To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.

- Colossians 1:27-28

Colossians 1:28

“The Main Thing”
John Ortberg

 Now today we're going to talk about The Main Thing. Have you ever read something and you get to the bottom of the page and realize you have no idea what you've just been reading, or someone is talking and you kind of tune in and realize you have no idea what they've just been saying? That will not happen with this talk. I make no claims about its quality, but when I get to the end of it, you will know what it was about.

You will know what the purpose of this church is, what's the main thing. You will know the one task that if we move toward this, we're moving toward what's right, and if we don't, no matter what else we do and no matter how good any program might look or something, we will have failed, and that's not just true for the church. You will know the main thing for your life. You will know what it is that if you don't grow toward this, however successful or wealthy, however high you might climb, you will have missed the reason why you're on this planet. We're going to talk about…The Main Thing.

Now another aspect of the main thing, we don't get to choose what the main thing is. The main thing is a task that has been assigned to us. Everybody has to decide if we'll take on that task. As a church, we have to discern together…How is God calling us to pursue the main thing? Part of what I want to share this weekend are thoughts that have been percolating with our elders and our staff as we've been thinking about strategic plans for the season to come, and sensing an urgency and a passion around God's calling for our church, the Holy Spirit guiding us.

One of the learnings for me where I need to grow is it can be easy for me to look at what other churches are doing and think, Let's just try to transplant that. I think part of what the Holy Spirit is saying is calling us to pray and discern…What is the unique way God is calling this church with its gifts and flaws and wounds and wiring to pursue the main thing? But we don't get to chose what the main thing is.

Now 2,000 years ago, a man that history tells us was physically rather small and unimpressive, in marginal health, had been kicked around a lot, spent a lot of his life in chains, did not have long to live, wrote these words. He talked to the church at Colossae about how the hope of glory is Christ in you. He says, "We proclaim Him. We proclaim Christ, teaching everyone that admonishing everyone with all wisdom so that we might present everyone mature in Christ." Paul says, "For this I labor, struggling with all His energy that so powerfully works in me."

The more I've been living with these words, the more I think they really are a creedal text for our life together. What do we do? We proclaim Christ. That means we do not proclaim clever human insights. We do not proclaim self-improvement or stress management or life balance, or career enhancement. We do not proclaim a system of beliefs. We do not proclaim a political agenda. We do not proclaim a set of traditions. We do not proclaim the superiority of church people over unchurched people. We proclaim Christ. We proclaim Christ because He is the light of the world, because He is the creator and sustainer of all that exists, because He is the head of this church, because He is the kingdom bringer and the sin bearer. He is the death defeater, and the life giver, and to invite Jesus into a life touches a place in a soul that nothing else can touch.

Two weeks ago, we did this deal at the end of the service where we invited people to come up and just walk through a little gate in a fence if they wanted to come home to the Father. After every service, we had a line of people waiting to go through that gate. After the 11:00 service we were here for 45 minutes, just one person after another. One guy came up and said, "I'm a hopeless case." I thought, No, not today. Not with Jesus because Jesus in you is the hope of glory. That means nobody is hopeless.

To say that we proclaim Christ is to say God was, in Christ, reconciling the earth to Himself so we are betting the farm. We are staking our lives. We are devoting ourselves fully to the crucified Carpenter of Nazareth. We proclaim Christ. We are a Presbyterian Church. If we were another kind of a church there would be one or two amens right at this point right here. That's what we do. We proclaim Christ. To whom do we proclaim Him? We proclaim Him to everybody.

Paul said, he kind of underlines this not once, not twice, three times he uses that little word. It's actually a phrase in the Greek. Everybody…we teach everybody. We admonish everybody so that we might present everybody mature in Christ.

Somebody was asking me recently, "As a church, what's the main focus? Are we going to be mostly focused on people outside the church? Are we going to be mostly focused on people inside the church?" Well, which ones does Jesus love the most? He loves everybody whether they're outside. He doesn't really divvy people up into favorites and non-favorites the way we tend to. So we want people who don't know Jesus to come to know Jesus because He is supremely worth knowing. Then for people who know Him, we want to come to know Him better and follow Him more closely.

Paul knows the best way for Christ to spread to people who don't know Jesus is for Him to be fully formed in people who do know Him. This world is not likely to receive a gospel of transformation from untransformed people. So we proclaim Christ through everybody. We do it with all wisdom so that the focus is on Jesus.

Very interesting is a sociologist named Christian Smith, and he is kind of the… He is at Notre Dame. He is the preeminent expert on emerging adulthood in our day. Smith says that the number one, fastest growing religion in America is not Christianity, it's not Buddhism, it's not Hindu, it's not atheism, it's what Smith calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. That's kind of a mouthful, isn't it? Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the fastest growing faith in our day, and it's characterized by certain beliefs Smith says are so popular they're just getting embedded in the popular mind whether people are aware of it or not.

It's a belief there is a god who made and watches over the earth, but who that god is…kind of fuzzy. There is a god. God wants people to be good, nice, and kind. That's the moralism part. What exactly does goodness look like? That's a little fuzzy. The central goal of life in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the central goal of my life is to be happy and feel good about myself. That's the therapeutic part. What exactly does proper human happiness look like? Kind of fuzzy.

God does not need to be particularly involved in my life, doesn't really place his demands on me, but he is available when needed to solve a problem. Okay, that's the deism part. How exactly does god intervene? Kind of fuzzy.

There is a book by a parenting expert on the new teenager that caught my eye. The title of the book is Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl To the Mall? That's kind of this approach to faith. God, I don't really particularly want You in my life, but you know could You take me to the mall first? Then the last belief is all good people go to heaven when they die. Now who exactly is a good person? What exactly kind of community is heaven? Kind of fuzzy.

This Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, and that's the fastest growing faith in America today. Part of what is really kind if insidious about it, Smith says, is even for many, many people who are in churches that think of themselves as Christians, what they're really living is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. See that's not Jesus. That's not following Jesus. So Paul says, "We proclaim Him. We proclaim Christ, teaching everyone that admonishing everyone with all wisdom so that we might present everyone mature in Christ."

Why do we do it? What's the purpose? What's the goal? What's the ball in the net? What's the whole reason why this church exists? What are all the services, programs, classes, groups about? One thing…to present everyone mature in Christ, everybody complete, everybody whole, everybody just the way God designed them to be so that human lives can flourish as God intended them to flourish, so that the power of sin might lose its grip on humanity. So that ordinary human beings, people who don't think of themselves as wanting to be spiritual giants…plumbers, peasants, venture capitalists, gang members, drug dealers, kindergarten teachers, everybody, anybody who wants to…might finally put on truth and kindness and courage and faith and gentleness and grace the way that we put on clothes.

So that the hearts of the fathers might finally fully be turned toward their children, and the hearts of the children be reconciled and turned toward their fathers and their mothers. So the hunger in every human heart that leads people to throw their lives away on money, or work, or pleasure, or all kinds of stuff, that hunger to be somebody, to have an identity, to be that person that I am not yet but might one day become could finally rightly be fulfilled so that everyone might be presented mature in Christ. That's the main thing.

That's the vision for which Paul struggled and suffered and labored and was shipwrecked and was beaten and went without food and went without drink, and went without sleep, and lived in constant danger and did it with joy to present everyone mature in Christ. What is the purpose behind everything we do as a church? To present everyone mature in Christ. What is our big hairy audacious goal for the San Francisco Bay? To present everyone mature in Christ. What is a vision that goes beyond making everybody on every continent in this world healthy or successful or prosperous or beautiful? To present everyone mature in Christ.

When you talk with somebody today after the service and they ask you, "What was this message about?" What is the main thing? What are you going to tell them? To present everyone mature in Christ. With tremendous conviction and energy and passion… To present everyone mature in Christ. Paul says, "For this I struggle, for this I labor to present everybody mature in Christ."

I've been thinking a lot this week about that word present because Paul actually uses that word about a half a dozen times in his letters in precisely this way. Earlier chapter, Colossians 1:22, he talks about what God is doing is in order to present you holy in His sight, without blemish, free from accusation. Now this goes back to language around a sacrifice that was going to be offered, to be presented to the priest, to God without blemish.

Or in a marriage, a bride and groom are presented to each other, to God, to the world. We still use this language, "We present to you Mr. and Mrs." The idea here is this language of presentation. Your life is not just about you. There is not just your own private business, although our world has that idea. There is something public, there is something at stake, there is some destiny for which you're intended. Paul uses this language to present you. There is a drama about your life, and the whole thing is about getting from where I am not to where God wants me to be.

On television, they, over the last several years, have a number of shows about what are called makeovers…extreme makeovers. Did you ever see any of those? They can actually be surprisingly moving because they usually involve not just like new makeup jobs. They'll take people who have features for which they have been ridiculed, felt embarrassed since they were kids, and then people go through a process. It might involve surgery, reconstruction, diet, exercise, some processes that might be fairly costly or painful to do a makeover.

The show is watched by millions of people, and it's swamped by folks who would like to be a part of something like this. Everybody wants a makeover. I'll show you a few pictures. Look at how dramatic these changes are. Okay, here is somebody. Just take a look at this guy for a moment. That's the before picture. He goes through this process. Can you believe that's the same human being? Isn't that amazing to think that guy, you know, could come out of the first one? Another one…there is the before picture. Goes through this whole process. There is the after picture. Isn't that remarkable? Same person. All right, one more. Here is a guy ahead of time, kind of a mess. You just think, Man you wouldn't want to look like that. Okay. Beautiful human being. You never would have guessed that second guy is in the first guy.

The climax of this whole process is when the new you gets presented. Everybody who loves you is gathered there…spouse, friends, relatives, workers. Then there is this unveiling. Now I present… This made-over person comes out. Very often they'll look in the mirror and they'll just be in tears because you know what's on the outside is what we really long for is to be remade on the inside. The friends, when they see them, they can't believe the difference.

Now one other thing we all need to know about these shows, and you'll know where I'm headed with this…the people who go through this process, they actually expect to be transformed. Like if they didn't look any different at the end of the process than they did at the beginning, they would want to know what went wrong. They would want all that money and effort back. They assume transformation is normative. It is expected.

Now how about us? Just take one statement from the apostle Paul. Paul says to the church at Philippi, "Do everything without complaining or arguing." Let's read these words together out loud, "Do everything without complaining or arguing." How is that going for everybody? Choir, how y'all doing at that one? Should we really aim for that? What do you think? Let's say somebody has been around… I'm serious about this. Let's say somebody has been around our church for five years. Do you think they really should have made some progress in that department? Like should we all expect if somebody is following Jesus, getting to know people who love them, learning to live in His presence, studying the Scripture, praying, should we really expect that people are progressively growing in their ability to do life without complaining or arguing, or is Paul just talking to hear himself talk?

Is it all just a bunch of religious language and what we're really expecting is for people to go to church and be kind and respectable and kind of do the church thing and hope they end up in heaven when they die? But we really don't actually expect for everyone to progressively be growing toward being presented mature in Christ. That's the main thing. It boggles my mind how people can go to church and think about…it's about doing certain kinds of services or perpetuating certain kinds of traditions, or engaging in certain kinds of programs, and nobody is actually expecting that people are really genuinely becoming the people God created them to be.

Now just to be really honest here, this brings us to the really hard part because there is this fabulous language, but then the hard part is the gap. Just to be really personal, for me as a teacher between these fabulous words I teach about, and then me. I think about that word Paul uses actually a number of times in Colossians…we admonish each other…and my need for that word. Do we do that for each other? Do we admonish each other? Like if your cell phone is going off in worship, do we admonish that? That's not to happen.

I pull my car into a place on our campus where it's kind of double-parked and it didn't belong there. I was just going to be in the building for a moment, but then a staff person who saw that pulled me aside and said, "You know when you do that it kind of sends a message that a leader thinks the rules don't apply to him. I know in your best self that's not who you want to be. That's not the message you want to send. It's kind of a sensitive subject, but I just wanted you to know." I thought, That took a considerable amount of courage for a staff person to say to me. Unfortunately that person is no longer on our staff. No actually, I married her to tell you the truth.

I had another friend who I trust a lot that I know loves me say, "You know I hear you talk about servanthood and it's such a wonderful idea, but to tell you the truth, sometimes I hear you talk about it more than I actually see you do it." I thought about it. I heard this great talk not too long ago about how the number one job of a leader is be thinking about the people on your team, the people that you lead. Just every day when you walk into the building if you're leading them, you just be thinking about…How is the team doing? Are they growing? Right people doing the right stuff.

I thought about how my job is to teach and proclaim, but how often I'm thinking more about if I'm being successful in doing that than about the One I'm supposed to proclaim. I talked with our elders recently this last year thinking about this issue…my need to deal with failure better. Failure is a part of life, but way too often if some area is not going well, I'll want to avoid looking at it, talking about it openly out of my own need to kind of feel successful or feel like people think of me in that way. We all get robbed of the chance to just learn and cheer on effort, and cheer it on when something doesn't work right and learn and grow and do better as we're going into the future.

The painful part of this compelling dream that does not have a serious rival for the vision about the possibility of humanity to be mature in Christ, but the painful part is just the reality of you and me and how far we have to go. It's not easy. We should not expect it to be easy. What does Paul say? The main thing is to present everyone mature in Christ. But then Paul says, "For this I labor, struggling." Now the word he uses for struggling is the Greek verb agonizo. Do you want to guess what word we get from that verb? Agony. Agonize. Now if the apostle Paul, for crying out loud, is struggling and agonizing, why would we expect it to be easy?

The main thing for a church is not just to put on great services, not just to attract a whole bunch of people, it's to actually help people become mature in Christ and it ain't easy. But then Paul finds this strange thing right in the middle of all that difficulty, labor, and reality and sin and junk and habit, I find it's not just me at work. Everywhere I turn there is God at work. I labor struggling, but not just with my power, with His energy. Over and over, I actually experience this, you will too. There He is. His energy that works, not just works, that so powerfully works in somebody like me.

The main thing is to present everyone mature in Christ, and maybe the most important two words are in Christ. See that is Paul's signature phrase. He uses it scores of times. The reality in which we're to be immersed, to live, the way that a fish lives in water, the way that we're surrounded by air, the spiritual reality that is more important to us than air is to be in Christ and for Christ to be in us, to be connected.

We're meant to live in that and on that and from that all the time. Really spiritual growth is just…How do I learn to live in that reality? I'll give you a picture of this. I have a friend, Danny, who is an adventuresome guy, kind of a thrill seeker. He was telling me about a time he went spelunking. Do y'all know what spelunking is? To go and explore in a cave. With another guy…the other guy had been through the cave before. They go through this one big part of the cavern and the guy says, "Danny, there is a really cool over cavern in this cave, but it's a little tough to get to. Would you like to go to it?" Danny says, "Yeah."

So they start walking through this passageway, but it keeps narrowing, getting smaller. Eventually, they have to get on their hands and knees to crawl through this pitch-dark cave. Then eventually it is so small that they have to lie down, eventually they have to get on their backs and propel themselves forward with their feet. Danny said it got so constricted in there that he would have to let out his breath so he could move a few inches and then when he took a breath in, the ceiling was so low he could not move when his lungs were expanded with air, and he would have to breathe out again. Then he could push a few more inches in the dark. Anybody getting a little claustrophobic at this point? Can you imagine that moment?

He said all of a sudden it hit him, "What in the world am I doing here? Why did I sign up for this? He started to lose it." He said, "I'm going to die. I'm going to flip out." Because he could not get out. He couldn't go backwards anymore. His feet wouldn't go that way. The only way was to go forward, and it kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Now he can't move and breathe at the same time.

His friend said to him, "Danny, are you getting a little nervous?" Danny said, "What in the world did you do to me?" His friend said, "All right, now Danny this is really important you listen to me right now. It's very important that you keep listening only to my voice because if you listen to anything else, if you let your mind run wild, you'll never make it. You'll flip out, but I have been here. You can trust me. You can make it. You just have to keep listening every moment to my voice."

Danny died in that cave. No, I just made that up. Kind of scared you for a minute there, didn't I? He made it all the way through and it was glorious when they got to where they were going. Afterwards, the journey was glorious, but it's just because he just kept listening to that one voice and no other thought gets to dominate my mind, just that one voice, just that one voice that keeps saying, "I will be with you. You are not alone. You can make it. I will be with you. You are not alone."

For this reason I labor with all His energy that so powerfully works in me. I will be with you. You can make it. You are not alone. I am living in Christ. All the stuff we do…see we read the Scriptures and we pray, and we're engaged in different activities. We're in groups. We worship. We study. We serve. Then God uses all these other moments when we're with other people, difficult moments and joyful moments when we're doing things we love, music and all those moments. See the idea is that we be in Christ so that His power is at work in us to mature us into that person God designed you to be, that you hunger to be throughout all of eternity. That's the vision. That's the main thing.

I love this prayer. This is from a man named William Temple. He says, "Pray for me, I ask you, not chiefly that I be wise and strong, but that I may never let go of the unseen hand of the Lord Jesus." That's how anybody gets there, every moment that I am not letting go of that hand. When I let go, when I stop listening then I'm in trouble. It's not rocket science. And it's not about the particular list of devotional activities or something. It's learning from one moment to the next moment to the next moment to listen to that voice, to hold onto that hand, to live in Christ, so that you might become that person that you long to be so deeply and that it pains you so much when you fall short of that. That's the main thing.

Now this is what we want as a church more than anything else. A lot of outcomes that are not in our hands, but this is… I want this for my own life and for my friends, and for you. This is the deal. So we're looking at… How do we better align our structure, our program, our staff, what we're doing because we end up with so much stuff going on? How do we really align that with the main thing? That's what we're trying to think about these days. How do we do better at looking not just at what other churches are doing, not just at what we've been doing in the past, but discerning…What is God calling us to do?

We're in a strategic planning process around that. If you have input you can go online www.ideas@mppc.org, and just like what helps you listen to His voice? What helps you hold onto that hand in the dark? That's what we're after. If you have thoughts for us, we want to get better at doing that. I will tell you one way His energy has been so powerfully at work that has been an enormous encouragement to me, and it will be for you in ways you don't even know about yet.

You all know in a couple of weeks Blues Baker is going to be joining our staff as Directional Leader. I want to tell you a little bit more on the back-story of how God was at work in that. We had a great search team working really hard, talking with great people. Nobody came close to being a right fit. After about eight months, it just got discouraging, at least for me. It was like, "I don't know what else to do." We also had people praying. A lot of you were praying. Teams of people in this church, people all over this country really praying, "God, would You lead?"

In January, just totally out of the blue, we got his name from another church that was actually trying to hire him, so they weren't supposed to give us his name, but they did. Our first phone call was just to touch base, but we ended up talking for like 30 minutes. There was so much chemistry there. I was explaining, "I kind of communicate recreationally. We really need somebody that kind of leads, has a spiritual gift of leadership that kind of leads recreationally."

He just kind of snapped to it. He said, "That's kind of what I do. I kind of lead recreationally. I've been doing that for years and years." So there was spiritual gift alignment. Then we were kind of wondering, What will the people chemistry be like? So he came out and spent a day with some of our key staff, and it was green lights all the way around. Everybody had a fabulous time with this guy. At the end of the day they all said to me, "John, don't mess this up." So I met with Blues at the end of that day, and I said, "Kind of a long shot, but I have to go to the Mid West in two days for four days, do you want to come with me?" He said, "Why not?"

So we spent four days together. I had a bunch of stuff to do on that trip, but I would find myself getting up early in the morning or staying up late at night to go have pizza to just talk about ministry, about faith, about our souls, about our families, about our marriages. His wife Marla is just a fabulous person. It just felt like such a dramatic gift that was so far beyond, humanly speaking just can't find the right puzzle piece, and then all of a sudden, so many things converging…background, experience.

Now we went through more meetings and interviews and testing and we're sitting there at lunch several weeks later. The conversation had kind of drifted from what if to when. So I asked him, I said, "Blues have we kind of crossed a commitment line here? Like is this the moment? Because if it is, I want to mark it." He said Emily Liggett had suggested he to go the Stanford Chapel earlier that day and, if we wanted to kind of take our vows we could go there to seal the deal.

Right there at that moment, no kidding, it sounds like a made-up scene except it just happened this way, his cell phone rang. We're at a restaurant. He answers it and some guy on the line is talking for a really long time. I can't tell what that guy is saying. Eventually Blues just says, "I'm sorry, I cannot be the president of that school. I have just accepted a position as Directional Leader here at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church." I said, "You're darn right you have."

So we went to the Stanford Chapel together and he showed me a place in the prayer book where that day he had already signed. We hadn't even talked about compensation…would there be a salary attached to this thing? Hadn't even talked about any of that stuff, but he had already signed, "God, I'm committing my life to my gifts to partner and serving Your people at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church." So I took that book in that chapel built over a century ago by a couple that used to be a part of this church, and I wrote down my promise to partner with him.

Then as it happens, it was Ash Wednesday, and they had a bowl of ashes there. So we did the ash deal, just put it on each other's foreheads and said those words, "Remember, oh man that thou art dust, ashes to ashes." And we prayed together there. We said, "Okay, it's a done deal. We've taken the vow." But I said to him, "Like no more marriage analogies now. It's enough of the marriage analogies." He agreed and then we walked down the center aisle of Stanford Chapel together.

Now to pursue the main thing, God just answered prayers. He just did. We're going to need Blues. Who else do we need? Well we need Betty Mitchell. If you call the church office, she is one of the great team of people you'll talk to. Last week we had a mental health conference, and Betty who herself has walked through some deep valleys is one of those who prayed and planned that into being. So several hundred people were here, and like 50 people received healing prayer, people going through depression or anxiety or trauma or loss. There is a place where they can be real, and find healing and hope.

We need Milo Medin. Milo is an elder. A lot of his time during the week, he spends… He's a really smart guy thinking complex engineer thoughts, but right now on Sunday morning he is sitting in Shepherd's Village with a bunch of first grade boys. He told me this week the mantra they all repeat every week is, "Bottoms in the chair, not in the air." He thought that one up so that they can learn there is a God in who made them and loves them, so that one day they might be presented mature in Christ.

I was talking to another guy this week, great guy who said, "You know I've been around our church for a while but just kind of sitting, taking it in. I'm tired of just sitting. I want to get in the game. I don't want to just be successful. I want to do something that has eternal significance attached to it."

Who do we need? We need you. You have gifts. You have wounds. You have a calling. See we're a body, and in a body, you need every member. The evil one will try to distract you by just being successful or busy, or try to convince you that you don't really matter, that you don't really count, that what you have to give doesn't really make a difference, but that's not true. We need you. We need Jesus. We need to be in Christ.

So for this next season of our life together as a church, we're doing kind of a call to prayer. The first week in June, we're going to open the sanctuary up from 6:30-7:30 every morning on the week of June 1, that's Tuesday, and each day that week. I'll be here and Blues will be here, and any of you who want to just come for any one of those days or every day that week. You'll hear more about this, but we're just going to pray and ask God to lead and guide us as a church in this next season. To give us clarity about how we pursue the main thing.

Then I'll tell you one more invitation. If you're a follower of Jesus, we had this deal a couple of weeks ago where people could kind of go public, it may be that you have committed your life to Jesus, but you have never followed Him in an act of baptism, and that's a really important part (if you've never done it) of declaring your commitment to be in Christ. We did a deal a year ago where people who had never been baptized, but they were ready to put a stake in the ground, where they did that.

So take a look at the screen. We're going to show you about a minute, and look for joy in this. This is just a cool thing of the joy that happens.

[Video Clip]

I always picture joy, and that's just like a little earthly drama of that moment for which Paul labors and struggles. It's the whole reason why we're here. One day everybody's hands go up like this. Finally, sin has been defeated not just on a Cross, but in our hearts and in this world. What a day! Like why would you want to give your life for any other cause? Man, that's the main thing.

So when the service is done, if you've never been baptized, but you're a follower of Jesus then just hang around and you can sit in one of these pews up in front and I'll stick around and just say a little bit about what baptism means. It doesn't commit you to it, but it would be a step if you want to do that in a few weeks this summer when we do that together.

Now I want everybody to stand. The way we'll do the benediction, the blessing, our prayer and joy as we go out today is you'll actually going to pronounce it. I will ask you a question, and I will give you a little hint. The answer is, "To present everyone mature in Christ." Here's the question, "If somebody asks you, 'What was that message about? Why does this church exist? What is the main thing?' What will you tell them?" To present everyone mature in Christ. Amen, God bless you.