Decided. Prepared. Hopeful.

November 8, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, church, decision, faith, God, hope, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Joshua, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, Paul, prepare, preparedness, Street, Thessalonica

Decided. Prepared. Hopeful.

November 08, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 Matthew 25:1-13 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

If you have ever made a major, life changing decision, then you understand that doing so is often a part of a process. Yes, there are times when circumstances compel us to do things on the fly and navigate by the seat of our pants, but deep thought and careful planning are normally the hallmarks of major decisions. Few of us asked, or agreed, to be married until after we had thought a great deal about whether doing so was a good idea. Likewise, buying a house is normally preceded by thoughtful consideration of what criteria needed to be met, what neighborhood, what style, what price, is the school system good, does it meet the needs of my present and future family, and so on. And then, having made such a major decision, then there is more planning, how will we pay the loan, how will we move from our present home, when will we file a change of address with the Post Office, banks, and credit cards? And through the process, especially depending on how well the planning went, we will have feelings. Those feelings may be negative or positive. We will be worried and anxious or hopeful and happy. Or something in between, or all those feelings at the same time.

Thus, since it is a major, life-changing decision, we should not be surprised to find that choosing to follow God often follows that same process and results in many of the same feelings. We find that process at work as Joshua stands before the gathered people of Israel and demands that they make a choice to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. Before the people of Israel cross the Jordan River into the land that God had promised, Joshua wants to ensure that no one can claim that they didn’t know what they were doing, that they were just going with the flow, that someone else had decided for them, or that they had somehow just drifted into a responsibility that they didn’t want. We read that story in Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25:

^24:1 Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges, and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

² Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. ³ But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants.

¹⁴ “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

¹⁶ Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! ¹⁷ It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. ¹⁸ And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”

¹⁹ Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. ²⁰ If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

²¹ But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”

²² Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”

“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.

²³ “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

²⁴ And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”

²⁵ On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he reaffirmed for them decrees and laws. ²⁶ And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord.

Joshua’s speech leads the people through several stages. First, everyone stops what they are doing and gathers in one place to hear him speak. Second, Joshual asks them to consider the idea that their ancestors, prior to Abraham, worshiped other gods, and some of them had done so during their time as slaves in Egypt as well. Because Moses’ offer of freedom was made to every slave that lived in Egypt, not every person that followed him may have been a genetic descendant of Abraham. The people of Israel were now multiethnic and multiracial and now was the moment for them to consider the faith of their ancestors, the faith of their past, and what life had been like since they had followed Moses.

Third, Joshua asks the people to set aside whatever faith and worship their ancestors may have had and decide for themselves whom they will worship. No one is compelled to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. Every person is free to leave and live their life as they please. And finally, Joshua pushes back and tells the people that they cannot worship God because they are too rebellious and sinful. Joshua warns them that choosing to follow God could bring disaster upon them if they turn away from him and later follow foreign gods. In this, Joshua presses the people to be certain before they make their choice.

After this, the people make their choice to follow God and Joshua uses legal language declaring that, as if they were giving their testimony in court, they now stand as witnesses, against themselves and against one another, to the decision and to the oath, that they have now made. And the people agree that this is so. But having made a choice to do something is only the beginning and not the end. There are steps that come after our choice has been made and Jesus presses us to understand that when he tells the parable of the foolish virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, saying:

^25:1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. ² Five of them were foolish and five were wise. ³ The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. ⁴ The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. ⁵ The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

⁶ “At midnight, the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

⁷ “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸ The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

⁹ “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

¹⁰ “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

¹¹ “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

¹² “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

¹³ “Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

In this case, all ten of the virgins had chosen to attend the wedding. They had worked through the steps to arrive at that decision, but even having made that choice, half of them missed another step. They failed to prepare. Five of these young ladies assumed that when they went out to wait for the arrival of the bridegroom, that he would arrive shortly. But that didn’t happen. For whatever reason, the bridegroom took longer to get there than they had hoped, and so they waited, in the dark, longer than they expected. And when five of them went out in search of more oil for their lamps, the bridegroom came and they missed their opportunity to attend the wedding.

Now, we understand that in the real world, friends of the bride would be let into the wedding feast even if they showed up late. But Jesus isn’t telling us a parable to explain how the real-world works. In a series of parables in which Jesus is describing what will happen in the end times when he returns to earth to judge the people of the world, he begins this parable by saying “at that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like…” And so, we must remind ourselves that while a bride might be expected to open the doors and let her friends in after the wedding feast had started, that is not what we should expect at the time of Jesus’ return. There will only be one chance. And those who are unprepared will not get in.

But our decision to follow Jesus, our planning, and preparation are not for nothing. Our generation is not alone in wondering if we have been deceived, or if we have only been wasting our time coming to church, worshiping, and abstaining from things that our culture says are normal, or fun, or profitable. The followers of Jesus in the first century had the same questions. Even if Christianity was legal, failing to worship at the temples and celebrations of the Roman gods came at a price. Being seen as unusual could cost you business and social contacts. On top of that, since many people had expected Jesus to return in their lifetimes, they worried about their friends and family who had died before them. And this is why Paul writes to reassure them in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 when he says:

¹³ Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. ¹⁴ For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. ¹⁵ According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Paul explains that nothing out of the ordinary as happened. People get sick, they grow old, and they die. But because those people chose to follow Jesus Christ, they have not been forgotten. Like us, they considered the message, they decided to follow Jesus, they planned, they prepared, they lived their lives honoring God and following the teachings of Jesus, but now that they had died, they were not forgotten. It was as if they had only gone ahead. On the day that the trumpet sounds and Jesus returns to earth, the dead in Christ will rise first and the living will join them in triumph and celebration.

Following Jesus demands something from us. Joshua told the people of Israel the same thing. When we make the decision to follow God, we must expect that our decision will come at a price. When we choose to follow him, we know that Jesus will expect us to change the way that we live, and to follow his teaching and example. But even if we live out our lives without witnessing Jesus’ return, we do not lose heart.

Because, in death, as well as in life, the message of Jesus is a message that is filled with…

…hope.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com . All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Victorious Losers

November 1, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Beatitude, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, losers, Matthew, Methodist, Ohio, Revelation, Street, victorious, victors, victory

Defeated Victors

(or Victorious Losers)

November 01, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Revelation 7:9-17 Matthew 5:1-12 1 John 3:1-3

As a species, humans are obsessively competitive. We will compete, or bet, on almost anything. We will race each other to the car; we even made speed walking a competitive sport. We give awards to the highest-ranking graduates, we have sports for anything that a human can do on land, in the water, or on the snow, and if we could fly, we would compete in that too. And I suppose if we were to count airplanes, we do that too. When we’re too old to compete physically, we watch other people do it, and we like doing that so much that we pay insane amounts of money to those people who are exceptionally good at something, just so that we can pay to cram ourselves into a crowded stadium and watch them do it. At work we compete to see who can bring in the most customers, to see who can produce goods the fastest, we often feel as if we are competing to see who makes the most money, wears the nicest clothes, or who lives in the nicest neighborhood. As a species, there are also an abundance of historical examples, not including warfare (which is its own sort of competition), of where we have even made death a part of the competition, up to, and including, human death.

But because we are so competitive, the one thing that we rarely do is to confuse winners and losers. No one accuses the Super Bowl champions of being losers, and no one would mistakenly give a gold medal to the person in last place. But scripture does exactly that… and it is not confused at all. In his Revelation, the Apostle John saw a great multitude of martyred believers, people who the world would think of as those who had lost to those more powerful, but the people in that multitude are not, in any way, described as losers, but instead can only be described as victorious. We find this as we read Revelation 7:9-17.

⁹ After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

¹¹ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying:

“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

¹³ Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”

¹⁴ I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ¹⁵ Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
    will shelter them with his presence.
¹⁶ ‘Never again will they hunger;
    never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
    nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷ For the Lamb at the center of the throne
    will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
    ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

The angel tells John that those who make up the great multitude are the people who had been killed and martyred during the great tribulation. And, because they had suffered and died for the name of Jesus, they had been purified and stood before the throne. These blessed saints, though they had lost in the fight against evil in the world, now served as victors before God and would never again feel hunger, thirst, discomfort, or sadness as they now followed the great shepherd.

Jesus preaches this same message of finding victory in what earthly culture calls loss as he preaches the sermon of the beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12 where we hear this:

^5:1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them.

He said:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
⁵ Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The people who have been poor will become a part of the kingdom of God. The mournful will be comforted, the humble will be greatly rewarded, those who tried to do what was right will be filled with righteousness, the merciful will be shown mercy, and those who are pure in heart and who are often criticized for being too nice, too kind, to decent, too moral, too ethical, or too sexually repressed will see God face to face. Having left a world that has almost never seen the absence of warfare, the peacemakers will be called the children of God. Jesus said that we are not blessed for selfishness, but for selflessness. And, we are blessed for the price that we pay on earth for remaining faithful to Jesus. Those things for which people of faith are often mocked, scorned, persecuted, or otherwise labeled as losers, are the very things for which God will reward them in his kingdom.

John further adds to our understanding of our life in the next world in the kingdom of God in his letter to the church in Asia found in 1 John 3:1-3 as he says:

^3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³ All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

John says that God loves his people so much that he adopts us as his own children and that after the appearing of Jesus Christ in the last days, we will see him in all his glory with nothing hidden, and we will be transformed and become like him. It is because that we have this hope: in a life in eternity, in the kingdom of God, that we strive to follow Jesus, follow his commands, and do his will.

Jesus, and his disciples, knew that there was an earthly cost to following God. They knew that being his followers often makes us swim against the current of our culture and compels the world to see people of faith as losers or worse. But despite being countercultural, and despite being unpopular, or even the cause of persecution suffering, and death, Jesus tells us to do good anyway. To love anyway. And to pursue faithfulness, purity, and righteousness anyway.

Because in the end, many of those who the world sees as losers, are really winning the only victory that matters.

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Transformational Leadership

October 25, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, leader, leadership, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, Paul, Thessalonica, transform, transformation, transformational

Transformational Leadership

October 25, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Matthew 22:34-46 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Who is it that you remember?

Each of us has lived and worked under people who have been placed in authority over us. Our parents were first. But after our parents we were under the authority of a host of teachers, employers, pastors, club presidents, drill sergeants, military officers, and others. And in each case, whether we thought about it consciously or not, we have filed away the memory of that leader with a personal evaluation, or opinion, of their leadership. Some leaders were good, others were terrible, some were easy to work for, some were hard, and some leaders stood out because they somehow made every one of their subordinates better by their encouragement, support, teaching, and mentorship.

And so, as you remember the leaders with whom you have worked, learned, and served, think about what it was that makes the best of them stand out in your memory. What is it about great leaders, whether that leader was the boss of three employees or the President of the United States, what is it that made them memorable and stand out in our memory as good, or even as great or exceptional?

With that question in mind, let us look at our scriptures for today and see what kinds of leaders we find there, what stands out about them even thousands of years later, and consider how those qualities inform us about how we evaluate leadership today, but also what qualities we should cultivate in ourselves as we lead others. We begin this morning by skipping to the end of Moses’ leadership and the end of his time on earth as we hear the words of Deuteronomy 34:1-12:

^34:1 Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, ² all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, ³ the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. ⁴ Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.”

⁵ And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. ⁶ He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. ⁷ Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone. ⁸ The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over.

⁹ Now Joshua, son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So, the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.

¹⁰ Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, ¹¹ who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. ¹² For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

There is something that struck me when I read this that stands out because over the last few weeks, we have, at least twice, encountered passages, such as the incident with the golden calf, in which the people essentially asked, “who is Moses”? Moses was unfamiliar and the people of Israel, at several points, felt that they couldn’t trust him, and they struggled with his leadership over them. But here, the people weep and mourn over his death for thirty days before moving forward once again under Joshua’s leadership. The writer of Deuteronomy goes on to describe Moses as being so exceptional that no prophet, in the entire history of Israel, was like him, no one spoke to God face to face as he did, no one performed signs and wonders the way that Moses did, and “no one had ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”

That shift, from “who is Moses?” to “no prophet has risen like Moses” is an enormous shift. What was it that Moses did that, in the span of forty years, so dramatically changed the people’s opinion from “who is he?” to “how will we ever live without him?” But those of us who have read the parts of the events that happen between Israel’s escape from Egypt, and the time of Moses’ death have a good idea about why the opinion of the people had changed so dramatically. We will come back to that before we finish but next let us consider a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, this time found in the words of Matthew 22:34-46.

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

⁴¹ While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ⁴² “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

⁴³ He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

⁴⁴ “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’

⁴⁵ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” ⁴⁶ No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

What we see in this confrontation, is a little bit of politics, a little theology, and a lot of ego. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were rivals, both politically and theologically. The Sadducees were generally wealthier and more closely related to the Roman government, but who also had some strongly held theological beliefs that were quite different than those of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were politically well-connected, and they did have dealing with the Roman government, but they were also more associated with scholars and orthodox belief as well as making an attempt to communicate their theological beliefs to the common worshiper, even if they often completely misunderstood the poor. And so, having heard that their rivals, the Sadducees, had failed at testing Jesus, they obviously thought that their smart guys were smarter than the Sadducees’ smart guys, and they decided to try to best Jesus with a trick question and wave it in the face of their rivals. But it didn’t work. Jesus thoughtfully answers their question without giving them an answer that could be used against him, and Jesus proceeds to ask the Pharisees his own trick question. The understanding of the time was that an elder was always superior to the younger, even if, perhaps especially if, the younger was a descendant of the other. But Jesus asks, if that is so, then how is the Messiah, a descendant of David, described as David’s Lord? And the Pharisees have no answer, perhaps because admitting that the Messiah would be greater than David, was to overturn decades of tradition that demanded that the elders were always right and the younger generations were always subordinate.

But considering our earlier questions about leadership, we notice that there are two distinct leadership styles present in this part of Matthew’s gospel message. The leadership of the Pharisees is driven by its connection to power, its dependence, even its addiction to authority and influence, but also by the ego that drive it to always be wealthier, bigger, more powerful, more connected, more righteous, and more influential. But the leadership of Jesus is different. Jesus’ leadership highlights faithfulness, thoughtfulness, wisdom, humility, and sacrifice.

But again, before we tie these threads together, let’s look at our final scripture this morning that we find in Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 where he says:

^2:1 You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results. ² We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition. ³ For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. ⁴ On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts. ⁵ You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. ⁶ We were not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our authority. ⁷ Instead, we were like young children among you.

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, ⁸ so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.

In his letter, Paul tells the church how things have been going on his missionary journey. But as he does so, he reminds them of who he is and his own leadership style as a follower of Jesus Christ. Everyone knows that Paul was once a Pharisee, indeed he described himself as a Pharisee of the Pharisees. But once he chose to follow Jesus, his leadership style changed to match the example of Jesus. Now, Paul ministers in the face of suffering, enduring outrageous treatment, and is marked by integrity, humility, and faithfulness as he seeks to teach while living and working together alongside the people of the church.

Let us review. In the span of forty years, the people’s opinion of Moses shifted from “who is he?” to “how will we ever live without him?” But why? Why was Moses so beloved by the people of Israel at the time of his death, when they had repeatedly doubted him, argued, whined, and resisted him, and even went behind his back to demand Aaron cast a golden god to worship? The reason was because of the kind of leader, and the kind of a person that Moses was. Moses always sought to do what was right before God, he took his biggest problems directly to God and asked for help, he led God’s people as faithfully as he could, he never asked for more than he needed, he worked alongside of the people and lived his life both thoughtfully and sacrificially. Yes, Moses performed great signs and miracles, but he had done those things even before the times when people doubted him. The transformation of his leadership happened because of who he was, how he lived, and the example that he set, and not because of the power and influence that he had.

The Pharisees came and went. Yes, they had a following, but the leadership style for which they are remembered bears the hallmarks of ego, selfishness, and the search for more rather than on faithfulness and the kingdom of God. In contrast, we remember Jesus by his faithfulness, thoughtfulness, wisdom, humility, and sacrifice. And Paul is remembered for his ministry in the face of suffering, and for his integrity, humility, and faithfulness as he lived and worked alongside the people of the church.

In one way or another, each of us is a leader.

We remember the leadership style of the Pharisees. But we remember that the style of Moses, Jesus, and Paul was altogether different. Only one of those two styles is remembered for the way that it transforms lives.

The first might make you rich, but the second enriches all the people around you and makes every one of your subordinates better by your encouragement, support, teaching, and mentorship.

One is selfish, the other selfless. One is arrogant and ego driven; the other is driven by integrity and humility.

Only one is transformational.

Which example will you follow?

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Losing Focus

October 11, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Broadway Street, Christ, church, crooked, drift, Exodus, faith, focus, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, Paul, Philippians, Street, wander

Losing Focus

October 11, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 32:1-14 Matthew 22:1-14 Philippians 4:1-9

As I was growing up, there were several things that happened consistently on Sunday. There was always church, followed by our family Sunday dinner, and then Dad would watch golf and take a nap. It was quite a few years before I realized how well naps paired with watching golf on television. Golf has a pace that is different than nearly every other sport. If you fall asleep watching any other sport, you wake up wondering what important things you missed. But in golf, once they flash the current scores, you’re pretty much caught up. As a spectator, focus seems to be less important for the sport of golf than for any other.

But for many other things, focus is critical. I used to work with welders, and you learn quickly not to interrupt them while they are controlling an arc and running a bead. You can’t weld and hold a conversation at the same time. If their attention is required, they stop welding, say what needs to be said, and then return their focus to what they were doing. Farming is similar. To plow a field straight you have to focus on the path ahead. Jesus once said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62) And farmers will tell you that this makes sense because once you look away from path ahead, the line that you are plowing goes crooked. And it is this same loss of focus that we see as we return to the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt in Exodus 32:1-14 where we hear this:

^32:1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

²Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” ³So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. ⁴He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

⁵When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

⁷Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. ⁸They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

⁹“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. ¹⁰Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

¹¹But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? ¹²Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” ¹⁴Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

As we heard in last week’s message, there was a gap between what was familiar and what was not. Learning how God wanted the people of Israel to live was new and unfamiliar. Moses, who had been raised in Pharaoh’s house and had been absent for forty years, was unfamiliar. But Aaron, who had grown up among them, and had lived among them for the forty years that Moses had been absent, was known to the people and was familiar to them. Likewise, worshiping idols that represented the gods of Egypt was familiar, even if they hadn’t personally worshiped those gods.

And so, when Moses goes up the mountain to speak with Israel’s God and does not come back for days and even weeks, the people grow impatient and afraid. They lose focus. Rather than focusing on the path forward, on what God had done for them, the miracles that they had seen, and the leadership that Moses had shown them, they focused instead upon their fear. And reacting in fear, they demanded that Aaron make them gods that were familiar. But this loss of focus led them all to stray from God’s path and God became angry enough to destroy them all and start over with Moses as he had with Abraham. Thankfully, Moses appeals to God on behalf of the people, reminds God of his promises to them, and God relented and did not bring disaster.

Then, in Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus offers a parable that gives us a glimpse into eternity and the Kingdom of God.

^22:1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ² “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. ³He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

⁴“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

⁵“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. ⁶The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. ⁷The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

⁸“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ ¹⁰So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

¹¹“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ¹²He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

¹³“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

¹⁴“For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

A group of people were invited to the wedding of the king’s son. They all knew about it. They knew when it would be. They had time to prepare and make whatever arrangements they had to make. But when the king’s servant came to tell them it was time to attend the banquet, they refused to come. That stops us short. While we live in a constitutional republic with democratically elected leaders and are thousands of miles and hundreds of years separated from any kind of monarchy, we understand saying ‘no’ to the king is not a good plan. Even today, the king or queen of England has an annual Royal Command Performance for which even American entertainers are loathe to refuse despite not being under any obligation to a British ruler.

But not only do those who were invited refuse to attend, when the king sends more servants to be more insistent, and tell them that the dinner is being prepared, they mistreat and even kill some of the king’s servants. As one might expect, this did not go over well with the king. In the end, the king not only destroys those who refused to attend the banquet, he fills the banquet hall with people off the streets who would normally never set foot in the king’s palace. At some point, the people who had been invited lost focus. They forgot that they had an obligation to the king. They assumed that their business was more important than doing what the king had called them to do. And their arrogance cost them their lives.

A similar thing happens in real life in the church at Philippi and causes Paul to write a letter to remind them of the things that were of real importance. We hear this in the words of Philippians 4:1-9 when Paul says:

^4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

²I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. ³Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Paul reminds everyone in the Philippian church that he loves them all, longs to return to see them again, is proud of them, and holds them up as one of his greatest achievements. But then he immediately begs two leaders of the church, women with whom he has labored alongside for the cause of Jesus Christ, and who he knows he will see in eternity, to please stop fighting. But notice how Paul began that request. Before Paul pleads with Euodia and Syntyche, he says, “stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends.”

Of course, the original texts did not include punctuation. Our modern translators have added it to help make our reading easier. But I wonder, in this case, where the translators have concluded that sentence with an exclamation point, if we wouldn’t understand it better if it were a colon. That first sentence really doesn’t include an object. Paul says, “stand firm in this way” but doesn’t say in what way. But if we read that sentence as ending in a colon, then what we hear is “stand firm in this way: please stop arguing with one another and be of the same mind in the Lord.”

When Israel got impatient, they lost focus and they moved away from God and were rescued from destruction by Moses. When the people who had been invited to the king’s banquet became selfish and self-focused, they lost sight of their obligations to the king and brought about their own destruction. And in the church in Philippi, people were losing their focus on God by focusing instead on their personal differences. And that is the same sort of thing that happens in churches every day. We would do well to take Paul’s advice to heart. Rather than allowing our neighbors to witness our arguments, let them instead see gentleness, prayer, thanksgiving, and the peace of God. Rather than finding ways to divide us, think about things that are pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

You can’t weld and hold a conversation at the same time.

You can’t plow a straight furrow through your field if you shift your focus from the path ahead.

And we cannot be effective at doing the work to which we have been called if we lose focus.

Let’s keep our hands on the plow… and focus on Jesus.

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New Birth

October 8, 2026 PastorPartridge Blogs adults, Alliance, Bible, birth, Broadway, children, Christ, christianity, church, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, mature, Methodist, new, Ohio, spirit, spiritual, Street

New Birth

Age and Maturity are Not the Same

October 2026

by John Partridge

In this Sunday’s bulletin, we welcomed three new babies (children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren) to our extended church family. And, especially since one of those is my own grandson, this got me thinking about new birth in a spiritual sense as well as in the physical sense. Physical new birth is easy to understand because we can see it, touch it, feed it, and hear it cry when it’s hungry. But spiritual new birth is trickier. Unless we are physically present when someone puts their faith in Jesus (and even then, only if they did so out loud), we don’t automatically know that anything happened. Being born of the spirit doesn’t present physical evidence. No one’s hair changes color, Hebrew or Greek symbols or tattoos don’t magically appear, nor any other outward and visible sign.

This can be a problem because when visitors come to our church, and when those visitors return and become regular in attendance, we can’t determine how grown up or mature they are spiritually simply by looking at them. And because we can’t, we often assume that visitors and new members are more mature than they really are. If we knew that they were only exploring the idea of faith, or that the had only recently chosen to follow Jesus, or had little spiritual teaching or education, we might guide them to appropriate classes, books, and other resources. But often, because many of us grew up in church, we assume a level of spiritual maturity based on their apparent physical maturity, because that is our lived experience. That assumption of maturity then causes us to miss the opportunity to offer guidance, and the lack of guidance can cause new Christians to feel overwhelmed or lost and drift away or lose their faith.

But the trouble isn’t just that newborn spiritual babies don’t look like babies. It’s that our spiritual growth isn’t tied to our physical growth at all. So, not only are we ignorant of the spiritual maturity of our visitors, but we are also similarly ignorant of the people in the church that we’ve known for years. Just because someone grew up in the church, went to Sunday school and youth group, doesn’t necessarily mean that they developed spiritually as they developed physically.

At the beginning of my career as a pastor, someone asked me why I build so much scripture into the text of my sermons rather than just referencing the appropriate scripture and then preaching on it. My answer, both then and now, is that although earlier generations may have been able to assume that church members read the Bible at home and knew the stories, my experience is that many folks today simply do not. When I taught the morning children’s message, I occasionally turned to the congregation and asked the adults if they knew this or that story, and most often, a great many did not. And so, rather than assume that the congregation knows the stories well enough to skip them with a passing reference, I prefer to teach it all, build up foundations for those who need it, and reinforce older learning for those who do not.

So, how do we become spiritually mature?

It really isn’t that difficult in principle. We grow in our faith much as we do physically. We eat healthy food, exercise, live in a healthy environment, and growth comes naturally. But doing those things spiritually is not as straightforward as doing them physically. Physically, when we aren’t eating often enough, we get hungry. And when we fill ourselves with food that isn’t healthy, we get tired, sluggish, and out of shape. But there are no obvious signs if we cut corners spiritually. We don’t get physically hungry when we don’t eat spiritual food regularly and we don’t notice that we’re out of shape when we continually fill up on spiritual junk food. And that disconnection is why many churches are filled with physically mature, spiritual children.

How do we avoid becoming one of those?

Easy. And not so easy. To grow, and become spiritually mature, we need to be just as diligent with our personal growth, as the mother of newborn is with their baby’s physical growth. We need to make sure that we eat regularly by going to church, attending Sunday school or Bible study, and going beyond that to read scripture and spend time with God more often than once each week. We wouldn’t dream of trying to eat dinner after church and then skipping dinner until the following Sunday, but “eating” once a week spiritually won’t work either.

When I was an engineer, I discovered that if tuned my radio to Moody Bible Institute, I could listen to Bible teachers in my office all afternoon as I worked. And so, while Patti and I regularly attended church, attended a weekly Bible study in the home of a friend, and read the Bible, suddenly I was at least half-listening to two or three Bible lessons every day. Obviously, that isn’t going to work for everyone, but that was a period of significant growth for me. Even though it only lasted for two or three years, it was only a few years after that when I recognized a call to ministry and began attending seminary.

As I said, that formula isn’t going to work for everyone. And clearly, not everyone is going to hear God calling them into full-time ministry. The point is, that each of us needs to find what works for them and recognize that spiritual maturity doesn’t “just happen” any more than children grow and become responsible adults by accident. We are deliberate in how we raise our children. We feed them on a regular schedule, make sure that they get an adequate amount of sleep, play, cuddle time, and we structure their development in many other ways as well.

Growing into spiritual maturity is no different. It needs structure and deliberate action.

Maybe it’s time for a checkup. Is your soul growing and thriving? Or is it struggling, starving, and barely getting by?

What will we choose?

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Keeping God at a Distance

October 4, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, Exodus, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Matthew, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, Philippians, Street

Keeping God at a Distance

October 04, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Matthew 21:33-46 Philippians 3:4b-14

Long before I ever heard a call to ministry, I was persuaded to co-teach a new Sunday school class at our church for a bunch of us who felt like we just did not “fit” into either of the two existing adult classes. Brian Baer and I shared the responsibility for teaching because he was occasionally required to travel for work, and although I travelled regularly, I was usually, but not always, home on weekends. And so, we had an arrangement that if Brian was teaching and got called away, he would leave our study guide on the table with a bookmark where we had left off, and I would pick it up in Sunday morning and continue. And if I was traveling, the reverse was true. In any case, during that period, one of the lessons that Brian taught struck a chord with me and has stayed with me ever since.

The title of the reading for the week in question was, “Just a thimble-full of God, please.” What the study described was a fire hose sized faucet or Niagara Falls from which believers would receive blessings from God. Such a faucet could pour out the Spirit of God and God’s blessings in unimaginable abundance. And yet, too many believers came to that spigot carrying only thimble and asking God only for a tiny blessing instead because they were afraid that to ask God for more would mean that God’s abundant blessing might cause them change something about the way that they lived. Too many of us would rather live on a starvation ration of God’s blessing, receiving a thimbleful at a time, rather than being immersed in God’s abundance and risk whatever a deeper relationship might require of us.

Too often we think of God’s arrival on earth through Jesus Christ as a sort of kindly visitation, like having an old friend over for tea and scones. But that is not the picture that scripture paints for us. Rather than sharing a table for tea, the arrival of Jesus on earth is described as something more akin to a beachhead at Normandy at the invasion of France. Jesus’ arrival on earth is the beginning of God’s invasion to take back the world from the control of Satan, and the business of his church is to capture as much territory and save as many people as we possibly can. None of that fits into the idea that we have of sharing a quiet cup of tea. But the calmer image, much like the image of a “thimbleful of God” allows us to keep God at arm’s length and not get so close that something might be required of us. This isn’t new. We see this same image early in scripture and we find it as we continue reading the story of Exodus in Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 where it says:

^20:1 And God spoke all these words:

²“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³“You shall have no other gods before me.

⁴“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

⁷“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

⁸“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

¹²“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³“You shall not murder.

¹⁴“You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵“You shall not steal.

¹⁶“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

¹⁷“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

¹⁸When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance ¹⁹and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

²⁰Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

We are all familiar with the ten commandments, but what I find interesting considering today’s discussion is that no one had any issue with God laying down some rules. No one complained about God restricting their freedom or anything else. The thing with which people took issue was in meeting God personally. They told Moses that the rules were okay, but they wanted to use Moses to meet God so they didn’t have to it themselves, so they could keep God at arm’s length, and insulate them from God’s presence. But Moses sees through their maneuvering, understands that the root of their negotiations was fear, and says, “Do not be afraid.” God’s purpose was to equip the people to live in such a way that sin would not be so easy and automatic.

But there is danger is keeping God at a distance. As we read the story of the landowner and his vineyard in Matthew 21:33-46, we see how doing so can affect our attitudes toward God. Jesus said:

³³“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. ³⁴When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

³⁵“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. ³⁶Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. ³⁷Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

³⁸“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

⁴⁰“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

⁴¹“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

⁴³“Therefore, I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. ⁴⁴Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. ⁴⁶They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

We know that the landowner in the story is God. He plants a vineyard, builds a winepress, a wall, and a watchtower, and then rents the whole thing out so that someone else can reap the harvest and return a little back to the builder. But the tenants hadn’t seen him for a long time. It may have been for a season, but it may have been several years if it took a while for the vines to mature enough to produce fruit. In any case, the rent was due. And rather than collecting a monthly or yearly rent at a flat rate, even while the vines were not producing grapes, the rent was due as a percentage of the crop.

But when servants of the landowner arrive to collect the rent, the renters act as if they own the land. The landowner had been distant for so long, they felt justified in treating the landowner’s servants as if they were trespassers, or worse. And then, when the landowner’s son comes, they threw him out and killed him. The story is obviously outrageous. But one might imagine that, at this point, the renters assumed that the landowner had been gone for so long that he was never coming back and that they could do whatever they wanted. Because the landowner had been distant from the renters for so long, they made assumptions that were totally wrong.

And speaking as someone who had dedicated their life to being a Pharisee, Paul understood exactly what those wrong assumptions looked like from the inside. But Paul’s assumptions got scrambled, thrown out, and rewritten when he met Jesus on the road to persecute Christians in Damascus and he explains what the realignment of his values looked like in Philippians 3:4b-14 as he writes to the church in Philippi, Greece saying:

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

⁷But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Paul says that he threw out his entire value system and everything that he once built his life upon he now considers worth less than garbage. Instead, he has found that following Jesus is so incredibly valuable, that nothing he had before can even come close. Any goodness that we have in the eyes of God comes only from our faith in Jesus Christ and not because of anything that we have done, and not because of how well we were able to follow the rules. But, Paul says, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” God has called us to follow him for a reason. God has a purpose and a mission for each one of us. The birth of Jesus Christ was the beachhead upon which God was invading the world and our mission is to take back control from God’s enemies, capture as much territory as possible, and save as many people as we possibly can.

God never intended for us to keep him distant at arm’s length so that we could forget who he was. Jesus’ arrival on earth was a reminder to us that God is present in the here and now and his spirit has taken up residence within each one of us. We can’t subcontract our faith. God would not allow the people of Isreal to make Moses a spiritual intermediary, and neither can we use pastors to insulate us from getting close to God. With the coming of Jesus, and his sending of the Spirit of God at Pentecost, our relationship with God is as personal as it could possibly be.

God cannot be kept at a distance or at arm’s length.

Each one of us has a calling and a mission to advance the kingdom of God.

We must do whatever is possible to change the world, capture territory from the enemy, and save as many people as we possibly can.

And neither Moses, nor your pastor, can do the work that God has called you to do.

Fear, Cowardice, and Moving Forward

September 27, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, complain, doubt, faith, fear, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, leadership, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, salvation, Street, trembling

Fear, Cowardice, and Moving Forward

September 27, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 17:1-7 Matthew 21:23-32 Philippians 2:1-13

Today we start out, not with a quiz, but with a question that cannot be answered except for in the moment that you experience it. The question is this…

… What do you do with your fear?

How do you react when you are afraid? The famous scientific insight that everyone knows about human physiology is the “fight of flight” reaction. As soon as the amygdala of our brain detects a threat, our fear triggers a rush of adrenaline and cortisol, our heart beats faster, blood flows away from the higher thinking parts of our brain, away from our skin, away from our stomach, and instead flows to provide more oxygen to our major muscle groups. The result primes our bodies to either run for our lives or to fight like it’s the end of the world.

But which will it be?

Planning and training can have an influence, but every individual is unique and it is difficult to know how they will react until faced with a particular situation. Instinct certainly plays a part just we know that adults of many species, especially parents, are famous for protecting their children, even when facing impossible odds and almost certain death.

In the movie True Grit, John Wayne famously said, “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway.”

In the end, fear is not a theoretical question. At some point, we all face it. In many ways we face it every day. We experience fear when we go to school for the first time, or on the first day of a new school year, or the first day of new job, or when meeting a new boss, or signing legal forms that obligate us for decades into the future, or just reading or listening to the days news, or trying to balance our checkbooks after buying gasoline and groceries. Fear is not theoretical, it is very real, and we face it, in some form, every day.

But what do we do with it?

And that’s where we rejoin the people of Israel in the story of their exodus from Egypt, this time, having had God provide both quail and manna to eat, they once again grumble against Moses because of the lack of water. We hear this in the words of Exodus 17:1-7:

^17:1 The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ²So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

³But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

⁴Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

⁵The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So, Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷And he called the place Massah [quarrelling] and Meribah [testing] because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

You should remember from last week that the people complained about not having enough food and, once again, God provided. Rational people might expect that after being rescued from slavery, walking across the Red Sea on dry ground, being rescued from the pursuing Egyptian army, and then being fed, daily, with quail and bread from heaven, or manna, that the people would begin to trust that God had a plan to provide for them. But no. Instead, they doubled down on their complaining and now they grumbled and escalated their complaining into outright quarrelling and arguing and accusing Moses, again, of bringing everyone out into the desert to die, this time because they did not have enough water. And, once again, God provides.

As we look at the pattern, we begin to suspect that the reason that the people of Israel complained and argued with Moses was not only because of their lack of trust, but also simply because they were afraid. Yes, Moses was born to Israelite parents, but he was raised in Pharoah’s house and then had been banished from Egypt for forty years. He was unfamiliar to nearly everyone and they had good reason to be hesitant with their trust. Likewise, the people had prayed to the God of Israel for hundreds of years and had little or no experience with God speaking to them in return. Although the acts and miracles of God were powerful and amazing, this too was all a new experience for them. Trust is not something that happens overnight, but hunger, thirst, and death in the desert were things with which they were all familiar. And so, when they tested God and asked, “Is the Lord among us or not?” What they were also asking was, “Do we have reason to be afraid?”

But then, keeping this in mind as we read the story surrounding Jesus’ parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:23-32, we once again see fear as an underlying cause, but in it we see an entirely different reaction to that fear.

²³Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”

²⁴Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. ²⁵John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ ²⁶But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”

²⁷So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

²⁸“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

²⁹“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

³⁰“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

³¹“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. ³²For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

As the chief priests and the elders of Israel talk among themselves, they admit that they are afraid of the people and that they know that the people believe that John’s baptism was a gift from God. But everyone on both sides knew that the priests and elders did not believe in John’s message of repentance. But believing John’s message carried its own flavor of fear. If the leaders of Israel believed John’s message, as well as the message of Jesus, then they would have to change. Change how they behaved, change how they acted, change how the Temple did business, change their relationships with the people, change their relationship with the Romans, and each of those changes felt just like change feels today. Scary. The leaders of Isreal were not only afraid of the people, not only afraid that the people’s beliefs did not align with their own, but they were deathly afraid of change.

And then Jesus tells them the parable of the two sons and accuses them of being the son that promised obedience but did nothing. Worse, Jesus confronts them with the fabulously insulting truth that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of Israel’s leaders because even when they witnessed how tax collectors and prostitutes were redeemed and brought back to a right relationship with God, they cowardly clung to their fear of change and still refused to believe.

But as we look at these two stories of fear, how should we understand our own? And once again, we find wisdom in the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Philippi recorded for us in Philippians 2:1-13 where he says:

^2:1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

¹²Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Paul concludes an earlier argument with a series of statements that begin with “if you have any” meaning that if you have gained any benefit at all from belonging to Jesus and this community of faith, then find a way to act in unity, to love one another and the people around you, and to set aside selfishness or conceit so that you can look out for the interests of others instead of your own. The people of the church should aspire to treat one another as Jesus would.

But then, as if that wasn’t hard enough, Paul says something even more difficult. He says that we should continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And sometimes when we read this, we wrestle with what he meant by the words “fear and trembling.” And so, here I want to go back to the kinds of fear that we just talked about for the last fifteen minutes and the differences between them. The people of Israel were afraid. They were afraid of starving, they were afraid of dying of thirst in the desert, and they complained about it, and they argued with Moses about it, and they asked what God was going to do about it. We criticize them for complaining, and so does Moses, and so does scripture. But when we compare it to the fear that we saw in Israel’s leaders when they confronted Jesus, there is a stark difference.

When Israel faced Moses, they confronted their fear, they asked God what they should do about it, and together they worked through it. But centuries later when Israel’s leaders faced Jesus, they were just as afraid, they faced similar life changing, culture altering shifts in the world they lived in, but the leaders in the time of Jesus simply refused to believe what they were seeing. They didn’t believe John’s message, they didn’t believe Jesus, and it never occurred to them to ask God what they should do about it or attempt work through it together. Instead, they ignored what they saw in front of them, pretended that the miracles that they witnessed never happened, and moved to protect the status quo.

And that difference, I think, is what Paul means when he says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Faith isn’t always easy. Sometimes life throws stuff at us that makes us afraid, and sometimes outright terrified, and sometimes our fear makes us face our doubts. But working out our salvation with fear and trembling is a mirror of Israel’s confrontation with Moses. Yes, we are afraid. Yes, we have doubts. But rather than pretending that we have never received good from God, rather than pretending that we have never received benefit, or love, or compassion from being a part of this community of faith, and casting aside our salvation, we should ask God what we should do about it, whining and complaining if necessary, and find a way to work through our fear and our doubts together… with fear and trembling.

“For it is God who works in you” so that you can think and act in ways that fulfil his good purpose for your lives.

It is normal to experience fear.

It’s okay to be afraid.

But what you do with your fear makes all the difference if we are to move forward.

Will it be fight or flight?

Will you cast God aside, or will you work through your fear with him?

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God Provides, People Complain

September 20, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Aaron, Alliance, Bible, blessing, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, complain, Exodus, faith, God, grumble, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, Philippians, provide, Street

God Provides, People Complain

September 20, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 16:2-15 Matthew 20:1-16 Philippians 1:21-30

It is said that the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. But, in my own experience, I suggest that there is a third certainty in any situation that involves humans, and that is… complaining. At every employer for which I have worked, including churches, regardless of how bad or how well, things were going there at the time, if you listened, pretty much everyone had something that they could, and often would, complain about. There is both humor and tragedy in that, and we can, with certainty, know that this is not simply a recent, or even a cultural development, but something that is common to all of humanity throughout time. As proof, we return to the story of the people of Israel 45 days after God freed them from their captivity in Egypt, and probably not long after God parted the waters of the Red Sea and destroyed the Army of Egypt that sought to recapture them. As we return to the story in Exodus 16:2-15, we hear this:

^16:1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. ²In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. ³The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

⁴Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. ⁵On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

⁶So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, ⁷and in the morning, you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” ⁸Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”

⁹Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”

¹⁰While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.

¹¹The Lord said to Moses, ¹²“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning, you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”

¹³That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning, there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. ¹⁵When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. ¹⁶This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer [about three pounds] for each person you have in your tent.’”

¹⁷The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. ¹⁸And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

No sooner had God rescued them, and they stopped running for their lives, God’s people started complaining. As many of us have done, they minimized the negative and exaggerated the positive. In this case, they immediately minimized the suffering that they had endured at the hands of the Egyptians and exaggerated the abundance that they had, complaining that, as slaves, they had pots full of meant and all the food they could eat. And so, God decided to test the people of Israel by providing them with food to eat in the form of quail in the evening, and thin flakes of bread that they called manna, which literally means “What is it?”

Our next example is a story that Jesus told as an example of what God’s kingdom is like in Matthew 20:1-16. Jesus said:

^20:1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ²He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

⁷“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

⁸“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

⁹“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰So, when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹²‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

¹³“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last, the same as I gave you. ¹⁵Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

¹⁶“So, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Since this is a story that describes the kingdom of heaven, we can understand that the landowner in the story is God himself. And as Jesus tells the story, he is well aware that the nature of human beings is to complain, even when God is honoring his promises, doing good things, and benefiting everyone involved. In the story, each worker is given exactly what they were promised, and yet they complain that the workers who were hired early in the day were paid unfairly.

In both the example from Exodus and from Jesus’ own story explaining what God’s kingdom is like, what we find is that even when God provides for his people, they will still find a way to complain about it. But in both cases, the example is given not to tell us that complaining is acceptable and normal, but that even though it is common, it is inappropriate, rude, and ungrateful. But if that is the case, then what is the right way to respond to God’s generosity and how we live our lives? And that is exactly what Paul explains to the church on Philippi as we read from Philippians 1:21-30.

²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²²If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. ²⁵Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.

²⁷Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel ²⁸without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved – and that by God. ²⁹For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, ³⁰since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Paul says that although he lives in Christ and is able to do fruitful labor for God as he does so, he would gain from death because he would go to live with Jesus in the kingdom of God. That said, he knew that his life was a benefit to church so that the people could grow in Christ because of his words and actions. But Paul notes that the people of the church should conduct themselves in a manner that was worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ no matter what circumstance, good or bad, that they found themselves in. Paul desired that the people of the church would stand firm in their faith, work together in unity, and not be frightened by anyone who might oppose or stand against them. Paul said that even though we have been called to believe in Jesus Christ, we have also been called to suffer and struggle for him.

Life isn’t always going to be perfect, and it isn’t always going to be neat and tidy. Sometimes it is going to be uncomfortable, sometimes, we will suffer, and sometimes life will be messy. But in each case, complaining about God’s choices and God’s provision is not the best choice. Although we all know that complaining is a deep-seated part of our humanity, it does not contribute to our growth. Worse, complaining about God’s provision is, rude, ungrateful, and inappropriate.

No matter what we face in life, regardless of whether we are showered with blessings, or whether we struggle and suffer, our calling is to stand together in unity, do the work that God has set before us, stand firm in our faith, and live lives that are worthy of Jesus and the gift of life that he has given to us.

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Facing Judgement

September 13, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, church, debt, Egypt, Exodus, faith, forgive, forgiveness, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, judgement, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, neighbor, Ohio, Paul, Peter, Romans, sin

Facing Judgement

September 13, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 14:19-31 Matthew 18:21-35 Romans 14:1-12

Throughout history, there are times that are referred to as inflection points, times in which culture, society, attitudes, values, or other things suddenly make a change from the line, or arc, that they had previously been following in a predictable way. It isn’t always obvious, but years later, these can be moments toward which everyone points and recognizes at the time when everything changed. The time in which we live today might well be one of those times. As we watch the evening news or scroll through our internet news feeds, we seem to see dramatic changes in the way that our nation values the lives of immigrants, people of faith, members of opposing political parties, or even anyone who disagrees with us. Moreover, changes in the way that we value the people around us are often triggered by how our political, religious, and other leaders speak about those groups of people, and how we then choose to judge their politics, morality, or faith. But as the followers of God, and as followers of Jesus Christ, we must be careful as we navigate the challenging waters of changing times because scripture has much to say about how we judge others and how God will, ultimately, judge us.

We begin this morning by examining a moment of judgement that we might have missed in a story that we have read dozens of times. We rejoin our story of Moses and the Exodus of God’s people from their captivity in Egypt. God parts the waters of the Red Sea, the people of Israel cross on dry land, and then there is a moment, an inflection point, when everything might have been different. We rejoin this story reading from Exodus 14:19-31 where it says:

¹⁹Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, ²⁰coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so, neither went near the other all night long.

²¹Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, ²²and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

²³The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. ²⁴During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. ²⁵He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”

²⁶Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” ²⁷Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. ²⁸The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.

²⁹But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. ³⁰That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. ³¹And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.

Up until now, a pillar of clouds and fire and gone ahead of the people as they advanced through the wilderness. But when the army of Egypt traps them against the sea, the angel of God moves from offense to defense, withdraws from the front, and stands between the people of Israel and the army of Egypt. It is then that Moses stretches out his hand over the sea and God drives a path of dry land through the water on which Israel could cross. But this is also the moment when the soldiers of Egypt are given a choice, and it is a moment in which everything might have been different. It is at this moment that each soldier must know, as they face a tower of cloud that blocks their path, and when that tower of cloud becomes a tower of fire after the sun sets, and then again as they witness Israel’s God part the waters of the sea and watch the nation of Israel cross the sea on dry land. It is at this moment that they must know that Israel’s God is real, and powerful, and acting both to protect the people of Israel and to stand in defiance against the entire pantheon of the gods of Egypt. And so, knowing this, each soldier had a choice to make, each man had the chance to recognize the power of Israel’s God and could choose whether they would continue to their pursuit.

And the soldiers chose. To a man, they chose to continue their pursuit. Perhaps they feared what would happen to them if they disobeyed, or what Pharoah would do if they returned empty handed, but each soldier made a choice. And God judged them saying “to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” But the people of Israel “feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.”

But God has something to say about how we judge the people around us as well. This can be difficult for all of us, and it was an issue for the disciples of Jesus. Peter is uncertain about the whole concept of forgiveness and asks Jesus about it in Matthew 18:21-35 where we hear these words:

²¹Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

²²Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

²³“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. ²⁵Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

²⁶“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³²“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

When Peter asks how many times Jesus requires us to forgive others, Jesus essentially says, “forever.” The comparison that Jesus draws, is to a man who has been forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents of gold. One talent was worth about twenty years wages. So, ten thousand talents, is about what the average laborer would earn if they worked for two hundred thousand years. It is an impossible number, and it is meant to be so. But that man, who has been forgiven an impossible debt, abuses and jails a fellow servant who owes him one hundred denarii, or a little more than three months wages. Not a small amount, but not anything approaching what the first man had already been forgiven.

It is this disparity that Jesus uses to illustrate the debt that we owe to God. The debt that we owe is impossible and unfathomable. And so, because God has forgiven us of so much, he commands us to be forgiving, forever, of whatever offenses we think have been committed by people around us. And the terrifying conclusion comes when Jesus says that our failure to forgive others will result in God withdrawing his forgiveness from us.

Paul has a similar conversation about judgment with the people of the church in Rome as we read from Romans 14:1-12 he says:

^14:1 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ²One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

⁵One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. ⁶Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. ⁷For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. ⁸If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. ⁹For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

¹⁰You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. ¹¹It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

¹²So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Paul says that faith is different for each person. What offends you may not offend someone else, and something that you feel fits perfectly within your faith, might be offensive to someone else. But we cannot treat others with contempt, or stand in judgement of them just because their faith is different than ours, or because they are at a different place, and a different maturity, in their faith than we are. It doesn’t matter if they want to worship on Saturday, or on Sunday, or whether they rotate days, or whether they worship at all in a way that you think is appropriate. Whether we live or die, we belong to Jesus. Paul’s rhetorical question then becomes, ‘Why do you judge others and treat them with contempt when each of us will stand before God and answer for ourselves?’

The conclusion reminds us of the story of Exodus and of Jesus’ words to the disciples. Whenever there is an inflection point, whenever we are faced with changes in our society, culture, morals, and values, we are reminded that each of us have the chance to make a choice for ourselves. We will not be judged for the sins of others, God will not ask us what sins were committed by our neighbors or the people around us, but we will answer for ourselves, and we will be judged for the sins that belong to us alone.

And that is more than enough to keep you awake at night.

There’s no need for any of us to stand in judgement of others because their faith is different than ours, or because they sin differently than we do. Instead, our calling is to forgive the people around us, forever, seventy times seven, and live a life a grace that looks so much like Jesus that others will be drawn to his light.

That’s more than enough, that’s difficult enough.

There’s no need to pile anything else on top of it.

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Living Sacrifice. Say What Now?

August 23, 2026 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, Exodus, faith, gifts, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Joseph, living, living sacrifice, Matthew, Methodist, Moses, Ohio, Paul, Peter, Pharaoh, Puah, Romans, sacrifice, Shiphrah, worship

Living Sacrifice. Say What Now?

August 23, 2026*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 1:8 – 2:10 Matthew 16:13-20 Romans 12:1-8

Each month when we celebrate the Lord’s table, which is also known as the Eucharist, or simply as communion, the liturgy that we use includes the phrase, “we offer ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice.” Since this is the pastor’s part of the liturgy, I often emphasize this part and occasionally add a word or two of what it might mean to be a “living sacrifice.” That language originally comes from the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Rome. But what does it mean? And what does it say about how we should live our lives in the modern world? I hope to offer some understanding and some answers to these questions this morning, and we will, near the end, examine Paul’s words for more detail, but before we do, let’s begin with some examples, first from the story of the Exodus, and second from a discussion between Jesus and his disciples. Once again moving forward in our story of God’s people in the nation of Egypt, we rejoin their story several generations after the death of Joseph as we read these words in Exodus 1:8 – 2:10:

⁸Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. ⁹“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. ¹⁰Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

¹¹So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. ¹²But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so, the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites ¹³and worked them ruthlessly. ¹⁴They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

¹⁵The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, ¹⁶“When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” ¹⁷The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. ¹⁸Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

¹⁹The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

²⁰So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. ²¹And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

²²Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

^2:1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, ²and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. ³But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. ⁴His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

⁵Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ⁶She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

⁷Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

⁸“Yes, go,” she answered. So, the girl went and got the baby’s mother. ⁹Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So, the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

The new Pharaoh was so far removed from those generations that knew Joseph, that they no longer remembered how he had saved the entire nation of Egypt. If any national memory of Joseph remained, it now lay soundly in the realm of fables and mythology rather than that of history. And so, when the new Pharaoh looked at the Israelites, he no longer saw allies, but only potential enemies. Despite living there and calling Egypt home for hundreds of years, the Israelites were still seen as outsiders and not as native Egyptians. And so, the Egyptians oppressed and enslaved the Israelites and worked them without consideration for comfort, well-being, or any kind of compassion or humanity. Even so, no matter how hard they were abused or overworked, the oppression of the Egyptians had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than reducing them in number, the people of Jacob’s family multiplied even more and now that they were oppressed, became an even greater threat to Egypt’s national security.

And so, Pharaoh orders Israelite midwives to murder any male children at the moment of birth. But two of Israel’s midwives resisted Pharaoh in private and refused to do what they saw as immoral and wrong. At great risk to themselves, these two women, Shiphrah and Puah, refuse to obey the command of Pharaoh, lie to Pharaoh’s face (or at least to the face of his officers), knowing full well that doing these things could cost them their own lives. Interestingly, As Pharoah issues an edict that is the instrument of death for a generation of Israelite male children, God chooses to use Pharaoh’s own daughter as the instrument of rescue for the man that would later rescue the Israelite people and become one of Israel’s greatest heroes.

Next, let us move forward to the moment when Jesus asks his disciples to share the gossip that they have heard about him in Matthew 16:13-20:

¹³When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

¹⁴They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

¹⁵“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

¹⁶Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

¹⁷Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” ²⁰Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

When Jesus asks what people are saying about him, there are various answers. Some think John the Baptist, which is silly since they were repeatedly seen together, but also Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets from the Jewish scriptures. But then Jesus asks who the disciples think that he is and something interesting happens because the first to answer is Simon Peter. And here we need to remember who Peter is, and what we have seen of him up to this point. Peter is the man who is rash, impulsive, speaks and acts before he thinks, and because of this has, repeatedly, put his foot in his mouth or otherwise said or done things that made him look utterly foolish, or for which Jesus had to publicly reprimand him. And yet, in this case, Peter is not only first to arrive at an answer, but he is also totally correct in his assessment that Jesus is Israel’s promised Messiah, the savior and rescuer of God’s people that had been foretold by God’s prophets throughout Israel’s history. Moreover, Jesus emphasizes that Peter’s answer isn’t just a result of Peter’s typical impulsiveness but is knowledge that has been revealed to him by God himself. The rest of this, though some parts scholars still argue about, essentially represents the idea that Peter, the apostles, and the church now take the place and the authority of the scribes, Pharisees, and the priesthood in the Jewish faith, for the community of Jesus’ followers that they were building.

And finally, we arrive at the words of Paul that began today’s exploration that we find in Romans 12:1-8 where he says:

^12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ²Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

³For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. ⁴For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. ⁶We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; ⁷if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

In the words that we hear each month as we celebrate at the Lord’s table, Paul calls God’s people to offer themselves as living sacrifices that are holy and pleasing to God, and Paul goes further to say that our living sacrifice is our true and proper worship. That is both notable and important. Paul is saying that just as worship in the Temple once revolved around the sacrifice of animals, true worship of God still involves sacrifice but now it is the living sacrifice of our living bodies. That seems a little confusing to us, and we wonder what that means, and what that would look like. But Paul understands the needs of his audience, and he continues with an explanation. He says that we must each consider ourselves, our gifts, our education, our abilities, and understand that these are all gifts that God has given to us, but also that each of us are different and have different strengths and weaknesses that God designed to work together.

Paul says that we are called by God to use the gifts that we have been given and that using these gifts is therefore how we give God the living sacrifice of our lives. True worship, Paul says, isn’t going to church, listening to the pastor, and singing some songs. True worship is using our gifts, whatever they are. Prophets should prophesy, teachers should teach, those with the gift of service should serve, those who can encourage should encourage, those whose gift is in giving, should give generously, the merciful should show mercy, and leaders should lead.

Let’s quickly pull all these strings together and see what we have. First, we saw that Shiphrah and Puah used their gifts to actively disobey Pharaoh in order to honor God. Next, we saw Peter being himself and behaving exactly the way we had seen him act. When Peter declared that that Jesus was the Messiah he looked exactly like his normal, rash, impulsive self, and discovered a revelation from God. And finally, we heard Paul’s instruction that we worship God most genuinely, most truly, and properly when we use the gifts, education, abilities, and personality that God has given us to honor God. This is when we offer ourselves as living sacrifices, when we use our gifts and expend our whole selves in the service of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.

Although we call it worship, what we do at church is only a shadow of true worship. We truly worship when we use our gifts, as a living sacrifice, in service of God. What we do during our weekly Sunday meetings are for the church, the gathered body of Christ, to report back on what we have been doing and plan for what ministry we will do in the future.

The question each of us must answer is this: What does true worship look like for me? How can I use the gifts that I have been given in the service of Jesus Christ, so that I can truly offer my life to God as holy and living sacrifice?

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