What Grows in Your Garden?

August 14, 2022August 15, 2022 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon Alliance, bad fruit, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, fruit, garden, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, promise, Street, United, vineyard

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What Grows in Your Garden?

August 14, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 5:1-7 Luke 12:49-56 Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2

Do any of you do any gardening?

If you attend here at Christ Church, you may know that we have a community garden on the other side of our parking lot. Each Spring, with the help and support of our church trustees, we prepare our garden plots for planting and divide our various plots among those who are interested in using that space. Sometimes, we are blessed to receive donated plants that we similarly divide amongst our gardeners.

But if you’ve spent any time farming, growing vegetables, or flowers, you know that everything doesn’t always go according to plan. Sometimes the free plants that we receive mature into something quite different than the label that arrived with them. And buying your seed from trusted vendors does not always assure immunity from suffering from the same problem. A year or two ago, Patti and I purchased seeds for spaghetti squash and while it was obvious that what grew was from that family of viny plants, those vines produced several different squash-like plants that mostly were not spaghetti squash.

Our gardeners also know that the row closest to the parking lot uses the same space used by the driveway of the house that once stood there. That space is full of rocks and bricks, is almost impossible to rototill or dig, or plant and so we’ve covered it up with plastic and mulch rather than struggle to grow plants in soil that only wants to grow grass and weeds.

But our struggles in our community garden are not unique to us. These kinds of problems have been shared from the time that human beings first began to cultivate crops. And it is our familiarity with these sorts of problems that helps us to understand the illustration that God uses in his words to the nation of Israel in Isaiah 5:1-7.

^5:1 I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.
²He dug it up and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
    and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

³“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.
⁴What more could have been done for my vineyard
    than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
    why did it yield only bad?
⁵Now I will tell you
    what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
    and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
    and it will be trampled.
⁶I will make it a wasteland,
    neither pruned nor cultivated,
    and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
    not to rain on it.”

⁷The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
    is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
    for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

The owner of the vineyard cleared the land, planted the best grape varieties available, cleared out all the stones, built walls to keep the vines from being trampled, added a watchtower so that a guard could oversee the entire area and, in anticipation of the crop that would one day come, he even carved a winepress out of stone to use at harvest time. The owner of the vineyard worked hard in anticipation of a positive future result. But regardless of his intent, his effort, his care, and his investment, the soil of his vineyard only produced terrible tasting grapes or grapes that were rotten, or moldy, or otherwise unusable.

And so, much like we covered the soil of our old driveway with plastic and mulch, God says that he is giving up on his vineyard. He is going to tear down the walls, the watchtower, and the hedges and abandon the land and let it go wild and be used for local wildlife or not at all. But the frightening part of the story is in hearing that the garden in Isaiah’s story is Israel and Judah. God planted his people with care, effort, and investment but instead of growing a crop of justice and righteousness, harvested only violence, bloodshed, and distress and God says that he isn’t going to continue wasting his resources on bad fruit and poor soil.

But eight hundred years, and a lot of history later, God plants Jesus in that garden to shake things up and put things right. And in Luke 12:49-56, Jesus says this:

⁴⁹“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! ⁵¹Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. ⁵²From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. ⁵³They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

⁵⁴He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. ⁵⁵And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. ⁵⁶Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?

God plants Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but Jesus knows that his arrival will cause dissention and division, quarrels, separation, and violence. People will not agree on who he is, or why he came, or how we ought to worship him. But his coming, and the division that it causes, is a necessary part of repairing the damage to God’s vineyard so that it can grow a crop of justice and righteousness as he intended.

Jesus continues by reminding the people that while they know how to read the signs of the weather, they know that a wind from the desert will bring warm air, and that a wind from the Mediterranean Sea will bring rain, they still pretend that they haven’t seen Jesus’ miracles or heard his teaching. Jesus said things that no one else had said, and did things that no one else had done, and still people pretended that they couldn’t see the signs that God was showing to them.

But what does all that mean to us?

What does God’s vineyard and Jesus’ lecture about reading the signs mean to this church, and this people, in this present time?

In Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2, Paul explains it this way:

²⁹By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

³⁰By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.

³¹By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

³²And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, ³³who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. ³⁵Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. ³⁶Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated— ³⁸the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

³⁹These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, ⁴⁰since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

^12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Paul reminds his churches that God has done all sorts of incredible miracles because of the faith of his people. And not only were there extraordinary miracles, but there were also miracles that happened as a partnership between God and his faithful followers who fought enemies, decided court cases, were thrown into fires, fed to the lions, and all sorts of other things. But there were others who were not rescued but were tortured to death, were beaten, flogged, ridiculed, imprisoned, and put to death in all sorts of terrible and ugly ways. God’s people were sometimes poor and homeless despite their faithfulness.

And regardless of whether God rescued them, or performed miracles for them, or if they were allowed to suffer, none of them, in this life, received the blessings that God had promised because what God has promised is a life that is better than anything imaginable on this earth. One day all of us who have been followers of Jesus Christ and who have been faithful to God will, together with God, be a part of something better. Every day, we are surrounded by those people of faith who came before us and they are watching us and cheering us onward so that we might throw off the sin that trips us up, remain faithful, and run this race with perseverance with our eyes locked only on Jesus.

In Luke’s story, we heard Jesus explain to us that not everyone is going to agree, or even like it, that we have chosen to follow him. Following Jesus is a choice that will cause people to disagree and sever their relationships with us. Following Jesus isn’t going to always bring peace and prosperity, but will sometimes make us unpopular, be tormented and ridiculed, get arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and worse. But through it all, whatever life brings us, we must remain faithful and steadfast, with our eyes only on Jesus, and run our race with perseverance.

Because, at the end of the day, God is still planting a crop of justice and righteousness among his people and the question that God asks us is the same question he was asking the people of Israel in the time of Isaiah.

What’s growing in your garden?

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com . All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Two Big “Ifs” of Christianity

August 4, 2022August 8, 2022 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon act, Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, future, God, heaven, hope, if-then, Jesus, Jesus Christ, kingdom, Methodist, obedient, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, sin, suffering, trust, United

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Two Big “Ifs” of Christianity

August 07, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

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

If you have ever programmed computers, you know that on the first day of your first programming class, you learn about the IF-THEN statement. It is just what it sounds like. The IF-THEN statement asks the computer to check some value and if that value is what you want, then you instruct it to do some other thing. For example, IF the turnstile rotates one time, THEN add one to the memory location tracking the number of customers.

But outside of computer programming, we deal with if-then situations all the time. If I want to earn interest on my savings, then I need to take our money out of my mattress and put it in the bank or invest it somewhere. If we want to have a less difficult visit to the dentist, then we should brush our teeth every morning and do the things that our dentist asks us to do. If we don’t want to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, then we need to stop and buy fuel when the needle moves to toward empty.

We understand if-then decision making because we make those sorts of decisions every day. But sometimes those “ifs” can be big and dangerous. If we smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, then we run an exceedingly high risk of cancer and other health problems. If we drive our automobile over one hundred miles per hour, then the odds of dying in the event of an accident are almost 100 percent.

We can find if-then choices throughout our laws and in every contract ever written. They say, if you do this for us, then we will do that for you. Or, if you do this to us, then we will do this to you. And, not surprisingly, this is also the kind of language that God uses to explain our choices to us and, in Isaiah 1:1, 10-20, we find two really big “ifs” in God’s words to Israel, and despite the passage of time and the coming of Jesus, they remain important advice and instruction to which we should listen.

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

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

Your hands are full of blood!

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

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

By describing Israel’s leaders and people as Sodom and Gomorrah, God accuses them of all sorts of sin and injustice. And because of their actions, God says that he doesn’t care about their sacrifices, gifts, offerings, religious holidays, festivals, celebrations, meetings, gatherings, or even their prayers.

What God really wants is for his people to stop doing evil, to defend the oppressed, to speak for the legally voiceless such as widows and orphans who, without a male family member, couldn’t even speak for themselves in court.

After that, God presents the two big “ifs” to his people. “If you are willing and obedient,” then “you will eat the good things of the land.” “But, if you resist and rebel,” then “you will be devoured by the sword.” If you follow God, and do what God commands, then he will give you all sorts of blessings. But, if you choose to ignore God, and do things your own way, then God will withdraw his protections and his blessings and let you face the world, and all the evil in it… alone.

The temptation for the people of Israel in the time of Isaiah, as well as the time of Jesus, is a temptation that still afflicts us in the twenty-first century, and that is to deceive ourselves into thinking that God isn’t watching, or that the return of Jesus Christ won’t happen any time soon. Sure, we understand that Jesus is coming back, and we say that we believe that he is coming back, but do we really act like we expect that to happen any time soon?

That is exactly the point that Jesus is making in Luke 12:32-40 and as he makes his point, Jesus offers a warning to the people gathered in front of him that is just as relevant to us today. Jesus said…

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

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

Jesus cautions us that we cannot act as if we are going to live forever. When we say that we trust God, we must act as if we trust God, and that includes how we treat our wallets and our giving to the poor. God’s call isn’t for us to give what is leftover or, only what we feel that we can spare, but to give to the poor as if we trust God to care for us like we say that we do.

That hits kind of close to home, doesn’t it?

Jesus continues by saying that we cannot act as if the master isn’t coming back until tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or sometime after we die. We must take God at his word and behave as if we expect Jesus to return at any moment. We must act as we would if we genuinely intended for Jesus to find us busy with the work of his kingdom upon his return.

Paul revisits this same idea in Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 by reminding his listeners about people who had great faith such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, and using those examples to illustrate how faith might look if applied to our lives if we choose to be obedient.

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

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

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

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

God promised Abraham an inheritance that only his descendants would see, and yet he persisted and remained faithful. And through that, and other examples, Paul reminds us that our promise is for a future that we may never see in this lifetime. We look forward to something better, we look forward to a better future, but it is a future in a kingdom that is not of this world. We may never see health, or wealth, or prosperity in this world, we will face trials, temptations, loss, betrayal, and all sorts of struggle in this life but through these examples, Paul reminds us not to give up hope.

Instead, we, like Abraham, must remain faithful as we hope for a future that we might only see in brief glimpses or shadows in this life. We must act as if we trust God. We must give to the poor, share with others, and seek justice as if we believed what we say that we believe. We must keep watch for the return of our master, Jesus, and conduct our affairs as we would if he might return this very afternoon and we wanted him to find us busy caring for his kingdom and his kingdom business.

Because, in the end, we still face those two big “ifs” that we heard in the words of Isaiah.

“If you are willing and obedient,” then “you will eat the good things of the land.”

But, if you choose to ignore God, and do things your own way, then God will withdraw and let you face the world, and all the evil in it… alone.

Where will Jesus find you when he returns?

Choose wisely.

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How Can Life Have Meaning?

July 31, 2022August 24, 2022 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon Alliance, barbarian, Broadway, Christ, church, civilized, division, education, fulfilling, God, influence, Jesus, Jesus Christ, judgement, life, meaning, meaningless, Methodist, money, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, pleasure, poor, power, purpose, rich, sex, Solomon, Street, unfaithful, United, why, wisdom

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How Can Life Have Meaning?

July 31, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23 Luke 12:13-21 Colossians 3:1-11

What is your “why”?

At some point, most of us discover that our lives need a “why,” we need a purpose, we need something that gives our lives meaning. For some people it’s writing, or painting, or other kinds of creative endeavors. For others it’s building things or helping people. But if we don’t find something that gives our lives meaning, it can cause us to struggle emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. A life without meaning is a lot like planning a trip without having a destination, we wander from place to place, from one interesting thing, one shiny object to another, without knowing where we are going or why we are going there. It might be fun, it might be interesting, and it can consume the waking hours of our lives, but before long, we begin to wonder why we’re doing it.

When I was an engineer, I really liked my work. I liked the challenge, I (mostly) liked the people, I liked designing and building things, and it brought a great sense of accomplishment when I could go out on the loading dock and see us shipping out a machine that had once only existed in our imaginations and then only on paper but now was built, operational, and on its way to its installation. But at some point, in large part after 9-11, I began to ask myself if that was enough. We had built this great machine, but it was replacing another great machine that another engineer had imagined and built, thirty years earlier. And I didn’t have any trouble imagining that in another thirty years, everything that we had done, everything that we were so impressed with and proud of, would likewise be torn out, cut up, and sent to the scrap yard.

This place of reflection and self-doubt where we question the purpose of our lives is not unique to us in the twenty-first century and it is not unique to those of us in the post-renaissance or post-modern eras who have sought to be “self-actualized.” This human struggle to find meaning and purpose is at least as old as recorded history. In Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23 we read the words of King Solomon, the richest, most influential, and most powerful king that ever lived. And in these words, we hear Solomon thinking about his “why.” What is his purpose? What is it that gives this man of wealth, power, and influence a life of meaning? Solomon says:

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

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

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

Solomon had it all. He had hundreds of wives who were some of the best looking, most intelligent, and fun to be with people that his kingdom had to offer, he had more money than he could spend, he led an economy and a military that influenced much of the known world, he had servants and subjects who could do almost anything that he asked, and by most definitions he had it all. And yet, he begins the book of Ecclesiastes by saying that everything is meaningless.

He studied academics, he learned wisdom, and found no meaning in it. He had seen foreign countries, met dignitaries from around the world, and accumulated more of life’s experiences than anyone living, and found no more meaning than chasing the wind. He worked to accumulate possessions, wealth, and power but knowing that one day all of it would be left to someone who hadn’t worked for it, found those things to be meaningless also.

So, if we don’t find meaning in the pursuit of wisdom and academic knowledge, or in sex and pleasure of all kinds, or in money, power, possessions, experiences, or influence, then what is it that can give our lives meaning and purpose?

This is the same question, and the same problem, that Jesus highlights in Luke 12:13-21 when someone asks him to help them settle a family dispute over their father’s estate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus listens to this request and then makes two statements. First that he is not the judge appointed to make such a ruling, nor does he desire to be, and second, that such a request is rooted in basic human greed. Jesus also warns that all kinds of human greed afflict us, and the accumulation of possessions and money is not how we are to build a meaningful life. Next, Jesus tells the crowd a parable about a wealthy man whose only focus was on becoming wealthier. But, just as Solomon pointed out, all that accumulated wealth would soon be left to someone else. The point of Jesus’ story is this conclusion: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” Jesus says that it is hopeless to build a life on the selfish accumulation of things if we are not rich toward God. It is hopeless to accumulate wealth or possessions, power or influence, wisdom or knowledge, sex, pleasure, or experiences, or anything else if God is not an integral part of our “why.”

But what is it then upon which we should build a life? What will give our lives meaning and purpose? And as we consider those questions, we find that this is exactly what Paul is considering in Colossians 3:1-11 as he expands on the teaching that we saw in the story of Jesus in Luke 12. Paul says:

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

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

Paul says that now, since you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, have chosen to follow him, and he has raised us from death to life with him, then it matters what you do with your life. Aim is important. Where you point your life is important. The meaning and the purpose of your life is important. And to aim your life in the right direction, Paul says, we must point our hearts and minds on things above and not on earthly things like sexual immorality, impurity, evil desires, and greed. If we are to follow Jesus, then God calls us to get rid of things like anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language, and to stop lying to one another so that we begin to increasingly resemble God and not our old self.

In the kingdom of God, there are none of the divisions that turn humanity against itself. There is no longer a difference between Gentiles and Jews, between those who are circumcised and those who are not, between slaves and free peoples, or between the sophisticated, cultured, and civilized people of the developed world and those who are referred to as uncivilized barbarians from less developed nations. Those differences are all erased because Jesus Christ is everything that we have, and we can find Jesus Christ in every person that we meet.

Finding a life of meaning and purpose is all about focus. If we focus our lives on ourselves, our needs, wants, desires, and aim ourselves at selfishly fulfilling them, we won’t ever feel as if we have a fulfilling, meaningful life of purpose. Instead of focusing on today or tomorrow, we must shift our focus to eternity. Instead of putting ourselves in the center of the bullseye, we must put Jesus in the center and focus on the needs of others and not on self.

Solomon begins the book of Ecclesiastes in a place of hopelessness as he mourns the meaningless of life, but as we read the rest of the book, he repeatedly encourages his readers to enjoy life and to be content with what they have. And he concludes by reminding everyone to keep God in the center of their lives, to “fear God and keep his commandments” because in the end, “God will bring every good deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” Solomon wasn’t dumb. He knew that selfishness emptied life of meaning and purpose. It is only when we keep God in the center of our lives, and focus on the needs of others, that we can point our lives at a place of meaning and purpose.

Before we can discover our “why” we must first remember that Jesus Christ is everything that we have.

Our search for a life of meaning and purpose must begin by remembering that that we can find Jesus in every person that we meet.

If you want to find your “why,” you must start with Jesus.

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An Adulterous Wife

July 24, 2022July 26, 2022 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon adulterous, adultery, Alliance, bride, bride of Christ, Broadway, Christ, church, faith, faithful, God, Gomer, Hosea, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, Street, unfaithful, United

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An Adulterous Wife

July 24, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

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

I want to be clear that despite the title, today’s message applies to both women and men. My title could have easily been, “An Adulterous Spouse” but aside from being admittedly more “clickable” on the internet, there are scriptural and linguistic reasons that it can, and should, be gender specific. And I hope that by the time we’re finished, everyone will understand why.

With that out of the way, for those of you who are already married, I want you to remember what it was like when you were still looking for a spouse. And for those of you who are not married, and who wish to eventually be married, or even if you can’t ever imagine wanting to be married, I invite you to imagine what it would be like to search for a person with whom you can share your life and build your dreams. So, whichever group you might be in, think about what qualifications you might look for in a life-partner. As a group, we would have a wide variety of potential requirements or at least highly desirable traits that we would be looking for in another person. But, without much difficulty, I would imagine that among those qualifications, absolutely none of us would list “likely to cheat” among the dreams and ambitions that we have for our future spouse.

But that is exactly what God told the prophet Hosea to add to his list.

As shocking as that might be, let’s read the story and find out why. We begin in Hosea 1:2-10 as God uses a highly unusual method to make a point, over the span of a generation, and send a message to the people of Israel that includes illustrations with whom they must live and interact on a regular basis.

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

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

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

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

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

God’s instructions to Hosea, as he searched for a wife, was to choose a woman who already had a reputation for cheating and who was likely to cheat on him after he married her. This was hardly what Hosea expected when God had called him to be his spokesman and prophet. I am certain that Hosea expected that following God would include living a godly life that followed the Law of Moses, living a righteous life and, one would assume, having a wife that was similarly righteous. But God’s call, in this case, is for his prophet to marry a spouse that will cheat, leave him for extended periods of time, sleep with other men, and bear children with questionable parentage. And, despite the unexpected nature of God’s command, and despite how unusual, difficult, and complicated that it would make Hosea’s life, he did as God instructed.

This wasn’t a project that Hosea could complete in a week’s time. This wasn’t the usual kind of mission that God gave to his prophets of “Go to this place and say these words to this group of people.” Instead, God’s words were coming to the people of Israel as a demonstration, or an illustration, which was seen, every day, in the lives of Hosea and his family. God’s point was that Gomer’s unfaithfulness to Hosea represented Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, and so every time that she wandered off, or was missing from Hosea’s life, or was carrying a child that may, or may not, have been fathered by Hosea, everyone was reminded of their unfaithfulness to God.

Worse, the names of Hosea’s children were a daily reminder of Israel’s failures. The name of Hosea’s first son reminded the people of Israel that when Jehu was anointed as king, he took it upon himself to massacre the previous king, the king’s mother, and his entire family. Hosea’s daughter reminded the people that they were no longer loved by God, that God had withdrawn his blessing from them and would now give his blessing to the nation of Judah. And Hosea’s second son reminded Israel that because they had abandoned God, God would now abandon them. Every day, in ordinary, daily interactions from school to grocery shopping, to gossip, the people were confronted with their sins against God simply in the act of speaking or remembering the names of Hosea’s children.

That is a sad story, but it is also a warning. King David certainly knew that story and the lessons of that story were on his mind when David chose not to act on opportunities to take King Saul’s life. Even for us in the twenty-first century, it reminds us that our God is not just a god of love that loves everybody but is also a God of judgement, with high standards, who will remove his blessing from those who turn their backs on him.

I’m sure that someone will want to remind me that God’s standards of judgement changed with the coming of Jesus. But they didn’t. After the birth death and resurrection of Jesus, God did not change. God’s standards did not change. God’s definition of sin did not change. What changed is that when we stand before the judgement seat of God, Jesus has already paid price for the sins that we have committed. And it is because of that change that we are indebted to Jesus and why we live our lives in ways that express our gratitude to him.

How we do that, as well as warnings about how not to do that, are what Paul is talking about as he writes to the church in Colossae in Colossians 2:6-19 where we hear these words:

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

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

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

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

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

Paul reminds us that receiving Jesus as our savior and choosing to follow him is just the beginning. We must also continue to live lives in him that are rooted in him, built up in him, and which are strengthened in faith and overflowing with thankfulness. Next, Paul warns us about where our life and discipleship can go astray. He says that we can be taken captive by our dedication to traditions that flow out of deceptive philosophy and spiritual forces that are not godly and which do not point to Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who saved us, and it is Jesus who is in authority over every senator, president, king, prime minister, emperor, czar, ayatollah, or anything else and it is Jesus who has authority over every angel, demon, ghoul, ghost, goblin, or any other physical or spiritual creature. Our sins condemned us to death, but we are alive because of the sacrifice, and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

Christianity is more familiar and more recognizable to the people around us than it was in Colossae in the time of Paul. Our holidays and our celebrations are not as alien and strange to our neighbors and friends than they once were, but still, people often find what we do to be out of the ordinary. They don’t understand why we pray, or why we fast, they think we’re weird, or even lazy because we don’t want to do certain things on Sunday, or at Christmas, or Easter. They think it’s a waste for us to give gifts and offerings to the church when we could use them to buy a car, or jewelry, vacations, or fun toys.

But Paul says that we should ignore their judgement because the little things that we do as a part of our worship are shadows of a larger reality. They remind us that that the world is bigger than what we see and that the governments and powers of this world are not ultimate powers of the universe, that the physical world still bends to the reality of the spiritual world, that God is in control, that Jesus sits on the throne of heaven, and that all that we are, and all that we have, belongs to him.

Paul reminds us that there will always be false teachers who think too much of themselves, who claim to have visions, or claim special spiritual insight, and who will lead us toward the worship of angels and other false beliefs. Those people, Paul cautions, have lost their connection to Jesus, the head of the church, and the head of the body of Christ. And like our physical bodies, when the head is disconnected, growth stops, and death soon follows.

The accusation of Hosea three thousand years ago remains relevant. The adulterous wife that he was talking about wasn’t ever a woman, it was always the church. Both then and now, it was always us. Because the church is the bride of Christ, we can see ourselves as the wandering Gomer as we wander, become faithless, and pursue other interests and put other gods, other hobbies, money, cars, houses, work, or anything else in first place instead of Jesus. To put anything other than Jesus in first place, with priority, is to risk losing our head.

Stay close to Jesus. Live your lives in Jesus. Stay rooted and grounded in him, be strengthened in the faith that you were taught, and be overflowing with thankfulness. Test everything. Don’t hold on to traditions that aren’t godly. Keep hold of worship, and all our little spiritual rituals, holidays, and practices because each of them reminds us of who we are, and whose we are.

God hasn’t changed. God’s standards haven’t changed. God’s definition of sin hasn’t changed. And the need for us to remain faithful, and the importance of faithfulness, hasn’t changed. Because when we stand before the judgement seat of God, the only thing that will save us…is Jesus.

We are the bride of Christ.

Don’t leave him at the altar.

Don’t be… an adulterous wife.

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Second Chance. Last Chance.

May 1, 2022 PastorPartridge Sermon Acts, Alliance, Bayard, Broadway, chance, chances, East Rochester, Easter, followers of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John, Paul, Peter, Revelation, second, Street

Second Chance, Last Chance

May 01, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

John 21:1-19 Acts 9:1-20 Revelation 5:11-14

If you’ve ever followed the results of a sports tournament, and even if it was a chess tournament, you will remember that there are different structures for those competitions. In some, like the NFL championship, once the post-season starts, losing one game removes you from the competition entirely. But in others, like some team sports in the Olympics, losing just moves you to a second bracket and, although winning the gold medal is out of the question, winning that second bracket could still mean that your team could win bronze and appear on the medal podium.

A few years ago, after I had preached another message about second chances, my friend John Cassidy gave me what he had labelled as the “second chance flyswatter.” It lives up to its name because John melted a big hole in the middle of it.

Sometimes there are second chances.

As the followers of Jesus, we often say that we worship the God of second chances, and that we are a people of second chances. None of us here are perfect and all of us are here because, through his grace, and through the suffering of his son, Jesus Christ, God has given all of us a second, third, or fourth chance. And often, we’ve been given a lot more chances than that.

But how many chances do we get? Is there a point when our luck, and God’s grace, will run out?

Before we answer that, let’s go back to the story of Easter and remember the events of John 21:1-19 where it says…

^21:1 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: ²Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. ³“I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So, they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

⁴Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.

⁵He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”

“No,” they answered.

⁶He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

⁷Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. ⁸The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. ⁹When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

¹⁰Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” ¹¹So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. ¹²Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. ¹³Jesus came, took the bread, and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. ¹⁴This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

¹⁵When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

¹⁶Again Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

¹⁷The third time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

In this reading, we witness Jesus as he appears, for the third time, to the disciples. Even though they had seen Jesus after his resurrection, and even though the disciples were still spending time together, Peter isn’t sure what he’s going to do with his life and decides that he’s going back to work, back to his boat, and bring in some money to pay the bills. But Jesus has other plans. Even though Peter denied Jesus three times, heard the rooster crow, and felt like an utter failure, Jesus still intends to use him. On a beach in Galilee, Jesus meets the disciples, performs a miracle, forgives Peter, invites him back into ministry, and launches him, and the other disciples out into the world… again. Just because Jesus died and rose again, and just because Jesus is no longer physically walking with then twenty-four each day, doesn’t mean that their ministry is over. It’s a second chance. And it’s a huge second chance for Peter, who felt like a failure, had given up hope, and was ready to go back to his old life and disappear.

Jesus still has work for them to do.

But the story is bigger than that. In Acts 9:1-20, we hear the story of Saul, an enforcer for the Pharisees who was hunting down Christians for what he, and the chief priests of Israel, saw as believing, and preaching, false doctrines.

^9:1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest ²and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. ³As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

⁵“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. ⁶“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

⁷The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. ⁸Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing. So, they led him by the hand into Damascus. ⁹For three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything.

¹⁰In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

¹¹The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. ¹²In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

¹³“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. ¹⁴And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

¹⁵But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. ¹⁶I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

¹⁷Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁸Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, ¹⁹and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. ²⁰At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.

Saul wasn’t Peter. Saul didn’t deny Jesus and feel like a failure. Saul was the enemy of Jesus and everything that he stood for. Saul held the coats of the men who stoned Jesus’ follower Stephen to death. Saul believed that any and all teachings about Jesus were false doctrines and he was hunting down, arresting, and dragging the Jewish followers of Jesus back to Jerusalem for trial. He wasn’t just a paper tiger, he was a real, and serious, threat and even the leaders of the new Jesus movement were afraid of him.

But God doesn’t just stop Saul. God doesn’t just protect his followers from Saul. God gives Saul a second chance. Jesus reveals himself, shows him the truth, changes Saul’s heart, and transforms him into one of the most potent preachers, teachers, and influencers of all time.

But is there an end to God’s patience?

Will there be an end to the opportunity for second chances?

We find the answers to those questions in Revelation 5:11-14 and also discover what it means for each one of us.

¹¹Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. ¹²In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

¹³Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

¹⁴The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

As I read these words, the critical bit that stood out for me was “¹³Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lambbe praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!””

Every human being that has ever lived, plus every rabbit, worm, eagle, mountain lion, and every other animal that lives above, on, or under the earth, bows down, worships Jesus, gives praise to him, and recognizes that he will rule forever. And the elders of the church, and what might just be the four most powerful creatures in all of creation, bow down and say, “Amen” which means, literally, “I agree.”

This is the end. This is where the first creation ends, and judgement begins. This is the point at which there are no more second chances. Up until this moment there might have been a chance for a second chance. But afterwards, there will be only judgement.

Three times, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. But Jesus gave him a second chance.

Paul had declared himself an enemy of Jesus and had dedicated his life to stamping out Jesus’ teaching as well as the followers of Jesus. But Jesus gave him a second chance.

There is nothing that you have done, will do, or could do, that would make you ineligible for a second (or a three hundred and forty second) chance in this lifetime. But once this lifetime ends, that door closes. Every one of us has a limited time to choose Jesus. And, like Peter, those of us who have chosen Jesus have work to do. Like Peter, and like Paul, once we have accepted Jesus, we become a part of his ministry to reach the lost and to save the world.

One day, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. But our mission is do the best that we can, to share the good news so that as many of our friends, family, and the people around us are on the right side of God’s judgement. The Good News of Jesus Christ can’t be kept a secret.

We have work to do.

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Unmasked!

February 27, 2022March 2, 2022 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, change, Christ, church, E.T., fear, glory, God, James, Jesus, John, Luke, mask, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, Peter, presence, radiate, radiation, self-conscious, selfconscious, Street, transfiguration, United, unmask, unmasking, unveiling, veil

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Unmasked!

February 27, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Exodus 34:29-35 Luke 9:28-36 2 Corinthians 3:12 – 4:2

Have you ever felt self-conscious? Have you worried that you don’t look quite right, or suddenly notice that everyone seems to be looking at you? Maybe you have food stuck in your teeth, or your fly is unzipped, or your skin broke out and have a big zit or something. It happens to everyone. There even a powerful photograph of President Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat moments before they went in front of the cameras to sign the Camp David Accords. In that moment, all three of these men, presidents of powerful nations, simultaneously and self-consciously stop to straighten their neckties before stepping out into the glare of the public eye. And, I wonder if what we see in Exodus 34:29-35, was caused, at least in part, by Moses being self-conscious about everyone looking at him.

²⁹When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. ³⁰When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹But Moses called to them; so, Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. ³²Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

³³When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. ³⁴But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, ³⁵they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

After Moses met with God, he was outwardly, and visibly, changed. Our scripture says that his face was radiant, and from the description, that doesn’t seem to mean that he was happy in the way that we say, “the bride was radiant.” We are, apparently, to understand that Moses’ face was… glowing… with a light of its own and that light, not surprisingly, was at least disconcerting, if not frightening, to the people around him. The world didn’t seem any different to Moses, but Moses’ appearance was different, and it was noticeable, even shocking, to everyone who saw him. And so, either to calm the fears of everyone else, or to calm his own feelings of self-consciousness, Moses began to wear a mask in public after each of his meetings with God. There was something about being in the presence of God, that changes human beings. And we see something similar in Luke 9:28-36.

²⁸About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John, and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. ²⁹As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. ³⁰Two men, Moses, and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. ³¹They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. ³²Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. ³³As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

³⁴While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. ³⁵A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” ³⁶When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

The disciples had become accustomed to traveling with Jesus and it was probably not uncommon for them to wake up early and be walking before the sun had risen. But whatever the case on this day, whether morning or evening, the disciples that were walking with Jesus were half asleep. But as Jesus prayed, the appearance of his face changed… and even his clothes changed so that they became as bright as a flash of lightning. And then Moses and Elijah appeared, and they shone in “glorious splendor” perhaps, in a way, that was similar to the way that Moses’ face had shone when he met God. And so now, obviously, Peter, James, and John were absolutely, completely, 100 percent awake and were, in a sense, in shock. As soon as Moses and Elijah began to leave, Peter just begins to babble nonsense about building houses, worship centers, or something. And then, as if this hadn’t been enough, suddenly a cloud appears, envelops them, and the voice of God announces that the disciples should listen to Jesus because he is his son. And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over, and they found themselves standing, on the mountainside, alone.

What I find interesting, is that even though Peter had been babbling about building shelters, and although Peter was often prone to shoot off his mouth, and to say things without thinking, after this incredible experience, none of these three disciples say… anything. They don’t tell their families, they don’t tell the other disciples, they don’t tell anybody… anything. And again, I think this has a lot to do with the disciples feeling self-conscious. What they had just experienced was powerful, incredible, and probably more than a little… unbelievable. Even for people who had witnessed Jesus heal the sick and raise the dead, who would believe what they had just seen? Who would believe that they had seen the glory of God radiating from the face of Jesus? Who would believe that they had been surrounded by the holy cloud of God that they had read about in the scriptures, or that they had met Moses and Elijah? Who would believe that they had heard God’s own voice proclaiming that Jesus was his son? Would anyone believe them? Would they think they were crazy? Would the Pharisees and other church leaders declare that they were heretics and throw them out of the Temple?

And regardless of their self-consciousness or fear, the disciples could not un-see what they had seen. Like Moses, they had spent time in the presence of God, and they had been changed.

But what does that mean for us? What do we take away from these stories of Moses, Jesus, the disciples, and the transfiguration? In 2 Corinthians 3:12 – 4:2, Paul explained it to his church this way:

¹²Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. ¹³We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. ¹⁴But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. ¹⁶But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

^4:1 Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. ²Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Obviously, Paul’s understanding of why Moses wore a veil is not he same as mine and, I think, not the same as the reason given in Exodus. Exodus simply says that people were afraid to look at Moses because he glowed or radiated but Paul interprets that to mean that Moses wore a mask so that people couldn’t see that the radiance of God in him faded over time. Those are not at all the same things and, I think, Paul’s interpretation is unfair, and a little unkind, to Moses. But I also think that Paul says this to make a point. Paul makes the point of saying that accepting Christ is like tearing away the veil, or unmasking God so that we can see his glory more clearly. Christians, Paul says, are the “unveiled faces” that can see God more clearly and something happens to us because of it.

As I said before, human beings that have spent time in the presence of God, are changed by the experience. Moses glowed. He was both outwardly and inwardly different because he met God. Peter and James and John, and all the other disciples, were changed because of the time that they spent in the presence of both God and his son, Jesus. Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, his entire life was turned upside down, and he was never the same afterwards. Paul says that because we have met Jesus, and because we have been unmasked, and have seen the glory of God, our lives have also been changed. We don’t give up, we are encouraged, we no longer deceive other people or distort the word of God. Instead, we tell the truth as plainly as we can, and we tell the truth all the time, so that everyone will know that we can be trusted.

But there’s one more thing worth mentioning, I think. Paul believed that when Moses met God face to face, the glory of God that radiated from Moses’ face faded over time. And while I’m not sure that’s how I would interpret it, there is some sense to it. Human beings are not God. We do not, and we cannot, contain God’s glory. Being in the presence of God changes us, but the effect in us fades if we aren’t deliberate in doing things that bring us back into God’s presence. That’s why setting times of regular Bible study, prayer, and church attendance are so vital. Nearly every Sunday, we pray that God would be at work changing us into the people that he created us to be. But for that to happen, we need to do two things. First, we need to give God permission to change us, and be willing to change. And second, we must, regularly and deliberately, invite God into our lives, and set aside time for us to spend time in God’s presence.

But we warned: Just as Moses, Peter, James, John, Paul, and the disciples discovered, being in God’s presence changes people.

And maybe that’s why so many people seem to be afraid to do it.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Christian Extra-Terrestrials?

February 20, 2022February 21, 2022 PastorPartridge Sermon Adam, Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, compassion, compassionate, Corinth, E.T., Egypt, eternal, extra-terrestrial, extraterrestrial, forgiveness, forgiving, generosity, generous, Genesis, God, goodness, holiness, image, image bearers, Israel, Jesus, John, Joseph, love, Luke, merciful, mercy, Methodist, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, slavery, Steven Spielberg, Street, superhuman, United

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Christian Extra-Terrestrials?

February 20, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Luke 6:27-38

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

Many of you are old enough to have watched the Steven Spielberg movie, E.T. the Extraterrestrial and, even if you haven’t watched it, you probably at least know something about it. There’s also a good chance that E.T. is what you thought of when you saw today’s sermon title, “Christian Extraterrestrials.” But despite Elon Musk’s goal of establishing a colony on Mars, interplanetary Christians is not what I have in mind… at least for today. What I have in mind, however, is just a little bit different linguistically. I thought about using Superhuman, or Supernatural, but those words bring up mental images of Superman from the planet Krypton, or a couple of brothers on television who fight ghosts, demons, and other non-human creatures, so neither of those words really work either. But the definition of the prefix “extra” means “beyond” and so while “extra-terrestrial” can mean a person, or a creature, that is from beyond our planet, it might also mean someone from this planet whose abilities lie beyond the those of normal, or expected, people.

And besides, it made you curious.

In any case, “beyond terrestrial” is a legitimate translation of the language that is used in our scriptures today. But, before we get to that, let’s begin with the story of Joseph. Nearing the end of Joseph’s epic in Genesis, we join his story at the point where, having once been sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph is now, after Pharaoh, the second most powerful man in all of Egypt if not the second most powerful man on the planet. But at this moment, Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers, the same men who years earlier had beaten him, thrown him in an empty cistern, and sold him into slavery. And, understandably, when his brothers realize who he is, they are terrified. We rejoin that story in Genesis 45:3-11,15:

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.

Joseph’s brothers were terrified that, because he was now the most powerful man in Egypt, and not the pesky younger brother, they expected that he would take his revenge on them for what they had done. And, honestly, no one would be surprised if that had happened. Joseph had every right to be angry and it would have been fair for him to sell his brothers into slavery as they had done to him. But Joseph’s relationship with God gave him a different perspective. Rather than seeing this as an opportunity for revenge, Joseph sees that God has been intervening in human affairs, influencing events, and moving him into position so that he could rescue the entire nation of Egypt, and his family, the people that would one day become the nation of Israel. Joseph behaves in a way that is unexpected because his relationship with God has given him a vision of the world that is beyond human.

And we can see that same vision as Jesus teaches his disciples in Luke 6:27-38, as he says:

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 says that being ‘just as good’ as the evil people around you isn’t good enough. And being just as good as average and ordinary people isn’t good enough either. The standard for his followers is to do good even when no other reasonable person would do good, to be unreasonably good, or… beyond humanly good. Jesus wants his followers to love the people around them more than other reasonable people would love, to love in a way that is beyond humanly loving or, beyond earthly love.

And the examples that Jesus gives are so far beyond our understanding of normal, that they are understandably difficult. Jesus says that we should loan money, not just to people that we trust, and not just people that we believe can pay us back, but to loan money to people we don’t even like, people we regard as our enemies, and that includes people that we might be confident have no means, and possibly no intention, of ever paying us back. Jesus says that we should loan them the money with no expectation that we should get it back. In other words, just give money away to people that you hate, and who probably hate you back. Loving in ways that are beyond human, or beyond terrestrial, is exactly the point that Jesus is making. Our calling isn’t to love the people around us like ordinary, average, or even exceptional people love, our calling is to love the people around us the way that God loves. God is loving, kind, and merciful to the ungrateful and the wicked who neither like him nor even know him.

It’s worth noting here that “Do not judge” is currently one of the most commonly misquoted and misinterpreted verses of scripture. It most certainly does not mean that we should… never… judge. Matthew includes this same quote from Jesus, but records Jesus’ statement as saying, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1) To make this clear, some translations record this as “Do not judge unfairly” rather than simply do not judge. There are many times when Jesus asks, even commands us to judge between good and evil, honor and dishonor, to be discerning in all that we do, and other things. What Jesus clearly means is that we will be judged in the same way that we judge others. Don’t rush to judgement. Don’t judge without evidence. Or, as the translators have said, don’t judge unfairly. Likewise, we can expect to receive the generosity of God with the same, or better, generosity that we show others. Give and it will be given to you in an even more abundant and generous measure.

But why? Why is the standard for love, mercy, and compassion so much higher for Christians than it is for everyone else? Why does God demand that our behavior be beyond human, whether we call that super-human or extra-terrestrial? We find the answer to “why” in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth where he says (1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50) …

³⁵But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” ³⁶How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.

⁴²So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam [aka Jesus], a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. ⁴⁸As was the earthly man [Adam], so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man [Jesus], so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall webear the image of the heavenly man.

And although Paul takes a while to get to his point, the answer really is simple. The reason that the followers of Jesus Christ are commanded, and empowered, to behave in ways that are beyond human, and the reason that it isn’t okay to just be the same as other people, is because earth and heaven are not the same. Adam and Jesus are not the same. When we choose to follow Jesus Christ, we become image bearers of God. Our calling is no longer to look like everyone else and reflect the image of the world in which we live, but rather to reflect the image of a merciful, just, compassionate, and loving God and to reflect an entirely different reality.

As the image bearers of God, we must love more than humanly possible, be impossibly forgiving, extraordinarily generous, inhumanly merciful, and in every other way that we can, be an accurate reflection the goodness and holiness of God.

God has called us, commanded us, and empowered us to behave in ways that are super-human, and beyond earthly.

In other words, we are called to be nothing less than Extra-Terrestrial Christians.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Whom Do You Trust?

February 13, 2022February 14, 2022 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, government, Jesus, John, Methodist, money, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, politicians, poverty, resurrection, Street, trust, United, wealth

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Video of this worship service can be found here: https://youtu.be/t5u9MdvdDYg

Whom Do You Trust?

February 13, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Luke6:17-26

1 Corinthians 15:12-20

Do you remember the television game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

On that show, you earned money by answering multiple choice questions that increased in difficulty as you advanced. And, as the questions got harder, players had the opportunity to use three “lifelines.” They could ask the audience, they could reduce the number of possible answers from four to two, or they could phone a friend. Today, I want to think about that last one. Imagine that one question might stand between you and a million dollars. And that’s what every contestant had to think about when they had the opportunity play the game. Choose one person, and a million dollars hangs on their ability to answer one random question. And in that moment of decision, those contestants had to ask themselves, “Whom do I trust?”

In a variety of ways, we answer that question all the time. Whom do we trust to educate, or to babysit, or provide medical care, for our children? Whom do we trust with the money that we save for our retirement? Whom do we trust to run our government, church, or social club? Whom do we trust with our friendship, or our medical care, or a host of other things? The stakes of our decisions are high because our lives can, literally, hang in the balance. That’s exactly what we find in our scriptures for today. We begin with the words of God found in Jeremiah 17:5-10. Lives hang in the balance, but whom do you trust?

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.”

This is incredibly relevant to us in the twenty-first century. God doesn’t say that we are cursed for trusting any one person, but we can be cursed by God for putting the fundamental trust of our lives in any human, in any person, other than God. We must not put our trust in politicians, or in human governments, or in television, radio, or internet personalities. Humans fail. Humans disappoint. Humans can be selfish and turn away from God. If we want our lives to be blessed by God, then we must trust our lives to God and put our confidence entirely in God.

At the end of the day, God says, our reward is based on merit. Our reward isn’t based on what we thought, but on our deeds. In other words, our reward is based upon what we do. And please note, that this statement about rewards is not written in the past tense. This is not a judgement by God after our lives are over, but rewards that God gives while we are alive.

In Luke 6:17-26, Jesus delivers a message that is known as the Sermon on the Plain, and in that message, Jesus also has something to say about trust.

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.

Untold thousands of sermons have, undoubtedly been written about Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain but let’s think about its meaning in light of today’s focus on trust. Jesus says that the poor, the hungry, and the weeping are all blessed by God and most everyone will admit that this always sounds a bit odd. But as we think about trust, doesn’t it make sense that the poor are blessed, because they trust God for their daily living. The hungry trust God for their daily food. Those who weep lean on God for strength and we all cling to God when the people around us hate us, exclude us, insult us, and reject us. Likewise, the richer we are, the more comfortable we get, when our bellies are full, and when we are laughing and surrounded by friends, it is easy for us to put our trust somewhere other than God.

The emphasis of Jesus’ message is that we needn’t worry when things aren’t going well. None of us want to be poor, or hungry, filled with sorrow, or hated by the people around us, but our primary concern should never be for our comfort or our popularity. Our primary concern should always be about our relationship with, and our trust in God.

And in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Paul shares a message for his church that remains strikingly relevant in a twenty first century world that doubts the resurrection just as much as it did two thousand years ago. Paul says…

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 first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Then, like now, there were people, even preachers, that said Jesus had never been raised from the dead. They may have said that Jesus never really died, or that the resurrection never happened, and Paul could find folks with either of those opinions, just as you can now. But Paul makes it clear that if there is no resurrection, then all of Christianity falls apart. Anyone, and certainly any preacher or teacher, that says that the resurrection didn’t happen is a false witness. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we have no hope of resurrection, no hope of eternal life, and everything that we have believed, and our life’s work, has been a waste. Were that true, Paul says, our trust would have been completely misplaced, and we would be the most pitiable people in the world.

But Jesus did rise from the dead.

And that, Paul says, is the foundation of our faith, our church, our mission, who we are, and everything that we do. It is in Jesus Christ that we have placed our faith, and in whom we have put our whole trust.

Twenty centuries ago, the temptation was for people to put their faith and confidence in the Caesar, or the emperor, national governments, powerful armies, wealthy patrons, money, or false gods. And, although the names of the politicians, nations, and false gods may have changed, the things that tempt people away from God haven’t really changed that much. We’re still tempted to trust politicians, parties, national governments, powerful armies, employers, wealth, popularity, and other gods instead of the one true God, the creator of everything. Poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution, are not now, nor have they ever been something that anyone wants for their life, but they all have a way of clarifying our trust. The lesson isn’t that it’s good to be poor, but that the most important thing is to put our whole trust in God and to keep God in the center of all that we do, and all that we are.

We still wonder whom we can trust, but ultimately the answer is a lot more important than a game show and is worth a lot more than a million dollars. Times changed and the people of the Old and New Testaments would feel lost in the world of the twenty-first century, but wisdom doesn’t change. The wisdom of scripture is just a true today as it was two thousand, or even three thousand years ago.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

From Ruin to Rescue

February 6, 2022February 8, 2022 PastorPartridge Podcast, Sermon Alliance, Broadway, call, Christ, Chuck Colson, church, fishermen, Gospel, Isaiah, Jesus, John, Methodist, ministry, mission, nets, obediance, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, persecute, redemption, remember, rescue, ruin, Street, United, Watergate

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From Ruin to Rescue

February 06, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Isaiah 6:1-13

Luke 5:1-11

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

There is a story that is common to special Sundays with the Gideon’s, or to inspirational speakers who are recovered alcoholics, or drug addicts, or former gang members. It’s the same attraction that we have to the stories of people like Chuck Colson. Colson was convicted of breaking into the Watergate building and was a key participant in that Nixon-era scandal, but he encountered the message of the risen Jesus in prison and founded Prison Fellowship ministry to reach others who find themselves on the wrong side of iron bars. We are inspired by stories of people who got lost or reached rock bottom, but ultimately found a way to rebuild their lives.

As we read the stories of scripture, we find many stories like that and, in fact, the whole point of God’s message is a story of redemption, rescue, and restoration. But before a story of rescue can be told, we often need to hear a story of ruin. Before we hear how a person rose from the ashes like a phoenix, there is often a story of how they crashed and burned. And, for that, we begin with the story of Israel contained in Isaiah 6:1-13 where we hear this:

^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!”

⁹He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
¹⁰Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.
Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

¹¹Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
    and the fields ruined and ravaged,
¹²until the Lord has sent everyone far away
    and the land is utterly forsaken.
¹³And though a tenth remains in the land,
    it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
    leave stumps when they are cut down,
    so the holy seed will be the stump* in the land.”

Isaiah has a vision of God in all his glory, sitting on the throne of heaven and Isaiah cries out that he is ruined or, we perhaps understand his intentions better by translating that as “I am a dead man walking.” It was a common belief that any imperfect and sinful mortal who saw a perfect and holy God face to face would immediately die. But an angel, a seraph, takes a hot coal from the altar, touches it to Isaiah’s lips and says that his guilt has been taken away and atonement has been made for his sin. And so, when God asks who he might send into the world as his ambassador, Isaiah raises his hand and volunteers.

But the message that God has for the people of Israel is terrifying. God’s message is that the people just aren’t getting it. They don’t see, they don’t understand, they’re sick, and they don’t want to get better, and God’s judgement is that for their disobedience, he will allow them to suffer the consequences of their unbelief. And, when Isaiah asks how long this punishment will endure, God replies that Israel will be left to their own devices until their houses, fields, people, and everything else are utterly ruined and the trees are left as stumps.

Stumps.

The word “stumps” is worth noting because a few chapters later, Isaiah refers to the messiah as a shoot that comes up from the “stump of Jesse.” (Isaiah 11:1) God’s punishment is to turn Israel over to the natural consequences of their disobedient actions and refuse to rescue them. But, in the same passage, God hints at the hope of future rescue.

And then, after we have heard about what happens to a disobedient people, and what happens to them when they refuse to hear the words of God, in Luke 5:1-11, we are given a vision of what happens when God’s people do listen and are obedient to his words as Jesus begins his ministry and encounters fishermen by the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

^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.

Jesus had barely started his ministry but even so, Simon, who would later be called Peter, was willing to let Jesus borrow his boat as a place to preach to the people gathered on the shores of Galilee. After Jesus was done preaching, he asked Simon, a professional fisherman who had been fishing the shores of this lake for his entire life, to go out into deep water and to throw out the nets that he and his partners had just spent hours cleaning. Worse still, the fisherman had not only just cleaned the nets, they had spent the entire night fishing with them and caught nothing but weeds, grass, sticks, and rocks. They had been awake all night. They had been throwing heavy, wet, nets into the sea and hauling them back out, hand over hand, time after time, hour after hour, all night. And then, after they had spent their morning cleaning and repairing those same nets, they were ready to go home, see their families, eat, get some sleep, and get ready to do it again. They were tired, sore, hungry, and probably more than a little grouchy.

But despite their hunger, irritation, fatigue, professional experience, and every other reason that they had to say no, and tell Jesus to get stuffed, Simon tells Jesus, “…because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

“Because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

And because Simon and his friends are willing to be obedient, even when they don’t even really know Jesus, and even though everything says that they should just go home and get some sleep, their lives are completely transformed. This is the opposite of what we saw a moment ago in Isaiah 6. There, the people of God knew the words of God but selfishly chose to go their own way and to do their own thing. Here, even though they haven’t yet recognized Jesus as the Messiah, these fishermen are willing to be obedient, even in the face of their own hunger, fatigue, and irritation. And it is that willingness to be obedient that transforms their lives.

And that brings us to 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, where we find Paul warning the church in Corinth that they seem to be drifting toward selfishness and away from obedience. Paul says:

^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 says that the people of the church need to remember where they started, to remember the gospel message that they had originally found so compelling that they had left behind their former gods, and former religions, and chosen to follow Jesus instead. It was that message, Paul says, that saved them and abandoning that message would make everything that they had done, and everything that they had endured, completely pointless. He then recites four points that are still contained on many of our creeds today, that Christ died, was buried, raised on the third day, and appeared to Peter and the twelve.

But Paul also says that although he had once persecuted the church, he was shown grace by God, had been transformed, and was now a missionary to the Gentiles for the cause of Jesus Christ. Like Peter, Paul’s entire life was transformed by his obedience to God, and he urges the people of the church in Corinth to remember that this was the power of the gospel in which they had put their faith.

We face a choice between ruin and redemption, between ruin and rescue, and the thing that transforms one to the other is our obedience to God and our willingness to do the things that Jesus asks us to do. Clinging to selfishness will inevitably lead to our destruction, but like Peter, the fishermen, and like Paul, our obedience to Jesus Christ can completely transform our lives into something new, powerful, unexpected, and completely amazing.

But, having been rescued, God asks us to rescue others. God is still asking, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

Are you ready to be obedient? Are you ready to fish for people?

What will be your answer?

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Missing the Point

January 30, 2022January 31, 2022 PastorPartridge Sermon Alliance, Broadway, Christ, church, excuses, faith, hope, Jeremiah, Jesus, John, love, Methodist, ministry, miss, miss the point, mission, Ohio, Partridge, Paul, point, railroad, Street, United

You can find the livestream of this service here: https://youtu.be/NPJQzZy3N9U

Missing the Point Podcast

Some thoughts on how the followers of Jesus should have conversations about politics and other difficult (and divisive) subjects can be found in this special video short of today’s benediction:

https://youtu.be/K-5cLL-5p-s

Missing the Point

January 30, 2022*

By Pastor John Partridge

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Luke 4:21-30

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

To find an example for this morning’s message, I opened my search engine and entered, “People who missed the point” and I was not disappointed. I was instantly directed to an article on Buzzfeed with a title that almost exactly matched my search, and while some of the illustrations are too visual to explain here there were still plenty of examples to make you smile… and groan a little. There was the photo a handicap “accessible” bathroom that was at the top of two stairs, a person using the blade of a Swiss army knife to open a wine bottle while the corkscrew was plainly in view a fraction of an inch from their thumb, a photo of a CNN “Breaking News” bulletin that the Titanic had sunk 102 years ago, a “connect the dots” coloring book in which the printed dots were already connected, a company named “Just Wireless” that was selling computer cable wires, a restaurant that offered a veggie burger with bacon, and Crest mouthwash that advertised 24-hour protection with instructions to use twice per day.

Sometimes people seem to completely miss the point… and sometimes it’s funny when they do. We probably all do it from time to time. But sometimes missing the point isn’t funny at all, and sometimes the results of missing the point can be downright tragic. We begin in Jeremiah 1:4-10 where we hear God cautioning a very young Jeremiah, possibly only 12 years old, that he should not miss the point.

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

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

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

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

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

God tells Jeremiah that he has known everything about him, about his life, about his purpose, and about his calling to mission and ministry since before he was even conceived by his parents. But Jeremiah is certain that God has made a mistake, misses the point, and argues with God because he is certain that God cannot use a twelve-year-old to bring a message to the leaders, priests, royalty, and the king of Israel. But, again, Jeremiah misses the point and God says something that amounts to, “What part of I set you apart,” or “I appointed you” did you not understand? God says that the point is not that Jeremiah is young and will, almost certainly, be disrespected by the elders of Israel because of his age, the point is that God, the creator of the universe, is sending him, is going with him, and promises to rescue him from whatever happens. And to make that point even clearer, God touches Jeremiah and says that he has put the words of God into his mouth and gives him the authority to uproot, tear down, destroy, overthrow, build, or to plant entire nations and kingdoms.

Boom.

That’s the point.

And, as we rejoin the story of Jesus that we began last week (The Power of Systems Integration), we discover that the people of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth missed the point quite spectacularly in Luke 4:21-30 after Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll and announced the fulfillment of scripture.

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 leprosyin 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.

Jesus announces that the people in the synagogue are witnesses as he begins the fulfillment of some of the messianic prophecies found in the writings of Isaiah, and the response of the people is “Who does this guy think he is? We know him. We’ve known him his entire life. We grew up with his parents. Obviously, the Jesus we know cannot be the Messiah.” Jesus replies by pointing out that their attitude was expected. Prophets throughout history were commonly misunderstood and completely disrespected in their hometowns for the same reasons that the people of Nazareth misunderstood Jesus. And it was for that reason that Elijah performed a miracle for an outcast, outsider, and foreigner and why Elisha healed the leprosy of the commander of an enemy army rather than any of the people of Israel.

Jeremiah and the people of Nazareth made the same mistake. They assumed that the focus was on them when God repeatedly tells us that the work of the kingdom is not about us. It’s about God. And when Jesus reminded them that they weren’t the center of attention, that Israel’s greatest prophets revealed God’s power to outsiders, and that he simply isn’t going to perform miracles on command, they got so angry that they transformed into a mob that tried to kill him. And that’s when the miracle happens. The synagogue mob tries to throw Jesus off a cliff… and he walks right through the crowd and goes on his way. There seems to be only two possibilities. Either Jesus simply faces down the mob and they suddenly have a change of heart, or some other miracle happened such that they were stunned, or Jesus became invisible, or something. But from what we know about mobs, and how intense they are when they become violent, it seems obvious that God miraculously intervened at this moment so that Jesus just walks away and goes on about his business.

The people in the synagogue in Nazareth completely missed the point.

But how often are we guilty of the same thing?

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Paul writes to the church and cautions them not to miss the point saying:

^13:1 If I speak in the tonguesof 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 whole point of ministry in the kingdom of God, is to be loving while we’re doing it. The point is that everything eventually ends. Prophecies end, languages end, voices end, childhood ends, people end, knowledge ends, everything eventually ends. The only exceptions to the rule, the only things that last forever, are faith, hope, and love. And love is the greatest of the three.

Too often we, even in the church, miss the point. Too often, like Jeremiah, we think that ministry is about us. That we can’t witness, that we can’t minister to others, that we can’t participate in God’s mission and ministry because of some limitation that we think we have. We’re too young, we’re too old, we’re too shy, we’re not good with words, we’re not popular enough, or rich enough, or good looking enough, or some other excuse with which we’ve convinced ourselves. But God’s reply to us is the same as it was to Jeremiah. It’s not about us. It’s all about the God who created the universe. And if, and when, God sends us, he goes with us and give us the power to do the thing that he sent us to do.

Too often miss the point like the people in the synagogue of Nazareth. We think that God will perform miracles for us on command. We pray for something that we want and get angry, and even we lose faith, when God doesn’t do what we think God ought to do.

And too often we miss the point like the people of Corinth. We want to do ministry the way that we want to do it. We want things to be the way that we want them. We want the rules to be the way we want them. We want to say whatever we want to say in whatever way we feel like saying it. We want to do whatever we want to do. We do things our way and convince ourselves that we’re doing the work of God. And we do all these things without any regard to how it makes other people feel. But Paul reminds us that we’ve forgotten the point if we forget to be loving. We can’t tell the world about a loving God while we’re hurting them. Mission and ministry are great. God calls all of us to kingdom work. All of us are called to be a part of God’s mission and ministry. But we miss the point if the people around us can’t see that our ministry is filled with faith, hope, and love.

Yes, we need to tell the people of the world about Jesus.

But they can’t, and they won’t, hear about his love if they can’t feel our love first.

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*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Pastor Partridge

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Missing the Point

Missing the Point

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