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Sermon Central Staff
Joshua 1:1-3:1
Mark 10:17-10:22
1 John 4:7-4:21
Matthew 6:9-6:13
Mark 14:32-14:42
Deuteronomy 6:4-6:5
$3.00 WORTH OF GOD, PLEASE
Tim Hansel in his book "When I Relax I feel Guilty," writes some insights of what most people want from God.
"I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please."
If we would be totally honest, the idea of transformation really scares us. That is because we know that such a radical change would be quite uncomfortable. We realize that with transformation comes a major overhaul of our lives and priorities.
(From a sermon by Scott Chambers, The Mission if You Accept it: Transformation, 2/15/2011)
Young Harold had a really bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder. On Palm Sunday, Harold’s Sunday School teacher sent empty plastic eggs home with each of her students. Mrs. Wilson told them to bring something back in the eggs next Sunday to represent Easter. She really didn’t expect Harold to bring anything, because he never listened in class. The next Sunday her children brought their eggs back. Susan had a pretty spring flower inside her egg. Joey had a little cross in his egg. Jackie had put a plastic butterfly in her egg. But, just as Mrs. Wilson suspected, there was nothing in Harold’s egg. She was surprised that he even remembered to bring it back! She had praised each of the other children for what they brought, but she didn’t say anything about Harold’s empty egg. Harold looked at her with anticipation and said, "Mrs. Wilson, you didn’t say anything about my egg!" Mrs. Wilson said, "But, Harold, you don’t have any reminder of Easter in your egg." Harold replied, "Uh-huh! It’s empty just like Jesus’ tomb!"
The circumstances of life often speak to us like Lucy one day spoke to Charlie Brown. Lucy said to Charlie Brown "Sometimes, I feel we are not communicating: You, Charlie Brown, are afoul ball in the line drive of life. You’re often in the shadow of your own goal post you’re a miscue. You ‘re 3 putts on the 18th green. You are a 7-10 split in the 10th frame. You have dropped a rod and reel in the lake of life. You’re a missed free throw. You’re a shacked 9-iron, a called 3rd strike, a bug on the windshield of life! Do you understand? Have I made myself clear?"
But the Christian who is living as a disciple considers that which he is confidently assured of-that he will be like Christ one day and that as he lovingly surrenders to God, he can be blessed by becoming more like Christ today. Then he replies like Paul in verse 31, "God is for me!"
Barna research shows:
That divorce in the church is just as commonas outside the church. In the church 33%, outside the church 34%.
Also, the south is second in the nation in divorce. The south has a divorce rate of 35%, just behind the west (38%), and leading the Midwest (32%) and Northeast (28%).
Another striking percentage for us as Baptists is that we lead the nation’s major denominations in divorce rates at 29%. Protestant churches overall is at 25%.
The divorce rate amongst the generations is also a bit of surprise:
Seniors (73+) = 18%
Builders (53-72) = 37%
Boomers = 34%
Busters = 7% (Most of these are not old enough to
marry yet).
What does this say about marriage in America? Is it old fashioned. One scholar said that long term marriage commitment isn’t good for mode...
Frequently in the wedding service we have the ceremony of lighting the unity candle by the bride and groom. The couple each takes a small burning candle, representing their solitary life thus far, and together they light the large, center, wedding candle. When they put their small candles back into their holders, they can either extinguish them, or leave them burning to represent their unique personalities.
During the wedding it is interesting to see whether they leave the individual candles aglow or put them out. At a recent wedding, the bride and groom put the individual candles back into their holders with the flames burning.
Then the bride, with an impish gleam in her eye, bent over and blew out her husband’s candle. The congregation burst into laughter. Later, one fellow commented: “During the marriage ceremony two become one --- on the honeymoon they discover which one.” (from Parables, etc 5/83 pg. 5)
What is servanthood? It’s a question we have to answer because today the concept has largely been abandoned by our culture. In his book, The Jesus Style, Gayle D. Erwin described servanthood this way:
"A servant’s job is to do all he can to make life better for others - to free them to be everything they can be. A servant’s first interest is not in himself but others … Servanthood is a loving choice we make to minister to others."
Gayle D. Erwin, The Jesus Style, 48
Illus.: “When Blind Eyes Were Opened”
D.L. Moody, the famed evangelist, told this story at one of his meetings: One evening just before Christmas, a man was walking through the streets of an Eastern city. The store windows were all beautifully decorated, and he observed three little girls intensely interested in one of them. He discovered that the girl in the center was blind, and the others were trying to describe the beautiful things in the window. “Why,” they said, “can’t you see that Teddy bear and that doll? Just look at that pretty pink bow!”
But the poor little girl stood with a blank expression on her face and could not appreciate the beautiful things before her. “Now,” said Moody, “this is an illustration of the effort we Christians are making to arouse the unconverted to an interest and delight in spiritual things. The reason we can’t do so is because the sinner is spiritually blind.” Moody had scarcely concluded when a reporter was on the platform asking him where he had heard that story. “Oh,” said Moody, “I read it in one of those daily papers. I have forgotten which one.” Then the reporter said, “I’m the one who wrote the story because I was there and saw the whole thing. I see now that I’m just like that little girl, spiritually blind.” That man was converted then and there.
THEY PAID THE PRICE
Americans, you know the 56 men who signed our Declaration of Independence that first 4th of July--you know they were risking everything, don’t you? Because if they won the war with the British, there would be years of hardship as a struggling nation. If they lost they would face a hangman’s noose. And yet there where it says, "We herewith pledge, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," they did sign. But did you know that they paid the price?
When Carter Braxton of Virginia signed the Declaration of Independence, he was a wealthy planter and trader. But thereafter he saw his ships swepted from the seas and to pay his debts, he lost his home and all of his property. He died in rags.
Thomas Lynch, Jr., who signed that pledge, was a third generation rice grower and aristocrat--a large plantation owner--but after he signed his health failed. With his wife he set out for France to regain his failing health. Their ship never got to France; he was never heard from again.
Thomas McKean of Delaware was so harrassed by the enemy that he was forced to move his family five times in five months. He served in Congress without pay, his family in poverty and in hiding.
Vandals looted the properties of Ellery and Clymer and Hall and Gwinett and Walton and Heyward and Rutledge and Middleton. And Thomas Nelson, Jr. of Virginia raised two million dollars on his own signature to provision our allies, the French fleet. After the War he personally paid back the loans wiping out his entire estate; he was never reimbused by his government. And in the final battle for Yorktown, he, Nelson, urged General Washington to fire on his, Nelson’s own home, then occupied by Cornwallis. And he died bankrupt. Thomas Nelson, Jr. had pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.
The Hessians seized the home of Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey. Francis Lewis had his home and everything destroyed, his wife imprisoned--she died within a few months. Richard Stockton, who signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging his life and his fortune, was captured and mistreated, and his health broken to the extent that he died at 51. And his estate was pillaged.
Thomas Heyward, Jr. was captured when Charleston fell. John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside while she was dying; their thirteen children fled in all directions for their lives. His fields and gristmill were laid waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves and returned home after the War to find his wife dead, his children gone, his properties gone. He died a few weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Lewis Morris saw his land destroyed, his family scattered. Philip Livingston died within a few months of hardships of the War.
John Hancock, history remembers best, due to a quirk of fate--that great sweeping signature attesting to his vanity, towers over the others. One of the wealthiest men in New England, he stood outside Boston one terrible night of the War and said, "Burn Boston, though it makes John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it." He, too, lived up to the pledge.
Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, few were long to survive. Five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes--from Rhode Island to Charles...
As the medical field will tell you, divorce has traumatic impact on health.
Children of divorce are 25-30% percent more vulnerable to becoming ill.
Children of divorce live shorter lives.
Choosing Wisely. Before You Divorce. DivorceCare. P.O.Box Wake Forest, North Carolina, 27588. 1996, pg. 41.
"A simple, childlike faith in a Divine Friend solves all the problems that come to us by land or sea."
