Scriptures: Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30
Key Verse: “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Revelation 7:10
What has your experience been with getting people on board with an idea or movement? Serving as an interim Pastor for churches, I have had the privilege to witness great movements of transformation in the lives of God’s people. At my previous call, a church I served was committed to a new adventure called the VDA process: V stands for Values; D stands for Direction; A stands for Action.
It was a blessed journey for me to see and experience how the majority of key leaders came together to ignite the newly formed values for the future, clarify the direction the congregation was heading, and then implement all the action plans one by one through a small group of leaders from the church staff to the entire congregation.
During the implementation process, we had to remind ourselves as leaders and as a congregation what this process was all about. We were told by our hired consultant that the moment we as leaders tire of saying Values-Direction-Action is when the congregation begin to remember their roles as Jesus’ disciples while learning and participating. The most rewarding experience for me was seeing the congregation begin to own this VDA process and explain it to whoever was not on board yet.
What was the experience of getting people onboard like for Jesus and his disciples? For anyone who has little faith, what God intended to accomplish through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the world was an unrealistic mission. From John 10:24, we know that the Jews in general weren’t on board with Jesus yet and demanded from Jesus a straightforward answer about who he was, and got upset for the way Jesus introduced himself by using the ‘I am” statement.
Throughout the gospel according to St. John, unlike other gospel writings in Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus didn’t avoid claiming who he was to the people of God and introduced himself with the words, “I am”, which shocked the Jews tremendously and was considered as blasphemy to God because it was the exact way God introduced God-self, “I am who I am” when Moses asked God’s name in Exodus 3:13-15. Jesus introduced himself throughout the Gospel according to St. John as:
“I am the bread of life” (Jn 6:35);
“I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12);
“I am the gate for the sheep” (Jn 10:7, 9)
“I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11, 14)
“I am the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25)
“I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6);
“I am the vine (Jn 15:5).
Since the Jews, or most of them at the time, didn’t want to or couldn’t accept who Jesus was and what he was to the people of God, whatever Jesus did and said couldn’t get them on board. It is easier for us, being believers in our time, to recognize Jesus’ values, direction, and action plans since we have the whole book, the Bible, in our hand. Whenever we are not clear or forget, we can always go back to the Bible to ponder, to go deeper, to digest and to live out Jesus’ teachings.
As we can see, Jesus didn’t come up with a new set of values which was the greatest commandment, and it was also the same as the Shema, the daily prayer that has been recited morning and evening by the Jewish community recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21; Numbers 15:37–41.
The Shema:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
How about the action plans? In the Gospel according to St. Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus also crystallized his action plans that he had demonstrated in the past 3 years to his disciples, which was the Great Commission: go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And the direction of God’s mission is explicitly said in the Great Commission, which is expanded from one chosen nation to all nations. All nations! Is it still an unrealistic mission? God has entrusted ordinary people for the past more than 2000 years including you and me to carry out the action plans with extraordinary values and a clear direction. Listen to what a messenger of God said about these ordinary people like you and me in Revelation 7:14, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Let’s get on board! And thanks be to God for Jesus. Amen.
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