Sermon at Kinmundy United Methodist Church on 2/17/2019.
Title: Who Has The Message Today? 1 Cor 14:24-26, John 14:25-26
Audio link – Right click, open in new tab to play: [Kinmundy]
Right click, open in new tab to view slides as a PDF: [Slides]
NEWS: On 02-03-19 Robert Souders preached on Beulah Holiness Camp. On 02-10-19 Worship was Canceled due to bad weather.
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?
TRANSCRIPT:
| that’s what it’s looked like for the last few weeks, hasn’t it? Let me take you back to January 27th, the morning of January 27th. 7:00 AM I got a text from Carol Colder who’s a member at the Wesley Church. She said that as she was coming home from work at 7:00 AM, she went over a solid sheet of ice in the [inaudible] bottoms. That nice little hilly road with the big dropoff into the gully where the sign says roads are not treated. And she texted me and she said, “We may not be able to have church at Wesley today.” Well the folks at Wesley talked about it and they decided to go ahead and have church, but Bill sent me this text. And I thought it was so beautiful that I needed to share it with you. Here’s what he said. “Dave and all, yes, let’s have church.” And then he said to me, “David and Kim, you have to drive the farthest. You have to go over the worst part of the road. Please make the best decisions for yourself and be safe. If you can’t make it, we have a 500-page hymn book to preach from.” Friends that would be a long sermon. “For those that don’t feel comfortable driving, we will meet again next week. We always have good conversations when we meet and thanks all. Bill [inaudible]’. And they had church, they didn’t have to have church out of the hymn book because I got there. |
| And this reminded me of a story. It’s a story of Mike Slaughter, who as a young man was sent to the Ginghamsburg Church in Ohio. North of Dayton there’s a town called Tipp City, has about 10,000 people in it. And north of Tipp City, there’s a little wide spot in the road, just a handful of houses, and a church. They had a pastor there who had taken that church and doubled the size of it by preaching a simple message that Jesus is Lord. And in 1972, Mike Slaughter was sent there to be their senior pastor. And within a couple years, the church went from 90 in average attendance to 1,200. And then it finally kind of bottomed out around 6,000 people a week. They’re the fourth largest church in the United Methodist Church. Oh, by the way, they’re still located at the side of the county road in the middle of nowhere. They’re not in any city, any large town, they’re still on a country road. And people have been asking the question, “What in the world happened here?” And the only answer I can tell you is that this man, his major spiritual gift is to be obnoxious and stubborn. I kid you not, he is obnoxious and stubborn. He believes in the |
[inaudible]
in the Bible, it should be done just exactly the way it says in the Bible. He is one of the most irritating people, and probably has some of the worst social skills that you can possibly imagine. I met him and it’s true. So one Sunday morning, he got up, held the microphone, looking out talking to over a 1,000 people and he said these words, 1 Corinthians 14:24 says this, but if all prophesy – and what that means i, if you feel the Lord’s telling you something, that you pray about it and then you speak about it, that you obey what feel God is leading you to say – but if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed and so falling on his face he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. Therefore, Mike Slaughter says, this is what’s supposed to happen when we worship. What then brethren? When you come together each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. And Mike Slaughter looks out over the whole congregation and he says, “If I’m the only one preaching the message that’s contrary to scripture, because the Bible says that every single one of you has a sermon inside of you, and every single one of you has a sermon at least one week of the year, because it’s supposed to be you and it’s against God’s will for it to be me up here being the center of the attention.” And by the way, he yells at people just like that [laughter]. And he took the microphone and he slammed it down and he said, “One of you has the sermon. I’m going in the nursery and pray for you,” and he walked out. Now I’m not obnoxious enough to do that to you [laughter]. But think about it for a moment.
Here’s what I recall from when he told the story, what happened next. One man stood up and said, “This whole week as I’ve been praying I’ve been struggling with the reality that I have a problem with anger.” Then he talked about losing his temper, how it had cost him a job, how it was hurting his marriage, how it was harming his children. And he just simply said, “I don’t know what to do about this. I need help.” And then he sat down. And after a little more silence another man got up, came up and said, “This reminds me of a verse in the Bible. I was reading it this week.” And he read the verse of the Bible and he said a couple things about it and then he sat down. A few minutes later, third man stood up and said, “I feel that I’m supposed to tell you some of the things my father told me. Good advice he gave me when I was young about my [inaudible].” And at the end of the service, Mike Slaughter came back in and sang the hymn with them. People happened to like that sermon because it was shorter [laughter], but they told him never to do that again. I don’t know whether he did or not. But he had made his point. If the Bible is true, God wants to speak through every single one of you. And if there’s ice on the road and the preacher can’t get across the street, guess what, one of you will be the one chosen by the Holy Spirit to preach that day. That’s what the Bible says. I would suggest to you that you think in terms of what happened as a good way to put your thoughts into words to chare. It’s always good to start with a problem because, guess what, whatever problem you choose, somebody else will have it, and everybody else should feel some empathy for people who struggle with that problem. Whatever you say, I certainly hope there’ll be a Bible verse that’s a part of it. We need to hear the Bible in church. I have a hope that every Sunday when you go home you know something about a verse in the Bible that you didn’t know when you came here. But finally, I also believe, as I said to the kids, every person in the Bible is God trying to help people. So there’s some kind of divine solution in every verse that applies to some kind of human problem, and if you think about it, you’ll realize that. Here’s what Jesus said. When there’s a human problem when you want to understand how God wants you to deal with that, here’s what Jesus said would happen. John 14:25, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,” after the Resurrection we understand, “The Holy Spirit, he will teach you all things.” How will the Holy Spirit teach you all things? “He will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” When God wants you to say something, he’ll remind you of something that Jesus said because I’ll be very honest with you, you can’t go wrong if you remind people of what Jesus said. We’ve been using this big throne here for almost a year and a half to remind you that there is a thing called your prayer chair that there ought to be a place where you sit and pray, and as a part of your prayers, you pick up the scripture and you read some part of it because if you pray with the scripture God will bless you, and sometimes God will give you a scripture and will let you know that you have a message to preach to the whole church, because that’s what I pray about every week, but it might be that your message might be for one person, but they’re still the same thing. There’s a problem, there’s a scripture, there’s a solution. But if you’re preaching to your neighbor it doesn’t need to be the kind of sermon we hear in church because I hope the problem will come up in conversation and that you’ll listen for it, but your neighbor will tell you what the problem is. If the Lord reminds you of a scripture, I hope you’ll feel comfortable saying, “That reminds me of something Jesus said,” and then maybe you can say, what do you think that means when your neighbor and you can have a conversation rather than you preaching a sermon to them? But it’s the same thing that every single one of you has a message through scripture, perhaps in every conversation you have. But whether you kneel to pray, whether you sit in a chair and pray, it’s the same kind of a thing. You’re reading the Bible prayerfully, and you read a verse and you think, “What does this one say?” Then you ask the next question, “What does it say that I need to obey?” Because if you’re supposed to do something, certainly that must be the solution. And then you can ask the question, “Who needs to hear this?” S-O-W, because certainly the person who needs to hear this is the person who has some kind of problem that this scripture will help them to deal with. God speaks to us when we pray, and God can speak to you when you open the Bible. Just think in terms of these three questions, “What does it say? What does it say that I need to obey?” If you’re not sure what the problem is, ask this, “Lord, who needs to hear this?” Sometimes the first answer will be somebody who has lost a job, somebody who is grieving, but what actually that may come up is my friend, Ralph or my friend, Logan, and you’ll know that you have a mission to share with that person in a loving, caring way how God wants to help them. Got speaks through us. And so as you pray for your neighbors and read your Bible, ask these questions so that you can be the means by which God brings the Bible to your neighbors. And also understand this too. Sometimes the person who needs to hear it is you because the problem that you have, I promise you, you will find help from God in these pages. Please pray with me.
Lord Jesus, I ask that you would help us to take that time to stop and sit and pray, whether we kneel, whether we have a prayer chair, whatever it might be, Lord, that you’d help us to make the time. Lord, I pray that as you help us to make the time, you would have us include your scripture as a part of it, to have a start with the words of Jesus and live by what they say. Lord, help us to ask questions so that we might understand the words, not just read the Bible to where it goes in one ear and out the other, but to read it so that we let it change our lives and then Lord, not just our lives, but the lives of people we love and are connected to. Remind us, Lord, when we open the scripture when we’re in a situation when the pastor refuses to preach or the ice is thick on the road, and he can’t make it to church, Lord, remind us of something you have said that you want us to say to others. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I would like you to know I played a trick on you with the words of the closing hymn. It says we have a story to tell to the nation, but you know what? It’s a long way from [inaudible] to the nations. And if we love our neighbors
that’s what it’s looked like for the last few weeks, hasn’t it? Let me take you back to January 27th, the morning of January 27th. 7:00 AM I got a text from Carol Colder who’s a member at the Wesley Church. She said that as she was coming home from work at 7:00 AM, she went over a solid sheet of ice in the [inaudible] bottoms. That nice little hilly road with the big dropoff into the gully where the sign says roads are not treated. And she texted me and she said, “We may not be able to have church at Wesley today.” Well the folks at Wesley talked about it and they decided to go ahead and have church, but Bill sent me this text. And I thought it was so beautiful that I needed to share it with you. Here’s what he said. “Dave and all, yes, let’s have church.” And then he said to me, “David and Kim, you have to drive the farthest. You have to go over the worst part of the road. Please make the best decisions for yourself and be safe. If you can’t make it, we have a 500-page hymn book to preach from.” Friends that would be a long sermon. “For those that don’t feel comfortable driving, we will meet again next week. We always have good conversations when we meet and thanks all. Bill [inaudible]’. And they had church, they didn’t have to have church out of the hymn book because I got there.
And this reminded me of a story. It’s a story of Mike Slaughter, who as a young man was sent to the Ginghamsburg Church in Ohio. North of Dayton there’s a town called Tipp City, has about 10,000 people in it. And north of Tipp City, there’s a little wide spot in the road, just a handful of houses, and a church. They had a pastor there who had taken that church and doubled the size of it by preaching a simple message that Jesus is Lord. And in 1972, Mike Slaughter was sent there to be their senior pastor. And within a couple years, the church went from 90 in average attendance to 1,200. And then it finally kind of bottomed out around 6,000 people a week. They’re the fourth largest church in the United Methodist Church. Oh, by the way, they’re still located at the side of the county road in the middle of nowhere. They’re not in any city, any large town, they’re still on a country road. And people have been asking the question, “What in the world happened here?” And the only answer I can tell you is that this man, his major spiritual gift is to be obnoxious and stubborn. I kid you not, he is obnoxious and stubborn. He believes in the [inaudible] in the Bible, it should be done just exactly the way it says in the Bible. He is one of the most irritating people, and probably has some of the worst social skills that you can possibly imagine. I met him and it’s true. So one Sunday morning, he got up, held the microphone, looking out talking to over a 1,000 people and he said these words, 1 Corinthians 14:24 says this, but if all prophesy – and what that means i, if you feel the Lord’s telling you something, that you pray about it and then you speak about it, that you obey what feel God is leading you to say – but if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed and so falling on his face he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. Therefore, Mike Slaughter says, this is what’s supposed to happen when we worship. What then brethren? When you come together each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. And Mike Slaughter looks out over the whole congregation and he says, “If I’m the only one preaching the message that’s contrary to scripture, because the Bible says that every single one of you has a sermon inside of you, and every single one of you has a sermon at least one week of the year, because it’s supposed to be you and it’s against God’s will for it to be me up here being the center of the attention.” And by the way, he yells at people just like that [laughter]. And he took the microphone and he slammed it down and he said, “One of you has the sermon. I’m going in the nursery and pray for you,” and he walked out. Now I’m not obnoxious enough to do that to you [laughter]. But think about it for a moment.
Here’s what I recall from when he told the story, what happened next. One man stood up and said, “This whole week as I’ve been praying I’ve been struggling with the reality that I have a problem with anger.” Then he talked about losing his temper, how it had cost him a job, how it was hurting his marriage, how it was harming his children. And he just simply said, “I don’t know what to do about this. I need help.” And then he sat down. And after a little more silence another man got up, came up and said, “This reminds me of a verse in the Bible. I was reading it this week.” And he read the verse of the Bible and he said a couple things about it and then he sat down. A few minutes later, third man stood up and said, “I feel that I’m supposed to tell you some of the things my father told me. Good advice he gave me when I was young about my [inaudible].” And at the end of the service, Mike Slaughter came back in and sang the hymn with them. People happened to like that sermon because it was shorter [laughter], but they told him never to do that again. I don’t know whether he did or not. But he had made his point. If the Bible is true, God wants to speak through every single one of you. And if there’s ice on the road and the preacher can’t get across the street, guess what, one of you will be the one chosen by the Holy Spirit to preach that day. That’s what the Bible says. I would suggest to you that you think in terms of what happened as a good way to put your thoughts into words to chare. It’s always good to start with a problem because, guess what, whatever problem you choose, somebody else will have it, and everybody else should feel some empathy for people who struggle with that problem. Whatever you say, I certainly hope there’ll be a Bible verse that’s a part of it. We need to hear the Bible in church. I have a hope that every Sunday when you go home you know something about a verse in the Bible that you didn’t know when you came here. But finally, I also believe, as I said to the kids, every person in the Bible is God trying to help people. So there’s some kind of divine solution in every verse that applies to some kind of human problem, and if you think about it, you’ll realize that. Here’s what Jesus said. When there’s a human problem when you want to understand how God wants you to deal with that, here’s what Jesus said would happen. John 14:25, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,” after the Resurrection we understand, “The Holy Spirit, he will teach you all things.” How will the Holy Spirit teach you all things? “He will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” When God wants you to say something, he’ll remind you of something that Jesus said because I’ll be very honest with you, you can’t go wrong if you remind people of what Jesus said. We’ve been using this big throne here for almost a year and a half to remind you that there is a thing called your prayer chair that there ought to be a place where you sit and pray, and as a part of your prayers, you pick up the scripture and you read some part of it because if you pray with the scripture God will bless you, and sometimes God will give you a scripture and will let you know that you have a message to preach to the whole church, because that’s what I pray about every week, but it might be that your message might be for one person, but they’re still the same thing. There’s a problem, there’s a scripture, there’s a solution. But if you’re preaching to your neighbor it doesn’t need to be the kind of sermon we hear in church because I hope the problem will come up in conversation and that you’ll listen for it, but your neighbor will tell you what the problem is. If the Lord reminds you of a scripture, I hope you’ll feel comfortable saying, “That reminds me of something Jesus said,” and then maybe you can say, what do you think that means when your neighbor and you can have a conversation rather than you preaching a sermon to them? But it’s the same thing that every single one of you has a message through scripture, perhaps in every conversation you have. But whether you kneel to pray, whether you sit in a chair and pray, it’s the same kind of a thing. You’re reading the Bible prayerfully, and you read a verse and you think, “What does this one say?” Then you ask the next question, “What does it say that I need to obey?” Because if you’re supposed to do something, certainly that must be the solution. And then you can ask the question, “Who needs to hear this?” S-O-W, because certainly the person who needs to hear this is the person who has some kind of problem that this scripture will help them to deal with. God speaks to us when we pray, and God can speak to you when you open the Bible. Just think in terms of these three questions, “What does it say? What does it say that I need to obey?” If you’re not sure what the problem is, ask this, “Lord, who needs to hear this?” Sometimes the first answer will be somebody who has lost a job, somebody who is grieving, but what actually that may come up is my friend, Ralph or my friend, Logan, and you’ll know that you have a mission to share with that person in a loving, caring way how God wants to help them. Got speaks through us. And so as you pray for your neighbors and read your Bible, ask these questions so that you can be the means by which God brings the Bible to your neighbors. And also understand this too. Sometimes the person who needs to hear it is you because the problem that you have, I promise you, you will find help from God in these pages. Please pray with me.
Lord Jesus, I ask that you would help us to take that time to stop and sit and pray, whether we kneel, whether we have a prayer chair, whatever it might be, Lord, that you’d help us to make the time. Lord, I pray that as you help us to make the time, you would have us include your scripture as a part of it, to have a start with the words of Jesus and live by what they say. Lord, help us to ask questions so that we might understand the words, not just read the Bible to where it goes in one ear and out the other, but to read it so that we let it change our lives and then Lord, not just our lives, but the lives of people we love and are connected to. Remind us, Lord, when we open the scripture when we’re in a situation when the pastor refuses to preach or the ice is thick on the road, and he can’t make it to church, Lord, remind us of something you have said that you want us to say to others. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I would like you to know I played a trick on you with the words of the closing hymn. It says we have a story to tell to the nation, but you know what? It’s a long way from [inaudible] to the nations. And if we love our neighbors as ourselves, you know we’ll start here, and we’ll work our way out eventually. We’ll get to the nations. But you know? We have a story to tell to our neighbors, and maybe that’s where we should start. So wherever it says, “nations” in this hymn, I’ve replaced it with the word, neighbors. So will you sing the word neighbors when you get to there? Let’s stand and sing together.
as ourselves, you know we’ll start here, and we’ll work our way out eventually. We’ll get to the nations. But you know? We have a story to tell to our neighbors, and maybe that’s where we should start. So wherever it says, “nations” in this hymn, I’ve replaced it with the word, neighbors. So will you sing the word neighbors when you get to there? Let’s stand and sing together.
[Resources]
[Discussion questions.]
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 Raod, 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.