SERIES: Worship 101 Message: How We Worship

(Click pictures to enlarge)

Louie Giglio – The Air We Breathe
1. this is how worship is defined by Louie Giglio in his book, The Air I Breathe –
worship is…

our response,
both personal & corporate,
to God –
for who He is
and what He has done
expressed in and by the things we say
and the way we live

2. the key word is response. Worship is our response to God. We don’t initiate worship, God does.

3. this is exactly what Paul wrote in Romans 12:1. Worship is our response to God for who he is & what he has done = in view of God’s mercy

4. we express our worship in and by the things we say and the way we live = offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy & pleasing to God

therefore
1. therefore is a pivot point in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. For 11 chapters Paul has been painstakingly unfolding, point by point, this thing called salvation – how God in Christ has saved us from our sin.

2. 11 chapters of some of the weightiest theology in the entire Bible:
§ God’s wrath & righteousness & judgment upon sin
§ our fall and sin and death
§ Christ’s death & resurrection
§ coming of the Spirit to sanctify & keep us
§ God’s faithfulness to his elect & to Israel

3. and now Paul starts in a different direction – therefore. At 12:1 Paul moves from
§ doctrine to practice
§ theology to ethics. From who we are in Christ to how we are to live in Christ

I urge you brothers
1. urge is a strong. This is no suggestion. A word of passion & conviction. Urge was used in the ancient world with troops about to go into battle.

2. it’s not a think word; its an action word. Because of the wonderful things of God written in chapters 1-11, there is a way of life waiting to be lived. Urge – get to it, live it, do it.

in view of God’s mercy
1. this phrase has knocked me off my feet all week. Listen closely. Paul sums up 11 salvation chapters with the word mercy. It’s all about God’s mercy. The foundation of our new life in Christ is God’s mercy!

2. not God’s wrath or righteousness or judgment. Not Christ’s death or resurrection. Not the Spirit’s sanctifying work.

3. but the mercies of God! Mercy, the one word that sums up all of the words of Romans 1-11.

4. what is mercy? Simple meaning. In the Bible mercy is what God shows to the weak & helpless. Mercy is God helping the helpless do what they cannot do for themselves.

5. and in this case, what we are helpless to do for ourselves is save ourselves. Is get back in good standing with God, our Creator & Father.

6. Paul to the Romans, to all of us – you weak, helpless, unable to undo your sin people. God has helped you to find salvation in Christ. In light of his help, his mercy, let me tell you about the only appropriate response.

7. mercy calls for a response, deserves a response, begs for a response. And the response that mercy calls for, urges us to, is to live a life of worship. Worship is our response to God’s mercy.

to offer your bodies as living sacrifices
1. our response to God’s mercy – offer our bodies to him as a living sacrifice. This is the language of worship. This language finds its beginnings in the Old Testament sacrificial system.

2. offer is a technical term used of Old Testament sacrifices. Paul is forming a contrast here between Old & New Testament sacrifices:
§ OT sacrifices given to make atonement for sin – since Jesus has become our atonement, we offer our bodies to God out of gratitude
§ OT sacrifices included sheep, goats, bulls, cereal – we place ourselves on the altar as a sacrifice
§ OT sacrifices were dead when offered – our sacrifices are living

3. body is key. Body is a way of saying our whole life. Worship is a way of life. Wherever our bodies go, whatever our bodies do, can become places & acts of worship.

4. how? If we give our bodies, our very lives, to God. If we commit ourselves to honoring him in & by the things we say & the way we live. This Pauline, Romans 12:1 understanding of worship, goes far beyond our Sunday morning worship as the community of faith. It both includes it & transcends it.

5. where do your bodies go? What do your bodies do?:
§ church – singing, prayer, preaching, teaching, serving, loving, giving
§ workplace – teaching school, pumping gas, writing memos, building houses, managing money, building computer systems, raising nursery stock, driving truck, selling electrical supplies, working in a hospital
§ neighborhood – the way you keep up your property, the kind of neighbor you are
§ community – how you treat people, cheer for your kids soccer game, coach your kids basketball team, interact with the checker at Thriftway or the waiter at Thai Dish or the person pumping your gas at Chevron
§ home – the way you treat your spouse or kids or parents, spend your money, plan your days, use the internet, deal with conflict & disappointment, celebrate special days, cooking, eating
§ world – the way you deal with issues of poverty, injustice, care for God’s creation, view your enemies, treat our public officials, vote at election time, carry ourselves in the public square
§ sexuality – the way we use our bodies in celebration of our sexuality matters to God, can be an act of worship if done within the parameters God has placed around sex to safeguard it
§ sports – way you run cross country, play football, play soccer, swim, respond to a controversial call
§ relationships – how you treat your enemies, those who hurt you, frustrate you, the way you love those you love
§ the arts – painting, writing, drawing, sculpting, dancing, acting, making music

6. these are things we do with our bodies. And offered to God, committed to God, done God’s way with God’s honor in mind, can every one of them be done as worship before God.

7. worship is…
our response,
both personal & corporate,
to God –
for who He is
and what He has done
expressed in and by the things we say
and the way we live

this is your spiritual act of worship
1. bodies & spirit go together. Bodies matter to God. Our bodies carry great spiritual meaning both to God & to ourselves. The only way we can worship God in this life is with our bodies – hands, feet, fingers, eyes, mouth, ears, legs, arms, lungs

2. the Psalms burst forth with bodily worship – hands clapping, hands raised, voices shouting, voices singing, bodies kneeled, bodies bowing, bodies prostrate, hands & mouths playing instruments, bodies dancing, bodies silent, bodies at attention before God.

3. tonight @ 6pm – be here!

4. worship is our all-the-time bodily & spiritual response to God’s mercy. We leave our places in our Monday-Saturday world. We come together on Sunday as the community of faith. We gather to worship God through music, song, prayer, Word, giving, service & community. We gather out of thirst for God, need of God. We gather to respond to his unfathomable mercy.

5. and we go forth into our Monday-Saturday worlds to continue our worship of God. With our bodies. In & by the things we say & the way we live. Where we live, work & play.

6. and then we return on Sunday & bring with us the stuff of our week both good & bad. We offer it up to God in worship. We give thanks. We confess our sins. We confess our failures. We confess our need of Christ. We listen for his Word. We gladly give him our money, time & gifts.

7. this is the cycle of a life lived in worship. And we do all of this in our bodies, bodies that we offer to God as sacrifices. Living sacrifices. All because of his mercy & love.

Bob Dylan
1. years ago during Bob Dylan’s Christian phase he sang a song called What Can I Do For You? The song is about responding with one’s life to God’s mercy.

You have given everything to me, what can I do for you?
You have given me eyes to see, what can I do for you?
Pulled me out of bondage
And you made me renewed inside
Filled up a hunger that had always been denied
Opened up a door no man can shut
And you opened it up so wide
And you’ve chosen me to be among the few
What can I do for you?

You have laid down your life for me, what can I do for you?
You have explained every mystery, what can I do for you?
Soon as a man is born you know the sparks begin to fly
He gets wise in his own eyes, and he’s made to believe a lie
Who would deliver him from the death he’s bound to die
Well you’ve done it all & there’s no more anyone can pretend to do, what can I do for you?
You have given all there is to give, what can I give to you?
You have given me life to live, how can I live for you?
I know all about poison, I know all about fiery darts
I don’t care how rough the road is, show me where to start
Whatever pleases you tell it to my heart
Well I don’t deserve it but I sure did make it through, what can I do for you?

Gerda Weissman Klein
1. I want to end with a story. It comes from the New England Holocaust Memorial and is from a death camp survivor, Gerda Weissman Klein –
Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.

2. Gerda Weissman Klein’s friend gave her all that she had, her prized possession, a raspberry. Our most prized possession is our life. It’s all we have of any significance to give to God.

3. When we give our lives to God as a living sacrifice than our whole life becomes worship. From Sunday gathered together as the community of faith to Monday-Saturday where we live, work & play!

4. take the raspberry that is your life & give it to God. And then let worship come!

SERIES: Worship 101 Message: Why We Worship

Acts 17:16-34

1. Worship 101. Last week, who we worship. Today, why we worship. Next Sunday, how we worship. To answer our why we worship? question we’re going to Athens, Greece. 40 A.D. with the apostle Paul.

Let’s go with Paul to Athens, Greece – 40 A.D.
1. Paul’s heart must have been racing when he set foot in Athens:
§ home of Socrates, Plato & Aristotle
§ unrivaled intellectual center of the Roman Empire
§ city of literature & art
§ aesthetically magnificent
§ culturally sophisticated
§ morally decadent
§ spiritually blinded

2. let’s walk with Paul through the city streets & notice what Paul saw, felt, did & said.

what Paul saw – 16
1. as tourist Paul walked around the city what hit him between the eyes were all the city’s idols. Idolatry was rampant.

2. one historian referred to Athens as a veritable forest of idols. Temples, shrines, statues & altars smothered the city – images of Athena, Apollo, Venus, Mercury, Neptune, Diana, all the gods of Olympus.

3. Paul discovered a city submerged in idols & dripping in spirituality.

what Paul felt – 16
1. he was greatly distressed. These idols set something off in Paul. They abhorred him. John Stott – they must have aroused within him deep stirrings of jealously for God’s name.

2. he 1st saw that the city was full of idols. And then he felt greatly distressed. What his eyes took in his heart experienced. The idols hit him like a bombshell.

3. what do you see when you walk the streets of Canby? Portland? Seattle? What do you feel? Are you eyes connected to your heart?

what Paul did – 17-18
1. 1st he visited the synagogue & spoke with God-fearing Greeks = going to church. 2nd he hit the marketplace & talked to people there = Starbucks, café, shopping mall, neighborhood pub. 3rd he entered into debate with a group of Epicurean (chance, escape, pleasure) & Stoic (fatalism, pain) philosophers = university.

2. he engaged the culture of Athens. He dialogued with God-fearing Jews, passers-by & philosophers.

3. I love vs. 18. Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. He stood up for what he believed. He took Jesus to the people. Wherever he went, Paul made Jesus the issue, the message, the question. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

4. John Stott – there is an urgent need for more Christian thinkers who will dedicate their minds to Christ as authors, journalists, dramatists, broadcasters, television script-writers, artists, actors who use a variety of art forms in which to communicate the gospel. Amen!

what Paul said – 22-31
1. the philosophers invited him to the Areopagus. Once Greece’s judicial court, it now acted like the city Council (33). Guardian of the city’s religion, morals & education.

2. Paul preached a 5 point sermon. I’ll give it to you quickly because I want to talk about why we worship.

3. God is our Creator (24)

4. God is our Sustainer (25)

5. God is our Ruler (26-27)

6. God is our Father (28-29)

7. God is our Judge (30-31)

why we worship
1. I want to sit us down on these words from vs. 28 – for in him we live, move & have our being. Paul is quoting a 6th century B.C. poet from the island of Crete.

2. Paul must have read poetry – the secular poets. Cool!

3. what that poet wrote 500 years before Paul was God’s truth whether he knew it or not. All truth is God’s truth no matter where we find it.

4. get this. To secular philosophers who were not followers of Jesus Christ Paul says – your life is bound up in God’s life; your energy comes from him; your very existence is tied to his. And this is true of each one of us:

through him (Jesus) all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3)

for from him (God) and through him and to him are all things (Romans 11:36)

for by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible & invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him (Colossians 1:16)

he has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Louis Giglio – The Air I Breathe: Worship As A Way of Life
1. we have been created BY God and FOR God. And that’s why we worship. Worship is the activity of the human soul.

2. every culture, every people, every time, every place – worshippers. Every corner of the world, every age has had its gods.

3. why do we crave something to worship? Why are we so insatiably drawn from idol to idol? Why do we desperately
need something to exalt & something to adore?

4. the Bible tells us via a secular Greek poet that in him we live, move & have our being!

5. we carry an internal homing device riveted deep within our soul that longs for our Maker. An internal, God-ward
magnet, pulling us toward him.

5. we’re born with something we attach to, something we fit with, someone we belong to, somewhere called home.

6. we’re thrust from the womb equipped for connectivity with God, pre-wired to praise. That’s why we worship!
my reality & your reality
1. worship is the activity of the human soul. Whatever matters most to me, the thing I put first in my life is what I worship – Duck football, relationship, friends, status, stuff, pleasure. We worship what we value most.

2. if we are made to love & worship God, why do we struggle to live a life of worship? Why do we so often fail? I can think of a number of reasons:
§ sovereign self – we want to be Queen or King of our lives
§ sin – we are not walking in God’s will or delighting in his ways
§ decisions – to highly value other things or people
§ ignorance – we’ve never been taught about who we are in God

3. the goal for all of us is to strive to live lives of worship. To do this we need to seek the presence of God in our lives – he is not far from each one of us (27). God is here, always here. How can we learn to seek his presence?

spiritual pathways
1. Gary Thomas has written one of the most insightful books I’ve ever read – Sacred Pathways – Discover Your Soul’s Path to God. He identifies 9 different ways that we experience God’s presence in our lives & world.

2. naturalist – experience God in creation

3. sensates – experience God with their senses = incense, architecture, classical music, language

4. traditionalist – ritual & symbol = liturgy, cross, stained glass

5. ascetics – solitude & simplicity = left alone in prayer
6. activists – stand against evil, work for justice, call people to repentance

7. caregivers – service, loving others, poor & needy

8. enthusiasts – joyful celebration, experience & feel God

9. contemplatives – love God through pure adoration

10. intellectuals – love God with their minds, life of study

11. we will fully experience God’s presence if we know & practice our spiritual pathway. We will worship most authentically by walking our spiritual pathway.

12. you are pre-wired to worship God. You have an internal magnet pulling you toward him. You have a homing device deep within you set on God.

13. tap into your spiritual pathway & let worship come!

SERIES: Worship 101 Message: Who We Worship

Isaiah 40:12-31

1. in his book The Knowledge of the Holy A. W. Tozer wrote,
What comes into our minds when we think about God is
the most important thing about us. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

2. for the next 3 weeks I am going to preach about worship. Today, who we worship; next week, why we worship; 2 weeks, how we worship.

3. today I am going to rely upon Isaiah 40 to tell us who we worship!

Israel’s story of exile – 40:27
1. in 586 B.C. the armies of Babylon invaded Israel. They sacked Jerusalem, smashed the city walls, looted & destroyed the temple. Men, women & children were force marched across 600 miles of desert to the strange land of Babylon.

2. they lost their identity, their homes, farms, possessions, businesses & place of worship. They were exiled.

3. 70 years later these words of the prophet Isaiah were given to them. The tide of events had run against them for a long time. These exiles felt forgotten & abandoned by God.

4. inspired by the Holy Spirit, the prophet Isaiah wrote to bring hope & encouragement to the exiles & to correct their wrong thinking about God. These words are just as true & relevant today as they were 2500 years ago!

Our story of exile
1. by exile I mean the sentiment expressed by 40:27, Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God. We have our stories of exile. Those times & places where we feel forgotten & forsaken by God.

2. our exile experiences take many different forms: 9/11; Katrina; a spouse or parent with Alzheimer’s; the loss of a job; a stagnate marriage; divorce; alcohol, drug or a sexual addiction; childhood abuse; depression, anxiety; broken relationships; single parenting; cancer; poor self-esteem

3. in the midst of exile Isaiah calls the people of God to think right thoughts about God. He calls them to become purely vertical in their understanding of the God they worship. This call rings true for us as well. Isaiah’s poetic language communicates the majesty & greatness of the God we worship.

God is greater than creation – 12
1. this verse reveals how God transcends his created world. He knows how much water covers the earth. He knows the distance from one end of outer space to the next. He can hold & carry the earth in his hand. He knows how much the mountains & hills weigh.

God is greater than man’s wisdom – 13-14
1. listen to the words of The Message:
Who could ever have told God what to do
or taught him his business?
What expert would he have gone to for advice,
what school would he attend to learn justice?
What god do you suppose might have taught him what he knows, showed him how things work?

2. the God we worship has no intellectual peers. He makes Albert Einstein & Stephen Hawking look like fools.

God is greater than the nations of the world – 15-17
1. the nations of the earth are nothing to him. They have no power over him. They are a drop in the bucket, a smudge on the window, dust on the floor.

2. the United States, China, India, North Korea, Iran, Iraq all add up to simply nothing to God.

God is greater than idols – 19-20
1. idolatry. Idols are a joke. The stuff of human minds & hands. Mere pieces of wood. Mere slabs of stone. Matter not Spirit. Impersonal not Personal. Dead not Living.

God is greater than the world – 21-22
1. The Message:
God sits high above the round ball of earth
The people look like mere ants
He stretches out the skies like a canvas
yes, like a tent canvas to live under

2. earth, people, heavens – he surpasses them all. In theology this is called the Transcendence of God. God stands over & above his creation. Creation comes from him but is not him.

God is greater than world rulers – 23-24
1. The Message:
He ignores what all the princes say and do
The rulers of the earth count for nothing
Princes and rulers don’t amount to much
Like seeds barely rooted, just sprouted
They shrivel when God blows on them
Like flecks of chaff, they’re gone with the wind

2. for Isaiah & his readers the world ruler of note was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Think of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin.

3. I read these words in TIME magazine this week – this is the world we live in:
Iraq is slipping deeper into the blood-red waters of civil strife. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Hizballah is crowing in the wake of Israel’s inconclusive attacks. Iran is drawing closer to acquiring nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden & his top depty, Aymen al-Zawahiri, continue to taunt the West with messages of defiance, as jihadist cells from London to Lahore plot fresh attacks. (this is the) grim news five years after 9/11.

4. back to Isaiah 40. Do we suppose that it is really the George Bushs, the Tony Blairs, Osama bin Ladens, Hizballah’s who determine the world’s future? No. God is greater than our world’s great men & women.

God is greater than the stars – 26
1. this universe dwarfs our ability to comprehend its vast reaches. For example:
§ the sun is 110 times larger than the earth. It would take over one million earths to fill the interior of the sun
§ there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy but only 6,000 of them can be seen by the naked eye
§ the star nearest to earth – Promixa Centauri – is 4 light-years away or 25 trillion miles distant
§ Rigel, at the bottom of the star-group called Orion, is one of the brightest stars. It is 18,000 times brighter than the sun. The light from Rigel, speeding toward us at 186,272 mi. per second, takes 500 years to reach the earth. When you look skyward and spot Rigel tonight, the light you see from it started shining 20 years before Columbus set sail for the New World

2. and our God is greater than all of the stars, suns, moons, planets & galaxies he created.

God is God Alone – 18, 25
1. Isaiah rebukes the people’s wrong thoughts about God. He is the incomparable God. No one, nothing, anything can hold a candle to him. Nothing we can ever imagine will successfully stack up against God.

2. Isaiah means to humble us all & bring us to our knees before the majestic & great God we worship.

God is our Hope – 28-31
1. Isaiah’s message pivots at verse 28. For 16 verses he has been poetically highlighting the majesty & greatness of Almighty God from a variety of angles. It’s all been vertical up to here.

2. Isaiah shows how the verticalness of God intersects with the horizontalness of his exiled people in Babylon AND now in Baghdad & Beirut & New York City & the Willamette Valley.

3. God the Almighty, unlike the exiles, doesn’t grow tired or weary or confused. The good news? God Almighty shares his strength & power & understanding with those like us who do.

4. he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. This should stop us in our tracks. Isaiah’s God is a Personal God. He reaches down to us. He touches us at our points of need. He cares for us. 40:11 – He tends his flock like a shepherd, he gathers the lambs in his arms & carries them close to his heart, he gently leads those that have young.

5. the God of Isaiah 40 is our true & only & everlasting hope (31). If we hope in the Lord he will renew (our) strength. We will soar on wings like eagles. We will run & not grow weary. We will walk & not faint.

6. what are your hoping in this morning?
§ your medication for depression & anxiety?
§ that cold beer or glass of wine you look forward to every evening?
§ the promise of your grandchildren?
§ the military & economic might of USA?
§ bagging as much money as you can?
§ trim figure & newest wardrobe from Nordstrom?
§ family, friends?

7. our worship will be insipid & lackadaisical if our one & only hope is not in the Personal, Majestic & Great God of Isaiah 40. Who is also the same God of Isaiah 53.

8. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior, who was born into our world to be God among us. To live & die for us. To rise from the dead for us. And to rescue us from our sin.

9. this is who we worship.

Listen Carefully so That You May Hear - Part II

Mark 4:21-34

Thank-you to….
§ all who made the benefit concert for the Canby Community Center a success!
§ Eileen Swigert & her crew for the Food Panty ministry
§ thanks for your faithful giving to General Fund, Great Commission Fund, building fund over the summer months
§ those who came to pray during our First Friday 24 hours of prayer 2 days ago – hope to fill the open slots when we pray next on October 6th

the church is people, a group effort, working together, serving, learning, loving, praying, giving & being transformed together!

+++

1. if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear (4:23) says Jesus. And consider carefully what you hear (24).

2. Jesus lived in an oral culture. Truth was spoken & only rarely written down. We have no record of Jesus ever writing a book. I don’t find Jesus passing out notes in the gospels. He spoke & called people to hear. These words of Jesus that we have before us in the gospels were ‘heard’ long before they were ever ‘read.’

3. one of the mysteries of our faith is that Jesus still speaks words for us to hear today. IN his written Word & THROUGH the spoken word of the sermon.

4. if anyone has ears to hear, let her hear. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus wants to speak to us today. Let’s be ready to hear!

hear these 4 parables
1st notice how ordinary their subjects are
1. a lamp, a measuring cup, scattered seed & a mustard seed. Nothing extraordinary about these things. The stuff of everyday life – the living room, kitchen & field.

2. Jesus was a master at taking the ordinary things of daily life & using them to illustrate the extraordinariness of the kingdom of God.

2nd notice the meaning of these parables
Lamp on a Stand
1. lamps give off light. They extinguish the darkness. The light is meant to shine. To hide the light is to misuse it.

2. the theme of these parables is the kingdom of God. In Jesus the reign & rule of God has come to earth. In Jesus God is doing a new thing. In Jesus God is revealing his love, justice, compassion, salvation, healing, deliverance & kingdom ethics.

3. the followers of Jesus are to let the kingdom shine. They are to spread it in the darkness. The kingdom is not to be hidden or concealed, bottled up in the church or confined to the religious ghetto. Disclosure & openness are to characterize the kingdom.

4. Jesus is speaking directly to us this morning. Some of us have covered our lamps at work. Or at family gatherings. Or on soccer field sidelines. Or even among our Christ-following friends – we seldom ever share with them what God is doing in our life.

5. Jesus wants us to bring the light of kingdom of God out into the open. I believe this is what happened at the benefit concert. The lamp of the kingdom of God sat out on a stand in Wait Park for all to hear.

Measuring Cup
1. the picture Jesus paints is of a measuring cup filled with the kingdom of God. The more we live by the kingdom, the more of the kingdom we will receive. The more kingdom truth we appropriate, the more kingdom truth we will understand and metabolize into our souls, lives, persons.

2. the opposite is true as well. If we don’t live by the kingdom, less of the kingdom will be ours. Little application turns into little apprehension. Little regard for the truth of Christ translates into little profit from the person & power of Christ.

3. what’s in your cup this morning? is it empty? Half full? Full?

4. read the story of Jean from When God Interrupts by M. Craig Barnes. 78 yrs old, dying in hospital, strong faith, quoting Scripture, prayed for husband, children, grandchildren, pastor before she died. She was a window into heaven for Barnes.

5. by living her faith with passion & intensity, God kept her cup full!

Growing seed
1. Jesus reminds us once again that these parables illustrate the kingdom of God. They show us what the kingdom is like.

2. the seed is the kingdom of God. There is power in the seed. The seed grows totally apart from human action. The kingdom of God is growing, expanding, advancing & will day reach its apex at harvest time.

The mustard seed
1. here we learn that the kingdom of God has insignificant beginnings but will have a gigantic finish. The smallest seed will grow to become the largest garden plant.


Lessons from these 2 parables
1. we can find confidence to overcome our despair. It’s easy to look around & wonder if the kingdom of God is making any impact in our world. These 2 parables remind us that there’s a hiddeness to God’s kingdom. We don’t always ‘see’ what God is doing.

2. M. Craig Barnes – the kingdom moves mysteriously when a baby was born in a stable in Bethlehem on a silent, holy night, and 33 years later when an innocent man was crucified on a cross in Jerusalem. When a tired African American woman silently refused to move to the back of the bus, when an old nun quietly washed the bodies of the dying in Calcutta. When a solider in Iraq silently woke up this morning & returned to his duty, placing his life in harm’s way. When somewhere, a young man chose not to be a terrorist or a suicide bomber. The world will never know about that heroic decision because God was working mysteriously, but who knows how many lives were saved?

3. it’s good to be reminded that the seed’s success does not depend upon our feeble efforts. In both parables the seed grows by the mysterious power of God. God’s will will be done, his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

4. of course we have a part to play. We are to work, serve, love, sacrifice & give. But ultimately it all comes down to God.

5. we are encouraged to exercise patient faith. There’s an element of waiting in these parables. The kingdom doesn’t come or manifest itself overnight. It’s a slow but certain coming.

6. confidence to overcome or despair; a reminder that the success of the kingdom doesn’t depend upon our efforts; patient faith is called for.

7. I don’t know about you but these parables call me to rest in God. To trust in Him. To become more vertical in my perspective. God is at work advancing his kingdom & nothing in our world can stop him!