Buying Bread

Well, today we begin our revival. It’s been a long, hard time during COVID, but this is the day we begin to take back the world for Jesus Christ. This is the day when we reach out to the sad, the lonely, the people who have been stuck in their homes with no one to visit except Netflix, Disney, and the other television services, their Facebook friends, and the UPS and postal delivery people. Today is the day when we remind people how much fun it is to gather with other people to learn about Jesus, to praise God, and to feel the power of the Holy Spirit flowing from one person to another.

We will have congregational singing, gospel music from excellent musicians, and two great speakers each evening. This evening we begin with Jessica Simons, a young mother who has worked long hours in fast food, but also discovered that she can speak to people about how Jesus has always been there for her. After Jessica, we’ll have my son Pastor Andy Boley, a young pastor based at Beverly and Mill Creek, just south of Elkins. Andy is 23 years old and is starting his 5^th year in the pulpit – but he also is an Eagle scout and well-known to many of the scouts who went through Camp Kootaga over the last ten years as their wilderness survival instructor.

Tomorrow evening, we’ll have my wife Pastor Saundra Boley from 7^th Street UMC – she’ll tell it like it is about God’s love and what God asks of us. Pastor Rick Haught of Kanawha UMC will then speak, reminding people why they need Jesus in their lives.

Tuesday evening, I’ll speak with a fact-based sermon explaining why we trust the New Testament accounts of Jesus, ideal for that science or engineering skeptic you know, and then Pastor Andy will be back with another passionate sermon.

Wednesday evening is the Kid’s Revival, starting at 5:30 with spaghetti and hotdog dinner for children and parents, a game for the children and parents, and then while the children have further activities, I’ll lead the parents in a time together.

By the way, if you are worried about driving after dark, we should finish up around 8 pm each evening – and sunset isn’t scheduled until about 8:45 pm, so you’ll have time to drive home in the daylight.

What does Jesus ask of you during this revival time?

Let’s take a look at our scripture and see…

In our first reading today from 2 Kings4, about 700 years before Christ, Elijah the prophet has already been taken to heaven in a fiery chariot. He left his mantle of leadership to Elisha, another great prophet who did even more than Elijah. There was a group of a hundred men. A man brought twenty barley loaves and some grain. The barley loaves were apparently small loaves, not nearly the size of our standard bread loaves. Elisha said to give it to the people and let them eat. But Elisha’s servant questioned this, asking how he could set just twenty loaves before a hundred men. But Elisha replied that the Lord said, “They shall eat and have some left.” And that is what happened.

Why is this important for us today? Why are the catering arrangements of a meal 2700 years ago worth including in scripture and teaching today? Perhaps it is because, even in the church, we often think that our efforts are all that matter. We forget that God and the Holy Spirit are with us.

I once led a church that had forgotten this. We had planned a community meal – notice it was not a “fellowship meal”, but a community meal. Yet, the women heading the meal came to me, upset that I had advertised the meal broadly throughout the community. “We can’t handle more than about ten extra people!” they said to me. “We wish you hadn’t advertised.” They needn’t have worried. No one from outside the church showed up. God does not bless those who don’t want to be blessed and believe that God can bless them.

On the other hand, I once was involved in a funeral dinner at Saundra’s church. They only had three women – including Saundra – who were physically capable of preparing the food and serving it. The funeral was for the matriarch of a large family – The family was large in numbers, plus most of the members, male and female, were 6 foot tall and 300 pounds in size. The three women all made several dishes, but it was not going to be enough. In fact, Saundra, who was leading the funeral, had prepared a couple of extra deserts the morning of the funeral before getting ready to rush out. We struggled to get a plan to deliver the food to the church. Just as Saundra was about to leave, one of the other women called to say that a large restaurant in town had called her to ask where they could deliver the catered food for 50 people that the owner was donating. God had the meal completely under control. There were leftovers – but not many. You see, that particular church had the idea that they would do what they could to serve the family – loving others was what was important to them – and to God.

They are the same church that received a $9500 grant for a new roof after struggling to raise $2000 over the previous 6 months through fundraisers, since their average weekly donations only totaled about $300 per week. God is more concerned with our attempt than with our capacity.

700 years later, the episode of Elisha and the 20 barley loaves was repeated for a much larger group of people who were following Jesus. There was a large crowd that followed Jesus around because of the healings that He performed. According to the Apostle John, Jesus looked up and saw the large crowd coming toward Him. He turned to Philip and asked, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” There were about five thousand people. And John says that Jesus asked Philip to test him even though He knew what He was going to do. God still tests us.

Philip responded with a quick calculation. “We’d need over six month’s wages to buy enough food.” It was sort of a statement of how impossible it was. They’d need about $10,000 – way too much.

Andrew pipes up, helpfully, “This boy has five barley loaves and two fish. But they won’t go very far in this crowd!”

And imagine that I turned to you right now and said, “You have three hours. Please prepare food for five thousand people.” It was that sort of request. So let’s do some quick calculations, and put together a McDonald’s fish sandwich, with two slices of bread and a quarter pound of fish. So that means we’ll need 10,000 slices of bread – at 20 slices per loaf, that’s 500 loaves of bread, and 1250 pounds of fish. I suspect that even today, you couldn’t round up that much food from all the grocery stores in Parkersburg on 3 hours notice.

Jesus just says, “Make them sit down.” The disciples had no idea what Jesus was going to do, nor how He would feed the people, but they trusted Him. They had faith in Jesus. So they did what He asked.

He took the loaves and the fish, gave thanks, and distributed them. Twelve baskets of fragments were leftover. And because of this, the people thought back to Elisha and the miracle where twenty loaves had fed a hundred people. Barley loaves. And in front of their eyes, five barley loaves had stretched to feed five thousand people. For most of these people, Jesus had established His credentials as a prophet who was even more powerful than Elisha. In fact, a group was about to come and make him king by force, so He left them and went off by Himself.

If we have faith, if we want to accomplish a mission that is acceptable to God, God will provide the resources, stretch the resources, accomplish the mission. For God created an entire planet – surely God can find some Bibles, some registration forms, enough money to pay for another broadcast. Where so many churches go wrong is assuming that it is all up to us. No, it is up to us to do the right thing, even to just attempt the right thing. God will accomplish the mission through us – and the people he sends to help us, like the owner of that restaurant who donated the food for that dinner, even without being asked, and without knowing about the tremendous shortage of help at that little church.

As many of you know, I once owned a small business where we bought inkjet ink in five gallon barrels, repackaged it into pint bottles, and sold it on the Internet. People could buy our ink for $34.95 a pint and refill their cartridge about 10 to 15 times, using a simple squeeze bottle with a blunt needle. Our business grew quickly. I challenged my 17-year-old warehouse guy – how will you operate when this business grows from a half dozen orders a day to 60 orders a day? It eventually grew to 80 orders a day, many of those orders being multiple pints, w, 4 or even 8 pints in an order. He kept up because he also could dream. He reorganized the shelves; he rearranged the packing table. He began coming into work two hours earlier so he could work faster in cooler temperatures. And he kept up with the work as we grew by dreaming about how to handle more and more orders. Eventually, this high school kid left us – he decided to go to college. And we missed him – but he had learned to dream big with us.

We each need to be thinking about our part of this church dream we have. How will we have church when our attendance doubles, quadruples, grows to be ten times what we have today? How many services will we need? How many people will need to be helping with children? How many people will need to teach Sunday school? How many people trained in the audiovisual booth? God will provide if we are looking forward to the dream, a dream where more and more people understand the love of Jesus and become regular followers of Him, and lead more and more people to Jesus.

The feeding of the five thousand was not the only miracle that would happen to the disciples that evening. They got back into the boat and set sail for the opposite shore of the lake. A strong wind came up – they rowed about 3-4 miles in the dark. Suddenly, they saw a figure walking toward them – it was Jesus walking on the water, headed toward the boat. They were terrified! But Jesus said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” They wanted to help Him into the boat, but suddenly the boat reached the land on the other side of the lake.

When the disciples followed Jesus, it was one amazing thing after another. They had all heard about Elisha feeding the hundred with twenty loaves, so they knew that prophets could stretch food. And so, they probably thought that the five loaves and fish could be stretched a bit, perhaps feeding fifty men. But Jesus far exceeded what they expected.

When they traveled across the lake, they probably figured that Jesus would catch up to them the next day after walking around the lake. After all, the lake was only about 6 miles by 9 miles, an oval. Many people walked around it. But Jesus exceed what they expected by walking across the lake. When Jesus was arrested, beaten, and executed, the disciples knew He was dead. They probably expected to take some of His teachings and perhaps become rabbis, teachers, themselves. It would be a living; a couple of them may actually have planned to create a movement that might grow to a few hundred people.

But Jesus far exceeded what they expected when He came back to them alive again. There were even two disciples who walked with Him, not knowing who He was, to the village of Emmaus, 6 miles outside of Jerusalem. When they went into an inn to get supper, Jesus indicated that He would have traveled further, but stopped with them. Isn’t that always the way it is with Jesus? Jesus’ plans and dreams for us go further than we want, than we dare, than we plan for. And, of course, isn’t that because He can tap directly into the power that created the Universe?

Yes! We just need to be reminded that Jesus has that power and then we aren’t surprised when He does miracles when He is present.

But, you know, the Holy Spirit can tap into that same power that the Holy Trinity has. Remember God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit? That’s why Jesus told the disciples that “wherever two or three are gathered in my name”, we can ask anything in Jesus’ name and it will be done. With, of course, the requirement that this be something that God deems good and wise.

The Apostle Paul understood this and tried to explain it to the Ephesians in Chapter 3 of his letter to them. He prayed that the Ephesians – and us who are reading the letter – “being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Then Paul wrote: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

There are three requirements for Christ or the Holy Spirit to do something for us. Let’s take the example of growing this church and leading other people to come to the saving grace of Jesus. First, He must have the power. Clearly Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as part of the Holy Trinity, have the power to lead people to Jesus, just as Jesus had the power to multiply the bread and fish to provide enough for five thousand people. The people are all around us – can Jesus and the Holy Spirit lead them to us? Of course.

The second requirement is that Jesus loves us and the people enough to lead those people to us. The love that Jesus has is far deeper and wider than the love we have for other people – we see that daily when people we have great difficulty loving are led to Christ, accepting Him into their hearts, and turning their lives around to follow Him. So does Jesus have the power? Yes. Does Jesus have the love for people to lead them to Him? Yes, of course. And if you are not currently a follower of Jesus, does He have the love to accept you as a follower and the power to turn your life around. Yes. There are so many examples of men and women whose lives have been turned around by Jesus after the most terrible crimes, the most horrible sins, after being so distant from God they could never find their way back alone, that the issue is never really at doubt. I personally know a man who used drugs, sold drugs, beat up people, stole, and yet Jesus and him found each other, and he is now a pastor, a successful pastor, leading others to the Jesus who found him and loved him. So, yes. Jesus has both the power and the love to turn your life around.

And so the third requirement remains. We must give permission, and we must want, we must desire Jesus to come to us and Jesus to lead others into our church. Whenever Jesus and the Holy Spirit deny a prayer, if we will think carefully, we’ll recognize that either our prayer was for something that would not be good for us – or it was a half-hearted prayer. What’s an example of a half-hearted prayer?

“Lord, help me to lose weight!” Oh, we want to lose weight, but there are only so many ways to lose weight – we either have to stop eating the ice cream and mashed potatoes and cheeseburgers and steak and drinking the soda and sweet tea – or we have to vastly increase our exercise in stead of sitting on the couch – or we will need to become sick. Jesus always works through the natural processes and Jesus always asks permission. If we don’t want to cut back on the eating, or exercise more or get sick – or if we really don’t want to become a smaller person because we feel powerful when we weigh more – then Jesus knows we don’t really want to lose weight. And the same thing applies to prayers to remove an addiction, we need to actually walk away from the good feelings that led to the addiction in the first place. It applies to prayers to get out of debt – we need to stop spending or we need to work more to get out of debt, and few people want to do that. Jesus will not grant a half-hearted prayer – only a sincere prayer.

And with churches who want to grow, there are often people in the church who don’t care about the people dying without Christ in the neighborhood, there are often people who are more concerned with their comfort than the comfort of visitors, people who want new visitors but who never greet visitors, people who want everything in the church to stay the same, people who want other people in the church to do the outreach. I knew a man who said he didn’t want his church to grow, he just wanted the church to hang on, barely surviving until his funeral. I knew an entire church whose idea of outreach was to send 20 or 30 letters each September to people who had left the church 20 years earlier, inviting them back, but who would not even speak to the neighbors who lived beside the church, yet they wanted the church to grow. Really?

The third requirement for Jesus and Holy Spirit to grant a prayer, you see, is that the prayer both be good for us and we actually are willing to do our part working toward the prayer’s success. We have to passionately want the prayer to be granted. And then it will be granted.

And so, this morning, as we start the process of trying to grow back this church to recover after the long year of COVID, I ask you – are you willing to do your part in growing this church? Will you contribute the funds that are needed? Will you greet the visitors that arrive, help them feel comfortable, become their trustworthy friends? Will you teach children, will you help the mothers feel good about their children and the burdens of family life, will you demonstrate how fathers should become the spiritual leaders in their families? Will you step forward and give of your time and skills and special gifts and witness to what Jesus has done for you? In short, will you be a good Christian to all who come near us in this church and in the community?

Tonight, as well as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, we will have Revival speakers and revival music. The kid’s ministry is restarting – we could still use a couple of more volunteers to help. The first weekend of September we’ll have the big rummage sale. Assuming God keeps the COVID virus away, we’ll continue to reach out – every week, many, many people hear us on V96.9 FM and online through the Facebook page and the website. We are beginning to truly reach out to people. We are at the beginning of a great work of the Holy Spirit in our community. Each of us can be a part of this great work. You have a flyer in your hands – call or speak to several friends, family, and neighbors, inviting them to the Revival, offering to pick them up, offering to help them with their children, do whatever it takes to bring them here over the next few evenings.

Today, I’m going to ask for your deep, passionate prayers to support this outreach. No half-hearted prayers, please! Pray strongly. Tonight and tomorrow, I’ll ask you to continue praying, and to work hard to make new friends of all who visit us.

I’d like everyone here today to come forward to the altar rail. You don’t need to kneel – you can stand if you need to. But when we all come to the rail, I’d like to hear everyone saying a prayer for the success of the revival. May many people and children come to Jesus. May some of them choose to come back and attend this church regularly to learn what it really means to become a Christian. May others be healed from the spiritual wounds that have happened to them over the years, particularly the year of COVID. May new, deep friendships be made. Pray for whatever and whoever you think needs a prayer. You can make the same prayers at home listening or in your car.

On Sunday, August 1, we will break bread together for Holy Communion, joining together with our new friends. Pray that there will be many of them.

And if you’re already here, come forward to the altar rail to pray for your peace, your rest, your healing – or pray for the peace, the rest, the healing of another person, a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Come forward to support another person and help them with their burdens. Come to the altar rail as we sing.

Amen!

Post-Sermon Song: Let us BreakBread Together 618

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song  - To God be the Glory 98

Go and Praise God all week long!

Two Peoples Become One

After 9/11 we were living on the east side of Atlanta, operating our online ink supply business. We sold pint bottles of inkjet ink for $34.95 and shipped them all over the world. Almost every day, Saundra and I were on the phone from 9 AM to 9 PM – and then someone from California would call as we walked out the door to go home twenty minutes later. Every week we struggled to make payroll and pay our suppliers and every month we struggled to pay the rent on the office, warehouse, and our home. It was a time of great stress.

We finally moved from Atlanta to Lowell, OH, to a home overlooking the Muskingum River, putting the office and the warehouse within 100 feet from our house. Our costs dropped tremendously, and I remember many evenings that summer walking home and sitting on the front porch for a couple hours, watching the river flow. It was a wonderful time reconnecting with God. It was a time of peace, a time to re-evaluate life, a time with family.

I remember one evening watching the dogs play. We had a ten-year-old Border Collie, a female long-haired chihuahua, and she had 6 month-old puppies. And they played on the front bank, chasing the border collie up and down the bank. We watched until the fireflies came out, laughing at them, watching our three kids who were at home play with them. It was a great evening. We’d never had that in Atlanta. Peace and family. And the river in the background.

We spoke about the early part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church last week. The Apostle continued in this letter, first to thank the Ephesians for their faith in the Lord Jesus, and their love for all God’s people. He prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be opened so that they would know the hope to which God had called them, reminding them of the mighty power of God with which God raised Jesus from the dead.

Beginning in Chapter Two, Paul reminded the Ephesians that they – and all of us – were dead in our sins, in the ways we used to live, following the ways of the world. We were all deserving of God’s wrath, but “because of His great love for us”, God made us alive with Christ solely by God’s grace, the gift of God. Our contribution is simply to have faith, which is also given by God. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Now, at the beginning of our reading in verse 11, Paul turns his attention to those of us who were formerly Gentiles by birth. “Gentiles” are people who are not Jewish. The word comes from the Hebrew term “goy”, which means a “nation”. The “goyim” were those who belonged to the nations of the world. This entered the Latin language and became “gentilis”, meaning “clan or tribe”

We are the Gentiles, for we are Gentiles unless we have Jewish parents. Paul points out that we were once separated from Christ, AND excluded from citizenship in Israel. We were foreigners to the covenants of the promises made to Abraham and his descendants, the Jews. Therefore, we were without hope and without God in the world.

To Paul, all the world was divided into Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were given promises by God through an agreement, a covenant made between God and Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews. That covenant was renewed between God and the Israelites at the time of Moses. God agreed to be their God, protecting them and supporting them, increasing their numbers, while the Israelites agreed to worship God and follow God’s Law, given through Moses.

The Gentiles were everyone else. The various clans and tribes of Gentiles, from Romans to Egyptians to Canaanites to Chinese to Germans to Russians to Persians to Scotts and Irish and English to Africans all chose to worship their own gods or no gods, which ranged from idols of wood and stone, carved by human hands to simply ancestors who had become legendary to perhaps even fallen angels who had set themselves up as gods and goddesses. But it was clear to Paul – and any good Jew, that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the only God.

Until God sent part of Himself to earth as Jesus the Messiah, the Savior, the Christ – the words all mean much the same. And through the blood sacrificed by Jesus the Christ, all of us Gentiles who once were far away from God have been brought near.

Behind this section is a history of persecution, discrimination, and warfare. For in the Roman Empire, the first true Emperor, Augustus Caesar, who had been Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian, won the Roman throne in the years-long civil wars after Caesar was killed in 44 BC. Augustus then promoted Julius to be worshiped as a god. Octavian, as Julius’ adopted son, then took on the title of Divi Filius, or Son of the Divine – or, as it may also be translated, “Son of God”.

And so, Augustus and his officials began to spread word around the Empire that all citizens who wished to remain in good standing must bring a coin and bow at the feet of a statue of Augustus in worship. The Jews would not do this – and since they represented about 10% of the Empire’s population and were prone to rise in revolt when pushed to worship the Emperor, a compromise was reached – the Jews would pay the price in coin, but did not need to bow in worship – in return the Jews would not revolt over this issue. The Jews were also exempted from military service and generally allowed to follow their customs.

However, customs led to many disagreements. Imagine inviting a Jewish man to your home for a meal. He would not come, because you probably would serve pork, maybe shrimp or lobster, maybe even horsemeat, none of which a Jew could eat. You probably would not wash before eating – which Jews were commanded to do. As a good Roman pagan, your home would probably have in the corner a small shelf devoted to small statues of your favorite gods or goddesses, again offensive to the Jew. And if he explained why, you would likely be offended – after all, would you remove the cross from your wall so as not to offend a visitor simply because they did not believe in Jesus?

Despite the larger Empire-wide decrees, locally, there were arguments, fights, and riots by and against Jews, which had the effect of creating a distrust between the Jews and the local Gentiles.

And so Paul begins writing of the peace of Christ in verse 14. “For He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.”

The early church in Ephesus, like many early churches across the Eastern Empire, held members who had been raised Jewish – and many members who were formerly Gentiles and pagans. In the church meeting, there would be a former Roman soldier who had previously sacrificed cattle to Mars, the god of war – and a woman who had been a temple prostitute for the goddess Diana, and a man who had grown up reading the books of Moses and avoided pork his entire life. Can you imagine the tensions that lie under the surface? Can you imagine the tension when the Roman soldier suggested everyone getting together for a pig roast? And I’ve seen churches fight over the color the walls should be repainted!

And so Paul points out the advantage of worshiping Christ together, “For He himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace.”

And believe it or not, this peace happened. The Christian churches gradually grew, and even began to flourish. Oh, there were fights – Paul’s letters are documents of making judgments about those arguments. But in general, coming to know and understand what Jesus offered put all those other arguments into perspective.

Early on, while living and teaching in Antioch, a large city which is today just southeast of the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea, Paul and Barnabus took a visit to Jerusalem to get a ruling on how Jewish a Gentile needed to be to become a Christian. The principal issues were over circumcision and the dietary rules. Naturally, Gentile men thought that adult circumcision was going to far. The Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem agreed. They judged that the leaders should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who were turning to God. They sent back a letter (which is found in Acts 15) by Paul, Barnabas, Judas Barsabbas, and Silas, which read, in part:

“…It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”

Paul saw that Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross reconciled both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross and this put to death their hostility toward one another. As Paul said about Jesus, “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peach to those who were near. For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. “

Despite the deep disagreements about cultural issues, Jesus’ sacrifice brought the Jews and Gentiles together, even though both thought their way was superior to the way of the other, and both often felt looked down upon by the other. They recognized that Jesus had shown them a superior way to both cultures, for He had died for all, something neither side would have even considered doing.

So what does this have to do with us today? Have you ever noticed that today, in the society of the world around us, there are people we call Christians – and people we call “non-Christians”? There are many parallels between the Jew/Gentile issues of Paul’s time, and the Christian/Non-Christian issues of today. Let me make it clearer to you.

Imagine that you are a Christian inviting a non-Christian over for dinner. You’ll probably not have beer at the table – at least that is what the non-Christian will expect, and so he won’t bring a bottle of wine or a case of beer. Your language will probably not use certain words – at least, that’s what the non-Christian will expect, and so he’ll be embarrassed if he uses those words – or you’ll be offended if he continually uses those words. He may be expecting to dig right into the food; you’ll be expecting to wait until grace is said. You’ll find you watch different television shows, different movies, read different magazines, do different things in your spare time. You’ll probably have different political opinions, especially on social issues.

Can you see why there might be disagreements, arguments, and misunderstandings between the Christian and the non-Christian?

And yet, the same basic dynamic is still there. Jesus died for all of us, Christian and non-Christian. All who see this and choose to follow Jesus come under His protection, for He has shown us all a better way. It doesn’t matter if we were born to Christian parents and baptized a few days later – or if we are 70 years old and have never set foot into a church, Jesus still died for all of us and offers us the gift of eternal life. We just have to accept His gift and, as Paul says, we will no longer be foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household. This church, you see, is not a building, it is not even an organization, but it is an organism growing up from a foundation established by the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone and seed.

Just as a building goes together piece by piece, not instantly at once, but gradually over time, so we all together are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The church is an organism, not an organization, not a building. It grows and changes over the years, the decades, the centuries. Think about the trees in your yard. They were planted years ago. They grew. Their roots found rocks in their way – some of which they simply moved out of the way, some of which were too big to move, so the tree grew around those rocks.

And like all organisms, the church needs different nutrients to grow – different types of people. We are not like a Taco Bell franchise, controlled from corporate, all looking the same, the same size, the same menu. No, every church is different, made of different sorts of people, and what brings us all together is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the cross, which has us working together despite our differences in politics, in wealth, in background, in speech, in appearance. Christ pulls us together – and we learn to live a different way than we lived when we were in the world.

Instead of living and fighting alone, we join together. Instead of struggling alone, we struggle together. Instead of trying to each carry heavy burdens, we carry those burdens together. Our coming together and asking for help from Christ is not a weakness, it is a strength, for we have learned our limits and where to get help we need. And Christ shows us His strength – and we learn our particular strengths as we help others.

Our Gospel reading happens in the week after the execution of John the Baptist by King Herod. We forget that several of Jesus’ disciples had been followers of John the Baptist. We forget that Jesus was John’s cousin. And so, after the word came that John had died, the disciples were upset. So Jesus said to them, ““Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

For the struggle to survive in this world is difficult. Every day is difficult. Every day people grow more aware they need help. Every day, we lose jobs, we lose friends, and we grow exhausted. We need a safe, quiet place to step back from the world around us. But the answer isn’t sleep or video games or more television. The answer isn’t in alcohol or food or other chemicals. Those all simply isolate us and depress us.

You may be working a job, a job with hard manual labor. You need rest, and a time to exercise your mind.

You may be an engineer or a lawyer, you may be running a business, a business with great stress that you carry alone.  You need friends who aren’t fellow employees.

You may be a health care worker, a nurse, a doctor. This has been a terrible year – you’ve seen disease, you’ve seen death, and you’ve worried about your family. You need a safe place where life is talked about, not death. You need to remember the good in the world, not just the ugly.

You may be a teacher or a parent feeling ripped apart by the last year. You need great healing and a chance to speak with other adults.

And so I say to you who are listening, as Jesus did, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Come away to spend an hour or so, once a week, sitting among people who will become your friends, who will share your burdens, who recognize the sacrifice that Jesus made, and are grateful for that sacrifice. Come to Jesus and be taught many things. Come to Jesus and be healed here at Cedar Grove United Methodist on Rt 47, just beyond WVU-Parkersburg. Our live service this week is at 10:30 AM.

And if you’re already here, come forward to the altar rail to pray for your peace, your rest, your healing – or pray for the peace, the rest, the healing of another person, a friend, a relative, a neighbor. Come forward to support another person and help them with their burdens. Come to the altar rail as we sing.

Amen!

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song – They’ll know we are Christians by our Love 2223

Go and Praise God all week long!

The Holy Path

It has been a while since we talked about the Apostle Paul. Paul was a Pharisee from Greek-speaking Turkey, with a Jewish father who had been granted Roman citizenship. As a teenager, Paul had gone to Jerusalem and studied under the rabbi Gamaliel, one of the greatest Jewish teachers, a man who is still quoted today in academic discussions about the Jewish Law. When Jesus appeared, was crucified, and rose from the dead, Paul was not in the story. But a few months later, after Jesus ascended to Heaven, after the great outbreak of the Holy Spirit among the disciples at Pentecost, after Stephen began to debate Pharisees in the street, got in trouble, and was stoned – Paul stood there holding the cloaks of the men who stoned Stephen. Paul was convinced that this Jesus movement was blasphemous, sacrilege, and needed to be stamped out. So Paul lead a movement to grab Christians and throw them into jail. He even got a letter from the high priest to travel to Damascus to pursue Christians there and bring them back to Jerusalem. Paul was convinced that those who claimed Jesus was Lord should be removed before this dangerous idea spread.

Until he traveled to Damascus. On the road to Damascus, he was struck blind by a bright light and heard Jesus speaking to him. He was led into Damascus, was visited by a Christian believer, had his sight restored, and was baptized. Then Paul put his fantastic mind to work, went to the desert, studied and understood the Old Testament scriptures about Jesus and came out of the desert preaching that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, God Himself walking upon the earth. He traveled across modern Turkey several times, to Greece, and even to Italy to found many churches and train other evangelists. He also wrote several letters, which make up much of the New Testament. One of those letters was written to the church he founded in Ephesus, then a Greek-speaking port city and center of goddess worship in western Turkey.

Today, Paul has written a letter to the Ephesian church. After a customary greeting explaining who Paul is and who he is writing to, Paul gets down to business and writes perhaps the wisest, densest letter

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

It is a reflection of Paul’s spiritual maturity that he begins the body of this letter with a praising of God the Father. Praising God at the beginning of a conversation is a great way to turn the conversation the way all conversations should turn, which is to acknowledge that God is present with us. We are never alone; we are never hidden from God when we speak – God is able to hear and see us, and we might as well take a moment to praise God for what God has done for us. God has given us EVERY spiritual blessing. There are earthly blessings and there are spiritual blessings, and it is good to understand the differences.

Earthly blessings are those gifts that God gives us on earth that remain on earth. For example, a person may be blessed with financial riches, or wonderful children or good health or the ability to sing or paint or solve mechanical problems. In general, we are only given a few of these earthly blessings; other people are given a different mix of blessings. One person is a wealthy mechanic; another person is a superbly healthy accountant who loves working with numbers all day long.

But spiritual blessings come in the heavenly realms as a package. All spiritual blessings are given to all Christians – Let me list some of these blessings.

For example, Christians are being adopted as children of God. What is the blessing of this? When a beggar flags you down at the traffic light, you may or may not check your wallet for a few dollars to give to him or her. But to your children you plan long and carefully to support them with food, water, shelter, clothing, education, and many luxuries such as bicycles, phones, toys, tennis shoes, perhaps even a used car or books or cable television or internet, and especially you plan carefully with a last will and testament for your grown children. And we have become adopted children of God! Imagine the long term blessings that God is even now planning for us!

We are chosen by God to become holy, not because he saw that we were holy or saw we would become holy, but because he determined that his children would become holy. Those who are Christians WILL BE holy and blameless in God’s sight, which is a wonderful thing. And so we will be spiritually blessed with the attention of the wisest mind in the universe to show us how to become holy, for holiness leads to happiness and joy. Of course, sometimes this training course, this movement along the path of holiness is difficult for us, like being thrown in a 4-ft pool of water is unpleasant for a 7-year-old who does not like the feel of getting wet, but with the child’s parent watching carefully, there is no real danger, just the fear of the unknown. And so, within a week or two, the child loves the swimming pool. In the same way, we children of God do not like the feeling of being fired or laid off from a job, we hate the idea of moving to a different home, teenagers are aghast and fearful at the idea of losing a boyfriend or a girlfriend, but we all adapt quickly to the new job, the new home, the new friend who is better for us.

Before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, do you remember what a trap for the poor that New Orleans had become? Filled with the occult, drug use, alcoholism, and no hope of ever getting away, many New Orleans residents were filled with sadness, depression, and loneliness. Then, with the Hurricane that God sent, people had to leave town. They had two choices: Leave or die. So they loaded onto the buses and were taken to Memphis or Houston or Nashville. And there, they found Christians and churches that opened their doors to them, that found them jobs, and connected them with Twelve-step programs. Many of the people who left New Orleans never returned, because they found a better life. God had moved them along to that better life even though they would have never left New Orleans if the Hurricane had not arrived. When God is behind a change in your life, it is best not to fight it, but hold on for the ride and smile!

And God does not do these things to punish us or because of how good or how bad we’ve been, but God does these things, as verse 5 says, “in accordance with His pleasure and will.” This is grace in action – God giving us a blessing that we did not deserve, did not ask for, and was not forced by any reason. It is simply the character of God to do good for us because God wants to do good for us.

Another spiritual blessing given all Christians is to be accepted by God because we simply belong to Jesus Christ, God’s Son. It doesn’t matter how good we’ve been or whether we’ve been terrible people, God accepts us simply because we belong to Jesus. Like a stray cat adopted by a little child, the cat is accepted by the child’s father, not because of how good a cat it is, but because the child, whom the father loves, has claimed the cat as its own. God has given us grace because we belong to the One he loves.

As Christians, we also receive the spiritual blessings of forgiveness of sins and the redemption from slavery to sin because of the blood of Christ. We each have the stain of sin, the wrong actions we have committed in our lives, but the blood of Christ removes that stain. We are like people who sold ourselves into slavery, in this case slavery to sins such as addiction, anger, hatred, and immorality. But Jesus has paid the price to buy us back from slavery, to redeem us from that slavery to sin. He has set us free – and this is given to all who choose to follow Jesus Christ and accept that He is the Son of God.

Another spiritual blessing, a privilege granted to all Christians is we can understand and receive God’s will, the mystery of His will are made known to us. The deep reasons that He sent Jesus Christ to the world are revealed to us. And thus we can see more and more the wisdom and the planning of God – and the world makes more sense.

We receive the spiritual blessing of being united in Christ. We are no longer divided people, more and more we have a unity of purpose and a unity of belonging with Christ. It is simple and easy to see in our world the dangers of the various factions in the world – and even in our own country. But we are united to and in Christ, the Son of God, tapping into that healing and protection that comes from the greatest and wisest power in the Universe.

We have the spiritual blessing of the eternal inheritance, a home with God forever, heirs of the kingdom, a happiness which is given to us from our heavenly Father, like a trust fund that will never expire, more security than any billionaire has received from his money, an eternal protection from God our Father.

We receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit, which is the deposit which guarantees our inheritance. We were marked by the Spirit and sealed in protection when we hear the gospel of our salvation, the message of truth. We are now secured, like earnest money secures a home. Yet in our case the home secured is a mansion in the future with God and Christ. All of the promises are secured by this blessing of the Holy Spirit, until the full redemption of these promises and blessings at the general resurrection – which will be the ultimate day of praising God’s glory.

Those of us who have been believers for longer are to praise God even more. This is part of the plan. As we move from those first days of wondering about Jesus, to understanding Jesus’ purpose, to believing in Him, to following Him, to proclaiming His Gospel to others, our praises should grow.

And this series of Spiritual blessings are given to all who choose to follow Jesus Christ. It does not matter whether you have follow Jesus since you were a child – or whether you are right now considering whether to really commit to Him, these spiritual blessings of adoption, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption from sin, the revelation of God’s will, unity in Christ, eternal inheritance, and the Holy Spirit are waiting for us. We may receive earthly blessings from day to day, the type we talk about during prayer time which differ from person to person. But we all receive the spiritual blessings.

And so we see a huge shower of blessings awaiting us at the end of our walk with Christ. There is much more to following Christ than “living forever” or “going to Heaven”.

I am constantly amazed at how small the blessing are that most Christians acknowledge. Are we so used to this world, are we so self-absorbed, are we so focused upon the material things of this world that we cannot see the great blessings God gives to us each day? Or are we so blind, so deaf, so spiritually asleep that we do not see or hear or even notice that God is performing a brass band with fireworks around us each and every day trying to get our attention. Let me draw your attention to some blessings from God…

1)    God has told you He exists. God does this in the Bible, in the testimony of people around you, and in the little wonders of life. For example, why is a rainbow pretty? As a physicist, I could explain to you why a rainbow looks like it does, the size of the rainbow, the color progression of the rainbow, why it mostly appears when there is rain. But why is it pretty? There is no good reason for a rainbow – or a coral reef, for that matter – to be pretty. Except that God wants to get your attention, and He loves pretty. What a blessing!

2)    Another blessing is that God has given us a wonderful land to live in. It does not have massive wildfires like the West, it rarely has earthquakes, it rarely gets below -20 F nor above 100 F, crops grow, rain falls, the land is green and well-watered, not brown, not sand or rock.

3)    Another blessing is that God gives us stable physical laws. A ball thrown into the air rises and falls on a predictable path. Airplanes can fly because the laws of physics are stable, the same every day. Electricity flows because 120 volts can only jump so far, and that distance can be predicted. Chemistry always works the same, day after day, and so food has predictable effects, even though I know we’d all like ice cream and chocolate to have less predictable effects on our bodies. But predictable physical laws are a blessing – God could have created an unstable universe. Imagine living in Alice’s Wonderland! Imagine a life where the force of gravity is different from minute to minute, where food is healthy one day and poison the next day.

4)    Another blessing from God is that we do not have bands of raiders and criminals that attack our city – just the occasional isolated person or two. Artillery does not pound our buildings day and night. God has led most people to prefer to buy and sell, to work for a wage, and not to use weapons to take. This is not true around the world – but it is true in almost all countries which are dominated by Christians, because we respect that all people are formed in the image of God, walking, talking sculptures of a view of God. Other countries have different religions, and in many of those countries, the gun or the sword or the fist are the principle ways people distribute wealth. But when the evening news talks about raiders and criminals that run countries around the world – be blessed that God protects us here.

5)    And another blessing from God is that we have children and grandchildren. Imagine how dull the world would be without children and grandchildren. Imagine how dull things would be if God had established people more like trees instead of as humans. But God did not. God, even in our fallen world, after Adam ate the Apple, God blessed us with the joy that comes from children and grandchildren – either our own or others.

Yes, God gives us many blessings. He allows us to ride in cars that almost always get to where they are supposed to go safely. Healthy days are the general rule – it is only when we don’t have a healthy day that we notice and say we are “sick”. The sun shines every day – although it is sometimes covered by clouds and then,  it cools us down or rains – which we need. We can see the moon and planets and stars at night; we can see and hear birds during the day. And sitting here beside us we have friends, people we enjoy being next to. God designed us so that we would be blessed by friends, not sit here like a group of wild cats, ready to scratch and claw and hiss at everyone else.

We are blessed by God, my friends. Look around, develop “blessing-vision”, where you see the blessings around you every day, every hour. Blessings occur in a normal day – you don’t have to wait until the semi-truck misses your car by half an inch to be blessed. No, your child called you or gave you a hug. It was a blessing. You hit a green light on the way to town. A blessing. You hit a red light and saw a beautiful cloud while you waited. A blessing.

Or you can give a blessing. You called a friend and your phone call was a blessing to your friend. Or you gave an extra 2 dollar tip to the waitress – or even 10 dollars – and were a blessing to your new friend, the waitress who you just blessed.

So today, I’d like to ask every person here, every single one of you, to come up to the altar during this song, and thank God in prayer for some blessing you’ve found over the last week. You don’t need to kneel – you can stand if kneeling is difficult for you. If you CAN kneel, well, that’s a blessing from God. Just stand up from your seat and make your way to the front to thank God for a blessing you’ve received.

And as you begin to make your way up here, let us share a blessing with you, the greatest blessing that you will receive, when one day you stand before Jesus and God the Father, and they tell you, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

Amen!

Post-Sermon Song: Well Done Video

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song – There Shall be Showers of Blessing 349

Two by Two

It’s been an interesting week. I don’t know about you, but I stayed in the house most of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday because I don’t like 95 degree heat. But Thursday evening was a great time, with our one-night Vacation Bible School. We met some new children, and hope to have more back when we do Part II late this month.

Today is July 4th, Independence Day. We celebrate our independence being declared from Britain almost two hundred fifty years ago. And today can become a day of personal independence, declaring our independence from bad habits, the slavery to sins, the worry about what happens when we die. Following Jesus Christ can set you free from all of that. And leading people to Jesus Christ can give you the joy that comes from completing a task Jesus has assigned to each one of us on earth – to set others free to live abundant lives and to have eternal life.

Did you hear the first reading this week, the one from Ezekiel 2?

2 He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.”

“Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

The Israelites 500 years before Christ. America today. The Lord has always sent people to speak to a rebellious nation. Will you, like Ezekiel, speak to those around you? For with God’s help – and the Holy Spirit speaking through you – you can lead many people to God’s saving love. How many people, how many adults have you led to the Lord in your life? How many souls will come to you in Heaven and speak to you of the time when you sat down with them, had a talk about Jesus Christ, and they accepted Christ? How many have you led to Christ over the last year, the last five years, the last decade?

In Matthew 28, at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew writes:

"Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

Let me ask you, people of God, do you believe this statement? Do you believe that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus Christ?

If so, then listen to His command to all who consider themselves disciples, students, and followers of Christ:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

And then, Jesus gives us this promise: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Consider His command again: ”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Make disciples – students, followers of Christ.

Of all nations – the Greek says ethnui, “All people groups”. Whites, blacks, Americans, Mexicans, Asians, Arabs, rich, poor, veterans, Indians, Native Americans, drug users, drug dealers, straight, gay, clean, dirty, old, young, children, alcoholics, pagans, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, the intelligent, the mentally disabled, your friendly neighbors, your hateful neighbors, your brother-in-law, your distant cousin, the woman at the Dollar General, the man at the Go-Mart, all means all, you see.

They are to be baptized. Lead them to the point they want to be baptized and we’ll get them wet here or at the river.

Then, teach them to obey all of Jesus’ commands – including this very command to “Go and make disciples of all nations…” Our job is finished when those we have led to Jesus lead others to Jesus.

Did you hear the part where we invite people to church? NO! We don’t get off that easy! We are each to lead and teach.

That can be a scary task. But Jesus has asked each of us to do this. Also, our society improves when each person around us is a follower of Jesus, rather than a follower of their own desires. Additionally, leading people to Jesus is the best way to grow to understand what Jesus asks of us, what Jesus taught, and how to be an excellent Christian.

But what if we don’t know enough?

Come to Sunday School, Come to workshops, Come to mid-week Bible study. Come to me and ask for help filling in the gaps where you don’t know.

But you know much more than you think. Do you realize that if you have faithfully attended church for ten years, you’ve heard 500 sermons? You know so much more about God and Jesus and Christianity than most people in our world around us.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a 24-year-old girl with a biochemistry degree, a very bright young woman, and I mentioned that the bishop had said such-and-such. The woman said, “Wait. What is a bishop?” She understood the bishop as a piece from the chessboard, but did not have any idea what or who a bishop was in the original sense of the word. Years ago, I was talking to another student who asked me, what is a pastor? Is he the government official in charge of the church?

We have grown up in a Christian society, but it is changing rapidly. Each of you who sits on these pews is an expert in Christian thought compared to much of the world. You have the wisdom of hundreds of sermons about the Word of God bouncing around in your brains – and in your hearts.

And if you are one of those people listening or watching who wonders what the big deal is about following Christ – we are here to teach and show you the difference between the Christianity Hollywood puts down – and the real Christianity that keeps so many people coming to church every week.

Some of you sitting here actively look for people to lead to Christ – others will speak of Christ when asked. I’m here today to remind you that Jesus has commanded you become active, seeking people to lead to Christ – for these people who do not know Christ are dying every day, and will not spend eternity with Jesus and God in Heaven. You have the knowledge to lead them to a good, eternal life. If you hoard that knowledge, it is like withholding food from a starving man, holding back water from a thirsty person in the desert. Worse, for Jesus has commanded you, each of us to find people and lead them to Him.

And so how do we do this?

Our Reading from Mark 6 shows us a bit. In the first part, Jesus goes to His hometown, Nazareth, and He taught at the synagogue, His home “church”, if you will. He had probably been gone from town for about a year or so.

The people at the synagogue were amazed – but apparently not impressed. The asked where He had received the wisdom He spoke of – and they asked where it all came from? And then they began to say, “Isn’t this the carpenter, Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren’t His sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him – a local boy who was lecturing them about the things of God. They would not listen to His teaching because they remembered Him as a child and a teen and a young man. To them, He was a carpenter – not a great rabbi!

It has been said that an expert is a man from out-of-town with a briefcase. For some reason, we give honor to the visiting expert rather than accept the local man or woman. Why is that? Is it because when a local person shows us exceptional wisdom and knowledge about a subject, we feel attacked because it bring home to us that, after all, we could have found that wisdom and knowledge also. The farmer who doubles his crop yield is not really a welcome speaker at the local farm bureau dinner – but would be welcomed halfway across the state. The local pianist who suddenly plays exceptionally well may be admired, but she will never locally receive the $3000 she can make for a night on the stage across the country. Albert Einstein had to leave Switzerland for America before he could make a substantial living as a scientist. We don’t really appreciate those who suddenly do well if we knew them when they were simply nerds in high school.

Many times, when a church is failing, having failed to listen to a succession of pastors over five or six years, the congregation asks the Conference to simply appoint their lay leader as their pastor. It isn’t done because it rarely works. The local leader has too much baggage developed over the years. He can’t tell the congregation the hard things – or he is branded a traitor. And it all goes back to this biblical episode, a situation that is grounded in a real truth, as Jesus says, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”

Mark tells us that Jesus could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith – but that lack of faith was because the people of Nazareth had watched Him grow up, they had run beside Him in games, they all knew His family – and they simply preferred to keep Him as a carpenter rather than a great teacher – and they KNEW He wasn’t the Son of God or the Messiah, for, after all, He was from Nazareth. He was from their hometown, and nothing good can come from our hometown.

And we do that, too. We look for our Messiah to come from out of town, even out of state. Not only for our religious issues, but for our everyday issues. We inherently believe that great ideas must come from elsewhere, not here, because we live here. And so Jesus sent the disciples out two by two into the villages. They were the experts from out of town. They were strangers – talking to strangers.

And so this happens to us when we begin to speak to friends, relatives, and neighbors about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For thirty, forty, even sixty years, those people close to us have looked at us through a certain, predictable lens. They know us, they know our past, they know what is important to us. And so when we begin to speak to people of Christ, there is a certain way we must speak to those who are close to us if we ever hope to break through with the Gospel.

They remember the fact that Mountaineer football has dominated our lives during the fall. So if we have decided to let Christ take the place of football, we need to acknowledge that fact, we need to expressly talk about the why we’ve changed before they will listen to the Gospel from us.

And it is very important that we talk about the Gospel – that we don’t spend our time talking to others about the behavior changes they need to make. We cannot lecture our friends, neighbors, and family about behavior changes they should make before they have noticed behavior changes we’ve made, before they’ve commented upon those changes, and we’ve explained why we made those changes – because Christ asked me to make those changes. Otherwise, we are simply branded as hypocrites by our friend – “you, the man who has always had five beers with me every football Sunday, you have the guts to tell me I should stop drinking just because you stopped drinking?” It doesn’t work – and that’s because those behavior changes are not the Gospel. They happen because of the Gospel.

No, talking about the Gospel is something like this. Try saying: "A few months ago I realized that Jesus had made a terrible sacrifice, He had died on the cross for me. For me! And because of that, I realized I was more important than I had ever thought I was. So I looked at myself and realized that I needed to change some things in my life and make my life mean something. I realized MY drinking was out of control, so I cut back, and then about a month ago I stopped completely, because I realized it was wasting time and money. That’s got nothing to do with you and how much you drink or don’t drink. And now, I’ve started making a difference with the kids at church where before I couldn’t wait to get home to the game."

We talk about what Jesus did, and how that hits us in our lives. We admit a change we’ve made from the old way to the new way, and let it explain the changes they’re seeing in us.

This little talk, explaining our old weakness and how Jesus made a difference FOR US, begins to open up a chance to talk a bit about church, about Jesus, about what we continue to learn about God. We can now talk about Christ a little bit every time we talk together. And if we continue to advance along the path of holiness, following the guidance of Scripture and the Holy Spirit, our character will gradually grow stronger and the Spirit will guide our speech with our friends until one day they will engage us in a deep conversation about Jesus. And at that point, we will be very close to leading them to baptism.

But that is for friends, neighbors, and family. Praising God and the works of Jesus will gradually lead them to Christ. For the measure of an effective church is not the attendance, it is not the finances, it is not even the excitement of the weekly service – the measure of an effective church is the number and length of the God-centered conversations the members have every week, particularly with others. A poor church rarely talks about God outside its doors; a rich church has members who are always talking about God and Christ to all sorts of people in the church and outside the church. We have several people here who are like that! So make your contribution this week; speak of God and Christ to everyone you meet this week. It doesn’t cost a dime and doesn’t require a strong back – just a passion to speak of the Savior who has given you eternal life.

Jesus also wanted His movement to grow. So Jesus did not stay in one place – Mark tells us Jesus went around teaching from village to village. We can get stagnate when we only talk to people from our church. Years ago, I had a woman tell me she didn’t know anyone who wasn’t a Christian; I told her she needed to make more friends.

Jesus called the Twelve core disciples to him and sent them out two by two with authority over impure spirits.

He told them to "take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. When you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them."

Put in today’s language, Jesus wanted people to go out to meet people, walking around the neighborhood or to the shopping mall or Walmart. Dress plainly. Don’t worry about people who won’t listen to you.

The disciples went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Today, just as in Jesus’ day, we would engage people in conversation, praise God, and speak with them about Jesus. We should listen to them, pray with them right then and there, and possibly anoint the hurting and suffering with oil – you can get the oil at any Christian shop or online. Simply make the sign of the cross on their forehead with a bit of oil, and pray. We might want to carry a Gideon testament or two and give them away freely to our new friends. Need testaments to give away - talk to a Gideon.

How do I engage people in conversation? I praise God. "Hasn’t God given us wonderfully warm weather today? Hasn’t God given us wonderful rain today? Isn’t the wind from God wonderful today?" At the supermarket: "These rolls are wonderful. God really gave someone at that company a blessing when He taught them how to make these rolls." When I get the chance, I ask them what church they attend. Most honestly respond that they used to attend church A, but haven’t in years. (If you are like that, you'll be welcome here at Cedar Grove Church.)

I remember that, as Paul tells us, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I assume that I’ll see the person again – and this takes off the pressure. My goal at a first meeting is to be a pleasant person, to help the other in some minor way, to find out something that will help me remember the person. Remember – our goal is to lead someone to Christ – not necessarily to this church, although that would be nice. Of course, I usually mention our radio broadcast – Sundays at 9 AM on V96.9 – and our live, in-person service at 10:30 am here on Rt 47 across from WVU-Parkersburg.

So what can we do to better follow Jesus’ command to make disciples?

First of all, genuinely adopt a philosophy that meeting new people is a good thing. Stretch yourself to speak to strangers, for you never know when a stranger needs a new friend who will care for them. And always remember that the oddest people are usually most in need of friends.

Second, praise God to everyone you speak with. Praising God draws the attention of the Holy Spirit – and begins to build the idea with the other person that you know something about God. And remember that you DO know something about God, simply because you have been attending here for years. In fact, I’ll bet you know a simple song that praises God. Sing with me, #95 Praise God, from Whom All Blessing Flow.

Third, let the wonderful Holy Spirit flow through you and speak through you. Let the fruits of the Spirit show - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A soul’s eternal destiny may rely upon your faithfulness.

If you are not already a baptized Christian, if you don’t have a current church home, we invite you to visit us at our weekly 10:30 am live service on Rt 47 near WVU-Parkersburg. It’s a good time to meet new friends who you can count on in time of trouble – and times of joy! Plus, our children’s program is currently relaunching, giving them an opportunity to learn about God and Jesus Christ.

Now that COVID is fading away, at least temporarily, this is the time to reconnect with the God who protected you through the pandemic. We’ll be holding tent revival services at the church on July 25 through 28th with several fantastic guest speakers and plenty of music.

Until then, practice explaining the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that Christ came to earth, not to condemn the earth but to save the people of the earth. He died in our place so we could live forever – and He proved He was Son of God by coming back to life. Amen!

Post-Sermon Song: To God be the Glory 98

Benediction: May God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fill you and guide you this week, that you may do the will of God. Be blessed!

5 Closing Song – I will call upon the Lord 2202

Go and Praise God all week long!