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This is the audio from the November 12, 2023 sermon, “Good News: A Not So Ordinary LIFE”, shared by Tom Lemler at the Deer Run Church of Christ.

Text: Luke 17

Today I continued a series from the gospel of Luke as we gaze deeply into God’s Word to find the good news of Jesus shared with us by Luke the physician.  As Jesus walked this earth, much of what we know about His activities took place in the ordinary circumstances of life.  Ordinary people going about the ordinary tasks of life, at least until they met Jesus.  Whether you think your life is ordinary, extraordinary, or less than ordinary, God’s desire is that you would have a not so ordinary . . .

• Love: — (Luke 17:1-4)

  • The ordinary love of this world tends to focus on self more than sacrifice.  As Jesus teaches in the context of temptation and sin, He points us to the importance of forgiveness.  With sin being inevitable, His desire is that we not be the cause of the sin others find themselves involved in.  The Bible teaches us that love covers a multitude of sin and we experience that when we find God’s forgiveness of our sin and then reflect that same nature in the way we forgive others.  When we live with a not so ordinary love, we learn and practice forgiveness not based on what is deserved but based on what is needed.

• Involvement: — (Luke 17:5-10)

  • The ordinary involvement of this world generally revolves around us doing what we want to do.  Even when we do what is required, we do so with a constant awareness of how we benefit.  Sometimes our involvement in the work of God reflects more of what we want than what He wants.  Jesus taught that we must always keep in mind the difference between God and us in relationship to responsibility and authority.  When we live with a not so ordinary involvement, our service to God is based on Him being in charge and us being His servant.

• Faith: — (Luke 17:11-19)

  • The ordinary faith of this world isn’t really faith at all but rather a human attempt to believe in what we create in our own mind.  When Jesus heals ten men who had leprosy, He says it is their faith that made them well.  We often focus, with good reason, on the one who returned to give thanks, but it appears that all of them were healed as they went off in obedience to the command of Jesus.  As lepers, their actions of going to show themselves to the priest would be completely unacceptable if they had arrived with visible signs of leprosy.  When we live with a not so ordinary faith, we take God at his Word in more than a mental acknowledgement but in a life of obedient action.

• Example: — (Luke 17:20-37)

  • The ordinary examples of this world are often people who accomplish great things and claim to do so on their own.  As Jesus taught about the coming of God’s kingdom, He did so with examples of faithful obedience in the midst of a disbelieving culture.  The Bible then tells us that all of the events recorded for us in God’s Word are there as examples for us in either how to live or how not to live.  When we live with a not so ordinary example, our life becomes a shining light of Jesus that we choose to make visible everywhere we go.

Today, how will you live a not so ordinary LIFE?