SCRIPTURE READING: John 4:46-54
46Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ 49The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ 50Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ 53The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
SERMON TITLE: "EMPTY SHELVES"
Sunday, Febuary 3, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: I want to say welcome to
all who have gathered here with us today.
This morning I want to talk about empty shelves,
and let me explain. For me empty shelves describes the idea of
looking for something that you really desire, that you really
want and discovering that it is in fact, not there,
and I think most of us have had that experience at one
time or another.
We've gone to the market. We've gone to the
store. We've been looking for a particular thing only
to discover that it was sold out. The last one had
been purchased. The shelf was empty. Or, maybe you
remember some of those days over the last couple of
three years when we had some kind of disaster.
It's always amazing that right after a natural
disaster takes place you realize, "Oh, wow, I don't
have any flashlight batteries," and you run down to the
store. You discover 17 million other people went to
get batteries too, and there are no batteries left.
We've all had those empty-shelf moments in our lives.
Now what does it have to do with the text?
For me, this text in John's gospel on one hand is
about having something that's
effective, highly desirable, having something on the shelf, but
also about the reality that the church may at times
be empty on its shelf as well.
I suspect that sometimes you've not heard this
text preached in this manner because this particular
text When Jesus utters
those powerful words, “Unless you see signs
and wonders you will not believe”, I
think we've heard that portrayed negatively as though
somehow not needing signs and wonders to
believe is the higher, more lofty way to live in Christ,
and that if, indeed, you need signs and wonders,
that's an indication of something lesser, but bear
with me for a moment and let's operate from the
assumption that Jesus may not so much have been
indicting the person in this text for a desire to see
a miracle, but simple stating a reality.
What if it was not an indictment, but just a
statement of fact that in reality we need a
significant reason to believe? Could it be that we need that? God
wired us that way? I say this because in John's
gospel there is no reticence to use signs, these
miracles as evidence to cause his audience, to ultimately believe.
Indeed, in Chapter 20, John will summarize
his gospel by saying all of these signs have been
recorded so that his readers might believe
that Jesus is the Son of God, and by believing, they
might have eternal life.
In the book of First Corinthians, Paul affirms his choice of
the powerful and miraculous as he presented the message of Christ
to the Corinthians so that their faith might rest
not in logic or philosophy, but might rest in the
power of God.
The Book of Acts as well is laced with dramatic miracle
stories of God's effective work in the midst of the
people with powerful results, those results being deep
and abiding belief.
Do you remember the Philippian jailer in the Book
of Acts? Paul and Silas are there in the
jail and chained to the wall, and then suddenly in the
middle of the night a violent earthquake shakes the
building and the chains fall off, the doors are sprung
open, and the jailer
stumbles in with his torch, and Paul reassures him that
no one has escaped, and that dramatic experience
caused the jailer and his entire family to believe.
I believe that in John 6,
Jesus is not negative towards our interest in signs and
wonders as is so often thought, but simply is
acknowledging that signs and wonders are important to
make a difference in the belief profile of a person's
life. Let me pose a question.
Why should anyone believe in the absence of
powerful persuasive evidence? Why should anyone
believe this whole thing about Jesus, the gospel? Why
should anyone simply take it at face value in the
absence of something that is deeply and powerfully
persuasive in the life of that individual?
In our culture today one of the
challenges that the church faces is to
have something more to offer than simply words.
Do we not all have the experience of being in churches where
we meet week to week over long periods of time and yet perceive
that the net result of those faithful meetings is
somehow or another non productive, and what I
mean by that is simply that we go from week to week feeling like
that we have come, we
have shared, and we have left largely with no tangible
evidence that it's made any
difference.
In our own Methodist circles, the truth of the
matter is that we understand such statistics.
They're with us constantly. That as a denomination,
the majority of our congregations go from week to week,
year to year to year with no
effective result of winning someone to a conviction
of faith in Jesus Christ. We do not have any
Philippian jailer moments, and yet there is no
shortage of preaching.
Pastors are in pulpits every Sunday. There is no
shortage of teaching. Sunday school teachers are in
classes every week. It just doesn't seem to make much
difference, and I wonder if part of the reason --
please understand, I'm offering a segment that I think
is important. Is it because that too often the shelf
is empty? The shelf is empty, and it really requires
more than just Marvin preaching a sermon. It requires
more than a class leader presenting a lesson. It
requires more even than us just gathering here in the
sanctuary to really make a profound difference in the
lives of individuals.
I believe it truly is time for us as
churches -- and obviously this is my church, my home
church, and this is where I'd love to see the spirit
of God begin that work. I think it would be good for
us if we saw some signs and wonders;
if a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit was to so
move upon us that suddenly we began to see God do some
marvelous things first within us,
but then beyond us.
Here's a question for us to mull over. What is
your compelling sign? John likes that word, "sign".
He uses it repeatedly throughout the book to describe the
compelling experiences that lead persons to belief.
Each of these miraculous things that Christ does are signs that
indicate that this person called Jesus, this message of
the gospel, is the real goods, it's the real
deal, and it's not an empty-shelf gospel, but the
supply is full, the inventory is complete, the shelves
are stocked.
So let me ask you this, my brothers and sisters,
what is the compelling sign within your heart and life
that you go back to repeatedly and say this is why
this thing called Jesus—this thing called Wesley Church is
number one in my life? This is what makes me want to
be here every Sunday morning.
Have you ever been in a church - -I'm recalling some down the
road -- where the presence of God's spirit was so real, so
palpable, so powerful that you found yourself actually
frustrated if something came up
that prevented you from being able to be in church.
You were afraid you were going to miss
some wonderful, powerful blessing that
would spill out into the hearts and lives of people.
You'd find yourself somewhat like this -- your wife would
be saying, hey, I want to go on vacation, or your
husband, would be saying, hey, I want to
go on this great fishing trip, and you'd say, oh,
darn, I don't want to do that. I'd have to miss
church to do that.
Or it might be OU/Texas weekend and your spouse says,
let's go to Dallas, and you say, no way, I might miss
what God is going to do at Wesley. Have you ever been
a part of a church like that? I have, and it is a
powerful experience.
It's the kind of experience when you come into
the doors of the church, it's almost you sense that
the presence of God is there. Not just in the
sanctuary, but when you enter the building, and it's
about the way in which God has touched your heart and
your life, and that encounter fosters belief.
So, what is the compelling sign in your life that
causes you to say this is number one as opposed to
number 10 on my priority list? Those kinds of things,
those moments in life are what set us apart. It
doesn't matter whether it's Paul on the Damascus road
who gets knocked to his face and Jesus speaks to him,
or whether it's the Ethiopian on the road south
into Gaza, or Peter in the upper room. Whatever
it is, those moments, those encounters with the spirit
of God fill the empty shelves of our life with
something that stands the test of time.
Is your shelf full with the produce of such sign moments?
If it's not, let me suggest that we do what the ancient church did,
and we're going to do it right now. Anytime the
ancient church faced a crisis -- the first thing they did was pray.
They didn't form a committee. They didn't
schedule a meeting. They didn't do any of that stuff.
They came together, and they began to pray. God pour
out upon us your presence, and again, literally, God's
spirit would fall time and time and time again and
replenish the shelves of their lives.
Let's pray today asking God for that new
outpouring, that new shelf-replenishing presence of
his Holy Spirit. In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, amen.