Worthwhile? Or Worthy?

October 5, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Babylon, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, God, Jermiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Judah, Lamentations, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, soul, Timothy

Worthwhile? Or Worthy?

October 05, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Lamentations 1:1-6 Luke 17:5-10 2 Timothy 1:1-14

How do you greet your friends at church? Or any of your other friends outside of church?

It’s common to say something like “Hi! How are you?” or “Hey. How are you?” But we all know that’s a superficial question. Occasionally, among close friends, I’ve been known to take a hard look at their facial expressions and their general demeanor, and follow that up with, “No, how are you… really?” And that is the question that brings out a bit more honesty, requires a little more thought, often takes longer to answer.

But one question that John Wesley often asked, was “How is it with your soul?” That too, is a deeper question than, “Hey. How are you?” Not only does this question probe with some of the depth of “How are you really?” but it also asks for some thought about how we are spiritually. How is it with your soul asks about your physical and emotional condition, but it also requires some thought about our faith and our relationship with God.

As we read and think about our scriptures for today, we will find that our discussion is, in some ways, similar to the discussions that we’ve had for the last two weeks. But, like “How is it with your soul?” our discussion will require us think more deeply about our faith before we’re done. We begin this week by reading a prayer of mourning from the book of Lamentations as God’s people grapple with what it means physically, emotionally, and spiritually, to have been conquered by the nation of Babylon, to have lost the city of Jerusalem, and to have witnessed, cruelty, destruction, and death on a scale that they could likely not have imagined previously. (Lamentations 1:1-6)

^1:1How deserted lies the city,
    once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
    who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
    has now become a slave.

2 Bitterly she weeps at night,
    tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
    there is no one to comfort her.
All her friends have betrayed her;
    they have become her enemies.

3 After affliction and harsh labor,
    Judah has gone into exile.
She dwells among the nations;
    she finds no resting place.
All who pursue her have overtaken her
    in the midst of her distress.

4 The roads to Zion mourn,
    for no one comes to her appointed festivals.
All her gateways are desolate,
    her priests groan,
her young women grieve,
    and she is in bitter anguish.

5 Her foes have become her masters;
    her enemies are at ease.
The Lord has brought her grief
    because of her many sins.
Her children have gone into exile,
    captive before the foe.

6 All the splendor has departed
    from Daughter Zion.
Her princes are like deer
    that find no pasture;
in weakness they have fled
    before the pursuer.

The nation of Judah mourns all that was lost but the writer, traditionally thought to be the prophet Jeremiah, also notes that all of Judah’s allies, all her false gods, and all her false hope have abandoned her. He says that the even the roads mourn because no one comes to her appointed festivals, meaning that the practice of the religion of Yahweh has ceased. But the writer admits that God has brought this tragedy upon his people because of the sins that they had committed, and the princes of Judah have fled their pursuers like deer that flee from their hunters.

When we read the words of Jeremiah, we imagine that if we could ask the nation of Judah, “How is it with your soul,” Jeremiah would answer by saying that Judah was cowardly, hungry, sinful, and faithless.

But the disciples of Jesus knew the history of their people. They knew that God had sometimes judged their nation because of their faithlessness, and the current occupation of their nation by Rome raised some of the same questions. Would God allow us to be free if we had more faith? Is the Roman occupation a sign that God is displeased with our faithfulness? How can we have more faith? And in that environment, we can, perhaps, understand a little better why the disciples ask Jesus, in Luke 17:5-10, how they can be more faithful, or, more correctly, the disciples ask Jesus to simply give them more faith.

⁵The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

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

⁷“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? ⁸Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? ⁹Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? ¹⁰So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

The first thing that I thought of when I read that first verse, “Increase our faith!” is that the disciples should have known that there’s no shortcut to increasing our faith. Much as praying that God would grant us patience, often results in God leading us into places that force us to be patient, I have always believed that praying for more faith results in finding ourselves in places that demand more faith from us. And, while it is possible that the disciples understood that Jesus’ reply is still surprising. When Jesus says, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed…” he is telling his disciples that it isn’t necessary to have a lot of faith. Even a tiny amount of faith in an all-powerful creator God is so immensely powerful that we should be able to command a tree to uproot itself and grow in the ocean. And Jesus’ parable about the servant and his master tells us that being worthy of God is no more difficult than doing the things that we have been asked to do.

Paul says something similar as he writes to his protégé in 2 Timothy 1:1-14 when he says:

^1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, in keeping with the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus,

²To Timothy, my dear son:

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

³I thank God, whom I serve, as my ancestors did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. ⁴Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. ⁵I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

⁶For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. ⁷For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. ⁸So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. ⁹He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ¹¹And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. ¹²That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.

¹³What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Paul reminds Timothy that he not only serves God but does so with a clear conscience and remembers Timothy in his prayers. Moreover, Paul remembers Timothy’s faith, but not just because the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother had made an impression on him, but because Paul had witnessed Timothy as he had lived out his faith in front of him. Paul then encourages Timothy to “fan into flame the gift of God” which I take to mean that he is encouraging Timothy, not just to sit back and rest in the gift of faith that he had been given, but to actively work to exercise and to increase it.

Paul then returns to his other point that he serves God with a clear conscience as he tells Timothy not to be ashamed of the testimony of Jesus Christ or the fact of Paul’s imprisonment. He reminds Timothy, and us, that God saved us and has called us to this life because of his own purpose and grace and because of that, Paul’s suffering was no cause for shame. Paul believed in Jesus Christ and trusted him to guard his path and his future until the day we meet at the foot of God’s throne. The key, Paul says, is to remember the teaching that he has been given and the life and faith that Paul, Jesus, and everyone who has invested themselves in us have modeled and demonstrated for us in their own lives.

And so, we have several clues that will aid us in answering the question “How is it with your soul?” First, there are consequences for living a life that is sinful and faithless. Second, that there is no shortcut to increasing our faith but also that even a tiny amount of faith in an omnipotent creator God is immensely powerful. Third, if we desire to be worthy of the gifts that God has given to us, being worthy of God is no more difficult than doing the things that we have been asked to do. Fourth, although the gift of faith has been given to us, we must still actively put in the hard work necessary to exercise and to increase it. And finally, we should never be ashamed of the testimony of Jesus Christ and that we should always remember the things that we have been taught by Jesus, Paul, and all those who have modeled and demonstrated a life of faith alongside of us.

Answering the question, “How is it with your soul?” is much harder than “Hey! How are you?” but it is also far more important. It is important for each one of us to occasionally put thought into how we are doing, how we are living, and how we are growing in our faith and in our obedience to Jesus Christ.

So…

How is it with your soul?

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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.™

Finding Hope Amid Crisis

September 28, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Babylon, Bible, Broadway, Christ, church, crisis, death, enjoyment, faith, God, hell, hope, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, life, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, seige, Timothy, treasure

Finding Hope Amid Crisis

September 28, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 Luke 16:19-31 1 Timothy 6:6-19

There is a curse that dates to the early 19^th century that says, “May you live in interesting times.” For most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, boring is good. Boring lives are predictable. Interesting times tend to be filled with tumult, unpredictability, stress, rapid change, crises, and unpleasantness. Despite being interesting, life is not as enjoyable as it might be when we spend our time worrying about war, violence, pestilence, disease, political upheaval, inflation, healthcare, financial ruin, death, and destruction. In comparison, boring predictability is much more likely to allow us to find happiness and contentment. But that wasn’t the world in which the prophet Jeremiah found himself. Jeremiah had been born into a world that was facing one of his nation’s greatest upheavals and was called by God to bring messages of warning and hope to his people. As we read our first scripture, we find the army of Babylon at the gates of Jerusalem and God’s people filled with fear and despair. But into this pit of worry, we hear God bring his people a word of hope for the future (Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15).

^32:1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. ²The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah.

³Now Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him there, saying, “Why do you prophesy as you do? You say, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am about to give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.

⁶Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me: ⁷Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.’

⁸“Then, just as the Lord had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.’

“I knew that this was the word of the Lord; ⁹so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekelsof silver. ¹⁰I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. ¹¹I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy— ¹²and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.

¹³“In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: ¹⁴‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. ¹⁵For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’

Although everyone in Jerusalem was worrying and wondering what tomorrow would bring, and whether they might even live to see the sunrise, God brings a message of hope through the simple act of selling a small plot of land. It is likely that in a city under siege, food was becoming scarce and expensive and many things that were normally valuable were becoming useless and cheap. After all, when you are hungry, you can’t eat gold or jewels. And so, in a similar way, Jeremiah’s uncle comes to him in hopes of selling him a field outside the city, that neither of them might ever see again simply because the money that he would get from Jeremiah might buy him enough food for another day or two. In such a situation, you might ordinarily expect that Jeremiah would be completely uninterested and would prefer to keep his money so that he could buy his own food. But God calls Jeremiah in advance and commands him to buy the field from his uncle as a sign to the people of Jerusalem that there is hope for the future. Through the transfer of property, and the sealing away of the documentation, God declares that there will be a time, within the lifetime of Jeremiah, that God’s people will return to Jerusalem and the houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought and sold. God’s message of hope is that despite the interesting, horrifying, and violent days ahead of them, a stable and boring life of normality will one day return.

But the reality was that many of the people inside the walls of Jerusalem would not live to see a new day. The violence and destruction of Jerusalem’s siege would claim many lives and still more would not live long enough to return from their captivity in Babylon. But aside from ancient violence, death is an everyday reality for all of us. Life is short in the best of times, and we are all painfully aware of our mortality. And in Luke 16:19-31, Jesus gives us a warning about how we should live so that we can be with him when we reach the end of this life. Jesus said:

¹⁹“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

²²“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

²⁵“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. ²⁶And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

²⁷“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, ²⁸for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

²⁹“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

³⁰“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

³¹“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

First, I want to note that despite this being a parable, Jesus speaks of hell as if it is real. This is important to remember when we hear voices in our culture that say that there is no such thing. If Jesus said that hell is real, then I must believe that it is. Second, the clear message of this parable is that we each have choices to make in this life that cannot be undone in the next and we must live our lives in such a way that we end up on the right side of the chasm that separates comfort from torment. Third, even before his death and resurrection, Jesus was clear that some people will never be convinced of the truth regardless of the evidence presented.

In an odd sort of way, the message of Jesus is like that of Jeremiah. There is hope for our future, but we must seek to make good choices if we want to reach a place of comfort.

But if that is the case, then how do we do that? How do we make good choices? And what kind of choices are good? And as we often do, we find help in the guidance that Paul sent to his friend Timothy in his letter (1 Timothy 6:6-19) where he says:

⁶But godliness with contentment is great gain. ⁷For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ⁹Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

¹¹But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, ¹⁶who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

¹⁷Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. ¹⁹In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Paul says that godliness and contentment are good things to which we should aspire but that we should be content with what we have. Whenever we begin to desire more, when we aspire to become rich, we are tempted to do things that are both foolish and harmful and those things have caused the ruin and destruction of many lives. The love of money has led many people to wander from their faith and caused themselves no end of suffering. Instead, Paul says, the followers of God are called to flee from that sort of temptation and to instead pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Paul charges Timothy, and all of us, to keep the command to fight the good fight of faith.

It is important to note that Paul does not say that the rich are automatically doomed simply because they are rich, especially because we are citizens of one of the richest nations in the history of the world. Instead, Paul instructs the followers of Jesus Christ to command those who are rich to do what is right. Paul says that the rich should not be so arrogant that they put their hope in wealth, which can be lost so easily, but to put their hope in God who richly provides us with all that we need and with everything for our enjoyment. Rich and poor alike should do good, be rich in good deeds, be generous and willing to share. When we do these things, we store treasure for ourselves in our future home and take hold of the things that are truly life giving.

No matter what crisis we face, we are never without hope but some of the choices that we make in this life cannot be undone in the next. Some people will never be convinced of the truth regardless of the evidence presented, but each of us must spend our lives in pursuit of what is good. We must seek godliness, and be content with what we have, resist the temptation to desire wealth at the expense of everything else, and instead pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, and gentleness. Be rich in good deeds, do good, be generous with what you have, and be willing to share with those who are in need.

If we do these things, we will increase our enjoyment in this life, draw others to the truth of Jesus Christ, and store up treasure for ourselves in the next.

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Who Do You Serve?

September 21, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, drift, faith, God, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, servant, service

Who Do You Serve?

September 21, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1 Luke 16:1-13 1 Timothy 2:1-7

Have you ever gone through a time in your life when God seemed distant and far away? Or just a time when it seemed as if God didn’t care about what you were going through? If we’re honest, I think that most of us have felt like that from time to time. But in times like that, I have been reminded of a poster that I saw many years ago that simply said, “If God seems far away… who moved?” Let me say that again, “If God seems far away, who moved?” Now, I admit that summarizing the complexities of life this in way may be a little over-simplistic, but it does seem to get to the core of the issue. While scripture tells us that there have been times when God didn’t seem to listen, the far more common theme tells us of times when God has chosen to appear distant because his people turned their backs on him first. Our first scripture for today recounts an example of such an occasion that was recorded by the prophet Jeremiah as God’s people mourn over the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of God’s people in Babylon and we hear these words in Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1:

¹⁸You who are my Comforterin sorrow, my heart is faint within me.
¹⁹Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King no longer there?”

“Why have they aroused my anger with their images,
with their worthless foreign idols?”

²⁰“The harvest is past,
the summer has ended,
and we are not saved.”

²¹Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
    I mourn, and horror grips me.
²²Is there no balm in Gilead?
    Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
    for the wound of my people?

^9:1Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.

Jeremiah reaches out to God because he is filled with sorrow and God is the one who he normally seeks out to find comfort. Jeremiah asks that God listen to the voices of his people as they weep in sorrow and asks why God is no longer in Jerusalem. But God answers that his people have angered him by worshiping images and idols instead of him and, because of God’s displeasure, the people feel disconnected, they know that God has withdrawn his saving power, and they feel crushed, horrified, and wounded. Jeremiah declares that he is so filled with sorrow that if his head were a spring of water, and his eyes were fountains, he would weep day and night over the deaths of his people.

But as sad as the story is, it is important to remember that the disconnection from God started long before the invasion of the Babylonians. God’s people turned their backs on him and worshiped foreign gods, images, and idols and refused all of God’s attempts to call them back to himself. It was only then that God turned his back, and it was only then that God allowed the Babylonians to rise in power and bring punishment to the people, and to the nation, of God.

But in Luke 16:1-13, Jesus tells a story about changing allegiances with an entirely different sort of spin while still being a story about obedience.

^16:1 Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. ²So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

³“The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— ⁴I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

⁵“So, he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

⁶“‘Nine hundred gallonsof olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

⁷“Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushelsof wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

⁸“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. ⁹I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

¹⁰“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. ¹¹So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ¹²And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

¹³“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

In the story that Jesus told, we discover that at some point, the manager decided that his allegiance was to himself more than it was to the owner, to ethics, to morals, or the teachings of God. The manager began to siphon the owner’s money in wasteful ways that we would describe as graft, theft, and embezzlement. When the owner gives the manager a few days to show him his accounting ledgers, the manager seeks out some of his boss’s biggest clients and debtors, and allows them to settle with him for enormous discounts so that they then become indebted to him rather than to his boss and he can count on them for employment and support after he loses his job.

The point that Jesus makes is that while the manager was shrewd in his dealings, he had lost faith with his employer and shifted his loyalties to himself, to his pleasure, and to his vanity even at the expense of his continued employment. While Jesus compliments the shrewdness of the manager and encourages us to use those same kinds of street smarts to the advancement of God’s kingdom, Jesus also notes that we cannot serve two masters. If we allow our bank account, pleasure, vanity, other gods, family time, politics, or any number of other things to become our master, then God becomes secondary and no god at all. Christian radio show host Larry Burkett, in his weekly show on finance, used to be fond of saying that if he could spend five minutes with your checkbook, he could tell you what your priorities were. Your priorities, and your master, are the things that you put first.

If we want to get our priorities right, if we want to serve the right master, and put God first, then it is worth looking at the advice that Paul has for his protégé Timothy in his letter that we find in 1 Timothy 2:1-7 where he says:

^2:1 I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people— ²for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ³This is good, and pleases God our Savior, ⁴who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. ⁵For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. ⁷And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.

Paul says that what God really wants from us is godliness and holiness. These are the things that we should make central to our lives and the things that we should give priority in our lives. God wants all people to come to a knowledge of truth, to know that there is one God, and one mediator between God and humanity, found in the man Jesus Christ.

Yes, there are times in our lives when it seems as if God is far away, but most often when that happens it is not because God moved, but because we did. We wandered off, we drifted, we forgot, we allowed our focus to shift to other things, we allowed other things to become our priorities and take a central place in our lives. The way to keep God close is to make God our first and most important priority. God wants us to have peaceful and quiet lives, but to do that we are called to live lives of godliness and holiness and expend ourselves in pursuit of God’s mission to save all the people of the earth and help them to find a knowledge of the truth.

Any attempt to serve more than one master causes us to abandon one of them. Dividing our loyalties causes us to give priority to one and to hate the other.

We can only serve one master.

Choose wisely.

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Hospitality: Curse or Blessing?

August 31, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, blessing, Broadway, christianity, church, curse, faith, God, Hebrews, hospitality, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Street

Hospitality: Curse or Blessing?

August 31, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Luke 14:1, 7-14 Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

You’ve heard it plenty of times, sometimes even within these walls, when churches proudly proclaim that “We are a welcoming church!” But whenever you hear that, it always pays to look a little deeper. A year or two ago, as I walked around downtown Akron during a break from our Annual Conference, I stopped in front of a parking deck for a downtown church. The signs were strikingly specific, and while there were several of them, the clear and emphatic point was that these parking spaces were to be used only by church members. While there was one sign that noted visitor parking, two others clearly said, “No Parking Members Only,” and “Church Parking Only – Decal Required – All others will be towed at the owners expense.” Despite the sign noting that visitors were welcome, the other two would cause me to be quite reluctant and anxious to park there if I didn’t belong.

In another case, I have often heard stories about new pastors or evangelists who dressed as a homeless person and spent the night, or at least the early morning before their first Sunday at a new church, sleeping on the steps of the church. They were often shooed away, or they watched as members of the church made a wide berth around them on the way to their fellowship inside. In the story, the people were then deeply embarrassed to discover that the disheveled person that they had seen outside was their new pastor or visiting evangelistic speaker.

It is often an unfortunate truth that when churches, and many other groups, proclaim that they are welcoming, the implied message is that they are only welcoming of a certain kind of people. It was clear in my last appointment that while everyone agreed that they wanted their church to grow, some (only a few) of them were only welcoming to the people who were like them and who worshiped like them. They openly opposed everything to do with our non-traditional worship service (which was growing) and insisted that if we eliminated it, that everyone could worship together in their traditional worship service. I warned them that many of the people who attended the non-traditional service felt that service was their home and would have chosen the traditional service if they had preferred it. The message, in any case, was that “we are a welcoming congregation… as long as you look like us and like the things that we like.”

And so, the question of the day is this: What does real hospitality look like? How do we accept it when it is offered to us? And how do we offer it, openly, honestly, and without reservation? And for that, we begin once again with a message that God sent to the people of Jerusalem through his prophet Jeremiah as we read the words of Jeremiah 2:4-13:

⁴Hear the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob,
all you clans of Israel.

⁵This is what the Lord says:

“What fault did your ancestors find in me,
    that they strayed so far from me?
They followed worthless idols
    and became worthless themselves.
⁶They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord,
    who brought us up out of Egypt
and led us through the barren wilderness,
    through a land of deserts and ravines,
a land of drought and utter darkness,
    a land where no one travels and no one lives?’
⁷I brought you into a fertile land
    to eat its fruit and rich produce.
But you came and defiled my land
    and made my inheritance detestable.
⁸The priests did not ask,
    ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who deal with the law did not know me;
    the leaders rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
    following worthless idols.

⁹“Therefore I bring charges against you again,”
declares the Lord.
    “And I will bring charges against your children’s children.
¹⁰Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
    send to Kedarand observe closely;
    see if there has ever been anything like this:
¹¹Has a nation ever changed its gods?
    (Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
    for worthless idols.
¹²Be appalled at this, you heavens,
    and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
¹³“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

God sends word to Jerusalem, Israel, and all the descendants of Jacob that he is disappointed, hurt, and angry that he has given them freedom, land, a nation, and many other gifts of his hospitality, but after he gave it to them, they abused and destroyed them. For that, God says that he is bringing charges against them in court. No other nation, God says, has ever changed its gods. They might be completely wrong about who is god, but at least they were faithful. But God’s people have exchanged their true God for a pocket full of worthless beans, or in this case, worthless idols. They exchanged gold and riches for lumps of clay. God says that his people have turned their backs on his hospitality and walked away from their God because they decided to worship themselves even though they have no power of their own.

And then in Luke 14:1, 7-14, we find Jesus people-watching at a banquet at the home of a prominent Pharisee, and after he watches for a while, Jesus comments on how we should show hospitality in a way that would please God.

^14:1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.

⁷When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: ⁸“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. ⁹If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. ¹¹For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

¹²Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Jesus says that if you use your hospitality to show off, make yourself feel important, impress the right people, or to move up in your social and business circles, then God may knock you down and teach you something about humility. But, if you use your hospitality to humble yourself, then God will exalt and lift you up. Jesus says that the right way to show hospitality is to use it to care for people who can’t afford to give anything back, to feed the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. The core value here is that God will repay you when you use your hospitality to show genuine generosity and grace.

This same sentiment is echoed by the author of Hebrews as he reflects on hospitality, marriage, and how we should choose our heroes and leaders. As we read Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16, we hear this:

^13:1 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. ²Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. ³Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

⁴Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. ⁵Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”

⁶So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”

⁷Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. ⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

¹⁵Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. ¹⁶And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

The writer of Hebrews says that while we should continue to love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, we should not forget to show hospitality to those who do not belong to our church, our fellowship, or even to our faith. It is through our hospitality, generosity, and kindness that people will see, hear, and feel the love of Jesus Christ and be drawn to faith in him. Similarly, while we should continue to love one another as brothers and sisters, we should also continue to love, and be faithful to, our spouses. But, when it comes time to choose our leaders, or to identify the people that we admire and respect, we should first consider the outcome of their faith and their way of life. Consider whether their example is worth following by looking to see how they have modeled their lives after Jesus Christ.

When we consider these things together, we understand that hospitality isn’t just about inviting people to our homes or to our churches. It’s about loving the people with whom we worship, but also about showing compassion, generosity, and love to the people around us who don’t belong to our fellowship, our church, or our faith. Hospitality is about using what we have to care for people who have less than we do. It’s about loving our spouses in a way that is exclusive, monogamous, and faithful to them and to the vows that we took before God. Hospitality is about remembering the things that God gave us, giving thanks for them, continually offering God a sacrifice of praise and worship so that we don’t turn our backs on him and exchange the richness of our God for a lump of clay.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that hospitality is just occasionally offering an invitation to your church or to your Sunday school class. Hospitality is about giving thanks for what we have been given, it about how we live our lives, how we model Christ’s example to the people around us, it’s about doing good, and it’s about sharing what we have with others.

Hospitality isn’t just one thing; it’s the whole package of how we live our lives and reveal Christ to the people around us.

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The Danger of ‘No’

August 24, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, blessings, Broadway, Christ, christianity, church, consequenses, danger, faith, God, Hebrews, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, Luke, Methodist, no, obedience, Ohio, Saying no, worship

The Danger of “No”

August 24, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 1:4-10 Luke 13:10-17 Hebrews 12:18-29

How familiar are you with the word… ‘No?’

I mean, certainly we all know it and use it. Some of us are better at using it while others of us say ‘yes’ more often than we should. But other than that, there are different kinds, or different levels of saying no. The repeated refrain that we hear in public, and that we teach our young people, is that “No means no.” That healthy and respectful relationships require both parties to consent. The concept of “No means no” applies not only to romantic relationships, but also to group dynamics such that peer pressure should not unduly compel individual members of a group to do things that they are not comfortable doing.

In these situations, saying no, and hearing and accepting no, are important. But there are other situations where no is not as meaningful, and where saying no can cause problems. If your boss gives you an assignment, saying no may not mean anything at all. Your boss may simply ignore your refusal and assume that the task will be done regardless and, if it is not, then you can expect that there will be consequences. In the military, there are obvious situations where ‘no’ is simply not an acceptable answer. In my own career, in which the bishop appoints itinerant pastors to move where and when they say, the unwritten rule of thumb is that you can say no… once… in your career, and even then, saying no to the bishop may have significant career implications.

But what happens when we say no to God?

Sometimes, it may not seem as if there are any consequences at all. We say no to God and stay home from worship, we don’t read scripture, we live in ways in which we know God would not approve, and we do our best to ignore the call that he has on our lives to do his work in our community and in the people around us. But the operative word here is “sometimes.” Scripture is filled with warnings about the potential consequences of ignoring God or saying ‘no’ too often. Some of those warnings tell us that God will withhold his blessings, others that God may punish you, but often it is that God will simply allow you to suffer the natural consequences of your actions, or in today’s language, God will allow what goes around, to come around.

In any case, today we will look at three case studies from scripture and we will begin in Jeremiah 1:4-10, where we hear God call Jeremiah, possibly only twelve years old, to speak for him as his prophet, we hear Jeremiah attempt to say ‘no,’ and finally we hear God command Jeremiah’s obedience anyway. Jeremiah begins by saying:

⁴The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁵“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born, I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

⁶“Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

⁷But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. ⁸Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

⁹Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. ¹⁰See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

God tells Jeremiah that even before he was born, God had a purpose and mission for his life. Despite that, Jeremiah makes excuses, saying that he is too young to do anything useful for God, but God isn’t buying it. Rather than even consider Jeremiah’s objections, God simply reaches out and equips Jeremiah with the things that he needs to get the job done.

And then in Luke 13:10-17, we hear the synagogue leaders say ‘no’ to Jesus because, in their mind, Jesus isn’t following the rules correctly.

¹⁰On a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, ¹¹and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” ¹³Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

¹⁴Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

¹⁵The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? ¹⁶Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

¹⁷When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Just to be clear, Jesus was teaching, on a sabbath day, in church, and paused to heal a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. Rather than be excited that they had witnessed a miracle, or simply happy that the woman had received healing after a lifetime of pain, the synagogue leaders get upset because, somewhere along the line, someone decided that healing is work. As such, since faithful people were taught to refrain from working on the sabbath, Jesus should have waited until the following day, and made this woman wait yet another day, before healing her. But Jesus isn’t buying it. Jesus reminds them that even his accusers feed and water their animals on the sabbath because, clearly, decency and kindness shouldn’t be restrained by deciding that they are work. The leaders of the synagogue said ‘no’ to God and defended their refusal in language that sounded both religious and traditional.

Our final case study is found in the book of Hebrews, current scholarship believes that this was written by Barnabus or Apollos, and reminds the people of the church that we have good reason not to say no. We hear these words in Hebrews 12:18-29:

¹⁸You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; ¹⁹to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, ²⁰because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” ²¹The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”

²²But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

²⁵See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? ²⁶At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” ²⁷The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

²⁸Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, ²⁹for our “God is a consuming fire.”

First, we are reminded that we do not live in the time of Moses when God lived on the top of a mountain and everyone was terrified of his presence. Instead, because we have chosen to follow Jesus, instead of coming to the foot of a scary mountain, we present ourselves to God in the new heavenly city of Jerusalem. There, we come to God where Jesus stands as our mediator and speaks on our behalf. Because of that, we should not refuse the commands of God and say ‘no.’ The writer then reminds us of how it often did not end well for those persons in scripture who had said no to God. And so, since we are receiving the kingdom of God, we should be thankful and worship him with reverence and awe because our God consumes those who refuse him, but we are consumed with passion for his kingdom.

There is danger in saying ‘no’ to God.

Jeremiah said ‘no’ and God equipped him for his mission and ministry and sent him out anyway.

The leaders of the synagogue said ‘no’ to God and made up a bunch of traditional and religious sounding reasons why, but Jesus called then out on their hypocrisy and explained that God doesn’t place limits on kindness, decency, and compassion.

And the writer of Hebrews reminds us that it often didn’t end well for those in scripture that said ‘no’ to God. If we don’t want to be consumed by God, we should worship him with reverence and awe, be consumed with a passion for his kingdom, and say ‘yes’ to his calling, his vision, and his mission as he sends us out into the world.

Saying ‘no’ to God is a dangerous thing.

Let us do our best to say ‘yes’ instead.

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Your Religion is Worthless

August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, God, Hebrews, Isaiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, prophet, religion, worthless

Your Religion is Worthless

August 10, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Luke 12:32-40 Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Imagine that you are a farmer, and the great and powerful Oz, the perfect meteorologist, who is known to never be wrong, visits to tell you that there will be a drought that will begin after the planting season. Further, to survive the famine that follows, rather than planting your seed in the spring, you should store all your seed so that your family has food to eat during the famine. Do you have that in mind? Now imagine that you, your neighbors, and everyone else, completely ignore the meteorologist. But, from planting time and all through the growing season, the meteorologist is constantly heard on television, radio, and public appearances, telling everyone that what they are doing is entirely useless, because he knows, absolutely, that the harvest will fail. And, of course, by that time, you have begun to realize that he is right because it hasn’t rained a drop since everyone’s seed went into the ground. You know that there will be no harvest, you know that there will be a famine, you know that you and your family will be very hungry, and you pray that there might be some bright spot that could give you hope for the future.

Aside from the utter fiction that there might be such a thing as a perfect meteorologist, we can understand that story. But now imagine that, rather than a meteorologist, our story was about a prophet that was sent by God. And imagine that instead of talking about seeds, his warning was about the worship of God’s people and his church. It is that story that we hear from the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 1:1, 10-20:

^1:1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord,
    you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹“The multitude of your sacrifices—
    what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
    of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
    in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹²When you come to appear before me,
    who has asked this of you,
    this trampling of my courts?
¹³Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

¹⁶Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

¹⁸“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.
¹⁹If you are willing and obedient,
    you will eat the good things of the land;
²⁰but if you resist and rebel,
    you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

God begins his speech by labelling the leaders, rulers, and people of Judah and Jerusalem as the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah and by doing so immediately goes on record as saying that they are all perverse and immoral. God continues by saying that he doesn’t care about the offerings, and sacrifices made in the temple because all of them are meaningless. Likewise, the feasts, festivals, holidays, and worship are so detestable and burdensome that God hates them with all his being and is weary of being bothered by them. God is so disturbed by the behavior of his people that he closes his eyes and refuses to listen when they pray because the entire nation is covered in the blood of the innocent and guilty of evil.

That is abrupt and harsh, but God also offers hope.

The solution is simple. Stop doing wrong, learn how to do what is right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, stand up for the fatherless, plead the case of the widows, and be a voice for anyone who doesn’t have a voice or rights because they are “outside the system.” God says that he is willing to forgive the sins of his people, and return their blessings, if they are willing to listen to his words and be obedient to his teaching. However, if they resist him, and continue to rebel against him, then they will be destroyed by violence.

Oddly enough, Jesus teaches a remarkably similar message, although rather than teaching it as a threat, he offers it as an instruction on how to please God in the right way. In Luke 12:32-40, we hear Jesus say this:

³²“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. ³³Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

³⁵“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, ³⁶like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can immediately open the door for him. ³⁷It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. ³⁸It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. ³⁹But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Although Jesus’ words are different than Isaiah’s, the message is the same. The distinctive mark of those who truly follow God is not how often they worship, or how may festivals and holy days they celebrate, but in how they obey God’s teachings and live it out. Jesus says that the way we live out our faith is by using the things that God has given us to help the people God has told us to help. Instead of holding on to “stuff” that you really don’t need, sell it and use the money to help the poor and the hungry. Do the things that God taught us to do, help the people God taught us to help, and God will credit your account with treasure in heaven. Jesus says that where you keep your treasure will reveal the location of your heart. In more modern language, Christian financial radio host Larry Burkett used to say, “Give me five minutes with your checkbook and I’ll tell you where your heart is.”

And then in Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Paul explains it yet another way, saying:

^11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. ²This is what the ancients were commended for.

³By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

⁸By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed, and went, even though he did not know where he was going. ⁹By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. ¹¹And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because sheconsidered him faithful who had made the promise. ¹²And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

¹³All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. ¹⁴People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Paul is saying that faith isn’t just some stuff that we believe. Yes, it is the confidence that we have in a future that we cannot see, and the hope that we have in God’s forgiveness and in his promises for our future. But it’s more than that. Faith is also how we understand the universe and make sense of the world that we live in. It was faith that allowed Abraham to be obedient and follow God to a country that he had never seen, faith that allowed Isaac and Jacob to live in tents before their family had become a nation and, under Moses, finally reached the Promised Land. It was faith that allowed Sarah to have children even when both she, and her husband, were decades past her childbearing years. These people lived out their faith in God even when the things that God had promised to them only came to their grandchildren and even later descendants many years after their deaths. At any time, they could have returned to the country from which they came, but instead, each day, they decided to be obedient and follow God, and as a reward, God prepared a city for them to call home after their deaths.

In Isaiah, we hear God say that he is tired of empty and meaningless worship from people that do not do the things that he has taught them to do or behave in the way that he has taught them to behave. In Luke, we hear Jesus say that faith isn’t just something we say or believe, faith is living out the things that God has instructed and taught us to do. Those good servants who have true faith will be found doing the work of the kingdom when he returns. And Paul emphasizes these same things. Faith isn’t just the things that we believe. It is our confidence in the future, the way that we see and understand the world around us, our hope for forgiveness, our hope in a future that we cannot see, the way in which we live out our faith, and how we do the work of the kingdom of God and carry on the mission and vision of Jesus Christ.

That is one of the great misunderstandings of our generation and, as we have seen in scripture, a misunderstanding of many generations that came before us. Faith isn’t just an idea, or words that we teach on Sunday, a belief that we have, the way in which we worship on Sundays, the rituals that we perform, the holidays that we celebrate, or a book that we have on a shelf. Faith is how we see the world, how we live, how we act, how we treat the people around us, how we spend our money, how we show compassion, how we share what we have been given, and how we love.

If we don’t live out our faith, and do the things that God teaches us to do, then our religion and worship are worthless.

Paul said that faith is an assurance about what we do not see, and yes, there are parts of our faith that we cannot see, but if we do it right, our faith is unquestionably something that the people around us will see and feel.

There is a quote that is widely, though questionably, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that says, “”Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”

For they will know we are Christians…

…by our love.

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It’s All for Me!

August 3, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, concubine, faith, God, greed, happiness, influence, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, lust, meaning, meaningless, Methodist, mortality, Ohio, Paul, pleasure, power, purpose, sex, Solomon, wealth

It’s All for Me!

August 03, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:17-23 Luke 12:13-21 Colossians 3:1-11

When children have siblings, it seems like one of the first ten words that they learn is the word “Mine!” It reminds me of the scene from Finding Nemo, when the seagulls think that they have found food, and all of them are mobbing the beach shouting, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” And, I think for many of us, part of the humor in that scene of the movie is found in how much the seagulls remind us of children or, if we’re honest, some of the adults that we know. But it is exactly that mindset that we see on display, discussed, and critiqued in today’s scriptures. The first among these was written by King Solomon, one of history’s wealthiest kings, a man who had everything that money and power could bring, and yet, found that wealth wasn’t everything that we might imagine it to be. We begin by reading from Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:17-23

^1:1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

²“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

¹²I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! ¹⁴I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

^2:17So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. ¹⁸I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. ¹⁹And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. ²⁰So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. ²¹For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. ²²What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? ²³All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.

Solomon says that he gave himself to the study of wisdom, and what wisdom was taught under many nations of the world, and what he found was that the life of humanity was burdensome and difficult. Despite all that he had seen, and all his wealth, women, power, and other things available to him, he could not find any meaning in his life and began to hate everything that he had and everything for which he had worked. After all his study and all his labor, he knew that in the end he would die and leave it all behind to someone who didn’t understand what he had done and who had not done any work to get it. And so, Solomon finds that study, work, labor, wealth, power, pleasure, and even weariness, grief, and pain were all meaningless.

To be fair, these words are not the end of Solomon’s writings and ultimately Solomon’s opinion is not as dark and pessimistic as this passage might suggest. But clearly, Solomon felt that wealth and power were not the answer to finding a life of meaning, purpose, or happiness. And Jesus echoes this line of thinking as we read the story of Luke 12:13-21, where we hear a man who is unhappy with the way that his father has chosen to distribute his inheritance.

¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

¹⁴Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” ¹⁵Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

¹⁶And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

²¹“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

However much this man’s father had left him in his inheritance, he clearly thought that it wasn’t enough and that his brother ought to share some of what he had gotten. But Jesus warns that it isn’t money or possessions that make life worth living. Greed, and the constant lust for more, isn’t the thing that makes life better. And to add emphasis to that idea, Jesus tells a parable about a man who was already wealthy, but when faced with a bumper crop, decided to build bigger barns rather than share his bounty with others, because, in his mind, “All this is for me!” You can almost hear the seagulls crying, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” But before he could even make the deposit on the construction of his new barns, his life was forfeited and, as Solomon had noted, all his money was passed on to someone else.

And Jesus said the moral of the story that we should remember, is that wealth that isn’t shared abundantly with God can all be taken away. Now, I am certain that Jesus isn’t saying that being rich toward God means that we must give the lions share of our wealth to the church, but rather that we must use what God has given us to do the work of God on earth. Rather than crying out for what is mine, mine, mine, we are to share what we have with the church, with the poor, the hungry, the naked, the abused, the disadvantaged, and anyone else who might not have the things that we have been given.

We find a bit more guidance along this line of thinking in Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae as we read Colossians 3:1-11 where he says:

^3:1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

⁵Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. ⁶Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.⁷You used to walk in these ways; in the life you once lived. ⁸But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. ⁹Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ¹¹Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Paul tell us that because we have been raised to a new life in Jesus Christ, we should find purpose in doing the work of God and of God’s kingdom rather than in the things in which our culture finds value, such as wealth, power, pleasure, and the accumulation of possessions and other earthly pleasures. Instead, we should set aside, or “put to death’ our earthly nature that craves sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed because all these things are forms of idolatry. Paul says that those are the things that we used to do before we chose to follow Jesus, and, as they say in the infomercials on television, “but that’s not all” because now that we follow Jesus, we must also rid ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lying to one another. As the body of Christ, we put aside all things that divide us and see one another as equal in value before God because Jesus is everything to us, and lives inside of all of us who believe.

I hope that you see the connections between these scriptures, but just to be sure, let’s connect the dots. Solomon had everything that anyone could possibly ask for, and more. He was fabulously wealthy, had hundreds of wives, consorts, and concubines, and ruled over what was one of the most powerful kingdoms of its time. He could have had, and did have, anything that he could ask for. And yet, despite all his wealth and power, Solomon grieved at the meaningless of life because his mortality meant that everything that he had would pass to someone else when he died. Jesus reinforces this same idea saying that we should avoid any and all kinds of greed because we will not find meaning or purpose in life by pursuing wealth, power, pleasure, or possessions. Instead, Jesus says, we will find purpose when we share what we have with God and use our wealth and possessions for the mission and vision of the kingdom of God.

But Paul expands on what it means to avoid greed and live for God, saying that because we have chosen to follow Jesus, have died with him, and have been raised to a new life, then we must turn our hearts toward God and find meaning and purpose by doing the things of God and pursuing the advancement of God’s kingdom. But to do that, Paul says, we must not live the way that our culture teaches us to live. Greed isn’t the only thing that we are called to leave behind with our old life but also sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language, as well as greed. In total, in exchange for a life that is filled with meaning and purpose, God calls us to live differently than the people around us so that they can catch a glimpse of a world in which there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, cultured or barbarian, citizen or foreigner, black or white, or any other division, but instead a world where all are equal, all contribute, all participate, and where everyone belongs.

My friends, that is a world that is worth fighting for, worth working towards, and worth making every effort to model and show to the people around us.

Children of an Annoying God

July 27, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, annoy, annoying, Broadway, Christ, church, Colossae, Colossians, faith, God, Hosea, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Street

Children of an Annoying God

July 27, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Hosea 1:2-10 Luke 11:1-13 Colossians 2:6-19

Any of you that have siblings will know that they are often uniquely equipped to annoy you. In part, this is true because they have spent so much time in the same room, or at least in the same house with you, but also because, having spent many years in the same household together, they know more about you, and the family stories, and your personal history, than almost anyone else. Next in line, in their ability to push your buttons, get on your nerves, and be annoying when they want to do so, are your closest friends. Those friends from high school or college with whom you spent hours, every day, for four years, in class, out of class, in the weight room, on the practice field, in the library, and elsewhere… together. They too, know so much about you, that when they want to yank on your chain and annoy you, they know things about you that few other people know and can say words that can get under your skin but mean little or nothing to other people in the room. For these same reasons, these are the people who can often speak wisdom and advice into your life when you aren’t willing to listen to anyone else simply because you have shared so much of your lives with one another.

This is what we find God doing, and teaching, in all three of our scriptures this morning. We begin by reading the words of the prophet Hosea, where we find God deliberately taunting and annoying the nation of Israel by reminding them of their failures and shortcomings, and pointing out how those failures have damaged their relationship with the God that they claim to worship. Reading from Hosea 1:2-10, we hear this:

²When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” ³So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

⁴Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. ⁵In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

⁶Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. ⁷Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword, or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”

⁸After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. ⁹Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

¹⁰“Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’

First, God asks Hosea, a highly visible public figure, to marry a woman, Gomer, who is known to be an unfaithful cheater. Some translations label her as a prostitute, but ‘repeat offender” or “serial cheater” is probably more accurate. In any case, the reason is that the relationship between Hosea and Gomer is meant to be a model for Israel’s relationship with God, as repeat offenders who are serial cheaters with other gods. Next, through the names of Hosea’s children, God reminds Israel that their king is only on the throne because he murdered the son of the previous king, and through the next two children, reminds them that God will no longer show his love to Israel and that they have been so unfaithful that they can no longer call themselves God’s people.

Imagine, seeing Hosea, a public figure, especially in Jerusalem and the halls of power, every day for years, and every time you heard the gossip about his cheating wife, you were reminded of Israel’s infidelity with God. Or that every time you heard the names of Hosea’s children, just speaking, or hearing their names reminded everyone of Israel’s failures to obey God. Whenever we read this story, there can be no doubt that when it comes to annoying his people to make a point, God plays a long game over years and even decades and plays on an entirely different level than our friends and siblings.

In our next scripture, Jesus teaches that sometimes it is good to be annoying. And we hear that story in Luke 11:1-13 as the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

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

²He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
³Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

⁵Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ ⁷And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

⁹“So, I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

¹¹“Which of you fathers, if your son asks fora fish, will give him a snake instead? ¹²Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

While we are all familiar with the prayer that Jesus teaches, what we don’t often discuss is how Jesus teaches his disciples to use it. Jesus teaches them a prayer but immediately tells them that they should never be afraid to be a bother, but to annoy God freely and deliberately with their prayers. The examples that Jesus gives are annoying a friend who has already gone to bed until he answers the door and gives you some bread and how a parent, even an evil parent, knows how to give good gifts to his or her children. If God is good, how much more will God do for us than we would do for our friends or for our children? Jesus encourages us to annoy God and to pound on the gates of heaven with our prayers and not to be shy in asking for fear that we might be a bother to God. At the same time, as we read Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, he hear as he encourages the church to be so confident in what they have, and the gifts that God has given to them, that they, and we, do not wander from what Jesus has taught just because the people and the culture might annoy us. In Colossians 2:6-19, Paul says:

⁶So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forcesof this world rather than on Christ.

⁹For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. ¹¹In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self-ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, ¹²having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. ¹⁹They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Paul says that once we choose to follow Jesus, we should be confident in living our lives the way that he taught us to live. We should not be persuaded by weak philosophy, corrupt traditions, or the vaguely spiritual culture around us that encourages a vague faith in nature, or the universe, or some other impersonal god. Instead, we must remember that Jesus is the God who came to earth, was born and lived as one of us, and who now lives and rules over all creation. When we chose to follow Jesus, we were set apart from the rest of the world and, through our baptism, are buried and raised to a new life of faith. Because of that we should not allow others to judge us for living differently than the people around us if our conscience guides us to eat differently, live differently, or worship differently than they do. Paul warns, and this is just as applicable today as it has ever been, that many of the people around us have become “disconnected from the head” which he means disconnected from God, but would likely not be wrong to also think of as being disconnected from their brains. Instead, we are to live, together, as one body, supporting and encouraging one another, and working together with God as the head.

In the end, we must remember that we worship a God who freely annoys his people and his church to remind them, to remind us, of who we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to act. But we are also taught that we should not worry about being a bother to God, but to pray unceasingly, to annoy God by pounding on the gates of heaven until he answers our prayers. And all of this is because God is a loving father who seeks to do what is best for us, and desires to give us gifts that will allow us to do his work, to be a blessing to the people around us, and to change the world.

We worship an annoying God who encourages us to annoy him in return, and to have the courage to ignore others who would try to annoy us away from God’s teaching. May our persistence in living like Jesus annoy the people around us into seeing God and hearing his call.

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Greed, Death, and Finding Purpose

July 20, 2025July 20, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon A, abuse, Alliance, Amos, Broadway, Christ, church, death, faith, God, greed, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, punishment, purpose

Greed, Death, and Finding Purpose

July 20, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Amos 8:1-12 Luke 10:38-42 Colossians 1:15-28

Every language has its own quirks, and English is known to go through the pockets of other languages to collect those quirks. But one thing that is common to every language is words and phrases that originate from agriculture. Sometimes these phrases, known as idioms, are difficult to translate because they can be borrowed from their original contexts and used in other places in ways that have other meanings. For example, saying that your mortgage or your car loan is “underwater” had nothing to do with being underwater, but means that your home or car is currently less valuable than the amount that you owe on the loan. Similarly, we understand that when Jesus says that the fields are “ripe for harvest,” he means that the people are ready to hear the gospel message. But, in English, the phrase saying that people are “ripe for the picking” often means that those people are gullible and ready to be hoodwinked and defrauded in some way. However, if the people at the orchard say that the apples are “ripe for the picking” it means something entirely different and completely what you would expect it to mean.

Can you see why these things can be difficult for translators?

But it is this kind of phrase that we encounter as we read the first of our scriptures for today and as we read, we will need to think a little bit about what it is that God, and Amos, and the bible translators intend for us to understand. And so, we rejoin the story of Israel, recorded in the book of Amos, as God describes his people as a basket of fruit in Amos 8:1-12 where we hear this:

^8:1 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ²“What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

³“In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

⁴Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,

⁵saying,

“When will the New Moon be over
    that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
    that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
    boosting the price
    and cheating with dishonest scales,
⁶buying the poor with silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals,
    selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

⁷The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.

⁸“Will not the land tremble for this,
    and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
    it will be stirred up and then sink
    like the river of Egypt.

⁹“In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

“I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
    and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
    and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹²People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it.

God points Amos to a basket of fruit and compares it to the nation of Israel saying that Israel is “ripe for the picking” or that the “time is ripe.” But what God means is that just as the orchard manager waits until the fruit is ripe before going out to pick it from the trees, God has waited until this time to bring his judgment upon his people. Israel has trampled the needy and chased the poor from their land. They have defrauded their customers in the marketplace and used their profits to defraud the poor even further. God declares that he will never forget the harm that has been done to the poor and intends to turn Israel’s greed into sadness, bitterness, and death. Just as the wealthy have tormented the poor and the needy, God intends to make even the wealthy and powerful suffer in many of the same ways that they have made others suffer.

But even if we make better choices than the leaders of ancient Israel, and even if we do a respectable job following Jesus and doing the things that he has taught us to do, we still must recognize that not all choices are equal. As we read in Luke 10:38-42, we see that some choices are better than others.

³⁸As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴²but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

I want to be sure that everyone understands that no one made a bad choice, and no one did anything wrong. Martha saw Jesus and a house full of guests and shifted into her role playing the part of a good host. But Martha expected that her sister Mary, who also lived in their home, would also focus on the tasks and preparations of hosting. But Mary did something different. Rather than do the work of preparing for, and serving guests, Mary stopped what she was doing and listened to what Jesus was teaching. Meanwhile, Martha was upset that Mary did not comply with her expectations and complained to Jesus that Mary should be helping her to prepare food and serve their guests. But Jesus says that while both choices were good, Mary’s choice was better. Jesus doesn’t suggest that Martha was wrong in choosing to function as host, simply that Mary’s choice to take a break from legitimate work and responsibility was the better of the two options. As such, this story of Mary and Martha’s interactions with Jesus reminds us all that while it’s often acceptable for us to focus on what we think needs to be done, or the things that our culture tells us we should be focusing on, sometimes it is the better choice to temporarily ignore our responsibilities so that we can focus on something even better.

And that brings us, once again, to Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae where Paul reminds us that sometimes the best choices may take us to unlikely, and even uncomfortable destinations where we may have experiences that appear to be bad, and even disastrous. Reading from Colossians 1:15-28, we hear this:

¹⁵The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

²¹Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of^[g] your evil behavior. ²²But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— ²³if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

²⁴Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. ²⁵I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— ²⁶the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. ²⁷To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

²⁸He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

Paul begins this passage by declaring that Jesus is the image of God, the firstborn of all creation, the creator of all that exists, and the power that holds the universe together. If you hear modern folks say things like, “The disciples didn’t think that Jesus was God,” or “The New Testament doesn’t claim that Jesus is God,” this is just one of many passages that you can go to that unequivocally makes that claim.

But having made that point, Paul reminds the church that it was Jesus that, through his life, death, and resurrection, made it possible for us to have a relationship with God. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are brought back into a relationship, reconciled, with God after being alienated from him because of our sin. But Paul also notes that because of the choice that he made to follow Jesus, he is has suffered for the sake of the church so that he could make God known to the Gentiles (and that’s us), by telling them about Jesus. Paul has made the better choice, but that choice has not always been pleasant. He could have gone back to his life of studying the Torah and enjoying the wealth and privilege of his family, but instead chose to follow Jesus, and share the message of the Gospel with the Gentiles. But even though that choice often led Paul to be afflicted, whipped, beaten, and imprisoned, Paul knows that he is doing the work that God has called him to do and is changing the world, one life at a time as he points people to reconciliation with God and a new life in Jesus Christ.

More importantly, Paul says that this is not his calling alone, but the calling of the whole church. It is the whole church who is called to proclaim, admonish, and teach so that we may present everyone around us to God as mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

At one time the ancient leaders of Israel chose to abuse the poor and focus on their greed, and those choices led God to bring about punishment that caused them to suffer in the same way that they had made others suffer. But even when we make good choices, like Martha did, we may still have the option, such as that we saw in Mary, of making an even better choice to listen to Jesus and learn from him. But like Paul, and like the church in Colossae, we may also choose to obey the call of Jesus so that we may proclaim, admonish, and teach the people around us so that on the day of judgment we do not arrive at the throne of grace alone but instead, surrounded by all those to whom we have witnessed and who we present to God as mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

I pray that each of us will make the better choice, and that God will be at work in us so that we may have the faith, commitment, and courage to pursue God’s mission, vision, and purpose for our lives.

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Curses, Love, and Fruit

July 13, 2025July 13, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Amos, Broadway, choices, Christ, church, curse, cursed, curses, diverge, easy, faith, fruit, God, hard, hike, hiking, institution, Jesus, Jesus Christ, love, Methodist, metroparks, movement, Ohio, paths

Curses, Love, and Fruit

July 13, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Amos 7:7-17 Luke 10:25-37 Colossians 1:1-14

In the Gorge Metropark in Summit County, there is a hiking trail on which, midway through your hike, the trail diverges in two directions and, at the point where the two trails split, there is a sign that, at one time, simply pointed in each direction with the labels, Easy” and “Hard.” Such a sign was brutal in its honesty and efficiency. But while both paths eventually returned you to the trailhead and the parking lot, the harder of the two paths will take you past some incredible scenery and through house-sized (and larger) boulders that were scooped up in Canada during the last glacial period and deposited here as the glaciers melted.

Life is often like that. We often have choices to make that will cause our path in life to diverge and while some of those paths are easy, others are extraordinarily hard. At the same time the scenery, and often the destination of the two paths, can be vastly different. For example, choosing to quit your job so that you can go back to school or learn a trade so that you can get a job that pays better can be a lifechanging decision. Likewise, choosing to join the military so that you can escape from a neighborhood that is likely to pull you into a gang and trap you in poverty is a choice that can take you in a direction that is almost unimaginable to the friends that you leave behind. In contrast, Patti and I have met people in prison who, if you met them on the street, would seem no different that many of the people you know from church and around town, except for one bad choice that resulted in their incarceration. Some choices, good and bad, forever change the scenery and the destination of our lives.

And that is exactly what we find in our first scripture today. God’s prophets, specifically the prophet Amos, had warned Israel to follow the commands of God but, despite those warnings, Israel and her leaders had chosen another path. And so, as we join the story, we hear God explaining to Amos that Israel was about to be measured and tested according to God’s standards. We begin reading from Amos 7:7-17 where we hear this:

⁷This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸And the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”

“A plumb line,” I replied.

Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

⁹“The high places of Isaac will be destroyed
and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined;
with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.”

¹⁰Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. ¹¹For this is what Amos is saying:

“‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,
and Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.’”

¹²Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. ¹³Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”

¹⁴Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. ¹⁵But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ¹⁶Now then, hear the word of the Lord. You say,

“‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and stop preaching against the descendants of Isaac.’

¹⁷“Therefore, this is what the Lord says:

“‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
    and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up,
    and you yourself will die in a pagan country.
And Israel will surely go into exile,
    away from their native land.’”

As God speaks to the prophet Amos, he explains that after all the instructions and commands of God, after all the teaching and preaching, it is time for Israel to be measured the way that a builder measures his work during the construction of a building. God intends to measure his people and his nation and assess the results of all the teaching just as a builder uses a plumb line to measure the straightness of a wall. Worse, God already knows the results and, just as a builder will tear down a wall that isn’t straight, God intends to tear down his own nation and start over.

It is too late for warnings.

Bishop Hopkins once asked the East Ohio Conference, “Are we an institution? Or are we a movement?” As a church, our history, and our calling, is to be a movement, but it is all too easy to drift into institutionalism where all we want to do is to preserve the bureaucracies that we have built and forget that the entire purpose of the church’s existence is to reach the lost. In the story of Amos, we discover that this exact thing has happened to Israel. There has been lots of worship, there has been lots of teaching, and many priests have expended themselves in preserving the institution of the church, but the end result has been a people that follow the king and the church but do not follow God, act in the way that God has called his people to act, or love in the way that God has called his people to love.

It isn’t a surprise that the priests shout and tell Amos to shut up and go home because no one wants to hear the prophecies that he has brought. But that rejection of Amos and the message that he has brought, just results in God bringing a curse against Amaziah the priest and all of Israel that will take many of them into captivity in Babylon, or worse.

But if it is so easy, and common, for the church and its leadership to fall into the trap of preserving the institution, then what does it look like to understand and implement God’s message correctly? And for that, we only have to turn to Luke 10:25-37 where we hear one of Israel’s resident theologians ask Jesus that exact question.

²⁵On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

²⁸“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

²⁹But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

³⁰In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³²So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

³⁶“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

³⁷The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

When Jesus tells the religious scholar to love his neighbor, his immediate question is to wonder who it is that he should treat as a neighbor. What he is really asking is, what does real love look like? And the story that Jesus tells in reply is that our calling is to love, even the people who are foreign enemies of our people, or even more simply… everyone you can imagine is your neighbor. And that even includes the people that you were absolutely certain were not your neighbor.

But if that is what love really looks like, then what does it look like when the church gets it right? And for that, we find a fitting example in the church in Colossae, when Paul writes to compliment them in Colossians 1:1-14, where he says:

^1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

²To God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sistersin Christ:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— ⁵the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel ⁶that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. ⁷You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on ourbehalf, ⁸and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹²and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified youto share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. ¹³For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Paul tells the people in the church of Colossae that others are talking about them and about their ministry, and that some of those kind words have even reached him where he is imprisoned in Rome. But what is it that people are talking about, and that Paul has heard, that allows him to know that the church has a strong faith? Quite simply, what Paul has heard, is that the church has love for all of God’s people. Moreover, because of what he has heard, he and his companions never stop praying for the church in Colossae and its people, and they encourage them to continue doing more of the things that they have already been doing.

It is notable at this point to highlight one more thing. Paul says that the people of the church can avoid the trap of preserving the institution and forgetting their kingdom mission. But, to do that, we must instead live a life that is worthy of God and bear fruit by doing good work. No, that’s wrong. Paul doesn’t say that we should just do good work. He says that we should bear fruit by doing every good work.

As individuals and as the church, we have choices to make, and the best choices do not always take us down easy paths.

Bear fruit by doing every good work. That means, don’t just love some people, love all people. Don’t just love a little, love in abundance. Don’t just love ordinarily, love extravagantly.

Because the difference between preserving the institution and advancing the missional movement is found in who we love, and how much we love them. As Paul knew, in the end, the way that we bear fruit for the kingdom of God is to love all the people around us, and by doing every good work.

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