Sermon 3-10-10

As is our custom during these Wednesdays of Lent we read the entire Passion History compiled from all four of the Gospels in one narrative. Last week we finished reading the account of Jesus being arrested by Pilate and we continue tonight...

So Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” “If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.” Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” “But we have no right to execute anyone,” the Jews objected. This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken indicating the kind of death he was going to die would be fulfilled. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.”

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Is that your idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?” “Do you think that I am a Jew?” Pilate replied. “It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “you are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this we went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” When Jesus was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate asked him, “Don’t you hear how many things they are accusing you of?” But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge. The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer?” But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. But the chief priests insisted, “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching; he started in Galilee and has come all the way here.” On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. When he learned that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at that time.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracles. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and teachers of the law were standing there, vehemently accusing him. Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe they sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became friends – before this they had been enemies. Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in our presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and release him.”

Now it was the governor’s custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one to you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him. While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, because I have suffered a great deal today in a dream on account of him.” But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.

Sermon –

If you walk in my office you will see a marker board on the wall and at the top of the marker board it says, “Welcome to the Inspirational Home of the Peter Principle”. Now you may be asking yourself, “What in the world is the Peter Principle?” The Peter Principle was developed by Dr. Lawrence J. Peter who studied organizational life and developed the principle that says employees, in every organization, tend to rise to their level of incompetence. So as you enter my office you will see, “Welcome to the Inspiration Home of the Peter Principle” - welcome to the inspirational home where your Pastor has risen to his level of incompetence!

Now you may be wondering who told me to write that on the marker board. Well, God told me to; He’s the one who told me to put it on the marker board. At this point you are probably saying, “All right, we’ve suspected it in the past, he has seven Barbie dolls behind the altar, he has this whacky saying on his marker board, God is speaking to him and not just biblical truth but very specific things - what’s going on with this guy? This is not right! This is not normal! This doesn’t make any sense!”

In our Lenten series we’re trying to make sense out of life and we are going to make sense out of what I wrote on my marker board. In order to make sense out of life, you have to know what God’s plan is, how you fit into it, and what specific things He wants you to do in life. We began talking about this a week ago and we looked at the third principle from Experiencing God: God invites you to become involved with Him in His work. We talked about how easy it is to find out what God wants you to do because all you have to do is simply watch to see where He is working and join Him in His work.

But there are times when you need specific information, really specific information, about what to do and how to do it and last Sunday we started talking about the fourth principle:

GOD SPEAKS TO YOU BY THE HOLY SPIRIT THROUGH

THE BIBLE, PRAYER, CIRCUMSTANCES IN LIFE and OTHER CHRISTIANS

TO REVEAL HIS PURPOSE and HIS WILL

Last Sunday we discussed that it is not important how God does it; the important thing is that He does it. When you need specific information, when God needs to reveal something He wants you to do, He will speak by the Holy Spirit through His word, prayer, circumstances in life, and other Christians. Probably the most abstract of these four concepts is the Bible and prayer. We tend to view prayer as us going to God, not as God speaking to us and we wonder what specific information the Bible, which was written 2,000 years ago, can give us. Does the Bible tell you what to write on your marker board? Can I open the Bible and read, “Pastor Berry, in 2010 write on your marker board ‘Welcome to the Inspirational Home of the Peter Principle”? I can’t find that in the Bible, so how do we know those things?

It all began on February 21 in Adult Bible Class when we were discussing Luke Chapter 5, and read about Jesus calling His disciples. Jesus didn’t call the trained religious leaders of the day to be His disciples, He called fishermen. God took men that were competent at fishing, took them out of fishing, and placed them in a line of work that they were basically not trained to do. They were, we might say, incompetent. Why did God do that? Well, He’s done that all through Biblical times - read the Old Testament, read the New Testament. He always calls the unqualified, the incompetent, to do His work because if we can handle it, we don’t need God. God wants people who can’t handle it, who are incompetent, because they need to relay on Him. That’s how He works.

As I was thinking about that, I ran across a very interesting Bible verse that reminded me of the same theme, 2 Corinthians 3:5, “At all times our competence comes from the Lord” and I thought, “That fits right in!” So one day during my prayer time that week it hit me like a ton of bricks. God was saying, “Pastor, I put you in a place where you are incompetent so you need to rely on Me each and every day.” And as I thought, “That is the Peter Principle at work. The Peter Principle is really Biblical!” And I said, “God, I don’t want to forget this. I need a reminder every day that I need to rely on You and do things Your way and not my way. How can I do that?” And the light went on – write it on the marker board so that I see every time I walk into my office!

Is that God speaking? That is God using the Bible and prayer to come up with something specific He wanted me to do? It doesn’t matter how He does it, He communicates what He wants. Every day I remember that I am an illustration of the Peter Principle, that I can rely on God and I can do whatever He tells me to do because, as 2 Corinthians 3:5 says, “Our competency comes from the Lord”!

Things are relatively easy to see when God guides through circumstances in life. God will communicate exactly where you should go, what you should do, and what needs to be done and He is still working today. One of our members, we’ll call her Miss S. was with her friends and her mother in Florida and they were enjoying their vacation at a condo. Her mother suddenly had some type of seizure and Miss S thought her mother was dying. But God knew something that Miss S didn’t know. God knew that an emergency room nurse was in the condo below. God wanted to direct Miss S to the emergency room nurse downstairs so how do you think He’s going to do that? Can Miss S look in the Bible and say, “Wow, there it is, Luke 23:7 “There’s an emergency room nurse in the condo downstairs”? Or could Miss S, even though she thinks her mother is dying say, “There’s not a lot of time, I think my mother is dying but let’s just pray and have a time of silence”? You would be way too frazzled to hear anything that God would be speaking. So what would God use? Circumstances in life would seem to be a pretty good way to do it. Or, God could have shouted down from heaven, “Pound on the door below you!”

And in a way He did. Her friend called 911 on her cell phone but because it was a cell phone, the location was not connected to the system. And again, they are on vacation in a condo in Florida and she didn’t know the address so when the operator asked for it, she ran downstairs, opened the door and looked at the number on the front of the building. When she told the operator the number, the 911 operator said, “There’s no such address as that.” And there was no such address because what she was looking at was the number for the individual unit; the operator needed the address of the apartment complex.

So what did she do next? She pounded on the neighbor’s door hoping that someone was there that knew the address. The lady downstairs opened the door and asked, “Is there a problem?” Miss S’s friend said, “Yes, a lady upstairs may be dying!” The neighbor said, “I’m an emergency room nurse” and ran up the stairs. That is God guiding through circumstances in life and it doesn’t matter how He does it, the only thing that matters is that He does it!

And remember when John and Doris Bauerman, our missionaries from Macow were here? They said, “Pray that God would guide and direct us.” Well, they thought that they were supposed to go back to Macow but God guided them to stay in the United States through circumstances in life. When John visited the doctor, he found out that he had some health problems and the doctor told him that he needed to stay in the United States. We could say, “What’s going on, how could God do this?” but that is God guiding through circumstances in life.

Those are examples of how God will guide you through circumstances in life. Don’t be disappointed by those circumstances, God is guiding and directing. If you get up in the morning and pray, “God, guide and direct my life” then you know that those things that happen are not chance happenings, God is guiding. Because you asked Him to when you got up in the morning, you can expect Him to do it.

And God gives advice through other Christians but if He is guiding through other Christians, make sure you run the advice through the Bible. You may want to pray about it, and you may want to ask for confirmation through circumstances in life. As an example, well-meaning Christians told this congregation, as we were trying to follow God in what He was doing, not to build Trinity Christian School. But this congregation ran that advice by other means and saw that the door was open to join God in what He was doing.

But there are times that other Christians give us good advice to guide us and direct us. John Bauerman tells this really great story about how he got to be a missionary: he his wife, Doris, had just about everything they wanted in life. They were retired, travelled around the country and enjoyed the good times of life; they were in those golden years. But John found those golden years pretty boring and empty; he felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled. One time they were camping in Texas, sitting around the campfire and in their group was, in John’s words, this “old German Lutheran Minister.” John talked about how unfulfilled he was and the minister looked right at him and said, “You what your problem is? You’re serving yourself. You’re not going to find peace and happiness until you stop serving yourself and start serving God.”

Well, John went home and prayed about it and realized that he had been serving himself; he was the one who was number one, not God’s ministry, God’s purpose or what He is doing. John knew he was number one and knew that had to go. So he applied for mission work, was sent to Macow and when he was here, we saw one happy, fulfilled man! God guided John and Doris through the advice from other Christians.

And remember this, you don’t have to worry about how it’s going to happen, who God will bring in, or how to find that passage in the Bible. It doesn’t matter how it works, when you are in touch with God through the Holy Spirit, it works! And all we need to say to that is AMEN!

Prayer -

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Holy Spirit who works through the Bible, works in our baptism, and works wherever Your word is talked about, meditated on, listened to, preached, or read. Thank you for the Holy Spirit and thank You for the promises in John 16 that tells us the Spirit will lead us in all truth. And, Heavenly Father, we ask that as we continue to search our Bibles, continue to pray, and continue to listen, that you use circumstances in life and other Christians so that we would see your direction and that we would have the specific information we need each day to serve You. And we pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Home Page News Contact Us