COVENANT PULPIT. May 31, 2015 Pastor Bob Petterson

Transcription

1 COVENANT PULPIT SOLITUDE: Power Unleashed May 31, 2015 Pastor Bob Petterson Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples (239)

2 Do you remember the Rock Opera that rocked the world? Those who came of age in the 70s can t forget Jesus Christ Superstar. I never got to watch it live on the Broadway stage. But I did see the Hollywood film adaptation. There is that single scene that still chokes me up: Crowds of needy people hound Jesus, shoving, shouting, stampeding, all desperate for a piece of him. Jesus is just as desperate! to get away from them. Andrew Lloyd Webber s musical score is frenetic with high anxiety. Then Jesus runs smack dab into lepers crowds of them, all dressed alike in filthy rags, hideously disfigured, moaning and wailing. One clutches at Jesus. So does another. A third grabs hold of him. Others latch on. Jesus goes down under their weight until he is buried beneath a mountain of lepers. The first time that I saw Jesus Christ Superstar, I wept. I felt just like Jesus, overwhelmed and buried under a pile of people whose needs I couldn t meet, suffocating the life out of me. Someone asked, Do you ever feel like you re being eaten by sharks? I replied, It s more like being gummed to death by a million guppies. This past week a friend challenged me for not adequately reaching out to him in his grief. I was defensive. Then I realized that I didn t respond well. Neither had our church. I concluded that we are a wretched lot, desperately in need of grace. We not only fall short of God s glory, but also of one another s hopes and expectations. I asked him to forgive me, and pray that I do better. For a long time now, I ve been putting in ultralong days, giving 110% of myself to others. But, at night, I lay in bed feeling guilty about s I haven t responded to, text messages awaiting reply, voice messages unanswered, thank-you s unwritten,

3 folks wanting for an appointment, and a sermon unfinished. I think of people I haven t seen in church, and hurting folk I still need to call. I feel sad that my wife is left alone too often. My latest manuscript lies unfinished. Lepers keep piling on. I ll bet that I m not the only one here who feels overwhelmed. Like Jesus, we are all being chased. But Jesus Christ Superstar got it all wrong. Jesus never allowed the needy to overwhelm him, or the lepers to pile on. When we go back to Square One, we learn the following truths: Jesus didn t fix everything. Neither should we. Jesus needed his Father s help. So do we. Jesus has just called four fisherman to leave their nets and follow him. He will call other disciples. Jesus knows what we often forget: no one can face this world alone. If the needs of this world were too big for Jesus to manage on his own, why do we think that we can do it? The only one who never had a Messianic complex was the real Messiah! Jesus goes to the fisherman town of Capernaum. On the Sabbath Day, he invited to teach in the local synagogue. It s a tour de force. The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Mark 1:22 Immediately, Jesus is faced with the desperation of people starving for truth. People are tired of trudging off to church to get the same old hackneyed stuff that s largely uninspiring and irrelevant. They are looking for Holy Spirit empowered teaching and preaching that sends them back out into the world, armed and ready to

4 make a difference. What preacher would dare go into a pulpit in his own power, and think he could deliver just another sermon cooked up in his study. Trent and I are desperate for the infilling and unction of the Holy Spirit a power not of our own flesh if we are going to feed people whose needs are way bigger than our capacity to meet in our sermons. We need Jesus to preach through us! During the service, someone begins to shriek. On the surface, he is just another respectable churchgoer, dressed in his Sabbath go-to-meeting clothes. But verse 23 says that he had an impure spirit. These demons might have kept quiet except that Jesus was in the house. Even demons must respond in the presence of Jesus. Presbyterians might sit quietly, but demons must viscerally confess, I know who you are the Holy One of Israel. (verse 24) Come out of him! says Jesus in verse 25. The Spirit shakes violently and comes out with a shriek. Church is never the same when Jesus shows up. It gets messy and disturbing. The people are more amazed. He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him! (verse 27) So it is at a respectable Covenant service. There are impure spirits in the place: evil lurks in human hearts. Some are gripped by addictions, and the clutches of unseen powers: the spirit of bitterness; a critical spirit; some spiritual stronghold. Who will tear down the walls and defeat the strongman who won t let them go? Some don t even know that unclean spirits are present. We delude ourselves if we think we can see them, or defeat them when they appear. We are so desperate for Jesus. Only he can drive out the unclean spirit. Verse 28 says, News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. People are desperate for a Savior! Jesus goes to Peter s house for dinner. But the Big Fisherman s mother-in-law

5 is sick. So he heals the woman. Finally, he sits down for a Shabbat Supper. He needs the rest. But the word is out! The sick, demoniac, and desperate pour into town to surround Peter s house. Jesus, like so many pastors, keeps on keeping on, as people pour through the turnstiles. It s after midnight before he gets to bed. Maybe he should sleep in. He deserves it. But verse 35 says, Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Back at the house, as dawn comes up over the Sea of Galilee, crowds are gathering again at Peter s house, waiting for Jesus to come in from his prayers. Peter later says to Jesus, Everyone is looking for you! (verse 37) In the original language, Peter s tone is one of frustration. Why is he off praying, when so many are desperate for his ministry? Maybe we should ask some Square One questions: why should we interrupt our busy lives for prayer? What should prayer time be? 1. DESPERATE TIME: The world is too big, and we are too small. Jesus got up, left the house (verse 35) Why does he get up while it was still dark? He s desperate! People are crowding in with their needs. Other towns and villages still need to hear the good news of salvation. The clock is ticking. Jesus only has three years left before he will ascend back to heaven. The clock is ticking for each of us. And the needs that take up our time crowd in on us. Everyone is looking for you, Jesus. (verse 37) Needs will find you, no matter where you go to escape them. How many times have people said to me, Pastor you need to take some time off and rest right after you ve dealt with my problem.

6 Someone once said to me, God loves you, and everyone else has a wonderful plan for your life. The world is too big, and we are too small. Even Jesus was too small. Remember, he emptied himself when he stepped off heaven s throne. He who was once infinite now occupies a finite body. He who was ever-present, now occupies a single space. He can no longer be in all places at all times. He who was bigger than the universe, will not travel more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He who was all knowing, now says, Who touched me? He who was allpowerful, says in the Garden of Gethsemane, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. (Matthew 26:38) He who scooped out the oceans, will not even be able to carry his cross to Golgotha. Jesus will not heal everyone who is sick. He won t feed all the hungry, or clothe all the naked. Before he leaves, he will say, The poor you will have with you always. (Matthew 26:11) Even Jesus didn t fix all the ills in this world. He left many things undone. But he did do everything his father asked him to do. That s all we can do. It s only when we realize how big the world is, and how small we are, that we will be desperate. I grew up in poor Pentecostal churches. Folks didn t have two dimes to rub together. Most were uneducated blue-collar folk. Their buildings were spare, their theology shallow, and their talents limited. So they were desperate for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. They prayed loudly and often. Maybe we re too educated, too wealthy, and too skilled in the ways of the flesh. We somehow think that we can depend on our theology, technique, and technology. A.W. Tozer said, The Church in Acts couldn t survive a second without the Holy Spirit. Take the Holy Spirit out of today s church, with its Madison Avenue savvy,

7 and it wouldn t miss a beat. Until we are desperate enough, we will never pray enough. 2. EARLY TIME: Seize the day while it can still be seized. Jesus needed to know whether he should go back to Capernaum or go to other villages. So he got up, Very early in the morning, while it was still dark (verse 35) Why so early? Eventually needy people will show up on Peter s doorstep. Given enough time, Peter will find him. If you don t seize control of your time [more importantly, if God doesn t seize it], others will! We often say, I don t have enough time. The truth is: we all have enough time. Bill Gates has no more time in a 24-hour day than you. The issue is: what will we do with it? You always have enough time if you do what God wants. You have a choice: you can start your day saying, God, here I am. I belong to you, as does my time and resources. Please mold my heart to yours, so that the decisions I make will be yours. Or you can fall into bed at the end of another exhausting day and sigh, I did the best I could. I hope you liked some of what I did. How about it: is it your discipline to get up early and start with God first? 3. ALONE TIME: God s voice is best heard in silent places. Catch again those words, a solitary place He was absolutely alone. God said to the Psalmist, Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10) Jesus had to get away from Simon Peter and his companions. He had to shake free from the needy on the doorstep. The moment that you let others in, they will come up with a plan for your life. But it is God who has the perfect plan. Later, Jesus will have to make a painful choice. For those of us who are people pleasers, this is excruciating: who

8 will we please, and who s heart will we break? So we kill ourselves trying to please everyone. Jesus will break some hearts that day when he says to Peter, Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there also. That is why I have come. (verse 38) Think about the heartache of those waiting on Peter s porch when he doesn t come back! But what about those in other villages who won t hear the gospel if he doesn t go there? How do you make choices when you want to please everyone and fix everything? Look again at the end of verse 38: that is why I have come. Jesus knew his purpose. And that morning, he was reminded again of what it was. There was never a saint who transformed the world who didn t practice the discipline of early morning solitary prayer time alone with God. 4. GOD TIME: We need to find God s heart to know his will. You may never hear the audible voice of God in the solitary place. But you will find his presence. You will be transformed as you talk and sing to him, and listen for his still small mostly inaudible voice. Being with God isn t so much about finding his will, as discovering his heart. Its about recalibrating and tuning your heart so it is in sync with his. Then, when Peter, or the needy, or even your own desire to please yourself, or make others feel good about you, or control freak propensity to fix everything comes crowding in, you can say, Let s go where God wants us to go, and do what he empowers us to do. Only then, will the world be changed because we ve been transformed. And, only then will we climb out from under that pile of lepers that are suffocating us. Copyright May 31, 2015 Covenant Church of Naples, FL /PCA