Providential Seats for Grateful Saints

Monday I hitched a ride up to Plattsburgh with our District Superintendent, Pastor Paul, who took the opportunity to drop a lot of church leadership wisdom on me.
Near Plattsburgh I picked up a U-Haul and followed him the rest of the way to a Wesleyan Church in Plattsburgh that has closed and I backed the truck up to the door and began the bitter-sweet process of looting a defunct church.  Sweet because there was much there that will be of great use to us as we move to the new location in Pittsford.  Bitter because it is a sobering, chastening thing any time a church must close.
Church's have lifespans and sometimes it is necessary that the "kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies" so that its death will produce many new kernels, "a plentiful harvest."  But even when the death of a church is so evidently an answer to our prayers it is still not a cause for celebration.
A couple of hours later the truck was full to overflowing and I drove home with scarcely room in the cab for the driver.  Chairs, a lectern, tables, and other sundries belonging to the district but available for our use.  My heart was the only thing more full than that truck.
Job and I unloaded all the chairs yesterday at the new location in Pittsford.  I had been told that there were about 120 chairs and we didn't bother to count as we loaded them up.  But Job and I counted 142 chairs at the unloading.  And there are 9 other chairs and some other assorted items that Ed Elliott will be bringing back for us this weekend.  A total of about 150 chairs!  What an answer to prayer.
And the best part was seeing those new chairs that God has already provided, in the building that he is in the process of providing, and imagining them filled with people that he will provide.
People I haven't even met yet will have the good news of salvation made clear to them while sitting in those seats.
What a privilege to be part of this!  What a thrilling thing it is to be at the intersection of providence and effort!

Readings for Sunday, October 9, 2011

This week we'll be considering a good portion of Ephesians, chapter 5.  In this passage Paul does a lot of comparing and contrasting in an effort to make us feel how unbecoming it is when we behave as though we had not had a life-changing run-in with the Son of God, and how sweet and joyful the freedom is that we experience when we allow him to bring us fully into the light.  

I have had two experiences of sleeping in the day time:  I have slept (or tried to) when, because of fatigue or sadness, I desperately wanted to block out all the light and every sunlit sound and fall asleep and stay that way.  In those instances it's almost as much a hostility to the daytime that motivates me as it is a desire for sleep and the comfort of my bed.

But I have also been confined to my bed when to lie still was an insufferable agony.  I remember as a child in Washington, D.C. being sent to bed in the summer at a time when the sun and my mother seemed to be paying attention to different clocks.  The curtains were drawn against the late day rays of sun, but it was too warm to close the window, and I smelled barbecues and grass cuttings, heard lawnmowers, children laughing and the pleasant sounds of traffic, of people going places to do things.  And it seemed that the world was a party to which I had not been invited.  

Paul's point seems to be that we've mistaken our coffins for beds and done our best to silence the alarms.  Paul challenges us to see how filthy are the sheets underneath which we huddle and squeeze shut our eyes.  He wants to open the window on us so that we can smell and hear the evidence of the party on the other side of the world, a party to which we have been invited.  He says to us "Sleepers awake . . . "

Call to Repentance

Psalm 139:23-24 (page 975)

Call to Worship

Psalm 139:1-18  (page 974)

OT Reading

Daniel 12:1-9  (page 1393)

NT Reading

John 11:30-46  (page 1669)

The Cornerstone of Our Worship

This Sunday I am going to be preaching on what the incarnation means for our worship.  It's difficult to appreciate, but believers of God in the Old Testament were physical people who found their physicality an obstacle to worship.  When I have a bad cold I could kiss my wife but I don't because I know that, however sincere the gesture, however much love I am expressing by it, I am also expressing some very undesirable germs.  The Old Testament believer felt this acutely: he desired to kiss God, to worship in the flesh, but knew too well that his flesh was polluted with a fatal illness.

That's why God's people, who could change nothing about their physicality or God's holiness, kept gravitating toward idols.  An idol will always consent to be worshiped by me in my flesh, no matter how unwholesome that flesh may be.  It raises no objection. 

So in Habakkuk God tells us "woe to the one who says to lifeless stone 'wake up!'"  That's the story of the Old Testament:  hopelessly physical people trying to wake lifeless stones.

But the story of the New Testament turns that story on its head, because it is the story of a Living Stone telling us to wake up!

Jesus is not only the Living Stone, but the Cornerstone on which we too, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:5)  By taking on the flesh as an infant Jesus not only demonstrated that he was worthy of our worship, but he also made it possible for us to worship him in the first place.  He removed the obstacle of our flesh by joining us in our condition.  Our physical worship is now made acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  

That being the case, shame on us if we're found sitting on our hands, right?

Call to Repentance

2 Peter 3:13-14 (page 1896)

Call to Worship

Psalm 61 (page 897)

OT Reading

Habakkuk 2:2-3, 18-20 (page 1458)

NT Reading

Hebrews 10:1-7 (page 1872)

Message

The Cornerstone of Worship

1 Peter 2:4-6 (page 1888)