Sermon 1-27-08

Old Testament – Genesis 18:20-32 Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The LORD said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.” Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?” He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

Epistle – James 5:16-18 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

Gospel – (The Gospel Lesson speaks about the importance of life. John the Baptist’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth were old and perhaps they said “What good are we anymore, let’s just live out our days in peace.” But God had a plan for them. It doesn’t matter how old you are, God has a plan for everyone. People in the nursing homes sometimes say, “What good am I, I just exist in a nursing home.” But if you can still pray, you can do incredible things for the Lord. On the other end of the spectrum are the unborn. Can God reach them? The following reading says that He can and they can do great things. What would have happened if Zechariah and Elizabeth said, “We’re too old, this is really not a good time to have a child” and they would have had an abortion? The greatest prophet would not have made an appearance. No one would have said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.) Luke 1:39-44 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was fill with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”

Sermon –

I’m a little bit disappointed this morning. Where is CNN? Where is Fox News? Where is ABC, CBS, and NBC? Where’s the local media? Where’s the Keene Sentinel? They should have been here! Today is a big day because I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States and today is the day that we’re going to find out how to turn this country around in just seven days! This country has been deceived as far as who has the real power and who controls the future and faith of our country. Politicians are saying “We’re going to do this, we’re going to give you that, we’re going to change.” But no one has any idea of how they’re going to do it.

How do you change things? This country has been deceived into thinking that politics is the seat of power. The truth is that politicians have very limited power; the political machine just helps us exist as a country. But if politics isn’t the seat of power, what is? Maybe it’s money. If you have money, you have power because you can control the politicians. If you have money, you can buy the influence. Money is power! But what is more powerful than money? Oil! Whoever controls the oil controls the money. Case in point – all of you have a lot less money in your pocket than you did a year or two ago because the price of oil has been jacked up. Whoever controls the oil controls us. But more important than oil is water. (Pastor held up a jar of water). This looks so cloudy because it is from the Jordan River. When I was in Israel two years ago at the spot where John was baptizing in the wilderness, I finished off my water bottle and dunked my empty bottle into the Jordan River and filled it up. This is actual Jordan River water! And we learned on that trip to Israel that whoever controls the water has the power. Water will get you through times of shortages of oil better than oil will get you through times of shortages of water. Without water, no one eats; without water, we all die.

One of the things that people in Israel have been fighting about for thousands of years is the control of the water at the Jordan River. Whoever controls the water at the source of the Jordan River controls Israel. Water is power! Without it, we die. Water is the most powerful stuff in the world – with one exception - whoever controls the water has all the power.

So, who controls the water? God does, but He gives control of the water to you and me and Elijah. Let’s look at the Epistle lesson for today, James 5:17 “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” God controls the rain, God controls the water but He gave that power to Elijah, a man just like you and me. He gives power to people at various times for various reasons; God has a partnership with you. So Elijah had this power and he prayed and it didn’t rain and he prayed again and it rained, “The heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” It was not the politicians, it was not those with the money, it was not those with the oil, it was not those with the water who controlled the fate of Israel in those days, it was God’s people who could pray.

In the Old Testament, we read about two wicked, wicked cities God said He was going to destroy, Sodom and Gomorrah. The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t in the hands of the politicians; they thought they had control, but they didn’t. The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t in the hands of those who had the money, it wasn’t in the hands of those who had the oil, and it wasn’t in the hands of those who had the water. The control was in God’s hands and God gave control of the future of Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham. And here’s the interesting thing: the future of Sodom and Gomorrah lay in the hands of a guy who didn’t even live there! Try that one on for size! That’s what this country has failed to realize and many times what Christians fail to realize. God has all power and control but he works with you and sometimes gives that power and control to you to see if you’re going to pray about it.

So Abraham prayed. He started out asking God if He would spare the city if fifty righteous people lived there. God said, “Yes, I’ll spare it for the sake of fifty.” And Abraham kept coming to Him, persistence in prayer, and finally got down to ten people. God said, “For the sake of ten righteous people, I will not destroy it.” Who had the power for the future of Sodom and Gomorrah? Who was intervening? Abraham. Isn’t that incredible? Unfortunately God did not find ten righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah; he found only Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and his family and God destroyed the city.

Who had the power? Who had the control? Who controlled the future of that country? Who controls the future of this country? Who controls change? God is in control and He gives the power to you through prayer. God responds to prayer; prayer changes things. The Bible says that many times we don’t have because we don’t ask. God is willing to do a lot of stuff but we just don’t ask. He’s not going to do it, the Bible says, if we don’t ask.

So we’re going to ask. We are beginning our Week of Prayer starting tonight at 7:00pm and meeting every night through February 2. It is our typical prayer service, we’ve been doing this for years, we meet, we pray, read a Psalm, have teaching on prayer to make your prayer life more effective and then we pray. And we can change this world, we can change this country, we can change your life in just seven days. God controls all things yet He says “I’m going to give you some power and control in this because you can pray. So ask! If you don’t ask, you don’t have.”

A lot of times we don’t ask because we think that nothing is going to change anyway. But we have to step back and see what things God has done. Our Prayer Board had twenty-four things on it that we prayed about during our last Week of Prayer and written behind everyone of them is “done!” God did it, God answered – not exactly what we wanted all the time, but we saw that God had responded, He did something, He worked things out and many times He worked things out better than we could have possibly imagined, even better than we would have prayed for. God responded to prayer.

I mentioned this last year at prayer time and we need to thank God for this. There was a seminar two years ago at the library for clergy in this community on the Bird Flu Pandemic that was supposed to hit. Pastor Ken Johnson from our Missionary Church in Peterborough called me and said he thought we should go. All the clergy leaders were there, we were told that we needed to be prepared for the massive funerals that would occur when the Bird Flu hit the next winter. We were asked if we were prepared for the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who would die when the Bird Flu hit and if we were prepared with a council and back-up support for those who would lose their families and loved-ones. Why didn’t it happen? Because we came together and at the next opportunity and prayed that the Bird Flu would never come. We prayed at the Wednesday night prayer service and we prayed during our summer Week of Prayer. The Bird Flu never came. Who controls the Bird Flu? God! But He gave control to Christians that could pray. Since 911 Christians been praying that God would spare this country and that we would not have another terrorist attack. God controls whether or not we would have another terrorist attack and He gives that control to you. The world needs to see that, they think the control is in the hands of the politicians or the military. God controls the future of this country and He gives that control to you. That’s how important prayer is.

So how do you pray effectively? The Bible says “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective”. Righteousness is the approval God gives a person because Jesus lived a perfect life in their place, went to the Cross and paid for their sins. We are righteous not because we do everything right all the time, because we don’t. The righteous person has God’s approval because of his faith in Jesus Christ for the payment of sins and because of his faith that Jesus lived the perfect life in his place. It is only the righteous that can approach God. That’s why the National Day of Prayer does not work. On the National Day of Prayer everyone prays to their own God in their own way. Where does the Bible say we are to do that? If God responds to those prayers who gets the credit? Allah gets some credit, Buddha gets some credit, OSFAF (One Spirit Fits All Faith) gets some credit and, yes, the God of the Bible, gets a little bit of credit. God says, “I will not give my glory to anyone else.” You can only approach God if your sins are forgiven; only Christians can pray effectively. God says in Isaiah 59:1,2 that He will not hear your prayers unless you are righteous; “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” The righteous are the ones who can pray effectively and the righteous are you!

And you pray effectively if you pray in the Name of Jesus, according to the will and purpose of Jesus. Did Elijah pray that it would quit raining so that he could enjoy power and control? Read about Elijah this week in 1Kings 17 and 18. God heard Elijah’s prayer because people needed to repent, to turn to the God of the Bible, and not worship their false god, Baal. Elijah prayed that there would be no rain and told the people “Let Baal provide the rain”. The false god, Baal, couldn’t provide the rain. When Elijah prayed and the God of the Bible sent rain, it proved the God of the Bible is the One True God. Elijah’s prayer was in accordance with the will of God and he got answers. Pray according to the will and purpose of God.

That’s why Bible study is so important. You can’t know God’s will and purpose for you, your life, or this country unless you are hearing God speak to you through His Word. That’s why we have a mission statement that says “That we would know Jesus as the Way.” Knowing Jesus is knowing His will, then we can pray according to His will; “Praying in the Name of Jesus”. And when you pray according to His will, no ifs, ands, or buts – you get an answer!

There are also times when we can pray for personal things. Abraham prayed for something personal because his nephew, Lot, lived in Sodom and Gomorrah. He wanted Sodom and Gomorrah spared so Lot and his family would be spared. Abraham didn’t get what he prayed about, Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed. But Abraham got what he wanted and needed. So keep that in mind with your personal requests; God may not give you what you ask for, but He will give you what you really want and really need.

How many of you remember Nikita Khrushchev? If you’re my age you grew up fearing Nikita Khrushchev. He was the head of the Soviet Union and said many times during his reign that the Soviet Union would take over the United States. This was serious; people were building bomb shelters in their basements! We grew up praying that God would spare us as our fathers were looking over plans for building a bomb shelter in the basement. On December 25, 1960 Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech kicking the God of the Bible out of the Soviet Union. He said “Christ will speedily be relegated to mythology.” Churches were used as storage facilities. Had he done what he wanted to do, this wouldn’t be a church this morning; it would be storing snow plowing equipment. But that didn’t happen; Nikita Khrushchev disappeared from the face of the earth, the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the earth, and the bomb shelters we were building disappeared from the face of the earth. Was it the politician that did it? Was it money that did it? Was it oil? Was it water? What was it? It was people like you and me who control the fate of the United States through prayer, that’s how important prayer is.

Do you want a change? Pray about it! You have the power; you can change things in this country for the better - the economy, the elections, even the fact that people trust in politics and not prayer and the power of God. All those things you can pray about. Going through some tough times in your life? Prayer. Does God answer? You bet He does! It’s not the politicians who are going to change your life in just seven days, not money, not oil, and not water - it’s YOU!

PRAYER:

Heavenly Father, thank you for what you have taught us today about prayer. Thank you that you do hear and you do answer. Lord, shift our priorities that we may see the power you have and use the power that you give us in prayer wisely and in accordance with who you are and your will. Heavenly Father, as we begin this Week of Prayer, we ask that you would guide us, motivate us and move us and that changes would be made. Lord, you’ve done it in the past and we know with confidence that you will do it again in the future. And we pray all this in the Name of Jesus, Amen.

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