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Show video clip “the awe factor of God” from crazylovebook.com



“When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Psalm 8.3-4


I am a speck in the universe. What am I that the Creator of the Universe should notice me at all? There is an old philosophical question, “How angels can sit on the head of a pin?”. Maybe the miracle is all these people on a planet the size of a pinhead in the needle of a galaxy in the haystack of the universe. To think of the shear numbers of stars and galaxies in the universe boggles the mind. My mind is boggled.

Here’s a number – seventy. Seventy was a symbolic number for the Jews. Seventy was the number of elders chosen to help Moses with the task of leading and directing the people in the wilderness. Seventy was the number of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews. And seventy was, at that time, held to be the number of nations in the world. The seventy disciples sent is connected in Luke with the mission of the Good News of Jesus Christ for the whole world.

There is an interesting side note here. One of the towns on which woe is pronounced is Chorazin. It is implied that Jesus did many mighty works there. Yet Chorazin is never mentioned in the gospel history outside of this reference. We do not know one thing that he did there or one word that he spoke. This vividly demonstrates that there is so much of Jesus life that we don’t know. And at the end of his gospel John says this – “You would need a world full of libraries to contain all the books that could be written on His life.” The gospels are not biographies but merely sketches of his life.

Think about how many lives Jesus impacted with his message. He started his public ministry and gathered twelve disciples, twelve men he would invest most of his time with. That number twelve is also an important number. Twelve has psychological and relational force. For example, think of a list of people whose death would leave you truly devastated. Chances are you will come up with around twelve names. At least, that’s the average answer that most people give to that question. Psychologists call that our Sympathy Group. Why isn’t that group larger? Because twelve is the number of people you can probably be very good friends with. To be a good friend to someone requires a minimum investment in time, and additionally it requires an emotional investment as well. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting. Twelve is also our Relational Group, Our Friend Group. Twelve is the number of a Small Group.

Our church has a Facebook Group. Facebook is an enormously popular social networking site. It feels like it’s been around a long time but actually only started in 2004. I know someone who has 696 “friends” on Facebook. Does this person really have 696 friends? Well, no. She probably has around 12 friends and she has many more acquaintances and people that she doesn’t have time and energy for. (When my sister created her Facebook account she got a screen that said, “You have zero friends.” That can be dispiriting. Good news – she has since found many friends.) The outsized number of friends listed on Facebook for many folks does say how connectional our lives are; how the twelve people you know are strongly connected to twelve others, and so on and so on. You can multiply the numbers out to the point where you get lost and feel insignificant. Or, you can consider how relationally potent you can be. You are the connection between so many people in your community and your world. In fact, in one sense, “your world” is you because you are the glue that holds it together. Have you heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? The idea behind the game is to try to link any actor or actress, through the movies they’ve been in, to the actor Kevin Bacon in less than six steps. So for example, O.J. Simpson was in Naked Gun with Priscilla Presley, who was in Ford Fairlane with Gilbert Gottfried, who was in Beverly Hills Cop II with Paul Reiser, who was in Diner with Kevin Bacon. That’s four steps. You could almost play this game with yourself and the people that you know who know others who know others. It’s Six Degrees of You.

What does this matter? You are a relational force for the Kingdom. You are an army of One. And if we use the authority and power given to us in the Holy Spirit to live and proclaim the Gospel then we will impact our community.

Now, when the seventy were sent out, they went as taught, prayed for, and trained disciples. They were the beginnings of what would be realized in more fullness in the Holy Spirit-baptized Church that we find in Acts 2, of whom it was written:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2.42

The Church from the very beginning was a relational force of small groups for spiritual formation and a larger worshipping community. By living in the power of the Spirit they made new converts every day – “every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (2.48) These people experienced the awe and wonder of God in their midst together.

The Seventy in Luke’s Gospel experienced the same kind of thing on a smaller scale. They came back to Jesus lit up with joy. They never expected such power to change lives and to affect the spiritual and eternal realm. Jesus confirms that they are doing Kingdom work, cosmic work.

“I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning. See I have given you authority. . .over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.” Luke 10.19


We have the power to change lives. We have the power to affect eternity. But do we have the urgency that lives are at stake? Will we commit to the training and the doing that it takes to become a relational force for the Kingdom? Or will we be like the people of Chorazin who ignored the visitation of Christ among them?

Are you in a class or small group where you are learning and growing and serving? We’ve made it pretty easy for you to be in one. We now average roughly 100 people involved in small groups. That’s about half of our worshipping attendance. Our goal is to have every one in the church be in a small group. We can do it. It’s achievable. But we need the disconnected to connect. We need you to carve out an hour in your week to give to a group of fellow travelers on the Journey. See what happens if you do it. See what happens if we get a hundred percent participation. I know what will happen – people will come to Jesus; lives will be changed. We’ll experience Awe and Wonder. Didn’t Jesus come to bring us a sense of wonder about life?

I want to close with a testimony that perhaps you’ve heard before. It’s called One Solitary Life.

He was born in an obscure village, a child of a peasant woman.
He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty.
Then he became an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book.
He never held an office.
He never did one thing that usually accompanies greatness.
He had no credentials but himself.
While still a young man, public opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
One denied him.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
His executioners gambled for his only piece of property – his coat.
He was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone.
Today he is the centerpiece of the human race.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed,
All the parliaments that ever sat,
And all the kings that ever reigned put together,
Have not affected the life man upon this earth as powerfully as that
One solitary life.