Jesus at Work: A Call to the People of God

By Peter J. Blackburn

In "Jesus at Work: A Call to the People of God," Peter J. Blackburn lays out four major themes: Building His Church (not our denomination), Growing His Body (not our corporation), Gathering His Harvest (not the spasmodic outreach), and Coming Again (a goal and end-point to the mission). This book challenges many of the assumptions of modern-day churches who are still, he asserts, dogged by the quest to be the greatest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499033076

Peter J. Blackburn

Ordained fifty years ago in the Methodist Church, Peter J. Blackburn is a retired Uniting Church minister, married with five children and eight grandchildren. He has an honor’s degree in New Testament and always seeks to make biblical truth clear to modern hearers. During forty years of active ministry, he served in rural, regional, and metropolitan Methodist and Uniting parishes throughout Queensland. He has exercised a leadership role among conservative evangelicals in the Uniting Church nationally.

Book preview

Prologue

Have you ever had to go away, and asked someone to do something for you while you were gone? Perhaps a son or daughter, or a friend…? But on your return you discover that they have found something different to do—it seemed so important, it was just shouting to be done, I knew I could do it…?

You felt let down. Your instructions had been clear. All the necessary tools and equipment were there, ready to go. And you came back to discover them still there—and ready to go!

The words of Jesus in Matthew 24.45-46 are striking—

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.

When he returns… That’s it! Jesus himself stated in no uncertain terms that he is returning.

Time goes on—and has gone on for nearly twenty centuries since Jesus walked the earth—since he taught, since he healed the sick and raised Lazarus from the dead, since he died on the cross for the sins of humanity, since he was raised to life on the third day, since he visibly ascended into heaven, since he sent the Holy Spirit on the first Christian Pentecost…

Time goes on. We have a whole series of things we have grown accustomed to doing. What Jesus talked about seems so hard… we can’t do it… but his ideals we appreciate and want to follow… yes, we want to follow… if we really can’t do it, let’s find some good, worthy things that we can do… let’s make a difference in the world…

Time goes on—and is that what we have been doing? Too often, yes!

After some four decades of active ministry and now another ten years into retirement, I reflect on the course of the church on earth. It seems to me that too often we have displaced Jesus from the life of the church. Of course, we faithfully read the Scriptures. We use his name in song, prayer and preaching.

Yet in a way we have thought of him as the absent Jesus. He’s coming again, but he’s not here right now. Every time the creeds are recited, we affirm our core belief that Jesus is coming again.

Meantime, we have the Holy Spirit—he’s there in the creeds too! And I have heard widely differing groups claim the Spirit’s guidance in support of some matter that isn’t what the Scripture says at all!

Some have suggested that Acts should be called the acts of the Holy Spirit. There’s quite a point to that, but what I notice is that it is about what Jesus continued to do and teach through the apostles by the Holy Spirit. On one occasion, after Jesus was being criticised for healing a man on the Sabbath, we hear him saying, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working (John 5.17). And, after the ascension, he has continued that pattern—just as his Father has, and the Holy Spirit too!

So what we have is that, through his people and in spite of our idiosyncrasies, Jesus is at work building his Church, growing his Body, gathering his Harvest and Coming Again.

The four foundational parts of this book were laid down in a sermon series with the Uniting Church congregations of Edmonton, Halifax and Ingham in North Queensland in 2013 and 2014. However, it soon became evident that much much more needs to be said.

It is not my role to diagnose each denominational church in detail. What I have written is on a very broad canvas. I trust that each of us will be sufficiently challenged to search our own hearts, to search our own structures, to search the Scriptures in a fresh way and to seek out the Lord as the source of our life, our mission, our energy…—and the only guarantee of our readiness for his return.

What has impressed me most deeply as I have reflected on the Scriptures is the love we are meant to express to one another. It is the very thing that will convince the unbelieving world. We really must get beyond the who-is-the-greatest syndrome. The ecumenical dream may have been a further expression of that syndrome, rather than the overcoming of it. Apart from anything else, it has been an entrenchment of the view of the church as an organisation—a mega-organisation. The loving of one another will have to happen at grass-roots—whatever will serve the Body of Christ best at local level.

I have not attempted to provide solutions. Yet I have persisted in emphasising the need for our connectedness to Jesus himself and to one another. That should drive us to our knees—or into whatever posture we do real business with the Lord. It should lead us into more active prayer with other believers who worship in different churches. We should recognise one another up the street, in the supermarket, at the doctor’s or wherever.

Above all, I hope that none of us will ever forget that Jesus is at work, and that he is building his Church, growing his Body, gathering his Harvest and Coming Again.

We’re not alone—thank you, Jesus! We’re not alone—bless you, brother, sister!

Peter J Blackburn, Allingham,

North Queensland, Australia, October 2014.

PART 1

Building His Church

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matthew 16.17-18)

1

Jesus at Work—Building His Church

Jesus said, I will build my church… (Matthew 16.18)

About forty years ago, I came in contact with an American family who had migrated to a small Queensland country town. Back in America, they had been regularly involved in a local church. While searching for a house to rent or buy, they asked the real estate agent the location of the churches in the town. They were met with dumb silence. For this new family it was a significant question, but nobody had ever asked the agent before. The family became embarrassed and isolated about their faith, and hesitant about becoming part of a church family here in Australia.

The Morningside Uniting Church in Brisbane is a red-brick building on Thynne Road—a major road on the way to Balmoral High School. It has quite a deal of traffic every day. A number of times folk getting ready to head to a wedding or funeral used to ring me asking where the Morningside Church is—to their surprise, I drive past there every day!

Where’s the church? Of course, for people panicking about getting to the church on time, the location of a building called church is validly important.

There are other questions, of course, like Which church? The American family I mentioned earlier had been Lutheran, and there was no Lutheran Church at all in the town to which they were moving. So we use the word church to refer, not just to a building, but to a denomination—and the whole organisational and administrative structure that entails—and then to local congregations with allegiance to that structure.

Now I believe we need to ask, What’s the Church? When Jesus talked about the Church, he wasn’t thinking about a building or a denomination. He was referring to people, people who believed in him—gathering together for worship and to hear his Word, scattering into the unbelieving world as salt and light (Matthew 5.13-16).

But here’s a crucial question—Whose Church?

Years ago at a pastors’ prayer meeting, a young pastor of another denomination said, God means me to have a big church. That troubled me at the time—and it still does! There seemed to be an inordinate amount of me in his statement.

My hope is that we can reflect seriously on what Jesus and the apostles had to say about building the Church, growing the Body, gathering the Harvest and Coming Again. We will be asking as we go, Whose Church is being built? Whose Body is growing? Whose Harvest is being gathered in? and yes, Who is coming?

But there’s another issue too. Luke the physician wrote two books—the third Gospel which bears his name and the Acts of the Apostles. Acts begins in a curious way—In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen… (Acts 1.1-2).

Did you notice? The Gospels are about what Jesus "began to do and to teach until he was taken up to heaven. The work of salvation/redemption was complete on the cross when Jesus said, It is finished! (John 19.30) The penalty for my sins and yours has been paid in full. We can’t and don’t have to work for our salvation. God forgives us our sins as a free gift—free to us, though it cost God a lot! We are now called to continue to work out our salvation into every aspect of our lives for it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to his purpose" (Philippians 2.12b-13).

In a beautiful way the New Testament brings together the ways the Father, Son and Holy Spirit work together. The Father bears witness to the Son (Matthew 3.17; 17.5; John 12.28). The Son speaks the words and does the works the Father has given him to do (12.49-50; 14.31). The coming Holy Spirit, Jesus told them, would not speak on his own, but would bring glory to Jesus by taking his teaching and making it clear to them (16.12-15).

So, getting back to Acts 1, we can quite rightly speak of Jesus at work throughout Acts and beyond—working by the Holy Spirit through his believing people.

I will Build My Church…

Jesus and his disciples had gone to the far north of the country, to the foot of Mount Hermon and the sources of the Jordan River, to the region of Caesarea-Philippi (Matthew 16.13). It was deliberately away from Jewish scrutiny and in a more Gentile (in fact, pagan) context.

Here Jesus asked his disciples how people were identifying him, how he fitted into the Jewish community’s understanding of the old prophecies and promises (v 14). Now a question directed at them—But what about you? Who do you say I am? (v 15)

Simon Peter voiced the conviction to which they had all come, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (v 16). The Christ (Greek) or Messiah (Hebrew) was the anointed one. Priests and kings were anointed to set them apart for their special divine vocation and service. For many centuries the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah to come in fulfilment of God’s promises. Peter went further—declaring that, in a unique way, Jesus was the Son of the living God. These claims, by the way, later became a critical part of the charges brought before the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin (see 26.63-64).

"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter (petros = a rock) and on this rock (petra = bedrock) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (16.17-18).

One of the big debates over centuries is whether this means that the Roman Catholic church, purportedly founded by Peter, is therefore the only true church. What each side of this debate so often failed to consider is whether, when Jesus talked about building his Church, he was essentially referring to an organisation at all. Of course, any human activity—even when divinely directed—will have some degree of organisation. But the protesters can all too easily slip into their own organisational model instead of the Roman one and miss the point of what Jesus was saying!

The Foundation

I want to ask the question, Whose Church is Jesus talking about? He says, my Church. He isn’t talking about whether it’s Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Uniting, Baptist, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Brethren… These are our terms and reflect our concerns. The Church (ekklēsia in the Greek, the word used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament for the Hebrew kahal = assembly, congregation, community) is the community of called-out ones who have come to put their trust in Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

So what’s this about the Rock? Was Peter the Rock on which the Church was to be built? Could any human being be the Rock in this final, absolute sense? I don’t think so—and especially not Peter! The denominational names I mentioned before include references to some very significant historical figures and movements, but Jesus is talking about my Church.

Notice what Peter himself wrote about it in his first letter.

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built