← Mariners Church Weekend Messages
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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes. I am so fired up. I could not wait for the 11:30 o', clocks, the single most spiritual service at Mariners Church because you are all up very early and you've already interceded for the 8:30 and the 10 o', clock, haven't you? Yes, I can see that. Lies okay, so I am pumped and I have loved this series, every ounce of it. And no matter where I am in the world, I'm listening, I'm watching online and this has personally helped me and I think today is going to bring it all together and launch us into what it is that God has for us. You know, when we first were thinking, thinking about starting age 21, my husband and I, I am married to the single most ravishing piece of masculine flesh on planet earth, in case you're wondering. And Nick and I have been married for 29 and a half years. So how is that? That's awesome. And so we had this real sense that we were meant to start an anti trafficking organization up in Thessaloniki, Greece and around the Eastern European region. It was about almost 20 years ago, I had just become aware in Thessaloniki that human trafficking was still a thing on the earth today. I had no idea at the time, but the reason there were no anti trafficking organizations at the time there in that region of the world was because it was just so dark and just so much corruption and there was mafia running it and there was obviously just political instability, there was economic instability, there was just no laws that made human trafficking a crime in that part of the world. So you couldn't prosecute something that's not a crime. I mean it was just really complicated. And so we hired some consultants to go in with Nick and it was about a 45 day process where they talked to law enforcement, they talked to government officials, education department officials, healthcare professionals, all the people that we would have to work with if we were going to really go down this track. And we just had this sense from the Lord that this is what we were meant to do. I mean, I wasn't looking to do something at the time. I was 40, I had just popped out my second kid. Can I just tell you, when you pop out a kid of 40, I was not asking the Lord for a new ministry. I was like, here, here I am Lord, send everyone else anyway. So it was more about that. I was like going, I'll go to Santorini and you know, go to just relax. But there was this sense that this was what we were meant to do. But when they did this 45 day study, I had to fly from Sydney, Australia to meet them. And we were gonna have a huge report and just do a big meeting and a consultation about what would happen. Nick was already there with them. So I fly now. I don't know if you've ever done this trip, but from Sydney to Thessaloniki is like over 40 hours door to door. You fly from Sydney to Bangkok and then you gotta get a connection from Bangkok to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt over to Thessaloniki. And so I was sitting in the lounge at Frankfurt. I was already jet lagged, exhausted. But I had the final three hour leg to go. When I was waiting for a couple of hours for the connecting flight. And as I'm sitting there waiting, my husband Nick calls me. He's already there in Thessaloniki. And when Nick prefaces a phone call like this, I always know that I'm not gonna like what he's gonna tell me. So he calls me and he said, Christine. And he was holding the feasibility report from the consultants. And he goes, christine, before I talk to you about this report, I want you to remember that you are a Christian. And I can't tell you how my husband might say this. In fact, Christine, you are not only a Christian, you are a Christian Bible teacher. I want you to remember that as I say this. So he began to say to me, chris, this is the consultants in this report. There is a variation of the phrase at least 10 different times that says it will be impossible. And in the conclusion to the report they were like, we strongly recommend that you do not start an anti trafficking organization in this region of the world for all the reasons, because of the corruption, because of the lack of legislation and, you know, the instability, politically, economically, all the things. So Nick's saying, so Chris, when you get on that plane for these last three hours, I want you to meditate very strongly on the fact that you are a Christian. And when you land, it would be good if you would lead with your sanctified Christian self and not your unsanctified Greek, passionate self. It would be great if there was no disparity between the person who I told them that you are and who you really are. And I wonder whether I'm the only one that every now and again there might be just like a little bit of a disparity. And if you think like you're perfect and I'm not, I've seen Some of you on the 405 coming down the road. That's all I'm saying. And you are doing signs out the window one way. Jesus. But it's an interesting choice of hand signals. That's all I'm saying. And the worst thing is when there is, like, the hand signals going out and there's like, a flash fish sticker in the back of the car, I'm like, thank God we don't have I go to Mariners Church stickers. Because literally today I pull in for the first service, and this beautiful couple comes up to me just outside in the parking lot. They're like, oh, we were the car behind you all the way. I'm like, oh, dear Lord. Was I legally driving? Like, was I in the legal. Like, I was, like, freaking out. But I wonder if even tonight, today, you bumped into church with someone that. That was the server at the restaurant you were at last night. Would they be shocked that you actually go to church? It's an interesting thing you could say, you know, with your friends at the college party, if they were to bump into you here at church, would there be a consistency, not a perfection, but a consistency between who we say we are and who we really are and how we behave? Paul is writing to the Corinthian Christians today, and we're gonna read a text. And as we wrap up this whole series, I've loved it because Pastor Eric has been saying, essentially, we do not just go to the Bible to get a whole bunch of information that we're gonna add to our data bank. It's not like I read this so that I can impress anyone with my Bible knowledge that I can say, oh, man, I know all 66 books of the Bible. And I know some of you have got it memorized from Genesis to Revelation. That's why you never open it. Cause you just know it. And you know. So it' kind of like I've got the whole deal or that I could impress people with my knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic. We're not a computer. We come to this word not just for information, not just for behavior modification, but we come to it for heart transformation. And as our heart is transformed, then the way we live in the world ought to be different. And Paul goes to an even deeper level of revelation of this for each one of us in 2 Corinthians 3:1 3 says, Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like, some letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are Christ's letter delivered by us, not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. So what was happening here was Paul is saying to the Corinthian Christians, he's continuing. Let me go back one verse. He's continuing an argument, and this is his response to something that started in chapter two. And in chapter two, verse 17, Paul says this. He says, for we do not market the word of God for profit, like so many. That's very strong words. On the contrary, we speak with sincerity in Christ as from God and before God. So what was happening during this time in the first century, Christian communities were sprouting up. People were getting saved. Christian communities were happening, and there were a lot of false teachers that were traveling around. They were just coming in and they were just saying, maybe, you know, like, James sent me. I just came from Jerusalem with James. Or, you know, I walked with Jesus, and I was there when, you know, Bartimaeus got his eyesight. I was there when we fed the 5,000. Man, you should have seen it when Lazarus came out of that tomb. I mean, but how would you know whether they were or not? I mean, in the first century, it's not like you could pick up a phone and check it. It's not that you could go online and do an Internet search. You couldn't, like, scroll through their social media profile and say, is there a selfie with, like, Jesus and this dude, Hi, here I am at the resurrection of Lazarus. You know, I mean, I don't know. Blessed? I don't know. How do you search? Well, the way that that would happen is someone would be give someone a letter of recommendation. And if you trusted the person that sent the letter of recommendation, then you trusted the preacher. And there are a lot of guys that were going around and they were just in it for themselves and God hadn't sent them, and the church leadership hadn't sent them. But this is what Paul is reacting to. It's called the Paul controversy. What happened in these early Christian communities, even here in Corinth, the church that Paul planted, there were some people that said, paul, why should we listen to you? Like, who do you think you are? You were not even one of the original 12 disciples. You didn't walk with Jesus on the earth. Why should we listen to you? I mean, you are the one that just said to us, you know, you had this shining light. You saw Jesus got knocked off your horse, and then Jesus sent You, why should we believe you? And Paul is now writing to these Corinthians that are starting to say, like, you know, you should have a letter of recommendation. He's like, what do you mean? Not only I planted this church. He goes, I don't need to bring a letter like everyone else, because you yourselves, you are my letter of recommendation. You are proof of my apostolic authority, your transformed life, how you are living your life in a lost and a broken world. That is the proof of the fact that God has called me and God has sent me. You know, I often think here at Mariners, like, I'm here. It's not that I randomly walked out off the street today. Went well. Here I am. Glad you're listening to me. Pastor Eric obviously has given me a recommendation of sort. That's why I'm here. I mean, this week alone at work, I wrote three different letters of recommendation. Someone, you know, was wanting to apply for a job. I knew them, and they said, chris, would you write a letter of recommendation? Until, you know, in this letter, the fact of what my skill set is, what I could do, my character. I had a high school senior that asked me to write a letter of recommendation because she was, you know, applying at colleges. So I did that. Someone else asked me to write a letter of recommendation to a publisher for a book that they were writing. I mean, it's not uncommon. When someone applies for a job at a 21, they will send me a resume. And in that resume, there's often letters of recommendation. It's not something that is unusual. It's what we do. It's like if you don't know someone. Paul in Romans, chapter 16, verse 1 and 2. And I could have picked so many of these out of the Bible. He says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is. So I commend to you. They don't know Phoebe, the Roman Church, but Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, gave it to Phoebe. And he says, I commend to you our sister Phebe, who is a servant of the church in Cenchre. So you should welcome her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and assist her in whatever manner she may require your help. For indeed, she has been a benefactor of many and of me also. So letters of recommendation, then, as in now, were just the way people did things. That's how you knew when you couldn't search online for somebody else. But Paul is saying to them that, I don't need to show you all my credentials and show you, like, where I graduated from. And who says that I'm awesome? You. You are living letters out there. You are our credentials here at Mariners. I thank God we've got an awesome teaching team and many of us have gone to seminary or have been educated. But ultimately that's not the testimony of really Mariners here in Southern California. It's you. The people of Mariners. How you are living your lives in your homes and communities and schools and workplaces and your interactions in everyday life. You are our letter of recommendation as you go into the highways and byways every week. And you, through the way you live, are displaying the love and the grace and the mercy and the goodness and the kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are our recommendation that God is moving in our midst in this place. You are living letters. It's you. And you know, in this time where letters were like just the way people did things in our world, many of us don't even know what a letter is. We're not called a lot of things in the Bible. Have you noticed that Jesus in John 15:5 says, you are the branches? I mean, look at the person next to you and say, you're a weird looking branch. You're a weird looking. Look at them. No, they're good looking branch. He says in Matthew 5, Matthew 5:13, you are the salt of the world. I love this. You're the salt of the earth. I'm Greek, so I love salt. Salt. Take salted anchovies every day of the week. Sorry, it's nearly lunchtime. He says, you are the light of the world. In Matthew 5:14, he calls us sheep, shout out to all the New Zealanders in the room. He says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them. They follow me in John in 10:27. And so in this case, Paul is saying, you're a living letter. Just like we're light salt branches, sheep, you're a living letter. Now, my daughter, my eldest, graduated, you know, from Pepperdine in May, and after four years of, you know, such a great education, I said to her, katherine, have you ever sent a letter? And she looked at me like I was from the Dark Ages and that I was like some archeological relic. And she's continuing then to tell me how people in 2025 communicate, which tends to be more text or text or text and the odd email and maybe slip in a DM or something like that. And I'm like, sweetheart, my dad was a senior executive with Australia Post, and so I love letters and this is what I made her do because I felt like a Failure as a mother. I said, not on my watch. I said, you are now gonna go to the post office. She goes, where is it? I said, have you heard of Mr. GP and S? Have a look and put it in. And she goes to the post office. And I said, I want you to get an envelope and I want you to get stamps. And she came honestly, like she'd been on an archaeological dig somewhere in Greece. She goes, mum, these stamps are so cute. Aren't stamps cute? And I said, catherine, do you know where they go? So my issue is church. How many people think they go in the center? How many people think they go on the left hand side? How many people know they go on the right hand side of the envelope? How many people in this service have never sent a letter? I'm just looking, okay? Yes, I know you could tell everyone that he's like under 20. But anyway, so this is an ancient relic sent symbol recently excavated from Corona Doma. Anyway, but when I get a letter, I love it. You sort of look at the thing, your name's on the front, there's a stamp on it. You turn around, you see who's it from. And there's a message in there. You know there's a message, but then you have to pray and fast and intercede and hope when you open it, you can actually understand the writing. Especially in this era when nobody knows how to write anymore. But here is the deal. You love it. You love it when you get one. And when we first moved to America, my mum, who really never graduated to technology, she was still like, has anyone seen my big fat Greek wedding? Okay, that is my big fat Greek life. And if you give me a word, any word, I will tell you the origin of that word is Greek. And to this day, we still have Windex in every room of the house. In my house, it fixes every ailment. But the fact is that, you know, she came from this, like, Greek culture. And she was like, I am not. I'm going, mother, I am taking your grandchildren to America. Where they talk funny. They all go like, awesome. Anyway, so I go, I am taking them. And she's like, I don't care. I said, mom, you know, there's technology now. You can actually watch them grow up via FaceTime. And she's like, no, I want a letter. And so, you know, my little kids, back when they moved here, they were 4 and 8, and it's like, you know, with crayons, like, write something home to grandma. And my mom would always wait for a letter And I would have to write about, you know, and I loved it, about what was happening and where we were going and what was happening with the ministry. And I would write to her and, you know, it didn't matter what the weather conditions were like in Australia. Like, sometimes it was flooded, sometimes there were fires, sometimes there was, you know, rain, or it was just, like, really windy, that the postman would do whatever they could to deliver that letter. Now, sometimes, because of conditions, the letter might be delayed, but there was a determination to deliver that letter. Now, I wonder in our lives whether there is that same determination, since we are living letters written by God to a lost and a broken world. He's written that in eternity, put us in time and sent us out into wherever your workplace is, your community is, wherever it is that you shop, whatever restaurant you're attending, whatever school, whatever college you go to. We are letters sent from God from eternity into time so that we can fill this world with the love of God. I wonder whether sometimes, when there's just so much going on and it's difficult and it's challenging and the conditions are tough, whether we are as determined as the postman to go. You know what, no matter how hard it is, I'm delivering the letter, I'm showing up. I'm showing up on behalf of God, and there's a letter. My life is gonna reflect the goodness of God. That doesn't mean everything's always good in your life, but there's a difference about us. Like, do we have this week alone? In a church this size, people have lost people, people have lost relationships. Businesses have not gone the way you had hoped. I mean, we all have disappointments and struggles and challenges, but we do not grieve as those that have no hope. So when we show up in a lot of the same circumstances as the rest of the world, we're not exempt from this thing called life. Our letter tells a different story in the midst of the pain and the suffering and the grief, because we have an eternal hope in Jesus. And if you and I are just reacting like everybody else from a temporal perspective, how will anyone know that there really is good news? If you and I are just acting like everybody else and they'd be shocked if they bumped into us at church going, really? Then you've got to ask. The question, really is, am I a letter of good news to a lost and a broken world? You know, when I would send a letter from here in America to go home to Australia, if the letter never arrived in my mind, I was never Thinking, my mom must be lost. I would always think the letter is lost. I wonder, out of the 2 billion Christians on Earth, how many lost letters there are out there that we've forgotten that we're to live our life on mission, that we've forgotten that we are sent as love letters to a lost and a broken world. And somehow we kind of took the letter, shoved it in the middle drawer, and it comes out every now and again when we're at church. But then we put it away rather than understanding, hang on a minute. I'm being mobilized at church and encouraged at church, and I'm coming around the Bible so that I can be this living letter to my community, my workplace, my school, my college, where it changes the way we show up for life. We're not just part of this, like, temporal boring life. Just. Yes. Are we doing a lot of things like everyone else? Yes. Are we kind of trying to make a living, build a career, graduate from college, build a family, build a home? Yes. But there is a different emphasis that we have in the midst of all of these temporal activities. We know that we are an eternal love letter sent by God into a lost and a broken world. And we are the only Bible most people will ever read. We are the only Jesus most people will ever. That is the whole point. So as we talk today about how do we read a Bible knowing people are gonna read us and it's biblical, because that's what Paul is reminding the Corinthian Christians. The people like you will be known and read by everyone. And we see the move here from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. In fact, he's reminding them that this was prophesied by Ezekiel and Jeremiah that we would be living letters for God. He says, in verse three, you show that you are Christ's letter delivered by us here. It is not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Of course, in the Old Covenant, the Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone. And so the fact is that there is no way that every, any one of us could keep those 10 Commandments and could keep the letter of the law and be good enough to get into heaven based on our own good works. And that's why God sent his son, Jesus Christ from heaven to earth to die on a cross, to be buried and to rise again from the dead so that you and I could have forgiveness for our sins, a brand new life, and a hope for the future. Thank God for Jesus. He says, listen no longer is it written on stone tablets where you gotta kinda put em up here on the wall and hope somebody reads them. He says, in I want you to see in Exodus 24:12 it says, the Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and stay there, so I may give you the stone tablets with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction. But then Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:33, this is what he prophesied instead. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days. The Lord's declaration. I love this. I will put my teaching. Remember how we read the Bible, knowing others are going to read you. I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. Ezekiel says, I will give them integrity of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove their heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh. And Paul is reminding the Corinthians, this is the new covenant. This is what has happened. You, you are the Bible people are going to read. Because God has written his law, his teaching on our hearts. And when we are born again and sealed until the day of redemption by the power of the Holy Spirit, God says, I'm now sending you out like a love letter to this lost and broken world. So when people see our lives not perfect, just consistent. I mean, when you're reading a letter every now and again, man, you go, I can't make out that word, or I can't make out that sentence, or that paragraph is illegible. We all have a bad day, a bad week, a bad month. That's not what I'm saying here. But over the consistency of the letter, you go, I kind of know what this life is about. And we should be living lives that are so compelling. It's not about us, that people go, man, I want to know the author of that letter. Who is the guy that wrote that letter? That is your life. I want to meet the author. So when we show up day after day, week after week, month after month, at that workplace, at that school, at that shopping mall, wherever we're going, we are on assignment. We are letters of God sent into a chaotic, divisive, broken, unstable world to declare and decree to a lost and a broken generation that God loves them and has a plan and a purpose and a destiny for every single life on this planet. That's what we're called to do. We are love letters. What might it look like, I wonder, in 2025 so much chaos in the world, so much pain in the world, so much political instability, social and moral instability, economic instability. I mean, Mr. Dow Jones is having a schizophrenic attack. Is up, down, up, down, up, down. It's like the world is like, what is going on? What might it look like in your home or your workplace or your school or college to show up as a letter? You're a person, but you're a letter. The author of that letter is Jesus. He is the author and perfecter of our faith. But what might it look like to maybe come in and in a very chaotic situation, instead of adding to the chaos, a letter of good news brings peace into that situation where there is hopelessness and there is so much hopelessness in the world today, what might be. Might it be like for us to show up with a sense of the hope of God, where there is this sense of. I mean, the world is just one really mean place at the moment? I often, sometimes when I've stopped reading people's kind of conversations and comments on social media, I'm like, do you not think that God reads your profile or your comments section? Actually, I think he doesn't. He's like, that is terrible. It is, like, interesting to me, the world we live in, how loving this letter would be if we would be forgiving in a very unforgiving world. Certainly in my lifetime, I haven't seen what I see when it comes to cancel culture, deplatforming people, the lack of forgiveness and grace and mercy in this world. One strike and you're out. What would it look like in our homes and our workplaces and just where we do life? If this letter was like, phew, I know I could react like the world, but I'm on assignment from God. And so where they're unforgiving, I'm going to be forgiving. Where there's a lack of mercy, I'm going to bring mercy. Where there is no love, man, I'm going to step into this situation that could just go out of control and display the love of God. That's how people read a letter and go, how is that possible? You go, man, I couldn't do that myself. But let's talk about the author of the letter. You need to know him. You need to know Him. There ought to be that kind of evidence in our lives that there's been this transformation, that we're not just reading this thing for information, but it has so transformed us. And the more of that word we get into our hearts when we show up. We are being read by people. That's what the scripture says. Known and read by all men. You know, D.L. moody, the famous evangelist, said that out of 100 people, of those hundred ninety nine, ninety nine of them are going to be read by people. Ninety nine will read people. Only one will read the physical Bible. And that's what it's like in our case. As we go out there. What kind of Bible are they reading? What kind of message are our families getting from our lives, the people in our workspaces, the people in our schools and our colleges? Because I think if we understand as the church of Jesus Christ, that we are God's love letter to a world, not just the people on the platform, not just those in full time vocational ministry or leaders. Paul's saying everyone, every Christ follower is a letter. Now if I was the best letter that could possibly be sent to your workplace, I'd be in your workplace. But I'm not. You are. You are God's Plan A. And God even knows all your faults, not that you have any. I'm talking to the person next to you now, not you, but everybody else. But are our lives bearing witnesses to the truth? Are we bringing peace and joy and comfort and love, patience? You know how hurried this world? This world is crazy. I mean, Amazon was not enough. We had to have Amazon prime and that wasn't enough. Now we want Amazon now. I mean, it's like, seriously, if we have to wait 15 seconds in line for a coffee, we're like, I can't believe this. It's like, honey, it's been 15 seconds. We want Doordash yesterday. We just want everything now. What would it be like to display the patience and the love of God in a lost and a broken world? This stuff is not rocket science. And you don't have to have a seminary degree. Here's the good news. It's not how much of the Bible do you know in the original language? It's how much of what you know are you actually living in a real world? That's all it is. And if more of us did that church, can you imagine if there are, as they say, 2 billion Christians, roughly around the world? Do you realize we could fulfill the Great Commission in about an hour if every single Christian lived on mission and lived as God's love letter to a lost and a broken world? So as we leave church and go into our own spheres of influence, and over this next week, let's make a decision that we're not just kind of rocking up aimlessly but we understand that we've been put in a heavenly envelope and there's a postage stamp and we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. And God said, I'm going to take you out of eternity and now send you through time and send you into your homes and your workplaces and your communities and your spheres of influence. Because you are the love letter that I'm sending to a lost and a broken world to declare my grace, my mercy, my love, my forgiveness, my goodness and my kindness. So as we go into our week, let's determine that as a church, we are going to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain. To the glory of God. In Jesus name. In Jesus name. Amen. All right, extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them. Cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week. Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message Podcast to support the ministry of Mariners Church. You can click the link in the Show Notes or download the Mariners App at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual read and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors in your community, check out the Gospel Every Day podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners App for more information on where to find it.