From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: Avatar

Message Title: Avatars and Incarnation

Sermon in a Sentence: We do not need to fear rejection when we approach God, because He chose us.

Text(s): Ephesians 1:3-14

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, Again, a fairly straightforward message that was fun to preach.

Message Summary:

We began by watching the following clip.  (The embedded copy is from YouTube.  We got our clip from WingClips.com.)

In the clip Neytiri shows Jake around the Hometree, explaining to him one vitally important part of Na’vi culture – the Mountain Banshees they call the ikran.  Na’vi hunters and warriors ride these flying beasts.  Each warrior has his or her own ikran, and each ikran its own rider.  The bond formed between them will be one for life.

She also explains that in order to become part of the Omaticaya and to be accepted as one of the Na’vi people, Jake will have to prove his worthiness by climbing up into the Hallelujah Mountains and taming his own ikran. Only by becoming an Ikran Makto, a Banshee Rider, can Jake truly become one of the people.

And to make things a little more nerve-racking for Jake, she explains it’s not just a matter of choosing your own ikran and taming it.  The ikran must also choose you.

We then thought about times in our own lives when we had to wait and wonder if we would be chosen.  I told about the first time I asked Michelle (now my wife) to go out with me, and had to wait to see what she would say.  I asked if they have ever been there themselves, because we all have…

Whether it’s wondering if the person you asked out will accept your invitation,

Or if someone thinks you’re good enough to be chosen for their sport team at school,

Or if anyone likes you enough as a friend to want to sit with you in the cafeteria,

Regardless of how it happens, all of us have worried whether or not anyone will choose us before.

And even if we have a long history of being chosen, all of us from time to time struggle with the question “Am I still good enough to be accepted.”  Even after we get the date, make the team or find someone to sit with at lunch, we worry about something happening that will cause us to lose their acceptance.

In fact, psychologists tell us one of the biggest fears teens face is the fear of rejection.

I read from a poem by a teenager name Dee who expresses the same fears:

I have feelings of love for the guy I see.
Does he love me too, what does he think of me?

I wish I could tell him he makes me whole, but I’m afraid to say
what’s deep in my soul.

I don’t want to lose him, for I would be alone,
and some days I just can’t wait to hear his voice on the phone.

She goes on to finish the poem with these words:

I wish I could tell him what I feel inside,
but I’m afraid of what he’ll say, how he’ll act on the outside.

And Dee’s not alone.  In one Yahoo Answers topic, which asks teens what they feared the most, 17 out of 22 listed fear of rejection.

I also shared about my experience on ChaCha where in my spare time I answer questions.  Many of  the questions I get deal with a fear of rejection.

“How can I tell a guy I like him without him thinking I’m stupid?”

“What happens if all my friends look down on me for pursuing my goals?”

“How do I get people to like me?”

“What can I do so people don’t think I’m boring?”

At the heart of all these anxieties is a fear of rejection.  What if I choose someone, and they don’t choose me?

So whether its Jake standing on a cliff high in the Hallelujah Mountains, or me at a church Halloween party, or you wherever you happen to be, at some point or another we all deal with this fear:

What if they don’t choose me?

From there we went to Ephesians and read 1:3-14.

The passage starts with these words: “He chose us in him before the creation of the world…”

In fact it’s so important, Paul says it twice.

In verse 11 he comes back to the same theme.  “In Him, we were also chosen…”

When it comes to finding love and acceptance, there is one person we don’t have to wait on to decide if he wants to accept us or not. When we call out to God we don’t have to spend the next day worrying about what he is going to say, whether or not he wants anything to do with us.  In fact, long before we ever get to the point where we choose God, God already chose us.

How would the way you approach others change if you knew they already accepted you?

Seriously.

Do you think I would have had so hard a time asking Michelle out if I knew she had already decided to say yes?

Would you get nearly as nervous when it comes time to choose teams in gym class if you knew that one of the team captains already wanted you on your team?

Would you be nearly as frightened about talking to the strangers in the cafeteria at school if you already knew they liked you and were hoping you’d come talk to them?

It’s a whole lot easier to choose someone when you know beforehand that they have already chosen you.

And that’s what the Bible says about God.

God chose you.

Before the creation of the world,

Before the beginning of time,

Before you could do anything to earn his love,

Before you could do anything to lose his respect,

Before you even thought about calling out to Him,

God . Chose. You.

From there we examined what Ephesians says that God chose us for:

He chose to lavish on you the riches of his grace.

God is a God who is good at giving gifts.  And he chose you to be the recipient.

I told a story about growing up as part of a large family.  Every Christmas we drew names to decide who bought presents for whom.  And there was one uncle that everyone hoped would draw their name.  He had a tendency to spoil the person he was giving gifts to.

But as good as my uncle was a giving presents, he had nothing on God.  Talk about the ultimate gift giver.  God invented gift giving, and at no point in human history has anyone come even close to giving better gifts than God.  James chapter one says “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Every good thing you enjoy, and everything that is good for you is a gift from God.

And you don’t have to wait to see if God chose your name.  It’s not like family Christmas where there are only so many gifts to go around.  There is no limit on how many gifts God can give, and he has already drawn your name.  God chose you to be the recipient of the gifts that he loves to lavish on his children.

He chose you to experience forgiveness and redemption.

Sometimes when we know we’ve done something wrong and need to make an apology, we hesitate because we worry about how the person to whom we are apologizing will respond.  And so instead of admitting it, confessing it and getting it out in the open, we try to pretend that everything is OK, even when everyone involved knows  it isn’t, just because we don’t know how they will respond if we apologize.

We do the same thing with God from time to time, rationalizing away our choices, trying to convince ourself we’re OK because we’re afraid what will happen if we admit that there is something wrong.

But we don’t have to wonder how God will respond, because the Bible says what will happen.  If you will confess your sins, God is faithful and just, and he will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrightousness.

He won’t condemn you.

He won’t reject you.

He will forgive you.

He’s already chosen you to receive forgiveness.

And it’s not just forgiveness that he wants to give you.  He doesn’t just want to wipe away the past record of your sins and make everything right again, he wants to change you, to help you become more like him.  That’s the third thing he’s chosen you for.

He chose you to be holy and blameless in his sight.

God didn’t choose you just so he can pretend that everything is all right between the two of you.  Having lavished his gifts on you, and having offered you forgiveness, he also promises to help you change – to become the better you that deep down you know he wants you to be.  He has chosen you to become more like him.

He chose you to be adopted as his children.

As if the other things weren’t already good enough, God has also chose you to become a part of his family.  He not only loves you enough to forgive you, empower you and bless you, he thinks you are worthy of bearing his name and being a part of his family.

And when you stop to think about it, that’s a pretty big honor.

Because when you are family, how you behave reflects on the rest of your family.

Anyone who has to go to the same school their older brother or sister went to knows this.  When your teachers have had your brother or sister before you, they already have certain ideas and expectations about you even before you first set foot in their class room.  The choices of your family members effects your reputation.

Normally, we don’t have any choices in this matter.  We don’t choose our families.  Like them or not, we’re pretty much stuck with them.

But not so with God.  God isn’t stuck with you.  He chose to adopt you.  He doesn’t just tolerate having you in his family, he wants you to be a part of his family, and he wants that so much, he even sent his own Son Jesus Christ to die to make your adoption possible.

And finally,

He chose you to know the mystery of his will

God is not the kind of God to hide his plans and purposes from us, leaving us in the dark about what he wants to do in the world, or in us.  Life isn’t meaningless and without purpose – God has a plan and he wants you to know it, and to take part in it. God tells us his purpose is to rescue and redeem the world, and there is a role in that mission that he wants us to play.

Jesus himself noted this.  In John 15:15 he tells his disciples “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” I could just boss you around as if you were my slaves, Jesus says, but instead I invite you to be my friends and partners in the work I am doing in the world.

And you know what’s really interesting about that verse?  The very next words of Jesus are these:

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.”

I chose you.

But that’s not all that Ephesians chapter one has to say about our fear of rejection.   Because the fear of rejection isn’t just that we will never be chose, the fear of rejection is also the fear that the person who chose us one day will change their mind and abandon us for someone else.

Look at the way this passage ends in Ephesians 1:13-14.

Not only did God choose us, he sealed us. He put his mark of ownership on us so that there can never be any doubt.  We belong to him.  And having sealed us, he gave us a deposit guaranteeing our place in his inheritance.

I talked about why our youth group requires deposits on trips.  Sometimes, when there are expenses we have to pay for even in someone backs out at the last minute, we require deposits to cover those costs.  It’s our way of making sure people are certain of their decision before they make a reservation.

God is so certain of his choice of you, he put down a deposit.  He placed his Holy Spirit in you to reserve your place in his kingdom. From his perspective there’s no going back on that choice.

No, he doesn’t kidnap you.  He doesn’t trick you into saying yes to him and then refuses to let you go if you change your mind.  You can still choose to turn your back on God and walk away from him.

But God promises that he will never, ever do that to you.

When you come to God, this is one relationship in which you don’t have to fear rejection.

Then we returned to the question: “How would your behavior change if you knew the person you chose already chose you?”

The fact is God has chosen us, and that should make it easier for us to choose him.  We closed with an evangelistic appeal, sharing how students could accept God’s grace and forgiveness and begin a life with Him.

If you’d like, you can listen to the full audio of this sermon by checking out our podcast on iTunes or by downloading it from our RSS feed.