Sermon Video: Personal Responsibility - Acts 18:1-17

Personal responsibility is sorely lacking in the majority of society’s ills.  This should be no surprise to us as it is a consistent theme of God’s message to his people in Scripture.  When Paul arrived in Corinth he was faced with insufficient support to allow him to be a full-time missionary.  The need was far greater than he could ever hope to fulfill in his lifetime, but for a while at least, Paul was forced to return to the trade of tent making in order to survive.  While this situation continued Paul didn’t give up on his missionary efforts, he still reasoned with the local Jews in the synagogue each Sabbath.  When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia they brought support from the church in Philippi that enabled Paul to return to serving God full-time.

            At this point in his missionary career, Paul has now traveled throughout Asia Minor and Greece attempting to plant churches by beginning at the synagogue in each city.  He has been beaten for his efforts, scourged, thrown in jail, and left for dead after been pummeled with stones.  When the people of the synagogue, his fellow Jews for whom Paul cares deeply, responded to his efforts in Corinth with abuse, he made a difficult decision.  Paul shook his clothes off in their presence (a cultural sign of dismissal) and said, “Your blood be on your own heads!  I am clear of my responsibility.  From now on I will go the Gentiles.”  The first phrase, “Your blood be on your own heads”, is used throughout the Old Testament as an indicator of responsibility for serious matters.  In Leviticus 20 it is connected to capital offenses where the death of those who commit them is their own fault.  In Joshua it is used when the spies make their deal with Rahab, in 2 Samuel by David after the unjust death of Abner.  All of these situations show how very serious Paul’s invoking of this phrase was.  The rejection of the Gospel message by the people to whom the Messiah was sent is a matter of grave consequences (as it is for anyone to whom the message comes).

            When Paul declares that he has fulfilled his own mission, he hearkens back to the commission of Ezekiel as the “Watchman” over Israel where the phrase “blood on your own heads” is once more used.  By sharing the Gospel message, repeatedly and at much personal cost, Paul has fulfilled his obligation as a disciple of Christ to warn the unrepentant of their need of God’s forgiveness.  The obligation to warn belongs to us, the results belong to God.

            Lastly, Paul decides that his message is too important to continue to push against such opposition, he then resolves to take the message directly to the Gentiles who have made up the bulk of his converts thus far.  These decisions are in no way easy for Paul, and his failure to reach his own people with the Gospel will continue to haunt him, but the choice is clear to Paul, he has a responsibility to focus upon those willing to receive God’s offer of grace.  For us, this lesson is also a hard one.  We never want to give up on anyone or any church program just because we don’t see success.  Paul’s example doesn’t require us to give up on individuals, but simply reminds us that we must be open to new opportunities.  So continue to hold out hope for that stubborn relative or friend, perhaps God’s grace will reach him/her before the end, but do not close your eyes to the chances we all have in our lives to share God’s love with more or unexpected people.

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Sermon Video: "TO AN UNKNOWN GOD" - Acts 17:16-34

After having been chased out of Thessalonica by yet another angry mob of Jewish men who rejected his message in the synagogue, Paul moved to Berea only to have their inquisitiveness about the message undermined by troublemakers who followed him from Thessalonica.  Paul is once more forced to flee, and then finds himself alone in Athens waiting for the rest of his missions team to arrive.  What will he do under these unexpected and undesired circumstances?  Paul goes to the synagogue in Athens, as is his habit, but also decides to take his message to the streets of the market where he is noticed by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers and brought to the Areopagus to explain his novel idea to the learned men there.

            How should Paul begin to explain the Gospel’s message of sin, judgment, and forgiveness that centers around the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to these men who care nothing of the Hebrew scriptures and who already consider themselves to be sufficiently religious?  Rather than denigrating the rampant idolatry that Athens is full of, Paul studies the beliefs of his audience in order to find common ground through which he can share the Gospel with them.  The common ground that Paul finds is a shared desire to seek and find God as expressed by the idol he found with the inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD”.

            By meeting his audience where they currently are, Paul is able to explain the Gospel’s message of God’s desire to be found by humanity using language that his audience would understand, even quoting their own philosophers to punctuate his point.  Paul thus demonstrates a willingness to present the Gospel in any way that will reach his intended audience, an attitude that requires both humility on the part of the speaker and compassion for the lost.

            Paul was willing to begin his message in an unorthodox manner to allow his audience to understand it, but he still knew that he had to end it with the truth of the resurrection.  This particular point was sure to cause his audience to think less of his message, but Paul knew that it was absolutely necessary.  In our day, we also need to be willing to adapt the presentation of the Gospel to allow those who would not understand it otherwise to hear God’s Word to them, but we too need to cling to the core message of the Gospel even if it is as unpopular for us as it was for Paul in Athens.  In the end, only a handful of Athenians believed Paul’s message and he wasn’t able to establish a church there, but he planted the seeds just the same.  God will make the seed grow, and even if only one or two plants sprout from our efforts, we know that angels will be rejoicing when those lost sinners come home.

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Sermon Video: How do we react to trouble? - Acts 16:16-40

How Christians react to trouble matters a great deal.  It matters because we all will endure hardship at some point, whether through our own poor choices, the malice of others, or accidents for which no one is to blame.  Trouble will come to people of faith as it comes to everyone else.  Being a believer in Jesus Christ does not exempt any of us from physical, financial, or emotional turmoil; anybody who preaches otherwise is ignoring the clear teaching of Scripture on this subject.  How we respond to it also matters because the Lost are watching.  Those who don’t have a relationship with God through Jesus are watching to see if what we have is as valuable as we claim.  If our reaction to trouble is no better than their reaction would be, would difference is our faith making?  This isn’t about holding grief or sorrow in and pretending they don’t exist, that’s not the solution at all, but rather about having perspective and persevering through the difficult times because of the hope that we have in God.

            On the second missionary journey, Paul and Silas faced trouble in the form of any angry mob whose racists charge against them as troublemakers resulted in a severe (and illegal for they were both Roman citizens) flogging and jail term.  The pain and humiliation of that beating was very real, as was the clear injustice of the violation of their rights.  How did Paul and Silas respond?  With prayer and singing that very night in the jail cell.  I can understand the prayer; we all lean on prayer more when times are tough, but the singing?  How can you sing when your back is a bloody mess, at the hands of those who hate people like you, while you were trying to do the work of God?  Such a response can only be an act of grace, from God, to his people through the power of the Holy Spirit.

            As Paul and Silas prayed and sang, the rest of the prisoners were listening.  When an earthquake opened the doors of the prison, they didn’t run; they had heard something worth sticking around for.  When the jailer saw the doors he was going to kill himself out of shame, but the reaction of Paul and Silas to suffering had kept the inmates at the jail and thus saved the jailer’s life.  When he fell trembling before them his question was clear, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  Why did he ask such a question?  Because Paul and Silas had demonstrated by their reaction to trouble that they knew the answer.  That very evening this man and his whole family became believers and were baptized.  How we respond to trouble matters.

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The future and the hope of the Church is found in the poor

In reading through A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I came across an insight about the Church from his doctoral dissertation The Communion of Saints.  When looking out at the Church in his native Germany, Bonhoeffer encountered a comfortable middle class church that while still offering social programs for the poor, had failed to include them in its community.  He wrote,

"for the church of today everything depends on its once more approaching the masses which have turned away from it, and, moreover; in such a way that the church brings the gospel into real contact with the present situation of the poor working classes, in full attentiveness to how these masses look upon the gospel."

There are some churches, particularly in blighted urban areas, who have successfully brought the Gospel to the working poor and made them part of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Unfortunately, for too many of our churches, this is not the case.  The Church has lost the rich, but it rarely has ever had them anyway, and it has lost the poor.  The majority of my church, and all of our churches, is middle class people.  Here in our county the working poor and the non-working poor are a large percentage of the population, but a very small percentage of our churches.  How did this happen, how can it be solved?

            Bonhoeffer continued with his line of thought by adding, “the future and the hope for our ‘bourgeois’ church lies in a renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning over the poor working classes.”  Don’t let the fancy French word “bourgeois” mess you up, just substitute “middle-class” in its place and you’ll be fine.  Finding a way to make the Church appeal to the rich will never be the answer.  The Church in Franklin, in Venango County, in Pennsylvania, and in America will begin to find revival when it finds a way to reach the poor amongst us with the Gospel and truly make them a part of our community.  Hope that we can accomplish this should not be hard to find, for “there is no modern power that is basically more open to the Christian gospel than these poor workers.  These avid, poor workers know only one affliction, isolation, and they cry out for one thing, community.”  I have certainly seen this with my own eyes.  In our work with Mustard Seed Missions we have been able to help hundreds of families with serious physical needs, but the greatest need for nearly all of them is to be part of a community; that is why our organization always makes its last step in helping someone the sending of a church near to them to do follow-up and offer them the chance to be a part of a community.  The idea of belonging to a neighborhood no longer exists as it once did in America.  People move too often, we drive too far to go to work and to church for any neighborhood to exist on its own.

            How do we know if our churches have become isolated from the poor in our midst?

“The best proof is that the poor working classes have turned away from the church, whereas the bourgeois have remained.  So the sermon is aimed at relatively secure people, living adequately in orderly family circumstances, relatively ‘educated’ and relatively solid in their morality.”

Here Bonhoeffer’s wisdom hits us squarely in the chest.  Why do people in our churches deplore the morality of “them” and choose to fight in a social war rather than take the gospel to the poor?  Because we’re comfortable here; because the Church has managed to create a little sanctuary within our community where things are a little better than out there, but only at the expense and with the consequence of making those on the outside no longer feel welcome amongst us.  In such a situation, “The danger of the church’s becoming a mere association is obvious.”  What prevents a group of relatively well off Christians from acting like a social club instead of being on fire for God’s work in our world?  It will only be our connection to, and acceptance of, the poor in our midst.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations about the churches of Germany in 1930 are entirely relevant for the Church in America today.  When we find a way to make the poor feel like this is their church too, when their problems become our problems, God will truly be alive and well in our midst.

Sermon Video: "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead." - I Corinthians 15:12-22

There has been much discussion in recent generations about the possibility of removing the teachings and ethics of Jesus from the life and divine claims in order to preserve a version of Jesus that feels acceptable to those who discount the possibility of miracles.  When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he reminded them of the original message of the Gospel that he had taught, and they had believed, which contained a clear understanding that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead three days after his crucifixion.  The people of Corinth had evidently believed Paul’s word initially but had later succumbed to or been tempted by doubts arising from cultural problems with the idea of a bodily resurrection.  In the end, the modern skeptic and the ancient Greeks of Corinth have the same problem; they doubt that the resurrection of Jesus could have taken place.  What is the response of the Word of God to both groups?  Without the resurrection there is no hope.

            The entirety of the Church and the Christian faith are built upon the historic fact of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  Without this foundational truth, the whole structure built upon it, from ethics and charity to prayer and worship, will come crumbling down.  Paul was not willing to accept a “diet” version of Christianity in his day any more than the Church should be willing to listen to calls to leave out the miracles in ours.  Without the resurrection, our faith is meaningless, our purpose is lost, and our sins remain.

            The problem faced by those who refuse to believe in the resurrection is that they have then no answer for the problem of evil in our world.  Without the resurrection as a means to obtain forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation from God, we have no hope of a better tomorrow and certainly no hope in any life beyond this one. 

            “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead”.  Hope is available because Jesus did conquer sin and death, forgiveness is available because Jesus’ payment for your sins was accepted by the Father and his sacrifice was vindicated by the power of his return from the dead to new life.  From this central truth, all of Christianity flows, and from it we offer God’s love to the world.

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