Notes for Children s Talk & Sermon Outline for Sunday, 21 October 2018

Transcription

1 Notes for Children s Talk & Sermon Outline for Sunday, 21 October 2018

2 Children s Talk: Beware of Covetousness - Do you know what the word Beware means? - People say Beware! to get other people to look out for something dangerous. - If somebody told you to Beware of the dog! what would that mean? (Watch out for the dog; it s dangerous.) - Sometimes dangerous things are obvious; or sometimes it s obvious that a certain thing is dangerous. - I probably wouldn t need to tell you that a crocodile is dangerous and that you should stay away. - But other times there can be things that seem fine but actually are dangerous. - In this story the Lord tells somebody to beware of something. - Luke 12:13-15 (NKJV) - 13 Then one from the crowd said to Him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. 14 But He said to him, Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you? 15 And He said to them, Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. - The Lord said, Take heed (pay attention) and beware (look out for the danger) of covetousness. - What is covetousness? (Another word you could use is greediness or craving. It s really wanting something that somebody else has.) - It might be some thing they have their toy, their shirt, their car, etc. - Or it might be some talent they have how good they are in school, how many friends they have, how well they can run, or sing, or dance, play soccer, or whatever. - In the story, the man who spoke to Jesus probably thought that he had a reason to be upset. - Things were not fair: he wanted Jesus to tell his brother to divide an inheritance with him. - Inheritance means all the money that belongs to someone when they die; it often gets handed along to their children but, in those days, usually the oldest son would get twice as much as any other sibling. - That doesn t seem fair so you can understand maybe why this person wanted the Lord to step in and divide things up differently. - But the Lord doesn t get into that; instead he tells the man to beware to watch out. - We can be like the man in the story. - It s easy to find things that are not fair. - It s not fair that he has that toy and I don t! - It s not fair that even though I try as hard as I can, I don t do as well as that person. - It s not fair that she got to go first. - Sometimes those unfair things do need to be sorted out. - But, the Lord also says to us, Beware watch out, there s danger there. - There s danger if we get stuck thinking about everything that other people have that we wish we had. - The evil spirts can get us feeling upset and hurt and also can try to get us to treat other people badly. - There s danger for us and danger for other people. - When we re feeling stuck in how unfair things are we can think about what the Lord said, one s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses (Luke 12:15). - Having or not having a particular toy does not actually make us live or die, does it? - Being better or worse than somebody else at some sport is not what our lives are actually about. - So try to stay away from that danger. - Beware of covetousness and jealousy and greediness and envy. - Instead be grateful for all the good things the Lord has given you in your life or at least try to let go of covetousness when you notice it within you. - Amen. 2

3 Repenting from Coveting A Sermon by Pastor Malcolm G. Smith 21 October 2018 Intro - In Exodus chapter 20 we read, - Exodus 20:17 (NKJV) - You shall not covet your neighbour s house; you shall not covet your neighbour s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour s. - These are the 9th and 10th commandments in the 10 Commandments not coveting our neighbour s house, and not coveting anything else that is our neighbour s. - Over the last couple of weeks we talked about repenting from stealing and repenting from bearing false witness against our neighbours. - And those ones are pretty concrete pretty easy to get a handle on what stealing and bearing false witness mean. - But what about coveting? - Have you ever broken the commandments against coveting? - Would you be able to recognise it if you did? - And most importantly, would you be able to repent of it if you did break that commandment? - To get a better understanding of what these commandments against coveting are all about and why they include things like servants and oxen, we re going to watch a short video by a New Church guy who makes videos about Swedenborg related content for the Swedenborg Foundation. - The video is called, How Not Coveting Could Change the World ( H7Sij_ZB9ow) - Are you now starting to feel like maybe you ve broken these commandments against coveting? - As we ve said in previous weeks, the point is not just to make you feel guilty; it s to motivate you to actually repent, using the steps of repentance. - Do you remember what those are? - They re worth trying to remember: - Step 1: Examine Yourself - Step 2: Recognise and Acknowledge Your Sin - Step 3: Pray to the Lord - Step 4: Begin a New Life 3

4 Step 1: Examine Yourself - Let s examine ourselves to see if we re breaking the commandments against coveting. - I want to start with what was mentioned in the video and then expand it to other ways of understanding the meaning and significance of these commandments. - First, are we doing the things that were mentioned in the video? - Are there any people in our lives that we are using for our selfish purposes? - Are we thinking about how we can use what we know about other people to get what we want for ourselves? - Are we longing for more control over the people around us? - You can see that these commandments against coveting are different from the commandments that come before them in that they are not just about actions do not murder, do not commit adultery they re about motivations and intentions. - It s not a mistake that these two commandments come at the end. - They bring the previous commandments together and also go deeper. - True Christianity These two commandments look back to all the commandments that precede them. They teach and enjoin that we are not to do evil and that we are also not to crave doing evil. Therefore the Ten Commandments are not only for the outer self but also for the inner self. Someone who does not do evil things but nevertheless craves doing them is still doing them. The Lord says, If some man craves someone else s wife, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28). - It s not enough to just stop the bad actions: we also need to stop the bad cravings that lead to those bad actions. - When we break the previous commandments it usually is because we were craving something. - When we break the commandment against murder by, for example, saying something very cruel to someone or about someone behind their back it s often because we were craving to get revenge on them for some pain they caused us. - When we break the commandment against stealing by taking something that is not ours from someone else it s often because we ve spent a while craving what they have. - The teachings of the New Church say that all the selfish cravings and motivations that we might have come in two large categories the love of the world and the love of self. - Love of the world is a love of money, of nice things, of status, of awesome experiences like going to cool places or eating delicious meals. - Loving those things is not a problem in itself, as long as they are not our highest priority. - So don t beat yourself up if you like nice things that s not necessarily a problem. - It s when having the money, the status, the experiences we want is more important to us than the people around us or when getting those things is more important to us than following what the Lord says that it becomes a problem. - Love of self is a love getting what we want having things our way. - Again, I hope you can see and understand that loving to get what we want is not a problem in itself, unless it is our highest priority. - It s fine to love to have things go our way and be good for us, as long as wanting that is a lower priority is subservient to higher principles of loving what s best for other people and loving what the Lord wants to happen. - Love of self becomes a problem when getting what we want for ourselves becomes the highest priority and then we start to justify treating other people like tools for our purposes, or like obstacles to be steamrolled over, or enemies to be destroyed. - Some people consider all the coveting stuff in the 10 Commandments to be one commandment but the teachings of the New Church say that You shall not covet your neighbour s house is one 4

5 commandment and You shall not covet your neighbour s wife, nor his male servant etc. is another commandment. - These are two commandments because they relate to these two big categories of selfish cravings. - Not coveting our neighbour s house (which is an inanimate object) relates to love of the world not coveting our neighbour s house, or money, or clothing, or status, or experiences. - Not coveting our neighbour s wife, male servant, donkey, etc. (all of which are living things) relates to the love of self not trying to control or use any aspect of our neighbour s life to get what we want. - At its heart, coveting seems to relate to our attitude towards other people. - Do we see other people and treat other people as fellow human beings or do we treat them and their things as something for us to use for our purposes? Step 2: Recognise and Acknowledge Sin - Let s move on to step 2: recognise and acknowledge sin. - This is a really important step. - It might be that what you re doing is actually OK or that certain parts of what you re doing are actually OK. - That all needs to be sorted out if we re going to repent from the right thing. - You ll see in the handout that I wrote up an example of a father working on repenting from controlling his son. - Is is a problem for a dad to want to have an influence over his son? - No. It s really important for dad s to take responsibility for their role in their children s lives and not to abdicate that responsibility because it s hard work. - But, as the dad works through the worksheet, part of what he comes to see is that there is something in him that wants to control every aspect of his son s life. - The dad tells himself that It s for his own good but actually it s for the dad s good. - The dad doesn t want to look bad doesn t want to be embarrassed by his son and so feels a need to take ownership of everything about his son s life to control and make it what he thinks it should be. - The dad realises that he s coveting his son s life. - In the process of thinking about step 2 the dad thinks about what his son s experience must be like. - Every time he messes up it s pointed out. - Every decision he wants to make is questioned and he s treated as though he is unable to make his own decisions. - He has very little trust in his ability to do things for himself because his dad regularly and persistently questions his ability to do things for himself. - When the dad thinks about his son s experience he realises that he s creating hell for his son. - That s not what he wants for his son. - He recognises that he s sinning against his son and against the commandment to covet what is his neighbour s. - His neighbour his son is his neighbour. - Even that is a significant realisation for him and represents a shift in his mind about how he approaches his relationship with his son. 5

6 Step 3: Pray to the Lord - That brings us to step 3: pray to the Lord. - Step 2 is very important but don t get stuck in step 2 don t get stuck in beating up on yourself for being a materialistic person or a controlling person or someone who uses other people. - Recognise those things, acknowledge them and your responsibility to do something about it. - And then move on to the solution. - And the solution is not just you trying harder. - The solution is working with the Lord. - It is horrifying when we see hell within us or hell flowing through us and affecting the people around us. - It doesn t match with the picture we want to have of ourselves of being nice, mostly good people. - But the difference between people who seem good and people who genuinely are good is the genuinely good people acknowledge their faults they know that they can be just as hellish as anyone around them and they also know that they themselves are not the source of goodness. - It is exhausting to try to be the source of goodness. - Maybe the dad in our example can get through one day of interacting differently with his son just on his own willpower. - But what about the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and especially what about the day after that when his son does something really stupid and embarrassing. - We can imagine the dad in that situation, saying to himself, Be a good dad. Don t control him. Be a good dad. Don t control him but then his patience runs out and he s right back into his old fears and habits and the bit of new trust that he s started to build with his son is smashed. - Instead let s imagine that the dad prayed to the Lord as he was filling out these worksheets and prayed to the Lord everyday to help him be a good dad to his son. - Imagine if he stayed connected to the reality that he doesn t have to be the source of good love for his son; instead he can focus on trying to follow the Lord s example. - So, when his son does something stupid, instead of frantically thinking, Be a good dad. Don t control him, he can instead think, What would the Lord do here? How would my Heavenly Father and my son s Heavenly Father handle this? - And he can pray honestly to the Lord, Lord, please help me to figure out what to do. - And maybe he can learn to just be honest with his son and say, I m really upset that this happened but I don t want to try to control you like I used to so I m not sure what to do or to say. Step 4: Begin a New Life - This leads us to the last step: begin a new life. - Because in that moment where the dad feels upset and lost and unsure what to do, he is beginning a new life. - He is no longer coveting his son s life. - With the Lord s help he is relinquishing control. - And when we can do that when we can just stop doing the things that harm other people, then the Lord can flow in with new life. - The dad might feel like a pretty useless dad at that moment but think of what it would mean to his son. - Think of the trust that it would build in their relationship. - I would guess that the son did not need to be told that he had done something stupid; I bet that he knew that his dad would be upset with him. - And probably, ever since he d seen his dad make an effort to change his behaviour, the son had been waiting for and dreading when this would happen when the other shoe would drop. - When he would mess up again in a big way and his dad would jump all over him and he would know that he was right that his dad couldn t actually change. 6

7 - But instead, the other shoe drops, what he s been dreading happens, and his dad his dad comes through. - His dad shows his commitment to changing and his commitment to his son. - His dad shows his vulnerability and love for his son, even as he s upset and confused. - His dad shows his son that he can trust his father a bit more. - It s only when we commit to stopping whatever harmful thing we re doing that then the Lord can flow in with a new life, new loves, and a new way of doing things. - That s what the Lord wants for us and for the people around us. - It s why He gave us the commandments. - Please do not see these commandments as a list of rules from a judgmental God who s just looking to find fault. - Please do not see the commandments against murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, coveting as just a list of things to feel guilty and shameful about. - See them as what they are. - See them as boundaries provided by our loving God who wants to protect us from harm and protect us from harming others. - See them as lifelines that the Lord throws to us to hold onto when we re drowning or stuck up to our waste in a swamp. - See them as the rod and the staff that our Good Shepherd uses to protect us as He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death to eventually come to dwell in the house of the Lord. - There is no more important work that you will do in your spiritual life this year than examining yourself to be able to recognise and acknowledge some area of your life where you are sinning so that you can work with the Lord in prayer to repent from that sin and begin a new life. - There is nothing more important to your spiritual welfare, to your marriage, to your relationships, to your impact at work, to your impact on the world. - And it s only when you do that work of repentance that you ll be able to begin to see that new heavenly that the Lord wants to give you that is just on the other side of the decision to stop doing what is harmful. - So listen and do what the Lord said when he first began to preach, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 4:17). - Amen. 7

8 Prayers Opening Prayer Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, thank You for being in our lives. Thank You for caring about us and wanting what s best for us. Please help us to see what we need to see. Help us to hear what we need to hear. And help us to do what we need to do today. Amen. Children s Talk Prayer Lord, thank You for warning us about dangerous things. Help us to not get stuck in covetousness. Amen. Closing Prayer Lord, You call us to wash ourselves and make ourselves clean, to put away the evil of our doings from before Your eyes, to cease to do evil and learn to do good. Help us to believe that we can do this work. Help us to have the courage to begin the work of repentance and the persistence to keep going all the way through it. And help us to trust that the new life that you can give us through this process is worth the work and that You will help us to come through so that through You we may have life and have it more abundantly. Amen. 8