Robert Woodyard

Passage: II Kings 5:1-14

Our text opens in the foreign country of Syria, north and east of Israel.  Syria was a powerful enemy of Israel.  We are in Damascus, the great and beautiful capital of Syria.  Syria was a pagan nation, full of idolaters, godless people, a land living in darkness.  Here we meet the principal character.

Naaman was the commander and chief of all the military forces of Syria, a five-star general, a Patton, a MacArthur, a Schwarzkopf.  He was second only to King Ben Hadad II.  We are told he was a mighty man of valor; a great man held in high regard.

He was also a man of great wealth.  He had a palace in the nicest suburb of Damascus, with a three-chariot garage, stables, servants and all the rest.  He had no trouble coming up with ten talents of silver and six thousand shekels of gold, 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold.

Naaman was as great as the world could make him and yet there wasn’t a soul in Damascus, even the poorest outcast, that would trade skin with him to gain everything else he had.

But.  One little word changes everything.  But, he had leprosy, he was a leper.  That word hits like a thud in our text, like saying he had AIDS.

But that’s not the most surprising or shocking thing in our text.  Did you hear something else in this story that struck your ears, that got your attention?

Passage: Proverbs 3:9-10; I Corinthians 16:1-2; II Corinthians 9:7; Phil. 4:14-18

I wish to address this morning our stewardship of God’s good gift to us of our money.  I am not preaching on this topic because we are in a financial crunch or need to meet budget.  I am not asking us all to dig a little deeper.  Paul Assink hasn’t put me up to this.  I am thankful we are blessed as a congregation and by God’s good grace we are doing well.

So if there isn’t a particular budgetary need, why talk about money?  I want to for your sake, not so much the churches sake.  I am struck by what the Apostle Paul said to the church in Philippi in the midst of his writing about their giving.

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Passage: I Corinthians 15:3-8, 12-22, 54-58

I am not a fan of hip-hop rap music, the style is too fast for my old ears, but there is one excellent Christian exception, Shai Linne.  He was an atheist who converted about 20 years ago, became a solid Reformed Christian, and does Christian hip-hop and rap music.  One of his raps is called Jesus is Alive in which he powerfully drives home how all the famous people we have ever heard of, all the greatest people in history, all our heroes are all dead.

Nero is dead, Constantine is dead

Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun are dead

Alexander the Great is dead

Napoleon and Henry VIII are dead

Saddam Hussein is dead

Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin.

Elvis is dead, Picasso is dead

Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are dead

Marilyn Monroe is dead

Princess Di and John Lennon are dead

FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan

Billy Graham, Mother Teresa

Martin Luther, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis

Plato is dead, Socrates is dead

Aristotle and Immanuel Kant are dead

Neitzsche and Darwin are dead

Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead

Confucius and Ghandi are dead

Pharaoh is dead, Cyrus is dead

Darius and Nebuchadnezzar are dead

Caesar is dead, Herod is dead

Ananias, Caiaphas and Judas are dead

Pontius Pilate is dead

In the entire history of mankind, all the prophets, priests and kings, all the poets, preachers and philosophers, all the scholars, academics, and rocket scientists, all the religious leaders, political leaders, business leaders, military leaders, spiritual leaders, all our heroes, all are dead.

Only once in history has someone died and been laid in a tomb and then walked out of a tomb and never returned to the grave.  Of the billions of people who have walked on this planet and then died, only once has someone come back from the dead and never died again.  Only once.

So it makes sense that that one singular event would be a defining moment in all of human history.  It makes sense that that one person should have our undivided attention.

If all the chapters of the Bible were a mountain range certain chapters would tower above others. Psalm 23, the shepherds psalm; Isaiah 53, the suffering servant; Matthew 5-7, Sermon on the Mount; I Corinthians 13, the love chapter; and I Corinthians 15, the New Testament’s longest and most detailed treatise on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul in this great chapter on the resurrection challengings those who don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead and he drives home several points.  Let me highlight three.

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Passage: John 19:38-42

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week, clearly the most important week in human history.

Tonight we will have a special service of nine lessons and hymns that will walk us through these five days of holy week from the Last Supper to the burial of Jesus.  I urge you and your families to come, to set apart an hour to reflect on the profound events that led up to our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins.  Make this evening a time to remember the greatest act done by the greatest being for the least worthy and least deserving beings.

I have chosen to break from the ordinary Palm Sunday text and focus on the end of Holy Week, and I have a specific purpose for doing so that I will address in a moment.

Jesus was born to die.  Jesus came to earth to take on human flesh to be the ransom for our sins, so He could bear the eternal wrath of the Father for the sins of the world.

Passage: Genesis 41:46-54

In the first chapter of James we read every good and perfect gift comes down to us from our Father in heaven, everything we have and are, our lives and all the gifts that come with life.  Apart from Him we are nothing and we have nothing.

Because all we have is not ours but from God, that makes us stewards of all His gifts.  We have been reflecting on a number of those gifts and how we are to be stewards of them, protectors of them, how to use them and not abuse or neglect them.

So far we have considered the gifts of retirement, children, marriage, sex and technology.

We have all had the experience of receiving a gift from someone they thought was a gift, but we didn’t see it that way.  Well-meaning perhaps, well-intentioned, but missed the mark.  That’s when we say it was the thought that counts.

So it is with adversity, with affliction, with trials and troubles and disappointments in life.  These are the sorts of gifts that lead us to say, “Why?”  “Why me?”  “What are you doing, Lord?”

The hardest questions all of us have to face in life have to do with suffering and affliction, the problem of evil and sin in our world.  It is interesting to notice the longest single story in the Bible and the longest story in the book of Genesis have to do with God answering the hardest questions.  The Book of Job and the story of Joseph, fourteen chapters in Genesis.

Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

God wants us to know Him and His ways.  He has given us these stories for our hope, for the strengthening of our faith, preparing us how to endure the trials that come.

The story of Joseph is especially instructive and a great encouragement to build our hope.

Passage: Matthew 6:6-13

Prayer is a strange task.  On the one hand, it should be so easy.  It requires no special equipment, you don’t have to be in any special place at any special time.  You don’t have to do it at a specified time of day.  You don’t have to have another person to do it with, you don’t have to get in any special position, you don’t have to talk out loud.  You don’t have to go to school or receive any special training.  It is not something only certain specially trained people can do.

So why is prayer so challenging, so difficult?  Why do all of us struggle with our prayer life?  Why does it seem like God is so hard to talk too?  And why are we especially self-conscious when we pray with others?

Prayer is hard work, sometimes the hardest work, we do.

It is a battle fought on three fronts, the world, the flesh, the devil.

First, it is spiritual warfare, it is engaging in a great cosmic battle and Satan resists all prayer all the time.  It really is against principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

Second, it is battle with the world, our world all around us creating so many distractions, so many interruptions.  The busyness of our schedules pushes prayer to the far corners of our life.

Third, it is a battle with our own flesh, with our own laziness, sloth, lack of self-discipline and self-control.  It is a battle with our doubts and lack of faith, a battle against our lukewarmness, our faintheartedness, our unworthiness.  Our own souls are empty, cold, spiritually dry ground.

Prayer is the greatest and most important work we ever do, and it ought to be the first work we do every day.  Jesus teaches us and calls us to daily offer up to God praise, adoration, confession, repentance, and thanksgiving and then supplications and intercession, all in reliance on the Holy Spirit.

And as we have been learning, Jesus is the model teacher giving us the model prayer.  One excellent place to start is to take each petition of the Lord’s Prayer and add to it, expand on it, dilate it, praying the petitions for yourself and for others and for your church.

I am going to do that this evening.  I am going to expand each petition using just Scripture, just praying the Word of God back to God.  Every word of this prayer is taken from 220 OT or NT verses.  This is sort of a doubly inspired prayer, a prayer based on the Lord’s Prayer using only God’s Words.  I invite you to pray with me.  You can do this either with your eyes open or closed, whatever way enables you to follow along and stay focused.

This prayer is the master prayer from the Master Prayer.  Let us not neglect so great a gift.

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Passage: 1 Samuel 13:13-14; I Chronicles 12:32; Romans 12:2

Do you know what is the most frequently asked question today?  What is the question we are asked more than any other question?  “Did you see this online?”  “Have you seen this meme, this video, this reel, this TikTok, this YouTube?”

I like a funny video clip as much as the next guy, but what is this steady diet of funny fail videos and dashcam crashes and crazy dances doing to our souls?

Who shows video clips that build up our faith and encourage our walk with Jesus?

Thank God for people like Randy Small who bless us almost daily with stunning pictures of God’s creation here in Whatcom County.  They are cause to give God glory and edify our souls.

I want to challenge our thinking this morning about the internet world and how we can be better stewards of God’s gift of technology, how we can be wise in a smartphone world.

Do you know who is the greatest influencer in the world today?  It’s not who you think it is.  It’s not Taylor Swift or Elon Musk or Lionel Messi.  Actually, it is not any athlete or Hollywood star or politician.

The greatest influencer in the world today is algorithms, social media algorithms.  Algorithms are the invisible hand guiding what you see and in what order on every social media platform.  Algorithms are the scientific and mathematical computer rules that take into account everything you do on your computer or smartphone.

This is why when you look at something to purchase, all of a sudden there are all kinds of ads for that product no matter where you go on the internet.  Some of us wonder if just thinking about it causes it to appear.

Algorithms watch everything you click on, where you search, what you post, what you like or share, what images or videos you watch, how long you stay on a page.  Then using all your information and past user behavior, it determines what content to display, in what order and how often.  These algorithms in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter all have one purpose, one goal in mind.  To keep you interested and engaged on their platform as long as possible.

The internet world we all live in is being personally, expertly crafted to wield influence over our lives and thinking and behaviors and choices and decisions.  The world you see online is different than the world I see whether we are talking about what we buy or the news we see, or the entertainment being offered.

This is why we all have the experience of getting hooked and drawn along and suddenly realizing we just wasted two hours binging and scrolling.  Algorithms are meant to keep us engaged and connected online.  Algorithms create this world that is all about us, feeding us just what we want.  To say it another way, it is constantly tempting us through our desires and felt needs, and then addicting us to want even more.  In a real sense social media algorithms expose before our eyes the desires of our hearts.  Who can resist?

Instead of “driving under the influence” we are onlining and scrolling under the influence.  This is how we become what we scroll.  So as Christians how do we navigate this technological world and keep from becoming what we scroll?  God’s Word is eternal and eternally relevant and speaks to our hearts and modern world.

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Passage: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8; Hebrews 13:4

This morning I am returning to our text from last week to finish my sermon on protecting God’s good and beautiful gift of physical intimacy in marriage.
These sermons are my love for you. I want God’s best for you, I want God’s will for you. This is the pleading of a pastor who loves this flock and wants to guard this flock from Satan’s evil intentions and destructive purposes that are flooding our culture today.

Last week I gave three motivations to encourage us to pursue sexual purity and abstain from and flee from sexual immorality.

The first motivation is because you know God and you know His will.
The will of God for you is to become increasingly sanctified, increasingly set apart from the world, not giving into the lusts of the ungodly who do not know God.
Colossians 3:4-5 If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, … 5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire.

The second motivation to encourage you to pursue sexual purity is honor.
Controlling your own body and desires is a matter of honor, of being an honorable person. Sexual purity is the honorable thing to do, as opposed to all forms of sexual immorality which are shameful.
Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled.

The third motivation to encourage you to pursue sexual purity is out of love for others.
Love seeks the good of others and does no wrong or harm to others. Christians are people who don’t use others for their own selfish desires or pleasures, whether that person is physically present with us in the flesh or is being viewed virtually.
I Thessalonians 3:12-13 May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, … so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God.

These are three positive motivations that we could sum up as love God, love yourself and love others. Love God’s good and perfect and best will for you. Love yourself by disciplining and controlling yourself and being an honorable person. Love others more than yourself and your selfish desires.
We turn now to the fourth motivation or incentive to encourage us to pursue sexual purity and holiness. If you will not heed these three reasons, then heed this one.