[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for June 10 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

A Change in Control 

Last night a friend of mine was talking about his father: he spoke of how, for many years, his father binged out, how his father was a drunkard - a man who when sober was kind and gentle - and when drunk - well he was something else again. He had no control over himself. And this kind and gentle man brought pain and suffering upon others, or at least the force within him did so - the family had to move - to change homes and communities - almost every year - landlords were cheated, employers disappointed, children neglected, friends abandoned - or embarrassed or betrayed. 

And this continued on until one day, after taking his children to Sunday School for a period of time, after witnessing the faith of others and what it did for them, he accepted Jesus into his life. He asked God to take control, to guide his actions and save him from his sins and from the power of sin. And then things changed; debts still had to be paid, amends still had to be made, mistakes still occurred. But the inner man -the man that God made - was set free to grow and mature. No more booze, a lot more prayer. And the love and kindness of the man that could be glimpsed before - in the moments of sobriety - became apparent to all - for days, weeks, and finally years on end. The children who were still living at home stopped fearing what would happen next - they began to look forward to being with their father - they began to develop their own faith in God - a faith that still guides them to this day. This man, this father, this husband, experience a change in control - he went from being in the control of the devil to being in the control of God, and the result was the renewal of his inner nature, and in the end, when his earthly tent was destroyed, the result was a building from God - a house not made with hands - eternal in the heavens.. 

Richard J. Fairchild, Even Though.... 

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Questioning the Source of the Power 

The scribes and Pharisees cannot deny what Jesus is doing; too many people have experienced it, too many people have been helped. So their strategy is to turn the people against Jesus by saying that He is ministering by the power of an evil spirit. 

It's sort of like Environmental groups in Canada receiving funding from people who want them to disrupt energy projects which conflict with their own financial interests. Or someone funding a Women's shelter with drug and prostitution money they make in their biker gang. 

You get the picture; suddenly the Environmentalist isn't the noble crusader anymore; the shelter benefits from the addiction and abuse it stands against. 

But it's not just a smear campaign that the Teachers of the Law are engaging in; they actually believe it. They are convinced that Jesus is in league with the devil because they can't see how it lines up with how God has worked in Israel in the past and how they understood the Law. 

Grant Gunnink, The Unforgivable Sin 

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Humor: Differences of Opinions 

Dr. Eugene Brice tells a delightful but disturbing story about a minister who returned to visit a church he had once served. He ran into Bill, who had been an elder and leader in the church, but who wasn't around anymore. The pastor asked, "Bill, what happened? You used to be there every time the doors opened."

"Well, Pastor," said Bill, "a difference of opinion arose in the church. Some of us couldn't accept the final decision and we established a church of our own."

"Is that where you worship now?" asked the pastor.

"No," answered Bill, "we found that there, too, the people were not faithful and a small group of us began meeting in a rented hall at night."

"Has that proven satisfactory?" asked the minister.

"No, I can't say that it has," Bill responded. "Satan was active even in that fellowship, so my wife and I withdrew and began to worship on Sunday at home by ourselves."

"Then at last you have found inner peace?" asked the pastor.

"No, I'm afraid we haven't," said Bill. "Even my wife began to develop ideas I was not comfortable with, so now she worships in the northeast corner of the living room, and I am in the southwest."

King Duncan, quoting Eugene Brice, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Family Values

Last week I was reading a newspaper article on family values. The gist of the article was that everyone wants strong family values but few can agree on what they are. Then I heard Roger Rosenblatt on public radio being cynical about family values. Rosenblatt said that there are plenty of perfect families around like yours and mine. But, there are so many others that fall short, families like the Walker spy family or the Medicis in Italy or the Macbeths of Scotland or the Oedipus Rexes of Greece. Rosenblatt's point was that there is no perfect family and that family values have become so generalized they are meaningless. He said what is valuable in families is that they are normal people struggling to do good and be good, strengthening themselves by listening to each other, paying attention to other families, and encouraging each other to be fair, honest, and kind. Sounds like a decent list of family values to me, and even a single parent can do those things.

Some of us, when we think of family, think of more ordinary things, like clusters of dog hair on clothes and hot dogs with everything smushed in the glove compartment and peanut butter on the television screen and aging grease on the hood over the stove. Whatever your view of the family and its values might be, Jesus wrecks it all. Jesus' words are like answering the doorbell and getting a bucket of ice water in the face.

Kristin Borsgard Wee, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost (First Third): Do You Love Me?, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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Training to Hear the Voice of God 

There is a positive message to be learned from these words of Jesus. The lesson is that we must keep ourselves alert to the way God is working in the world. Remember that those who were seeking to discredit Jesus were religious people. Their problem was that they just didn't expect God to be acting as Jesus said he was acting, so they missed the movement of God in their midst, and in fact, they called it evil. Today God may be speaking to us in causes that are unpopular, or in political events that cause us to feel threatened and insecure. The cries for justice and fairness in the world may come from quarters that we are not accustomed to listen to. We need to exercise diligence so that we don't miss the voice of God today just because it happens to be spoken by unfamiliar lips. 

I once sat in on a class my wife was taking in music appreciation. The instructor was asking the class members to listen for the recurring theme as it was passed from one instrument to another and was modified. I quickly lost it, but others in the class, who had benefited from their training, were able to keep track of the theme and even state which instrument was playing it. It is a law of life that we hear what we have trained ourselves to hear. What we must do is to train ourselves to listen for the voice of God in areas where we have not expected to hear it. We hear that voice only by attentive listening: by asking ourselves whether there is a valid message in those things which make us uncomfortable.

Jesus spoke of an unforgivable sin, not because any act is unforgivable, but to warn us that our own hardness of heart can close the channels through which God's forgiveness flows and, as a consequence, leave us feeling alienated. Let us, therefore, affirm the good that is in others, so that our own hearts become generous and accepting of others, even as God is generous and accepting of us.

David G. Rogne, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing Company 
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Think What God Can Do with Our Sins 

M. H. Schubert shares the story about a group of fishermen in the Scottish highlands. They gathered for tea and discussed the day's catch. As a waitress set down a cup of tea, a hand accidently knocked it against the wall. It left an ugly stain. One of the guests got up, went to the wall, and began sketching around the stain with a crayon. What emerged was a stag with magnificent antlers. The man was Sir Edwin Landseer, England's foremost painter of animals. If an artist can transform an unsightly stain into a beautiful masterpiece, think what God can do with our sins. He absolves them and, in their place, refashions us toward full maturity.

James Weekley, Tilted Haloes, CSS Publishing Company 

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When Perceptions Shift 

In Mark 3, those who try to turn the work of God into the work of the devil show by so doing that they are so far gone, so deeply enmeshed in a spiritually inverted reality, that there is no reaching them. Some of you will recall the dwarves as depicted by C.S. Lewis in the last book of the Narnia series. The dwarves had been brought by Aslan the Lion into the glories of the New Narnia, which stood for heaven or the kingdom of God. These stubborn dwarves sat smack in the middle of a sunlit meadow full of wildflowers and were being fed fruit and vegetables more exquisitely flavorful and fresh than anyone had ever before imagined was possible. 

Yet their minds were darkened, their hearts were cold. And so they were convinced they were sitting in the middle of a stinky old stable being fed moldy bread and cow manure. When one of the other characters asks Aslan what can be done for these hapless figures, the answer comes back that...
 
The rest of this illustration, as well as many additional illustrations and sermons for the whole year, can be accessed at www.Sermons.com. 



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