background there. This guy was just taking a photo of himself with a plaque at Microsoft without realizing that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, was standing behind him. And these people were trying to take a picture of, I don't know if they would be happy about this, depending on if they knew if that was Arnold Schwarzenegger or not, but they were trying to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and he rode in. I think what makes photo bombs interesting in these cases is how these celebrities stole the focus off of these everyday moments, right? In a funny way, they point attention away from the intended focus to themselves. But the question that I have for you and for myself is are we stealing the focus of everyday moments off of Jesus to point to ourselves? So I want to talk to you tonight about the idea of pointing to Jesus. What does that mean? Instead of photo bombing his plans to point to ourselves. So my big idea for you is that everything we do should make people notice Jesus instead of noticing us. The life that we're living is not about us. It's about Jesus and his glory. And I think a lot of us, whether we would say it outright or not, I think we like to believe that our life and in fact everything around us is about us, right? Our culture echoes the words of Billy Joel saying that I don't care what you say anymore. This is my life. Go ahead with your own life. Leave me alone. I'm sure it's playing in your head now. But what does the Bible say of the Christian's life? Well, Galatians 2.20 says that I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So my first point for you tonight is that our life, what we do should point to Jesus. The life that you and I live is no longer our life, but his. Our life is gone except a life that we now live in Christ. It's his life. We often ask the question of what's God's will for my life? But it isn't even our life anymore. It's his life. He bought us with a price when he sent his son to die on the cross for us. Our life no longer belongs to us. I think we struggle. There's the concept of Jesus as our Lord and our savior. And we think of those as synonymous words. They're not synonymous words at all. Savior saved us. Our Lord is in charge of us. And that's the harder one. I think we like the savior part, not the Lord part. But our life no longer belongs to us. But that's a good thing. First Corinthians 6, 19 and 20 says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, whom you have received as a gift from God and that you are not your own property. You were bought with a price. You were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made his own. So then honor and glorify God with your body. And I think that applies. This is often used in reference to things like purity, physically and all that kind of stuff. But I think this extends beyond that. This isn't about just that. This is about how we live our life in its entirety. So how do we point to Jesus in how we live? Colossians 3, 17 says, whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. We've talked about this before, but if I go somewhere with my Salvation Army shirt on or Les go somewhere with the Salvation Army shirt on, people are aware that we're acting, even if we're not even intending to, we just forgot we were wearing the shirt, people are seeing us as a representative then of the Salvation Army. And they're gonna be watching those things. So whatever we do, we do it as a representative of him. In all things, we have to let Jesus shine through us. If you're after that promotion at work, work like Jesus. I don't mean preach at your boss. I mean, work with integrity, right? Point to Jesus through your actions. If you wanna witness, point to Jesus, not you, not me, not the Salvation Army, not Next Steps gatherings, but Jesus. I mean, we love him to come here, but it's really about Jesus, right? The key phrase there, and I think this is so important is of what I just said there was to let Jesus shine, to let him. I don't mean make him. I mean, let him. If Jesus is living in us now and we're living our lives in him, he'll shine out of our life automatically. The Bible calls this in a few different places, they talk about the idea of fruit, right? If an apple tree is an apple tree, we know it's an apple tree because it produces apples. We have a lot of cherry blossom trees around here. We know they're cherry blossom trees because they have cherry blossoms. You don't have to work at producing that fruit. It's produced as a by-product of what those plants and those trees are. It's what they are, so it comes out. The only thing we'd have to work at is at repressing that, you express who you are without trying. Often, I find a lot of people find the need to call to attention to something about ourselves that we identify as us, and I think that if we need to do that, that it means it's not something that's naturally exuding from us. I don't waste time telling people that I have red hair because if I'm not wearing a hat, it's obvious that I have red hair, right? I don't have to tell most of you that I'm married to Hannah because I talk about Hannah and I'm with Hannah most of the time, so you get that already. It's already evident in my life. I don't have to tell any of you that I don't particularly enjoy dressing up in fancy clothes because other than Hannah or less, like one time, you've never seen me do that, right? You're gonna see me in sweatpants or jeans and a hoodie. It's obvious that is not something that I enjoy doing, dressing up fancy. It's who I am, right? So I don't have to go out of my way to tell you that. It's obvious because it's who I am. So if I have to go out of my way to make you all believe I love my wife, that would imply I'm not living in a way that it's already obvious, right? If I have to go out of my way so that you know I love Jesus, am I really already living in a way that points to Jesus? And I'm not saying that then to make any of us feel guilty that not everybody on the street's just like, oh my gosh, you must be a Christian because of the way that you walk. I can just tell, right? I'm not trying to make anybody feel guilty in that, but what I'm saying is there's a great expression that says preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words, right? There are many ways that we show who we are. There's a Chinese proverb I like that says, talk doesn't cook rice, right? And it's true, right? And I think Hannah and I have talked a bit about different cultural things that we've, differences that we've learned over time. One of the things that's really interesting that was a big mental shift for me about a lot of more like Chinese culture and vicariously Singaporean culture and that kind of stuff too is that, that's really interesting is that saying, so in Canada, we say a lot of pleasantries, right? Please, thank you, excuse me, sorry. We're no for saying sorry and all that kind of stuff, right? But it doesn't really mean much here. Like legally speaking, saying sorry in Canada, legally speaking, saying sorry in Canada is not an admission of guilt in a court of law. It doesn't mean very much, but in a lot, in like Chinese culture and stuff like that, there's not as much saying those things, not saying thank you, there's showing thank you. Somebody invites you for a meal, you invite them for a meal. Somebody gives you a gift, you give them a gift, but it's an expression and it's showing that it's not just talk. It's showing that it's part of who you are. And that's kind of what I'm talking about here. Our, everything we do, how we treat others by the quality of work we do. It's not just, because everything we do is, you know, lots of people, they say someone like in my position or Alexis's position, they might say that we're in the ministry. We're all in the ministry. It's not just, this isn't the only form of ministry that there is, but who you are is a form of ministry and how you conduct that, you conduct yourself. Do you work in an ethical way? Are you always bending the rules? Are you, and I'm not talking about being a stickler, but I'm talking about following a code of ethic there that people can see. I've met people over the years who have seen the other side of that and they've felt that church or people from church have failed them and so they want to stay away from God. And why is that? I think it's because people, they've experienced people who've been pointing to themselves instead of pointing them to Jesus. And in our good intentions, I think even in evangelism, that's sharing our faith, sometimes we've simplified it to getting people into church, getting them into a room like this, getting them, that's a start and that's great, but that's not really evangelism. That's just getting somebody to an event. We've made it a gospel of church sometimes and neglected the gospel of Christ. And then when a church or an imperfect person in there inevitably failed them, they abandoned the only gospel that they were taught, the gospel of church, without ever knowing that there's one that doesn't fail them. And it's not us, it's not the church or its institutions, it's Jesus Christ himself, which leads me to my second point for you is that our evangelism should point to Jesus. That might sound like, no, duh, Chris, that's literally what it is. But I think sometimes we end up photo-bombing God at the very time we're supposed to be sharing about him. And it's not a modern problem or issue of the contemporary world or church. It happened way back in Jesus' day as well. One of the first people in the New Testament who we might be able to call an evangelist, someone who shared about Jesus, was John the Baptist. And John preached that Jesus was the rescuer to come and he dedicated his ministry to that specific end. But not everyone that he was discipling or that we might think of in a more modern term like mentoring, not all of them understood this. Not all of them understood that his mission was literally to, as he said, make way and make straight a highway for this one who is coming, Jesus. So we're gonna pick that up in John 3.26-30. It says, so John's disciples came to him and said, Rabbi, the man you met on the other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, that's Jesus, is also baptizing people and everybody's going to him instead of coming to us. John replied, no one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. You yourselves know how plainly I told you, I am not the Messiah. I am here to prepare the way for him. It is the bridegroom who marries the bride and the bridegroom's friend is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I'm filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater and I must become less and less. John's disciples missed the point. They saw Jesus was growing in popularity more than their teacher. That's all they saw. They missed the point that their teacher's whole purpose was to point to Jesus. And I think that they felt that their own ministry was being threatened, right? And I think in today's modern version of that, it would be like someone coming up and saying, well, Chris, you know, more people are getting saved at the Baptist church down the street or the youth are having more fun at this church over there or something like that. But the story's not about us, it's about Jesus. So I say wherever there's true salvation, praise God, I don't care if it's here, I don't care if it's down the street, I don't care if it's in Timbuktu. And in fact, I'm excited if that's what's happening because it's about Jesus, right? We're not about making ourselves go down in history. We're not about next steps going down in history. That's great if that happens, but it's really not relevant because this is here to serve, pointing us to Jesus. I'm going to butcher this quote because I don't even remember who it was from and all the exact words, but essentially this guy was saying that to him, the greatest legacy that he could have is if people completely forgot he existed when he was gone, but that people remembered what he shared with them about God. We're the friend of the groom, but it's his wedding. You know, I had this experience actually super recently. My good buddy got married and we were there for his wedding and I was the best man. I gave a speech as the best man, but imagine how dumb it would be if I went around afterward going up to everyone and shaking their hand and saying, you know, thanks for showing up to my speech, right? No, like that's a footnote in the whole thing. It really doesn't matter. They didn't come to hear me give a speech. They came to see the bride and groom get married. We're not here to photobomb God, but to rejoice wherever the Holy Spirit moves here in our gatherings or around the world. So my last point for you guys is that our weaknesses should also point to Jesus because we can swing the pendulum too far hearing some of this. Like I'm saying, point to Jesus, not to ourselves. Point to Jesus, not to ourselves, right? We can swing the pendulum so far and we can swing it the other way though and we can put ourselves down saying, you know, I'm nothing, I'm nothing, I'm all this in an attempt to keep the focus off of God, but it's not really taking the focus off of God. It's not taking, sorry, the focus off of us. It's taking the focus off of our strengths and putting them onto our insecurities. It's not really putting them onto God, right? John's entire ministry, as we said, was about Jesus. He baptized him back in Matthew 3, but he too struggled with looking at his own weakness instead of Jesus' strength, even in that moment, right? We see right here in Matthew 3, 13, then Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. So he got it. He got that it wasn't about him. He was there, he was ready, but John tried to talk him out of it. I am the one who needs to be baptized by you, he said. So why are you coming to me? But Jesus says, it should be done for we must carry out all that God requires. So John agreed to baptize him. After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were open and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. And a voice from heaven said, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy. So John almost missed the point, right? He didn't have the same struggle as his disciples who thought it was about John being the center of attention here, but he almost missed the moment because he made it about his weakness. He made it about himself. He wanted to stop the moment because he didn't feel good enough. He didn't feel like he was good enough to do what Jesus was asking. But in reality, the moment wasn't about John and it wasn't about his insecurities or lack. It was about Jesus and fulfilling what Jesus had to do. We often focus on our inability instead of Christ's ability and when we do that, we make the situation about ourselves. Ancient Israel had this temptation as well. When God was asking a man named Gideon to take out the army of Midian, it rhymes, God told Gideon to fight the enemy using a vastly smaller army. And he explained it to him this way. I love this verse. I love this verse because this puts that whole passage into context and a whole lot of the rest of the Bible too. The Lord said to Gideon, you have too many warriors with you. If I let all of you fight the Midianites, the Israelites will boast to me that they saved themselves by their own strength. So he asked them to have a smaller army, but for a reason. When we make the discussion about how little we have instead of what God can do even with our little, we steal the focus off of God. Whether it's because our focus is now on us and our lack or because God came through and we didn't acknowledge the way he overcame the situation and we take the credit for ourselves instead, we're stealing the focus. There's lots of people right now praying for God's blessings in their life that don't know he's already blessing them because they chalk it up to luck or just the situations that happen. We need to be acknowledging those moments when he's blessing us and giving him that credit. We just went to the mainland and we were waiting for the ferry, getting ready for the ferry. And it was like all the ferries were getting canceled through the whole day leading up to ours. And ours was at 9 p.m. Everything before 6 p.m. was canceled and the 10 p.m. was canceled. Why would you have the 9 p.m. just in the middle not canceled? It was so weird. But I was so grateful because I took that and people can explain it away or just say whatever, Chris, but I took that as just a little nice nod from God as a blessing that he was looking out for us. And then when we got there, we got to meet on an even earlier ferry. And again, we could say, well, that's just coincidence. You just happened to be early. Well, why did I decide to be early? Maybe God gave me the nudge. Whatever way you want to look at it, you're not going to be wrong for thanking God. So we have to be acknowledging him in all of these things. Because I think it's really important. This is a verse that is often quoted as Christians. I would say often misquoted or often quoted correctly, but with misintentions. And the Bible, this is really important. The Bible does not say that you can do all things. I know you see a verse on the screen behind me. That's not what it says. The Bible does not say you can do all things. It says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that's super, super important. We have to remember that it's only through Christ that we can do all things. The focus needs to stay on him. I like to leave you with this final thought. I thought it was really interesting. There's a book called Crazy Love written by Francis Chan. And in one of the chapters, he writes this really interesting thought. He says, suppose you're an extra, like a background actor in an upcoming movie. He says you'll probably scrutinize that one line where hundreds of people are milling about for two fifths of a second when you can kind of maybe see the back of your head and no one's going to recognize you. Maybe your mom, that's about it. But he kind of goes on to ask what would happen if we rented out an entire movie theater and invited everyone we know to come see the movie that we star in where we showed up for three seconds and you just see the back of her head, maybe in the back. They would laugh at you. They think that that's ridiculous because the movie is not about you. You know, I heard this said, this is kind of corny. This isn't really how the word works, but the word history, as some people have pointed out, is his story, as in God's story. That's not really how the word comes together, but it's a nice way to remember. It's his story. We are the background characters. This is not, lots of people talk about, this is your story you're writing and what chapter do you want to write next in this story you're writing? Except it's not your story. This story has been happening long before us. It'll keep going long after us. So how can we point to the main character in this story, God? Let's take a moment to pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that we get to be a part of your story. And Lord, as we're so worried about the things that are going on in our lives and we're thinking about decisions or the new year that's coming ahead and lots of people are thinking about New Year's resolutions or things they want to change about themselves, about their life in the new year, Lord, that turning a page in that story, Lord God, help us to remember that it is your story. Help us to humbly put our plans at your feet and ask how we can better reflect you, how we can better point people to you this year. The main character of this story, help us to express a reflection of who you are in our actions, Lord, not just in our words, Lord, not just talking the talk, but walking the walk, Lord. Help us to point to you as we share the gospel, Lord, that we don't make it about joining a club or a group, but that we make it about joining a family, the family of God where you are the head. Lord, I pray, Lord, that even as we think about our insecurities, our weaknesses, the places that we feel uncomfortable, that we've fallen short, that we've failed, Lord, help us not to belabor and wallow in those mistakes, Lord, but instead submit them and surrender them to you and allow them to be an opportunity to point to you instead. Even when we don't feel good enough, help us to know we don't have to be good enough, Lord. It's not about our little, but what you can do with our little. So Lord, I just pray for each and every person here, Lord, you know them, you know their heart, you know exactly what they need to hear in this moment, and I just pray that you would show them how you care for them, Lord, that just because they're a background character in this story does not mean that they're insignificant, Lord, that they are so dearly loved by their Father in heaven, who has a plan, who has a purpose for them, and that purpose is a wonderful purpose that brings more glory to you, and we thank you that we get to be a part of that. In Jesus' name, amen.