Lathem Postell: Well, good morning. Sam Jones Methodist Church. It's so good to be in worship with you again this morning. As we get started, I did want to just, kind of, give you an update, and I got it covered here. If you were here with us last week, you remember us talking about our being Sam Jones initiative, and so I'm not going to go into the full spiel of it now.
If you missed that, and you want to hear the full thing, go back and listen to last week's sermon. But what we're doing is we're inviting you as Sam Jones to to be the church. It takes, I told you this last week, 86 people serving once a month in one area to make Sunday mornings happen well, and so we're we're doing a push to see and get people involved in ways that perhaps they haven't been involved in before. So, if you haven't already filled one of these out, you can hopefully find those in your bulletin. It's got a various amount of service opportunities both on Sunday mornings and on Wednesday nights.
And my plan is each week this month to give you just a little bit of an update of of where we're at, to to give you some transparency about how many folks we still need to step up to to beat Sam Jones. And so last week we had 30 turned in, which was great. Wonderful. I I didn't think we'd have many turned in last week at all. Just, you know, folks having to take it home maybe and pray about it and talk about it and see what they wanted to do.
So hopefully this week we'll get even more. If you didn't put it in the offering plates, you still have the opportunity maybe when you come forward for communion to place it on the altar rails. But we had 30 turned in, 22 of those were for Sunday mornings, so kids, ushers, greeters, those sorts of things. So if you do the math, I think the quick math, 22 divided by 86, it's right around 1 fourth of what we need. So incredible.
We're off to a great start. One fourth of what we need. If we do that every week, we'll be right on track. So thank you thank you thank you. You have any questions about this, please come and find me.
Happy to talk with you after church or during the week, whatever it is. If you've got question about a particular area or or what is going to be needed of you, just as a reminder we're gonna have training sessions, so if you've never done something before, don't let that stop you. We would love to have you serve in that way. But we're also gonna continue this morning our August sermon series that we are calling return. Pastor Jacob prayed about it in his prayer and we talked about it last week.
This is a time of year. It's a time in our lives and the time of the community where folks are returning. They're returning back to a little bit of normalcy coming out of summer. Right? Teachers are back in school.
Kids are back in school. All of the routines that we're used to, even in the life of the church, Wednesday night suppers, things like that are returning. And so if we're going to do that in every other aspect of our life, perhaps it's wise for us to spend just a little bit of time thinking about what it might mean for us to return in our spiritual lives. If we're not careful, what can often happen is we'll turn around and what we'll see is that we are further from God than we realized. We've walked away.
We've chosen to follow other things. And so my goal, my hope for this series is that you spend a little bit of time thinking about where you are to in relation to God specifically, and and maybe, just maybe choosing to return closer to Him. To to do that today, we're gonna turn to our passage of scripture. Last week, we talked about returning to God. Today, we're gonna, kinda talk about the same thing, but come at it from, just a slightly different angle.
Now that'll make sense in a minute. And so if you've got your bibles with you, we're gonna turn to the book of acts. We're gonna be reading from chapter 3, should be behind me as well. Chapter 3 verses 11 through 20. Hear this word of God together.
Let's see what it says. While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's colonnade. When Peter saw this, he said to them, fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare this as if by our own power or godliness we have made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers has glorified his servant Jesus.
You handed him over to be killed and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the holy and righteous one and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong.
It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see. Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent then and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the messiah who has been appointed for you, even Jesus. Will you pray with me?
Gracious and loving God, we're so thankful for this day. We thank you for the privilege we have to worship. Lord, we ask that you use this scripture to speak to our hearts and our lives. Help us, Lord, to turn and return to you that we might follow follow you more today than we did yesterday. Lord, in Christ's name that we pray.
Amen. What we see in scripture is that the apostle Peter was really the first mega church preacher in history. If you don't believe me, we can actually go in scripture and kinda see what I'm talking about here. Right? We look in acts.
If you go back, we read chapter 3. If you go back to chapter 2, it's probably a story that you're familiar with. It's the story of of Pentecost. It's the celebration of that Jewish holiday. And so, many Israelites had had come to Jerusalem, and and many of the believers of Jesus were there as well.
When it tells us as they're celebrating, the spirit descends upon the followers of Jesus that had gathered there, and they began to speak in tongues, speak in different languages from those that they spoke, and everybody understood one another. And so Peter, like any good preacher, he kinda sees all this going around. He he he looks out and the the crowd's unsure of what's going on. Some were astonished, some were confused. And he doesn't let a good opportunity pass.
And so he begins to to preach a message. He he preaches to them the gospel of of Jesus Christ there in Acts chapter 2. And what it says for us is 3,000 people that day came to follow Jesus. He's the 1st mega preacher. We can keep on.
Right? Acts chapter 3. A similar story. The circumstances are different, but the results are the same. The Jewish people had again gathered at the temple when the disciples heal a lame beggar.
And so the people are watching this. Right? This man who had come in and who was unable to walk and had been begging. What what they see is him taken from that state to one of being able to run around and jump and celebrate and praise the name of Jesus. They're astonished.
They're amazed. And so Peter, again, doesn't miss a good opportunity. What does he do? But he begins to tell them the gospel of Jesus Christ. He he preaches to them.
And if you go on a little bit further in acts chapter 4, what it tells you is that 2,000 people, that day came to know Jesus as Lord. Peter is the the first mega preacher. 5,000 people there in in in 2 chapters come to know Jesus. But that's not what I find interesting. The interesting thing to me is not the results, right, because ultimately that's up to to God.
That's up to Jesus. No. No. It's not the numbers that are interesting to me. It's the message.
You see, the message that Peter preaches is a message on sin. Yeah. If you if you go back, the the message that he's preaching, the thing he wants the people to hear about is sin. You know, that that nasty topic that we don't really want to talk about. That thing that when we hear it our skin, kind of, crawls and you're worried that I'm about to start yelling at you for 20 minutes.
Right? Sin. But but this is the message that Peter Peter preaches. If you don't believe me, look, chapter 2 verse 38. They're in acts.
This is part of Peter's sermon. He says, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. We just read chapter 3 verse 19. Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. And then, we we go on verse 26, how he kinda ends his sermon.
When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. In other words, Peter's kinda stump sermon, this this message that he proclaims and preaches that bring thousands of people to faith in Jesus Christ, is this, and it's simple. If you want to turn to God, you have to turn away from sin. Repent, he says. Turn away from your sin.
Turn to God. Turn from your wicked ways, and God will be there. This isn't always an easy message to receive. It's not always easy to talk about sin. But Peter shows us we have to.
We have to talk about sin if we're gonna fully understand the gospel. And if we're gonna fully understand the gospel, we have to fully understand sin. And so when we look at the Bible, it talks about sin in a variety of ways. It talks about those things that we do that separate us from God, That go against God's desire for our lives. And the bible actually uses several different words to describe this for us.
The the first word is iniquity. It's the English word that we translate. It's iniquity. It's describing behavior that we might call crooked. And what we mean by crooked behavior is doing something.
An example would be, you know, making money off someone through deceitful means, lying or what have you. So iniquity, that's one thing we can do wrong. Another word is transgression. A transgression is something that breaks trust. So if me and you have a contract, or if you've given me your word, or I've given you my word, and one of us does something to to break that, we we do something outside of the agreement that we have come to.
That's a transgression. I have broken trust or you have broken mine. But by far, the word that is talked about most in scriptures to describe the mistakes that we make in life is sin. Yes. It talks about inequities.
It talks about transgressions, but the word it uses the most is sin. The Hebrew word is. The Greek word is. If you want to remember that, you can. They're both translated to our English word as sin.
And if you literally translate it, right, if you try to get the definition of that, sin as translated in the bible is something that describes how we fail or miss the mark. In Judges chapter 20, we get this story of the 700 left handed soldiers who are really good with a slingshot. Right? The scripture tells us that the 700 soldiers could not miss. That word is, kata.
The same word for sin. Sin is when we miss. It's when we fail as humans to live into the design that God had for us. Namely, we go back to the beginning. Right?
This this goal, this desire, this design of God for us to be his image bearers in the world. God created Adam and Eve in his image. He created humans in his image that we might go out and be like Christ to be like God in the world. Jesus later kinda describes, maybe, the heart of this. Right?
Our image, our command as followers of him to love God and to love our neighbor. Sin is when we fail to do those things. It's why the 10 Commandments, the basic the basis of the Mosaic law. Right? Now this is a little reductive, but but it's helpful for our terms.
Right? The the first five commands are ways that we love God. The last 5 are ways that we love people. Because that's God's design for us. To to love God and to love people.
And when we fail to love God, we fail to love people. And when we fail to love people, we fail to love God. That is who God created you to be. And when we fall short of that, when we miss that, we sin. The problem is, if that was it, sermon would be rather easy.
Tell you this. Just stop doing that. The problem is, that most of the time in scripture, and then conversely in our lives, because scripture is kind of describing for us the human condition. Most of the time in our lives, when we sin, we don't know we're sinning. We don't realize it.
Sure. There are sins we can do that that we realize what we're doing. But so often in our lives, and so often in scripture, the people don't realize that they're doing something wrong. Peter is talking in our our passage today to to those very kind of people. He's talking to the Israelites who had gathered there at the temple, And what he describes is that they are the folks that killed Jesus.
He's telling them about their sin. Look, you killed God's son. And if we want to be charitable, they didn't realize they were doing something wrong. Jesus had come and and proclaimed himself God. A blasphemy, a heresy, if there ever was one.
Right? So put yourself in the shoes of the committed Israelites in in that day and time. If you were going to do that, well then you had to be wiped out. That that was blasphemy. That was heresy.
If your false message spread, it was gonna lead people down a path that took them from God. We have the high we have the pleasure of hindsight. Right? We look bad. We know who Jesus was.
We know about the empty tomb. We know that he wasn't lying. We can see the sin for what it is, a sin. But for them, they were blinded by what they thought was right. They were blinded by their sin, and because of their blindness missed what God was doing in the world.
That's why sin is so hard because oftentimes we don't even know that we're doing it. It's why the Bible describes sin for us as more complex than just the bad things we do. Sure. Sin is the bad things that we do, but it is more than that. Sin is more than just doing something wrong.
Sin is also the lies that we tell ourselves to justify our world view and the actions that we take. You see, sin goes deeper. Go to the genesis chapter 4. Go go and read it sometime. It's the first place in scripture that this word, sin, is used.
It's chapter 4 verse 7. God is talking to Cain. You know maybe know maybe know the story of Cain and Abel. And so God is coming and he's talking to Cain who's contemplating doing the worst thing imaginable. He's he's thinking about killing his brother Abel.
And and this is how God describes sin. It's the very first time it's talked about. Here's what he says. If you do not do what is right, sin or kata, if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.
Sin is this thing, it says. This this beast crouching at our door desiring to have us. But it's not just the old testament. Paul, in the new testament, talks about sin, not just as those things that we do that are against what God would want us to do, but but but he also describes it as this power that has us chained. Go and read sometime Romans chapter 6 verse 6.
What he tells us is that our bodies are ruled by sin. That sin is a power that rules in our hearts and minds, and we are chained to it as a result. Sin is more than just the things we do wrong. Sin is this seductive creature that wants to consume us. It is this power that binds us to anything in the world other than God.
Sin is serious and and the Bible takes it seriously. It's why the the story of Jesus is so important. It's why the story of Jesus is such good news. Because over and over and over again, scripture describes for us that that we are people, that all people are people who will consistently miss the mark. We will consistently fail.
Jesus is the only human who did not do so. He did not miss the mark. He did not fail. He looked at that creature that God describes in Genesis chapter 4. He looks at the creature who stands at the door, and he told it no.
He looked at the power of sin and saw it for what it was. He saw it as a lie. And so what he did was he died. He he took on those sins. He took on those failures.
He took on those mistakes, and he died and was raised to new life, so that the power he used, the power of God to say no to the creature, to say no to the power, that the power to say no to sin would be extended to those who confess him as Lord. That's the good news of the gospel. And it's why the crux of life is this. Will you choose to follow the creature, or will you choose to follow Jesus? Will you choose to to give into the power, or will you choose to follow the way, the truth, and the life who offers life and life abundantly?
When you put it like that, it seems easy. Right? Our lives show that it's not. There's an example of this that I saw on the news recently. It was talking about the peach tree road race.
Many of you might be familiar with that. We live near Atlanta and so, it's a major race that's usually run on July 4th, I believe. You'd be surprised I'm not a runner. So if I get anything wrong about this race, I I apologize for that. But but I heard this story and I think it perfectly encapsulates for us this dynamic that that we're talking about.
And it's really an apt comparison too. Right? Because scripture talks about our life of faith and and compares it to to running a race. And so the story I I saw, it was about a woman by the name of Sainte Bertha Feri, and I I apologize if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. She was the reigning women's 10 k race champion.
She she won last year. She was the favorite to win again this year. And as they were getting towards the end of the race, there were 3 racers who were kind of in a lead by themselves, but Tafiri was leading all of them. It looked as if she was about to win the race again. And so, they get to about a 150 meters from the finish line.
And if you've not seen this story, go and Google it sometime. I'll try to describe it for you, but you can go and see. There's a great angle that shows all of this. As they're getting close to it, they're about a 150 meters from the finish line. They've been following this police motorcycle, which has helped them follow the direction of the course.
Right? And he begins to to pull off of the course. They're at the final finish line. They can see it. You know, the the crowd's cheering.
They can see the clock. There's the ribbon that's in the front that they get to run through to indicate that the race is over. Right? The the police officer figures and assumes and and probably had had the direction. Go ahead and pull off when you get close to the end, so that they can finish, finish their their last sprint.
And so all of this has happened, and and if you go and watch the video, you can see in horror as Teferi, who who's been presumably following this police officer for the entire race, follows him as he just drives off course. You can see the panic in her eyes as she realized it, and it doesn't take very long. She just goes off for a second. The other 2 pass her, and, ultimately, she finishes in 3rd. She lost her chance to win again, which she was certainly gonna do.
And maybe even worse, she lost out on $7,000 of prize money. The crazy part is she had done this before. She had run this race. She had won it the year before, Yet, still, she couldn't believe her own eyes. Or she had run this race before, but she had also followed the police officer.
She had followed the motorcycle, and she probably thought in her head, this doesn't seem right. I can see the finish line, but he hasn't let me down yet. It's gotten me this far. Maybe maybe this is just kind of the the way we have to go, and and we'll pop back up onto the road later. What is that except a perfect analogy for sin?
Because the truth is is that the beast starts very innocently. It starts as that little white lie that we tell ourselves or we tell someone else. We convince ourselves actually that it's good for them or good for us. It's just just better if I tell this little white lie. Or we do something and it seems good.
We enjoy it. Other people seem to enjoy it. This must be a good thing. We know where we're headed. We see the finish line, but but we allow sin to get us off course.
Sin is at our door. It is crouching. It is ready to consume you. The only way it can't is if you let God consume you first. Therefore, I stand in the grand tradition of all the pastors who have come before me, and I stand in the grand tradition of the apostle Peter.
And I have one word to tell you this morning. Repent. As so many have said so many times, repent and turn from your wicked ways so that your sins may be wiped out. If if I've never told you this, I apologize for my negligence. You are sinful.
I'm sorry if that's hard to hear. You are sinful. I am sinful. Unless Jesus Christ of Nazareth is here, and I don't think he is, you have made a mistake. You have failed.
You are sinful. And my warning to you is to follow that sin at your own peril. I can tell you it wants you to. It desires to have you badly, God says. It wants to control you.
It doesn't want what's best of you. It wants to use you. And the reality is, that for many of us, if not all of us, it already has. Repent and turn from your wicked ways. But I also stand in the grand tradition, again, of so many that have come before me and the tradition of the Apostle Peter to also tell you this.
Yes. You are sinful, but in the name of Jesus Christ, you can be forgiven. That's why the good news is so good. Because for those who choose to follow Jesus, rather than choose to follow sin, there is a refreshing, as Peter says. Our paths can be made straight.
There is good news in the gospel. The simple question is, who will you follow? Where will you go? You cannot serve 2 masters. Will you admire the the chains that bind you?
Will you pet the creature that stands ready at your door? Or will you return to God? Will you repent and turn from your sin? Turn from your wickedness, and instead, turn to the God who loves you. Because at the end of the day, the truth is simple.
Sin leads to death every time, but Christ leads to life. Which will you choose? Let's pray.