1. At this time, due to decreasing Coronavirus rates, the United Methodists Churches of our Illinois Great Rivers Conference are worshiping in face-to-face worship services. On May 14, 2021, the Illinois Great Rivers Conference announce a significant relaxation in safety standards in harmony with recent announcements by the CDC and the Illinois State Department of Public Health.
2. YOU HAVE SIX CHOICES TO PARTICIPATE IN WORSHIP, depending on what you feel is best for your own safety and situation in this Coronavirus season. We respect your decision.
Choice #1: You are welcome to attend live, Face-to-Face worship at Kinmundy United Methodist Church at 9 am Sunday morning OR at Wesley, 10:45 Sunday morning.
Choice #2: We broadcast the audio of the live service on your car’s FM radio, FM 87.9, to the parking lot at Kinmundy UMC at 9 am. This is a little safer than inside for those who are unvaccinated or concerned about safety. Just like a drive-in, you can bring snacks and coffee.
Choice #3: Please click on the link at the blog post for this Sunday in the “Attend Worship at Home” category to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone. Sermons and worship services for previous weeks are also available. The same links will be provided on the Kinmundy Church Facebook page. Pastor Dave intends to continue providing an online service on into the future.
Choice #4: You can also click on the links at the blog post of the day in the “Attend Worship at Home” category to have your own worship service experience, for whatever you are interested in. You can listen to the sermon on audio, pray the prayers, play YouTube versions of the hymns, and/or view the sermon slides with the sermon audio.
Choice #5: A copy of the “Worship at Home” service AND a sermon transcript will be emailed or sent by US Mail Monday to anyone who requests it. Call the church office at 547-7423 to subscribe. The transcript can also be read on the blog after 2 pm on Monday and used in your devotions through the week. Pastor Dave intends to continue provide this on into the future.
Choice #6: If you don’t have the internet and you would like to watch the worship video on DVD, please call the church office.
SOBER REALITIES: Unvaccinated people may choose to wear masks for their own safety and the safety of other non-vaccinated people. Please do not crowd each other as we adjust to this change. Physical distance is the most effective precaution against COVID!
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KinmundyChurch.org: The Blog of the Kinmundy and Wesley United Methodist Churches, 308 E. 3rd St, Kinmundy, IL, 62854
Worship at Kinmundy: 9 am Sunday. At Wesley: 10:45 Sunday. Visit us on Facebook here! Listen to or download sermons and slides by clicking here.
Vision Statement: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. Mission Statement: “Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional.” (¶126, Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church)
The world has 2 needs and 2 kinds of people: People who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple-makers. (T4T)
Kinmundy United Methodist Churches 308 3rd Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854 Worship Sunday mornings at 9 am. Please join us!
Wesley United Methodist Church 3381 Kinoka Rd, Patoka, IL 62875 Worship Sunday mornings at 10:45 am.
WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY: PLEASE CHECK THE CHURCH FACEBOOK PAGE FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION!
Weekday policy: if South Central public schools are closed because of bad weather, church activities that day are postponed. Be Safe!
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Prayer of Confession & Words of Assurance We confess, O God, that we are attracted to false gods and easy answers in life. We are vulnerable to temptations that could damage us in ways that are not obvious. Forgive us that sin that draws us like moths to a flame. Restore us and fill us with godly resolve. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Hear the good news: Christ died for our sins and rose again that God may free us from the tyranny of judging others to live fully in the power of God’s grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives your sins and offers you a transformed future. Live fully into God’s grace! Amen.
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life. Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not. Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature. Help me to serve you as I am gifted. Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood. I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
John 16:33 I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Mark 4:35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” 41 And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”
Luke 18:1 And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; 3 and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?“
2 Corinthians 5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
Since the beginning of Lent, we have been talking about this revival, this season of beautiful spiritual grace that happened at Asbury University, a small college in Wilmore, Kentucky, where the students, one day, started praying and they didn’t want to stop. In fact, they prayed all day and all night for 400 hours, and people felt very close to God. They felt that their sins were forgiven. And so they began to repent of their sins and ask God to make them whole, and they felt that God was answering their prayers. And this began to draw large crowds of people.
Why? Whenever God begins to answer prayers, it’ll draw a crowd of people. Whenever people begin to feel that God is present in a very real way, other people want to have that same feeling. I have a good friend who went to seminary at Asbury, just decide to go and visit the campus again. He and his children just got back. It’s a whole other month from what was going on in February, but he couldn’t help it. He loaded his kids in the car and he wanted to go to Wilmore just to be there, because he wanted to feel like that. Because, you see, a revival touches our emotions, a revival touches our hearts, and a revival increases feelings of faith, feelings of hope, and feelings of love. And human beings have a great hunger for that.
Now, here’s the truth. If you want to go all the way to Wilmore, Kentucky – maybe that’ll be a SALT trip one of these days! – you can do that. But God can be this close to you right here. And you can feel that faith and hope and love right here, you can. And that’s why we’ve been talking about it so that what happened down there, we believe God can do in our lives right here. Maybe on a smaller scale, but every bit as real and genuine.
A revival creates deep and meaningful feelings of faith, deep and meaningful feelings of hope, and deep and meaningful feelings of love. And I’ll be honest with you, there are times that we need those feelings. I have been feeling under stress lately, but certainly not as much stress as some of you.
So let’s talk just a little bit about stress. When we are stressed, when our patience is tested, the thing I think that makes it the most powerful is that we feel very overwhelmed. People in need, and things that we have to do right now, come at us from all directions and they overwhelm us. And what I’ve come to realize about myself when I’m feeling under a great deal of stress, what I’m reaching is what I would call a competency limit. This much stress, I can deal with, but then it gets worse. This much stress, I can deal with, but just barely. But if it goes over the line, this much stress, I can’t deal with it. Over here I’m competent, but if it goes over the line to where I’m incompetent and things go from bad to worse, I feel overwhelmed by the stress.
Now, here’s a couple truths about that from how I experience it. You might be different. Sometimes when we get overwhelmed and stress gets higher and higher, we’re tempted to feel anxious. We’re tempted to press the panic button. Now the problem with giving in to your anxiety is it lowers your competency to deal with stress and, instantly, it makes everything worse. It’s always best if we’re able to hang on. We can’t always do it. It’s best if we can hang on.
But what helps me most when I’m under stress is the awareness that not everything in life is even. And there is this idea called the Pareto principle. It comes from an Italian economist that noticed, in his land of Italy, 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people. Now, the fraction might be a little bit different, but it tends to run to be true. 80% of the sales will be made by 20% of the salesmen. 80% of the complaints will come from 20% of your customers. And here’s the thing … when you apply that to problems that you’re having, 80% of the pain comes from 20% of the problems. Not every problem is equally bad. But, you see, when you’re overwhelmed, they all seem to be exactly the same, but they’re really not.
Now, if you understand fractions, you know 20%, that’s one out of five. One out of five things that you’re struggling with will cause four out of five parts of the pain. They are not equal. And when I’m too overwhelmed to think, I’m too overwhelmed to figure out which one of these things is the most critical one, and which are the four that really don’t matter that much. Because I lose the ability to distinguish and to discern when I’m overwhelmed. And that helps me when I’m feeling under stress.
Jesus said this stress would come. John 16:33, this is the night before he dies on the cross. “I have said this to you,” he said to his disciples, “that in me, you may have peace. But in the world, you have tribulation.” In the world, you’re going to have troubles. In the world, there are going to be problems. You have a nice day, and you have a nice day, you have a nice day, but sooner or later in the world, there’s going to be a storm that’s going to blow up and threaten to ruin your day. Jesus says, “In the world you have tribulation.” It’s built-in. “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
Christian psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote a book that changed the lives of many, many people quite a long time ago. It was called The Road Less Traveled. The very first three words in the book: Life is difficult. And Peck goes on to say the astonishing thing is, if you understand that life is difficult, all of a sudden it’s not as difficult as it was before. What causes the greatest difficulty is believing that everything should be just fine and when it’s not that there’s something wrong and bad with you. I have known people literally to say: It rains. Snow falls. They have a flat tire. They literally will say, “Why is God punishing me?” And the answer is that life is difficult. It’s a part of creation. Life is difficult. But Jesus says, “Be of good cheer. For I have overcome this world and it’s difficulty.”
Last year, for quite some time, a couple of months at least, if not longer, we used this slide as our call to worship. And I think it really applies to what we’re talking about today. I think it really applies to repentance because there are two kinds of mistakes that we make.
So we would begin our prayer this way. “Lord, I believe,” and then you all would say, “Help my unbelief.” You remember, that comes from the story on the day of the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus and Peter and James and John are coming down the hill. And there’s a big crowd at the bottom of the hill, and there’s a man whose son who is sick. And the other disciples have not been able to cure him. And they have done their best, and the man comes up to Jesus and says, “My son needs your help. Help us.” And then he says this phrase, “If you can do anything.” And Jesus replies, “If? If?” Jesus says, “All things are possible to the one who believes.”
And the man instantly cries out. I think this is brilliant. He instantly cries out, “I believe. I do. I believe. Help me with my unbelief. Help me with my unbelief.” Now, here’s the truth: What does that mean? And what I would suggest to you what that means is we’re asking God to help us to see the world as God sees it. Because the way human beings are, we look at the world as if God had human limitations. We need to see problems the way God sees them. Because certainly, God understands problems in a much clearer way than we do. Certainly, God is smarter than we are. If there’s a simple solution, we may not know it, but God will know it. We need to see the world the way God sees it, and then we’ll see everything differently. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. What’s going to help your faith more than anything is to see a problem the way God sees it.
And then the next problem, of course, Lord, I obey. You know what you’re supposed to do. Guess what? When you don’t do it, problems happen. And so it’s Lord I obey; help my disobedience. I’m not perfect. Help me to focus. Guide me to do what’s best. Prune me in what holds me back.
And so it’s time for us to talk about repentance. Do you know what we’ll talk about? Lord, help me with all those things I’ve done wrong. And we completely forget about the first one: Help me, Lord, with all the times that I have seen wrong, that I have misunderstood the situation, that I had made things worse because I have decided my view of other people as if they are evil and sick and stupid and bad. We need to repent of how we see things when we see things wrong. Because, I tell you, if the Lord will help you with your unbelief and help you to see the way God sees things, it will change your whole life.
So here’s the storm, Mark 4:35, on that day, when evening had come he said to them, his disciples, let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him with him in the boat just as he was. And the other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose and the waves beat into the boat so that the boat was already filling. Now, let me remind you, 4 out of the 12 disciples, at least 4 out of the 12 disciples were professional fishermen. They had been fishing on the Sea of Galilee for most of their adult life. They were no stranger to storms. They knew what to do in a storm. They knew how to sail this boat.
But every now and then there will come a storm that is beyond your competency limit. A storm where you do not feel competent to deal with it. And this was that kind of storm. Professional fishermen began to panic. Now, strangely enough, Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat. I don’t quite understand that. He is sound asleep. His head is on the cushion. Water is coming into the boat, the boat is rocking back and forth. The men are, we assume, yelling and screaming at each other. They’re bailing water out of the boat, trying to stay afloat. 38, but He was in the stern, a sleep on the cushion, and they woke him and they said to Him, “Teacher, do you not care that we perish?”
In other words, why should you sleep when we are struggling so hard? Why should you be relaxed when we are scared to death? Why should you sleep when we’re bailing to try to keep the boat from sinking? And I want to tell you over all the years that I thought about this scripture, I’ve come to a conclusion. It’s my opinion. They’re panicking. They’re upset. Why did they wake up Jesus? What do they think that Jesus could do that would help? And here’s my opinion. You know what my opinion is? I think they wanted Jesus to bail.
Now, this is early on in the gospel. I think they thought that the best thing that Jesus could do to help them was to help bail. Because you see, when stress comes upon us, we begin to look and imagine that God has human limitations. What can Jesus do to help us? Hand him a bucket.
But here’s what happens. Verse 39. He awoke and he rebuked the wind. He insulted and cussed out the wind, like you talk to a bad dog. And he said to the sea, “Peace, be still.” And guess what? The wind ceased. And there was a great calm.
Because Jesus can do a lot more than bail. They didn’t know. But he could do a lot more than bail. You see, this storm had not reached God’s competency limit. Because whatever is beyond you and I is not beyond God and God’s ability to deal with it.
And then Jesus turns and looks at them, maybe they were still trying to hand him a bucket. I don’t know. And he says this, ”Why are you afraid? Don’t you understand who’s in the boat with you? “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”
In Luke chapter 17:5, the disciples come to Jesus and they say, ”Lord, increase our faith.” That’s the prayer. But this probably was the first time they realized that there was a lot of increasing of faith that was needed. Because, looking verse 41, they were filled with awe. They were astonished. They were amazed. They were filled with amazement. And they said to one another, ”Who then is this?” And that phrase tells you they did not understand what Jesus could do. Now, they came to understand more, but at this stage in their life, they did not understand what Jesus could do, and so they are astonished. Who is this man that even wind and sea obey him?
”Why are you afraid?” Jesus says. ”Did you think this was beyond me?”
In Luke chapter 18, there is a parable about the unjust judge; a widow has been cheated and she comes to the judge and she says, ”I’ve been wronged, give me justice.” And the judge says, ”Eh.” Maybe she didn’t have bribe money, maybe he didn’t want to bother with her, but she kept coming back. She kept coming back. She kept coming back, and, finally, the judge decided to help her … so that she would stop coming back. Now that’s the parable. But let’s not forget the point of the parable. Luke 18:1, Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. And not stop praying. They are always to pray. And the parable ends with verse 8: Nevertheless, when the son of man comes, when Jesus Christ looks down on you and I, is he going to see that we have given up? Is he going to see that we have stopped praying … as if we don’t believe that God is going to help us? And so if we don’t believe that God can help us, that’s our faith. As if we don’t believe that God is willing to help us – that’s the state of our hope. As if we don’t feel that God cares, that’s the belief that God doesn’t love us. When the son of man comes, will he find people praying on earth? Will he find people who have given up just because it was a bad day or it was a hard time or it was a terrible storm?
So life is difficult. Well, the first thing for us to remember is that life is difficult when we do stupid things. I happened to run across this picture on Facebook. I have no idea how it came up, but that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Out of all those things that are causing you stress, and if you think every single one of them is of equal importance, one of them is something you should stop doing. During January and February, we talked about Wesley’s General Rules. If you’re overwhelmed, remember the first rule that John Wesley had was do no harm. There are things that you and I should stop doing or at the very least do less of. If you can figure out what one of those are … like this young lady here, what she’s doing … the minute you stop that, you will raise your level of competency to deal with everything else that you’re dealing with. If we are doing stupid things, that makes us less competent to deal with the stress.
John Wesley’s second rule is, “Do all the good you can.” If we stop doing a stupid thing, we can replace it with a good thing and our competency to deal with stress will increase.
Wesley’s third rule was to attend upon all the ordinances of God. That’s a literal quote, but it’s hard to understand. But what it means is do the work that takes care of your spiritual health. Show up for worship. (By the way, so glad all of you are here!) Take time to pray. Take time to read the Bible. Take communion. Do the things that lead to you being spiritually strong, and when life is difficult, you will be more competent to deal with it.
Second, when life is difficult, you can put yourself in timeout. Now we have school teachers in the room. We have parents in the room. Do you remember what timeout is? Time out is where you don’t spank a child but you say, “You go over to the corner and you think about what you just did. You go over to the corner and you think about what you just said.” And the kids go over to the corner and because they get bored, this works.
But sometimes as a grown-up, you have to put yourself in time out, because if you give yourself a moment to think, you will become more competent to deal with whatever the problems are. If you give yourself a moment to ask, “Lord, what shall I do,” you’ll find that you will be more competent in dealing with the stress you’re experiencing. If you give yourself a pause to think, you’ll be able to distinguish between all the things that are assaulting you and which one is the biggest problem and needs to be dealt with first. And that will make you more competent in the time of stress. When life is difficult, take a pause to think, especially if you use that pause to think with God. What is prayer anyway? If you use that pause to think with God, you will have God’s help with what you’re dealing with. So when you’re under stress, sometimes you need to just go away for a moment. You can go hide in the restroom. You can go to take a walk. You can say to the little children, you can say, “Watch this movie. Mom has got to give herself a rest break,” whatever.
When you’re feeling pushed beyond the level where you’re competent, take a pause. Things are not as bad as you’ve perceived them because, you see, that’s what we miss: We see the problem not the way God sees it, but the way we see it. We see the stress not the way God sees it but based on our experiences from the past that come back to haunt us. We need to see things the way God sees them. And I can’t think of anything that would help us to be calmer and more able to deal with problems as they happen, because if Jesus Christ is with you, you do not face any problem in this life alone.
And so the apostle Paul says these words, 2nd Corinthians 5:16: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” You should not regard your life from a human point of view because God is a part of your life now.
And Paul goes on to say, “Even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” Because we understand that Christ does not have human limitations … but he can love us, watch over us, and help us because he is God with us.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, help us when stressful things happen. When a storm blows up all of a sudden that we did not expect, and there we are, dealing with great difficulty, Lord, help us not to underestimate the power of God and what you can do in our lives in the midst of any storm. But also, Lord, before the storm happens, you can help us prepare. And also, Lord, after the storm happens, you can help us repair any damage. Lord, help us to live with a clear perception and understanding that we and God together deal with every aspect of our lives. And so, Lord, we ask you to help us, to increase our faith, to increase our hope, and to increase our understanding of how much you love your people in the midst of their problems. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Prayer of Confession & Words of Assurance We confess, O God, that we are attracted to false gods and easy answers in life. We are vulnerable to temptations that could damage us in ways that are not obvious. Forgive us that sin that draws us like moths to a flame. Restore us and fill us with godly resolve. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Hear the good news: Christ died for our sins and rose again that God may free us from the tyranny of judging others to live fully in the power of God’s grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives your sins and offers you a transformed future. Live fully into God’s grace! Amen.
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life. Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not. Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature. Help me to serve you as I am gifted. Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood. I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Philippians 2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Mark 8:34 And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
Lord Jesus, I pray that you would increase our faith, and I pray that you would bless the words that I speak today. That they might support us in heart, in mind, in soul, in strength, and that they might increase our faith. Amen.
A generous grace. We have been talking about something that happened earlier in February that is going to go down in history. All of a sudden, people began to pray at Asbury University, at a small town called Wilmore in Kentucky. And they prayed overnight, and they prayed for some 400 hours, and God began to do something. And, of course, what I want to suggest to you is that when God begins to do things, a crowd begins to gather. But it’s not about the crowd, it’s about God.
From that time, Matthew 4:17, Jesus began to preach saying, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” And whenever people repent and turn toward the Lord Jesus Christ, God begins to act. That’s the Kingdom of Heaven starting to happen. But this term, revival, what exactly does it mean?
Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, children came to the front of the church for the children’s sermon. And the pastor said, “Boys and girls, I want you to pay very careful attention. I want to ask you a question. What has brown fur, lives in a hole in a tree, and loves nuts?” And a little boy was so excited, and he just raised his hand. He knew the answer. He said, “I know. I know. I know.” And the pastor said, “What is it? What’s the answer?” And the little boy says, “It’s Jesus. I know it, it’s Jesus.” And the pastor is trying to fix this and the boy just keeps saying, “It’s Jesus. It’s Jesus. I know it’s Jesus.” Finally, his mother comes up and starts dragging him out of the church. And the little boy just keeps yelling, “It’s Jesus. I know it’s Jesus.” After the service, the pastor came over to the little boy and said, “Let’s have a talk. Do you know what a squirrel is? Didn’t you know what I was talking about?” And the little boy said, “Aren’t you supposed to be talking about Jesus?”
And you see, friends, that’s the whole point. We need to be talking about Jesus. We need to focus on Jesus. Whenever the focus shifts from Jesus to anything else, church begins to get a little squirrelly. Jesus needs to come first and to be at the center of everything. Consequently, there is this verse in John 12:32, and it has two meanings. Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” Now, the literal meaning is that is a euphemism for being crucified because they lift the cross up and the pole falls into a post hole in the earth, and the person who’s dying is up high above everyone, so everyone can see them suffer.
But it also has the meaning of the fact that when we lift up Jesus so that he is visible, so that he is the center of attention, I’ll see him. And especially when we see him on the cross, Jesus himself predicted and said this, “He will draw all people to him.” So you see a crowd there at Asbury in the picture? Jesus is drawing all people to him. That’s the result. What’s the cause? The students began to lift Jesus up and desire him to come first in all things.
You see, that’s the default. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” That’s the default. For us to understand that God comes to us in love and God sends Jesus to us as an expression of God’s love. And so notice the next verse, “For God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” There’s been a lovely little meme that’s been making the rounds; started back at Christmas. If God did not send Jesus to condemn the world, I don’t think he sent you.
Because God’s default is not to condemn the world, God’s default is to love and to seek to draw the world back to God, including us here in the church, to draw us all back to the lord. And so, when we lift Jesus up, he will draw all people to himself.
So, what does it look like when Jesus is lifted up? There’s a beautiful portrait of Jesus Christ in Philippians chapter two. In fact, they believe that verses 5 through 11 are actually a hymn, an early hymn sung by the church. And no one knows the melody, but the Greek is written in a way that rhymes as if it’s to be sung. So Paul draws this picture for everyone: So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, and he goes on to say, “This is what I want to see.” Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord, and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility, count others better than yourselves. Let each one of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Verse five, “Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus.
Now think about that word this. I think it’s like the equal sign in an equation. What you have just read is Paul describing what it looks like when Jesus is visible in the church. But the verses that follow also describe what it’s like when Jesus is visible:Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
You know, on Facebook and in conversations, sometimes we ask ourselves questions that help us to explore our minds. One such question is, “Out of all the people in history, who would you most like to spend a week with?” And you know the first answer is always Jesus. But that’s not what I say because I don’t want to go back to the time before there was air conditioning. It’s pretty childish. I don’t want to go back to the time before air conditioning and running water. I don’t want to have to walk everywhere I go. (If the question allowed me to bring Jesus here, I would bring him here!) But think about the difference between then and now … isn’t that almost the difference between heaven and maybe the worst way that earth can be? Jesus did not count equality with God to be a thing to be grasped. Jesus did not insist on his rights. Jesus did not say, “I want to stay here in heaven where everything is comfortable and perfect.” He came to us. That’s God’s default. God so loved the world that he sent Jesus. And as he came to us – look at verse 7 – he emptied himself, he left behind every aspect of being God so that what was left was that of a human being, with all the limitations, all the discomforts, all the difficulties of being a human being. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Pastor Rick Warren wrote a bestseller. You probably have a copy of it in your home. Most people do. It’s called The Purpose Driven Life. The very first lesson he makes in the book is this: your life does not have this purpose; it’s all about me. And Jesus Christ models that for us. He did not count equality as a thing to be grasped but surrendered it and came to be among us as one of us. This is the view that Jesus gives us of what it means to be Jesus. And then verse 8: Being found in human form, he humbled himself further – humbled himself! – and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
In the garden of Gethsemane, he said, “Lord, God, if there’s any other way. Nonetheless, Thy will be done.” We pray that all the time, “Thy I kingdom come, thy will be done.” When Jesus prayed it, this is what he knew was going to happen. He became obedient, even unto death on a cross. And because of His surrender, because of the way He showed His love. Because of the way He was willing to fulfil God’s will, here’s the result: Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess, what? Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is what Jesus showed us what it’s like to be the Christ.
Matthew 10:24 says it very simply: A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master, as if you or I had rights that we could claim that Jesus chose not to claim. But, verse 25, “It is enough – it is enough! – for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master.” So, therefore, friends, have this mind among yourselves, which Jesus showed to us.
On Ash Wednesday, we gathered together out at the Wesley church. As it’s a tradition, we read this scripture from Mark 8:34, “And He called to Him the multitude with His disciples and said to them, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. And for those who wish, the mark of a cross is placed on their forehead so that everyone can see, I am willing to follow Jesus and take up my cross.
But you know where this comes from? When you read in Mark 8, Jesus says to the disciples. “Who do men say that I am?” And they have various ideas. And he looks at them and he says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter says, “You are the Christ. The Messiah.” And then Jesus began to explain what it means to be the Messiah. It means He’s going to die upon the cross. It means he’s going to suffer. It means He’s going to be rejected by the Jewish people. It means that God’s love poured out will be rejected.
And Mark 8 says that Peter grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside and began to rebuke him. “Jesus, how can you be so stupid to think that that’s what should happen to the Christ because we know what should happen. Everything should go your way. You should get everything you want. Oh, and those of us who are following you, real close to you, we get a whole lot of things that we want, too.”
You remember what Jesus said to Peter when he talked like that? He said, “Get behind me, Satan,” because, you see, that’s a temptation that Satan brings to people. “What it means to be holy, what it means for God to be powerful means,” Satan says, “you should get everything you want.” But friends, you know it’s not like that.
And so right after that, Jesus calls everyone around him who is there to be able to hear, including the disciples, and he says, “Here’s what it means to be the Christ: if anyone wants to follow me, to come after me, let him deny himself.” You’ll have a cross, too. Now something to keepin mind, Jesus’ cross brought him suffering. But it also brought a great blessing to all of us. Please understand this. Your cross is not about suffering. It’s about God making the world better. That’s what Jesus did. But it won’t always go your way. You won’t always win.
And so, Jesus said, in John 12:32, says the same thing today, “When I am lifted up from the earth, when people see me on the cross, I will draw all people to myself.”
And so all the news organizations take these pictures of the crowds gathered at Asbury, because this is their understanding of a revival. There’s a huge crowd. But the huge crowd is a byproduct. It’s the result. And on the news, those questions they would repeat over and over again, “How long will they last? How long will this keep up? Those people praying all night long, they’re getting tired. How long? How long will it last? Is the revival over yet?” And I read that again and again and again.
And here’s what I want to say about that. When our focus shifts from Jesus to the revival, the revival begins to fade away. When our focus shifts from the cause to the results, the results begin to fade away. We want to remember that Jesus is the cause of all of this and that when we lift him up, he will draw all people to him. What a tragic thing it would be for you to be a seminary student and to get an A in church history and to get a B in religious philosophy and to get an A- in the New Testament but get an F in following Jesus, or get a D in putting Jesus first. Because, friends, I’ll be honest with you, one of the problems that our church has is there are people who are really, really smart, but what they know has not shown up in what they do. And in fact, there’s an old zen proverb that says to know and not do, means you don’t really know yet. I think if we got an A in following Jesus, putting him first, making him visible, we would see our world change, right here, right where we are.
And so I leave you with this prayer. In fact, I leave you with a thought. If you take this church bulletin home, the Call to Worship prayer that began our worship, you can pray to begin your day this week. The Congregational Prayer that we pray before our prayer time, the Centering Prayer, you can pray it before you go to bed at night. The scripture that we’re hearing about today that is printed on the back of the bulletin, you can ponder it, asking God, what does this mean? How do I live it? You can pray for the people who are listed on the prayer page. And the church events that are listed on this page. And the activities that are coming up on this page. And you can lift Jesus up all week long. Let’s get an A in being like Jesus.
And so I suggest there are two parts that make this revival happen. The first one is to repent, and in the prayer, you see it there: Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. Is that true? Yes, that’s true. But Lord Jesus, you can help me, and I can ask you to be more and more the center of my life. That’s what it means to repent. That lifts Jesus up.
And then all the other words are what we do as we follow Him. And if you want, you can perceive them as a checklist. Some days you’ll get to do them all. Sometimes it won’t be all. You’ll get to those the next day. But lifting Jesus up is about repenting from what we are not yet. And deciding to follow in doing more of what God wants us to do.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, increase our faith. Because our world has problems. And we need to have faith. For our prayers, Lord Jesus, increase our faith, and help us to lift Jesus up. So the more people become aware of him and, in particular, Lord, as they get to know us, they become aware of Jesus. As they become more aware of what our church is doing, they become more aware of Jesus. Lord, help us in all things to make you visible. So that people can come to understand what we know in our hearts: You are wonderful, Lord Jesus. And you are the generous grace of God sent to us because God loves the world. And does not wish to condemn the world, but that through you, Lord Jesus, the whole world would come to be saved. And so, Lord, we pray that you will bring revival to us because certainly, Lord, revival is that we revive and come alive. And Lord, may your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
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CALL TO WORSHIP: Prayer of Confession & Words of Assurance We confess, O God, that we are attracted to false gods and easy answers in life. We are vulnerable to temptations that could damage us in ways that are not obvious. Forgive us that sin that draws us like moths to a flame. Restore us and fill us with godly resolve. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Hear the good news: Christ died for our sins and rose again that God may free us from the tyranny of judging others to live fully in the power of God’s grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives your sins and offers you a transformed future. Live fully into God’s grace! Amen.
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life. Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not. Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature. Help me to serve you as I am gifted. Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood. I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!
GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.
MESSAGE: The Revival of Faith, Hope, and Love Text: Mark 1:40-42, 5:22-43, 6:56, 1 Corinthians 13:11-13, Luke 17:5-6 Series: The Jesus Revival (Times Of Refreshing)
Mark 1:40 And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” 41 Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I will; be clean.” 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
Mark 5:22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Ja’irus by name; and seeing him, he fell at his feet, 23 and besought him, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” 24 And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. 25 And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” 29 And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, “Who touched my garments?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?'” 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Mark 6:56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or country, they laid the sick in the market places, and besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well.
1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Luke 17:5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree, ‘Be rooted up, and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
We’ve been talking about revival, how it happens. We’ve been talking about what God recently did at Asbury University in little Wilmore, Kentucky, how people stayed after church because they didn’t want to go home. They didn’t want to stop praying. And they just kept praying for days and days. And God began to answer their prayers. People are still trying to figure out what God did that would cause 50,000 people to travel to this little tiny town in Kentucky.
Well, what I want to suggest is it’s the same kind of thing we read about in the New Testament because what Jesus was ready to do in the New Testament, Jesus is ready to do now, and he’s ready to do here. And the same Jesus Christ who was there is here is here. But we are still trying to figure it out. I read a text on Facebook this morning and I just shook my head. Somebody said, “What happened at Asbury, that’s the spiritual Woodstock of our generation.” That’s quite a reach, folks. But people are trying to figure out what God is doing. And it’s not a bad thing to try to figure out what God is doing, even if a few nuts and flakes wind up in the conversation.
What is it that God is doing? Well, here’s what I would like to suggest today based on a few scriptures from Mark. Whenever the Kingdom of Heaven begins to happen, God comes into people’s lives and their lives begin to change. Prayers are answered. Miracles occur. God helps people.
From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, “Repent.” Why? Because as you repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is going to start to happen. We pray that in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” This is what it looks like when the kingdom comes, because what we’re praying is thy will be done, on earth in Foster Township, in Kinmundy, in Wilmore, Kentucky, thy will be done right here and right now. But what does it mean for the Kingdom of Heaven to be at hand? I think Jesus is trying to say, “Get ready because God is ready to do something.” And we don’t want the people of God to be holding God back because they don’t understand that God is ready to do something.
Mark 1:40, “And a leper came to him beseeching him and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.'” You see, this man decided that Jesus held all the power to make his life better. “If you will, if you want to, if you decide, Jesus, it’s all simply up to you. If you will, you can make me clean.” Or you could say, “If you want to. Is that your desire, Jesus? Is that what you want?” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. And said to him, “I will. It’s what I want. Be clean.”And immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. You see the Kingdom of Heaven happened, right then and there.
And then Jesus says a very peculiar thing. He says to the man, “Don’t tell anybody.” But of course, he didn’t pay any attention to Jesus. The man who’d been healed went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that now Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was out in the country. And people came to him from every quarter. Because if he came into a town like Wilmore, Kentucky, all of a sudden, 50,000 people would show up. And the people who really needed him couldn’t get to him.
But you see, here’s the reality for us to understand. What the world is really curious about is why did all these people show up? Well, I want to tell you, Friends, it’s obvious. When God begins to answer people’s prayers, people who need answers to their prayers start to show up. Answered prayers always draw a crowd. When people begin to feel God’s presence– and by feel, I mean that they literally emotionally begin to feel at peace and calm and forgiven and loved by God, when people begin to feel like that, and they talk about it, other people realize, “That’s how I want to feel too.” And it draws a crowd. Answered prayers always draw a crowd.
And what I have felt this Lent is I feel surrounded by people who have incredible needs for prayer. And we share those prayer requests with each other. There are other prayer requests that I’m the only one that’s aware of them. People want God’s help. And so it seems to me, this Lent, more than any year previous, I am feeling drawn to spend more time and prayer. And if the paperwork doesn’t get done, if the sermon is shorter, Friends, you’re just going to have to deal with the disappointment!
Because I honestly do feel that it’s important that I spend time praying for the people who need God’s help. And you may be feeling the same sort of thing this Lent, being pulled to our knees to pray. That’s why the crowd is there. They feel pulled to their knees to pray. And consequently, today I wanted to talk about things that help prayers to be stronger.
And my favorite scripture for this, you’ve heard me speak on it before, a little bit later in Mark, a couple of chapters later, “Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and besought him saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death.'” Now, look at how he phrases his faith, “I need you to come and lay your hands on her.” You see, what Jairus believes is, if Jesus is in the same place where his daughter is and if Jesus lays his hands on her dying body and prays for her, this man believes that a miracle will happen and his daughter’s life will be saved. But Jesus has to physically come and be present. Now there are a few other scriptures that talk about this too. But this is what Jairus believes. It’s what his faith tells him, “Come and lay your hands on her so that she might might be made well and live. And look at verse 24 at how much Jesus loves us, and he went with him, and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.
And now we meet another person. Look at verse 25. And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for 12 years. We assume this is the illness known as endometriosis. But in the Jewish faith that saw bleeding as an incredibly serious spiritual problem – we’d be here all day if we went into all the details – this was an incredibly difficult illness for her to struggle with. She had it for 12 years. In the Jewish religion, it was probably considered to be worse than leprosy. Not only that, verse 26, she had suffered much under many physicians. You know how it is. The physicians don’t always do what feels good. Not only that, the physicians had taken all their money. She had spent all that she had, and she was no better, but rather grew worse.
She was beginning to be desperate, and she decided to turn to Jesus Christ. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and reached out and touched his garment, for she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” You see, she made a decision, “This is what I need to do,” and she acted on it by faith, and immediately, the hemorrhage ceased, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
But notice the next surprise in verse 30. “And Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him,” that someone had just gotten the help they needed from God. Someone had gotten healed or forgiven. Something had happened, and Jesus immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” You see, Jesus knew how the power flowed, but he didn’t know who it was. Now, I remember having a discussion with my pastor when I was 17 and I said, “You see, God can answer prayer, and Jesus didn’t even know who it was,” and my pastor said to me, “Well, I think Jesus did know who it was.” Well, if that’s true, then he misled people. And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” Jesus knew that God had acted, but Jesus did not grant permission, except that Jesus was always willing for God to do what God wanted. “Who touched my garments?” Jesus said. Something happened, and now I know … he touched me and made me whole. Something happened.
Verse 31, his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pushing around you, pressing around you and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ What are you talking about?” … because you see, they didn’t feel the power. And he looked around to see who had done it, but the woman who, more than anything, wanted to remain hidden, in secret and not publicly identified, but the woman knowing what had been done to her came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the truth.
And notice what Jesus he said to her: “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” And Jesus says this phrase multiple times, and sometimes it’s said in the sense that, because they didn’t have faith, he could do no good. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.
Friends, if our faith influences the power of God to help us– we know God wants to help us, but if our faith influences the power of God to help us, it’s important for us to understand the role of faith in prayer and in healing, which leads me to this observation: in science, there’s a thing called the placebo effect. When your doctor prescribes you a medicine, it’s been approved by the FDA and it’s gone through rigorous testing to prove that this medicine works.
And the testing they do to prove it works is like this: they set up a blind study, half the people get the medicine, half the people get a placebo, a pill or a shot that has no effect whatsoever. There are no active ingredients. If it’s a shot, it’s usually distilled water. If it’s a pill, it’s usually a sugar pill. In other words, half get the medicine, and half get nothing.
Now here’s the ironic thing. The medicine has to do better than cure 30% of the people. You know why? What they have found over the years is 30% of the people who get nothing get cured anyway. So if you’re going to spend money on pills, they better do better than nothing, because the third of people get better because of nothing.
Harvard Medical School trained cardiologist, Herbert Benson, Harvard Medical School faculty, teacher, Herbert Benson, wrote a book about the placebo effect. The title of the book is calledTimeless Healing. And he wanted to examine the placebo effect scientifically. Now, please understand, this is not a religious book. This is a medical book about healing. And what Herbert Benson said is that if people take the placebo and they believe it will help them, if people act – in other words, you actually have to take the pill, not just believe it – that yields 30% cure. And it’s interesting. You see, there’s something in your body that responds to what you believe to be true. But he went on to say, if the person taking the placebo really believes that it will help them, it’s more effective. And if the person believes an authority figure like a doctor, who says, this is the latest medication, it’s going to help you, if they believe the doctor, and even more, if they trust the doctor, if they have confidence in the doctor, if they feel the doctor cares about them, Herbert Benson says the placebo effect is even more powerful. And in fact, in his book, he says, it’s as powerful as 90% effective.
Now, given that there are some illnesses for which there are no medications– friends, everybody’s got this. It’s part of the way God created the body. So that’s what Herbert Benson says is the science.
But now let’s look at that same science with faith. You see what actually makes the placebo work is the people have faith. And faith is not an inert inactive ingredient. Faith is the active ingredient in these results. People believe they’ll get better. And it’s so strange, they do. Now it’s quite ironic, the medicines that were highly in favor 20 years ago, they began to lose their effectiveness. Doctors began to say, “We’re not sure if this will help or not.” And all of a sudden the placebo effect doesn’t work anymore. Because their faith has changed.
So if the doctor is going to have you take medicine and if you’re going to pay for it, you might as well believe that it will help you. Because faith is the active ingredient, and not only that, remember, faith in the active ingredient, that’s 30%. But you know what makes it even more powerful is when you believe that an authority figure cares about you, wants to help you. And if they believe in this medication, and if they feel trustworthy to you, it has even greater power. And friends, when we exercise our faith, as Christian people– Jesus is the great physician. Jesus is the authority figure. And if you feel trust in him, if you feel that he cares for you, if you feel that he is going to help you, that will strengthen your faith. Because the healing comes from Jesus and faith in Jesus.
So that’s the science that’s behind what we call faith healing. And it even works when the doctors aren’t believers. And it even works when it’s not about religion or faith. But if we apply faith to it, it is even more powerful to help us.
By the way, let me encourage you to be wise. Please do not decide that you believe that because your car is low on gas, if you fill the gas tank up with water and lay hands on your car and pray for Jesus to turn it into gasoline– I do not recommend that. Please be careful. Please be wise. There was a rumor that started flying all over the internet a few years ago that one way to kill the coronavirus was to drink bleach. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Please be wise.
But having faith in Jesus and having faith in your doctor, God will see that faith and it will strengthen your prayers. But please be wise.
Now, in different times when I preach this sermon, I have said that this woman was ridiculous. I’ve said that her decision to touching the hem of Jesus garment was a little bit like me deciding to drink Diet Dr. Pepper and that will cure my diabetes. Now please understand this. I’m a big fan of Diet Dr. Pepper. And the main reason that I would say that, that this was not smart was because I know that this woman and you and I, there are people who will try to convince us not to believe. They will try to convince us not to have faith. They will try to tear down our faith. And the point that I wanted to make – and I’ve been encouraged that I should explain it in a different way – is that you don’t want to let people talk you out of doing what you know to be God’s will. Now, that’s not the same as, again, filling your gas tank with water and praying for it.
But the strange thing that she believed – because the standard was that Jesus has to come to your house and touch the person. That’s how healing happens. He touched the leper – She invented something new. But notice what happens. Just two chapters later in Mark. And whatever he came and villages, cities of the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces along the side of the road and they begged Jesus, they besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. You see, what this woman thought would work, all of a sudden now everybody knows this will work. They have faith in it. And notice what it says, “And as many as touched even the fringe of his garment, were made well.” This is now the normal way to get better, the accepted protocol for healing. But it started out as something that she believed in faith and took a risk. And she found out when she stepped out to meet God, God met her halfway.
And so in Luke 17:5, the apostles say to the lord, this is their prayer request: “Increase our faith.” If everything is a result of a strong faith, Lord, increase our faith. Maybe the very first prayer that is said in this church on Sunday morning should be, “Increase our faith.” Maybe the last prayer we say before we leave, the first prayer you say tomorrow morning, the prayer you say at night before you close your eyes should be this prayer. “Lord increase my faith.” Because if faith leads to our prayers being answered, this is a prayer we want to pray. So I say to Jesus, “Increase our faith.”
And here’s how Jesus responds to their prayer. “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed– ” now, mustard seed, extremely tiny. If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be rooted up and be planted in the sea. And Jesus says it would obey you.
I have a wonderful friend who’s a dentist. Rick Penny is very scientific and literal. And he put on Facebook. He said, “Dave, it’s not the mustard seed. That’s how we get mustard.” It’s not about the mustard if you have that much faith, that’s what it’s trying to say. And if you had to say, “Rick, well, you’re right. You’re right.” But if you have faith in the smallest amount, the amount of a mustard seed. You can say that this problem, go jump in the lake. You can say to this illness, go away. You can say to this person who is violent and abusive and frightening, mind your own business. If you have even the tiniest little bit of faith, it can lead to so much good happening in your life and in the lives of people you care for. So you see, we want to increase our faith.
There’s a lot of ways to do that, but I just want to mention a couple here. And 1 Corinthians 13, there is the phrase. Look at the 13th verse there. There are three things that last, faith and hope and love.
And I think that hope strengthens our faith. In fact, I wonder if faith isn’t like an engine and it runs on fuel. And I think that hope is fuel for faith. The way the world tries to destroy your faith and tear you down and discourage you is by encouraging you not to have hope. There are a lot of ways to define depression, but one of them is hopeless and helpless. If you want to have prayers of faith, you want to encourage yourself not to be hopeless, but to be hopeful. Not to be helpless, but to know that God is powerful and strong and able to help us. So when you begin to pray, I want to encourage you in your emotional place, let yourself hope that your prayer will be answered. Be fuel for your prayer of faith.
But Paul also says the greatest of these is love. I know when you pray for someone, because they have a problem, because they’re suffering … I know that you do that because you care, because you feel love. But I would encourage you when you pray, don’t pray in an incredibly logical and unemotional way. Let your feelings of wanting good happen flow to God with your prayer. “Oh, Lord. I love so and so. I want the best for them.” Let your emotions strengthen your faith to travel with your prayer.
And not only that, as I said in last week’s sermon, scripture is like wood for a fire. Scripture will fuel your prayer as well. You need to let the Bible come into your life and let it feed your prayers. One of the most faith-building things you can do is turn scripture into prayers. “Lord, just like you healed the woman who touched the hem of your garden, helped my friend who is ill.” No reason why you shouldn’t quote scripture to God in your prayers. It will strengthen your faith.
So, Lord, increase our faith. This is the picture, by the way, that my friend Rick Penny had trouble with. “Dave, it’s not about the mustard.” But you see, friends, here’s the truth, if you’ve got this much faith, that little bit, you’re ready. You’re ready to pray. Lord, increase our faith.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, just like on the day when that woman reached out to touch the hem of your garment … this is what happened in that scripture, then … We pray that you will do your loving work with us today. That, when we reach out to you for ourselves or for others, that our faith in your ability to help us will release your power toward us, to do God’s will, to do God’s work, to do good. And so Lord, we pray, increase our faith. So that the prayers of our faith, filled with hope, filled with love, filled with trust in you, filled with an awareness that you do love us. Lord, we pray that you would empower our faith and grant our prayers according to your will. We pray, Lord Jesus, that the Kingdom of Heaven would come pouring in, to be a witness to everyone around that you are a loving God that helps your people. And so, Lord, here is our prayer … increase our faith. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
Thomas Hawk via Flickr, Andrea di Leone ” Adoration of the Golden Calf”
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Prayer of Confession & Words of Assurance We confess, O God, that we are attracted to false gods and easy answers in life. We are vulnerable to temptations that could damage us in ways that are not obvious. Forgive us that sin that draws us like moths to a flame. Restore us and fill us with godly resolve. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Hear the good news: Christ died for our sins and rose again that God may free us from the tyranny of judging others to live fully in the power of God’s grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives your sins and offers you a transformed future. Live fully into God’s grace! Amen.
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life. Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not. Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature. Help me to serve you as I am gifted. Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood. I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
2 Kings 22:8 And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9 And Shaphan the secretary came to the king, and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the LORD.“ 10 Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. 11 And when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he rent his clothes.
2 Kings 23:2 And the king went up to the house of the LORD, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great; and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the LORD. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book; and all the people joined in the covenant.
2 Kings 23:4 And the king commanded Hilki’ah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel … 6 And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD … 10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. … and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down and broke in pieces …
21 And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. 22 For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah; 23 but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem. … that he might establish the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD. 25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
Earlier this February, something spiritual began to happen at Asbury University in the chapel. They have three required chapel services each week. And on a Wednesday morning, February 8th, the students didn’t want to stop praying. Now I don’t mean all the students. I mean that there was a tiny little group that just stayed behind because they wanted to continue to pray. Word passed through the campus that they were still in there. And a few people came to join them, and then a few more, and soon the building was full.
And the prayer meeting that was going on went on overnight, in fact, with short breaks that went on for 400 straight hours. This was so unusual that people came from all over the United States, an estimated 50,000 people, such that they were standing in line to get into the chapel. Asbury opened other buildings. Other churches in this very tiny town in Kentucky opened up, because people wanted to come and they wanted to pray, and they wanted to get right with God. And The Lord blessed this and gave them a deep sense of being forgiven.
Now I want to suggest if you and I want to understand why this happened, we need to look into the Bible where God did something very similar because understanding revival in the Bible will help us to understand what’s happening in our experience today. And if we take our experience today and research in the Bible, our experience today will help us to understand the Bible better. So today, I’d like to talk to you about King Josiah’s revival. But first, in a great exercise of faith, I want to attempt to tell you a joke. And here’s the joke.
Once upon a time, a church member said to the pastor, “I would like to teach the adult Sunday school class.” And the pastor said, “Well, okay, why don’t you let me come to your home and we’ll talk about it.” So the pastor was sitting in the living room. And the woman was sitting across from him in a chair. And the pastor said, “I’d like to ask you to tell me about your spiritual life.” And to show the pastor how spiritual she was, she called out to her child. She had a little first-grade boy. And she said, “Honey, would you go in the room, the end of the family room and right next to where I sit while I watch TV? I want you to bring mommy the book that you always see me reading.” And of course, she meant the Bible.
And the little boy said, “Yes, mommy. I know exactly what you want.” And he went into the other room, and he came back with the TV Guide. [laughter] Now, I may have last told this joke back in 1982, which is when this issue of TV Guide came out, but if you remember back that far, you remember what it was. It was fear of missing out. “I need to pay very close attention to what’s on TV today or I’ll miss it.” Nowadays, we don’t feel that sort of fear, and as a result, we don’t have the TV Guide. Because there are 492 channels and there are DVR recorders that record everything, whether you want them to or not.
But you see, we don’t always realize what has our attention. Scientists tell us that the average person watches up to four hours of television a day. I want to be truthful with you. I don’t read the Bible for four hours a day. I don’t pray for four hours a day. But I do understand the hold that television has on people. Television is the voice of our culture. (And so is the Internet, Facebook, newspapers & politics, all kinds of media, all kinds of entertainment, athletics and music.)
And you see, that’s something that we need to be aware of. A culture naturally drifts away from what God wants. Because culture has its own desires, culture has its own values. Culture wants to pull you to think as it thinks. It wants to pull you to act as it acts. And what culture naturally does is it causes people to drift from serving God to serving idols.
And on the screen, you’re looking at a picture of an example of this. Moses went up into the mountain, and he was gone for 40 days. And while he was gone for 40 days, God gave him the law, the ten commandments, and the instructions for how the people of Israel were to live.
But down at the foot of the mountain, the people of Israel were idle. They had nothing important to do. And because they were idle, they began to think about idylls, I-D-Y-L-L-S. That is the perfect assumed place that you would most love to be. And they decided what they needed to do was to go back to Egypt. This promised land stuff was garbage. They needed to go back to Egypt because that was the perfect place to be. And they turned on Moses’s brother Aaron, and the implication is that there was a threat of bodily harm and they said to Aaron, who was a priest, “We need you to make us a god to lead us back to Egypt.” And Aaron caved in, took gold, their various jewelry, various other things … and he claimed that he cast the gold into the fire and they melted, and the melted gold took on the form of a bull. (I don’t believe it for a minute!) The bull was a Canaanite god known as Baal.
And so when Moses came down from the mountain after 40 days, he began to hear a noise. And the noise he heard was a wild party going on, as the people of Israel were worshiping their new god. The god that Aaron made out of their old jewelry. And you see, this is the way the culture causes us to drift. First, it gets our attention; then it attracts us with what seems to be a beautiful and a perfect way to live; it grabs a hold of our desires and begins to adjust them to its benefit. And once it has our attraction, then it begins to change our actions. And people do what the people of Israel did. Idols become the goal.
So … Josiah’s revival. King Josiah decided that it was time to renovate the temple and make it beautiful. So inside the temple was a locked storehouse of gold and jewels and wealth, all the treasures of the Israeli people, of the Kingdom of Judah. And they opened up the treasure house and began to take out the gold and give it to the workmen who would do the work of renovation.
And in the treasure house, maybe behind the treasures, maybe buried under the gold, they found one of the greatest treasures of all, a book. Hilkiah, the high priest, took the book and said to Shaphan, the king’s secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.” You see, the Bible was so treasured that they locked it up with the golden jewels. And then you know what? After that, the culture influenced them, and they forgot that it was there.
The assumption we have is the book of the law that was found was the book of Deuteronomy. But it could have been any of the five books of Moses, perhaps all of them together. But Hilkiah the high priest gave the book to Shaphan, the king’s secretary, and the secretary read it. And Shaphan the secretary came to the king and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who had the oversight of the house of the Lord.”
Then Shaphan, the secretary, told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan then read it before the king, and when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he rent his clothes. Now, this was their custom in those days. When you repented, when you were upset, when you wanted to ask for forgiveness as a sign of how sincere you were, you would tear your clothing.
And the king went up to the house of the Lord and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people both small and great, and he, the king, read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord. This was the first time that any of them had heard any words from the Bible. Verse 3, and the King stood by the pillar and made a covenant, an agreement, a contract before the Lord to walk after the Lord. (Today we would say, “follow Jesus”.) And to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.
And now we’re going to find out how bad it was.
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple all the vessels made for Baal, for Asher, and for all the host of heaven … he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel …. And he carried their ashes to Bethel. You see, over the years, when they were guided only by their culture, the temple of the Lord had become a place for the worship of false gods and of idols. And that’s the worship that took place in the temple. Verse 6, And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD – these were particular cult worship objects from the house of the lord. And they brought out other things, and because we’re in church. I can’t even tell you all of the disgusting things they took out of the temple of the lord. You’re welcome to read it for yourself.
And Josiah began to go to the other places where people were worshiping the false gods, and he began to destroy those altars. Verse 10, He defiled Topheth which is in the valley of the sons of Hinnom… An altar for idol worship … that no one might burn his son or daughter as an offering to Molech. You see, they were sacrificing children to the idol known as Molech. Not only that, there were two altars that Josiah’s grandfather Manasseh had literally made in the two courts of the house of the Lord inside the temple. And Josiah destroyed them. He pulled them down and broke them in pieces.
And then the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God as it is written in this book of the covenant.” For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the Judges, who judged Israel or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. Now the Passover, that was the meal they ate of lamb and unleavened bread, the night that the angel of death came and killed the firstborn, and this was the reason that Pharaoh let them go. Let’s take these words literally. Throughout all the days of the kings of Israel – King Saul, King David, King Solomon, all the kings until Josiah – the Passover had not been celebrated. The religion that they had had almost nothing to do with their own history. They had so drifted to be nothing more than another idol-worshiping culture.
But in the 18th year of King Josiah. This Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem that he might establish the words of the law, which were written in the book that Hilkiah, the priest, found in the house of the Lord. You see, there were things that the book said to Josiah, “This needs to stop.” And he began to destroy the idols that had captured and drawn away the people of Israel.
The book said that there are things that they need to start. And so they began to celebrate Passover and the other true genuine aspects of their Jewish religion. Look at verse 25, “Before him, before Josiah, there was no king like him who turned to the lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to the law of Moses.” The kings of Israel allowed the people of Israel to drift away from their religion into the religion of the countries that surrounded them. They forgot everything that was important and of value. And how could that happen? Simple; the book of the Lord was locked up in the treasure house. It was too valuable to let anybody’s grubby hands touch it. And pretty soon, it became forgotten. And so Josiah was a different king. But you notice what else it says, “There was no king after him, like him either.”
You see, the culture drifts. And as the culture drifts, it drifts toward idols. It drifts toward the people who are not religious, the people who are not holy. It drifts toward the values of the culture. Human beings drift unless they have guidance. And repentance, which is a desire to change and to do things God’s way, requires the book of the Lord. Because if you don’t have the details that are in the book of the Lord, you’re just going to be drawn to some other aspect of culture. Repentance, true repentance, requires the book of the Lord for correction.
And we’ve been talking about this, interestingly, since the beginning of the year. If you want to repent, that means there are certain things you want to stop or you want to do less of them. John Wesley’s rule for that was to say, “Do no harm.” But you don’t know what harm to stop unless you have the guidance of the book. And so, the minute they found the book, it was very clear to Josiah, we need to stop this idol worship in our midst. It’s offensive to God.
Not only that, if you’re going to follow Jesus, if you’re going to start doing the right thing – as John Wesley said, “Do all the good you can” – you won’t know what good you need to do without the detailed guidance from the book.
And John Wesley’s third rule was to attend upon all the ordinances of God, all the ways that God desires worship. And again, without the book, they had no idea what those were. Passover had not been celebrated for centuries … because they just forgot.
Friends, we need the book of the Lord to guide us. So let me ask this, honestly, because you know we are so distracted, can you and I really pray with God when the television is on? Doesn’t it distract us? Doesn’t pull us away from focusing on God? What are the idols of our culture? If you turn your television on, you’ll very quickly feel pulled in this direction or pulled in that direction. And you’ll know what the culture wants you to do. But unless you open the book of the Lord, the culture will not tell you what God wants.
Now, remember, the temple, the place where God was worshiped, had become a place of idol worship. Believe me, friends; even religious culture can’t tell you what God wants you to do. Because religious people are just as influenced as every other one to develop their own idols. But we religious assume that we know what we’re talking about … but we’re just as influenced by our religious culture as everyone else.
What has your attention? I would like to suggest for even 1 minute a day, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, that you take time to open the book of the Lord. If you take time to open the book of the Lord and read the words that are in there, you will be guided toward doing God’s will, rather than that of our culture.
There are three questions that come from a missionary movement called CPM (Church Planting Movement) that helps people who are illiterate from cultures around the world, who do not know how to read, and who have no knowledge of Christianity. But they read the Bible with the help of three questions: First question is, what does it say? The last question is Who needs to hear this? But the middle question, if you’ll just simply keep this question in your mind, what does this say that I need to obey? And I’ll be honest with you, many verses in the Bible don’t have any instruction or command that you need to obey. But if a verse does, that question will cause it to light up. Please make a note of it. You can use a highlighter to mark it. You can make a little star in the margin.
There’s something I need to ask God here, “How to obey?” I need to let it be a part of my attention.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, I pray that as your people open the book of the Lord, you will help them to understand clearly, that you will help them to see within the words of the book of the Lord, the detailed instructions you have for your people. Lord, I pray that these instructions would be like seeds growing in our souls. I pray that they would have all our attention and focus … so that we are ready and listening when you tell us how to obey. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Prayer of Confession & Words of Assurance We confess, O God, that we are attracted to false gods and easy answers in life. We are vulnerable to temptations that could damage us in ways that are not obvious. Forgive us that sin that draws us like moths to a flame. Restore us and fill us with godly resolve. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Hear the good news: Christ died for our sins and rose again that God may free us from the tyranny of judging others to live fully in the power of God’s grace. In the name of Jesus Christ, God forgives your sins and offers you a transformed future. Live fully into God’s grace! Amen.
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life. Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not. Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature. Help me to serve you as I am gifted. Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood. I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Matthew 4:16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” 17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zeb’edee and John his brother, in the boat with Zeb’edee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
23 And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. 25 And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decap’olis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
I want to talk with you about something that the Bible calls times of refreshing. “Times of refreshment” – this verse comes from Acts 3. But I’m referring to things that have happened in a small town called Wilmore, Kentucky, where Asbury College and Asbury Seminary is located.
On February 8th during a chapel service in the morning – the students are required to go to chapel three times a week; this is a religious college – something wonderful happened.
The students at chapel that day, some of them, did not want to leave when the service ended. So they stayed, and they were praying. And some of them started singing and others sang along, and then they kept praying. They began to share testimonies of what God had done and what God meant to them. Word went through the campus that people were praying in the chapel and others came to the chapel also to pray, and that prayer meeting went on pretty much continually for 400 hours. For 400 hours, people did not want to stop worshiping. For 400 hours, people did not want to leave the church.
Something wonderful happened. They were filled with enthusiasm. They were filled with joy. They felt the presence of Jesus Christ, and they didn’t want to leave. And you know something else? As news spread, other people came to find out what was going on. So many, in fact, they couldn’t get in the doors. And so you see there on the screen a picture of a long line of people.
And a long line of people waiting to get into a church is such an unusual event, the news people showed up … because apparently there’s nothing less believable than the idea that people would stand in line to get into a church. Last weekend, one news network said that there were 20,000 people who descended on this little town of Wilmore. Just over the past weekend, 20,000 people were standing in line. They had opened other places, other churches, and other buildings on campus to hold all the people. They were all worshiping God, and they didn’t want to go home.
And we want to call this a revival. It’s happened before. Not only that, it happened in the New Testament surrounding things that Jesus said and did. People want to call it a miracle, but I think it’s something that it’s good for us to understand. But the very first thing we need to understand is what we are looking at is what is called a lag measure. If you do the right thing, good things happen, and all of a sudden, out in that cornfield, there is a beautiful result, a beautiful harvest. And you can measure the harvest, but the harvest is something you measure after what’s important took place. Fifty thousand people drove to Wilmore, the news people estimated from February 8th to 24th, that’s something measured after everything that caused that was done. So this is a result that you discover after.
But everything that happens before that is called a lead measure. What causes this? Lead measures.
You’re looking at a picture of Randy Dowdy, who farms in Brooks County, Georgia. He and his family are regular winners in yield contests. Randy was the first to pass the 500 bushel per acre mark in the National Corn Growers Association yield contest. He also holds a world record soybean yield of 190 bushels of acre, but he also has a commitment to let other farmers know how to do it. You see, how to do it, that’s the lead measure. You can measure, “Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you do this?” That’s what produces the lag measure, “This is the high yield that happened.” And there’s an article about it, and I’m going to put the link on Facebook so you can read it. It’s very technical, and I don’t understand 10% of what they said you needed to do.
But I do understand one thing. Your typical farmer, if they look at a yield of 500 bushels an acre, the first question they will ask is, “I wonder what seed did they plant?” Because it’s the sowing that determines the reaping. In 1963, the record yield that year was 218 bushels of corn an acre. In 2022, last year, the record yield according to the National Corn Growers Association was 394 bushels an acre. Almost double. But in 2019, apparently, everything happened at exactly the right time and everything you would want to happen in a cornfield happened in exactly the right way, and the all-time record is 616 bushels per acre.
Now let’s apply that to this wonderful thing that happened at Asbury. The crowds that gather, the upwelling of worship and joy, and the feeling of the presence of God, all of that is the result of being faithful. And it’s important to ask the question, “What led to this?” Lag measures (reaping) are the result of lead measures – which are sowing good seed and acting in different ways to take care of the crops. So to paraphrase the military motto, so the corn crop can be all the corn crop can be. None of us have fulfilled the potential of all that we can be. No church has fulfilled all of it’s potential — well, no church that I know of around here. In other words, normal churches like us, we have not fulfilled all the potential of what God can do.
But lest we think 50,000 people in one month is dramatic, let me remind you of the fact that there are other places where this sort of thing happens. What you’re looking at here is a photo of the grotto at Lourdes in France. February 11th, 1858 — I’m not sure what it is about February! On February 11th, 1958, a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette reported that the Virgin Mary appeared to her. This was the first of 18 times the Virgin Mary appeared to her with a message. It was important that Bernadette share that she was calling the world to prayer and, one more word, repentance.Calling the world to repentance.
And people began to come to the place where this happened. And when they came to the place where this happened, they had a very deep feeling of the presence of God. And they had a very deep feeling that God could answer prayers. And they had a very deep feeling that God loved them. And there were people who were ill who got healed. In fact, the spring water from the grotto was believed to possess healing powers.
So fast forward to today. Every year five million pilgrims of all denominations visit this place because people have a deep hunger to feel the presence of God. They have a deep hunger to be involved in a spiritual encounter with God where everything we believe feels real. And in the 165 years since the first appearance, an estimated 200 million people have visited this small town in rural France. The population of Lourdes in 1858 was around 4,000 people.
Now, I’m not saying this to suggest that 5 million people will come here to Kinmundy and try to come to our worship. Although, it would be nice. I’m not saying this so that a line would be down the street, of people trying to get into our sanctuary. Although that would be nice. I’m saying that it’s smart for us to understand this. And to understand when it happens, we can look and discover why it happens, and we can link what’s happening in Lourdes or at Asbury or other places with what Jesus said and did. Because when we connect what Jesus said and did with what we see happening around us, we will have a deeper understanding of what happens around us. And we will have a deeper understanding of what happened to Jesus.
So let’s work our way backward to understand what’s at the heart of this beautiful experience of God. So we’re in Matthew 4. We’re working backward here from the reaping, from the harvest. And he, Jesus, went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease. Notice that, every disease. And every infirmity among the people. Verse 24. So his fame spread throughout all Syria. Now that’s not just Israel; that’s out even beyond Israel. And they brought to him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains. Demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics and he healed them. And the result of this good happening drew a crowd. It will always draw a crowd. Verse 25, “And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and the Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.”
And when you read the words of Jesus in context, he began to tell people, “If you’ve been healed, don’t tell anyone,” because pretty soon there were so many people coming to look that people who needed to heal could not get closer. Do you remember the Bible story where they actually tore the roof off the house to lower the man who needed Jesus down through the roof? Why? There were too many people just standing around watching.
So here’s the harvest. But what preceded this? What happens before Matthew 4:23? Well, you’ve heard me talk about it over the last seven weeks. Just before Matthew 4:23, Jesus goes by two brothers, Peter and Andrew, who are fishing in the Sea of Galilee, and he says, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” He goes a little further and tells two brothers, John and James, “Follow me.” And they get up immediately. They follow him. And guess what? As they follow him, as they begin to do what he says, go where he goes, and listen to what he wants them to hear, fish start showing up. In other words, Jesus shows them how to live so spiritually that other people come … and they want it, too. It comes from following Jesus. That’s what causes this revival.
And we talked about that the last seven weeks. The verse right before this, here’s what it says: From that time, the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, Jesus began to preach saying, “Repent…” It’s time for us to change our ways. It’s time for us, as one translator said, to turn away from sin and turn toward God and move toward God. That’s what repentance means – because it’s time … for the kingdom of God is at hand. God is ready to act. Now, it’s time, for us to turn toward God and receive what God is willing to give. And so Peter and Andrew and James and John, there’s nothing bad or sinful about fishing, but they turn away from fishing. And they turn toward following Jesus. And then, astonishing and amazing things begin to happen as Jesus begins to work.
So I want to suggest to you that following Jesus, that’s like all the work that the farmers do to help the crop to grow. And repentance, I want to suggest to you, is like the seed farmers plant. It’s where God begins to start to act. I want to suggest to you that that’s what makes this happen.
And in fact, when you read the accounts of what happened at Asbury, here’s something you find. The student body president was interviewed, and here’s what she had to say. On Wednesday, February 8th, 2023, a handful of students, just a handful, remain in the chapel following a regularly scheduled service. After a fellow student— now this was later that day. After a fellow student decided to openly confess some of his sins to the small group, ‘the atmosphere changed.’ In other words, it became more than just prayers and singing when one of the students wanted to get right and repent of something he was struggling with. And repentance became the theme. I want to live a different life. Same thing at Lourdes. The Virgin Mary, in her appearance to Bernadette says, “People need to pray and repent.” Same thing. That’s the seed that becomes the harvest. That’s the lead measure that grows into the lag measure, the harvest we can measure.
And we talked about this for seven weeks. We talked about “organizing for the new year.” But I had no idea that God was going to do this on February 8th at Asbury …. where it helps me to realize that as I was asking you, “Let’s get organized to do God’s will in the new year,” … God had us learning how to get organized for God to bring a revival … to change people’s lives, starting with us.
So what are the lessons about revival from the sermons from Epiphany?
Well, there are things that we need to stop doing. That’s repentance. John Wesley said, “Do no harm.” There are things that we should start doing. John Wesley said, “Do all the good you can.” And if we make a commitment to follow Jesus, that’s what we’re going to be doing.
And I’m beginning to see as I look at what’s happened at Asbury, it’s almost like a cycle. I turn away from something I shouldn’t do and turn towards something Jesus wants me to do. That’s what it means to follow Him. And the cycle just keeps repeating, growing stronger each time.
John Wesley’s third rule is to attend upon all the ordinances of God. And look what happens next. People start going to worship. People start going to listen to sermons. They start going to church. They start taking communion. They start doing all these things that we see in Asbury. And now people are praying and hoping that that will begin to spread worldwide. This is what causes a church to come alive.
Again, I wouldn’t mind thousands of people standing in line to get into our church. I wouldn’t mind that a bit. But friends, I want to say this: If we can come alive spiritually, if we can be blessed in this way by God, it will bless our church, because, of course, the outcome of what Jesus did in his three years of ministry was what happened in the book of Acts where on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell. Three thousand people were baptized that day. (By the way, do you know who those 3,000 people were? They were the people who were crowded around Jesus for the three years previous, watching God work.
In Acts 3, God heals a man in the temple through Peter. And Peter in his explanation of what is going on, verse 9, he says to the crowd: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord …” So I want to suggest that this is Peter’s name for what God is doing, “times of refreshing”. And how they come is there are things that we stop doing, that’s repent; there are things that we start doing, that’s following Jesus. And it begins to be a self-renewing cycle in the people.
So let’s do the same thing here in our town. No reason why we can’t. No reason why you and I can’t repent and follow Jesus in our lives and then let God make a cycle of life happen in us and in our church!
Which brings me to this prayer that I wrote many years ago. You prayed it with me quite a few times. That very first paragraph, that’s repent. Lord Jesus today, I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help. Repentance is not focused on how awful I am or how awful I feel about it. Repentance is focused on my desire to be pleasing to God. And so at the heart of repentance is I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life.
The rest of the prayer very clearly gives a list of the things we do when we follow Jesus. Lord Jesus guide me to all that is good. Cleanse me from all that is not. Lord Jesus teach in me your ways and form in me your nature. Lord Jesus, help me to serve you as I am gifted. Lord Jesus, help me to love my neighbor as myself, which means, Lord Jesus, help me to notice my neighbor. And work through me so that my whole neighborhood can come to Christ. This cycle is a part of what this prayer describes. And I thank you for praying it with me as a church. May God’s will be done!
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus every week, we pray The Lord’s Prayer in worship. Every week at different times during the day, we might pray The Lord’s Prayer. Every week we say these words, “Thy kingdom come.” We may forget, Lord Jesus, that what that means is we want you to do your will in our midst so that people who need healing are healed, people who need to be set free are set free, people who need help are helped, and people see that God loves them. And they feel the presence of God. Lord Jesus, may it so be that people all around us would feel your presence, would see the blessings that you bring to all of us, that people all around us would say, “We see the power of God, and we’ve learned that God is real.” Lord, that’s a very deep human hunger. I pray that you would reveal yourself, not just at Asbury, not just at Lourdes, but that you would reveal yourself in the lives of people right here in Kinmundy, where we live and where we go to church. Lord, I pray that thy kingdom would come and that your will would be done. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 1:
1 Blessed are the ones who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaf does not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Congregational Prayer − The WESLEY COVENANT PRAYER
I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Matthew 10:24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.
Matthew 4:16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” 17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Phil 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
In the preface to the General Rules, John Wesley described the Methodist societies: “Such a society is no other than ‘a company of [persons] having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.’”
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
A little bit of church history: In the years following the Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church– that’s the name of our denomination back then. In the years following the Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church decided that they would be just a church. Like any other church.
Now, in the years prior to that, going all the way back to the 1700s in England, the Methodist movement was a group of people within the Episcopalian Church. And we were a group of people who took the faith very seriously. You prayed the Covenant Prayer; that’s how serious they were.
And as a result, they followed three very distinct rules. They were called the General Rules; we’ve talked about them. They are a great way for us to organize ourselves, to follow Jesus:
Do no harm. Do all the good you can. Attend upon all the ordinances of God, which means we need to show up for everything that Jesus tells us to do and to help us to grow spiritually.
But there’s one other thing, and this is when we decided to just be a church. Early Methodists were required, were expected to meet every week outside the church. And people would go to a meeting in their own neighborhoods – perhaps in your house, perhaps down the street from where you live – and they would talk to each other about their week. They would talk about their struggles. They would talk about God’s help. They would answer the question, “How is it with your soul?” and they would help each other.
But you see, in the late 1800s, after the Civil War, we decided that it was enough to just be a church … that all people needed to follow Jesus was just to come to worship. All people needed was just to hear a good sermon, and I hope they’re good. All people needed was Sunday school. And the only time the church needed to gather outside of Sunday school and the occasional Bible study was for a committee meeting.
In other words, we decided to give up our history to just be like everybody else. And consequently, I feel it’s important to remind everybody of the history that we have. And particularly, if we’re talking about being our best in the new year, I think we need to talk about what is the engine that makes the church work.
Now, you are looking at a picture of the engine in 1967 Chevelle Malibu. My dad actually bought one of these. He really liked it because it had a six-cylinder engine, and you literally could look down on either side of those six cylinders and see the grass under the car. It seems to be that now, when they build cars, they put so much machinery in there, you can’t get at anything. But my dad loved it because he said, “With this much room, I can work on my own car,” and he did.
But whether it’s a six-cylinder or an eight-cylinder or something else, the church has an engine that makes everything work. And we need to ask ourselves what’s under the hood, and if it’s needed, we may need to give it a tune-up so that we can do, in the coming year, what Jesus Christ wants us to do.
Here’s the question: how do we organize ourselves to do the will of God and to do the work of the church in the coming year? And here’s my best answer. It’s just simply this: It’s enough for you and I to be like Jesus.
Because if you and I can be like Jesus, everything will happen that needs to happen. Everything will happen that God wants to be done. In Matthew 10:24, Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher. Nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master.” So how do we do that? What do we do?
The Greek philosopher Socrates, they tried to confuse him. They tried to debate with him, and one of the famous questions they would use is to ask him was this: “You’re such a wise philosopher,” they would say, “Tell us, how do you get to Mount Olympus? How do you get to the place where the Greek gods live? How do you get there?” Because Greek people believe that there was such a place, but nobody knew where it was.
And here was Socrates’s answer. He said, “The way to get to Mount Olympus is this. Just make certain that every step you take is in that direction.” You and I may not know all the steps that need to be taken, but if we make certain that every step we take leads us to follow Jesus, if we make certain that every step we take leads us toward God’s will and God’s heaven, there will be no question that we’ll be headed in the right direction.
And I feel that John Wesley’s rules help us to understand what those next steps are. For every single one of us … and by the way, it’s no accident; Lent begins this week! … can follow the tradition of giving something up for Lent. Friends, all of us have things that we should give up. All of us have things we should do less of. So John Wesley’s rule number one points right at our feet and says this is what you need to do:
Do no harm. There are things we need to stop, or as Jesus said, “We need to repent.” Not only that, Jesus said, “Follow me,” and the disciples started to follow him. There are things in Lent that we should start or perhaps do more of, and that’s the Second Rule, Do all the good you can. Those rules of John Wesley are good guides for us.
The rule we talked about last week was To attend upon all the ordinances of God. Everything that Jesus wants us to do is like a recipe in a cookbook. There are ingredients. There are resources that you bring to everything God wants you to do. There are certain steps that you take. And if you want to know what those steps are and what those ingredients are, you simply need to read Jesus’s words in the New Testament. He will tell you … but to attend upon all the ordinances of God means to show up to do what God wants us to do. If we do these things, there’s no question. Every step we take will be toward the goal of following Jesus.
Matthew 4:16, this is from the very beginning. Look at verse 17. “From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God as in hand.'” There are things, brothers and sisters, that we should leave behind; we should repent.
And then Jesus said this: “As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.'” You see, he said to them, “I want you to start doing something.” And what is that? “I want you to go with me where I go. I want you to be with me where I am. I want you to hear what I’m saying. I want you to do what I’m doing.” And verse 20 says, “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
But there’s one other subtle distinction that I want to bring up today. Before we were a church, before we gave up all the hard work we did to just be like every other church, there was one other principle that was very important. In the preface to the General Rules, John Wesley described the Methodist Societies. “Such a society is no more than a company of persons having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation,” and here are the keywords, “and to watch over one another in love that they may help each other work out their salvation.”
You see, this is what we gave up when we decided to just be a church. We gave up watching over each other. Instead, we’ll let the pastor watch over us.
We gave up helping each other to learn. We said, “We’ll let the Sunday school materials teach us.”
We gave up all the different ways that they were linked together because that linking together was a very great strength that helped them to change their lives. And I think we need to link back up. I think we are better when we do things together.
Philippians 2 has this verse, “Therefore, dear friends,” Paul writes, “as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence,” and here Paul says what it is we’re doing, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling…” It is okay for our faith to involve some work. “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.” God works in you to will and to act, God works in you to will to help you to make decisions. God works in you to act, to help you to do things in order to fulfill His good purpose. And I want to suggest that the best way that God works in us is when we get together … just like you see on the picture there.
Now, let’s consider the reality that cars have engines and churches do, too, and ask ourselves what’s under the hood?
I want to suggest to you that the engine in a church is people working together. You see the picture on the screen of the little boy on the right playing basketball all by himself? Now … he can get acquainted with the ball. He can get acquainted with the basket. He can imagine himself being Michael Jordan and flying through the air. But he will never learn how to play basketball all by himself.
There’s a picture of a TV set there. There’s a whole lot of people that think that they can learn how to play basketball by watching basketball being played on TV. If you heard them tell the refs what they’re doing wrong and the coaches what they’re doing wrong, you would see – That’s what they think: “I watch TV. I know better than the people who do it for a living.” But the fact is you can not watch basketball and learn how to do basketball. You can’t even sit in the stands and watch it live and learn to do what the people are down on the field doing. The only way you can learn how to do this is by getting out there with other people … because basketball is about what you can do when you’re playing with someone, and, yes, even against someone.
We are better together, but, you see, when we decided to just be a church like every other church, we decided to be an audience, an audience, wonderful people who come every week and sit and listen. (And God bless you, folks. I’m so glad that you’re here to do that.) But when Jesus said, “Follow me,” he didn’t mean for you to sit and listen. He didn’t mean for you to be in the stands. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” he didn’t mean for you to turn on the television set or get on the internet and listen to some preacher somewhere preach a sermon. He wants you to get up out of the pew and to be like him because you see, it’s enough for us to be like Jesus. But it’s way past time for us to get up, and stop being just an audience and begin to do – together – what Jesus asks us to do.
I think you’ve heard that a few years ago we had a pandemic. I think you heard a few years ago that people were at risk of dying if they left their homes. I think you’re very aware of that, but you might also consider the reality that, in order for safety, most people took a giant step back from doing anything in order that they would be safe and other people would be safe. I used to preach this sermon down there rather than behind the pulpit, but that’s a little too close to people. It might endanger them. We stopped having our Wednesday night Bible study. We stopped collecting the offering. We stopped having the children’s sermon. Because everybody needed to be —away— for everybody else to be safe.
But friends, I want to tell you, if we want to see the church be blessed, we are going to have to come back together and to do God’s work together. Now, I don’t know what form that’s going to take. Maybe there will be a Wednesday night Bible study at Wesley. Maybe it’ll be Thursday night here. I don’t know. Maybe there will be a Thursday morning prayer meeting. I don’t know. All I know is if we want to be like Jesus and if we want to do what Jesus did, we will want to come out of our all-alone space and start to do things with each other.
I’ve been a pastor for 42 years. During the first 20 or so of those years, I would stand at the door and shake everybody’s hand as they left. That’s something else they stopped doing during the pandemic. But I decided years before I ever met you that what was not needed was for me to stand by the door and say, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. Bye bye. So I decided decades before I came to be your pastor, it was probably smarter for me to stay up here, and I still do that. You may not know that, but I stay up here in case someone needs to pray. In some churches, they have the custom if you need the pastor to pray for you, you come up during the closing hymn and you kneel. But I stay up here in case any one of you needs to pray with me. Why? We talked about this several weeks ago. When we pray together, our prayers are more powerful. When two people pray, when three people pray, it’s more powerful than if you pray by yourself, and I’m up here in case any of you want to pray.
Not only that, I’m in the church office four weekdays a week in case any of you need to pray. Not only that, you may have a question about the Bible. There’s one individual each week, he seems to ask me a question about the Bible. And I always respond to him. There’s no greater thrill for me than somebody asking me a question about the Bible. It’s a whole lot more fun than them asking me the question about when the Twilight Circle has their next meeting. Nothing against the Twilight Circle. But I love to talk about the Bible with every single one of you.
And I won’t say that I’m like the pretty girl waiting by the phone on Friday night for it to ring, but if you want to talk, I would love to talk to you. I would love to talk to you so much I would come to your house. Of course, then you’d have to run the vacuum cleaner and clean up. So maybe you’d rather come to the church house! But we are stronger and wiser and better together.
We are stronger and wiser and better together because that’s the way Jesus planned it. It’s what he did with his first 12 disciples. It’s what he wants to do with us today.
So how do we get to Mount Olympus? How do we become more like Jesus? We need to come together and talk about … what should we stop? We need to come together and talk about … what should we start? We need to come together and talk about how shall we do God’s will with regard to worship and sermons and prayer meetings and communion. We need to come together because we are better when we serve the Lord together.
I’ll say one more thing and let the sermon be a little longer before we sing. I can always tell when God touches your hearts during worship. I can always tell when you feel that God is present and God has touched you and blessed you. I can always tell. Do you know how I can tell? You don’t want to leave. And you begin to stand in little small groups around the sanctuary, talking, probably not about the sermon, but you have this desire to be with each other when God has touched your hearts. Now, I’m a big fan of the cookies. I’m a big fan of the coffee in the Fellowship Hall after worship. The place I see it, though, is actually right here. Because when the Holy Spirit touches your heart, you immediately want to begin to connect with other people. And I wish I was such a good preacher that I would see that every week.
Please take a minute for that to sink in, and let’s pray. Lord Jesus, as we take this one minute for God, I ask that you would remind us, not merely in our brains that are listening, but all the way down deep into our hearts, that your faith is better when we practice it together. Help us, Lord, when we need to pray, to reach out to another person so that we’re praying together. Help us, Lord, when we’re doing our devotionals to think about how we can link up with someone else so that we can strengthen our devotionals by being worshipful together. Lord, help us to turn from the ways of just being a church to the ways of being a disciple, because Lord, it’s enough to be like you. Help us, Lord, to come back together. So that we can feel your presence and feel the comfort that flows toward us through each other. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 1:
1 Blessed are the ones who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaf does not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Congregational Prayer − The WESLEY COVENANT PRAYER
I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!
GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.
MESSAGE: Rule #3: By attending upon all the ordinances of God Text: Psalm 1, Galatians 6:7-10, 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 Series: Organizing For The New Year
Psalms 1:1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8 For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
2 Corinthians 9:6 The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work. 9 As it is written, “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.” 10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God;
Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are: The public worship of God. The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded. The Supper of the Lord. Family and private prayer. Searching the Scriptures. Fasting or abstinence. https://www.umc.org/en/content/the-general-rules-of-the-methodist-church
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
The season of epiphany, which comes right after the season of Christmas in the Christian church year, is a season that begins with the Wise Men coming. And what we hope is that what we do during this season lends wisdom to what will come throughout the rest of the year. And so I’ve been wanting to share with you ways that we can organize for this new year and to use wisdom to do that.
Here is a word from Brian Tracy that has meant a lot to me during this season of Epiphany. Tracy writes, “Clarity is everything.” To perform at your very best and to double your productivity – that’s his goal, but I would like to think of it as let’s double the good that happens. Tracy writes, “You must be absolutely clear about what you want to accomplish. And then you must then identify and pursue the best way to achieve it. You must be open to new information …” And you must be ready to make changes so that what’s better can take the place of what’s not as good. So that the new year can be filled with God’s blessing.
And there’s an image there of a Methodist cookbook. I should have asked about this before. Has our church ever made their own cookbook? Congregation: Yes. Because I know if you have one of those, it’s a treasure. There are all kinds of cookbooks. And some of them are full of ingredients that I’ve never heard of. And some I’m never going to hear of – because I don’t want to make something that’s full of whatever that is. But every now and then, I get curious: What is it that makes French dressing French dressing? What is it that’s in Russian dressing that makes it taste in a way that I like it so much? And this is a cookbook I go to to try to find that out. Because I get curious.
And I want to tell you something that you already know about cookbooks. It’s a good cookbook if all the ingredients are included on the list. It’s a bad cookbook if they leave any ingredients out. It’s a good cookbook if it tells you how much paprika to put in. It’s a bad cookbook if it says, “Put in as much as your mother did.” It’s a good cookbook if it lists every step in order that you do very clearly so that you can follow those steps. It’s a bad cookbook if it says, “Do your best.” My mother was the daughter of a woman who loved to cook, and she was one of these people that never measured anything. And she was also one of these people that never explained anything to my mother. My grandmother just assumed that my mother just knew, somehow, exactly how much to add to anything that was on the stove, and she would get criticized for not knowing – how was she to know? As a result, as an adult, my mother never made anything without a good recipe. And you know what that meant? Everything tasted wonderful.
Now, we are Methodist people. We believe in being organized. We believe in following the recipe. John Wesley was someone who gave clear instructions, and told everybody: “This is what you do. This is what you need.” And he was possibly the most organized person on the face of the earth! There’s a lot we can learn from that, particularly when we think about our church and what is needed, when we think about people around us and what is needed.
There are recipes that, if we follow them faithfully, we will get the very best result. And that’s what we started talking about last week. Last week, I talked about the third rule of John Wesley. And I focused on just the first word, attend. There are specific things we need to attend to. There are specific things that we need to pay attention to and to do them at the appropriate time and in the right way, because John Wesley, with these three rules, wanted to give us recipes to follow.
And I want to say to you that everything we do is like an investment. It will produce a profit or a loss. It will produce a benefit or it will prove to not be worthwhile. Investors call that the return on investment. It’s either good and getting better or it’s worse and getting lower. It never stays the same. But here’s the principle for us as we use wisdom to think about the future: Good choices lead to good consequences.
Our Call to Worship talks about that. Psalm 1:2, “But his delight, this wise person, is in the law of the Lord, the cookbook of the Lord, the recipes of the Lord, the very clear instructions of the Lord, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, this wise person meditates day and night.”
It takes time to get absolutely clear, “Let me gather what I need.” It takes time to follow the instructions clearly. When you do that, it’s an investment in the future that pays a result.
Let me give you an example of a bad investment. Again, Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man, women also, blessed is a man who walks not in the council of the wicked,” that’s bad advice. “Nor stands in the way of sinners,” that’s bad advice. Standing in the way of sinners, it’s like if there’s a road that leaves from bad to worse, you’re standing on that road looking for some party bus you can get on. That’s bad advice. It is not wise nor– and this is a big one, sits in the seat of scoffers. If there’s something that’s different this year than 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or my childhood – it is that the level of scoffing, the level of disrespect, the level of foolish criticism has grown to be epic flood proportions in our media, places like Facebook, and the gossip that people tell each other as they go through their day. This is not a good investment.
Let’s turn away from it and notice the good investment. If you delight in the way God wants things to be done, there are going to be good consequences. And here they are, “The person who pays attention to God’s instructions is like a tree that’s planted by streams of water. At the right time, it yields its fruit. In a time of drought, its leaf does not wither,” and then look at that promise, “In all that he does, he prospers.” Friends, if you take time in the morning to think about the day ahead, if you take time in the evening to think back what you learned, especially what you learned the hard way, your life will be blessed. In all that you do, you will prosper. Because good choices lead to good consequences.
The wicked are not so but are like chaff, which the wind drives away. The picture on the screen is of a woman in a third-world country. She has taken the products of threshing. They have animals walk over them to separate the hulls from the seed. And it’s a big mess. How do they purify that? It’s very simple. They just throw it up in the air and the wind blows the chaff away. Because it has no weight. It has no substance. It has no value, and so the least bit of wind can take it away. And friends, it’s the same in our lives. If we let God’s wind blow among us, what is of low value will go off to the side and what is of God will remain. And consequently, the wicked will not stand in the judgment. Because there will always be wind. Everything that’s shallow, everything that’s foolish, everything that’s a waste of time, it amounts to nothing because there will always be wind.
And so Paul writes – these are some of my favorite words – do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. What a terrible world it would be if you planted soybeans in the spring and corn came up in the fall. What a problem it would be if you planted corn and the wrong crop came up. But the way God created the world, what you sow, you’re going to grow, and you’re going to reap.
And then here’s the point, for he who sows to his own flesh, to the unspiritual things of your nature– he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. There is a consistency here, good choices and good actions are like seeds that yield good consequences. So we need to pay attention to what we’re sowing.
Paul goes right on to describe other seeds: Let us not grow weary in well-doing because if you sow well-doing, you’re going to reap good results. Paul says for in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. That’s sowing.
Paul talks about sowing and reaping also in 2nd Corinthians 9:6 to where he makes this point; the point is this, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. But Paul says verse 7, each one must do as he is made up his mind. Not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a cheerful sower! And then here comes an interesting promise: And God is able to provide you with every blessing and abundance so that you may always have enough of everything, and you may provide an abundance for every good work. Now, let that sink in for just a moment. You know what we think of when we think of abundance? The harvest in the fall – but what this verse is actually speaking of is that God is able to provide you with the seeds, which when given time and care, will provide that great abundance. Everything worthwhile starts as a seed. And the same is true for our church and our spiritual life.
So here is John Wesley’s recipe. You remember, there are Three Rules: First one, do no harm. There are things that you should stop doing or do less of. Second, do all the good you can. There are things you should start doing or do more of if you’re already doing them. Thirdly, John Wesley says, by attending upon all the ordinances of God …
Well, what are the ordinances of God? An ordinance is an authoritative decree or direction. This is the right way to do something, when a city government passes an ordinance. It’s like, this is how it must be done. But an ordinance is also a prescribed usage of practice, or a ritual or a ceremony … or you could say, a recipe.
There’s a certain way to make Russian dressing. There’s a certain way to do church. There’s a certain way to say your prayers. And if you have the best instructions, they will lead to the very best results because what you’re doing in this Third Rule is investing in spiritual disciplines.
So here are the ones that Wesley listed.
The public worship of God. I want to thank all of you that are here. I don’t want to make anybody feel bad. I don’t think I’ll make anybody feel bad who’s here right now, but it makes a difference if you come to worship. It makes a difference. And now that the pandemic is easing up, friends, we need to come back together. We need to come back together.
In addition to that, the next spiritual discipline is the ministry of the word, either read or expounded. “Pastor Dave, what does it mean to expound?” It means that I stand up here and expound a sermon all over you. To attend worship and listen to a sermon. But you know something? Back in Wesley’s day, they printed out their sermons. You can read John Wesley’s standard 44 sermons. He had sermons as examples of what his preacher should preach. You can read a sermon … and in fact, these words that I say today, on Monday afternoon, they’ll be posted on the internet, and you can read them again, if there was something that you thought was really good, that was really helpful. Not only that, you can read years of these. They are on our church blog. The ministry of the word, either read or expounded.
The Supper of the Lord, holy communion. We have holy communion on the first Sunday of the month, but holy communion is a little bit like vitamin C. You can’t live without it spiritually. It’s important to come together and take communion. If you’re not here, by the way, on the first Sunday, you can come to me. You come to my office. You come in on Monday morning or Wednesday morning, and you and I, we will have communion because it’s good for you.
Family and private prayer. You and your family should say prayers together, maybe not just for what you’re about to eat, but for the other concerns that you have. And I really hope that you don’t only pray when someone is watching or listening, but that you turn to God throughout the day as you need to. There are benefits that come from that spiritual practice.
Searching the scriptures. What does that mean? Searching the scriptures means that when I have a decision to make, when I have a choice that’s important, I take time to turn to the scripture to try to understand what God wants me to understand, or as Psalm 1 says, in the morning, in the evening, I meditate on God’s word.
The last one might not occur to you: fasting or abstinence. A few of you have noticed that I have lost some weight – the reason I’ve lost weight is I’ve developed a practice of fasting. But I’ll be honest with you, it’s for health, more than for prayer, but fasting makes a difference in prayer as well. This whole idea of fasting or abstinence is typically talked about in Lent because people look at each other and they say, “What have you given up for Lent?” In other words, you’re going to fast throughout those six weeks of Lent and try to give up this thing that’s holding you back. Do you remember Wesley’s first rule? Do no harm, either stop or do less. Maybe it’s not something you’re giving up, maybe it’s something you’re going to start up to do more good, but that’s the idea of fastening or abstinence. By changing your behavior, you will change your results.
These are six things that John Wesley gave as recipes for his people; they will help you. But here’s a problem with John Wesley’s General Rules. People, especially we pastors, tend to try to change them and fix them and one of the reasons– I’m sorry, one of the ways that we do that is to water them down.
One of the famous examples of this, there is a wonderful bishop, Bishop Reuben Job, who wrote a book about John Wesley’s rules. He called it Three Simple Rules. And he took this very specific recipe, this Third Rule where John Wesley said to his people, “You need to do these six things …”
Bishop Reuben Job changed that very specific recipe to one thing. Do you know what he wrote? Here it is. Stay in love with God. There’s nothing wrong with that. And in fact, that’s the end result we’re all looking for, but remember … we’re talking about seeds that lead to the end result. I would feel very disappointed if I opened up a cookbook and I saw a picture of a brownie, as if you and I are supposed to figure out how much chocolate goes into a brownie by looking at the picture of the end result. How much flour? How much sugar? Now, you can eventually get there, but how many batches of inedible brownies are you going to make on the way? That is a very hard way to make a brownie. It is a very hard way to live your life to learn by trial and error. failing on your mistakes, falling on your face, as a way to learn what not to do. That’s a very hard way to live your life. But because we’re Methodist, John Wesley gives you specific recipes to follow.
So let’s not water down the rules. Let’s look at them, and do what we can to keep them, because the results we get this year will depend upon how we get organized for spiritual growth. Simply because what we plant in the spring, we will reap in the fall.
So consequently, here’s the reality: whether it’s your church, whether it’s your field or your garden, whether it’s your job or your house, whether it’s your family or your coworkers, if you don’t like what you’re reaping, understand where that comes from. If you don’t like what you’re reaping, consider changing what you’re sowing. And then give God time to work, give God time to change your world, because good choices will lead to good consequences in every part of our lives.
So as we move toward Lent, it’s a good time to ask,: Is it time for us to make a change in the investments we’re making in our spiritual life?
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the ways that he spoke clearly to us of what we needed to do. Thank you, Lord, for preachers like John Wesley, who took those instructions and wrote them out even more clearly, so that we could follow them. Help us, Lord, to learn from the truth that’s been presented to us so that we can make good choices and then reap what we sow and enjoy good consequences. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
Due to a technical error, a video of the online service could not be completed this week.
As you are unable to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 1:
1 Blessed are the ones who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaf does not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Congregational Prayer − The WESLEY COVENANT PRAYER
I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!
GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.
MESSAGE: Rule #3: By Attending … Together Text: Matthew 11:28-30, Hebrews 10:24-25, 1 John 1:5-10, Matthew 18:18-20, Luke 4:16, Acts 2:42-47. Series: Organizing For The New Year
Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Hebrews 10:24 and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; 7 but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Matthew 18:18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
Luke 4:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read;
Acts 2:42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe[d] came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
We’ve been talking about John Wesley’s “General Rules.” In other words, these are rules that will help you to live a holy life. What does that mean? These are rules that will help you live a life as God would like life to be lived. What does that mean? These are rules that will help you keep the promise we make when we pray the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
First rule, do no harm. Second rule, do all the good you can. But the third rule is one that has just a lot of debate associated with it because the first words of the third rule are Attend upon … and John Wesley goes on to talk about the things you need to do to take care of yourself spiritually. And this week, I wanted to talk about those things, but I’ll be honest with you. I became riveted upon that word Attend. So, actually, this rule is going to be a two-parter.
The picture on the screen is in Ireland. And there is danger ahead. That’s what the exclamation sign means. There’s danger ahead because there is a blind summit. Now that doesn’t mean that there is a conference or a meeting of blind people, it means that when you get closer to the top of that hill, you can not see what’s on the other side of the hill. If you drive down country roads like this, I don’t know if you’re like me. I drive the speed limit, 55 miles an hour, or within 20, 30 miles at the speed limit. And when you’re driving that fast, if the road’s a little bumpy, you drive right down the middle. But here’s the thing, you don’t want to be in the middle of the road when you hit the top of the hill because you don’t know what’s on the other side. There could be another car driving toward you just as dumb as you are or as I am, I should say. Do no harm. Move over to the side of the road and slow down. Do all the good you can. Be ready when you get to these places where you don’t know what lies ahead. And that has to do with learning how to be present, and that’s one of the basic meanings of that word, attend. You need to be present in that place at that time, paying attention.
Woody Allen once said, “80% of success is just showing up.” Because that’s how much some people have difficulty being present, or you could say being in the present because we are so distracted. And in fact, that is the primary change in our world today from the world I grew up in. There are so many things that constantly distract us where you can honestly say that distraction is taking over.
In particular, people tend to have a greater interaction with screens. Parents are especially aware of this, how much screen time your children have, how much time do your children spend looking at screens, instead of with real-life people? And I’m thinking, well, that’s really something that the children need to pay attention to.
But I sort of came under conviction that it was a big problem that I had. The alarm goes off at 7 o’clock Sunday morning. I take my blood sugar, weigh myself, all those other things. Then I sit down with a giant mug of coffee. One half of the coffee pot, just the way I like it. And I turn on the computer, and I was intending to go over the sermon, but there’s just sort of some illness that takes over your hand, and you click on and open up Facebook. So this morning, instead of looking over the sermon, I spent 20 minutes arguing with some guy in Alabama about what they need to do about passers for small-role churches. A guy I never met, never will meet, probably will never see again, but I’m having a deep conversation with someone who is almost like an imaginary friend. Sort of like a little girl might have a conversation with the teddy bear.
You’ve heard me say this before, some of us are so wrapped up, for example, in television that you know the people on your favorite television show better than you know people in your own family. Oh my gosh. Rachel (played by Jennifer Aniston) got into BIG trouble today on the episode of Friends, and it just will be on your mind all day, that poor girl, as if she was real. And Friends is a wonderful example because it’s entitled “Friends.” But I’ll be honest with you, people today often have more friends that only exist on TV shows than they have friends in real life. And it’s really easy for me to judge people like that because where I spend time with my imaginary friends is reading books! So I do the same thing, but here’s the problem.
When we’re distracted by people we aren’t face to face with, we’re not living in the present moment. So it’s actually a little bit like this. They warn you that if you text and drive, you can meet Jesus sooner. But what would be even worse is watching an episode of Friends on your phone as you were driving up to that blind summit. Friends, we need to focus on reality. We need to focus on real people. We need to focus on what’s happening right here and now, and I’m beginning to understand how distracted I am and how distracted probably everybody else is.
Think about the last time you were upset about something. You read it on the news. You saw it on Facebook. I’d almost be willing to bet you– well, no. I’m a pastor. I’m not a betting person. I’d almost be willing to say to you it’s probably something that’s happening on the other side of the country, not here where we live. Friends, we need to be aware of what’s happening right here where we live, or there’s going to be hurt. And it occurred to me: what I need to focus on today was that we need to focus on the present right here and right now and not be distracted because Jesus and as we follow him to focus on the present, or in other words … to attend.
Here are a few scriptures that talk about that. Matthew 11:28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now to take my yoke upon you means to follow Jesus, let him tell you how to live. Follow his directions. But you know something? We think that, but what we don’t realize is when you yoke oxen together, they work together. You are not intended to practice your faith without another human being pulling right alongside of you. You are not meant to be a Christian in isolation. We are meant to do this thing that we do as followers of Jesus together. And part of what makes following Jesus easy, part of what makes the burden this light is that we share it with another person.
But what’s happened since the pandemic is we’ve all sort of pulled away from the different ways that we’re connected to each other. And I think we need to come back to attend upon what brings us together … because this is reality: We are better together than when we are all by ourselves.
Hebrews 10:24 says this, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. That’s what that person who’s yoked next to you is supposed to do. They’re supposed to stir you up. Verse 25, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, all the more as you see the day drawing near. And that day, that’s the time of the end, sort of like a blind summit.
We need to be connected to each other. We need to attend, this is reality. We need to attend to reality, but the reality is this: We are better together.
Luke 4:16, and he Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And he went to church. Now, what they called it for Jewish people was the synagogue. He went to the synagogue as was his custom … his regular habit … on the Sabbath day. And not only that, as they would spend the day at the synagogue, men would stand up and they would read scripture out loud, and then the group would talk about it. Friends, we need that, and if we attend to being together, the reality is, our faith will be better because we are better together.
Not only that, notice the way John puts this in verse John 1:7. But if we walk, it’s not even contemplated that you would be walking all by yourself. If we walk in the light as he, Jesus is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. We are meant to have fellowship with one another. And look what happens. And the blood of Jesus his son cleanses not just me, cleanses usfrom all sin. When we attend, when we get together, that’s when forgiveness and cleansing happen, when we are together. We are better together.
Matthew 18:19, Jesus says this, again, I say to you if two of you— now I wish he’d said if one of you, but that’s not what he said. If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. What does that mean? Prayers are more powerful when we pray together. And that’s why we take time with a microphone to let you share. It helps us to pray together. Look at verse 20. “For where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus says, “there am I in the midst of the them.”
Now, Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” That is true.
But when 2 or 3 people or 20 or 30 people or 200 or 300 people come together to worship, Jesus promised that he would be here in a very real and powerful way when we attend and gather together. This is reality: we are better together.
And in Acts chapter 2, it talks about the church after the day of Pentecost. It was a church that practiced being together: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers … The apostles’ teaching took place at Solomon’s porch. The fellowship was that they would meet in small groups every night – Every night of the week, there would be small groups meeting in homes. And people would meet once a week with their small group. And in that small group, they’d break bread. They’d eat together just like we will with the SALT Potluck this Wednesday. They’d take communion together. And also, the prayers, the worship services, they would attend the prayer services in the temple – day by day, they would do this.
Verse 43, and awe came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs, miracles, in other words, were being done through the apostles. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, having favor with all the people. And notice what is the result of that being together? And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved.
When we are together, when we gather, when we attend, good things begin to happen in our reality because God shows up and begins to change people … because we are better together.
So let me make four points. I’m not sure why these four points need to be made, but as I prayed over the sermon, they just seem to be very important for me to mention. Here’s the first one: I’m not making any plans how I want 2023 to go … I just really want God to take the lead.
I think we can all agree with that, right? We want God to take the lead. But you know what happens? As we turn toward God, God is going to turn us toward others. If you love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, God is going to turn your heart to others. Because we’re supposed to love one another, as Jesus loved us. And we’re supposed to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. So if you really just want God to take the lead, understand this. He’s going to ask you to attend and to pay attention to other people.
Point number two: why are people avoiding church? Well, here comes the good advice. It’s good advice. Stop looking for the perfect church. You know the problem with looking for a perfect church? They wouldn’t let you go there! Stop looking for the perfect church. Go worship a perfect God today, with a congregation of flawed people. Just in case you’re not sure who I’m talking about, I’m talking about me, and all of us, a congregation of flawed people, who need God, who need grace, who need the Lord as much as you do. We are better together. But 80% of success is just showing up. And when we show up, God begins to work in our lives in a beautiful way. Because we are together. We are better together.
Point number three: you live your best life when you invite God into it. Here’s the truth, friends. When you invite God into your life, you know what God is going to do? God is going to invite other people into your life. Some of those people will bless you and encourage you. Some of those people will irritate the living daylights out of you. But you’re supposed to bless them and pray for them. Because when we interact with each other, when we love one another, we are better together. So the future is this. We want to turn every “I” – every Christian in isolation – every person who’s pulled back from participation in church life, who’s pulled back from church worship, who’s pulled back from participating in loving their neighbor. We want to encourage every “I” to become again, just like it used to be, a “WE.”
So I invite you in your imagination to think that you’re receiving a letter like the cartoon people on the screen did. “It’s from our church,” the husband says. “We’ve been called up to active duty.”
Lord Jesus, during the pandemic, and for many reasons, we have taken a giant step back from interacting with the people who live around us, our literal neighbors. Now, we’re interacting with people across the country on Facebook. We’re interacting with issues that trouble us that come from all over the world, as people argue and fight with each other. We’re anxious about things all over the place. But Lord, help us to understand … that if we choose to follow you, you will call us to serve right here. You will call us to focus on reality that is happening right here. You will ask us to pay attention to real people who live right here. And Lord, before technology was invented, that’s how it always was. Lord, in the days of the Bible, that’s how you always portrayed it, as to how we should live. Lord, help us to not be isolated, as the culture encourages us, to live in social media, as the culture encourages us, to live in books of fiction and stories on television, as the culture encourages us, to step back from real-life people and step into imaginary stories because we find them very comforting. But Lord, life is not just about what we find comforting. Help us to focus on real people. Lord, help us to attend, to gather together. Because with your help, Lord, we are better together.Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
Jerry Dean Curry passed away peacefully at home in Ocala, Florida on January 13, 2023. Jerry was born in a white house in the small town of Kinmundy, Illinois in 1933 to parents Cecil and Rose Curry. He loved the country life and had fond memories of playing with cousins at his grandparents’ farm. Unfortunately, life moved the family to Chicago, Illinois, where he graduated from Farragut High School in 1953 and fell in love with his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Patek, whom he married in 1954.
After two years attending Sioux Falls College, Jerry and MaryAnn returned to Chicago to be closer to family. His career path in data processing began at Benefit of Railway Employees as a sorter machinist. Quickly he learned how to wire computer boards and learn the trade of data processing. In 1958, Jerry and his young family moved to LaPorte, Indiana, where he became Supervisor of Operations in the Data Processing Department at Whirlpool Corporation. His department designed and implemented accounting and financial systems and migrated from tab card to first generation IBM and RCA equipment. In 1968, he was promoted to Corporate Data Processing Director in Benton Harbor, Michigan. His responsibilities included corporate-wide coordination of standards, acquisition of equipment and software, and strategic planning. His position extended his resume to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he provided strategic direction to Brastemp, to Inglis, Ltd. in Toronto, Canada, where he designed a new computer center for operations and systems and to Argentina where he participated on the Argentina Whirlpool-Philips disentanglement project.
Jerry didn’t slow down in his retirement. After 31 years with Whirlpool, he continued to teach data processing at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. He was very active in Bible Study Fellowship and Men’s Fellowship Clubs at church. Jerry and MaryAnn volunteered many hours to Operation Christmas Child, including Jerry making over 1,000 wooden toy cars for the shoeboxes. Through his genealogy searches, Jerry connected with relatives in Croatia and the Czech Republic whom he visited on several occasions and entertained in the USA.
Jerry will be greatly missed by his wife, Mary Ann of 68 years, his three children, Debra Horton, David, and Jeri Lynn Curry, his six grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren. His family was his pride and joy. He shared his love of the outdoors camping with his young family, Boy Scouting with his son, going on a ten day canoe excursion in Northern Canada with Sarett Nature Center, teaching his grandsons how to fish and hunt, hosting family gatherings at Brown County State Park, and helping with barn chores at his daughter’s horse farm in NH. He said his only regret was never raising chickens.
A Christian service will be held on January 28, 2023 at 11:00am at McGriff Funeral Home in Kinmundy, IL followed by burial at the Curry gravesite at Evergreen Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child.
If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, please click on the link below to watch the entire worship service as a video on your home computer, tablet or smartphone:
If you would prefer not to view the video, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just right click on the link to “open link in a new tab” to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 1:
1 Blessed are the ones who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law they meditate day and night. 3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaf does not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Congregational Prayer − The WESLEY COVENANT PRAYER
I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Eph 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God– 9 not because of works, lest any man should boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
James 4:17 Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. 15 Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred, let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console To be understood, as to understand To be loved, as to love For it is in giving that we receive And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Chapter 4: “Jesus,” it says, “began to preach: ‘Repent.'” And we’re talking about that word and what it means. What does it mean to repent? And the phrase I’m using is that to repent means to get organized to do God’s will, to get organized for a better year … because the way we’ve always done it before may have many wonderful aspects, but God deserves better than the way we’ve always done it before. And John Wesley gave his people three rules for how to get organized to do God’s will.
And we talked about the first rule last week. And the first rule is to do no harm.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything you have to do, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, the quickest way for you to find some peace is to look for something you’re doing that causes harm, harm to you, harm to somebody else because if you can stop, if you can drop, if you can quit that thing, if you can press pause, it will immediately make room in your life for more of what you need.
If you don’t have enough time, there’s something you can stop, and all of a sudden you’ll have more time. If you don’t have enough money, there’ll be some spending habit you can drop. There’s something you can quit or pause.
And I would like to suggest it’s easier to drop out something you should let go of than to add one more thing to all the things you have to do. We talked last week about what’s called the Pareto Principle. It’s also called the 80/20 rule. And this is the Pareto Principle: that 80% of the good that happens to you comes from 20% of the things that you do. But 80% of the harm, 80% of the problems, 80% of the stress comes from 20% of what you’re doing. And immediately all of that goes away if you can stop or drop or quit the thing that’s holding you back and doing you harm. So that’s the first rule.
And here’s the second rule: do all the good that you can. Now John Wesley is said to have said this quote below. He never did. But it really summarizes the way the early Methodist people thought about it. What should you do? You should …
Do all the good you can by all the means that you can in all the ways that you can in all the places you can at all the times that you can to all the people that you can as long as ever you can.
And I’ll be honest with you, that’s not a bad summary of the way the early Methodists look at it. But it reminds me of a bumper sticker or a saying I’ve seen on coffee cups: “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” Busy is not necessarily what Jesus wants … because, remember 80% of the good that you do comes from just a few things that you do. And all too often, we can really get very busy doing things that don’t really matter much at all. And we can think that we’re making great progress, but really we’re not.
It makes me feel a little sheepish when I think about the bicycle, how we end our service, how we’ve ended our worship service every Sunday for 9 years. Now don’t just stand there, get busy; Do something.
Oh, friends, it’s not a bad thing to think before you start to do things. Because if you don’t, you can find yourself in another kind of overwhelm. You are overwhelmed with all the good things that you’re doing … without really thinking about whether they do any good.
Now, it is better to wear out than to rust out. And we have lots of good people in terms of how much they do for God – they are wearing out. But so many others … Well, frankly, they’re rusting out.
But it’s good to think before we get busy. And as you’re thinking, here’s what I would recommend in terms of deciding what you should do that will be good:
The first suggestion is, take a look at that first rule first: Do no harm. You could do a lot of good by quitting some things that don’t help you a bit.
The second suggestion is, ask yourself, “When I choose to do certain things that I feel are good, am I doing them because they’re fun and easy OR are they things that allow me to avoid, maybe, what would be more beneficial?” A lot of us, when we get overwhelmed, it’s because we’re avoiding something by being busy instead of facing it. And after you’ve looked at those two things, then I think it’s useful to ask the question, “How can I do all the good that I can?”
Well, here’s my first answer to that question, one of several. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you …” In other words, Jesus says to us: “I have a yoke, I have a task, I have some work, and I want you to do that for me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Friends, every single one of us has a calling. Every single one of us has something that Jesus wants us to do. And whatever that “yoke” is, it’s probably a better investment of your time and energy to do that than something else.
Friends, I guarantee you, you do not want me to work on your car. You may need someone to work on your car, but you don’t want me to work on your car. I’m the kind of person who thinks, “I wonder what would happen if I plug this wire in over here instead of over there.” I’m the kind of person who thinks during an oil change, “I wonder what would happen if we used corn oil in stead of 10W-40?” I’m the kind of person you should not trust to work on your car! Thank God I am not called to work on cars.
I’m the kind of person who when I mow the yard, I leave long stretches and stripes of grass that I miss because I just don’t see them. Thank God it’s not my calling to mow the grass.
But if it is my calling to be a preacher, it’s probably smart for me to focus on doing the good that I can in the area that I’m called. So when you have too many choices as to what you can do in terms of doing good, you should do the one that Jesus has asked you to do.
Now, these oxen are pulling a plow. When they put the yoke on, they know that’s what they’re supposed to do. I have no idea what they’re saying to each other. Maybe they’re saying to each other, “I wish just once Jesus would ask me to make lunch,” but friends, I don’t think you want the ox in your kitchen. I don’t think you want these oxen working on your car.
There are certain things that God wants us to do, and we are perfectly made to do them, which is why Jesus could say, “If you do what I want you to do, if you take my yoke upon you and do the work that I want you to do, you’re going to find that to be easy because my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” So every single one of us has a calling, and we should consider what it is.
A second possibility, Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, God is working on us, helping us to be better people, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Therefore, I would suggest that from when you get up in the morning and you go to bed at night, I’d like to ask you to consider that you’re walking on a path that Jesus has given to you throughout your day. What you’re going to find, sprinkled along that path, you will have opportunities to do good, and you can look for them. There are so many other things you could do, but if you look for what God has set right before you, most of the time, the good work, the good thing that you can do on the spur of the moment, turns out to be the very best choice. You will find your opportunities along the way.
If you meet someone, they’re there on purpose. If they need something, maybe it’s a matter of just taking care of it. Sometimes all God wants us to do is notice this person who has a problem and pray for them. If this person has had an answer to prayer, remind them of how kind God is. You can let your environment tell you – this is what God wants me to do – by looking around you and seeing what needs to be done. So that’s one opportunity.
But also, please keep in mind that same 80/20 rule. As you walk along the path, 20% of the good that you do will result in 80% of the benefit. So sometimes you can be guided in terms of knowing what good you should do simply by asking what brings the best return on investment.
Now, let’s just assume that this man in the picture who is sad and who is looking down, let’s assume that the reason he’s sad is that he’s just learned that his wife has been taken to the hospital. And he needs to get on the other side of town because she needs him. What should you do? Well, some of you could just buy him a car. And there’s some people who think, “We have this much money. We ought to buy a car for everyone who needs something to drive.” But is that really the best choice?
Some people might feel guilty. I should just hand them my car keys. I can walk the rest of the day. I’ll just give him my car for the day. Now I know some of you are saying, “Well, that’s really stupid.” But still, you could do that. There are people who make great sacrifices.
But if you ask yourself what is the real need— what is the real need, what is the thing that would create the greatest benefit, I think it would be if you gave him a ride. Because you might be a little bit later arriving at your destination, but maybe he needs company on the way to the hospital and all he really needs in this moment is a ride.
Maybe that’s the better choice because it provides the greatest benefit, the greatest, as we say, bang for the buck of all the good that you can do to be helpful. So when we have a choice of different things that we can do, it is not always necessary to be extravagant. It is not always necessary to sacrifice. Remember Jesus said, “My yoke is easy. My burden is light.” Maybe there’s something that you could do that is exactly what is needed and no more, the exact thing, just in time that’s needed.
You’re familiar with this picture because every Christmas, I always talk about Mary and Joseph being turned away from the inn as an example of people not noticing their neighbors. Friends, it is a commandment for us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so, therefore, it’s important that we notice our neighbors because God will most often prompt us to do good in the lives of neighbors. Now, occasionally, like the good Samaritan’s experience, your neighbor will be a total stranger. But I find it very odd how often people don’t notice people they know well who have a problem, but we are more willing to help a total stranger. And it’s almost as if some people are looking for a stranger, rather than letting God ask them to help the person who lives right next to them. Their literal neighbor!
But James 4:17 says, “Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him, it is a mistake. For him, it is a failure. For him, it is a sin.” We need to think when God draws our attention to something that’s happening in our neighbor’s life … but the first step of that thinking is to notice. Notice all the good that is needed, and if you can’t do something to help in that moment, you can always pray. Sometimes, God helps us notice problems so that we can pray about them. Sometimes you notice a problem, like someone whose lawn needs to be mowed, someone whose car needs some work, and if you’re me, you know that God’s asking you to pray for that need, not to do it yourself.
But it’s possible you might know someone who’s really good at that and who could help them. Sometimes, God causes us to notice things so we can pray about them. Sometimes, God causes us to notice things because we know someone else who could do the good thing. It doesn’t always have to fall on your shoulders. But notice your neighbor. You’re supposed to love your neighbor. You’re supposed to do all the good you can.
As Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” And the good that we do lights a path for people around us to come closer to Jesus.
So light up your neighborhood. But how? When there are so many good things that we could do, how do we know which we should choose? Well, here’s Ben Franklin’s advice: make a list. What you’re looking at on the right side of the picture there is Benjamin Franklin’s way of planning his work for the day. In the right-hand column, he would list his appointments from when he would get up in the morning at 5:00 and go to sleep at 10:00. The things that he would do every day are printed there, but then he would write in all the others.
But notice over on the left-hand side, he would ask himself two questions. And then he’d make a list to answer to each question, and the first question was this, the morning question; he asked it in the morning during his time of learning and thoughtfulness and prayer. The morning question is this: “What good shall I do this day?” Friends, that’s a good question for each one of us to ask: “What good shall I do this day?” and then you make your list.
And you notice down at the bottom of the page, in the evening, he’d ask himself, “What good have I done today?” Because things just pop up. Things just happen, and you do the right thing in the moment because you feel prompted by God. That’s where he would write those down.
But you’ll also notice the morning part is much bigger than the evening part. You know why? A lot of things you put on your list won’t happen today, but because they’re on your list, they’ll happen tomorrow or the next day because they have your attention, and they are on your mind. If there’s something you need, if there’s something you notice, and you make a list, it will stay on your mind, and most likely, it will eventually get done.
So my best answer to John Wesley’s rule – Do all the good you can – is to make a list and think about it. Sometimes the problem you notice, what God wants you to do, is pray. Sometimes, a problem that you notice is for someone else to fix; you have a friend, and you can ask them, and you can help someone together. Sometimes, you’re supposed to do it, but not just yet. But certainly, it is true; God wants us to do all the good that we can.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, we are not meant to be disengaged from the people around us, but we are meant to be involved with the people that you called our neighbors. We are meant to be involved with the people who you told us to love as we love ourselves. And so help us, Lord, when we encounter another person, to notice and to make a note about all that we see. Help us, Lord, as we move from one situation to another, to notice if something’s wrong. And make a note so that we can be a part of the solution, so that we can ask, “Lord, what is your will for my life? What good shall I do this day?” We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?
What grabbed your attention? What is the human need or problem? What questions do you have about any quotes provided? Does the Bible say anything about this? What solutions do you see for the problem? What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?
Additional Resources
Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible. Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays. VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow. MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline) Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.
