1996 SINGLE SERMONS
PASSION AND COMPASSION
DR. JIM DIXON
JULY 14, 1996
REVELATION 3:14-22
The Apostle Peter wrote to the churches in Asia Minor saying, “I intend always to remind you of these things, though you know them and are firmly established in the truth which you have. But I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to rouse you by way of reminder.” This is the role of a pastor in every generation. It’s the role of a pastor to rouse the congregation by way of reminder. This morning, I have two subjects (and we have dealt with them before). I feel led to deal with them again, to rouse us by way of reminder.
The first subject is passion. If we would be the church of Jesus Christ, we must become a people of passion. Cal Ripkin is the shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles. This past Tuesday, he competed in his 13th All-Star game, but it wasn’t a good day for Cal Ripkin. He went zero for three at the plate, and that really wasn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem occurred before the game, during the photo session of the American League All-Stars. As the American League All-Stars were having their picture taken, Roberto Hernandez, the closer for the Chicago White Sox, slipped. He slipped on the bleachers and he fell. As he fell, his elbow flew backwards and hit Cal Ripkin in the nose and broke Cal Ripkin’s nose.
Now, for a while, they thought that Cal Ripkin was not going to be able to play in the All-Star game. In fact, they thought he was going to have to miss a couple of regular season games, and that would’ve been a big deal. It would’ve been a big deal because Cal Ripkin has played in more consecutive baseball games than any other player in the history of the world. Last year, Cal Ripkin broke Lou Gehrig’s record for most consecutive games played. Now, whenever Cal Ripkin plays a baseball game, he breaks his own record. This morning, as Cal Ripkin’s about to play, he has played in 2,242 consecutive baseball games. He is destined for the hall of fame and he’s famous even now across this country and in many parts of the world. And when you stop to think about it, the primary reason that he is famous is simply because he always shows up for work.
He always shows up for work. If the weather is bad, Cal Ripkin goes to work anyway. If he’s not feeling so well, if he has a cold, he goes to work anyway. If his team’s not playing well (as once the Baltimore Orioles lost 21 games in a row), he goes to work anyway. If he’s not playing so well, if he’s not hitting well or not fielding well, he goes to work anyway. If things aren’t good at home, he goes to work anyway. If he breaks his nose, he goes to work anyway. Just last month they ask Cal Ripkin why. “Why do you always play the game? What’s the key to your perseverance?” And he said, “The answer is simple. I have a passion for the game.”
Well, you see, God wants this church to have a passion for ministry. God wants you to have a passion for ministry. Now, the English word passion is a nebulous word—confusing, with a multiplicity of meanings. We use the word passion to refer to everything from sexual desire to tropical fruit. But you see, etymologically, this word passion takes on clarity of meaning. The word passion comes from the Latin word passio. And this word refers to intensity of feeling. It’s just like the Greek word for passion in the Bible, the word pathos, which refers to intensity of feeling. Now, sometimes the word passion refers to suffering, because suffering involves intense feelings. The final week of our Lord Jesus Christ’s life is oftentimes called Passion Week because of the Via Dolorosa and Calvary and the suffering on the cross and the intensity of feeling that our Lord Jesus Christ experienced.
But normally, the word passion does not refer to suffering. Normally, the word passion is linked with a goal. It is linked with a purpose. It is linked with a cause. It refers to intensity of feeling with regard to a goal, a purpose, or a cause. And thus, passion refers to fervor. It refers to zeal. It refers to ardor. And that’s what God wants for you. That’s what God wants for this church. With regard to ministry, God wants us to have fervor. God wants us to have zeal. He wants us to have ardor, passion, for ministry.
Now, when you look at the Apostle Paul, you see passion for ministry. The Apostle Paul said, “Is anyone a minister of Jesus Christ? Will I minister more? (Though I’m speaking like a fool) I’ve had far greater laborers, with far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and was oftentimes near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked, a day and a night I was adrift at sea. I have been on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, in danger from my own people, in danger from the gentiles, in danger in the wilderness, in danger in the cities, in danger at sea, and in danger from false brothers and sisters. I have experienced toil and hardship through many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst, oftentimes without food, in cold and exposure. In addition to this, I have the constant pressure of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I do not feel their weakness? Who is made to fall and I am not enraged?”
Do you get a sense of the passion that the Apostle Paul had for ministry? Paul said, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the crown? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do this to obtain a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and subdue it lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
Do you see his passion? And it was that passion that he took to his death as he was beheaded at Three Fountains in Rome by the Emperor Nero. What was true of Paul was true of all the apostles. They had passion for ministry, and all of them, with the exception of John, died martyrs’ deaths because of their passion for ministry.
You might say, “Well, that’s okay, but I’m not a minister.” You might be sitting there this morning and you might be thinking, “I’m not a minister. I’m a banker, or I’m a lawyer, or I’m a doctor. I sell insurance. I’m a homemaker.” But you see, if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you have truly received Him as Savior and as Lord, then you are a minister. There are three words for “minister” in the Bible: the word huperetes, the word diakonos, and the word leitourgos. All three of these words are used not only with reference to the clergy but with reference to all who believe. All Christians are ministers, and we are called to have passion, zeal, fervor, and ardor in the ministry as we seek to serve Jesus Christ.
That is why Jesus spoke to the church at Laodicea. He said, “The words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin, the source of God’s creation. To the church at Laodicea: I know your works. You are neither hot nor cold. Would that you were hot or cold. But because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of My mouth. Because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am sick to My stomach.” Obviously, Jesus Christ cares about passion. He wants to see passionate churches and He wants to see passionate Christians. And if we have passion for ministry, it’s going to affect the way we live. If we have passion for ministry, it’s going to affect the use of our time, talent, and treasure. It’s going to affect the way you use your time, your talent, and your treasure if you really have passion for ministry.
If you have passion for ministry, you’re going to take the time to come to church and you’re going to take the time to get involved in the ministry of the church. If you have passion for ministry, you’re going to teach a Sunday school class, or you’re going to be a Stephen Minister, or you’re going to be a cell group leader, or you’re going to go into the inner city and be a tutor, or you’re going to help with the youth ministry, or you’re going to help with Manna Ministry, or you’re going to work out in the parking lot. If you have passion for ministry, you’re going to do something with your time and with your talent.
It’s also going to affect your treasure if you have passion for ministry, because ministry costs money. It’s always been true. It’s true today and it’ll be true tomorrow. Ministry costs money, and the people of God, the men and women of Christ, are called to support the work of the ministry. And if you have passion for ministry, you’re going to tithe. You’re going to give God the first fruits. You’re going to give Him your first and you’re going to give Him your best.
If you really have passion for ministry, you’re going to go beyond the tithe because you long to see Christ’s work prosper on the Earth. Now, if you look in the back of the bulletin, you can see how we’re doing in this ministry. You can see that at mid-year, as we have completed six months of 1996, the deficit is now $545,000. We’re $545,000 behind. And I know (I mean, God has shown me—I’ve prayed about this and agonized about this) the problem isn’t money. The problem isn’t dollars. The problem is passion. The problem is passion for ministry. Now, we expected to be $300,000 down at this point in the year because giving climbs as we approach year end, but we’re further down than we expected. You see, the call is great. And in some ways, we’re not doing so bad, because we have given as a congregation $300,000 more this year than we gave last year. We’re giving more this year, but it isn’t enough. We knew this heading into the calendar year of 1996. We knew when we moved to Highlands Ranch that our budget would increase this year to $1,300,000. So we’re not doing well enough. We’re not doing well enough.
You might be sitting there thinking, “Well, if only we had more people to help us. We need more people so we can have more givers. And I promise you, we will have more people. I mean, we have built a sanctuary that will hold 3,500 people, and the day will come when we will have two services, both of them full. The day will come when we’ll have 7,000 people at worship on Sunday, because we have seen the future. God has given us a vision and we know what’s going to happen down the road. But you see, in the meantime, it’s up to us. No one else is going to do it. We’re going to have to dig a little deeper to make this ministry work.
You know, when we moved to Highlands Ranch and when we bought the land here, our elder board looked at this piece of property (we knew God had anointed this and God had led this) and it was such a prime piece of property. And as we looked at the whole of Highlands Ranch, someone said, “Why, the land we’re buying is in the hole of the donut.”
It’s in the hole of the donut. It’s in the dead center of Highlands Ranch and the ministry that we’ll have in South Metropolitan Denver. And this land is in the dead center of Highlands Ranch, and it is in the hole of the donut, but you see, the donut’s not there yet. I mean, you’ve probably noticed that Highlands Ranch hasn’t been built out. We only draw from 180 degrees. We only draw from the north. If you look to the south, what do you see? You don’t see houses. You see fields, you see cattle, and you see antelope. They don’t put a lot of money in the plate. But you see, the day is going to come when Highlands Ranch is going to be built out. And we will be in the hole of the donut, and we will reap the harvests. And the fields will be white for harvests. But the fields are becoming white now. And the call of God is upon us, and there’s no one else to respond to this ministry,
God wants us to be a people of passion. You know, if we just tithe—I mean, if all of us just tithed—we’d cover the general operating budget of this church and we’d already be moving into phase two. We’d already be building the additional children’s and youth ministry space that’s needed if we all just tithed, if we all had passion. So the call of God upon this church and upon all churches and all generations was a call to passion, zeal, fervor, and ardor for the work of the ministry.
But it’s not only passion. There’s a second subject this morning, and the second subject concerns compassion. If we would do the work of the ministry, we must not only be a people of passion, but we must be a people of compassion. We must be a people who care about people. Compassion.
Now, without compassion, no matter how much passion we have, ministry isn’t anointed. The Apostle Paul said, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and I understand all knowledge and all mysteries, and I have all faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give away all that I have and deliver my body to be burned but have not love, I accomplish nothing.”
See, passion must be joined with compassion. It’s not easy. I mean, I think it’s easy to lose compassion for people. It’s not easy to remain fervent and zealous with regard to love. That’s not easy. A lot of people even in the ministry lose passion for people. I talked to a missionary a month ago. I said, “How do you like being a missionary in France?” He smiled and said, “It’d be great if it wasn’t for the French.” And I think he was kind of being humorous, but it’s a running joke in the ministry. The ministry would be great if it wasn’t for people.
You know, about eight years ago I had a sabbatical. Barb and I and the kids went out of town for three months. When I came back, I got a letter from a person saying, “I wish you hadn’t come back. The moment you left, the Holy Spirit showed up.” Your initial response to a letter like that is not Christlike. And the truth is that I would have no ability to minister to that person unless I care about them. And that’s how the ministry is. Unless you care about somebody—unless you love them, unless you have compassion for them—there’s no ability to minister.
I was talking to another pastor a few months ago, a friend of mine. He has a new elder on his board, and this elder had never served in church leadership before. This elder had been a coach, and he’d been frustrated with athletes. He had been frustrated with athletes because he had decided that so many of the athletes are self-centered and they’re seeking glory and they aren’t concerned about the team. There’s a lot of bickering and complaining. But he thought when he got into the church and he became an elder, when he entered the leadership core of the church, he’d see a whole different world where nobody was selfish and everybody was team-focused. There’d be no grumblers and no complainers. And of course, it didn’t take very long before he was shocked. He began to see that even in the church there are grumblers and complainers, and some of them really began to frustrate him. So, he recently went to the board and he said, “I have a request. I’d like to ask that I be given permission once a year to go up to an individual in the church and say, ‘Get the hell out of our church.’”
Now, if you’re in the ministry, most pastors you talk to when they hear that they can kind of relate to it. And yet, the truth is we have to care about everybody. We all have times we get frustrated with people, don’t we? We all have circumstances where we get frustrated with people and where we lose compassion.
You might have heard of the little girl who was in the car with her mom and dad, and they were driving and the little girl said, “Mommy, how come whenever daddy drives all the idiots come?” But you see, it’s easy to lose compassion in an automobile. But if you think everyone around you is an idiot—whether you’re driving a car, pastoring a church, running a business, teaching a Sunday school class, or working in the parking lot—something’s wrong in your heart. Something’s wrong in my heart. So you see, we need to pray for compassion. It can’t be ministry without compassion. It can’t be ministry without love. We need passion. We need fervor. We also need love and compassion. These things are basic to a powerful ministry and at the very core of a church’s life.
Perhaps some of you have heard of a man named Dr. Maurice Rawlings. Dr. Maurice Rawlings is a cardiologist. He’s a professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Chattanooga. With his colleagues, over these past 15 years Maurice Rawlings has been conducting a study of near-death experiences—people who were clinically dead and then came back. Of course, in most of these kinds of studies when people have been clinically dead and they’ve come back and they’ve described a glimpse of the afterlife, they’ve reported seeing bright lights and a place with heavenly countenance—green meadows, rows of smiling relatives, a deep sense of peace in their heart, heavenly bliss. That’s what most people have reported as they come back from these near-death experiences. Certainly that’s what Betty Eadie describes in her book Embraced by the Light. It’s a feelgood book.
But you see, Dr. Maurice Rawlings did something different. In his near-death studies, as they examined 300 people who were clinically dead and then came back, they examined them immediately after they regained consciousness. They examined them while the memories were not only fresh, but vivid and real. They found that more than half of these people described seeing demons. They described seeing a place of eternal misery. They found that many of these people, as the days passed, changed their story because they were embarrassed.
Now, on what do you base your theology? On what do you base your theology of life? On what do you base your theology of death? On what do you base your theology of the afterlife? You really shouldn’t base it on near-death studies, whether they come from Betty Eadie or Maurice Rawlings. You really shouldn’t base your theology on those near-death studies. You should base your theology on the Word of God. And the Bible’s very clear: Heaven is real, and hell is real. They’re both real. There are two destinies, two very different destinies. The Bible tells us that hell is exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His mind. You see, Heaven is a place where God rules and reign. And the women and the men who are in Heaven are going to be people who embrace God’s reign and rule. But hell is a place where self is on the throne. Hell is a place where each person, male or female, sits on the throne of his or her own life.
God really doesn’t have a choice. God’s not going to force people into Heaven. He’s not going to force people to embrace His reign. But I tell you this, on the authority of the Word of God: God cares. That’s why He sent His Son into the world. That’s why He’s entrusted the gospel to us. The Bible says God is not willing or wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. His wish is that all should embrace His reign. That’s why He sent us forth with the gospel.
Do you care? I mean, if we are a people of compassion, we care about the physical needs of people. That’s why we have a Manna Ministry, and that’s why we go into the inner city. We care about the emotional, relational needs of people. That’s why we have Steven Ministers. That’s why we have a counseling department. But we also care about the spiritual needs of people. So much is at stake.
So much is at stake. And God has placed our church in South Metropolitan Denver for a reason: because lives are at stake. Eternal destiny hangs in the balance. I promise you, this nation is a mission field, every inch of it. South Metropolitan Denver is a mission field. We are moving into a post-Christian era in this nation. And there’s a whole generation of young people who no longer understand the gospel. They’ve never heard it with clarity. They’ve never heard it. And do you care?
In Israel there’s a hill called Megiddo. It’s a very special hill. On that hill, many cities have been built throughout time. 20 different cities, archeologists tell us, today are stacked one upon another, layer upon layer, on that hill call Megiddo. You can look down and you can see this massive plain, this great valley—sometimes called the Valley of Jezreel, sometimes called the Plain of Esdraelon, sometimes called simply the Valley of Megiddo. But you see it all from the hill of Megiddo.
You see that the great roadways of the ancient world all ran through that valley, and they were all controlled by the city on that hill. The city on the hill of Megiddo controlled the roadways. The Via Maris, the great road to the sea, went right by Megiddo. If you wanted to travel from the Ptolemaic to the Seleucid Empire, you had to go by the hill of Megiddo. If you wanted to go from Asia and the Middle East to Europe, you went by Megiddo. If you wanted to go from Egypt to Europe, you had to go by Megiddo. And therefore it was said that whoever controls Megiddo controls the world. That’s what was said in the ancient world. Whoever controls Megiddo controls the world.
The Bible tells that us at the consummation, at the end of the age, there’s going to come a battle called Armageddon. You’ve all heard of Armageddon. Armageddon means “hill of Megiddo.” Some theologians believe that this final battle is called Armageddon because it will be for the control of the world and the hill of Megiddo symbolized control of the world. But the Bible says more than that. The Bible says that in this final battle at least a portion of the struggle, a portion of the war, will actually take place on the Plain of Esdraelon—on the Valley of Jezreel, upon which the hill of Megiddo looks down.
But you see, there’s a sense in which Armageddon is already happening. There’s a sense in which we’re already in the midst of Armageddon. There’s a sense in which this battle called Armageddon has always been taking place, because it’s a battle for control of the world. It’s a battle for the souls of women and men the world over. It’s a battle for the souls of boys and girls. It’s a struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, Christ and Antichrist. And this morning God is inviting you to join the battle. He’s inviting you to join the struggle, if you care.
You see, we are in a struggle right here in Highlands Ranch for the souls of women and men and boys and girls. There’s a struggle right here between light and darkness. There’s a struggle in South Metropolitan Denver, a spiritual warfare, and God is calling you to take part in this ministry, to be a people of passion and compassion. God’s calling us to be a bringer church. You know what a bringer church is? It’s where people care about people in their neighborhoods and in their communities and so they bring them to church. They care enough that they’re willing to talk to them about their faith in Christ. It’s all related to compassion, and it’s all related to passion. It’s all about ministry. And God wants you to be part of it. Let’s close with a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your Word written and Your Word proclaimed. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit who empowers Your Word with the promise that it will not return void. Lord Jesus, we ask that You would empower Your Word this morning, that our lives would be changed, and we would leave this place a different people, with greater passion for ministry and more compassion for people. Help us to dig a little deeper with time, treasure, and talent for Your kingdom’s sake, for this church’s sake, and for our sakes. We love You Lord, and we pray these things in Your great and matchless name. Amen.