[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for July 29 - Part 1

[Joe Parrish]

Proper 12


        

 

        
	    
    
        
        

July 29, 2012



        
        
    
        
                

    
    
        
        
        
            

        
        
        


John 6:1-21 - "Are You a Satisfied Customer?"
John 6:1-21 - "The 4 Spiritual Flaws" by Leonard Sweet
 


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John 6, the sermon title "Are You a Satisfied Customer?"  
 
Did you know that neon signs can be hazardous to your health? There is one neon sign that is hazardous to mine. It is the one that flashes "hot" in bright red on the window of Krispy Kreme. If you have ever eaten, some really great, hot, Krispy Kreme doughnuts oozing with that glaze that is so wonderful for your cardiovascular system, you know there are always two problems in that box of doughnuts: (1) one is never enough (2) no matter how many you eat eventually you'll always want more. 

For so very many people, life is just like that. There is a never ending quest for fulfillment. There are so many people in this world who have found success, but they have not found significance. 

This world is filled with people who are desperately trying to find purpose and meaning, fulfillment and significance in their life. The truth is when it comes to living and life, most people are not satisfied customers. It was the great philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, who once said, "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." 

People are hungry and they are hungry for two things primarily...
 
The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining http://www.sermons.com/signup 
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John 6, the sermon titled "The 4 Spiritual Flaws" by Leonard Sweet   
 
Want to attract young, floundering, post-high school people to a life of faith, fulfillment, and commitment? Would your first thought be to offer that age group a solid set of "divine directives"-- aka "Four Spiritual Laws?"
 
Probably not. Unless you were Bill Bright in 1952, when he offered that gleaming, golden nugget of insight to a new generation of spiritual seekers. But the "laws" Bill Bright proposed were far from rude and reactionary. Instead they were redeeming and revealing. And they have touched many new generations of searching young men and women, people seeking to find a direction and meaning for their adult lives. 
 
If it's been awhile--or never--Bill Bright's "Four Spiritual Laws" are as follows:
 
1.   God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. 
2.   Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life.
3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives. 
 
These guidelines continue to be the mainstay of the evangelical outreach of the Campus Crusade for Christ to this day.
 
But that doesn't mean we don't still get it wrong, everyday, everywhere, whether we are teen-aged, college-aged, middle-aged, or elder-aged...
 
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Need Happens 24/7

A few years ago in the city of Chicago, a crowd of community residents did something unusual. They picketed the churches in their community to do something other than have church. They picketed them to be church. They seemed to say the Christ you claim and proclaim each Sunday seems more than enough in the sanctuary, but never seems to get out in our neighbor-hoods. Why are you open only on Sunday? Need happens 24/7. There are six other days in the week, but you're closed.

Ozzie E. Smith, Jr., More Than Enough
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Jesus Takes Command
 
Only one miracle made it into all four gospels. It transpired on the grassy hills by the shores of the Sea of Galilee at a time when Jesus' popularity--and also his vulnerability--was cresting. Wherever he went, a throng that included many deranged and afflicted trailed behind.
The day before the big miracle, Jesus crossed the lake to elude the masses. Herod had just executed John the Baptist, Jesus' relative, his forerunner and friend, and Jesus needed time alone to grieve. Doubtless, John's death provoked somber thoughts of the fate awaiting him.
Alas, there would be no secluded retreat. A huge swarm of yesterday's multitude made the ten-mile journey around the lake and soon hundreds, even thousands of people clamored around Jesus. "He had compassion on them," says Mark, "because they were like sheep without a shepherd." Instead of spending the day renewing his spirit, Jesus spent it healing the sick, always an energy drain, and speaking to a crowd large enough to fill a modern basketball arena.
The issue of food came up. What to do? There are at least five thousand men, not to mention the women and children! Send them away, suggested one disciple. Buy them dinner, said Jesus. What? Is he kidding? We're talking eight months' wages!
 
Then Jesus took command in a way none of them had seen before. Have the people sit down in groups of fifty, he said. It was like a political rally--festive, orderly, hierarchical--exactly what one might expect from a Messiah figure.
 
Unavoidably, we moderns read Jesus' life backwards, knowing how it turns out. That day, no one but Jesus had a clue. Murmurs rustled through the group on the packed hillside. Is he the one? Could it be? In the wilderness, Satan had dangled before Jesus the prospects of a crowd-pleasing miracle. Now, not to please a crowd but merely to settle their stomachs, Jesus took two salted fish and five small loaves of bread and performed the miracle everyone was waiting for.
Three of the Gospels leave it at that. "They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish," reports Mark with masterful understatement. Only Jon tells what happened next. Jesus got his time alone, at last. As the disciples rowed back across the lake, fighting a storm all the way, Jesus spent the night on a mount, alone in prayer. Later that night he rejoined them by walking across the water.
 
Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, 175-176.
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