MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/10/12

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Reading:
Luke 17:11-19

Text:
Luke 17:16 “He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.

Message:

This morning I want us to focus on a theme that is as old as the Bible itself, yet as fresh as the morning dew. It is a theme that is firmly woven into our Christian faith and yet it is something we often overlook in our daily lives. That theme is gratitude. Gratitude is not just about saying thank you when someone holds a door open for us. Gratitude is much more than that. It is an attitude, a mindset, a way of life. It is about recognizing the blessings we have received from God and acknowledging His goodness in our lives. It is about seeing the beauty in every moment, the miracle in every breath, the grace in every trial. It is about living with a heart full of thanksgiving, a heart that is always ready to praise God for His unfailing love and mercy.

Let us look at the story of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus, but only one of them returned to thank Him. This story is a powerful reminder of the importance of gratitude and the blessings that come with it.

The ten lepers come to Jesus asking for healing and then we see their response or lack of response for their healing. This shows us so much about the importance of giving thanks and the place that thanksgiving should have in our lives. We see here that Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem on the way to the cross. There in the distance from the road stood the ten lepers. They were in a distance because the law band lepers from the community and loved ones. They had live in isolation, you were not allowed to touch them.

These men cried out in a loud voice because they were so desperate. This may be their only chance to interact with Jesus and they did not want to miss out. May we never miss out on any opportunity to come to Jesus. They had obviously heard about Jesus and His power to heal. They may have even heard how He had healed other lepers so that gave them hope and confidence. Notice how the lepers address Jesus, “Master” They recognize his authority over them. They recognize him as the master of their fates. If anyone is going to heal them of leprosy, it’s only Jesus. It is always only Jesus.

Notice they appeal to Jesus’ compassion. “Have pity on us!” they cry out. They must have not only heard stories of Jesus’ healing power, but also of his compassion for others. They don’t try to bargain or negotiate. They don’t attempt to put forth any reasons why they deserve to be healed. They simply appeal to Jesus’ mercy and compassion. And Jesus has infinite compassion, He did not turn them away. He tells them “Go show yourselves to the priests”. And as they went, they were healed. Go show yourselves to the priests,” This was required in the Old Testament.

It is interesting that Jesus tells them to go to the priests before he heals them. Jesus tells the lepers to go before he heals them. Instead of healing them, Jesus gives them a command. He doesn’t even promise to heal them if they obey the command. He just commands them to go show themselves to the priest. Why is that? Perhaps Jesus is testing their faith. It must have taken some faith to go to the priest while still in a leprous state. As they went, they were cleansed. How remarkable that Jesus heals them from a distance. So we see the importance here of faith and action. As they stepped out in faith they were healed. We see the importance of obedience to Jesus.

The response of the Samaritan

Luke tells us that one of them came back, praising God in a loud voice. Remember how all the lepers had called out to Jesus in a loud voice for healing? Now the one leper who returned praises God in a loud voice. It raises a good question for us. Do we praise God as loudly and as passionately when he answers our prayers as we do when we call out to him for help? It is a good question. Out of the ten who were healed only one came back to thank Jesus. Only one recognized the grace that had been extended to Him. The first step in showing gratitude is to recognize the grace in our life.

It is about acknowledging that every good thing you have, every blessing, every bit of happiness, comes from God. It is not about what you’ve earned or what you deserve. It is about what God, in His infinite love and mercy, has chosen to give you. As the great theologian Karl Baarth once said, “Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.”

The second thing we can learn is not to take God’s grace for granted. Of the ten men who were healed, none of them went on their way without a second thought. They were so focused on their healing, on the gift they had received, that they forgot about the Giver. It is to do the same thing in our own lives. We get so caught up in the blessings, in the good things we have, that we forget to thank the One who gave them to us. But gratitude isn’t just about saying thank you for the gifts. It is about acknowledging the Giver. It is about recognizing that without God, we would have nothing.

The third thing we need to do is to make gratitude a habit. The one man who came back to thank Jesus, he made a conscious choice to do so. He didn’t let the excitement of his healing distract him from showing gratitude. He made it his priority. In the same way, we need to make gratitude a habit in our own lives. It is not something that should be reserved for special occasions or times when we receive something we’ve been wanting. It should be a daily practice, a constant reminder of the grace we’ve been given. So let’s learn from the story of the ten lepers. Let’s recognize the grace in our lives, let’s not take it for granted, and let’s make gratitude a habit. Because when we do, we’ll find that our lives are filled with a joy and a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Responding with thankfulness

This man, overwhelmed by the mercy he had received, fell at Jesus’ feet, praising God with a loud voice. His response was not a mere reaction, but a deliberate act of gratitude. This story serves as a mirror, reflecting our own attitude towards gratitude and challenging us to respond with thankfulness. This Samaritan could have continued on his way rejoicing in his newfound health. But he chose to return. He made a conscious decision to go back to Jesus, the source of his healing. Here is a lesson for us when we experience God’s blessings, our first response should be to return to Him acknowledging that every good thing comes from Him.

When the Samaritan came back he fell at Jesus’ feet, it was a posture of humility and acknowledgement of His dependence on Jesus. It is a reminder for us to remain humble, recognizing our need for God’s grace in every aspect of our lives.

The Samaritan praised God with a loud voice. His gratitude was not a quiet, private affair. He openly declared his thankfulness, sharing his joy with those around him. This challenges us to express our gratitude openly, not just to God, but also to the people He has placed in our lives.

The danger is that sometimes we are too busy to take time to give thanks for all that God has done and is doing for us. As those other nine wanted to get on with their lives and get back to their families that they did not make time to come back to Jesus to say thank you.

The Samaritan leper’s gratitude was not a one-off event. His return to Jesus suggests a commitment to a lifestyle of gratitude. It is a reminder for us that gratitude is not just a response to blessings received, but a way of life. The story of the Samaritan leper invites us to respond with thankfulness, to return to God, to remain humble, to express our gratitude regardless of our circumstances, and to commit to a lifestyle of gratitude. As we reflect on this story, let’s ask God to help us show gratitude in our daily lives. Only one of them, a Samaritan, returns to thank Jesus. The other nine, presumably Jews, go on their way, rejoicing in their newfound health but failing to acknowledge the source of their healing.

This narrative is not just a historical account; it is a mirror held up to our own lives. How often do we, like the nine lepers, receive blessings from God and fail to express our gratitude? How often do we take His goodness for granted, forgetting to acknowledge Him as the source of all our blessings? The nine were so caught up in their healing that they forgot to acknowledge the Healer. How often are we so focused on the gift that we overlook the Giver. This is a common pitfall that we all need to guard against.

Research by Dr. Robert Emmons, a leading expert on gratitude, shows that recognizing and acknowledging blessings is a key factor in promoting happiness and well-being. His studies reveal that people who regularly express gratitude experience more positive emotions, sleep better, express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems.

A.W. Tozer, who once said, “Gratitude is an offering precious in the sight of God, and it is one that the poorest of us can make and not be poorer but richer for having made it.” This quote beautifully encapsulates the essence of gratitude. It is not about what we have; it is about recognizing and appreciating what we have been given.

We need to consider the transformative power of gratitude. The Samaritan leper’s act of gratitude not only acknowledged Jesus’ healing power but also affirmed his faith. Jesus told him, “Your faith has made you well.” His gratitude was a testament to his faith, and it was this faith that made him well, not just physically, but spiritually as well. In the same way, our gratitude can be a testament to our faith. It can affirm our trust in God’s goodness and power, and it can transform our lives in profound ways. So, let us strive to cultivate a lifestyle of gratitude, recognizing God’s blessings, expressing our thanks, and allowing our gratitude to transform our lives and deepen our faith.

As we give thanks to God it also draws us closer to God. Let us make a point this week to express our gratitude and thanks to our family, friends and most importantly to thank God for His unending grace and love and mercy and blessings.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/10/05

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Reading:
Luke 17:5-10

Text:
Luke 17:6 “He replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea’. And it will obey you.”

Message:

As we look around us we see that the world is in a mess with all the conflicts and things happening in the world. The large number of unemployed people, conflict situations, poverty and climate warming. Now that is bad news but the good news is that as long as we are alive we can use our faith to imagine the impossible and make it possible. For our faith rests in God and it is through faith in God that miraculous turnabouts can and do happen. But how do we keep our faith strong when there is so much around us that erodes its power for change. That’s what we see in the cry of the apostles.

Dealing with their own set of circumstances, no less dire to them than the events in our lives are to us, they cry out to Christ to “Increase their faith!” It is a plea and a prayer. Christ responds with the idea that even a faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains, or in this case, a mulberry tree.

The apostles were familiar with the mustard seed even though it is not the smallest of seeds so it was a good metaphor for the moment. I read a beautiful story of a small congregation who built a new church. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor that unless the number of parking spaces doubled, they would not be able to use the new church. Unfortunately, the new building had used every square centimeter except for a rather steep hill behind the church.

In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move that rocky hill. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had “mountain moving faith.” They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved before the scheduled opening dedication service.

At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation’s 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At 10 o’clock the pastor said the final prayer. The next morning as the pastor was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door and a rough looking construction foreman entered. “Excuse me, Reverend. I’m from a Construction Company. We’re building a huge shopping mall. We need some fill – in fact, heaps of fill. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that rocky hill behind the church? We’ll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed areas free of charge. We need to do this now to allow it to settle properly.” The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned (Source unknown).

Wow, when you first hear this story it’s easy to say that this is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would tell this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted, and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”(v. 6) In other words, through faith we can move mountains.

The disciples were facing their own mountains that needed to be moved. In the beginning of chapter 17:1-5, Jesus tells his disciples if anyone causes someone to sin it would be better for them to tie a millstone around their neck and be thrown into the sea. And if your brother sins seven times against you a day and seven times comes back to you and asks for forgiveness you must forgive them. That kind of forgiveness goes right against our human nature. That person who keeps on offending us does not deserve forgiveness and yet Jesus pronounces some dire consequences on those who can’t overcome their need for revenge and be forgiving.

The disciples had a problem – you might say they had their own mountain that needed moving. They recognized their own sinfulness and their failure to live up to their calling as people who belong to God and disciples who claim to follow their master and do his will. So they come to Jesus with all this on their minds and say, “Increase our faith! Give us a greater amount of faith so that we will be able to do the things that you have asked of us” (v 5 paraphrase). They felt that an increase in their faith would enable them to move the mountain of sin that was getting in the way of their faithful discipleship.

Jesus could teach about faith and forgiveness using this tiny, little seed as a way to illustrate that even the smallest expressions of faith could move trees, mountains, hearts through the power of God’s grace.

What does Jesus do, how does He answer their prayer?

Does He lay His hands upon them and pray and give them more faith? Does He snap His fingers and grant them a double dose of His Spirit and faith? Does He give them “mountain moving faith” so that they can remove all obstacles that got in their way? No, He does not – instead He says to them. Verse 6 “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea and it will obey you.’ The point Jesus is making here is that they already have been given faith. Even a tiny faith the size of a mustard seed is enough as far as God is concerned.

The size of faith doesn’t matter because God is the one doing the moving. If it is my faith that moved the mountain, then the bigger the mountain the more faith I would need to move it. The bigger the obstacle the more strength I’d need to climb it. The more serious the illness a faith even greater would be required to overcome it. The more serious the sin the more faith I would need in order to have it forgiven. That kind of thinking makes sense but that is not how faith works, in fact faith does not do the work at all. And thank God for that. God is the one doing the work through faith. Think of faith as the key that opens the door to God acting in our lives. So even a little faith opens the door for God to move the mountains and trees and even our hearts.

So, what Jesus is saying to His disciples, who asked for their faith to be increased, is that even if they have the smallest amount of faith they can do great things. Even the smallest faith can grasp what God has and is doing in our lives; even the smallest faith is able to recognize the ways that God is able to make changes in lives and in our world through us.

Jesus didn’t need to increase the size of the faith of the disciples. They already had faith. He assures them of that and states that, even though their faith may be small, God can accomplish great things through them. And we know that he did. They went on to share the Good News about Jesus even in the face of some strong opposition, being brought before rulers and judges, being imprisoned and killed. Didn’t Paul says when he was recalling some of the difficulties he had to face as an apostle, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me “(Philippians 4:13). He doesn’t talk about how great his faith in God was, but rather he talks about what his faith was focused on. There are times when our confident, perhaps even over confident, faith is brought crashing down because of what is happening in our lives. There are times when our faith seems so trivial and weak in the face of gigantic threats to our health, our family, our self-worth.

But no matter what size and strength we consider our faith to be at any given moment, faith as small as a mustard seed (and that is pretty small) is able to uproot a mulberry tree (which has an extensive root system, and plant (not dump) it into the sea and still expect it to bear mulberries.

Praise God that in spite of our sins he has given us faith – even faith as small as a mustard seed. And God working through the faith he has given us will defeat the devil’s temptations to sin, he will help us overcome the obstacles we face when forgiveness is required.

God working in us through faith can move mountains and trees and even our own hearts for his glory. Faith is powerful, because the Christ in whom faith believes is powerful. Faith, even one that is described as being the size of a mustard seed, relies on Jesus, his love and strength. This kind of faith enables us to rise above the most threatening circumstances. To repeat Paul’s words, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

Conclusion

It is not the quantity of faith but the quality of faith that is important. The lenses of faith sharpens our vision of the God who is present in and around all things. When we put on the lenses of faith we see the world with clearer eyes. Our sharper vision allows us to see God’s directing movement between us and those people, places and things with which we inter-act. Faith in God sharpens our vision. Then faith in God motivates our action. But the mustard seed reminds us that the quantity of faith is less important than the action of faith. The healing stories, therefore, are really about people whose faith motivated them to the action of seeking out Jesus in the first place. Again, when Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” he is not speaking about quantity. Faith is not something we can store up in a safe deposit box. Rather, we have faith the same way we have energy. Energy propels us to run and work and play; faith propels us to love and serve and forgive. Indeed, faith is the energy that motivates us to participate in God’s work in the world. And like energy, faith unused can begin to fade away. God gives us faith to motivate us to love and serve. And the more we allow our faith to motivate our action the more resilient our faith becomes when we are confronted with difficult and demanding situations.

Faith in God motivates us to act, to live lives full of God’s love and grace, to bring God’s gifts to other people and call God’s gifts forth from those people. Faith in God motivates us to participate in God’s healing and reconciling work in the world. Faith is not a static thing. Faith is not a statistic. Faith is the great gift from God that shows God’s faith in us. Faith is the catalyst that kindles all of our other God-given gifts to shine. And a mustard seed is all we need to see and to act upon God’s movement in our lives.

We today are not asked how much faith do you have but rather what are we doing with the faith that God has already given us. Instead of asking for more faith we should be finding opportunities to act on the faith God has already given us.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/09/28

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Reading:
Luke 16:19-31

Text:
Luke 16:1921 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus covered with sores, and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

Message:

In our text for today Jesus carefully draws this picture of Lazarus calling attention to the sores. He’s drawing this picture on purpose: Lazarus looks exactly like the one who is cursed by God. Thus, according to one interpretation of Moses and the prophets, the great chasm is the poor man’s fault. He must have disobeyed God. The rich man doesn’t have to do anything for the man lying at his gate.

But Jesus’ will not let this interpretation stand. He argues directly against this interpretation, for he knew there were other words in scripture. In the same book of Deuteronomy, God tells the people: “You shall open wide your hand to your brothers and sisters, to the needy and to the poor…” (Deut.15:7 – 11) This was not a weak voice, but one that was steady and strong, reminding people to leave grain at the edges of the fields for the poor, the widow, the sojourner. This voice became even stronger in the writings of the prophets such as Amos and Jeremiah and Isaiah. “what does true fasting mean?” asked Isaiah:

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isiah 58:6a, 7) And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus covered with sores …

Which reading of Moses and the prophets will we choose? It’s no secret where Jesus comes down: “The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.” Poverty is not a sign of disobedience and wealth is not a sign of faithfulness. It was poor, hungry Lazarus – not the wealthy man – who was embraced in the bosom of Abraham. But Jesus didn’t tell this parable to scare the hell out of us. Jesus told this parable to change the way we are living this side of heaven.

A lot can happen in this life. Unexpected joys. Unwelcome challenges. There are many twists and turns in this life. And it can all get pretty confusing. But whatever happens along the way, our task remains the same: To learn to love. To learn that we are loved. To learn to return that love to our Creator. And to learn to share that love with one another. And whatever else happens in this life, if we have learned this, we have learned to live as God intended.

“We are put on earth a little space,” another poet, William Blake, writes, “That we may learn to bear the beams of love.”

That is why we are here – that we may learn of God’s love for us, but also learn to bear those beams of love, and let them shine all around us.

In this parable Jesus tells us about a rich man who has failed at this essential task: He has not learned to love his neighbor. His neighbor is a poor man named Lazarus, who lay at the rich man’s gate covered in sores and hungry. And he is ignored by the rich man. Every day, walking by his gate, ignoring this poor man in need. Even though, as we learn later in the story, the rich man knew this poor man’s name. He still failed to love him.

When the rich man in this parable dies, he is buried and sent to Hades, he does not make his way to the lasting world of love and peace. Why? Not because he hoarded his wealth – but rather, because he never learned to love his neighbor as himself. He did not learn to bear the beams of love, and so his life was a failure. He was rich, to be sure. He lived a comfortable, pleasurable life. Dressed in the finest clothes, feasting on the finest foods. The world he lived in would have called him blessed. And in some ways, he was. But not in the only way that matters. At his gate, day after day, lay a poor man, Lazarus, that the rich man didn’t see, or didn’t love, and didn’t help. and so, when the rich man died, he was buried, and found himself being tormented in Hades. But when poor Lazarus died, he was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.

Today’s gospel is about how we live today. Jesus is telling us that how we live today has consequences for tomorrow, not just for ourselves but for others too. Jesus is asking us, regardless of our income, to face the poverty in ourselves and the world. Lazarus doesn’t just represent poverty in the world, he also represents the rich man’s impoverishment. I suspect that’s one reason why we set gates between the rich and poor. We don’t want to look in the eyes of Lazarus and see ourselves. If we did, if we ever truly saw impoverishment in the world and in ourselves, it would ask something of us. Our choices matter. Our priorities set a direction for where we are headed. Our values and actions shape what is becoming of us. Isn’t that what we see in the rich man in today’s gospel?

I was challenged by what Paul Branels Raushenbush said about the word ignorance when he thought about this parable. As he said the word Ignore-ance. We always think of the word ignorance as a passive condition. But what if the Word is an active and intentional stance towards the world which censors that which is inconvenient or uncomfortable? Ignore-ance then either consciously or unconsciously judges when is or is not knowing and acts accordingly.

But ignore-ance has profound implications for the church as well. Hopefully, we come to church with hearts and minds and spirits open, in order to truly understand and accept the Good News. Yet many of us, either consciously or unconsciously, assume that we already know everything that there is to know about God and close ourselves off to that which does not fit within our neat formulas. There is a deep temptation in the church to be ignore-ant. As our scripture today warns, ignore-ance makes us failures in our attempts to be Christians and puts our very salvation at risk.

We can imagine the rich man passing by the poor man at the gate several times a day, never once addressing him. mind you, it is not that the rich man wishes the poor man harm in particular; he probably doesn’t feel anything for him at all. To the rich man’s point of view, they live in two entirely different worlds with a huge divide between them – one has nothing to do with the other. There is a gate between them that is used to keep them apart.

Eventually, of course, both men die. And the parable describes how the poor man is taken to heaven and is at Abraham’s side while the rich man is tormented in hell. The rich man begs Abraham to send the poor man to give him water, even just a drop from the tip of his finger, yet Abraham informs him that the chasm between them is fixed across which no one can pass. The rich man’s fate is sealed. For him, the gate is shut for eternity.

The parable is meant to startle us, and I think it succeeds brilliantly. It is especially stark because the picture we have of the rich man is not particularly villainess. He was assuredly respected and given honor in his own circles, and the text does not say that he was a sinner or that he was evil. He probably considered himself a righteous man, yet he ends up being tormented in the afterlife. So what is the sin for which he is being punished? The rich man ignored the poor man in life, and therefore he is being punished in death. His sin was ignore-ance, especially because his ignore-ance caused the continuation of such visible and avoidable suffering. The wages of the rich man’s sin are indeed death.

What must be difficult for the rich man languishing in hell is the memory of how many times he passed by the poor man in life without realizing that the poor man at the gate was crucial to his own salvation. The poor man has a name – Lazarus. Lazarus is the only named person in any of the parables of Jesus. In this parable Jesus names one person Lazarus and this is the only story in the teachings of Jesus where one of the characters is given a name. Lazarus means “God helps” and that’s what the Bible says consistently about the poor. God cares about them, helps them. In the Bible God sides with those in need. Jesus leaves the rich man nameless and so turns the world’s standard on its ear. In our world the wealthy have names and the poor are anonymous and faceless.

Then both men died. Death is the great equalizer. Then notice that one man went to hell while the other didn’t. He was at Abraham’s bosom or side; this means heaven or God’s presence. The rich man is in hell and there is a chasm dug by the rich man all his days. He’s distanced himself from Lazarus and his kind and now there is a permanent distance not only from Lazarus but from God. Abraham informs the rich man that the gulf between him and Lazarus is now set forever and cannot be bridged. Yet this only serves as a reminder that while on earth the gate was open as Lazarus waited for some recognition from the rich man. It is too late for the rich man in this story, but not too late for you and for me.

Our place in this parable can be understood as the brothers who are still alive back at home, perhaps unaware or ignorant of the serious nature of their predicament. The rich man, understanding his fate is sealed, seeks to tell his brothers to avoid a similar one. He begs Abraham to send back Lazarus in order to warn them that their ignorance or ignore-ance has consequences. Abraham shrugs and says if they did not listen to the prophets, they will not listen to the one who has come back from the dead – referring to Lazarus and also, of course, to Jesus. But there remains a question mark in the story. In expressing his dismay, Abraham also leaves a lingering hope that, in fact, the brothers and that you and that I will listen and move towards the gateway of knowledge represented by Lazarus in order to stave off the fate that awaits those who dwell in ignore-ance.

Jesus is teaching us the interconnection between our eternal spiritual life and how we serve and treat our neighbors at the gate. Abraham’s reference to the prophets is important because they were the messengers of God who understood and proclaimed God’s demand for justice. They did not ignore the poor and the oppressed – just the opposite – they knew that we could not be right with God and oppress our neighbor and leave the poor in misery. We cannot claim knowledge of God while being ignore-ant of our neighbor.

Service to others and working for justice is not only the right thing to do, but it’s also integral to our spiritual salvation – not only in the life to come, but right now in this life. Isaiah promises that when we obey the ethical mandates of God, then we receive God’s help saying: ‘Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and you shall call and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and the Lord will say, ‘Here I am.'”

Conclusion

There are many people who do not have enough to eat or a roof over their head or adequate health care or feel safe in their home or community or circumstances they do not have control over. This story will remind them no matter how poor, how unloved or unwanted you are, no matter what life has done to you, you are loved and wanted by God and there will be a day when you too will be carried away by the angels to be with Jesus. Only one person is Lazarus “God has helped”.

Even after death this rich man still has not learned to love; he still asks Abraham to let Lazarus bring him some water. So Jesus is looking to us to love here and now and reach out to the needy because if it does not happen here and now we can’t count on it happening there and then in the next life. It continues to remind us that our most important task on this earth is to love God, and to love one another. And whatever else happens, when we have learned to love one another, we have made our way into the lasting world. That is our task, the purpose of our life: to learn to love God, with all our heart, and learn to love our neighbor as our self.

Jesus’ story is a warning against two things in us. The first is apathy. In this parable, there is no contact at all between these two men – and there’s the rub. The rich man had resources to help, but he didn’t care. His sin is not that he caused Lazarus’ hunger, or that he kicked him as he walked through the gate every day, or that he mistreated him in any way. His sin is not that he did bad things to Lazarus but that he did nothing. He goes to hell, not because of crimes against the poor, hungry man but because he just didn’t care. This guy is what I’d call a practical atheist. He’s upstanding, moral, faithfully, attends the services of the Temple but doesn’t make any connection between his proposed faith in God and the practical realities of daily life – like human need.

Poverty of spirit can keep us from caring – poverty rooted in selfish apathy. Some of us are tempted to forget about the hungry for the same reason. “Let the government take care of it.” There are agencies to deal with the problem.” “I don’t have the time or energy to care.” That’s not my problem!” And Lazarus, who needs a hand-out, then a hand-up, gets only crumbs from the table, if he’s lucky. But this story warns against something else: acceptance. Lazarus had become part of the scenery, just a piece of the landscape. He’s there, every day, catching whatever scraps of bread he can and longing for more. “It’s just the way things are,” the rich man may have reasoned. “That’s just life.” We get to that point because we all get weary of Lazarus. There seems to be so little we can do in the face of so massive a need.

Lazarus – the great need that is Lazarus – wears us down, and so it’s easier just to give up – to accept the tragedy of hunger … to let the nameless and faceless ones just fade back and blend in with the background. We must not allow our weariness with Lazarus to become acceptance – acceptance that nothing really helps, nothing substantial can be done. That’s simply not true. We do make a difference as Christians who will not be comfortable with the tragedy of hunger … who will not accept the situation of Lazarus as inevitable and unchangeable … Christians do make a difference. So Jesus’ story warns us not to quit caring and not to quit doing. Lazarus lies at the gate and needs a hand. Will he take it if I offer it? Will he use my help wisely? Many will, some won’t. That’s not my choice … My choice as a Christian with resources is to extend my hand. it’s to offer my voice and my advocacy for Lazarus in a world which doesn’t know his name, doesn’t see his face. I know. I see. I will respond – I will be faithful.

What if we open the gates of compassion and concern for others, generosity and sharing, healing and wholeness, forgiveness and reconciliation, justice and peace, vulnerability and love? What would that take? And what would it mean for your life? I suspect it would change the way we pray, how we care for one another, the depth of our relationships, the significance of our lives, and what we hope for the future.

Today Jesus is inviting all of us to repent of our ignore-ance of God and our ignore-ance of the suffering of the world and to step through the gate of knowledge and radical love into the kingdom of God, where God’s will for justice and peace is done on earth as in heaven. May all of us see God’s help at the gate and be blessed with the knowledge of the Lord and the knowledge of one another and be saved.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/09/21

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Reading:
Luke 16:1-13

Text:
Luke 16:8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”

Message:

In today’s reading Jesus is talking to His disciples so we know Jesus is addressing followers and not opponents. Those Pharisees who have been giving Jesus so much trouble might be lurking around in the background, but Jesus is not dealing with them at this moment. He is teaching His own students, the ones who belong to Him. This means that if we claim to follow Jesus, He is speaking directly to us too.

“The Steward of a Fortune.”

Imagine you were suddenly handed the keys to manage a billionaire’s fortune – not your money, but theirs. You could use it, invest it, distribute it – but one day, you would have to give an account. How would you handle that responsibility? Jesus once told a story just like that – not about finances alone, but about faithfulness, eternity, and the condition of our hearts before God.

Today’s message is titled: “Go! And be faithful with Eternal Treasure.”

The parable has deep lessons to teach us even though it is a very difficult message to understand the meaning of this parable. Let us look at the lessons. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home. “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

(a) We are stewards and not owners

The parable begins with a man who manages someone else’s wealth. A steward is someone who is entrusted to oversee resources that do not belong to them. So we are not owners of our time, talents or treasure, God is. Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.” Our responsibility is to faithfully manage what God has placed into our hands. This includes our finances, our gifts and our influence.

Charles Stanley once said: “We are stewards of everything God has given us, and one day we will give an account.” This parable shows a man caught mismanaging what was not his – and Jesus is teaching us that a day of reckoning is coming for all of us.

(b) The Manager is confronted

When the manager is confronted, he immediately makes a plan. He starts preparing for life after his current role ends (verse 4). When faced with the prospect of getting fired, the manager panics. “?What shall I do?” he asks himself. He’s too weak for even the lowliest manual labor available, and he’s too proud to beg. At least he is honest with himself, even if he has been dishonest in his job. But he’s shrewd. He has street smarts. And he has thought through the possibility that this crisis would one day arrive. He has a Plan. Our friend, the shrewd manager, had a good memory. He knew who owed his master the greatest debts, and he knew how to use that information to his own advantage. Everyone agrees that it would be easy to make friends among the master’s customers by decreasing the debts they owed. And everyone agrees that a manager who cheats his master in order to make friends with his master’s clients is anything but righteous.

He knew that his time was short. Our lives on earth are short. We are like the manager – facing the end and we must prepare for eternity. Hebrews 9:27 “And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgement. Tim Keller says this, “You don’t really understand Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” He is really generous in writing off people’s debt.

How does the master respond?

This response takes us by surprise. Instead of firing the manager first for squandering his wealth or later for cutting his profits, the master commends the manager for acting shrewdly. That is really puzzling. How can the master be happy with what just happened with the manager? How could he commend him? It raises the question, “What does Jesus think about what’s happening here?” Is Jesus commending dishonestly? Are we supposed to be like the sons of the world? Aren’t we supposed to be children of light? When some people read this parable, they start thinking to themselves, well, there has to be something else going on with his debt if the servant is to be commended by the master. He is commended for his shrewdness for thinking ahead, for being wise in his use of wealth, and for planning for the future.

Jesus is saying use worldly wealth for eternal investment. Use worldly wealth for eternal investment. Be shrewd, be clever, like the people of this world, not in using money for yourself, not in padding your own pocketbook. They use wealth for short-term gain, you make sure that you use wealth for long-term eternal interest. Use it for spiritual good. Use it for spiritual gain. Invest your worldly wealth. Take it, use it, to bless others and to bless a kingdom that will last forever. Invest it and send it ahead, as it were. Take your worldly wealth and use it to bless the kingdom and to bless others.

1. Use what you have to impact eternity (verse 9)

This doesn’t mean we buy salvation. It means we use earthly resources to advance God’s Kingdom to bless others, fund missions, share the Gospel, and care for the poor.

Matthew 6:20: “Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.”

Every penny you give to Gospel work, every moment you invest in someone else’s salvation – it echoes into eternity.

R.T. Kendall said: “The greatest use of your life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

Jesus calls us to live not for what fades, but for what lasts.

So often our mind is just on this and not on the age to come but on everything that just happens here?, everything we can see and touch, feel and experience now. Jesus says we must not live like that. So often we try to find life in our wealth. Well that stuff is going to fail us or are we preparing for eternity.

2. Faithfulness is proven in the small things (verse 10)

The Greek word for faithful is pistos – dependable trustworthy. God does not look for the flashy; He looks for the faithful.

Think of David, a shepherd boy before he was a king. God promoted him because he was faithful in obscurity.

Zechariah 4:10 “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”

John Piper challenges us: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

When we are faithful with what God entrusts us – be it small or large – we show our hearts are set on Him, not on the stuff.

Faithfulness begins with small things. We sometimes think we would be far more generous if we had a little more to give. But to know whether we’d be faithful if we had more, check out whether you are faithful with what has given you now.

Jesus is saying just be faithful with what you’ve been given.

Because, you see, if you’re not faithful with a little, you will not be faithful with much. If you are dishonest with a little, you will be dishonest with much. “Will you be faithful with the little that you have?” Because if you’re not faithful with the little that you have, how will you be faithful when you have much? So faithfulness begins with small things.

3. You cannot serve God and money (verse 13)

The Aramaic word Jesus used for money here is “mammon”, which represented more than coins – it was wealth as a false god.

Jesus is not against money – He’s against money becoming our master.

1 Timothy 6:10 says: “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

The issue is not the money – but what your heart loves most.

Max Lucado wrote: “God has given us everything we need, but we’ll never know it until we give everything to Him.”

You can’t walk fully with Jesus and still cling to the world’s values. Choose your master.

In verses 11 and 12 Jesus points how we handle our wealth is a spiritual statement about the condition of our hearts and a test for riches to come. It’s also a testimony. Our values, when it comes to wealth, can be a witness to the world. How we use our wealth can say something to other people out there. Jesus brings it down to just one more lesson about wise financial stewardship, and that is He reminds us that we can only serve one master. This is how He closes in verse 13: “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Jesus is asking, “What are you mastered by?”

Wealth is a funny thing because the tighter that we grip it, actually the more it grips us. The harder you hang onto it, the more it’s hanging onto you. The more that we think we’re in control, the more we are controlled by it.

Jesus says there’s no middle ground. You cannot serve both God and money. It’s either/or. There can only be one God in your life.

So often we’re trying to do the very thing that Jesus says we cannot do. We’re serving God with some of our wealth and serving ourselves with some of our wealth, or maybe more often we’re serving ourselves and then we give to God some of what’s left over so we can serve Him, too.

People of God, that will not do. That simply shows who our master is. But Jesus says there is a choice to be made. Your heart, my heart, has room enough for only one master. It doesn’t have room for two. It’s either God or money, and of course it must be the Lord. You see. Jesus teaches us all these finer points to back up what He’s been saying in this parable. Use unrighteous wealth, use worldly wealth to invest in the kingdom for heavenly, spiritual gain. Yes, use it, use what God has given you, not to bless yourself, but use it to bless others.

And who is the person that manages that fund? Right: a trustee. What is printed on the money in that fund? In God we trust. And yet, it seems we make this same mistake over and over again – we trust in the money, instead of trusting God.

We could paraphrase verse nine to read, “Build friendships through your wise use of money, instead of trusting in it, so that when this age is over God will receive you into his eternal home.” If you want to be Christ’s disciple, you have to go all in, turning away from everything you trust that isn’t God. You cannot serve both God and wealth. God’s value system is not the world’s value system. The world values stuff and status. God values you.

Brian McLaren writes that the real problem of the Pharisees was a problem of misplaced values. “The reason they didn’t properly value people is because they improperly valued money.” God’s economic system says everybody matters. And if you love God, everything else will have a new value. Jesus says, “If then you have not been faithful with earthly wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches of heaven? Trust. Christ calls us to trust him, and also to be trustworthy stewards who show the same character as our master, Jesus Christ.

4. Jesus promise a heavenly welcome (verse 9)

What an interesting statement from Jesus. It is important to understand, of course, what Jesus is not saying and then to understand what He is saying. He is not saying you can buy a way into heaven. He is not saying use your worldly wealth in such a way that you got a reservation in heaven because of what you did here. Our heavenly reward is always a gift of grace. The only way to get to heaven is through faith in Christ Jesus.

You see, like the manager used wealth to gain friends below, Jesus says be shrewd in how you use wealth, not to gain friends below, but actually to gain friends above. So whatever you have now – whatever wealth you’ve been allowed to earn now, invest it intentionally. Use it, Jesus says, to make friends for eternity. In other words, reach people with it – so that one day in heaven – your eternal dwelling, Jesus calls it – you will meet people who will be your friends forever.

The friends Jesus is talking about here are those people who were helped, those who have been blessed by our giving those that we befriended by helping in a time of need. So, people of God, what will we do with our money? Will we give to bless others? Will we be as shrewd as the world in the worldly wealth we’ve been given, shrewd not to bless ourselves in some way but to bless many other people, to bless the kingdom? We have a Savior who gave. A Savior who was rich, who became poor, so that we who are poor might become rich. A Savior who gave His life as a ransom, a Savior who reminds us that no greater love has any man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends. For his friends. That’s why we give.

Conclusion

Call to Action: Go! And be Faithful

Brothers and sisters, today Jesus is calling us:
To see our lives as stewardship – not ownership.
To live for eternity, not for the moment.
To choose Him over every false master.
Whether you have much or little, time or money, education or influence – faithfulness is what God desires.
Live with heaven in view. Be generous. Be trustworthy. Serve Christ above all else.
Let us be faithful stewards – of grace, of truth, of love, of the Gospel.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/09/14

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Reading:
Luke 15:1-10

Text:
Luke 15:4 : “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

Message:

We see that this parable about the sheep and coin is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees grumbling complaint: this man welcomes sinners. In the eyes and words of the Pharisees and scribes Jesus is guilty of violating the law and social norms of the day. At the deepest level, however, their words are, ironically enough, a statement of the gospel. They have just spoken the good news. Jesus not only welcomes the sinners, he eats with them. Eating with them means there is a relationship and acceptance. Jesus has aligned himself with them. He is on their side. This parable is clear about the seeking, searching, tireless love of Jesus. The lost in Luke 15 are the tax collectors and sinners who were flocking to Jesus. Throughout His ministry Jesus made a habit of welcoming and associating with these social and religious outcasts. As a Good Shepherd, as the Creator and Redeemer of these poor souls, it was only natural for Jesus to see them as precious and go out of His way to find and save them.

But Jesus’ natural love for the lost filled the religious elite with disgust. The Pharisees and teachers of the law – who were supposed to be the spiritual shepherds of God’s flock on earth – didn’t care at all about the lost. They didn’t preach about God’s grace but his wrath; they emphasized Law not Gospel. Their message was inherently work-righteous: that you need to clean yourself up, stop sinning and reform your life before God will accept you. They despised and ignored these poor, lost sinners; figuring that they were simply getting what they deserved.

The real tragedy in this text is not that Jesus was associating with open sinners but that these self-righteous Pharisees didn’t see their need to join them. So Jesus told them two parables – the lost sheep and the lost coin.

The lost Sheep

Luke 15:4 (text) What shepherd wouldn’t abandon his flock to search for one wandering sheep? Here is the twist; no good shepherd would do that! You don’t risk your entire flock to save one. You would write that sheep off as dead and cut your losses. So, imagine you are a shepherd. And you have 100 sheep. You’re in the wilderness – which can be a pretty scary place. It is your job to defend those sheep against the animals and other threats of the wilderness. And now imagine that one of those 100 goes missing. What are you going to do? Leave the ninety-nine to go search for the one? Or cut your losses and make sure the ninety-nine are safe? Jesus tells us this parable in such a way that it sounds like it’s perfectly obvious that the shepherd would go in search of the one. But is it really? Is that really the best thing to do? I suspect that anyone with any common sense would say, wait a minute! Wouldn’t it be better to make sure the ninety-nine are safe than risk them all to go in search of the one who’s missing?

Remember the Pharisees complain that Jesus spent time with sinners, would it not be better to cut His losses and spend time with the ninety-nine who are actually trying to obey God’s teaching. To encourage them and help them live a more righteous and God pleasing life? Why leave the ninety-nine in other words to go after the lost. This parable is not just about why Jesus is spending time with the sinners. It is also the simple fact that we are all sinners. We are all that one lost sheep. We all need to be found by Jesus.

Our God is a God who comes after us when we are lost. Our God is like a diligent shepherd who searches diligently for a lost and precious sheep. That’s the way God is. And every so often, we think that maybe God has given up on us; that we are persistently sinful that God has finally given up on us; that our character effects seem to be so inescapable, that God finally gives up on trying to get through to us. But this story tells us clearly of God’s forever wanting to find us.

In the poem “Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson he says “I fled from God. But those strong feet of God came after, … with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace; with constant speed and divine instantcy. … And a voice, more persistent than the feet, spoke and said: You are my precious one. I will not let you go.” Yes, that is the way God is. So persistent, so diligent, so untiring in His pursuit of us when we are lost. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who doesn’t stop searching; he’s the one who turns the whole house upside down, moves the furniture and tears up the carpets until he finds that lost coin. The lost is the sole object of his attention. Nothing else matters to him.

Who are the lost sheep? We read in verse 7. “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Who needs no repentance. Repentance is not a once off but we need to continually repent. Who is completely without sin? No one except Jesus, we all have sinned, there is no one who needs no repentance. All of us have fallen short of the mark. The Pharisees, the religious leaders, tax collectors, the sinners and each one of us. We are all lost. We read in Isaiah 53:6 we all like sheep have gone astray, we all have been tempted by a patch of green grass that looked a little greener. We all have gone astray.

And if we are ever tempted to be like the Pharisees and religious leaders, and judge other sinners, it is good to remember that we, too, are lost without Jesus. We’ve just been found by him one more time. In fact, I really think that there is one and only one difference between the one sheep who is lost and the ninety-nine who are not: The ninety-nine have been found one more time than they have been lost. That’s all. Isn’t that why we are here today? Because we have been found one more time than we have been lost. And how thankful we are that our good shepherd has searched and found us yet again. And maybe that is why this parable is so beloved. Because we know that without Jesus, we would all be lost.

We are all the lost children of God. We fall for Satan’s deceptions daily. We reach for things God doesn’t want us to have. We have strayed from the path of life and stumbled onto the wide road that leads to destruction. Left to our own devices we are and would remain lost. We got ourselves lost. We have no one but ourselves to blame. Jesus would have been perfectly justified in writing us off as a lost cause, as not worth his time or effort. But he didn’t! Jesus came to our wilderness, leaving behind the righteous hosts of heaven to seek and save our lost race from sin and death. He came taking on our flesh, wandering in our wilderness, suffering our temptation, dying our death. He lost himself, his blood, his life to find us. To be clear: Jesus found us, not the other way around. He wasn’t lost, we were. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be welcomed by righteous and powerful leaders, he came to dig through the gutters and search through the trash to find his sheep who didn’t even know they were lost. So great was his love for us that he didn’t care what condition we were in when he found us.

There is another reason why this parable is so special because when he finds the lost sheep “He lays it on his shoulders and rejoices”. What a picture of grace. There is no judgement, no punishment, no harsh words. The shepherd simply rejoices that he has found the lost sheep and now carries the lost sheep back to the flock – what a picture of grace. This is exactly what Jesus does for all of us as His lost sheep. He lays our sin and our brokenness and our lost-ness on His shoulders on the cross and carries us home. And heaven rejoices. Repentance means changing our mind to look at the world differently that is what Jesus is asking of all of us. Are not the Pharisees themselves being asked to repent? Heaven rejoices when sinners are continually repenting, repeatedly coming to Jesus for forgiveness and peace. Here, it’s not your good works that give joy to God but the confession of your sins. But that all sounds backwards, doesn’t it? What is more pleasing with a child when they confess that they broke the lamp than when they report that they’ve done their homework and cleaned their room? Again, Jesus doesn’t see things the way we do. Heaven rejoices when we come regularly and repeatedly to lay our sins at Jesus’ feet because that’s why he came. As Paul says Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) – not those who think they have done enough, served enough, given enough to please God on their own. There are no parties in heaven for the proud and self-righteous who don’t think they need to be in God’s house to receive his forgiveness. Jesus didn’t come for them. He came for sinners.

To begin thinking about God’s grace and mercy and passion for the lost differently. That grace and character revealed in Jesus is searching, finding and rejoicing. They are the ongoing presence of God in Christ in each one of our lives. This text is not about us seeking and finding the lost! Are you the lost sheep and the lost coin? You might not want to think of yourself as lost – but here’s the thing – if you don’t see yourself as the lost sheep and coin, there’s only one role left. Then you’re one of the ninety-nine righteous persons who don’t think they need to repent. If that describes you, then I have only bad news for you: you’re still lost, you’re still in the wilderness. If you’ve become so comfortable in yourself, your goodness, your lifestyle compared to others that you don’t think you need to repent, then you’re no different than those Pharisees sneering at the tax collectors and sinners. If you think repentance is for other people, then it’s my responsibility to warn: Jesus receives sinners, lost sheep, not self-righteous saints.

God’s love is not letting us do whatever we want. The lost sheep doesn’t keep playing in the dangerous terrain, away from the flock; the shepherd takes the sheep away from the dangerous place and brings it back home. God brings us away from sin and back to himself. His forgiveness means we need not feel guilt over our past faults but also that we actively seek to thank him by living a life free from sin, living according to his will.

Conclusion

This story is about you and me when we get lost from God, when we lose significant contact with God, and don’t even realize it, just as the Pharisees did in Jesus’ day. And the story is God’s invitation for us to repent, to turn around, to come back to God and grab his extended hand to us, and hold onto God, and talk with God and walk with God and pray with God, the way we were made to be, to give and take love, to give and share life. And this gives God such great pleasure and joy, when we finally come to our senses, wake up, and return to a loving and living relationship with God. Maybe it’s time for you and me to be found … again.

Jesus wants us also to seek the lost. Like the woman who lit the lamp to find the lost coin so we must let the light of Christ shine through us to witness the to the lost world. Also the Word of God is the lamp unto us on the path of life, so we must share the Word of God with others as a witness for Jesus. Remember the old saying? – “You may be the only gospel that someone reads today”. You may be one the shepherd sends. You may be the woman in search of the coin, or you may be the light that helps find that lost coin. And how much joy will there be when the coin is found! When even one sinner repents.

We are here today because we have been found one more time. Placed on the shoulders of the good shepherd, and carried home. Now, it is time to join Jesus in search of those who are lost. We who have been found again are sent in search of the lost. And we dare not rest until every child of this earth knows how beloved they are to God. Until that glorious day, let’s light our lamp and get to work. To the glory of God.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/09/07

Please note that there are no longer any YouTube messages available

Reading:
Luke 14:25-33

Text:
Luke 14:26-27 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yes even his own life he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Message:
Jesus is on the move again. He has left the hospitality of the Pharisee’s table and is headed once again to Jerusalem. He knows that this will be His last journey, that the price tag on this trip is high and it is not negotiable. Wow, it almost sounds as if Jesus is trying to get people to stop following him! Have you ever heard Jesus be so negative? Ten times in these few verses, he uses the word “not” – three of those are in the phrase “cannot be my disciple.” Jesus has seen the crowds growing behind him, and he knows that some of these followers are only tagging along to see another miracle, especially if that miracle includes getting a free lunch. Some of them are following only because they’ve been caught up in the mob mentality that has begun to develop around Jesus and his disciples. So he turns to the crowd and tells them, “Unless you’re serious about following me, you might as well go home!” But Jesus is not trying to get rid of followers. He just wants them – and us – to know what is involved in being a true disciple. We need to know what we’re getting into when we say we want to follow Jesus, because the cost is high.

Jesus is not asking us to do more than what He did for us. He never asks us to do anything that he was not willing to do Himself. And he not only did it: he did it for us. We are here today to be thankful. We are here because we love Jesus and we want to follow Him and learn from Him and grow what it means to be a disciple. We are here not just to hear the easy things that Jesus teaches, but the hard things too. We want to hear it all. Today is one of those hard teachings of Jesus.

When we travel with someone, we are still in control, right? We can still decide whether to take that next step, whether to go to that next destination. It is a pretty casual way of being with someone. There is not a lot of commitment there. Jesus didn’t give up his divinity and come to earth to have people travel with him. He came to die for us, and to invite us to follow him. And if we are going to follow him, it won’t always be easy. We won’t be in control anymore. Jesus will. Our priorities will have to change. And Jesus makes that very clear in this reading. Jesus is inviting the crowds to make a choice – travel with him, until they get bored or frustrated or disappointed; or, follow him, all the way to the cross and the tomb. Which will it be, travel with Jesus, or follow him?

Being a Christian, Jesus reminds us today, is not a hobby. It isn’t something we can do just when we want to, or feel like it. We are either all in, or we’re not. And so, for the crowds traveling with Jesus, it’s time to decide. Do they want to travel with him? Or do they want to follow him? And that same question comes to us today, and actually comes to us over and over again in our lives. We are here, in church today. But are we here because we want to travel with Jesus? Or are we here because we have made the choice to take up our cross and follow him? And if we are ready to follow him, then he must come first. Nothing else can be more important to us than Jesus. Not our families. Not our possessions. Not even our life.

The same is true for many today, of course. Churches throughout the world are packed with people interested in Jesus but who don’t really grasp the implications of discipleship for themselves. And it is to such as these that Jesus was speaking here. Here were people who were willing to follow Jesus and learn from him as long as the cost wasn’t too high: they were, if you like, casual followers. Too often church and faith are treated like a big buffet. We take as much of what we like and want but leave behind what we do not like, what’s too hard to swallow, what we disagree with, or what does not fit our personal opinions and beliefs. That’s not how the gospels portray Jesus or the life of discipleship. To the degree we have done that we have deceived ourselves and each other. The crowds have been gathering around Jesus since early in his ministry. Jesus was the new buffet for them. He offered healing, exorcisms, teaching, hope, life, good news, bread, freedom, and a new vision. He had what they wanted and they gathered around, surrounded, and pressed in on him. It was as if they could not get enough.

There is more to discipleship than simply travelling with Jesus. Discipleship is more than grazing at the buffet of divine life. That life cannot be bought but it will cost us everything we have. And now Jesus gives them 3 “cannots”.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters cannot be my disciple.”

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

“If you do not give up your possessions, you cannot be my disciple.”

It doesn’t get much harder than that, does it? It seems a strange way to build a religious movement. Most would surely be attracted by the benefits rather than being confronted by the cost.

I  We must hate our families

This is pretty strong stuff in a culture where family was everything and loyalty to one’s family was the highest loyalty expected. Let us look at the word “hate ” to see what Jesus meant. Jesus tells us that to follow him we must hate our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters. What exactly does he mean by this? The word Jesus uses for hate here, in Greek, is miseo. In Greek, this word is not describing an emotion, which is the way we typically use the word. A good way to think about what Jesus means by hate is to think about what Jesus means by love. We know, for example, that for Jesus, love is not an emotion. Jesus commands us to love one another. And you can’t command an emotion. Instead, love is an action, based on a decision to put that person first.

That is what love means to Jesus. And hate for Jesus is simply the opposite of that. To hate something is simply to refuse to put it first. When we hate something in this way, we have made a decision not to put it first in our life. That is really what it means to hate it, in the language of the New Testament. So, when Jesus tells us that we must hate our families in order to follow him, he simply means that we can’t put our families first. He must come first. It is a question of priorities. Which comes first, Jesus or our family? It can’t be both. To follow Jesus, everything else must take a back seat to this first priority.

Perhaps Jesus knew that there would always be times when people would be tempted to make family their god. When family would be put first, above everything else, even God. When that happens, the family can become toxic, unhealthy. Jesus is simply reminding us that family cannot come first if we want him to come first. But this does not mean that we shouldn’t love our families! Putting Jesus first means doing what Jesus commands. And what he commands, above all else, is to love one another. To put others before ourselves. And that obviously includes our family. To put Jesus first often means to love our family. Of course, if your family wants you to spend Sunday morning somewhere other than in worship, then putting Jesus first might mean disappointing them. It still comes down to priorities, in other words. And if we want to be a follower of Jesus, then he must come first. Not our families. But most of the time, for most of us, that means loving our families.

So Jesus is saying that we need to love him more than we love our relatives and our own lives. And this isn’t a statement about emotions – how we feel: it’s a statement about our commitment to obey. We are to put Jesus first, put our love for God above our commitment to obey. We are to put Jesus first, put our love for God above everything else in our lives. Our obedience to the person of Jesus Christ must inform all other decisions we make with regard to the rest of our lives and our relationships with other people. In all things, Jesus is our first priority. He comes before all other relationships, he comes before our personal desires. He comes before our dreams and ambitions. He comes before our own plans for the future.

So how did Jesus hate his parents? Remember the twelve year old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem? Mary and Joseph are frantically looking for him. They think he is lost. When they find him Mary asks, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house'” (Luke 3:41-50)? At that moment Jesus hated Mary and Joseph. He set his relationship with them below his relationship with God the Father. Jesus is not but establishing new priorities. For the disciple no one and no relationship can take precedence over the relationship with Jesus; not father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, or life itself.

II  Pick up your cross and follow me

Not only must we be willing to put Jesus ahead of all other priorities, He raises the price of discipleship even higher. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. To them, taking up one’s cross was a general expression of accepting the burden of great suffering, suffering that would surely end in death. It was the same responsibility a soldier would accept, going into war. If following Jesus meant taking up a cross, it meant staying loyal to him through certain suffering, to the point of death.

This saying would have been enough to make the large crowd gasp in horror. Most of them would have seen criminals carrying their crosses on the way to execution in humiliation and shame. Why would anyone choose that for themselves? There was no turning back from that. So Jesus uses this as a metaphor for saying a final ‘goodbye ‘ to all our desires and ambitions if we choose to follow him.

Thomas A Kempis, the Christian writer of ‘The imitation of Christ’ in the medieval period, commented that: “Many come following Jesus who love his heavenly kingdom but few come looking forward to suffering. Many admire His miracles but few follow Him in humiliation to the cross.” How true that is for us too: we admire Jesus, we admire his teaching, we glory in his love for us. But we are far more reticent to accept the humiliation of the cross for ourselves. But that is what is demanded of us. And so Jesus switches to an illustration about planning to build a tower and counting the cost before we do so. Or a king preparing to wage war against an enemy but first reckoning on the strength of his own troops before committing himself. In the same way, we are to reckon the cost, count the cost before committing ourselves to a life of discipleship.

Blind commitment that expects only blessings is of no use to God: he wants disciples who are committed and prepared to live sacrificially for him. Jesus wasn’t impressed by large crowds. He wasn’t impressed on this occasion. He wasn’t impressed on Palm Sunday. It is easy to join the crowd, or come to church, when things are going well. But the test of true discipleship is how we respond in times that are tough and whether we are able to obey God, even when the cost to us is high.

Jesus carried His own cross and gave precedence to His Father’s will and our salvation. Again it is about priorities. He sets aside his will and preferences in favor of love and obedience to God.

III  You cannot become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

The Greek word that Jesus uses here literally means to renounce our possessions. It doesn’t mean that we should put all our possessions in our front yard with a sign that says, “Free.” It means to renounce their power over us. To live in such a way that our possessions no longer have any control over us. It comes down, once again, to our priorities. If we want to follow Jesus, we must put him first. It is easy to get so completely focused on paying our bills, or putting our kids through college, or planning for retirement, or on just having fun, that we put Jesus second. But if any of these things come first, then we’re not really following him. We’re just travelling with him. If we want to be a follower of Jesus, then he must come first. Not our possessions. Not our families. Jesus.

What about Jesus’ possessions? The birds and animals of this world have more possessions than Jesus. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” Jesus says (Luke 9;58). Again Jesus gives primacy to his relationship with God not his relationship with things. It’s a question of priorities.

IV  Counting the cost

Jesus does not encourage a hasty emotional decision. Instead Jesus urges those who follow Him to seriously “count the cost”.

Before you build or go to battle we must sit down and count the cost. Counting the cost requires some thoughtful pondering before any action can take place. In the same way, we can’t follow Jesus in any old way that suits us. We have to carefully consider the commitment we are making. Jesus focuses on outcomes. Counting the cost indicates that there is some end in mind, some goal to be reached. You don’t start building a tower unless you plan to finish it. You don’t head into battle unless you think you can overcome the enemy. You don’t follow Jesus unless you want your life to be changed. Not only do we need to count the cost, that cost is everything we hold valuable. We have to bid farewell to everything we call our own. We have to leave behind everything that matters most to us.

And when Jesus says you have to leave behind everything that matters to you, whether it is family, or good standing in the community, or the things you own, he means you have to leave it behind now, and keep leaving it behind. This isn’t a one-time-and-you’re-done thing. It’s an ongoing, day-by-day, moment-by-moment surrender to God’s grace and mercy. To be a disciple of Jesus you must know that the cost will be putting Jesus first, and everything else last. That starts the moment you say “yes” to Jesus, and it does not stop. Ever.

The cost is high, but the cost of not following Jesus is even higher. Yes, Jesus asks us to leave everything else behind, to make him our first priority, but what price do we pay if we decide to not follow Jesus? What is the cost of refusing to be a true disciple? In his book, Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard lists the things we lose if we don’t follow Jesus with our whole being. He writes:

“Non-discipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring.”

The question you have to ask yourself is this: Is it worth it? Is it worth giving up abiding peace to live life on your own terms? Is it worth sacrificing a life penetrated by love to settle for having things the way you like them? Is it worth cutting yourself off from faith that trusts in God’s overarching plan for your good, in order to run your life the way you want to? Is it worth giving up hope, and the power to stand in the face of evil? Is it worth it to you to say “No ” to God’s abundance, so you can skimp by on your own meager resources? Because that’s what it costs to not take up your cross.

When we say “yes” to following Jesus, when we surrender our will to his will, something amazing happens. Bit by bit, we are changed. Each time we keep saying “yes, Lord, I leave behind everything to follow you,” we are re-formed. We are transformed, becoming more and more like Christ. We experience abundant life, by God’s grace. And we discover that the cost of following Jesus, that we thought we couldn’t possibly afford, is worth it all. Because the price has already been paid out of God’s deep love for us, and when we give our all to Christ, we receive so much more!

Conclusion

In closing, this passage tells us that being a disciple of Jesus Christ is costly. It is not for the faint of heart. A lot of people will follow Jesus, for a while. A lot of people will say they are His disciples, for a while. A lot of people will be a part of Jesus’ church, for a while, until something happens or it becomes inconvenient, or it becomes too costly for them to be with Jesus. It is not the large number of people who follow Christ for a while, but the smaller, committed group who remains. Which are you? What Jesus said in this passage described complete commitment to Him. We must be totally committed to Jesus in order to be His disciples. We must love Him more than anyone else and we must surrender all, including our very lives, to Him. That is the cost of being a disciple. That is what it means to follow Christ. Are you fully committed to Jesus Christ?

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/08/31

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Reading:
Luke 14:1; 7-14

Text:
Luke 14:11 “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Message:

In our reading today Jesus is certainly not talking about seating arrangements or etiquette in general. But the banquet table and seating arrangements happen to be the classroom in which Jesus chooses to teach the lesson for today, namely humility. Jesus seizes this moment to teach us the lesson we find our best in humility and sacrificial service and ultimately then that so much depends upon how we treat and live with one another.

In Luke 14:11 Jesus sets forth a powerful principle of life, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled (literally put down), and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” If I push myself up, God will push me down. If I humble myself, God will lift me up. 1 Peter 5:6 “Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”

First question we must ask ourselves (especially when in a conflict with someone else): Do I really believe what Jesus said? Do I really believe that if I humble myself, God will in due time exalt me? Or secretly in my heart, do I believe like the world believes – that those who exalt themselves will be exalted?

Second question we must ask ourselves has to do with the phrase in 1 Peter 5:6 “In due time.” The challenge I have wrestled with on this subject is how long the “in due time ” can be. I typically want the need to be defended and vindicated right here, right now. Most of the time, God wants to use the circumstances as an opportunity to work deeper humility in me – and then He exalts me on His time table. So will I trust Him to make that call on my behalf? If there are delays do I still believe He is working in my best interest?

Let’s take a moment and see how we think of ourselves in relation to humility:

1. Do you spend more time thinking about yourself than God or about other people?
2. Do you make yourself the center of most conversations?
3. Do you compare yourself with others often, judging yourself favorably?
4. Do you take credit for your own looks, intelligence or ability?
5. Do you think you deserve more of this world’s good things than other people do?
6. Do you think God must be pleased with you because of how ethical or religious you are?

How do we humble ourselves?

Humility begins with a sense of subordination to God. Subordination – the act of placing in a lower rank or position. We are in subordination to God. Subordination includes submission. In humility we submit to the will of our heavenly Commander in Chief, the King of kings and Lord of lords!

This is in direct opposition to the path of the world.

The world we live in says, “I’ll go where I want to go. I’ll do what I want to do, I’ll think what I want to think. I’ll be what I want to be. It’s my life and I’ll live it however I want to live it!”

Matthew 10:24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.”

For those of us who love Jesus with an all-consuming love it would be unthinkable to question His teachings found in Scripture and His teachings found in Scripture demand humility as demonstrated by Jesus Himself.

1 Peter 5:5b-6a: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.”

Humility does not feel a right to better treatment than Jesus got. Humility does not return evil for evil. Humility is not life based on its perceived rights.

1 Peter 2:21-23 “This is, in fact, what you were called to do, because: The Messiah also suffered for you and left an example for you to follow in His steps. “He never sinned, and He never told a lie. When He was insulted, He did not retaliate. When he suffered, He did not threaten. It was His habit to commit the matter to the One who judges fairly.”

Humility asserts the truth not to bolster ego with control or triumphs in debate but as service to Christ and love to the adversary. We don’t study the Word of God to win arguments with unbelievers or other believers! If we do, we both lose. If we ever leave a “conversation” with someone about the things of the Lord feeling like, “I guess I told them” we have failed at the humility that God desires. We assert the truth of the Gospel in order to love the other person as God loves them and out of love for God Himself. No one ever came to faith in Christ by being figuratively “hit over the head” with the Gospel. Speak the truth in love.

1 Corinthians 13:6 “Love rejoices in the truth”.

Humility knows it is fallible, and so considers criticism and learns from it. But humility also knows that God has made provision for human conviction and that he calls us to persuade others. If you think you are infallible then you are not humble but prideful and not teachable because you think you already know it all. The humble person listens to criticism. Criticism can come as a personal attack or anywhere in between. How do you receive criticism?

Have you been falsely criticized? Take it to the Lord.
Have you been rightly criticized? Take it to the Lord.
Rightly or wrongly criticized the Lord will let you know if you come to Him with a humble heart.

Proverbs 12:15b: “A Wiseman listens to advice.” When we speak as a witness for the Lord with a humble spirit He can use us. He can use us not because of our abilities but because in humility we allow God’s grace to flow through us.

Conflict is always an opportunity to humble ourselves. Most conflicts are perpetuated because we are not willing to humble ourselves.

Choosing to trust God to defend me rather than defending myself. Time may prove that I wasn’t as right as I thought I was. Time may prove that I was right on the issue but not on the attitude. But the bottom line is this: will I give up the need to win the argument? Will I give up the need to be right? Will I give up the need to have the last word? Will I recognize that my irresistible urge to defend myself is probably rooted in my own pride.

Ask forgiveness and give forgiveness. It’s humbling to ask for forgiveness. To do that right, you have to acknowledge what you did wrong. It’s humbling to give forgiveness because you have to relinquish the right to hold it over the other person’s head. The truth is: any time two people are in a conflict, two people have the opportunity to humble themselves.

Humility knows it is dependent on grace for all knowing and believing. Here we run into that amazing gift called Grace once again. Grace is defined as unmerited favor. We have done and can do nothing to earn or deserve the favor of God. Period! But in grace God extends His favor to us.

How does that favor work out?

God’s grace calls us to salvation. God’s grace enables us to say “Yes” to His saving grace. God’s grace sustains us in faith and helps us to grow in our faith. And, God’s grace enables us to understand the truths of God found in the Bible. You could have the entire Bible memorized but unless you yield to God’s saving grace it will do you no good.

James 1:21b “Humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.”

Philippians 2 gives us the ultimate example of how to move into spiritual authority by humbling ourselves. Phil. 2:5 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Who being in the form of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. As God the Son He had every right to hold onto that place of grandeur – but love drew Him to you and me. He took a lower place for our sake”.

In Luke 14 Jesus illustrated a practical way we humble ourselves. He said that when you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t take the best place or you might run the risk of them telling you in front of everyone to take a lower seat. Take the lower seat and wait to be invited to the higher place. That runs contrary to the way the world thinks. The world’s advice is climb the ladder anyway you can. Take care of I. Jesus was making a radical statement about the way His Kingdom works when he gave the beatitudes. The first one says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit (that’s talking about humility) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That’s the opposite of what the world really thinks. The world values prideful self-promotion. Yes, do it with the veneer of a fiancé. But climb to the top.

When the church operates on the same principles that the world uses, the result is powerlessness – no real spiritual authority – a lot of hype and self-promotion – and usually using the same standards the world uses to define success. We must be careful of false humility. For example I may allow someone in another car to go before me and when they do, I get cross because they did not say thank you. This shows that my humility was false, I did it so that they could say thank you and acknowledge me.

God highly exalted Jesus as He took the route of humbling himself and submission to the Father. He made of Himself no reputation – he was not living to promote himself; He was living to do the will of the Father. After stating all that, Phil. 2:9 begins with the word “Therefore “- because Jesus was willing to humble Himself to that extent, the Father has exalted Him above all others. That is the pattern we are to follow. He who humbles Himself will be exalted.

Benefits of increasing humility

1. Relief from Stress of Impressing others (nothing to prove)
2. Brings Contentment to the soul – less striving for things and position
3. Increases Confidence in God – resting from our own works, now God can work on our behalf
4. Opens the flow of God’s grace in our lives. “God resists the proud but gives grace, favor, empowerment to the humble.”
5. Brings promotion in the right way “… he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
How have you learned to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God?

Ah, the beautiful part of this scripture and of the Christian experience is that we are called by Almighty God to live lives of humility and sacrificial service. But the difficult part is that we are called to live those lives right now, today, among the broken and damaged people whom we meet every day. That is the difficult part.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/08/24

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Reading:
Luke 13:10-17

Text:
Luke 13:12-13 “When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Women you are set free from your infirmity’. Then he put his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God.”

Message:

In Luke’s gospel today we read about a woman who had been crippled for 18 years. We do not know much about her story. We know that she did not come to Jesus asking to be healed. For all we know, she did not even know Jesus was going to be teaching in the synagogue that day. She came in only after Jesus had already begun to speak. She slipped in late because then she avoided the glares of the people seeing her crippled body. She was completely bent over. She is a symbolic way to represent us all. What do you see when you look at her? What do you imagine she’s feeling and thinking? What feelings does she bring up in you? What is she looking for? Do you recognize yourself in her? Where have you seen her? What does she represent for you? Maybe she represents the way we can be weighed down by circumstances and the heaviness of life. Maybe she represents how social, political, economic, justice, or religious systems can be crooked, bent, or crippled, and oppress others.

We are all bent over with a heavy burden or sin. None of us are truly able to stand up straight to praise God on our own. We all need help. In need of a Saviour. This is precisely what Jesus longs to be. The world’s Saviour. Our Saviour who frees us from the heavy burden of sin. That is what Jesus came to do, to set us free to help us stand up straight and praise our loving God.

When Jesus saw the woman, he could have left her in peace. He could have simply counted her as one of the crowd and let her go on living the way she’d come to consider as normal. At least, it was normal for her. She wasn’t asking for anything. She wasn’t even hoping for anything, as far as we know.

Jesus could have asked her if she even wanted to be healed. He could have asked if she had faith to be healed. But he didn’t do any of those things. He called her over – and keep in mind this would have been difficult for her on at least two counts.

Women did not enter the part of the synagogue where the men listened to teaching. So she would not only have had to make the effort to find her way over unfamiliar ground without being able to look up to see where she was going, she also would have been walking into an area previously forbidden for her. She would be breaking some well-established rules. Yet, Jesus calls her over to where he is sitting, and says, “You are set free from your ailment.” Not ‘forgiven of your sins’ or ?’healed of your infirmity,’ but “set free.”

Satan binds us with rules and meaningless rituals, but Jesus releases us into new life. Jesus overcomes our crippling bondage to sin by releasing us into God’s grace. Whether or not we can look up and see beyond the ground at our feet, Jesus sees us, calls us, and proclaims freedom from whatever is binding our spirits and bending us into brokenness.

When Jesus spoke to the woman, she immediately felt the pain go away. She felt her back loosen up. Then he reached out and put his healing hands on her. Her back straightened for the first time in eighteen years, and she stood straight up! There was nothing else she could do but stand straight and tall, and praise God. She didn’t ask him to do it. She wasn’t even hoping for healing. But he called to her, right where she was, and put his hands on her, and she stood up straight. He touched her – something no one had done for a very long time. They were all afraid that physical contact with her would make them unclean, so – for eighteen years – people had been careful to stay away from this woman. No one wanted to risk uncleanness.

But when Jesus touched her, he welcomed her back into life. He made it okay for others to touch her, too. He made her clean again, after eighteen years. Like a mustard plant stretching toward the sun, she lifted up her hands and her voice to praise God. Luke doesn’t tell us her exact words, but her gratitude and praise were contagious. The crowds started rejoicing and praising God with her.

As we now look at the after picture we see her standing up straight, restored upright and in alignment with life. What do you see when you look at her? Imagine the possibilities that now lay before her and how her life might be different. Where have you seen this picture in your life and our world? What feelings does she bring up in you? Hope, courage, desire, inspiration, joy, gratitude? Isn’t it a picture of what you want for yourself, others, our country? What would it be like for us, to stand up straight, restored, and aligned with the life and values of God? It is a pattern we see again and again in the gospels. Jesus sees and touches another and the picture of life changes.

The Ruler of the Synagogue

There is another person in the story who is important to look at and who has much to teach us. And that is the leader of the synagogue. He too is in need of healing in need of a Saviour but sadly he does not know it. Meanwhile, the ruler of the synagogue wasn’t too happy. He started yelling at the crowd. “There are six days in the week for work, come get healed on those days!” He almost makes it sound like the miracle of healing isn’t such a miracle after all – it’s just a normal workday occurrence. And notice that the synagogue leader didn’t yell at Jesus – even though it was Jesus who had initiated contact with the woman, and had done the work of healing. But Jesus knew his heart. Even though the rabbi would not talk directly to Jesus, Jesus spoke directly to him. “You hypocrite!” he said. “Don’t you untie your donkey and lead it to water on the Sabbath? ?Isn’t this woman worth more than a donkey? Shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”

The root of the word we translate as ‘hypocrite’ also means “actor”. The rabbi was busy acting the part of a devout Jew. He was concerned about sticking to the letter of the law, but he really wasn’t concerned with fulfilling the spirit of the law. A woman is miraculously healed by God’s Son and all he can think is that it’s the Sabbath. It’s? hard to comprehend how anyone could be so cruel. The woman who was healed by Jesus had been crippled for 18 long years.

So, imagine how heartless and cruel you would have to be to do what the leader of that synagogue did that day. Not to celebrate or give thanks for this miracle. But simply to focus on the fact that this was done on the wrong day, the Sabbath. Imagine getting angry at Jesus for healing this crippled woman on the wrong day. This could be her one and only chance to even see Jesus. And this synagogue leader is upset. God provided the Sabbath to give us rest and refreshment, to renew life after a hard week of work. Healing a poor old woman’s bent back certainly does that. But the religious leader was bound up in his own idea of religious rules. He was crippled by his own interpretation of the Law’s restrictions.

Like a fig tree that won’t bear figs, this religious leader has all the appearances of righteousness, but none of the fruit. And Jesus calls him out on it. You untie a donkey and lead it to water on the Sabbath, don’t you? Shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham be released from bondage on the Sabbath, then? Isn’t the Sabbath the very best day to heal and restore to wholeness?

Now she is standing, giving thanks to God in a posture of praise. We stand stiff, rigid, and indignant like the religious leader in today’s gospel. “There are six days on which work ought to be done,” he says: “Come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.” Every time we make the rules or policies more important than people our lives are out of shape. You see, this story is not just about the healing of the crippled woman. It is about the healing that we all need. In the case of the synagogue leader, he is in need of healing, but not physical healing. He needs to be able to see the world in a new way. He needs a softer, kinder heart. He needs to be made to see that love is sometimes more important than rules.

I don’t think the woman is the only crippled and bent over person in today’s gospel. The leader is just as crippled and bent over. The difference is the woman knows she is but the leader doesn’t know he is. He has chosen law, rules, and “the way we’ve always done it,” over another human being and it has distorted and crippled his life. I wonder if that sometimes happens to us. In what ways might this picture of the leader describe our lives today? Jesus never did that. He always put people first even when it meant upsetting the authorities, breaking the rules, and changing “the way we’ve always done it.” He saw them and he laid hands on them regardless of who they were, what had happened to them, or what they had done. People came first.

There are so many things we let cripple us. So many ways we bend to fit into some self-created box of what we think is normal, what we think we should do, what we think we must do, until we can’t see straight ahead anymore. We can’t look each other in the eye, or lift our eyes to the hills to see our help coming toward us. (Ps 121:1). What cripples you, and keeps you stuck? How have you resigned yourself to suffering, not expecting anything to change? What miracle have you given up asking God to work in your life? Maybe you’ve been asking so long and it seems like God has been ignoring you, so you think this must be what God wants for you: this suffering, this pain, this crippling posture that forces you to always look at the ground and never see the sky.

No matter what is binding you, trapping your soul in a box of ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’, Jesus came to release you from that prison. Jesus is calling you to himself, so he can put his hands on you and raise you up to new life in him. Let your life be filled with gratitude and praise, and offer others the same release from bondage that Christ has given to you. What is Jesus calling out to you to do? How is Jesus calling you to stand up straight, to be released from your bound up spirit? And what is your response to such grace? Jesus invites you into his presence, and into his grace. Jesus is reaching out to touch each one here, to heal you and to include you in his love, to release you from whatever is crippling your spirit.

How will you respond? Will you keep acting out your traditions and rules, like the synagogue leader? Or will you stand up and join the woman in heartfelt praise? Are you ready to live a life that makes others say, ‘That one is a child of God’? Jesus is calling you, reaching out to touch you, ready to heal you and your brokenness, to restore you to wholeness, to claim you as his own. It’s time to stand up.

Conclusion

We have come to this place today, not because we get it all right, but because we too often get it all wrong. We have come to this place today, not because we are strong, but because we are weak and in need of saving. We have come to this place today, not because we have no burdens in our lives, but because our burden is so great. We have come to this place today, not to be like the leader of the synagogue, and stand proudly before the Lord today; but to be like the woman bent over, in need of help and healing from the Lord today. We have come to this place today, to be strengthened by God’s word, to be nourished? by God’s meal, and to find in the Lord rest for our weary souls.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/08/17

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Reading:
Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Text:

Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Message:

The Christian life is often compared to running a race. But how are we to run that race in order to claim the prize that God offers to all who finish? Indeed, in our reading today, the writer to Hebrews uses the image of running and racing to make this point. He says: “Let us run the race…” This image shows us that to be a Christian is not a passive thing, it is active and dynamic. It’s not about buying the t-shirt and watching from the stands, but being in the race and running on the track. We’re not to be couch potatoes, but busy bees. Our faith shouldn’t just be a vague afterthought, but the driving force of every aspect of our lives.

The writer makes this point after chapter 11, where he has reminded us of some of the heroes of the Christian faith. People who has worked through great struggles in life, in order to pursue the greater prize that God had promised them. They are the kind of Christians that we are called to be.

A young soccer player tells about how they had to run a long distance to get fit before they practiced their soccer. He said that he is not really a runner and it got to him. When someone one day said to him, instead of looking down the looong stretch of road we had to cover, to just look a few feet in front of me at a time. Then, to look at the light poles, and focus on running just to the next pole. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one light pole to the next. That’s what it takes to finish the race set before you; knowing where to look.

When we read Hebrews 11 the writer takes us through the “Hall of Faith”. We see portraits of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Samson. We learn about the heroes of the faith and the extraordinary things they did for God. As I take in this inspiring tour, it’s as if these heroes are calling out to us, “Carpe Diem! Seize the day. Make your life extraordinary for God!” One can’t help but be inspired by this text. It is a clarion call for the church to continue to fight the good fight of the gospel. The winning witness of our heroes stirs us to persevere. Their stories remind us that we are not the first ones to run the race of faith. Faithful saints before us have run the same race, fought fatigue, battled discouragement and won!

This teaches us to run the race to win. Along the way, there is also the cloud of witnesses for us in faith; this listing is one high five after another from those who have walked the road of life before us in faith, giving us confidence to do the same. To those new to the faith, the writer points out “hey, look! Here’s a whole host of people who have come before you, who have had tremendous obstacles and challenges, too, and by faith, have made it through. If they can do it, so can you!”

What has helped God’s people deal with discouragement since the beginning is the knowledge that we are not alone. We follow in the footsteps of people from the earliest biblical times who were unsure of what the future held for them. We follow in the footsteps of saints who along the way chose to trust God anyway. We follow God who does not abandon us in times of trouble.

I  Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles

Throw off the sin that so easily entangles. There was once a man who was stranded on a deserted island in the Pacific. A ship was passing that was prepared to pick him up but he refused because on the island he found a monkey that became his pet and he did not want to leave the monkey behind and he was not allowed to take the monkey on the boat. How many of us have not become entangled with sin. We’ve picked up bad habits and sins along the way. We know they weigh us down. We know they are bad for us. We know they complicate things. We know they keep us from running the race of faith swiftly, but we still hang on to them. And it is causing many of us to lose the race of faith. If we would throw it aside, we would run much faster. But too often, we do not take the weight of sin seriously enough to do anything about it, and we continue to run at a loser’s pace.

Notice when athletes run they do not wear too much, just their running shorts and vests. When the runners ran when the book of Hebrews was written they ran naked. When it comes to running the Christian life, it is not too many clothes that are the problem, but sin. That is the attitude, speech and behaviours that go against God’s will for our lives, that act more out of our selfish and warped desires than out of love for others or God. If we want to run the Christian life, so as to win the prize we need to throw off our sin or else it will trip us up and we will come crashing down. “By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be ill-treated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (11:24-26)

He knew that to run the race of faith, he had to throw off the sin that so easily entangles. We need to do the same thing, if we are to run the Christian race.

Many may start the Christian race, but they find themselves caught up in sin that pulls them away from faith. Drink and drug addictions, sexual flings, anger issues, jealousy, laziness or just become too proud of their own achievements to humbly accept their need for God.

It is not very popular to preach about sin anymore. Several years ago, Karl Meninger wrote a book entitled, “Whatever became of Sin?” Right, whatever did become of it? Sin is hardly ever mentioned anymore, but it remains the most dangerous threat to our spiritual lives. We can’t win the race of discipleship if we are spiritually dead!

II  Run with Perseverance

The writer of Hebrews says we must run with perseverance. Perseverance – it’s what separates followers of Jesus from admirers of Jesus. The first essential lesson to winning a race is that you have to finish the race. It is easy to start the race of discipleship, but the real question is, “Can we finish it?” Remember, it was the tortoise and not the hare that won the race!

Now churches are filled with starters, but in every church there is always a small percentage of finishers – those who get the work done, those who give and serve consistently, those who tithe on a regular basis. And it is the finishers who make the church go, that make the church run. So, as we reflect on the race we are running, the question we must ask ourselves is, “Am I a starter or am I a finisher?”

The writer of Hebrews does an inspiring job motivating us to persevere, to finish the race of discipleship. Hebrews 12:1 ways, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” The image here is that of a big stadium filled with saints cheering us on as we race. Imagine being at the center of a huge stadium, running feverishly around the track and the whole crowd are saints – thousands of them, and they are all screaming your name. You see Paul holding up a banner with your name on it. You see Abraham and Moses high fiving, chanting your name. I don’t know about you, but that motivates me. Let’s be finishers!

III  Focus on the Promised Prize

“Let us run the race mark out for us” – this is what the writer says to us. So firstly let us focus on the prize. We are not to just focus on the next step, but to consider the whole race and particularly the end of the race!

The writer began chapter 11, where he reminds us of the great heroes of faith by saying: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”(11:1)

Faith is about hope, it is about confidence that God will give us what he has promised. Unlike a sporting event, the Christian life is not a competition, where only one or two win, because as the writer has already made abundantly clear, Jesus has already won the prize for us and God has promised us that there is an amazing future waiting for us. The example of faith in chapter 11, includes mention of those who were heading for the Promised Land. The Israelites who had been slaves in Egypt were promised by God, their own amazing land to live in. So, they set off on a journey. It was not an aimless wandering, but one with a goal in mind, the land that God had promised. Their faith drove them on towards the prize, with amazing miracles as they crossed the Red Sea on dry land and defeated the stronghold at Jericho, with just a shout!

In the same way, as Christians we are to live our lives, with an aim to reach the promises that God has ready for us. To receive the gift of eternal life and a place in his eternal home knowing him fully and ruling with him forever. Sometimes we get to the starting line and sit down. There is no concern to complete the race, no desire to gain the prize. If that is you then you need to get up and run the race set before you.

IV  Perseverance

We don’t just need to start the race, we need to keep going. And sometimes that can be hard and tough. The Christian life is not a sprint, it is more of a marathon. That’s why the writer of Hebrews say “let us run with endurance”. He is writing to Christians who have started the race well, but as the race goes on the pain seems to be setting in and the temptation is to give up to stop racing and forget the prize. But he wants to encourage them to keep going, to continue the race so that they do reach the prize.

At the end of chapter 10 he says: “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” (10:36)

In his list of great heroes of faith in chapter 11, he reminds us of the kind of things that the heroes of faith had to endure. It is a reminder to the Christians he was writing to, that their pain and suffering is nothing new or unique to them. We see that some of them faced jeers, flogging while others were chained and put in prison, they were stoned and destitute (11:36-38)

Just as in long distance running, if you want to win the prize, you need to go through the pain. There will be suffering on the way to the goal. We need to run with endurance, we need to keep going through the pain.

There are sadly many who start off as Christians and run the race well, but when the going gets tough, they give up, they forget the prize and withdraw from the race.

Perhaps you know that is you. Maybe you have been a keen Christian in the past, but you gave up because it felt too much of a sacrifice or there was too much pressure or ridicule from non-Christian friends or family or perhaps you just grew weary or bored of it. Perhaps you are in a place where you are about to give up for one or all of those reasons.

Don’t give up. Yes, it can be painful to be a Christian at times, but this race is worth completing, the promised prize is worth more than anything else and so many others have faced the same pressures and difficulties as you – and probably far worse, but have kept going through the pain to win the prize.

V  Look to Jesus

The last thing the writer of Hebrews says is we must look to Jesus.

So, to be a Christian, to live by faith, means to look to the prize, endure the pain and throw off our sin. There are many examples in the Bible to show us how to do this, but there is of course one great example: Jesus. The writer says, if you want to run the race, to gain the promised prize, fix your eyes on him! Not only must we finish the race, but we must also cross the right finish line. Now, there are all kinds of people in the world running all kinds of races. Some are running the race of greed, trying to earn as much money as they can. Some are running the race of lust, trying to have as many pleasurable escapades as they can. Some are running the race of power, trying to get the most powerful and prestigious job they can. But at the finish line of these races is death and emptiness. The only race that counts in eternity, the only race that matters after all is said and done, is the race of Christian discipleship.

So what are we as Christians racing towards? What is our goal? What is our finish line? It is Jesus. Jesus. Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus, the Prince of peace. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, the great shepherd. Jesus, the rock of all ages. Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Jesus! You see, Jesus is not only our companion and strength as we race. He is our goal. Our goal is to be like Jesus.

Just think about it, you are running the race in a big stadium and you hear all the saints cheering you on and that fills you era energy. But you are not prepared for what you see as you turn the corner. There is Jesus at the finish line with a look of encouragement and intensity. He is motioning you forward, “Come on child, don’t stop. You can do it!” You finally stretch across the finish line and you feel a sense of relief and release. Jesus embraces you, says in your ear, “Child, well done, I am so proud of you!” Is there anything else worth living for?

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/08/10

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Reading:
Hebrews 11:1-3; 8-16

Text:
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see!!

Message:

Today’s readings seem like they are all about not being afraid, which is an important message for our fear-filled world these days. But these readings are not really about not being afraid, they are about having faith. It is our faith and trust in God that keep us from being afraid.

How is your faith these days? I ask that question because there are events, times, and seasons in each of our lives when everything we thought we knew or believed is called into question. The narrative of our life has been ruptured. We no longer know what we believe about God, life, or the world. We’re not sure where to place our trust or in what to hope. Some events leave us wondering, “If this kind of thing can happen to us, then how do we live now? How do we move forward?”

People may come to you and say to you, “Just have faith or get more faith or you need stronger faith. That is not very helpful. What does it even mean after tragedy strikes, our heart has been broken, our world shattered? I wish it were as simple as ordering up some faith but I don’t think it is. I think we are always working out our faith. So I want to rethink with you what faith might mean and look like for us today.

Life is unpredictable. Life is filled with uncertainties. While preparing for the message today I read two stories of how trouble comes to us in unexpected ways.

They threw a retirement party for him. They roasted him and presented him with all these awards. He had been with the company for a long time. His proud wife was there by his side. They asked what he was going to do in his retirement. “Travel”, he said. The couple went on to tell about all the trips they had planned. They went home a proud and happy couple. The next day his wife collapsed and died.

They were a good family. They planned well. Invested their money. Their adorable kids would be taken care of. Well, dad was at work. He got a call from his wife. She said, “Have you seen the news? We’ve lost it all.” You see, they invested with a guy named Madoff.

We see trouble rarely announces itself before it comes. Trouble hardly says, “Here I come! Get ready.” If it did at least we could prepare for it or better we could avoid it altogether. But that is not the way life works. It is because of this truth that our lives are defined by how we respond to trouble. Scott Peck in his book, “Road less traveled” said the reason for so much human dysfunction is the inability to face trouble. At the bottom of all unhealthy responses to trouble is one bad word. This word is the enemy to all that brings life and joy and peace and hope. The word is “panic”. Panic is the feeling of being out of control. Panic is grabbing anything that makes you feel like you are in control, even if it’s unhealthy.

Maybe your life is coming apart, financial, healthy relationship issues and this sends you into panic. You want to know something. There is another choice besides panic. You can find peace in the midst of your storm. You can calm the raging tempest inside you. You can find help and hope. All that is needed is one thing.

It is faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen.” As we read this scripture for today it calls us to remember the faithfulness of God to our ancestors and practice the faith that sustained them. So this ancient story calls us to do the same – put our faith and trust in God, the One who was and is and will always be faithful. The story of Abraham and Sarah starts with a decision of Abraham and Sarah. To obey and go or to stay where they are. To trust or not to trust. To be ruled by fear or to live by faith.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” Faith in God that starts us on the journey of the Christian. Faith that God loves us. Trusting Jesus. This is what gives us the courage to live our lives for God. This is the faith that gets us out the door, and gives us the courage to live our lives for God and for God’s creation. This is the faith that led Abraham and Sarah to go, as Genesis teaches us. The faith that started it all.

But there is also another matter that not only was it Abraham’s faith and belief in God but also by God’s faith in Abraham that he set out for a new homeland even if he did not know where it was or how he would get there. Haven’t there been times in your life when someone emboldened and encouraged you, comforted you, stood by you, believed in you, had faith in you, and it made a difference? You did more than you thought you could, you overcame what you thought was impossible, you got through a situation you never thought you would. So what is God’s desire for you today? In what ways is God calling you? What a difference does God’s belief in you make.

Faith also sometimes means staying at home. We can’t all be Abraham and Sarah, packing our bags and heading out on a great adventure. Faith, and obeying God’s call, can also mean to stay, if that is God’s desire for us. And so, in Hebrews 11:9, the author reminds us that:

“By faith Abraham and Sarah also stayed for a time in the land they had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents.”

It wasn’t easy for them, I am sure, but they stayed. Sometimes faith can lead to something much less dramatic and exciting than going to a strange, new land. In Mother Teresa’s book, “A simple path,” she says:
“I always say that love starts at home: family first, and then your own town or city. It is easy to love people who are far away but it is not always so easy to love those who live with us or right next to us. I do not agree with the big way of doing things – love needs to start with an individual.”

We can love the poor that are all around us. We can begin at home and in our own community. This too is what being faithful can look like: staying where we are and loving those we are with, in the way Jesus loves us.

Faith means looking forward with hope. Hebrews 11:10 “Looked forward to the city that has foundations whose architect and builder is God.” We see faith calls us to look forward, faith teaches us hope. When we look ahead in faith we look ahead with hope. Hope is essential to our Christian life. Hope is not an escape from this world, a distracted desire for heaven to hurry up and get here. Hope is what gives us the patience to live through the trials of this life. It gives us the confidence that better days await. And that can give us the courage to make needed changes in our life. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. When we have this blessed assurance, there is nothing that we cannot face with faith and trust in God.

As Christians we are those who have learned, like Abraham, that God can be trusted. God can be trusted to give peace in the midst of the storm. God can be trusted to take what is evil and transform it into something good. God can be trusted to empower you in the midst of trouble. God can be trusted to receive you when you die. God can be trusted!

Abraham and Sarah have much to teach us about faith about trusting God even when it is hard to trust God. Hebrews 11:11 Sarah was far beyond the age of child bearing still trusted in God. We often think that it is harder to trust in God these days, simply because it is harder to trust in anything these days. And there is some truth in that. But if the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us that we are not alone when we struggle to trust. There are people of little faith scattered throughout Scripture. We are not alone when our faith seems small.

But the Bible does not teach us only about our small faith, but also about our great God. And even faith the size of a mustard seed is big enough, when it is faith that is placed in God. God can work wonders even with mustard seed-sized faith. Abraham and Sarah had enough faith to trust in God, even in the midst of their doubt. And God had enough faith in Abraham and Sarah to entrust them with a child, to fulfill God’s promise.

We saw in our reading today what faith looks like in the Old Testament then it concludes with these words.
“All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.”

Isn’t that a poignant thing to say about faith, and about what it looks like in our world? The promise of God that faith clings to, the ultimate promise, lies beyond the grave. None of us will see it in this life, unless Jesus returns in our lifetime. If that doesn’t happen, we will “die in faith without having received the promises,” as Hebrews reminds us. But we see this promise from a distance. We see it and greet it. We trust God. And we do so, on this journey called life, toward the place that is promised us all. We believe the lord, and we go. Just like Abraham and Sarah.

Faith is important. Where we place our faith is important. As David E. Graves writes, “Faith matters. Our faith gives assurance that God has our best interest at heart, knows what we hope for, and holds our future” (Bartlett, 2015). Let’s be honest though, having faith is not always easy. It can be hard to have that confident assurance that God can be trusted, especially when things are not going the way we want them to or when we cannot see the end of the story. That is why this passage is so important for our people. In a world like ours, a world where faith is on the decline, this passage is a call to remembrance. It is a call to remember the never-ending faithfulness of God. It is a call to remember that the God who was faithful to Abraham and Sarah, is the same God that was faithful to Isaac and Jacob, Rahab and Ruth, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. This God is the same God that was faithful to the disciples and the early church. And this God will never cease to be faithful. This God will be faithful to you, to me, to God’s church today.

We need this call to remembrance. We need the hope that comes from faith in Christ. We need to be reminded that faith in God is never misplaced! Faith in God is the foundation we can build our lives on and when we do, when we build our lives on this confident assurance, this conviction of truth, then we can wait with joy and confidence, knowing that God is at work – even when our eyes cannot see.

I want today to conclude with a beautiful story of Henry Nouwen who went to a circus to see the German trapeze group “The Flying Rodleighs”. He was mesmerized by their breath-taking performance as they flew gracefully through the air. At the end of the show, he spoke with the leader of the troupe, Rodleigh himself.. Nouwen asked him how he was able to perform with such grace and ease so high in the air. Rodleigh responded, “The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher – The secret is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have to simply stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me. The worst thing the flyer can do is try to catch the catcher. I’m not supposed to catch Joe. It’s Joe’s task to catch me.”

When trouble comes, so often we try to grab on to God. We think if we do enough mental gymnastics or enough fanciful praying, we can somehow catch God. It’s not our job to catch God. God catches us.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/08/03

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Reading:
Luke 12:13-21

Text:
Luke 12:21 “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Message:

This passage from Luke is going to force us to look at our lives and ask ourselves: “what is really important in life?” Our scripture tells the story of a man who has plenty more than plenty and what he does with his bounteous blessings. In Dr. Philip Ryken’s commentary on Luke gives an illustration from John Grisham’s novel The Testament.

Then Ryken comments, “Whether rich or poor, this is how life always ends: with the dead leaving it all behind, and the living dividing whatever is left. Yet the living are not always satisfied with the way things get divided.” That was true of the man who approached Jesus to adjudicate an inheritance dispute in Luke 12:13-21. Jesus used this opportunity to address the sin of greed.

In the passage we read today, we find Jesus sitting and teaching his disciples, but also sitting with them where many just listen to him teach. He was trying to teach his disciples to fear God alone, when he was suddenly interrupted by a man who was not trying to learn what Jesus was teaching, but he was adamant about his own problem. He blurts out and asks Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” I’m sure Jesus stopped what he was teaching and looked over at this man then said, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” Jesus refused to be sidetracked from his mission of seeking and saving the lost. He looked at that man and saw that the problem wasn’t the fair division of the inheritance, but one of ‘greed’. Jesus saw that not only did this man have a problem with greed, but also the man’s brother.

What Jesus saw coming out of this man was “greed”, and so he begins to teach about the sin of greed in the parable of the “rich man”. After all my reading, I don’t believe that Jesus had a problem with a man having possessions or even being wealthy. Jesus was concerned with man’s heart … where is your heart? Is your heart turned toward getting more and more of what you already have … or is your heart bent on loving and giving to where it is needed.

Proverbs 21:26 speaks to this very point… “they are always greedy for more, while the godly love to give.”

Jesus warns us against the sin of greed, a strong desire to acquire more and more material possessions or to possess more things than other people have, all irrespective of need. This desire applies to all people, rich and poor alike. The rich are tempted to want even more of what they already have, while the poor are tempted to want things they do not have.

We read in Ecclesiastes 5:10 “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income.” The reason Jesus warned against covetousness and greed is because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. The word abundance (perisseuein) in this sense means “surplus”, a superfluity of stuff. Jesus is teaching that having more does not add anything to our lives. He wants us to be content with what we have, rather than have an inordinate desire to have more. T.W. Mason said, “It is true that a certain minimum of material goods is necessary for life; but it is not true that greater abundance of goods means greater abundance of life.”

If it is a lie that life does consist in the abundance of possessions, what is the truth? The truth is true life is to know Jesus Christ and to live for him. The Bible says that Jesus is the life (John 14:6). The Bible says that true life is to know the only true God and his Son Jesus Christ (John 17:3). The Bible says that to live is Christ (Philippians 1:21). A heart bent on acquiring more and more of any earthly possession is dead end. Jesus said that one’s life does not consist in the abundance of His possessions … and yet greed tries to convince us of just the opposite.

As we reflect on the story that Jesus told, what is Jesus teaching us?

I  We focus on ourselves

And we do not give God credit for the things He has done. Has the grammar of our lives been predominantly in the first person singular. I? I want, I need, I hope I achieved, I accomplished, I will. I I I “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

Jesus told a parable say “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentiful.” Jesus spoke of a man who was rich, a man who had honestly earned what he possessed … Jesus didn’t have a problem with that … Jesus was speaking of a man who was leaving God out of the picture … he was speaking of a man who was saying to himself … look what I have done … look what my fields have yielded … look at me and my wonderful problem. Where was God in this picture .. the fact that he was a steward over all that God had given him … the fact that God had blessed him with a good crop free of blight and disease … the fact that God had blessed him with such an abundance that ‘his cup overfloweth’… that his barns could no longer hold all that God had given him … this man was not giving God any credit for these things that he had done.

When we focus on ourselves, we make plans but leave God out. “And he thought within himself, saying, ‘what shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops? So he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and there I will store all my crops and my goods.” There is nothing wrong with the man’s desire to build more barns; it was probably a good and prudent idea. The problem lays in the fact that there is not any thought of sharing his abundance with others. It is interesting to note that in the parable the personal pronoun ‘My’ occurs four times and ‘I’ occurs five times. The rich man says … my crops … my barns… my goods. There is no thought to putting God into his life. In all his plans, he has left God out.

God had blessed him, although he did not recognize it. God had sent just the right amount of rain and sunshine, and kept the pests off his farm, so that the farmer had a massive crop. The farmer did not cheat anyone nor abuse his employees. He was wonderfully successful. But the man did not recognize God’s provision, and, falling prey to a false sense of security, he thought to himself, “what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods”(12:17 – 18). Building new, larger barns was logical and prudent. It was a good idea. However, the danger lay in what was missing. There was no thought of stewardship. There was no understanding that he was a steward of God’s possessions, and that he was to share God’s blessings with others.

The problem with this man is that he was selfish and self-absorbed. All he could think of was himself. He had no thought for God or for other people. In fact, Dan Doriani notes that of the fifty-four words in the parable in the original Greek, fully eighteen of them are first-person words like “I “, “Me,” and “my.”

A minister tells a story of how he went to visit a mentor and teacher of his who said he could take some of the books he no longer needed or used. He said he was so excited because he had some great books. He then showed his wife that he took six large boxes of books. He said he was thrilled but his wife was not. She said where will you put them all? He said he was going to put up extra shelves. Then she said there was another option, get rid of some of the books. He said, no he wanted to get rich of his books “Take care. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” As Jesus warns, there are all kinds of greed. It might be books, shoes, or any other tangible thing. It might be amassing money, land, or other wealth. But greed can also be about time, attention, approval, love, knowledge, power, control, being right, being in charge, or a thousand other things. Ultimately, though, greed is not about any of these things. They are just the symptoms or pointers to the deeper issue. The issue is not about quantity but a condition of the heart. Greed is really just a way of dealing with our own feelings of deficit and emptiness. It’s not so much about having enough but about being enough. When we believe ourselves to be deficient, when we lose belief in ourselves, when we feel we are not enough, then we get greedy. We use things and other people to fill the hole inside us.

When we focus on ourselves we consider spending our resources only on ourselves. “And I say to my soul … soul, you have many goods laid up for many years: take your ease; eat, drink and be merry.” In this verse, the rich man is talking to himself and assessing his future physical well-being. This man thought that when he put his plan into action that he would have it made for years to come. He was convinced that his future would continually expand under his control. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was beginning to show traits of being a ‘fool’. In the book of James, it speaks about this rich man’s attitude in Chapter 4 verses 13-16 when it says, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

One of the most dangerous words in our language is the word, “tomorrow”. When we speak of the future, we should say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” The Bible does not discourage us from looking into the future, however, as we make our plans, whether it be in business, in relationships, or in our personal lives, we are to do so from the perspective that ultimately God is in charge. With this in mind, we should plan with a humble heart, knowing that God is with us … to help us and to strengthen us in all we do.

That means we invest in ourselves, each other, and the world in the same ways in which Jesus invested himself; through love, mercy, compassion, justice, hope, courage, acceptance, truth, beauty, generosity. This is the wealth of God. This is the life God shares and invests in us through Jesus Christ. So to be rich toward God begins with knowing that we already are God’s beloved treasure. There is freedom in that. It is the freedom to live rich toward others and the world. It reveals that there is enough. It declares my life to be as important and valuable as yours. It eliminates the need for comparison with and judgment of myself and others. Being takes precedence over having.

Greed deceives us and convinces us that if we just have enough then we will be happy. Greed uses external things to deal with internal matters and it rarely works. It leaves us wanting more, always seeking the next dollar, the next book, the next word of approval. The thing is that greed steals and deprives us of what we most want. Greed thieves us of our lives. That doesn’t mean that possessions are inherently bad or wrong. The antidote to greed is not necessarily in cleaning out the closet, throwing away my books, or giving away my belongings, though in some cases that might be a necessary beginning point. The real work is interior work. Greed shows me to be living in poverty toward God. The antidote to greed then is to be rich toward God.

Greed thieves us of God’s wealth. The boxes, shelves and closets of our lives are already full. We have no need, no desire, no room for God. It isolates us from self, others, and God. Greed works its deception and turns us back on ourselves and the grammar of our life soon becomes first person singular.

I know what I will do.
I will pull down my barns.
I will build larger barns.
I will store my stuff in my new barns.
I will relax.
I will eat.
I will drink.
I will be merry.

When that happens greed has thieved me of you and the possibility of us. There is no second or third person. There is only me, a “fool” Jesus says in the parable, a fool who closes the barn door after the thief has escaped with my life. “Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions”, Jesus said. Somewhere deep within we already know this. Jesus does not have a problem with us owning possessions – that is one way God blesses our lives. It is the problem of how we think about our possessions that makes the difference.

As we packed up our stuff to move to Stilbaai we had got rid of a whole lot of things. I realized then and there, that “you can’t take it with you”… that God blesses you with many things, but they are only on loan for you to use… that you are only a steward of the things of this life. All our earthly riches will do us no good once all we own is a small six foot plot of ground, unless our riches are used to help others … unless we use our abundance to bring others to the belief that giving is better than getting … that God blesses the giver and places treasures in his house for the righteous person.

Conclusion

Here is a closing thought. Kent Hughes notes that “this is the only place in the Bible where retirement is spoken of, and here it is in the context of disapproval. Of course, the Bible recognizes aging and slowing down. But retiring to a life of self-indulgence finds no favor with God. A retirement that lives for self is unbiblical and immoral.” I realize that there are many retirees in our congregation. You need to hear what Jesus is saying. The problem is not with retirement, the problem is with retirement that lives for self.

May the words of the Gospel speak into our lives today and let us begin to experience what it means to be “rich toward God,” for to be truly “rich to God” requires a real change of attitude which considers everything we have as a blessing from above and to treasure those blessings by sharing them generously. True Christian charity begins in the heart and then translates into heart-felt actions. As the great American comedian Bob Hope once said, “If you haven’t got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.” And indeed, perhaps that is what we may be suffering from – “heart trouble”, the kind of heart trouble that makes us unable to fully experience the loving great generosity of God, furthermore, our inability to plainly see God’s bountiful providence in our lives. When we come to terms with the fact that God’s generosity is great, we begin to realize how much more generous we must be, we who are created in God’s image and likeness.

MESSAGE FOR SUNDAY, 2025/07/27

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Reading:
Luke 11:1-13

Text:
Luke 11:1 “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished one of his disciples said to Him, “Lord teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples”.

Message:

One of his disciples said to Jesus, “Teach us to pray”. It is a simple request. It is this text that becomes the cornerstone for the church position and view of prayer. The passage begins with the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray and this is one of the very few things that they specifically asked Jesus to teach them. This reveals the importance and power of prayer. This passage clearly describes Jesus as a man of prayer and He was devoted to the discipline of seeking the heart of God. He is the one who provides the example and teaches both with His own lifestyle and with the examples that He presented. It is this fact that shows the full and total impact of the teaching. The disciples were so interested in prayer because they had seen how prayer had been a vital part of the ministry of John the Baptizer.

Perhaps you are perfectly comfortable praying, but many church people are not. A Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown wrote: “Prayer for many is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists, we feel uncomfortable and out of place. Like most tourists, we therefore move on before too long and go somewhere else.”

So, in today’s sermon we would like to look at what prayer is and how to go about it so that we may find the true meaning and purpose of prayer. How often we feel guilty about prayer. Many of us probably think that we know how to pray. Many of us may not know how to talk to God. Jesus is going to challenge our prayer life as he teaches how true disciples talk to God. I love the story I read while preparing for today’s sermon. When a minister went to see his dentist, the hygienist asked him how he was doing with his flossing. He replied, “Well, I feel about flossing much the same way I feel about prayer. I know it is good for me, and that I should do more of it.”

Many people see prayer as a chore or a religious work required by our faith or we feel we do not have the proper words or forms of prayer. We must keep our prayers simple. Jesus answers the question how to pray by saying “Ask, search and knock”. We have got to keep at it and be persistent. The Lord’s prayer is a simple guide that we have said so often we take it for granted. Let us now learn from this the Lord’s prayer as a simple guide to pray.

I  Our Father in Heaven hallowed be your Name

Jesus begins by calling God, ‘Father’. Jesus teaches his disciples that prayers do not need to begin with long flowing descriptions. We are instructed to speak intimately with God, speaking with him as our Father. Jesus does not say that only he can call God, ‘Father’, but we are also to God, ‘Father’. Talking to God does not require formalism. My children do not talk to me in Shakespearean English. We come to go as a Father who cares for his children who invites us to come to Him. How I appreciate it when my sons call me. It’s hard for us to remember just how radical this is, that Jesus teaches us to address God as ‘Father.’ Before Jesus taught this, it would have been unthinkable for anyone to address God so intimately. It makes sense, of course, for Jesus to address God as ‘Father’. After all, Jesus is God’s Son. That would be the most natural way for Jesus to pray. But when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, the first thing he taught them was that they should also address God as ‘Father’. And with this one word, Jesus redefined the disciples’ relationship with God forever. And ours, too.

We are no longer God’s servants. We are now God’s children. Because Jesus declared it so. Jesus came to be our brother, and to help us learn that we are all now God’s children. And that changes how we talk to God, how we pray to God. We don’t need a fancy formula to talk to God. Children of loving parents don’t need fancy formulas to talk to their parents. Nor do we need to have our life figured out before we can talk to God. Loving parents want their children to talk to them, even when they are in trouble. Perhaps especially then! We don’t have to be a perfect person in order to talk to God. What loving parent rejects their child because they are not perfect?

Jesus teaches us that when we pray, we can turn to God as any child would to a loving parent. God wants to hear from us, wants to be in a relationship with us, wants to help us live our lives. But God also does not want to interfere without our wanting Him to. He loves us too much to help us against our will. So he waits for us to ask. And the way that we ask is through prayer. Approaching our heavenly Father in prayer.

Jesus then continues teaching us to pray for the name of God to be kept holy. The new living translation puts this verse in a good way, “Father may your name be kept holy.” We are praying for the holiness of God to always be revealed. Further, we are reminding ourselves that we keep the name of God holy through our words and through our actions. We cannot exalt the holiness of God in prayer if our daily words and actions do not reveal God’s holiness. Disciples uphold the holiness of God through speech and action. We do not use God’s name as a curse word. We do not throw the name of God around as if it were a common exclamation. Our words uphold the high holiness of God. Our lives reveal God’s holiness not discredit the name of God to the world.

We can sometimes feel intimidated when we approach God. We can feel nervous about talking to God, unsure of whether we are doing it correctly. And I think that is why Jesus went on to teach the rest of this prayer – for it to serve as a guide to how to approach our Heavenly Father in prayer. The Lord’s prayer isn’t a formula, but it does teach us a pattern for praying that serves as a guide to how to pray. So, think about the pattern we are taught in this prayer, after we are taught to address God as “Father”. Jesus teaches us to pray, “hallowed be your name.” It begins, in other words, by praising God’s holy name. Jesus teaches us to begin our prayers in this way, by praising God, blessing his holy name. Sometimes we can fall into a pattern of always beginning our prayers with a plea for help. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking God for help, but Jesus is reminding us here that our prayers, like our very lives, should be about bringing God glory. So, when we have fallen into a pattern of beginning all our prayers with a plea for help, this can be a reminder to begin our prayers with praise. And in my experience, something important happens when we do that – it tends to change the rest of our prayer. Nothing looks quite as awful when we begin by praising our God. We don’t stop there, but Jesus teaches us to begin there. The prayer continues with another petition that often doesn’t begin our prayers: “Your kingdom come.” Before we pray for our daily needs, or ask for forgiveness, or pray for help in times of trial, we are taught to pray for God’s kingdom to come. And, again, it seems that Jesus is reminding us in this prayer that it is not all about us. An important part of our lives is bringing God glory and doing God’s will. And that should be an important part of our prayer-lives, too

Your Kingdom come

Jesus is teaching to pray for the rule of the kingdom to come into the world and into the heart of every person. We are praying for all powers and authorities to be subjected to Christ. We are praying for every person to be subjected to Christ. The kingdom has come and the kingdom continues its reign until every enemy of Christ has been subjugated. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come we declare that we do not believe that the kingdom of this world is ultimate. We as the church pins our hopes on Jesus Christ who makes all things new. The one who prays for God’s kingdom to come works for the transformation of the world even as we wait for God’s kingdom, which will never be identical with our hopes and dreams. We pray for the fullness of God’s kingdom here on earth. And, finally, he teaches us to ask God not to bring us to the time of trial. Every life faces trials and challenges, to be sure. Jesus knew that. He obviously faced some incredible trials himself. But here, Jesus is teaching us to bring our trials to God, so that we do not have to face them alone. God wants to help us through our trials. To be involved in the challenges we face in life. And prayer is the way in which we invite God to do so.

Give us our daily bread

This prayer reminds us that we are creatures and must rely on God’s provision for our bodily needs. Daily bread is the bread which God must supply each day. Like the manna in the wilderness we cannot store it to provide for ourselves. Praying for our daily bread reveals our dependence on God to provide our physical needs. We are recognizing that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. We are acknowledging that our physical blessings are given to us by God. When Jesus speaks of the daily bread, we are too often convinced that we are or must be independent and self-sufficient. Prayer reminds us that we are “un self-sufficient.” We ask each day for our daily bread. That does not mean we are deficient but that our sufficiency comes not from ourselves but from God. It means that God sustains and nourishes our life.

Forgive us our sins

We also rely on God for our spiritual protection. Every prayer rightly asks for forgiveness from our sins. But our forgiveness is contingent on forgiving others. A disciple readily forgives, not holding grudges or using offenses for selfish manipulation, because God has forgiven us. When we are not readily forgiving those who seek our forgiveness, then we are no longer Christians because God will not forgive us. We are lost in our sins when we do not forgive others when they offend us and seek repentance. Prayer is the way we express our dependence on God. Prayer humbles us so that we accept in our hearts that we need God and understand that we cannot live without him. If we are not able to offer this forgiveness, how will we ever understand the forgiveness that God offers to us, free of charge in Jesus Christ?

And lead us not into temptation

This prayer reminds of the perilous spiritual situation in which we stand. God himself tempts no one. But the prayer asks God to spare us from the testing of our faith. And finally, he teaches us to ask God not to bring us to the time of trial. Every life faces trials and challenges, to be sure. Jesus knew that. He obviously faced some incredible trials himself. But here, Jesus is teaching us to bring our trials to God, so that we do not have to face them alone. God wants to help us through our trials. To be involved in the challenges we face in life. And prayer is the way in which we invite God to do so.

Jesus teaches to pray with boldness

Jesus then tells the disciples a parable to show us the need for persistence and dedication to the calling of prayer. It is a simple and profound privilege that we can go before God and present our needs whenever we have them, day or night. There is a man who has a friend who arrived on a journey and he has no food to give him and then he goes to friends’ house at midnight and asks him to lend him three loaves of bread. Then the friend answers from inside and says the door is already locked and my children are already in bed. I can’t get up to give you anything. But Jesus says because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Jesus brings us a clear picture of the means that we can have and build a right relationship with God. We must be in direct and consistent contact with the throne of God and it is from this point that we can see how God loves and cares for every person. Do you see that this is the point of the story? It is not the man’s persistence of the request. It is the timing of the request along with the persistence. This man had the boldness and gall to make this request at such an hour. The friend in the house gives him the bread because he is such an irritant. Jesus’ point is that disciples pray boldly with shameless nerve. Prayer is the audaciously bold request for God to do what he has promised. This shameless boldness is not for selfish requests. We are not praying for things to fulfill our selfish desires. (James 4:3) To encourage another brother or sister in Christ? God says you should pray boldly for them. Are you trying to teach your friends the gospel? Shameless pray for their souls. The model prayer does not have room for selfish requests. Rather, we are revealing our complete dependence on God. We are telling God what is happening in our lives and the things that we need spiritually or physically. Go to God in prayer boldly. Ask for great things to happen in your life. You are given the offer to make bold, audacious requests to your Lord. What have you been afraid to ask God to do in your life? Are you struggling with daily food because of economic conditions or physical hardships? God said to pray for that and pray boldly for it. Are you struggling in your faith? God tells you to make audacious prayers for your spiritual life. Are you trying to encourage another brother or sister in Christ? God says you should pray boldly for them. Are you trying to teach your friends the gospel? Shameless pray for their souls.

Ask, seek and knock

The manner that we are to approach is one of both humility and boldness of spirit. We are to go to God with confidence because He knows our needs even before they leave our mouths. We must be willing to ask for what we need, seek out the will and way of God and knock at God’s door. He will answer when we call and everyone who asks will receive, any who seek will find and all who knock will have the door opened for them. God is available 24/7. So I tell you, ask, and God will give it to you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will open for you. Yes, everyone who asks will receive. The one who searches will find. And everyone who knocks will have the door opened.

Jesus says keep on asking, this is an invitation to prayer and He says keep seeking, this means to pursue God and His will seeking the goals and purposes of the Kingdom. Then keep on knocking we are entering through the door into God’s presence to receive blessings. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. God answers our bold requests in his name. Notice verse 10. “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” God provides for his children. This is the illustration that Jesus uses to explain why God answers prayers.

But there is one final thing that Jesus teaches us about prayer in this gospel reading. And that is, to put it simply: keep praying. Don’t give up on prayer, don’t give up on God. Keep asking. Keep searching. Keep knocking. If God doesn’t seem to be answering your prayer, don’t give up on God. Persist in prayer, and your prayers will be answered. Why? Because, again, God wants to get involved in our world. God wants to hear from us, and is waiting for us to knock before opening the door. Ask, Jesus teaches us in this gospel reading, and it will be given us; search, and we will find; knock, and the door will be opened for us. That certainly sounds like a God who wants to interfere in our world, doesn’t it? So, let’s keep turning to our heavenly Father in prayer. Let’s keep inviting God into our lives and with our world. And then, let’s keep our eyes of faith open, to see all the amazing ways that God is answering our prayers. Thanks be to God.

What Father would give a snake to the son who asks for a fish, or a scorpion when he asks for an egg. Here is the son who is in physical need. What father is going to give his child something that he does not need? Even more, what Father is going to give his child something harmful? No father would do that. The father gives what the child needs and does not give what is harmful to them. Now watch the point in verse 13. If we are evil people and yet we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give us the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! If we know how to give our children what they need when they ask, and we are evil and sinful, then how much more does our Father in heaven know what to give us? How much more will our heavenly Father do for us? We are given a blank check request for the necessities of the spiritual life. God is going to give you everything you need to get through this life. Ask him boldly for the things you need as you depend on him. God is going to provide for his children. God is going to give you his blessings when you ask. What do you truly need right now? Ask God. Shamelessly be persistent in your request to the God who gives you every good gift and perfect blessing for your life.

Conclusion

The main thing Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer is to be persistent, the old word was importunate: “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Finally, Jesus assures the disciples that their loving Father in heaven will give them what they need. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

How much more, indeed! Jesus himself embodies the love and concern that he promises the heavenly Father will have for his children. And when I am reluctant to approach the high and holy God, I try to remember that this same God, so far removed from us, reached out in love to be “God with us” in the humanity of Jesus Christ. That is why so many of our prayers conclude with “through Jesus Christ our Lord” or “In Jesus’ name we pray.” Because Jesus himself is the mediator between heaven and earth. He is the bridge between frail human flesh and the majesty of the Divine. So you can pray to him and through him anytime you want with any words you want.

Prayer is one of the strongest and most fundamental aspects of the Christian life and we cannot expect for growth in grace without time in prayer. This is our highest calling to separate a special time to be alone with God on a daily basis and to turn our burdens, needs and cares over to Him. It is not enough for us to talk about God; we must begin to talk to God. This aspect of the Christian life is one of the most fundamental and one of the most forgotten. It is time to make a dedication to daily spiritual exercise that builds our Spiritual life with Christ.