Don't Worry. Seek the Kingdom.

Introduction
On the last day of 2023, it's a good idea to reflect on where we've been and consider where we are going.  What a crazy year it’s been! Do you remember what you were doing this time last year?  I do.  I was still in shock from a terrible and unfair decision by the North Georgia UMC bishop's decision to cancel the disaffiliations of nearly 200 churches in our conference.  We didn't know what to do or if their was anything we could do.  But here we are one year later and God is good.  He has opened doors we thought couldn't be opened.  And December 31st, 2023 is the last day my church and I belong to the UMC.  On January 1st, we will be free and will be Global Methodist!  Praise be to God! 

Can I just be honest with you for a minute?  I need to confess something this morning.  You see, I thought I had really done something 23 years ago when I answered the call to ministry.  I thought I was really trusting God with BIG faith.  I walked away from a promising career as an engineer to follow Jesus.  I graduated from college when I was 23.  I started a career as a textile engineer.  But then God called me to be a preacher.  And so after only 3 years into my career, I stepped out in faith and became a United Methodist minister.  I thought my wife might leave me, because me going into the ministry had never been part of our plans.  She chose to marry a straight-laced, dependable man with great career prospects.  Leaving all that took a lot of faith for me and Kelly.  

But as scary as it was, there’s acyually a lot of security for ministers in the United Methodist Church.  We had health insurance, a pension, a decent salary, and a guaranteed appointment.  Yes, we had to go wherever they sent us and they moved us away from family and friends frequently.  But we also had job security.  

Now, I never took anything for granted.  Ephesians 6:7 says, “Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”  So, I’ve always tried to do my best, because I realized I didn't really work for the United Methodist Church.  I work for the Lord.  The UMC was an ally, for a time, that helped me fulfill my calling to help people grow closer to Jesus.  But I’ve always said if the UMC ever departed from traditional Scriptural Christianity, I would depart from the UMC.  And that time has come. 

And so, I’m walking away from a second career.  As of January 1st, 2024, I will no longer be a United Methodist minister.  I will be a Global Methodist minister.  And I’ve had to trust the Lord in this.  Because I am walking away from something I’ve known very well for the past 2 decades into an unknown future and an unproven denomination with less job security than the UMC. 

But I know this is where God is leading me.  And I trust Him!  He has never failed me yet.  He won’t fail me now.  I am His servant.  It is a privilege to serve Him and god wherever He leads! 

I want to read to you one of my favorite passages from God’s Holy Word–something that has encouraged me my whole life as a Disciple of Jesus Christ.  It’s right in the middle of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 6:25-33
25 “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

28 “And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God…
I’ve tried to make that verse 33 the theme of my whole life and ministry.  In the old King James Version it goes, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

If you think about it, that’s the whole theme of the Bible.  Isn’t it?  Go all the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  What do you find?  There’s Adam and Eve living in paradise.  God has given them everything they need.  They have food.  They have peace.  They have protection.  They’re naked and don’t even care.  They aren’t ashamed.  They don’t feel vulnerable and exposed.  (Now you think about that.  They are wild animals roaming all around–lions, tigers, and bears–and Adam and Eve are totally naked.  No knife. No bear spray.  No gun.  No weapons.  Not even a scrap of clothing.  But they weren’t “naked and afraid”.  Why?  Because God provided everything they needed.) 

That is the way we were all meant to live.  It’s a life where God provides everything we need–just like He cares for the birds of the sky and the flowers of the field.  Oh that we could go back to that Garden in Eden and live without a care in the world.  Where we can walk in harmony with each other and with God!

Sin Wrecked It All!
Ah but sin!  Sin came in and wrecked it all!  It wrecked you!  It wrecked me!  And the curse of sin is that we must scrape a living from the dust of the ground.  And try as we might, it’s constantly producing thorns and thistles!  Do you have any thorns and thistles in your life–in your family, in your work?

And so the curse of sin has always meant, “By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat.”  I always thought that sweat meant the sweat that comes from the hard work of farming.  But it’s not.  There’s nothing wrong with working hard and sweating.  That’s a good thing. A cleansing thing.  SOme people (like me) actually enjoy doing hard work with there hands.

No, “sweat of your brow” means the sweat that comes from the deep, overwhelming anxiety we have when we think, “Oh no! It’s all up to me!  The fate of my family and the people I love rest on my shoulders.  Whether I live or die will be a result of my own hands.”  Have you ever been so stressed out and worried drops of sweat literally broke out on your forehead?  THAT is the sweaty, anxious curse God proclaimed in Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made.  For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

Jesus Breaks the Curse!
But praise God!  Hallelujah!  Jesus came to break the curse!  That’s what it’s all about!  Jesus is our redeemer!  He redeems us from our sin.  He heals our whole lives.  His life, death, and resurrection mean we know longer have to drown in the anxious sweaty drops of worrying whether we will have food to eat and clothes to wear.  In the words of one of my favorite Christmas songs:  “No more let sins and sorrows grow!  Nor thorns infest the ground!  He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found!  Far as the curse is found!”  We don’t have to feel ashamed and naked because of our sin.  We don’t have to fear death, because Jesus gives us new life–new life now and for all eternity!  

And so Jesus invites us all in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”  Jesus is leading us back to Eden–back to life in Paradise where we don’t have to worry where our next meal will come from or if we will have a job in the morning or if our church property will get seized by a corrupt denomination. 

It is Eternal Life, and it starts the moment we put all our faith in Jesus and follow Him.

Walking Through the Wilderness
We still have some wilderness to walk through. We’re not in the Paradise Garden yet.  But we will get there. In the meantime, God leads us like He led the Israelites through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land.  And He will provide manna from heaven to feed us and water from a rock to quench our thirst.  You don’t have to understand it all; but you must have faith.  You must trust Jesus when He says, “Don’t worry about all these things.  You’re Heavenly Father already knows all your needs and He will take care of you.”

And so we come to my favorite verse–the theme verse of my ministry–that tells us the secret of living as Christians who follow Christ.  Matthew 6:33 – “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else. 
When my middle child was still a toddler, we were shopping in JC Penny.  In a moment of lapsed attention, she wandered away from me and my wife.  We dropped everything and frantically searched for her.  It only took a few minutes to find her hiding behind some clothes hanging on a rack, but the anxiety of those moments were palpable.  (Talk about the sweat of anxiety breaking out on your brow!)  

That story about searching for a lost child is a great illustration of seeking the Kingdom of God.  That’s how we should seek the Kingdom of God above all else.  We drop every thing else and make the Kingdom our number one priority.  And that’s what I want to do with my life.  And that’s what I want to challenge our church to do in 2024.  And that’s what I want to challenge you to do with your family and with your own life.

Closing
I want you reflect for just a minute.  I want you to think about the one thing in your life that’s really important to you right now.  (I’m not talking about Jesus, OK.  Everyone knows in church the answer’s supposed to be Jesus.  But let’s be real right now, OK?)  What’s something that’s really important thing to you? 

Think about it.  If this person or thing (whatever it is) is so important if it we lost, you’d drop everything to go look for it.  What would that thing be for you? Maybe it’s your kids.  Maybe it’s your spouse or your mom or dad. Maybe it’s your phone; let’s be real.  If you went on a trip and left your phone at home, how many of us wouldn’t turn the car around and back track an hour to go get our phone?

Now, I want you to make a mental image of whatever you're thinking of right now.  And I want you to think about how you’d feel if this thing was lost.  Think about the lengths you would go to find it.

From now on, every time you see that thing or even think of it, here’s what I want you to do:  I want it to remind you that Jesus told you to “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and all these other things will be added to you as well.

Jesus Heals Ten Lepers

Introduction
My church is getting ready for Vacation Bible School which starts this week. This message is what we will teach on the fourth day, the story of when Jesus Heals Ten Lepers.  Our theme is: JESUS IS FULL OF HEALING.

When I was a kid, my parents used to fight a lot.  Mostly it was just shouting and name calling and verbal violence.  Sometimes it turned physical.  As a kid, I didn’t know any better.  I just thought that’s the way all families were.  It’s all I’d ever known.  It wasn’t until I was a little older and spent more time outside my home in my friend’s homes, maybe spending the night at their house.  Their parents didn’t fight like mine.  Eventually, my family was the unusual one.  Families aren’t supposed to fight all the time.

We live in a broken world.  But this is all we’ve ever known.  The only world we’ve ever known is full of families that are broken.  It’s also a place where people get sick—where cancer and heart attacks and strokes happen and people suffer and die.  But that’s not the way God meant the world to be.  It’s this way because human sin has wrecked all creation.

Jesus came to make the world right again.  Jesus is Lord of all the earth.  And everywhere He walks, the Kingdom of God starts to break in and take over our broken world. 

In the Bible, we see a lot of stories where Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and caused the lame to walk.  It was a natural thing to happen.  You see, there is no sickness, blindness, or lameness in God’s Kingdom.  And when the King comes, these things are banished.  What is it that Jesus said so often?  "The Kingdom of God (of Heaven) is near."  And there is no sin. sickness, sorrow, or death in God's Kingdom.  So whenever Jesus bring the Kingdom close, those other things naturally disappear.

Luke 17:11-19
¹¹ As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. ¹² As he entered a village there, ten men with leprosy stood at a distance, ¹³ crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

¹⁴ He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

¹⁵ One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, “Praise God!” ¹⁶ He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan.

¹⁷ Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸ Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.”

Jesus Heals Ten Lepers
Leprosy was a terrible disease.  People with leprosy had sores all over their bodies.  Sometimes leprosy caused people to go blind or to limp or to hurt very badly.  It also made them very lonely.  The disease was very contagious, so lepers couldn’t be around other people.  They lived as outcasts in camps together away from the rest of society—even their own families.  Anytime they went away from their leprosy colony, they had to ring bells and yell, “Stay away!  I’m unclean!”  It was so embarrassing!  And most people in those days also though people got leprosy because they had done something bad.  People said, “God would only let someone catch leprosy if they’d done something really bad.  They must deserve it.”

But then in our story, Jesus is different.  These 10 lepers were in agony and full of shame.  But Jesus knows this isn’t the way God’s world is supposed to be.  And Jesus knows these lepers aren’t sick because they did something wrong.  They’re sick because we all live in a broken world.  And Jesus came to bring God’s mercy and healing.  He came to forgive sins and make the broken world right again.

So when the lepers cry out:  “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  He is glad to heal them.  The passage doesn’t say how Jesus heals them.  It seems like it was just and instantaneous thing.  Otherwise, the passage would tell how he gave them some medicine, said a pray over them, or something else.  But Luke doesn’t tell us how Jesus healed them.  He just said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy. (vs14)

That tells us two things.  First, when Jesus heals, it doesn’t have to be some elaborate ceremony.  It doesn’t require oil or music or even a fancy prayer.  It just takes our desire to be healed and Jesus’ power and consent to heal us.

The second thing the stories shows is healing comes as we obey.  Jesus told the lepers to go show themselves to the priests.  That was what the Old Testament Law that God gave required.  If someone had leprosy and then they were healed, they went to the priest to be examined and pronounced clean.  And Luke 17:14 points out: “As they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.”  So they had to do something.  It wasn’t much.  But they had to obey Jesus command to go.  And as they did, hey were healed.

So when we are in need of healing—whether it is physical healing, emotional or spiritual healing—we should take not of these two insights.  First, trust in Jesus.  Don’t expect some magical ceremony that makes you feel like healing is taking place.  It’s not religion that heals.  It’s Jesus that heals.  And Jesus is not interested in fancy religion.  Jesus main concern is bringing God’s Kingdom on earth.  It’s just like the words we pray in the Lord’s prayer:  "Thy Kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

So only two main things are needed to receive God’s healing through Jesus Christ:  Faith that Jesus is Lord and our obedience.  We need to do what He says.

Jesus is powerful!  He is full of mercy and grace and kindness and healing.  When we don’t feel well, when someone we love is in the hospital, we can pray to Jesus.  He will always answer us with love.  Like the tenth leper, we thank God for healing us.  Even more, we thank God for taking away our sins when Jesus died on the cross in our place!  Jesus healed our sinful lives.  He forgives us when we make bad choices and sin by disobeying the Ten Commandments God gave us.

The 1 in 10 Gratitude Principle
There’s another important principle I’ve learned over the years from this story I want to share with you.  I call it the 1 in 10 gratitude principle.  You see, only 1 of the 10 lepers came back to tell Jesus thank you. It’s not that the other 9 weren’t grateful.  I bet they were grateful to be healed.  But only one—a Samaritan—came back to actually say “Thank you.”  And that’s the way it it is so much of the time.  Only about 1 in 10 people know how and takes the time to really express their thankfulness in ways that tells you they really are thankful.

I think this might be an important principle for all the VBS volunteers to understand this week.  Our volunteers have already put in a lot of work getting ready for VBS.  And they’ll put in even more this week.  And Melissa Starling has already done so much work—it amazes me!  Melissa works a full-time job.  Plus, she’s a mom and a wife.  (And I know Robert is an unsung hero in all of this too; Robert works full-time too and then I’m sure he’s doing extra working as a great dad with his kids while Melissa does extra work for the church).  And Melissa has done such a fine job organizing VBS and getting everything ready for our volunteers.  It amazes me and we a we all appreciate Melissa and her family.

We will all work hard this week.  We’ll be good and tired at the end of it.  And there will be many who say thank you.  And that gratitude always feels good—to know people appreciate your hard work and to know you made a difference.

Even if you’re not working with VBS this week, whatever ways you serve Christ and make a difference in the world, it’s nice to be thanked.  Mom’s and Dad’s and grandparents, it’s nice to be thanked and you don’t always get the thanks you deserve.  Or if you work, people probably don’t tell you “Thank you” enough at work (or really show you that they do appreciate you).

That’s where the 1 in 10 principle has helped me.  You see, only 1 in 10 lepers came back to tell Jesus thank you.  So here’s a little trick I started doing many years ago in ministry.  I always figure for every one person who really shows their gratitude well for anything I’ve done, there are ten more who are thankful but just didn’t say it or don’t know how to say thanks in a really meaningful way.  So I just take that one person’s gratitude and multiply it by ten in my own heart.

If you ever feel like you don't get the thanks you deserve, take whatever thanks you receive and multiply it by ten.  It works for me.  Maybe it’ll work for you.

Closing
But it’s healthy to be a thankful person.  The more thankful you are, the more joyful you are.  Showing gratitude actually enhances your own appreciation for your gifts in life.  So I want to close today by giving you time to be thankful.  Take a minute to close your eyes and thank God for your blessings.  You may even want to go further and take 15 or 30 minutes to make a list of all the things for which you have to be thankful.

Here are some things you might consider:
Your health
Family
Church
Nation, etc.

And praise God!  We all can be thankful for what Jesus has done.  
Forgiving our sins and giving us eternal life…