Message; Children of Light, Brighten the Night!
I almost titled today’s message; “Serving God isn’t Worth Spit, without a Little Sweat”. But my wife is back in town, and I don’t want to be put in Pastoral Time Out…again! There is also the reality that the message wouldn’t fit the sign out front so there you are.
On top of that dilemma, is the deeper thought that you, Christians of the working day, bring light to those languishing in darkness. All of you are a part of a family that brings freedom to the captives struggling in; sin, addiction, loneliness, and hurt. I am not overstating this, because each of you are that important to the battle plans for redemption, and the salvation of humanity, by your God.
Yes, the way we live our faith in and with our Lord, actually changes life for all those who exists within earshot of our very being. Just think about it for a minute… How many people do you know are the real thing? You know… What you see is what you get. We actually are given the opportunity to be genuine in our faithwalk, resulting in illuminating the path towards our God for all of the willing we meet in life.
I think, that is what Paul had in mind when he wrote his letters of encouragement to the early churches of our faith. These letters are called the Epistles in your New Testament, and they are full of advice and instruction on how to live the good life in and with our Lord, and God’s family. Reading again today’s Call to Worship from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 5:8-13;
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.
There is so much there to consider, but for me the most important verse is the shortest. Verse 10;
10 and find out what pleases the Lord.
My thought, and again it’s just that. You are charged with the heavy lifting, of studying, praying and thinking for your self with the Lord. My thought is; We know the kind of things that pleases God…
“Acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, which leads us to, grows into, loving God with all we are, and loving others, producing fruit of the light which is: goodness, righteousness, and truth!”
You know… A Faithwalk… In and with the Lord and His family. How it looks varies with each and everyone of us, and that is more of the Good News of God’s Word!
By the way, I think we expose all those fruitless deeds that exists out there, not by being a: told you so, or a know it all, a brimstone and sackcloth self-righteous monastic isolated shut-away, a Pollyanna, or a prig and a killjoy… No! We expose the junk of life by living our own lives joyfully and excited about this beautiful life God has given us in the short time we are afforded in this existence, and being grateful for all of the miracles God provides in our lives every single day.
Reminding me of the Miracle we heard about in today’s Message reading from the Gospel of John. As I read it again, see if you can identify more than just the obvious miracle being depicted in the narrative. Reading again from John 9:1-16;
1 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
*Interrupting the narrative to say; When people try to attribute the bad things that happen in life to God getting back at someone, or being “Born under a Bad Sign”, they are missing all the opportunities that God has reserved for all of us who are willing to utilize those gifts of His Holy Spirit! Challenges and even hardship can either destroy us when we go it alone, or grow us when we walk humbly with our God! But beware! Night is coming. My thought is that Christ’s Spirit is in this world, and we can all be living breathing miracles for others. Each of us are afforded the ability to:
bind up the brokenhearted,
proclaim freedom for the captives of addiction
and release from darkness the prisoners, of sin…
By walking humbly with God, loving Him with all we are, and loving the people He places in our lives. Now verse 6;
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
**This is where I got the idea of that title; “Serving God isn’t Worth Spit, without a Little Sweat”. Because the Lord Himself went out to the people to reach the children of God. Our Lord journeyed to reach the prize. You and me! The people of God’s eye, are all the willing receivers of His offer of grace. And that is truly a miracle indeed. Every time a person accepts God’s offer. Verse 8;
8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
God has provided the obvious miracle of sight, for a man born without the ability of vision, and yet the man sees. All the self-righteous can do, is complain about the miracle taking place on a Sabbath. In other words, God, why didn’t you do your thing the way I wanted you to do it?
My friends, these are the kind of people (the emotionally immature, the dangerously self-righteous, and life’s unpleasable), who you were meant to break up with in High School. Mamma warned us about them not being good for your long term hopes in life. And they are just as destructive to the family of God. Because they act like roadblock from God instead of doorways into the Lord’s love.
Well, the bickering with the Pharisees will continue in this narrative. It goes on and on, just like the squabbles of the lost often do. I would like to pick this story where we haven’t yet read today, at John 9:28-41;
28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
*Interrupting the narrative once again to say; You know when someone is desperate in a disagreement, when they loose all self-control and cancel someone they can’t control over or win in argument. Sound familiar? Our Lord will now provide the clean-up on isle 9, with an explanation of “Spiritual Blindness” on to verse 35;
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
For once we all were blind, but now we see a little better than before, and the further down the road we journey in our Faithwalk in and with the Lord and His family, the better the vision becomes with the illumination of God’s truth. Our healed man with sight, shows us that a person does not have to know all the answers, understand all of the challenges, to be a person of faith in our Lord God.
That faith prepares us for the times in our lives that the Prophet Isaiah spoke so often of. Reading from Isaiah 49:8-10;
8 This is what the Lord says:
“In the time of my favor I will answer you,
and in the day of salvation I will help you;
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people,
to restore the land
and to reassign its desolate inheritances,
9 to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’
and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’
“They will feed beside the roads
and find pasture on every barren hill.
10 They will neither hunger nor thirst,
nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.
He who has compassion on them will guide them
and lead them beside springs of water.
Our Lord is our covenant in and with God and life it’s very self. And His grace, His compassion, leads you and I to be light in darkness for those struggling to know a better way. We actually are equipped with the Holy Spirit to say to others, the captives of sin, imprisoned in darkness… “Be Free!” And then instructed to help them be so, by walking with others in their challenge.
Additionally, the more you and I strive to serve God by serving His created, the more our Lord provides for our ability to do so. And if you were thinking that Paul’s words to the Ephesians was a fluke, and a one off statement about us being children of light. Let me refer you to Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica. Reading from 1 Thessalonians 5:4-6;
4 But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5 You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober.
For those who are asleep, we gently, humbly come to their aid by lovingly waking them from their slumber, by robustly, joyfully, gratefully living your beautiful lives to the fullest each and every day possible. That my beloved family is the good life God has planned you each and every one of us who willingly take up the invitation for: life eternal, and happiness supernal.
Amen!