Rev. Dustin ParkerA Bit of Repitition!
Concordia Lutheran Church
Pentecost 7, July 31, 2011
They come to where He is…because they know
His steadfast love endures forever!
Psalm 126:23-26: Matt 14:13-21
† IN HIS NAME †
May the steadfast love and mercy of God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ ever be on your mind!
Why did they go?
Some kind of Brainwashing?
Imagine seeing the crowds, literally thousands of people, walking through your neighborhood. As they are rushing by, you find out they are chasing after this rabbi, this itinerant street preacher whose infamy is the topic of all.
We hear this description, we know they are following the Messiah, the Son of God who would die for them, and for us. Yet those villages along Lake Galilee wouldn’t have seen what we know – they hear the gossip and the rumors, people questioning why this man didn’t go the normal route of preparation to be a rabbi.
This would be like the son of one of the day laborers who tries to get work outside a Home Depot or Lowe’s all of a sudden, in just a couple of months, founding a mega church. Would we be suspicious? Would we wonder what people see in this man?
Would we wonder if there was some form of brainwashing occurring? (long pause)
How else do you explain how he goes from being a no-one, to a somebody, so quickly?
Why did they follow Him?
Why do millions still? Why do we? Even at the risk of some of our friends or family thinking we are brain-washed, and out of our minds. We need to find out – which means we have to get into the minds of those who follow – to see why.
The GiGo/Disney Effect
Burn it into your brains!
Our minds are interesting…devices.. and in some ways far more like a computer than we want to admit. One of the basic rules of computers is an idea called GiGo. If you type into a computer garbage, the only thing the computer can produce is garbage. I think sometimes you can try to stop this effect, but with human beings one of the disadvantages is that we can be overloaded in what comes in, and we don’t have the ability to filter out that which we don’t like – it can overwhelm us.
I can prove this – pretty simply. You may try to resist it all you want, but it is nearly impossible to overcome, it will be nearly impossible to get your mind off of this, once I bring it to your mind!
(walk over to keyboard and play intro to it’s a small world)
Now try hard, and try not to think about the words… but they will enter your mind – and you won’t be able to get them out for a while…. (Pause)
If a simple little tune, heard for 137 minutes and 42 seconds (okay 15 minutes ) on amusement park ride can so dominate your mind – years after the last time you heard it, how much more can the messages of the world flood your mind, and push all the right buttons, no matter how many times you try to avoid it!
What our mind hears and grasp onto, they grasp onto – and the world, Disneyland and Satan all know this!
What are the Messages of this world?
No hope after death so..
Life has no value, no meaning, so escape it!
There is no God, or if there is, he is a God of wrath
They can’t grasp we are His treasure
The world bombards us with messages, in much the same manner as “Small World” does. Messages that often fuse with one’s mind, and often become accepted without consideration.
Messages like – eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we will die. Not perhaps that blatant, but the constant advertisement of sensuality, and of ways to escape reality dominate our televisions, our magazines, our computer emails. Experience the fast driving car, or the faster entered into an left relationship, just keep going and going and going..
Message like Real life has no meaning – except winning at all cost – and if you don’t then find a way to escape it or do what is pleasurable. People so often do, chasing after that which will not satisfy, but costs their lives, their souls.
The worlds’ message regarding God isn’t any better, it isn’t one of a loving God, but one of wrath and anger and punishment. That is why, if you look up religion on the internet news searches, so much of it is devoted to showing how meaningless God is, how crazy Christians are, and sometimes – how corrupt those who are part of churches can be. We hear this enough, we experience it a few times, and we accept it as fact.
I hate to say it, but that message about God’s anger and wrath is far too often repeated from what people hear in some churches. There the focus is not the relationship God calls us into, and where will be forever. Rather the message is on avoiding wrath, as is God’s primary purpose in creation is to pour out wrath on those whom He doesn’t like. I saw this “programming” all to evident in the last week, as a few people to the sermon I posted on the internet – that we really are God’s treasure, His people. They could not believe it, they viciously denied that God would see anything of worth in us, even as we abide in Christ.
If you hear that message enough, it becomes part of your psyche – your life. And like “Small Word” it is a message that needs to be cleansed from your life, from your psyche.
What is His Message?
The “I” in Christ
His Steadfast Love endures forever
It is brain-washing in the sense of its cleansing the crud away (Romans 12:2)
The message that needs to replace it is incredible – I’ll say the beginning, you finish it.
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! (for His steadfast love endures forever!)
An awesome message! And we repeated it 13 times in the Psalter alone! There is something we need to grasp in this incredible phrase that we need to know we can assume.
“His steadfast love – for His people – endures forever.”
When it talks of God’s steadfast love, a word that includes compassion and mercy and care and devotion and assistance – all wrapped up in the phrase “steadfast love” we need to understand that the object of that love is His people, the phrase last week – His treasured people. We need to grasp that – His steadfast love – (which is what Sunday School is all about) is His steadfast love for you – and for every person for whom Christ offered His life.
It’s that life – so clearly pictures in the crosses and crucifixes we hang, and put up and wear – for the joy of His steadfast Love – he endured that cross to save you.
It’s His steadfast love which draws us to the water of baptism, whether hours old or nearly a century old, as He does wash our minds, cleansing them of the crud and sin that the world tosses at us, that we have engaged in struggled with. Get this, - God loves us enough to cleanse us, to renew and regenerate us is how Paul describes the world of the Holy Spirit to the young pastor Timothy.
In a way – it is truly a brain washing. A cleansing of everything from it’s a small world, to that desire for something you saw yesterday, to that anger and resentment that has been building for years, to that sense of hopelessness.
My dear friends, Christ has delivered you from all of that – He has brought you, united with Him in your baptism, into the presence of the Father, who has declared you His beloved children, His treasured people, Knowing this, the psalmist wrote those precious words of verse 23.
23 It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever;
24 and rescued us from our foes, for his steadfast love endures forever
Hear it from Jesus, as John recorded in John 15:
11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.
John 15:10-16 (NLT)
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
That is the message we have to have – burned into our memory, written on our hearts, set before our eyes. It is the message the people who flocked and ran all over the Galilean countryside couldn’t get enough of – that they kept wanting to hear, over and over.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
It is where we, as individuals and as a congregation, need to grow in our understanding of, even as that message is sent through us into the communities around here, and to places like jails, and hospitals and coffee shops, and schools, and into our homes.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
God doesn’t use animatronic devices to spread this message and burn it forever into the hearts of people – the Holy Spirit sends us to them…
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
Which means we need to know it – far better, far deeper, than any other message we now. We need to know that He has marked us His, His children, His treasured people, His people, the ones He has cleansed, and redeemed… to be His.
So praise God, for He is good for ….. (His steadfast love endures forever)… for us.
AMEN!
Pentecost 7, July 31, 2011
They come to where He is…because they know
His steadfast love endures forever!
Psalm 126:23-26: Matt 14:13-21
† IN HIS NAME †
May the steadfast love and mercy of God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ ever be on your mind!
Why did they go?
Some kind of Brainwashing?
Imagine seeing the crowds, literally thousands of people, walking through your neighborhood. As they are rushing by, you find out they are chasing after this rabbi, this itinerant street preacher whose infamy is the topic of all.
We hear this description, we know they are following the Messiah, the Son of God who would die for them, and for us. Yet those villages along Lake Galilee wouldn’t have seen what we know – they hear the gossip and the rumors, people questioning why this man didn’t go the normal route of preparation to be a rabbi.
This would be like the son of one of the day laborers who tries to get work outside a Home Depot or Lowe’s all of a sudden, in just a couple of months, founding a mega church. Would we be suspicious? Would we wonder what people see in this man?
Would we wonder if there was some form of brainwashing occurring? (long pause)
How else do you explain how he goes from being a no-one, to a somebody, so quickly?
Why did they follow Him?
Why do millions still? Why do we? Even at the risk of some of our friends or family thinking we are brain-washed, and out of our minds. We need to find out – which means we have to get into the minds of those who follow – to see why.
The GiGo/Disney Effect
Burn it into your brains!
Our minds are interesting…devices.. and in some ways far more like a computer than we want to admit. One of the basic rules of computers is an idea called GiGo. If you type into a computer garbage, the only thing the computer can produce is garbage. I think sometimes you can try to stop this effect, but with human beings one of the disadvantages is that we can be overloaded in what comes in, and we don’t have the ability to filter out that which we don’t like – it can overwhelm us.
I can prove this – pretty simply. You may try to resist it all you want, but it is nearly impossible to overcome, it will be nearly impossible to get your mind off of this, once I bring it to your mind!
(walk over to keyboard and play intro to it’s a small world)
Now try hard, and try not to think about the words… but they will enter your mind – and you won’t be able to get them out for a while…. (Pause)
If a simple little tune, heard for 137 minutes and 42 seconds (okay 15 minutes ) on amusement park ride can so dominate your mind – years after the last time you heard it, how much more can the messages of the world flood your mind, and push all the right buttons, no matter how many times you try to avoid it!
What our mind hears and grasp onto, they grasp onto – and the world, Disneyland and Satan all know this!
What are the Messages of this world?
No hope after death so..
Life has no value, no meaning, so escape it!
There is no God, or if there is, he is a God of wrath
They can’t grasp we are His treasure
The world bombards us with messages, in much the same manner as “Small World” does. Messages that often fuse with one’s mind, and often become accepted without consideration.
Messages like – eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we will die. Not perhaps that blatant, but the constant advertisement of sensuality, and of ways to escape reality dominate our televisions, our magazines, our computer emails. Experience the fast driving car, or the faster entered into an left relationship, just keep going and going and going..
Message like Real life has no meaning – except winning at all cost – and if you don’t then find a way to escape it or do what is pleasurable. People so often do, chasing after that which will not satisfy, but costs their lives, their souls.
The worlds’ message regarding God isn’t any better, it isn’t one of a loving God, but one of wrath and anger and punishment. That is why, if you look up religion on the internet news searches, so much of it is devoted to showing how meaningless God is, how crazy Christians are, and sometimes – how corrupt those who are part of churches can be. We hear this enough, we experience it a few times, and we accept it as fact.
I hate to say it, but that message about God’s anger and wrath is far too often repeated from what people hear in some churches. There the focus is not the relationship God calls us into, and where will be forever. Rather the message is on avoiding wrath, as is God’s primary purpose in creation is to pour out wrath on those whom He doesn’t like. I saw this “programming” all to evident in the last week, as a few people to the sermon I posted on the internet – that we really are God’s treasure, His people. They could not believe it, they viciously denied that God would see anything of worth in us, even as we abide in Christ.
If you hear that message enough, it becomes part of your psyche – your life. And like “Small Word” it is a message that needs to be cleansed from your life, from your psyche.
What is His Message?
The “I” in Christ
His Steadfast Love endures forever
It is brain-washing in the sense of its cleansing the crud away (Romans 12:2)
The message that needs to replace it is incredible – I’ll say the beginning, you finish it.
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! (for His steadfast love endures forever!)
An awesome message! And we repeated it 13 times in the Psalter alone! There is something we need to grasp in this incredible phrase that we need to know we can assume.
“His steadfast love – for His people – endures forever.”
When it talks of God’s steadfast love, a word that includes compassion and mercy and care and devotion and assistance – all wrapped up in the phrase “steadfast love” we need to understand that the object of that love is His people, the phrase last week – His treasured people. We need to grasp that – His steadfast love – (which is what Sunday School is all about) is His steadfast love for you – and for every person for whom Christ offered His life.
It’s that life – so clearly pictures in the crosses and crucifixes we hang, and put up and wear – for the joy of His steadfast Love – he endured that cross to save you.
It’s His steadfast love which draws us to the water of baptism, whether hours old or nearly a century old, as He does wash our minds, cleansing them of the crud and sin that the world tosses at us, that we have engaged in struggled with. Get this, - God loves us enough to cleanse us, to renew and regenerate us is how Paul describes the world of the Holy Spirit to the young pastor Timothy.
In a way – it is truly a brain washing. A cleansing of everything from it’s a small world, to that desire for something you saw yesterday, to that anger and resentment that has been building for years, to that sense of hopelessness.
My dear friends, Christ has delivered you from all of that – He has brought you, united with Him in your baptism, into the presence of the Father, who has declared you His beloved children, His treasured people, Knowing this, the psalmist wrote those precious words of verse 23.
23 It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever;
24 and rescued us from our foes, for his steadfast love endures forever
Hear it from Jesus, as John recorded in John 15:
11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.
John 15:10-16 (NLT)
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
That is the message we have to have – burned into our memory, written on our hearts, set before our eyes. It is the message the people who flocked and ran all over the Galilean countryside couldn’t get enough of – that they kept wanting to hear, over and over.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
It is where we, as individuals and as a congregation, need to grow in our understanding of, even as that message is sent through us into the communities around here, and to places like jails, and hospitals and coffee shops, and schools, and into our homes.
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
God doesn’t use animatronic devices to spread this message and burn it forever into the hearts of people – the Holy Spirit sends us to them…
His steadfast love for you – and for all His children – endures forever.
Which means we need to know it – far better, far deeper, than any other message we now. We need to know that He has marked us His, His children, His treasured people, His people, the ones He has cleansed, and redeemed… to be His.
So praise God, for He is good for ….. (His steadfast love endures forever)… for us.
AMEN!
