Fear and the Unexpected

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, blame, Broadway, call, Christ, Christ Church, church, fear, forgiveness, frightening, God, grace, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Joseph, Methodist, Ohio, Pharoah, terror, unexpected

Fear and the Unexpected

February 23, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Genesis 45:3-11, 15 Luke 6:27-38

What kinds of things scare you?

It might be things that jump out at you, or strange noises at night, or it might be those worries that keep you awake at night. We worry about our children, about our finances, insurance, taxes, and all sorts of other things. But in our story this morning, the fear that is unlocked begins with a fear of hunger and starvation, but ultimately shifts into a nightmare when the sons of Jacob, also known as Israel, discover that the brother they had nearly murdered, left for dead in an empty cistern, and then sold into slavery, is now standing in front of them and is the second most powerful person in Egypt. As Joseph reveals himself in Genesis 45:3-11,15, we feel the fear in the room as we hear this:

³Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.

⁴Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! ⁵And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. ⁶For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. ⁷But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

⁸“So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. ⁹Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. ¹⁰You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me; you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks, and herds, and all you have. ¹¹I will provide for you there, because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise, you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.’

¹⁵And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him.

Our storyteller says that Joseph’s brothers were terrified and, truthfully, without exaggeration, they had every reason to be terrified. As soon as they learned that Joseph was the man in front of them, a man who ruled over the nation of Egypt second only to Pharaoh and surrounded by armed guards. All that Joseph had to do was to give the order and all of them would simply disappear into the desert… or worse. He had every reason to hate them and to want revenge for what they had done to him. Their terror was real. It was as if their worst regret and guilt married their worst nightmare and jumped out at them in the dark of night. They were totally doomed, and they knew it.

But then, Joseph tells them a story about how God had sent him to Egypt so that he could save his family and protect them. Even more than the surprise and fear of discovering that this powerful ruler was their brother, Joseph’s grace and forgiveness was far more unexpected.

And this is the same sort of unexpected grace that Jesus teaches in Luke 6:27-38 as he teaches how his followers ought to behave towards the people around them, the people that abuse them, and even the people who hate them and try to kill them. Jesus said:

²⁷“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.

³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. ³³And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. ³⁴And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. ³⁸Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Jesus teaches that being nice to the people who are nice to you is neither remarkable nor admirable. Anyone can do that, and some of the most evil people on earth have done so. But being a follower of Jesus Christ takes us on a different, unexpected, and sometimes frightening path upon which Jesus calls us to show grace and forgiveness to those that don’t deserve it. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you are not the things that our culture, and ordinary human nature, wants us to do. Giving a shirt to someone who has already taken your coat runs entirely against our instinctive response to fight back, and giving to everyone who asks goes far beyond the nature of even the most generous among us.

Our culture has trained us to blame others, to paint those who disagree with us with a broad brush and assume a list of prejudices that they must have. Surely, everyone who voted for the candidate you supported is good, and everyone who voted for their opponent is evil. Surely, my friend lost their job because of immigration, or because of big business, or because taxes are too high, or because government is inefficient, or something else, because we feel we absolutely must point blame away from ourselves. But Jesus commands us not to judge people, or to condemn them, but instead to forgive because the way that we judge, the way that we condemn, the way that we give, and the way that we forgive, is the way that God will judge, condemn, forgive, and give to us on the day that we stand before him in judgement. If we want the blessing of God, then we must be the people who give, and who show grace and forgiveness to the people around us.

God’s love and grace is often unexpected. We live out our lives and sometimes we find ourselves in situations that frighten us. We worry about our children, our grandchildren, our finances, our health, our future, our safety, and all sorts of other things. But no matter where we go, and no matter what frightening situations that we face, God goes with us. And, like Joseph and his brothers, sometimes God uses those frightening situations to reveal his grace and bring about our rescue. And, like Joseph and his brothers, sometimes God uses our trials and suffering, sometimes some of the worst experiences of our lives, to prepare us to be instruments of God’s grace, forgiveness, and rescue to others. If Joseph had not been sold into slavery by his brothers, and later thrown into prison because of the false accusations of rape by Potiphar’s wife, he never would have met Pharoah, never would have interpreted Pharoah’s dream, never would have become Pharoah’s second in command, and never would have been able to rescue his family, God’s people, and all of Egypt. God’s grace was revealed, and made possible, by Joseph’s suffering.

And that unexpected grace is passed on to us. Sometimes, like Joseph, we might become instruments of God’s grace because of what we have suffered, experienced, endured, or learned from our past. But sometimes, we become instruments of God’s grace and forgiveness because we do the unexpected thing and follow Jesus instead of our culture and human nature. We become Jesus to the people around us when we love our enemies, do good to the people who hate us, bless the people who curse us, pray for the people who mistreat us, turn the other cheek, do not judge, and do not condemn, but instead become the people who are known for their forgiveness, their generosity, their compassion, and their love.

Because, in the end, we must remember the unexpected, and frightening, call of Jesus.

“For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

May we be so filled with God’s grace and forgiveness that the people around us will see and experience the love of Jesus through us.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

*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.™

Photo by Sammylee on Freeimages.com

The Curse of Wealth and Happiness

February 16, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, blessing, Broadway, Christ, church, curse, faith, faithful, faithfullness, God, happiness, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Paul, power, resurrection, trust, United, United Methodist, wealth

The Curse of Wealth and Happiness

February 16, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 17:5-10 Luke 6:17-26 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

How many of you, at one time or another, have watched some of the television preachers or televangelists? Most of us have. Although the names have changed over the years, televised church services, and sometimes even just pre-recorded Sunday school lessons, remain a staple of national programming. The problem is that what motivates television stations to air a particular church, or a particular pastor isn’t whether their message is theologically sound or morally edifying, their motivation is based almost entirely on popularity and the ability to sell commercials or, in some cases, to be paid by the churches themselves in such a way that the television station makes money.

And so, as many of you may have noticed, the messages that air on television are often flawed theologically. In particular, many television preachers promote what is referred to as prosperity theology, which is, simply put, if you are prosperous, God must have blessed you, or put another way, if you are genuinely faithful, then God will make you rich. And just in case you haven’t heard me mention this a dozen time before, that message cannot be found in the Bible and is entirely contrary to much of what the Bible actually teaches.

We begin this morning by reading a message from Jeremiah, in which God’s prophet pronounces what might just be one of the most anti-political, and anti-cultural messages of all time. Here, Jeremiah speaks out against anyone who believes that their king, president, political party, or military might will make their lives better, happier, or more prosperous. Worse, Jeremiah declares that anyone who believes those things will be cursed by God. The good news is Jeremiah also teaches us what we need to do if we genuinely want to be blessed by God. We begin this morning by hearing the words of Jeremiah 17:5-10 as Jeremiah declares to the people:

⁵This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
    who draws strength from mere flesh
    and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
⁶That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
    they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
    in a salt land where no one lives.

⁷“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
⁸They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.”

⁹The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

¹⁰“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

Jeremiah declares that anyone who trusts that the actions of human beings, such as governments or people in positions of power, will make their lives better, or who looks to those people for emotional strength, will be cursed and not blessed because, in most cases, putting our trust in humans is a path toward losing our trust in God. When we do that, God says, we become starved like a bush in the wasteland that never sees prosperity even when it comes to everyone else. However, blessing comes to the people who put their trust and confidence in God. When we do that, we live as if we were a tree planted by a river so that we gain strength and courage even in times of heat and drought.

In the end, God says that what matters is your heart condition. If you trust God, that is what matters. God isn’t going to judge us by which human being we followed but at whether we behaved the way that God has taught us to behave. Moreover, God’s blessing doesn’t come to us because we said the right words, or because we believed the right sorts of cultural things, but because we lived the kind of life that God taught us to live and did the things that God has taught us to do.

And, as much as people sometimes try to dismiss the Old Testament, this is much the same message that Jesus preaches in his sermon in Luke 6:17-26that we now refer to as the beatitudes, where it says:

¹⁷He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, ¹⁸who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, ¹⁹and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

²⁰Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.
²²Blessed are you when people hate you,
    when they exclude you and insult you
    and reject your name as evil,
        because of the Son of Man.

²³“Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

²⁴“But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
²⁵Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
²⁶Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

If we look at this well-known message of Jesus with the words of Jeremiah in mind, we can understand the first section about blessings almost as one long, run-on sentence that says that if any of these things that sound bad happen to you because of your faith and trust in Jesus, or because you are doing the things that Jesus taught us to do, then God will bless you. Your blessing might not happen here on earth, but God will give you a reward in heaven. Jesus points out that all these sorts of mistreatment are exactly the sorts of things that happened to the prophets of the Old Testament.

And then, in the second half of the reading, Jesus lists a bunch of things that sound like they would be good things, things that Israel’s culture, and our culture, normally think of as blessings. But these things, wealth, prosperity, comfort, abundant food, laughter, and the admiration of others, Jesus says are warning signs that you are in trouble with God. Why? Because, once again, if we examine Jesus’ words in light of what we read in Jeremiah, it’s because our trust has been misplaced, and we have come to trust humans instead of God. Like Jeremiah, Jesus warns us all that the comforts and temptations of wealth, prosperity, happiness, and the admiration of others can distract us from our faith and obedience to God while the situations that we think of as misfortune, such as poverty, hunger, sadness, and the hostility of others are precisely those things that often shift our focus towards God and compel us to trust God for the things that we need.

And finally, in his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul adds one more thing upon which our faith pivots. Jeremiah preached that we needed to put our trust in God and to live and act the way that God has taught us. Jesus preached that those things that draw us toward God, even if we often think of them as undesirable, are good simply because those misfortunes will become the source of heavenly blessings when God examines our faith. And to these important things, Paul writes to the church in Corinth and adds this pivotal belief in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20:

¹²But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Paul says that our entire faith, as the followers of Jesus Christ, hinges on the central belief that Jesus died and rose from the dead. Although there have been those throughout the centuries that have taught that Jesus did not physically die, or that rising from the dead is impossible, Paul says that our entire faith hinges on this one point. Because if Jesus only swooned, or passed out, and didn’t really die, then our entire faith falls apart. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we believe in nothing because Jesus was a mortal human being the same as us and has no power to rescue us from sin and death. Jesus’ death and resurrection is a core doctrine and belief of our faith and so, that faith must be combined with our faith and trust in God, and our rejection of those things, like wealth, prosperity, comfort, abundant food, laughter, the admiration of others, and the influence and power of politicians, and persons of power that would tempt us to trust in anything other than God.

Prosperity theology and far too many television preachers teach that if you are prosperous, God must have blessed you, or that if you are genuinely faithful, then God will make you rich.

But what the truth of scripture teaches, is that the people who are blessed, trust in God and have confidence in God. But those who put their trust in other human beings, and anything else that distracts us from God will be cursed like a bush in the wastelands and will not see prosperity even when it comes to everyone else.

May we always keep Jesus Christ in the center of our lives and trust only in him.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Photo by clafouti on Freeimages.com

Hot Coals, Dead Fish, and Grace

February 9, 2025February 16, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, call, calling, Christ, church, faith, fish, God, Gospel, hot coals, Isaiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Byron, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, Peter, teach

Hot Coals, Dead Fish, and Grace

February 09, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 6:1-8 Luke 5:1-11 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Have you ever studied physics? Even basic physics would do to understand what I want to ask, and I’m not sure that even the basics are necessary to get a grip on my next question. In physics, we talk about mass, momentum, velocity, and force. If a mass is moving in one direction, some force must be applied to change its velocity. One force that can be applied is if that mass collides with another mass that is moving in the opposite direction or is not moving at all. But then the age-old question arises, what if an irresistible force collides with an immovable object? Of course, there is nuance to how you can answer this, but the simple answer is that when an irresistible force collides with an immovable object, both are utterly destroyed. If you need a picture in your head, imagine a head-on collision of railroad trains. There are no winners, everyone loses.

So why does this matter?

Well, there is an analogy to this question that we encounter from time to time in scripture, and that is, what happens when an imperfect, flawed, and sinful human being encounters a perfect and holy God? And the answer for most of biblical history is simply… death. The underlying assumption throughout most of scripture is that an imperfect human being would not survive an encounter with God’s perfect holiness. Far from the mutual destruction we would expect in physics from a collision of an irresistible force and an immovable object, in the theological realm, nothing imperfect and sinful survives an encounter with God’s perfect holiness.

And that is exactly the assumption that Isaiah has in mind as we read Isaiah 6:1-8:

^6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ²Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

⁶Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

Isaiah says that he had a vision in which he was transported to the throne room of the universe, saw God seated on his throne, and heard the worship and the praises of the seraphim. And as he took in this scene, Isaiah knew that he was a dead man. He knew that he was sinful, that he lived in a nation of sinful people, and he knew that, as such, he would not survive a meeting with a just and holy God. But just as Isaiah is expecting to die, the unexpected happens. A seraph, an angel with six wings, flies to Isaiah with a live coal from the altar, touches Isaiah’s mouth with this white-hot live coal, and declares that his guilt has been taken away and his sin has been forgiven. And it is at that moment when God asks, “Whom shall I send?” Having stood in the throne room of God, witnessed God’s holiness, seen the angels in attendance, heard their praises, and received God’s forgiveness, Isaiah answers God’s call by saying, “Here am I, Send me.”

And that, is how Isaiah left behind a life as a priest from a privileged family and became God’s prophet. But then as we move forward seven or eight hundred years, we see a similar reaction on the part of Peter when he meets Jesus after a hard, and unsuccessful night of fishing with his partners. We find that story in Luke 5:1-11 where it says:

^5:1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. ²He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. ³He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

⁴When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

⁵Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

⁶When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. ⁷So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

⁸When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” ⁹For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, ¹⁰and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” ¹¹So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

The story begins with Jesus preaching and, having already become known in the region and having attracted a following of people curious to hear him speak, the crowd begins to press Jesus until he is up against the water. He asks that the fishermen, who are there repairing their nets after a night of fishing, would allow him the use of their boat so that he can preach from just offshore. As a matter of politeness and curiosity, they comply. But, after Jesus has finished preaching, he tells the fishermen, who had already worked all night, to load up their nets, go out into deep water… again, and do it all over again at a time that they were hoping to be going home to a warm meal and a comfortable bed. But again, out of politeness, and out of respect for this new wandering preacher, they do as he asked. (pause) And, despite having caught nothing the previous night, they caught more fish than they had ever caught before. Their nets were breaking, their boats were sinking, and Peter knew that what he was witnessing was not a normal circumstance. Although it wasn’t an angel with a hot coal from the altar of God, Peter knew that he was in the presence of the divine, he knew that Jesus was something more than human, and he fully expected something terrible to happen because he was a sinful man who stood in the presence of God. But much like the experience of Isaiah, Jesus tells Peter not to be afraid and calls the fishermen to leave behind their old lives and follow him.

And finally, we turn to Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth where he remembers the calling that God had put on his life and explains how God has called each one of us as well. As we read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, we hear this:

^15:1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ²By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

⁹For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

Paul doesn’t mince words or dance around his point. He says “I want to remind you of the gospel that I preached to you” the one that you heard, accepted, and upon which you have taken a stand. This is the gospel that I was taught by Jesus and by the disciples in Jerusalem and I want you to remember and to hold tightly to the most important thing. Paul then offers a summary that is short, sweet, memorable, and easily memorized. He said that what we must remember is that Christ died just as the prophets said that he would, that he rose from the dead on the third day just as the prophets said that he would, and afterwards he was seen by Peter, the disciples, and more than five hundred others, and then he appeared to his brother James, to all of the apostles, who by definition were all of Jesus’ followers that were not disciples, and then finally he appeared to Paul as he traveled the road to Damascus.

Paul emphasizes that he was an enemy of Jesus and only became a follower of Jesus because of God’s grace. It is because of God’s grace that Paul has become the disciple and evangelist that he is, and it is because of God’s grace that he has done all that he has done. But notice that at the end, Paul changes the personal pronouns in his speech. Where before he was saying “by the grace of God I am what I am” he changes up the pronouns at the end and say, “Whether then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” Suddenly, instead of speaking in the first person, Paul shifts from “I” to “we” and “you.” This is what we preach, and this is what you believed. And so we should not miss the point by thinking that Paul was only reminding the church about his history, but should remember that Paul’s intent, was to remind the people about the importance of the message, and then make it clear that preaching this message is something that all of us do.

Paul said that it is because of God’s grace that he was who he was, and that he had become the man that he had become. But Paul is also saying that:

We are alive because of God’s grace. We are forgiven because of God’s grace. We are called because of God’s grace. We follow, we preach, we share, we witness, we are bold, and we are unafraid because of God’s grace.

Isaiah was forgiven and sent out into the world by means of a white-hot coal from the altar of God.

Peter and his partners were called to follow Jesus by means of a net full of dead fish.

But Paul and all the rest of us are being sent out into the world by means of Jesus sacrificial death, resurrection, and the grace of God.

Like Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, let us answer God’s call upon our lives and tell the world the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Motivation, or Just Excuses?

February 2, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, call, Christ, church, Corinth, excuse, excuses, faith, God, hope, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, love, Luke, Methodist, mob, motivation, Ohio, Paul

Motivation, or Just Excuses?

February 02, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 1:4-10 Luke 4:21-30 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Nearly all of us have, at some time or other, had a conversation with our parents, grandparents, or one of their friends, in which we may have asked a question that somehow made them uncomfortable, and their response was “Well, I knew your parents before you were even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye” or “Child, I knew you when you were just this high.” But no matter what words they used, or how humorously they pushed it off, the message was clear, “I’m older than you, so don’t question my choices in life.”

We’ve all experienced that sort of brush-off, but to be fair, as we get older, some of our own bad, or even marginal, decisions can sometimes be a sore spot that we don’t care to have questioned. We are open about some of those. I understand myself well enough to know that I am not a type ‘A’ personality, I am not ultra-career driven. Sure, maybe I could have been more successful in advancing in my engineering career, but when I had to choose between spending long hours at work and spending time with my children, work came second, and some people at my place of employment didn’t like the choice that made. Yes, I was angry at first, but I can sleep at night.

As we read our scriptures for this morning, we will find some conversations that sound like the brush-offs we heard from older adults in our own lives. And just like the ones we experienced; these conversations were excuses for the choices that those adults had made. But we will also hear some sound advice on how we can make genuinely good choices about how we live our lives… choices that will let us sleep soundly at night.

We begin this morning with the prophet Jeremiah, whose words sound a lot like those older adults in our lives, but since Jeremiah is speaking for God, those words carry a different meaning for us and for our excuses. Reading Jeremiah 1:4-10, it says:

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 spoke to Jeremiah and said, I have known you all along. I have known you since before you were born, not just because I knew your parents, but because I knew everything about you, because I knew who I created you to be, and what I called you to do. Before you were born, I knew about the scar you would get on your knee when you fell as a child, I knew who your friends would be, and who you would marry. I knew every decision you would make and all that I had made you capable of doing. But even so, Jeremiah immediately begins to argue with God. Granted, at the time of his calling, it is possible that Jeremiah was as young as twelve, so arguing that he is too young to carry messages from God to the king and to the royalty and ruling powers of Israel.

But God knows what he is doing.

God tells Jeremiah not to be afraid, because when he goes where God commands, and speaks the words that God has sent, God will walk with him, protect him, and rescue him from trouble. Then God touches Jeremiah’s twelve-year-old mouth, puts his words in Jeremiah’s mouth, and appoints him as his messenger that will carry words of power to kings and to nations.

And then we rejoin the gospel story from last week, as Jesus read the scriptures in his hometown of Nazareth. You will remember that Jesus read a passage from the prophet Isaiah that spoke of the coming messiah and then Jesus announced that the scripture that he had read was being fulfilled in their presence. And by doing so, Jesus was claiming that he was the Messiah that God had promised, and the people didn’t take it very well. We rejoin the story right where we left off as we read from Luke 4:21-30.

²¹He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

As soon as Jesus makes the claim that the people are witnessing the fulfillment of Isaiah’s scriptures, they begin to make excuses. Their assumption, is that nothing important can happen in their little town, that no one important can come from there, and that clearly, if Jesus had been anyone important he would have been born to an important family, or a rich family, or that someone would have recognized that Jesus was somebody important before now. But because of the biases that they carried, and the because of the decisions that they had already made, they immediately started to say those words that we have all heard before, “I knew you when you were little,” “I knew your parents before you were born,” “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the kid we watched grow up?” “How could he be anyone important?”

And Jesus reminds them that every prophet has suffered from the same problem, the blindness of the people, and the town that knew them best. And, because of that blindness, God often sent those prophets to do miraculous things somewhere else or to perform miracles for other people, even for Israel’s enemies. Not surprisingly, having already been in a bad mood and making excuses, Jesus’ speech makes them angrier still, and they drove him out of town toward the cliffs which today are about a mile and a half from town, with the mob having every intention of throwing Jesus off the precipice. But Jesus, somehow, just walks through the crowd and goes on his way.

What? Does that mean that a mob suddenly because reasonable? Probably not. We understand mobs cannot be reasoned with. Does it mean that Jesus became invisible or somehow paralyzed the crowd, or used some other superpower? Honestly, we don’t know. But something amazing, even miraculous happened, and Jesus just walked away.

Okay, so we know that we, even God’s prophets, are human and like to make excuses. And we know that we have a habit of discrediting or even getting angry at the people that question our bad choices. But how do we make better choices? How can we test ourselves when we make decisions so that we can make better choices that let us sleep at night? And that is exactly what the Apostle Paul tells us as he writes to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 when he says:

^13:1If I speak in the languagesof men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹²For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Paul says that the answer… is love. There are two questions that we need to ask ourselves when we make important choices, and they both have to do with love. Before we decide, we should consider our motivation for choosing to act the way we do, or to do the thing we think that we want to do. The first question is, what is our motivation towards others? And the answer is… love. Our motivation should not simply be selfish at the expense of others, our motivation should consider the effects of our decision and be loving towards others. And the second question is similar, what is our motivation towards God? Again, our motivation cannot be selfish at God’s expense and should consider the effects that it will have on God, and on God’s kingdom. Simply put, it isn’t that God doesn’t want us to be happy, or that God doesn’t want us to have nice things, it is simply that if we want to make choices that let us sleep at night, we should consider whether those choices are loving, towards God, and towards others. Even when we are compelled to make choices that hurt other people, we can be loving and try to find ways that hurt those people less, or which hurt fewer people. We must consider how, and in what ways, we can be the most loving.

Paul says that if we want to make good choices, there are always three things to consider, faith, hope, and love, but the most important is always… love.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Hearing What We Didn’t Know

January 26, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Bible, Broadway, Christ, church, Ezra, faith, gifts, God, hear, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, Methodist, Nehemiah, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, unique, weirdness

Hearing What We Didn’t Know

January 26, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Nehemiah 8:1-10 Luke 4:14-21 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Have you ever relearned something that you forgot, or had to learn something that you should have learned much earlier? There are a host of videos on the internet in which college students or the “average man or woman on the street” are embarrassed by failing to answer questions about history, government, fractions, cooking, or other things that most of us learned, or should have learned, in high school or from our parents. Personally, I cringe whenever people ask, “Why don’t they teach how to fill out tax forms in high school?” But also insist that “Learning algebra was useless.” Because, from my perspective, our tax forms are one giant algebra test where we calculate the value of ‘x’ and then add that to the value of ‘y’ where ‘y’ is something that we calculated two lines earlier and then insert that sum on line 17. It is frightening to watch these videos online, or sometimes to see the results of nationwide surveys, and see the lack of understanding some people have of truly basic things that many of us take for granted. I’m thinking about people who insist that New York is a city and not a state, or who seem to have absolutely no awareness of any event that happened prior to 1980.

Granted, there are a lot of things that can be known, and which are taught, that we do not need to know. But some of the things that we never learned, or which were taught but to which we weren’t paying attention, turn out to be critically important. Many common conspiracy theories are rooted in a fundamental lack of understanding, or misunderstanding, of general principles of science, law, or government. And while we might just be irritated at the people who believe the earth is flat, some of these misunderstandings can be fatal to us or to our children.

It is this sort of thing that we observe as we read the story in Nehemiah 8:1-10. After 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the scrolls of the Law of Moses, likely at least the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Torah, and others, were brought out and read aloud because Nehemiah wanted to be certain that the people understood. And this appears to be, for many people, the first time that they had heard it. And this is the story that we hear:

^8:¹All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.

²So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. ³He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.

⁴Ezra the teacher of the Law stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Beside him on his right stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah and Maaseiah; and on his left were Pedaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah and Meshullam.

⁵Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. ⁶Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

⁷The Levites—Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan and Pelaiah—instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. ⁸They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clearand giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.

⁹Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.

¹⁰Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

In many readings, the mechanics or the logistics of this passage are skipped over, but I find them interesting enough and important enough to include them. In an era that was thousands of years before any kind of electronic amplification, Ezra brings out the Law of Moses and reads it aloud to the gathering of hundreds, even thousands of people. Of course, there is no way that Ezra could have shouted loudly enough for everyone to hear him, and so Ezra stood on a raised platform and the Levites, thirteen of which are named here, were out in the crowd. As Ezra read, the Levites repeated and interpreted, so that everyone could hear and understand.

And having heard and understood, again possibly for the first time, the people began to weep, not from joy, but from grief, when they realized how far from God they had wandered and, without realizing they were doing it, how sinfully they had been living. In this case, it wasn’t because the people had been deliberately disobedient, but because they had not heard the words of God read and taught. But Nehemiah instructs them not to mourn or weep, but to celebrate because although it was true that they had fallen short of God’s commands because of their ignorance, now they knew better so tomorrow they could do better.

Tomorrow would be different. The world had changed because of what the people had heard and what they had learned.

And, although the situation is different, the same thing happens when Jesus makes an announcement at the synagogue in Luke 4:14-21, where we hear this:

¹⁴Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

When Jesus says that the prophecy of Isaiah has been fulfilled, he is making an incredibly exclusive claim. Everyone knew that the prophecy of Isaiah pointed to Israel’s expected messiah, and so when Jesus says that the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, he is making a claim that the Messiah had come and that he was that messiah.

For the people who believed him, tomorrow would be different. The world would change because of what the people had heard and what they had learned.

And then in his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul explains how the church, filled with people who were all so vastly different from one another, could work together for the greater good. In 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Paul says:

¹²Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For we were all baptized byone Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

¹⁵Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁶And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁷If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ²²On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

²⁷Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. ²⁸And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

Most of us are familiar with this passage. And although we live in a culture that talks a lot about diversity and inclusion, this is a reminder to us that we are far from the first to grapple with the differences of the people around us. In many ways, the people of the Roman empire may have done it better. There were generals in the Roman army from nearly every nation in the empire and Caesars from nearly as many nations. Travel and migration throughout the empire was common, as evidenced by this letter in which Paul writes to Christ followers in Greece that were both Jew and Gentile, slave and free. And there were many stories, such as that of Pentecost, in which people from all over the Roman world were gathered in one place. In fact, such things were quite common.

But like people everywhere, the church in Corinth was a collection of people with different skills, interests, and abilities. As such, there were disagreements from time to time and some of them wondered how they fit. Paul explains that despite our differences and abilities, not only do we all fit in, but every one of us is necessary. For the last two weeks we have been talking about the gifts of the spirit that God gives to us when we choose to follow him and we learned that God’s purpose in giving those gifts is for us to use them for the greater good, which is to use them for the benefit of the people around us and to make our communities, and our world a better place. With that in mind, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth tells us that we can’t use our weirdness or our uniqueness as an excuse. Each of us has gifts, and although some of us have gifts that are different, or weird, or unique, Paul tells us that somehow we still fit, that somehow God still has a calling and a purpose for us, and that somehow God wants us to use our weirdness and our unique gifts so that there would be no division in the body of Christ.

And now that we have heard the story, we cannot ignore it.

Tomorrow should be different from today. The world should change because of what we have heard and what we have learned.

Do not grieve or mourn for what we might have done differently yesterday but let us celebrate because although we might have fallen short of God’s commands yesterday, today we know better, and tomorrow we can do better.

Let us go out from this place, use our gifts for the greater good, to help the people around us, and make our communities, and our world…

…a better place.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

A New Name, A New Purpose

January 19, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Cana, change, Christ, church, faith, Galilee, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, Methodist, mission, name, new, Ohio, Partridge, purpose, wedding

A New Name, A New Purpose

January 19, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 62:1-5 John 2:1-11 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Names mean something.

Most of us can name several large American corporations that have changed their names to better reflect their business. The National Cash Register Corporation long ago stopped manufacturing cash registers and is now known as NCR, “Brad’s Drink” became Pepsi-Cola, “Pete’s Super Submarines” became Subway, “Kibble” became Netflix, Kentucky Fried Chicken is now officially just KFC so that there isn’t so much emphasis on the word “fried” in a culture that is more health conscious, International Business Machines sells software and other services as well as computers, and so their legal name is now just IBM.

But people do the same thing. Women, and sometimes men, change their names when they get married, I know a number of people who legally changed their names because the names that their parents had given them didn’t match their personality, and we all know a few people who have chosen to go by their middle names, or nicknames, instead of the first name on their birth certificate. Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he changed religions and so have many others. Thousands of immigrants have changed their names to fit into the culture of their new homeland and to let everyone know that they belonged here and had left their past behind. And, of course, none of that counts the people who are in the witness protection program or who have changed their names so that they can run away from their past or to hide from abusive spouses.

Whether it is a corporation or a person, changing your name is a statement to the world that something different is happening. Either your original name didn’t match your personality, or it doesn’t match your present reality, or you want your name to better reflect your goals, purpose, and future mission. In ancient times, and in the world of magic and mysticism, names were often seen as the heart of a person’s power and an insight into their soul. And all those ideas are at play as we read Isaiah’s message to the nation of Israel in Isaiah 62:1-5 when God says:

^62:1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet,
till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.
²The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.
³You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
⁴No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah, [Hephzibah means my delight is in her]

and your land Beulah; [Beulah means married]
for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married.
⁵As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

God says that he will not keep silent until Jerusalem is vindicated, and the world sees the truth of God’s blessing and the glory that he has given to Israel. When that happens, God says, Israel will be given a new name from God to reflect its goals, purpose, mission, and connection to God. Once, Jerusalem was called deserted and desolate, but on that day, it will be known as the delight and the bride of God himself because God rejoices over her in the same way that a groom rejoices over his beloved.

With that in mind, we move to John 2:1-11, where we see Jesus beginning for the first time, to move and to live into the purpose for which he had been born and to the mission to which God had called him and sent him into the world.

^2:1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, ²and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

⁴“Woman [Greek usage here denotes no disrespect], why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

⁶Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

⁷Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so, they filled them to the brim.

⁸Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, ⁹and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside ¹⁰and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

¹¹What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Even though Jesus tells his mother that the time of his ministry has not yet come, Mary knows that God has sent him for a purpose. Did Mary know that Jesus could perform a miracle? I don’t think so. Did she know that Jesus could do… something? I think yes, but I doubt that she had any idea what that something would be. In any case, Mary, who must have been well known and respected in the household and by the household servants, simply instructs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. And so, Jesus changes 120 to 180 gallons of water into wine. That’s a lot. It must have been a big party, but still, that’s a lot. Think about that in terms of containers that are more familiar to us. That’s between two and a half to three and a half 55-gallon drums full of wine. Or, more than two hundred refrigerator wine boxes, or nine hundred standard size wine bottles. Again, that’s a lot.

But more to the point of today’s message, this moment, as the Apostle John notes, is the first time that Jesus performs a sign that reveals who he really is. And this is a suitable time for a quick refresher about the meaning of Jesus’ name. In Hebrew, Jesus’ name is Yeshua, which is the same Hebrew name that we translate as Joshua. But, in Hebrew, Yeshua means “Yahweh saves,” or “God saves.” And so, at this moment, Jesus not only reveals who he is and begins his earthly ministry, but he begins to live into the meaning of his name.

Remember that I said, names mean things.

And that brings us to the present day and to our relationship with God and with Jesus Christ. What does all this naming, and calling, and purpose stuff mean for us? And much of this is explained by Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth as he explains some of the gifts that God gives to those who love him. Reading from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, we hear this:

^12:1 Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. ²You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. ³Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

⁴There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. ⁵There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

⁷Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. ⁸To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, ¹⁰to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of languages, and to still another the interpretation of languages. ¹¹All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

Paul says that the gifts that God gives are not all the same. Each of us was made differently by God and as such we have each been given different gifts that suit our lives, our personalities, and the mission and calling that God has put upon our lives. Some of us have been given gifts of wisdom, some knowledge, and some faith, others are given discernment, or gifts of languages but all the gifts come from God. But Paul is clear that the reason that we have been given gifts is not simply to satisfy our curiosity, or to provide an income, or to make us rich, or famous, or powerful, or influential. The reason that we have been given gifts by the Spirit of God is for the common good. Just as Jesus was called by God to rescue others, and to save the world, we are called to use our gifts for the common good and to make the world a better place.

If you think about it, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for a company to have a name like the National Cash Register Corporation if they didn’t make cash registers any longer. Having a name that matches your mission makes much more sense. It is the same reason that many people change their names. They want their names to match their personalities, to let the world know that they have a new life as a married person, or that they’ve changed their religion. And we should include ourselves among that last one even if our name has stayed the same. When we chose to follow Jesus, then we identified our lives with Jesus, with his mission, and with his purpose. If you want to think of it that way, at the moment we chose to follow Jesus our name changed. Where it once was John Doe or Jane Doe, it became John Doe Christ Follower or Jane Doe Christ Follower.

And with our new name, we received gifts from the Spirit of God, a new mission, and a new purpose. We are called to use the gifts that we have been given for the common good, to help the people around us, to make life better for everyone in our community, and to make the world a better place. We have been called to change the world.

Let us live into our purpose and live into our new name. As John Wesley said, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can”.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Photo by Henkster on Freeimages.com

Redeemed, Summoned, Empowered

January 12, 2025 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, baptism, Broadway, Christ, church, empower, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Messiah, Methodist, mission, missionary, Ohio, prejudice, racism, redeem, spirit, summon

Redeemed, Summoned, Empowered

January 12, 2025*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 43:1-7 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Acts 8:14-17

In 1775, Robert Morris was elected to the Pennsylvania state assembly and served in that capacity alongside Benjamin Franklin. He then served as a member of the Committee of Safety, which was responsible for arming the state militia, building forts, and purchasing ammunition. In November of 1775, Morris was elected by the Pennsylvania legislature to be a delegate to the Continental Congress where he, once again, served on the Secret Committee which was responsible for arming the new Continental Army. Morris resigned that position in 1789 but then was appointed and served as the superintendent of finance for the Continental Congress from 1781 to 1784 and was thus in control of the finances of the American colonies as well as being responsible for funding George Washinton’s army. Morris’ activities in this capacity created what we now think of as the Department of the Treasury.

It was Morris who established a national bank, which was then chartered by the Continental Congress and began printing a single currency for the American colonies rather than thirteen different state currencies. As such, Morris was also the first to call for the creation of a national mint. But in 1792, Morris began speculating on the development of land, in which he would borrow money and buy millions of acres of land, in hopes of then selling the land for a profit as the new American nation grew westward. Unfortunately, his speculation was unsuccessful, he was convicted for his debts and thrown into debtor’s prison where George Washington and other wealthy and powerful friends often visited him.

Many of you are unfamiliar with the concept of debtor’s prison because such a thing no longer exists in our nation. Laws about bankruptcy were passed in 1800 that did away with debtor’s prison, and it is suspected that it was because of the many influential people who were friends with Robert Morris. In any case, the idea of debtor’s prison was that persons who were unable to pay their debts would be put into prison where the money they earned from their labor would be used to repay the debts that they had incurred. For a variety of reasons, the entire concept of debtor’s prison never really accomplished its purpose and instead created other problems.

In any case, with all that in mind, I want you to imagine for a moment that something like debtor’s prison still existed in the modern day. Next, imagine that you made a bad business deal and suddenly owe tens of millions of dollars to your partners for your mistake. Being unable to make payments on the debt that has been assigned to you, you are convicted and sentenced to debtor’s prison. In prison, you work every day to make license plates for twelve dollars per hour and your income seized to make pitifully small incremental payments towards the millions that you owe. You have no hope of ever being released from prison in your lifetime. But one day, you are summoned to the prison warden’s office and informed that a wealthy billionaire has paid your entire debt, redeemed you from prison, and you are now free to go. The person that paid your debt has given you something that you had no hope of ever paying for yourself. And that is the story that we hear in today’s scriptures as we begin reading in Isaiah 43:1-7 where it says:

^43:1 But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
²When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
³For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
    Cush and Seba in your stead.
⁴Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
    and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
    nations in exchange for your life.
⁵Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
    I will bring your children from the east
    and gather you from the west.
⁶I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
⁷everyone who is called by my name,
    whom I created for my glory,
    whom I formed and made.”

Through the prophet Isaiah, God tells his people that he has redeemed them from their conviction for sin, summon us by name, and claimed us as his own. But God doesn’t stop there. Not only has God redeemed us, but he also promises to walk with us when we pass through challenging times and trials and will protect us from being swept away by our problems. God declares that we need not ever be afraid because he will always stand by us, and with us. But in the time of Isaiah, God’s people still knew that all these promises had not yet been fulfilled. They knew that God had not yet gathered his people together and returned all those who had been carried off into captivity or had fled Israel in times of war and persecution. And for that reason, God’s people still looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and that is exactly what we hear in the story of Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3:15-17, 21-22:

¹⁵The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. ¹⁶John answered them all, “I baptize you withwater. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you withthe Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

²¹When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened ²²and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

It is important to remember that, in the time of Jesus, the emotions of the Jewish people were quite similar to what they were in Isaiah’s time. Although Israel was not facing destruction at the hands of the Babylonian army, it had already been conquered by a new Roman superpower. Rather than being slaughtered and taken into captivity as it had eight centuries earlier, at this time, Israel had been subjugated, occupied, and paid exorbitant taxes to Rome and to their occupying government. And so, Luke tells us that when they went out into the wilderness to hear John preach, they waited expectantly, hoping beyond hope that they would find God’s promised messiah and wondering if John might be him. The good news that they hear is that while John is not the messiah, he is there to introduce him. And moments later we see all three persons of the trinity in two sentences. As Jesus was praying, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove, and the voice of the father came from heaven.

We have all heard that story before. But God’s promise that we heard from Isaiah was not just a promise of the Messiah, but a promise that God would go with us, that we would belong to him, and that he would one day gather his people together. And so, while the coming of the messiah is a key part of that, it is not all that there is. In Luke we saw that the Holy Spirit came down from heaven like a dove at Jesus’ baptism, but Luke also tells us that the gift of the spirit wasn’t just a gift that God gave to Jesus. In Acts 8:14-17, Luke says:

¹⁴When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. ¹⁵When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, ¹⁶because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. ¹⁷Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

I want to think about this and break it down because this is important for a couple of reasons. First, Luke tells us that the apostles in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had heard the gospel message and accepted the word of God and so they sent Peter and John to Samaria. There are two important things that we can take away from this. One of these is that we should remember the Samaritan woman at the well that had a conversation with Jesus. After their conversation, she ran into town telling everyone that she had met a man that had told her everything that she had ever done, and she brought everyone out to the well to meet Jesus and to hear him teach. That seed, planted by Jesus and that first Samaritan missionary woman, had now grown, and the people of Samaria had heard the gospel and had chosen to follow Jesus. The other important thing that we should note, is that while the disciples had been not at all happy that Jesus was talking to a Samaritan woman, and that Jesus would defile himself by spending time in a Samaritan village, they had now set aside their ingrained prejudice and racism and now accepted the Samaritan believers as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

The second reason that this is important, is that we see that the gift of God’s spirit was not exclusive to Jesus at the time of his baptism. The new believers in Samaria had been baptized in the name of Jesus and now, when Peter and John prayed for them, they also received the Holy Spirit. This is further evidence, beyond the story of Pentecost, that the gift of the spirit is given to every believer in Jesus Christ.

And that brings us back to where we began. Although debtor’s prisons are a thing of the past, we, like Robert Morris, owe a debt that is far beyond what we can ever pay. Our sins against God and man are a debt that we could never afford to pay and our eventual conviction for those debts was certain. But as we heard in Isaiah, God has summoned us, redeemed us, through his son, God has forgiven our debt, and through his spirit, God has filled us and empowered us with his strength and power so that we can be his agents and ambassadors is this world, and do the work that he has called us to do. We have been called, redeemed, and empowered to be Jesus to the people around us, and to share the good news with everyone who needs to hear it. We are never alone, and we need never rely upon our own strength, because God goes with us everywhere we go, and is with us through everything we experience.

May we, filled with God’s spirit and power, go out from this place, and do the work that we have been redeemed, summoned, and empowered to do.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

How Are You Growing?

December 29, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, God, grow, growing, Hannah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Partridge, Methodist, new year, Ohio, Samuel

How Are You Growing?

December 29, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 Luke 2:41-52 Colossians 3:12-17,

If you have ever been in my office, it’s a mess. I know that my mother would not approve. If the police were ever called, they would say that “there appears to have been a struggle.” But you also might notice that I have plants. Oddly, houseplants don’t do well at our house and the only ones that we keep alive are in the cactus family. Since I began my career in engineering, if I want plants to live, I take them to my office. Some time ago, I did a children’s message with three plants that I brought home from my mother’s funeral and all three of them continue to do well, two of them are growing and flower regularly, and the third is holding its own.

In addition, I have a rubber tree, or something, I don’t have a scientific name for it, but it’s quite large. It has grown so tall that it did not have the strength to stand on its own so, some time ago, I added stakes to help it. And then, a few months ago I decided to trim off the growing ends so that it would be able to use its energy to grow thicker and stronger instead. When I did that, I took two of the longest pruned branches and, as an experiment, I dropped them into my fish tank. Once there, both branches rooted the baby guppies hide among their roots. Soon, I should plant them in pots of their own, but I really don’t need two more plants.

In any case, as I read today’s scripture lessons, it made me think about how we, as humans, and as the followers of Jesus Christ, have much in common with those plants. Keep that in mind as we begin this morning by reading from 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 where it says:

¹⁸But Samuel was ministering before the Lord—a boy wearing a linen ephod. ¹⁹Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. ²⁰Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, “May the Lord give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the Lord.” Then they would go home.

²⁶And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with people.

This continues the story about Hannah and her son Samuel. If you remember, Hannah was tormented by her husband’s second wife because she was childless and when God finally gave her a child, she returned him to God for service to the house of the Lord at Shiloh as soon as he was old enough to be weaned. But here we learn that Hannah loved him and mothered him as much as she could from a distance. Each year their family would return to Shiloh to offer a sacrifice to God and each year Hannah would make Samuel a robe that she could give to him as a gift.

From this story we can understand that Hannah, Elkanah, and their family were faithful in their worship of God, faithful to one another, and we see that they were, despite the distance separating them, faithful to Samuel. And each year, Eli, the high priest, would bless Elkanah and Hannah for their faithfulness and for their son Samuel. And, we are told, each year they witnessed that Samuel had grown in size, as is natural, but also in favor with God, and with people. Samuel was well liked by the people around him but was also growing closer to God and was receiving God’s favor.

And as we read the story of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, we find that Luke’s description of Jesus, as a child, is a mirror of the description that heard about Samuel. As we read from Luke 2:41-52 we hear this:

⁴¹Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. ⁴²When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. ⁴³After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. ⁴⁴Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. ⁴⁵When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. ⁴⁶After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. ⁴⁷Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

⁴⁹“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”⁵⁰But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

⁵¹Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. ⁵²And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

Like Elkanah and Hannah, Mary and Joseph were faithful to God and made the journey to Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Passover despite their relative poverty. And as it was in the story of Samuel, we find also in the story of Jesus, the faithfulness of the parents is reflected in the faithfulness of their son. The part of the story that we always talk about is that Mary and Joseph were a day’s journey from Jerusalem before they realized that Jesus was not among their friends and family in the caravan. But when they returned to Jerusalem and found Jesus, he simply said, “Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” Jesus is where is needs to be because he has learned faithfulness from his parents and now must be faithful to God in his own way. And again, as it was in the story of Samuel, when Jesus returned to Nazareth, he was obedient, and grew is wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and with people. Put another way, Jesus was growing in mind, in body, and in spirit.

And that takes us back to the plants in my office. With care, my plants stay alive. But the ones that get enough light, food, and water will grow and flower. But scripture tells us that the same is true of human beings and the followers of God. If we are properly cared for, have food and water and all the things that we need, and live lives of faithfulness to God, we will grow in mind, in body, and in spirit, and produce fruit for God.

And so, as we come to the end of one year and the beginning of the next, it is an appropriate time for us to think about these things, take a hard look in the mirror, and ask ourselves, “How am I growing?” Are you growing in faithfulness, in mind, in body, and in spirit? Are you growing closer to God?

As we begin the new year, let us ask ourselves, “Are we producing fruit?”

Today’s benediction comes from the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Colossae. In Colossians 3:12-17 Paul speaks this blessing over the church, and I want to pray it over all of you for the new year:

¹²Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. ¹³Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

¹⁵Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. ¹⁷And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Happy New Year everyone.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Photo by a_glitch on Freeimages.com

A Promise Kept. But Why?

December 24, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Advent, Alliance, Broadway, Christ, Christ United Methodist, Christmas, Christmas Eve, church, death, faith, God, Isaiah, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John Partridge, keep, kept, Luke, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, peace, promised land, Titus, United, United Methodist, war

A Promise Kept. But Why?

(Christmas Eve)

December 24, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 9:2-7 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)

We’ve had a great evening of celebration, and we all know that Christmas is a time of joy, wonder, gratitude, and thanksgiving. We give thanks for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, who was and is the rescuer of the world. In the scriptures that were read this evening we heard God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah that the Messiah would bring light to the darkness, freedom to the captives, and peace to the world. When we turn on the news and we hear messages of missiles, bombs, bullets, and warfare around the world, and as our nation spends trillions of dollars to maintain the largest military ever seen on the face of the earth, hearing God’s promise that every warrior’s boot, and every blood-stained garment will be thrown into the fire is a powerful message. It is for us, just as hopeful, and just a powerful as it must have been for the people of Israel so many years ago. But God’s promise didn’t stop there. Isaiah continues by saying that the coming Messiah would take over the government, that he would govern in greatness, that the peace under his rule would never end, and that he would establish, and uphold, justice and righteousness forever. That sounds just as fantastic, impossible, and hopeful in the twenty first century as it must have sounded in in the time of Isaiah eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus.

But Luke tells the story about God keeping the promise that Isaiah had proclaimed. A story of how the savior, Israel’s messiah, had been born, how an angels had announced his arrival to lowly shepherds on a hillside rather than in the halls of the palace, and how an entire choir, a host of angels, had praised and given glory to God, and how, having heard the message, and seen for themselves, the shepherds became the first preachers, heralds, and missionaries and spread the word about the messiah’s arrival.

But why?

Why did these things happen? Why did God promise, and why did God keep his promise? Why did God go to all that effort? Why did God send his own son to earth? Why did God care?

And this evening we heard the answer from God in the words of Titus. It is because of God’s grace that he sent the Messiah. It was and is grace that offers rescue to the people of the world. It is grace that teaches us to say “no” to ungodliness and the passions of the world. It is grace that teaches us to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives while the world spirals into selfishness, lust, greed, and depravity. And it is grace that empowers us as we wait for the fulfillment of our hope in the coming of Jesus Christ because it was Jesus who gave us the gift of himself to redeem us from wickedness, to rescue us from sin and death, and to purify us so that we could become his people. It was Jesus who gave himself so that we could become a people who were eager to do what is good.

The story is just as amazing, fantastic, impossible, hopeful, and wonderful as it has always been. And our mission is the same as that of the shepherds who heard the story from a host of angels on a hillside two thousand years ago. Let us go out from this place glorifying and praising God for all that we have heard and seen and tell the world the good news of our rescue, of God’s grace, and of Jesus’ gift.

Jesus is the greatest gift of all.

It isn’t a story that we could keep to ourselves, nor is it a story that we were ever intended to keep for ourselves. As the angels said, it is good news, of great joy…

…for all the people.

Merry Christmas.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Photo by bjearwicke on Freeimages.com

The Promise of Hope, Peace, and Love

December 22, 2024 PastorPartridge Sermon Advent, Alliance, baptism, Baptist, Broadway, Christ, church, Elizabeth, faith, God, hope, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, John the Baptist, love, Luke, Mary, Methodist, offering, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, peace, sacrifice, United, United Methodist

The Promise of Hope, Peace, and Love

December 22, 2024*

By Pastor John Partridge

Micah 5:2-5 Luke 1:39-45 Hebrews 10:5-10

We have often spoken about the grand themes of scripture and, not surprisingly, each week we have focused on one of those themes during the season of Advent, and this week is no different. While we have already, in the first week, mentioned the theme of hope, we visit that theme again as we consider this week’s theme, and look forward to a season of peace both as a nation and as individuals. But one of the consistent messages of scripture that brings hope to the people of God, is God’s reliable character and integrity, and the love that he has demonstrated to us by keeping his promises.

And so, we begin this morning by reading a part of God’s message that was spoken through his prophet Micah. Micah is yet another lesser-known messenger who warned Israel of its coming destruction at the hands of the nation of Babylon seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Micah lived and preached before the time of Jeremiah and at the same time as the prophet Isaiah. Much as we heard in the message of Zephaniah last week, Micah wrote a book with messages of God’s judgement but included among them were messages of restoration, peace, and hope for the future. And that message is what we hear this morning as we read Micah 5:2-5 where God says:

²“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    though you are small among the clansof Judah,
out of you will come for me
    one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
    from ancient times.”

³Therefore Israel will be abandoned
until the time when she who is in labor bears a son,
and the rest of his brothers return
to join the Israelites.

⁴He will stand and shepherd his flock
    in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
    will reach to the ends of the earth.

⁵And he will be our peace.

Through his prophet Micah, God declares that the small town of Bethlehem will one day produce a son who is already ancient, a ruler whose origins are from ancient times. And although God speaks of how the nation of Israel will be abandoned, he also promises a time when the people will return. And it is in that day, God says, that this future ruler will rise up, lead his people in the strength and the majesty of God himself, and under his leadership the people will live in security and peace.

And that is the picture and the promise of God that we should have in mind as we remember the story of Mary, already pregnant and carrying Jesus, as she arrives to visit her relative Elizabeth who will soon give birth to John the Baptist. We hear this story in the words of Luke 1:39-45:

³⁹At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴²In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

I am certain that those who are skeptical of the claims of the Bible will remind us that it is common for third trimester babies to move about in their mother’s womb. Some move about so often, and so forcefully, that their poor mothers are left a bit battered, bruised, and exhausted. But in Luke’s story, Elizabeth’s baby didn’t just move about, he chose the exact moment of Mary’s arrival and greeting to do so. Elizabeth understands that this is a sign from God that Mary is carrying the savior that was promised by God through the words of Micah and many other of his prophets. And clearly Luke accepts this interpretation and so he includes this story as proof that God keeps his promises, that Jesus is the promised savior, and that God has given us hope for the future.

But aside from hope, what did the coming of Jesus bring to the people of God? What did God hope to accomplish? What were God’s goals? And not only that, what does all of that have to do with us, what does God expect from us, and how is any of that supposed to bring us peace? In Hebrews 10:5-10 Paul explains it this way:

⁵Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
    but a body you prepared for me;
⁶with burnt offerings and sin offerings
    you were not pleased.
⁷Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
    I have come to do your will, my God.’”

⁸First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. ⁹Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. ¹⁰And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

In this, Paul reminds us of Jesus’ own words, that although the laws of Moses required offerings and sacrifices, those were not the things that God desired. Instead, what God wanted was obedience. And so, Jesus said that the reason that he had come was not to make sacrifices on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem, and not to make a lot of money so that he could give offerings to God, but instead the reason that he had come was to do the will of God. Israel’s God was not like the gods of the Greeks and the Romans that needed the gifts and sacrifices of the people to make them powerful.

Instead, Paul explains, that no matter how rich or abundant they might have been, God was not pleased with offerings and sacrifices. Instead, Jesus came to set aside sacrifices so that he could establish a people who would love him enough to be obedient and do the things that God had called them to do. Moreover, Paul says, it is through the will of God, that we have been made holy because it was through the obedience of Jesus Christ, and his sacrifice, that we were made holy, were adopted into Jesus’ family, and invited into God’s kingdom.

And so, as we pass through the season of Advent and prepare ourselves for the arrival of God’s messiah, let us consider just a few of the ways in which God has demonstrated his love for us.

We know that we worship a God who always keeps his promises.
We worship a loving God who always cares about the needs of his people.
God’s messiah is described as a loving shepherd who leads his people in strength and majesty to a place of security, safety, and peace.
God does not desire an abundance of sacrifices or expensive gifts and offerings.
God sent his son so that we could be made holy, become members of his family, and enter his kingdom.
Because what God wants is our obedience, he places no priority of rich over poor, or royalty over common peasants. Before God, we are all equal. He only asks that we do what he has taught us and calls us to do.

For these reasons, and many others, we have hope for the future, hope for a day when all nations can live in peace with one another, and find peace within ourselves in the present. But most of all, we can know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God loves us, cares for us, watches over us, and wants what is best for us.

Please LIKE and SHARE!

Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.

Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.

Pastor Partridge

Sermons, blogs and other things from Pastor John Partridge

God

Fear and the Unexpected

Fear and the Unexpected

February 23, 2025*

The Curse of Wealth and Happiness

The Curse of Wealth and Happiness

February 16, 2025*

Hot Coals, Dead Fish, and Grace

Hot Coals, Dead Fish, and Grace

February 09, 2025*

Motivation, or Just Excuses?

Motivation, or Just Excuses?

February 02, 2025*

Hearing What We Didn’t Know

Hearing What We Didn’t Know

January 26, 2025*

A New Name, A New Purpose

A New Name, A New Purpose

January 19, 2025*

Redeemed, Summoned, Empowered

Redeemed, Summoned, Empowered

January 12, 2025*

How Are You Growing?

How Are You Growing?

December 29, 2024*

A Promise Kept. But Why?

A Promise Kept. But Why?

(Christmas Eve)

December 24, 2024*

The Promise of Hope, Peace, and Love

The Promise of Hope, Peace, and Love

December 22, 2024*