Morning Message Text: Luke 17: 5-10
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.
7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’?
8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’?
9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?
10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ”
Morning Message:
From my devotional: Psalm 9: 10-11, “And those who know your name will put their trust in you; for you, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord, who dwells in Zion!” Whenever we’re facing uncertain times, we’re apt to be apprehensive. That’s normal. It’s what we do with our apprehension that matters. The psalmist said that those who know the name of the Lord will put their trust in Him, which enables us to sing praises to Him who dwells in Zion. The more we trust God, the more naturally we’ll worship Him. When we trust Him with our problems, it enables our hearts to praise Him more freely; and when we cast our worries on Him, it expedites our worship toward Him. We have been focusing on worship and our need, as followers of Jesus, to worship more fully and more often. I don’t believe that we fully understand the effect that worship can have on our lives. Worship can be a cure for worry.
So the next time worry invades your heart, say with the psalmist, “I will praise you, O Lord, with my whole heart…. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” Turn your worry into worship! A quote from Alistair Begg: “Only when we understand that we were created for His glory can we turn life’s trails and toils into acts of worship.” Please, let that sink in. We become so full of ourselves that we forget our true purpose in life. Most of us wouldn’t act this way, but somewhere in the depths of our hearts and minds we think that our existence is so important and that we are somehow special to this world apart from God. You were created for one reason and one reason only, His glory. God blesses us with meaning and purpose in our lives, he allows us through his grace and mercy to be a part of His wonderful plan of salvation for the world around us, but make no mistake, you were created for His glory. The sooner we come to terms with our unworthiness the sooner we can get to the true worship of God.
How many of you are familiar with the song Kumbaya? If you are old enough you will remember that it was a very popular camp song in the fifties and sixties, and probably beyond that. In recent history we have dismissed this simple song as being naïve idealism. It was maybe to touchy feely for us; we were too sophisticated for such a childish song. Listen to what it truly means. The term kumbaya originates in an African-American spiritual song from the American South. The earliest record in the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center comes from lyrics collected in North Carolina in 1926 for a song called, “Oh Lord, Won’t You Come by Here.” The spiritual pleads for divine intervention—for God to come by here and help a people in great need, referencing an area historically connected to the enslavement and oppression of African Americans. The word kumbaya is taken from the song’s refrain. We need to hear what this song says because it points us in the direction of true worship. It is so simple, but if you can sing it and mean it, true worship will follow. Oh Lord, won’t you come by here. Isn’t that exactly what we want in worship? We want to meet God here. This is the attitude that we must have in worship. We come here hopeful and humbly asking for God’s presence. Listen to how unassuming this is: Oh Lord, won’t you come by here.
The apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith. Just like all of us, they wanted a quick fix to their Christian lives. Just drop it on me Jesus; hit me with it. Make me a faithful person like you. It doesn’t quite work like that. First, he showed them how little faith they had. If you have faith as small as this tiny little mustard seed you can uproot trees and cast them into the sea. I can imagine in my mind, most of you know that my mind is a little wired, but I can see Peter, John, James, and all of the others standing in front of that mulberry tree, squinting their eyes and saying, “Into the sea with you mulberry tree, into the sea I said; ugh, I really believe that I can do it, now into the sea, come on, why won’t this stupid tree move?” Listen, these disciples were all full of themselves. They had been walking with Jesus for some time now. They had watched as he performed miracle after miracle, and they truly believed in him. So much so that they started to believe that they were worthy and deserving by association. How awful of them to assume that just because they were associated with Jesus, they automatically had faith. Don’t we do the same thing?
Jesus tells them a story, and you might think, how does this story answer their question about faith? Jesus, within this story, says to them, if you truly want great faith stop acting like you are worthy and deserve it; stop thinking that you are special just because God blessed you with salvation and opened your eyes to the Savior of this world. You were created for God’s glory, not the other way around. You know how this works; you know how you treat servants of your own. Stop thinking that just because you have been blessed to serve God in a wonderful way you are worthy and deserving. Over and over again Jesus tells us to be humble. We should do what God asks and expects out of an overflowing love for the one who redeemed us from sin. The church of Jesus Christ has forgotten that the faith that they have found is a blessing from God. You don’t deserve to be here; you are not somehow more worthy than the person who has not yet found his way. That’s why we take worship for granted; we forget that we are unworthy, and only through the grace and mercy of God do we have life.
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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