Hot and Cold

Isaiah 45:1-7, Psalm 96, I Thess 1:1-10, Rev 3:14-22

Good morning!

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, are you hot or cold?”

This time of the year, the weather drives me crazy. One day, it’s hot outside – nearly 80 degrees! The next morning, the temperature has dropped to nearly freezing and I’m cold! If I dress for the cold mornings, by the afternoon I’m sweating in my clothes. Like many of you, I long for a nice middle-of-the-road temperature, a nice constant 70 degrees.

Moderation is nice, isn’t it. We love our moderation. “Moderation in all things”, we state in a nice, moderately loud voice. In the early twentieth-century novel, Lost Horizon, a British diplomat is kidnapped from the war and chaos in China and finds himself in a wonderful peaceful valley called Shangri-la lost in the Himalaya Mountains. There, the monks practice moderation in all things, including, as one says to our hero, “moderation in our moderation”.

We want to avoid passion and hot emotions, for those emotions, we say, are the cause of all the problems of the world. Love causes jealousy and fighting – as we see on Facebook. Hate causes more fighting. Yoda from Star Wars tells Anakin Skywalker – and us - “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to much suffering.”

Emotion is bad. Reason is good! In another science fiction show, Mr Spock shows us how we can remove emotion from our life and become successful. We admire the airline pilot who coolly landed his plane in the Hudson River when everyone else would be panicking. We want leaders who tell us that everything is under control – the terrorists are being quietly rounded up, the Ebola cases are all being monitored, the Russians will be calmly dealt with no matter what they do. We want our fears to be dealt with by men and women who don’t show any emotion, for that calms us down and helps us control our strong emotions.

We don’t like it when the stock market has wild swings. We don’t like it when the unemployment rate suddenly changes. We don’t like it when there are too many people at the stores – or too few. We love moderation, we love predictability, we love stability. Change frightens us. Cold weather worries us. Hot weather bothers us just as much. We want the 70 degree sunny weather of San Diego, day after day, month after month, year after year. We want to make simple plans for our lives and then work those plans. We don’t like it when things change.

But things do change. The reality of the world is that the world swings suddenly from hot to cold and back again. Our lives swing with the world. One day you’re driving down the Interstate at a calm, collected 65 miles per hour and 3 seconds later you’re spinning out of control in the median strip, headed for the opposite lane, fighting with the steering and the brakes to come to a safe stop. And all because that little red sports car cut in front of you.

Did you stop quickly enough? How much damage was done to your car? Is everybody in the car ok? The feeling is unpleasant, your heart is beating far too fast and you know that this will be a day you’ll remember, but it isn’t pleasant, and so you begin to hit the wheel in anger.

But, you know something? Our God is not a God that hates emotions. Our God is not a God that hates change. Our God is not a God that wants you to remove all passion from your life.

Listen to what Jesus says to the church of Laodicea in Revelation Chapter 3:

14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

In the twentieth century, the Methodist church became known throughout the country for the stability of its finances, the predictability of its worship, the solidness of its individual churches. To be a Methodist meant that you were a solid member of American society, sober, making decisions only after careful thoughtful deliberations, never getting carried away with any of the extreme and new ideas that swept through American Christianity like speaking in tongues, Christian rock music in services, and television evangelism. Say what you might about the Methodists, you would never accuse us of being fanatics about religion.

Yet it was not always that way with the Methodists.

The early Methodists were a radical group. John and Charles Wesley, who formed with several friends an accountability group at Oxford University, were so devoted to living a holy lifestyle that their group became known by the other students as the Holy Club. Most of the Holy Club was soon ordained in the Church of England, by far the largest church in England. In the years that followed, John Wesley led the Methodists to do strange and new things, things that simply weren’t done in the dull, dying Church of England, a church that Wesley wanted to revive.

John Wesley preached outdoors in the streets. He preached at the factory gates. He preached at the mine entrances. Only the Holy Club preachers did that.

His brother Charles began to write hymns that could be sung by ordinary people to ordinary popular tunes instead of fancy choral songs that could only be sung by professional singers with orchestras and organs. His hymns became popular. They were also denounced as the tools of Satan by mainstream pastors.

Soon, a group of Methodist preachers began traveling around the country, preaching at buildings that weren’t churches, but which had preaching at least three times a week. Instead of stone – the Methodist chapels were built from wood in an eight-sided style that allowed people in the pews to see each other. The movement grew.

People listened to the sermons and fell down on their knees, weeping and crying and yelling out loud. Some fainted. Others claimed to see visions. The Holy Spirit was moving.

The Methodist preachers were so focused upon people coming to know the Lord that they didn’t even bother to form congregations, but instead simply pointed the people to the nearest Church of England, but the people didn’t want that. They joined up to small groups of 12 and 20 and went once or twice a week to their small group, groups that helped them stop cussing, that helped them stay away from whiskey, groups where they taught each other what it meant to follow Jesus Christ. And the Methodist got a reputation for being fanatics for God and soon after John Wesley’s death they had to form a new church and began to build new churches and chapels in a different way.

In the new churches, the ceilings were lower than in the huge Church of England cathedrals. In the new churches, the pews were arranged in a half circle so you could see others speak, for it wasn’t just the preacher who spoke in the Methodist assemblies, but many people prayed out loud and many people testified of what the Lord had done in their lives and many people ministered to one another and the movement grew and grew and grew.

In America, the Methodists became the largest church in the country, larger that all the Baptists put together. A third of Americans at one time were Methodists.

The Methodist preachers, traveling from one church to another, sometimes serving 30 different churches, were proverbial. If the weather was bad, really bad, it was said that the only things moving on the highways and trails were the Methodist circuit riders, who went from church to church, making a loop of the churches over 6 or 8 weeks, preaching at 4 and five churches every Sunday and teaching local men and women to lead the church while they were at the other churches. And all those local leaders grew and grew and grew the Methodist churches.

But in the Twentieth Century, we became more concerned with being known as solid and stable members of society than with the things of God, and gradually, gradually, we stopped growing and began to die. When a church looks inward and cares more about what good society thinks of it than saving souls, it soon begins to die. Despite the fact that the country has added a hundred million people since our last merger in 1968, like many mainline denominations, today’s United Methodist Church is smaller than at the time of the merger.

We became lukewarm and forgot our first love, the love of God.

16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness;and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

We have our priorities turned around. We Methodists, who were the poor farmers, the poor miners, the workers – we wanted respectability. And so we traded our spiritual wealth for material wealth. We became rich in the rewards of this world – nice homes, good cars, comfortable clothing. Yet, in doing that we became “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

And so Jesus says to us: “Buy from me gold refined in the fire.” What is that gold? What is that fire?

The gold is spiritual passion, refined by the Holy Spirit that moves inside each of you. That Spirit is moving within you, It has made you uncomfortable in your life, and the Spirit is drawing you to greater things. You know that there are great things that could happen here – great things HAVE happened here in the past – and you want to be a part of that greatness, going where God leads with His Spirit Fire, consuming the evil and dreariness and sadness and trouble in the world, leading us into a shining future filled with a golden joy!

And white clothes to wear! White – the symbol of purity. Christ wants us to become pure in His service, to be known for our Christ-like hearts, to be seen throughout the area as the people who have an unstained love for God, to be the sort of people that everyone would like to sit down and talk with.

We people who want to be known for our moderation…There is something we need to understand. Many people are blocked from Heaven, not because we have too much emotion, but because we have too little emotion. Jesus never complained because people loved too much – only because people loved too little. Jesus did not complain because people became too angry – only because people were never angry enough about the things that keep people from God. Jesus cried his eyes out when he stood outside the tomb of Lazarus because He was so upset with death. Yet we “learn to accept death”. Jesus chased the moneychangers and merchants from the Temple with a whip in his hand, yelling at them for making it hard for people to come to God. Yet in many of our churches we put dress codes in front of people and tell them that a donation of “only” so much money will buy a poinsettia or a lily – and we imply that our worth in the kingdom depends upon our free cash.

No, Heaven isn’t a place where our emotions have been taken away – Heaven is a place where the emotions are much more intense than here. The joy that we feel when we see a new member join or a new life comes through a baptism is only a shadow of the joy we will feel when our loved ones join us on those gold-paved streets. And our sadness will be equally intense when our loved ones do not join us. But our tears will be wiped away by the intense love of the One who loved us before time began.

And so our task on this earth is to let our emotions about the things of God rule us more deeply. We need a passion for telling people about God and the saving love of Christ, a passion that burns hot within us because our hatred of eternal death is so strong. Yes, we can hate as Christians, and we should hate those things which keep those people we love from God. And we should take our fondness for people and turn it into love, our appreciation for good, godly things and turn it into a passionate pursuit of those things, and our appreciation of human life and turn it into a love of all things truly human – and a hatred of all things associated with death and Satan. We need to let our emotions about the things of God rule us more deeply. We need to let go in joy in our worship and let our eyes shine with joy when we talk about what God has done for us.

You know, the Thessalonians were such a people. They had a passion for the Lord, they imitated Paul and the Lord, they became a model for the people who lived in their area. They accomplished great things individually and as a group because of that passion. They were willing to work through trouble and hardship, lifting each other up, looking outside their small fellowship to those around them, and spreading the Gospel in their area after Paul had moved on to other cities and other countries. Their passion for Christ led them forward.

Where is our passion? Where are the people who come to the altar each week to pray? Where are the people that pray for an hour each morning asking for growth for the church? Where are the people who walk through the stores looking, just looking and hoping and striving for a chance to talk to people about their broken lives, their dashed hopes, their shattered dreams, and tell those people why Jesus Christ is the answer to all their lives’ problems?

The Methodist movement was never primarily about the passion of the pastors. It was about the ability and love of the people who were looking across the aisle at one another and encouraging each other to do great things with God’s help. It was about three friends sitting down together over some coffee, praying, and hatching a plan to reach the five families that live down the road. It was about the five men who sit in the back deciding that something needed to be done about the gambling and drunks in the town and building a men’s accountability group by accepting non excuses. It was about four women who decided to build and run an orphanage because it was needed. It was always about ordinary people doing extraordinary things with God’s help and guidance, because they had a shared passion to give other people the joy that they knew in Jesus Christ.

Where is your passion? Do you still have the ability to think about extreme things? Some of you have told me that when most of you were teenagers, you did some pretty wild things, didn’t you? Why don’t you do those things now? Is your respectability worth more to you than the eternal souls of your neighbors? Is your image more important than your brother or sister’s eternal life? Are you more concerned that people like you – or are you more concerned that God approves of you?

As the Holidays role around this year, we’ll be having a very important series of sermons which begins the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Those sermons that begin that week are being developed to bring people who know very little about Jesus Christ to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is. Those sermons will answer common questions about Jesus, about why Christians believe the things we believe, and why God is real. They will peak on Christmas Eve with a strong sermon about the reality of Christ.

Between now and then, I’ll be giving you ideas on how to talk to your friends, neighbors and family about God and Christ. You’ll find out how to be different, how to get people’s attention in a good way, and how to help people begin the process of approaching Christ.

But it all depends upon you making a key decision.

Some of the people in this room have already made that decision. Your leaders have already found the passion that you need to find. You need to decide whether the salvation of the world is important enough for you to get excited about. You need to decide whether you care about other people. You need to consider whether you want to be remembered someday by twenty, a hundred, or a thousand other people for showing them the way into Heaven.

A man did a study about 15 years ago. He found out that the average adult in America knows about 1000 people. There have been more studies over the years that have found that people who are happy tend to make their friends become happy – and people that are depressed tend to make their friends depressed. If you post angrily on Facebook, your friends will tend to become angry posters. If you post happy things on Facebook, your friends will tend to post happy things.

This also happens for other emotions, and it happens with ideas, too. And the influence is not just on your immediate friends, but also upon their friends. The result is that the average adult in America has the ability to influence – positively or negatively – about a thousand times a thousand people or 1 million people in their lives.

We do it all the time and don’t even realize it. Imagine what could happen if we get passionate about it. Imagine what could happen if everybody in this room decided to make their life’s goal to be bringing people to Christ. If you want learn how to do that, join us this evening at 6 pm for Defending the Faith.

Imagine what would happen to the world around us if the two-thirds of this county that does not have a home church decided to go to church on a regular basis.

Imagine what would happen if most of today’s alcoholics began going to AA meetings on Saturdays and church on Sundays. Bob’s group has grown to 14 people, its making a difference! Imaging what would happen if the drug users – and the drug pushers – would join small accountability groups and come to church every week. Do you want to start such a group?

Imagine what would happen if just a thousand people in this county that are unemployed today would gain enough confidence from listening to Jesus Christ and listening closely enough to the Holy Spirit that they started successful, ethical businesses! Imagine what would happen as they hired other people and taught them about Jesus! What if you organized a group of people who want to start up small businesses using Christian principles. Let me know where and when – I’ve started three businesses in my life. It is amazing what God can do if you ask Him for guidance and help in doing it.

You see, the God I worship is a God of excitement. I worship a God that spoke and created an entire Universe. I worship a God that spoke again and entire species came into existence. That same God blew upon the Red Sea and cleared a path that allowed 600,000 people to escape a murderous army. That same God raised Lazarus from the dead – and then raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the man who claimed to be that same God.

Next week, we are inviting all the children in the Pioneer Clubs and their parents to visit us as they receive awards. Many of these children you know – you see them here regularly. But some of these children don’t have a home church – yet. Welcome them and their parents next week. Help them feel at home. God is on the move. He is building excitement and getting ready to do even greater things here.

Have you noticed? Have you also noticed that some new people have started coming here on a regular basis? Have you met the new people, have you welcomed them, have you learned from them? Have you noticed that our Wednesday evenings have grown from 5 people to 40 people?

I have seen something happen in the last two years that is exciting to me. For the first time in many years, I can say that our new bishop understands the Holy Spirit – and she also understands how God wants to grow the church. She isn’t concerned with our respectability, she isn’t concerned with our political correctness, she isn’t concerned with her personal career – she is concerned with the things of God. And that is exciting. It means that we are free to grow as we please, bring Christ to save the souls of whoever we meet – of everyone we meet.

I want to warn you – if you like to come to church every week and know exactly what is going to happen – then I suggest you find another church. There are many churches that have been doing the same, predictable things for the last twenty years or more. Almost all of them are much smaller than they used to be, though. We will not be a lukewarm church, for we do not want to be spit out of Jesus’ mouth.

Instead, we will listen carefully to the Holy Spirit as it speaks to us. If you are hearing the Holy Spirit speak, come and talk to me. I want to hear what the Spirit has been telling you. Who knows? You may be the third person to send me an email telling me that Dennis needs to wear a purple tie and a green propeller beanie to bring a hundred people to Christ, or more seriously, you may be the third person to tell me about a particular ministry need or opportunity that will bring hundreds of people out of despair and suffering. Let me know.

You see, we keep falling into the same trap we fall into with our government. I once saw a live interview with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfield, who was serving under George Bush. The interviewer asked him “What is the administration’s idea about [some particular issue]” Rumsfield, to his credit, said, “First of all, there is no “administration’s idea”. I have some ideas, the President has some ideas, the Joint Chiefs have some ideas.” You see, he was reminding the interviewer – and us – that a government is composed of individual people.

In the same way, we often talk about “this church believes this” and “that church does that”. But churches are made up of individual people. If you want this church to grow, then walk outside the church this afternoon and talk to people about Jesus Christ. I knew one 88 year old woman who single-handedly brought 15 new people to a church one year. If you want this church to have more people in the choir, then come to choir practice on Thursday night and bring a friend from outside the church.

If you want this church to have a polka band, then buy an accordion and start it up with your two friends who love polka music! If you want to have a tent revival at the projects, then pull together two or three friends and start planning it. Tell me when and where to show up. If you want this church to show movies here on Friday evening – with hot buttered popcorn – then talk to me and we’ll reserve the space for you and help you get fliers printed for the community. If you want more people in your group that meets here regularly to come to the church on Sunday, then talk about the church, invite me to your meeting to speak, or at the very least, introduce me to the group’s members when I wander in!

It is amazing how things work, sometimes. Sometimes I run into some of you at Wal-mart or at a restaurant, and you have friends there with you, and most of the time you introduce me. But once in a while we’ll talk for 3 or 4 minutes – and you never introduce me to your friends! At least you all are much better about this than one time this happened at another church, a church that had been slowly dying for 30 years. After the other family walked away, the church member turned to me and said, “I would have introduced you to Jim and his family, but they aren’t Christians.” DUH!

There are people in the leadership of the Conference who have their eyes on this church, people who actually know something about church potential. And they are asking, “Why can’t Quiet Dell become a church with 500 people, with a thousand people, or even more? It has the location, it has the land, it has great people with a great attitude?” And furthermore, why can’t Monroe Chapel grow to a hundred or a hundred and fifty people? It may lack the location and the land, but we have been growing recently. There are hundreds of people within five miles of this place, hundreds of people who do not know Jesus Christ, hundreds of people who do not know the joy that you have.

I agree. This church is on the brink of bringing many new people to know the Lord. We are right there.

But everything depends upon us each choosing no longer to be lukewarm in our Christianity. Hot or cold – make the decision: Is Jesus Christ truly the Son of God and worthy to be followed completely – or is He just another fairy tale character, made up to make you feel good and safe and live a quiet life? Hot or cold – make the decision.

Tomorrow or today, you’ll need to decide – Hot or cold – make the decision: Is it worth taking 15 minutes to stop and talk to that couple that you overhead worrying about their lives, that couple you don’t even know? Hot or cold – make the decision: Hot, passionate Christianity says talk to them – cold Christianity says walk away, lukewarm Christians walk away and feel guilty. Are you hot or cold or lukewarm? Make a decision.

Your friend says they are worried about the Ebola virus. Hot or cold – Make a decision: Do you mention that Jesus Christ will take care of your family no matter what? Or do you sort of agree that you’re worried and change the subject. Hot or cold – make a decision.

Another friend says their child is acting up in school. Hot or cold – Make a decision: Do you offer to pick them up and bring them Wednesday evening to the dinner and Pioneer Clubs? Or do you agree that the school should fix the problem. Hot or cold – are you a follower of Jesus Christ and believe He has the solutions to all the world’s problems - or not? Hot or cold – make a decision.

Stand up! Stand up! Stand up!

Where is your passion? Where is your emotion? When was the last time you cheered and sweated and prayed for something really worthwhile? To have passion – to become hot for the things of God – means we have to let go and let God’s Holy Spirit take us over. It is an act of trust, an act of submission, and an act of surrender. Staying cold means that you are fighting the fire. And that means that you are fighting the Holy Spirit. And if we find that we are fighting the Holy Spirit, we need to intentionally ask for God to do with us what God wills.

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, are you hot or cold?”

And turn back to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, I am on FIRE!”

Now come to the altar today as we sing this final hymn. Come up front, everyone of you and take turns kneeling at the altar and praying to God to give you a hot passion for doing His will, to ignite the fire of the Holy Spirit in you, to show you a purpose for your life, to lead you to people who need to hear about the transforming possibilities of Jesus Christ, to guide you in your speech, your habits, and your holiness!

Let us pray:

Oh Passionate Son of God! Give us the burning desire to spread Your Word to all the people we meet, that through our trust that You will provide, we may find the life Your Word has promised.

Help us to hate what You hate, to love as You love, to care as deeply as You care, to be as sad as You are at the injuries done to Your brothers and sisters, and to be a joyful as You are when another comes to follow You. Help us to remember to not be cold or moderate in our relationships with other people, but to be burning hot in those relationships, that some may come to know the joyful personality that is You.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ,

Amen.