Jesus' response to those who had a lack of faith was to teach them and to demonstrate faith by helping them and healing them.
That is a sharp contrast with what a lot of times religious people do, isn't it? They get called names and they have words that they use to describe them, to describe those who have yet to believe, and derogatory terms. They threaten people and they like to give them a hard time and everything else they can and try to argue and make life miserable for them if they don't believe and not only if they just don't believe in general, but if they don't believe exactly like a lot of times they think they should believe, somebody thinks they should believe.
Transcript of sermon preached extemporaneously
on July 4, 2021 at Briensburg UMC | [Audio] | [Video]
That is just exactly the opposite of what we see Jesus
doing in the face of unbelief. Here He was with all these people that He had
known all His life. If anybody He was going to be angry with, it would have
been them, but instead He was loving them and He went around that community and
other communities there around about and He taught. That's how He responded to
faith, by teaching people and helping them and healing them. So our job is to
encourage faith, to include everybody. We do that sacramentally at the Lord's
table as we gather around and the table of the Lord and all are welcome.
Encourage Faith
Then Jesus went to the villages around there, teaching the people. (Mark 6:6 GNT)
This is one of the Wesleyan heritages that we share with all those denominations I was telling you about in the World Methodist council that continue that also, because John Wesley brought that up, that the best place for people who don't know the Lord to meet the Lord. He's right here at the Lord's table with the Lord's people with the sacrament of Christ and celebrating Christ's presence and love for us.
Recently, there was an article that several of you might have seen because I shared it on Facebook. It was an article about the Methodists doing that, just how our table is open and how everybody is welcome and how it is not our job to go through the guest list that Christ has sent out and decide which ones to take off the Lord's guest list. Everybody's invited and everybody's welcome. So that kind of approach is what Jesus had right from the beginning, that everybody is invited into the kingdom. Everybody is welcome into the kingdom. So we treat each other as members of the family. Everybody is made in the image of God.
Christ gave His life for each and every one. So people
might say, "Well, they need to be warned about all this." Well, they
are. But they are missing things. Just think about one of the readings that we
had today talking about being carried up into heavenly realms to see things
that have never been seen before, the experiences that we have in our lives
that come from knowing Christ and from walking through the Christian pathway
and from growing spiritually and all that.
That's what people miss out on if they're not engaged in a
spiritual life. So they're missing out on those things already. But our job is
not to make it worse for them, but instead to make it better, to open the doors
and make it easier and to encourage people in their faith, wherever they are in
their faith journey. Maybe some people haven't even hardly thought about it,
and some have thought about it and gone different paths than we would have gone
and others in all different other kinds of places.
New People Come to Faith Every Day
We pondered your love-in-action, God, waiting in your temple: Your name, God, evokes a train of Hallelujahs wherever It is spoken, near and far; your arms are heaped with goodness-in-action. (Psalm 48:9-10 MSG)
New people are always coming to faith in Christ. They
always have been, and they always will be, even now. As the psalmist said,
"We pondered..." the Message put it this way... "We pondered your
love-in-action, God, waiting in your temple. Your name, God, evokes a train of
hallelujahs wherever it is spoken. Near and far, your arms are heaped with
goodness and action." What a wonderful word of praise that gives us that
picture that people all over the world gradually, one here, one there, another
there, all around the world, all of a sudden, coming into a personal
relationship with God and Christ and having their soul blessed and beginning
their spiritual journey, others moving forward step by step, even they, even
you, and even us, even in our community, and all around the world.
People are moving forward in their relationship with God
and learning to praise Him and being blessed by Him and getting to know God and
getting to have a relationship. That's what we want. We don't want to chase
people off. We want to bring people in. We want people to come together around
the Lord until finally the promise of the apostle is completed and fulfilled.
where He said “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” You know sometimes people have even put a harsh
twist on that too, like they're getting beaten into submission.
Trust God with Those Who Have Yet to Believe
And whether they listen or not (for remember, they are rebels), they will at least know they have had a prophet among them. (Ezekiel 2:5 TLB)
But they're being invited and they're accepting the
invitation. So we just have to trust God with them then and those that have yet
to believe, just trust God with them. God said to Ezekiel in The Living Bible,
"And whether they listen or not, for remember they are rebels, that they
will at least know that they have had a prophet among them." I love that
parenthetical statement, "For remember they are rebels." We can
remember that a lot of times, people that are just having a bad attitude about
everything and like to condemn people.
They reject any kind of science or medicine or anything
and make politics out of everything and cause trouble and everything like that.
They are rebels. That's the whole idea. They have their mind closed and they
don't want to hear what we have to say. They don't want to hear the good news.
They don't want to hear about faith and about God and things like that. They
have other things that they want. That's the whole idea. So whether they listen
or not, because they're probably not going to, but whether they listen or not,
at least they'll know that time they have had the witness borne to them.
Then they'll know that a prophet has been there or
somebody who they may not even call it that, but they'll know somebody has
talked to them about the spirituality. They'll know that you have demonstrated
love to them. They'll know that you have cared about them and that you have
tried to help them in whatever way you could. They'll know that, and that'll be
a part of their whole consciousness for the rest of their lives. So treat them
gently. Treat them as you would hope years later they would remember being treated
by you, because they will remember that, just as we think about ways that
people have treated us many years ago.
We remember those things, don't we? I didn't know I
remember. I didn't know I remembered the things that I've done and the way that
I've treated people either, for better or for worse. But we do, and they do
too. So treat people that way, not cursing people, not calling down balls of
fire on them if they don't believe or anything, but loving them and gently
leading them, gently moving. And then and ourselves gently move on to others
and minister our spiritual gifts to others who are ready to receive them.
Trust God that others will follow where we were and they
will continue in ministry and eventually it will all of this come together for
these other people and they will come to faith. In our Wesleyan tradition, we
say that prevenient grace, grace where God sends us into each other's lives and
sends us into different situations. That all adds up and moves people gently
along toward justifying grace where they place their faith in Christ and it all
comes together for them. It clicks and they realize and they place their faith
in Christ. They are justified and they're saved and they walk with Christ.
And then they continue in that holy path to sanctification
till their love is complete and everything. It's all done and their live is
complete in spirituality. That's why we're all in that process somewhere.
Everybody is, those that have been walking the path for a long time and those
that are just beginning. So we trust God with that. Remember that at any rate,
whatever else happened, they will remember what you said. They will remember
how you treated them, and they will think about that. That will have an effect
on their future spiritual growth and will be included in how they develop their
faith going forward, and they build on those memories.
Let God Convince
Each time he said, “No. But I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in weak people.” Now I am glad to boast about how weak I am; I am glad to be a living demonstration of Christ’s power, instead of showing off my own power and abilities. (2 Corinthians 12:9 TLB)
Let God convince people. That's why Jesus said the Holy
Spirit would convince people of sin and righteousness and judgment. Let God be
the one that convinces them of those things. Our job, even the best salesman
can't just convince somebody of spirituality. They can win some arguments but the Apostle wrote that some will plant, some water, but God gives the growth. In the
reading from the letter to Corinthians from Paul, he wrote, "Each time
they said no, but I am with you and that is all you need. My power shows up
best in weak people. Now I am glad to boast about how weak I am. I'm glad to be
a living demonstration of Christ's power instead of showing off my own power
and abilities."
So it's not us who is saving. We are not the ones who are able
to save anybody. It's Christ who saves. We're not the ones who can convince
people of anything. It's the Holy Spirit who does the convincing. Our job is to
make the proclamation. Our job is to be the witness, to point the finger to
Christ and say, "There He is. There He is. Look and receive His
love." Ours is to make the introductions and say, "Here is the church.
Here are God's people. Here is Christ. Here is the love. Come on in and make yourself at home."
Our job then is to extend that invitation and say,
"Come on and be a part of what we're up to here. Come on and be a part of
the kingdom of God. Come on and be a part of the love and friendship." We
get to be the conduits of the power and love that is much greater than anything
we are ourselves could even imagine or be able to do. So then we watch for the
results. It said in the gospel reading, "They cast out many devils and
anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them."
So a lot of times we wish we could see these immediate
results in other people's lives, but we can't always see that. Sometimes we
never are the ones who see that. But the most immediate effect and result that
we get to see is the effect on our own lives, is what is happening in our own
lives when we are witnessing, when we are loving, when we are teaching and
helping and anointing and on and on the list goes of these things that Christ
invites us to be and to do.
Watch for the Results
And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. (Mark 6:13 KJV)
When we are loving others as Christ has loved us, then we
get the blessing of doing that immediately. We get the blessing of being the
hands and feet of Christ. We have the privilege of extending the love and grace
and healing of Christ to every person that we're willing to extend that to. Sometimes
we even get to be the one who has scorched someone over that line, that thin
line from unbelief to belief, but always remember that many other people have
already been helping them along the way, have already been witnessing to them
and loving them to that point.
Just like that many of the people that we love and we
witness to and we minister our spiritual gifts to, we might not see them make
that leap of faith, but somebody else will. They'll be blessed to escort them
across that divide onto the other side. That's just the way it works and so
altogether. Others have brought them that far just as we have helped others get
closer. We think of John Wesley again and his moment that he wrote about when
he felt his heart strangely warm just thinking of the whole lifetime of
teaching by his parents and by his school where he learned the theology and
where he taught and his friends in the holy club that they were calling or
derisively calling Methodists because they were so serious about the way they
were approaching love and faith.
But yet he came to that moment with a little group of
people in a side street in London and, in that moment, that's where this faith
was ignited into something new and beautiful that moved him further along and
that gave birth to the feelings we have in our hearts this morning when we
think about it. So now, we walk people across and other people walk people
across. Together, we all rejoice with each other throughout the world,
throughout the church, throughout the spiritual realm, throughout heaven. We
rejoice in God's unconditional and persistent love. Amen.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment