Sunday
02/16/20 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title:
“Milk or Solid Food?”
Old Testament
Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
New Testament
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Gospel Lesson: Matthew
5:21-37
Friends, brothers
and sisters in Christ, welcome once again on this our Sixth Sunday after the
Epiphany. Six Sundays after the Wise Men came to visit Christ with gifts of
gold, frankincense and myrrh. These wise men arrived one way and they left
changed forever.
So, I have noticed something really really awesome in
recent months. I have noticed that when we have a special book study for Advent
or Lent, or when we restock our Upper Room daily devotion books that they are all
gone really quickly! In fact, we probably as a church need to double our
bi-monthly order of our Upper Room daily devotion books. This is a good problem
to have!
I also ordered 24 books for our upcoming Lent Study, and I
kept one book to lead the study with, but already the other 23 books have already
been taken. In fact, I ordered 10 more books, and we might need more than that.
This is also a good problem to have!
What this is telling me is this, is that people in this
church and this community want to grow in their faith in Christ and in their Christian
relationships with each other. Part of our calling as Christians is to continue
to grow in faith in Christ, grow in God’s love, and to grow in relationships
with each other. Throughout our whole lives we are called to grow closer and
closer to Jesus. We are called to become more and more like him. Or to put it
another way, the Apostle Paul said this morning that we are called to go from taking
in spiritual milk to solid food (1 Cor. 3:2, NRSV).
One of the things that I have found in the churches that I have
attended or that I have served as the pastor of, is that many people truly want
to grow in their faith. I have heard some people say things like, “Church on
Sunday morning is good, but I really want to grow in my faith and connect to
others”. How do I do that? Sunday morning just isn’t enough”.
How many of you here this morning, are to the point in your
walk with Jesus Christ, that Sunday morning just isn’t enough anymore? You want
more than just Sunday morning?
Part of the growth of the church and the furthered development
of our faith is growing our faith beyond just Sunday morning. Don’t get me wrong
though, Sunday morning is important, but do you eat only one day a week, or do
you eat seven days a week? Faith, therefore, cannot be only one day a week. Since
this is true, I want the Sidney UMC to be humming with activity and ministries.
I want a church that will continue to live into deeper faith, deeper connection,
and deeper community. I want the people of this church to be connected, to be
growing, and to be strengthening in their relationship with Christ.
We can gather together for Bible Studies, we can gather in
choir practices, men’s lunches, and many other things. There are also
ministries in this church that have yet to be created. As Christians, our faith
is something that we share and live out every day. As a result, if this church
continues to live into being a faith community, as opposed to just a church service,
then we will go from milk to solid food.
There are people in this community that are lonely, that
would love to connect with others and a church like this. Friends, I need your
help with this. How can we grow our faith, serve others, and bring people
together?
As you pastor, as many of you know, I will work hard and
burn the mid-night oil, but we still can reach more people. Some of the women
of this church for example, are organizing another annual prom dress and suit
give away on Saturday March 21st. What an opportunity to share the
love and the hope of Jesus Christ. What an opportunity to show the community
what a gift this church is. As your pastor, I want to support you in what God
is calling you to do.
You will notice in our bulletin insert and in our monthly newsletter
calendar that we have all sorts of things going on in this church. Yet, even
so, how do we reach even more people for Christ. God has brought you here, we
are called to be in community together. So how do we do this?
So often in many of our churches, the pastor is the one who
creates and runs all the programs and the ministries. Yet, the continued
strength of this Church rests in the power of Jesus Christ that is in us all.
Are we ready for solid food? Do you want to go further? If you do, you have my
support. Our leaders can help you to become the leader that God is calling you
to be.
For example, on our piers on either side of our church
altar, we have beautiful flowers that are delivered from the shop on main street
every Saturday. On Sunday, or Monday, Ron Nemire or myself will bring these
beautiful flowers into the church office. We then think about who would be blessed
by them. So, for example, do you know someone who is sick? Do you know someone
who is down? Do you know someone who needs encouragement? Then after church
today, take one of these flower arrangements to them. See the struggle and the
suffering of someone you know and brighten there day with the love and the hope
of Jesus Christ. We are the church, and we called to go from milk to solid
food.
Another way to put it is this, there is a
difference between Christianity and “Churchianity”. “Churchianity” is Sunday
morning, but Christianity is what we live out all week. I believe that our growth
and us coming closer to Christ comes from our hunger for a deeper faith. As I said
a few minutes ago, if we as a church have a hard time keeping in stock our daily
devotion books and book study books, this tells me that people want to grow
deeper in faith. Or as the Apostle Paul tells us this morning going from milk
to solid food.
I would love to have prayer groups, more studies, more
small groups of us getting together, praying, and loving each other. This is
the going from milk to solid food.
Our Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy for this morning
reminds us once again that we must choose God and chose life. We must follow
God and live for Him (Deut. 30:15-20, NRSV). How do we do this though? You
might say, “but Pastor Paul I go to church, I read my Bible, I pray, so why can’t
I go deeper in my faith?” The answer is, is that Jesus created the church so
that we could be together. So that we could support, uplift, and care for each
other.
Our hunger and our faith grows when we are living our faith
in small groups, connecting to each other, and in loving and growing closer to
each other. Are we ready then for solid food? I know that even up until a few
years ago, the thing the kept me from continuing to live even deeper into my
leadership was fear. I was afraid that what I would try to do through God and
that it would fail. Yet I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the hope of
the world, and it is life, light, and love. Pursue Jesus, and he will equip us.
In our New Testament reading from the Apostle Paul’s First
Epistle or letter to the church in Corinth, or the Corinthians for this morning,
it says once again:
“And so, brothers and sisters, I could
not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as
infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready
for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the
flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not
of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says,
“I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely
human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to
believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave
the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,
but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters
have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of
each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s
building”
(1
Cor. 3:1-9, NRSV).
Paul speaks to the Corinthians not as mature believing Christians,
but as “infants in Christ”. Paul says that he fed them milk not solid food, as
they were not ready for solid food yet. Paul then says that the jealousy and
quarreling among them must end, and that they must be focused on Christ, not their
leaders. Do worship Apollos, don’t worship Paul, worship God.
The Apostle Paul then ends this reading by saying that we
are servants of God, that we are to work together, and that we are God’s field
and building.
You know anytime that I hear that someone has had surgery
or has a medical problem causing them to be on a liquid diet, it is never good.
I will hear, “Oh, so so can’t eat solid food for two weeks”. Or if child is old
enough and not yet eating solid food, then there is concern. Babies drink milk,
but once we are old enough or are adults, there tends to be concerns if we cannot
eat solid food. Not only this, but most people that I have met that can’t eat
solid foods are not happy about this fact.
One of the beloved men that has passed on from a church
that I used to serve, towards the end of his life, was given liquid food supplement
through a tube in his stomach. This man said that he wasn’t hungry, but that at
the same time he missed eating solid food.
I think that the Apostle Paul uses an analogy this morning
that we all can relate to. Drinking milk, versus eating solid food. Do we trust
Christ, as our savior, and as our all in all? Do want to know him more, and do
we want to lead others to him? If we do, then the church will thrive, and will
be together in a variety of ways, living, loving, and serving together.
As I was saying a few minutes ago, as well, many church struggle
with “Churchianity,” versus Christianity. When the church moves its focus from
only Sunday morning, to a faith that we live out together every day, through a
variety of programs and opportunities, then we grow and move to solid food.
Growing and thriving churches, are not just Sunday morning
churches. Growing and thriving churches have all sorts of things going on to bring
us in, bring us together, bring us to Christ, and to have us form relationships
with each other. It seems to me that many in this church have a desire for solid
food, instead of milk. For this reason, we have created various ministries, and
we hope to continue to add to these ministries. I would love for some of you to
take on something in this church or this community that God is calling you to
do.
In our gospel lesson for this morning from the gospel of
Matthew once again, Jesus tells us to go just beyond our actions. Jesus challenges
us to control our desires, to forgive, to love, and to continue to be like Him.
Don’t be conformed to this world but continue to live and love like Jesus. May
we do this on Sunday morning, and the whole weeklong.
When we go from drinking milk to eating solid food, we are
eagerly and passionately seeking Jesus Christ. We are doing this through Bible Studies,
Church Choir, United Methodist Women, and many other ways to further grow in
our faith.
So brothers an sisters is your spiritual diet “Milk or
Solid Food?” I don’t about you, but I don’t want to be a Sunday morning Christian.
I want to sit with the sick. I want to encourage the broken hearted, and I wanted
to live my faith out together with all of you. Don’t we want that? Don’t want
to be part of vibrant community of faith, where we know we are loved, prayed
for, and we are loving others in return? Imagine such a community? I don’t know
about you, but I’m all in.
The
reason that I think that so many people have left the church, is that they don’t
want “Churchianity,” they want “Christianity”. Guess what? I want Christianity
to, and I would love your leadership and your help to reach more people in this
area that desperately need Jesus Christ and a church like this. Friends, this
is how we go from “milk to solid food”. Amen.
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