Vineyard Church | Weekly Update January 29th, 2025

adam greenwell alpha billings vineyard church church blog friends healing how far luke luke5 scum the vineyard vandalism vineyard vineyard usa Jan 29, 2025

Scum and vandalism… This is what I am thinking about today, let me see if I can draw a map to show how I got here.

The Son of Man came to seek and save those that are lost. If you have been with us so far this year, you recognize that Luke 19:10, the verse we are using to guide us through the Gospel of Luke, has two sides to the coin for using a verse like this as the anchor. The first is that we have a common thread that keeps us on point throughout the series. The other side of that coin is that we can miss some sections of the narrative that don’t quite fit the theme, and for a book as rich as Luke, that means we can miss some pretty cool parts of the story, like scum and vandalism. Or maybe not…

As we opened the series, I mentioned that Luke is the only of the four Evangelists who regarded the story of Jesus as somehow incomplete without its continuation in the life and mission of the community of Jesus’ followers. Luke saw the life of Jesus as only complete when presented alongside the truth that His followers are supposed to do something with the gift of salvation. To us, but only complete when it is through us.

Luke is part one of a two-part work we know as Luke-Acts, a unified view of the life and ministry of Jesus, and the product of that ministry as the church born out of the resurrection. What Luke and Acts together are able to do is make the story of Jesus and the story of the church become one coherent and interconnected narrative of the mission of God, to seek those who are lost and to save them, reconciling them to the Father, through Jesus and the activity of His body, the church.

So, scum and vandalism. We are in the midst of the journey, seeing how far Jesus would go to seek and save the lost. Alongside what Jesus is doing/has done now comes the Luke-Acts inspired question, how far would we go to see the lost saved by Jesus?

Take a moment and read Luke 5:17-32. I won’t go anywhere; I will just drink my coffee while you read. If you have a copy of it, check out The Message paraphrase of this passage as well, and then come back to the blog. Done? Good; vandalism and scum.

There are so many teaching points to pull from this passage, but what I feel stands out to me today is how far these four men would go to get their friend in front of Jesus. The fact that Jesus has power over sin and that he has the authority to heal are huge pieces of this story, and the ability to read the minds of the angry religious dudes is cool, but for a moment, what about those men who would not be stopped? They could see the source of healing for their friend, and they were willing to rip the roof of the place to get their friend to that source.

How far am I willing to go to get my friends in front of the source of all healing? Asking this question can lead me to a place of shame when I consider, in some cases, how little I have done for some. But knowing that I can’t turn back time, I can turn towards a new focus and ask Jesus to reveal to me the people near me who just need some friends willing to rip up a roof. Sounds like a great place to drop a reminder that Alpha starts tonight and there is still time to invite our friends!

So that can get our mind rolling on the vandalism but don’t forget the scum. Again, the angry religious dudes are worked up at Jesus, this time for the places he would go to seek and save. This serves as a reminder of how corrupted secular ideas of worth tend to be, as well as an indication of the heart Jesus has for the lost. As I consider acts of vandalism, the question becomes, who would be worthy of my vandalism?

My prayer for us this week is that we could see a picture as we pray of how far Jesus has come to seek and save us, and that in the spirit of vandalism for Jesus, we would ask Him to reveal the people in our lives that need to be brought before Him by any means necessary. Vineyard Vandals… If we had a church softball team, I think we just found our name.

 

Adam Greenwell
Pastor
Billings Vineyard Chruch www.billingsvineyard.org

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