This last week, I came across a website that cataloged what they called “The Best Church Bulletin Bloopers.” They are sentences that actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services. Here are just a few of them:
Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa, will be speaking tonight at Calvary Methodist. Come hear Bertha Belch all the way from Africa.
Announcement in a church bulletin for a national PRAYER & FASTING Conference: “The cost for attending the Fasting and Prayer conference includes meals.”
The sermon this morning: “Jesus Walks on the Water.” The sermon tonight: “Searching for Jesus.”
Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
“Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don’t forget your husbands.”
The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
Remember in prayer the many that are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "hell" to someone who doesn’t care much about you.
Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack’s sermons.
Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
This evening at 7 pm there will be a hymn sing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done.
Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance. (The Best Church Bulletin Bloopers, www.tallrite.com/LightRelief/ churchbloopers.htm)
There are some strange things going on in some of those churches, and it makes me wonder: What is going on in our church?
God has called us to be a spiritual lighthouse in this community, helping people find THE Way. But if we fail to do what God wants us to do here, then our light goes out and people’s lives are shipwrecked on the rocks of sin and hell. Oh, we may continue to exist, but all we become then is a museum for tourists just like the lighthouse on Rock Island.
Is that what we want for Bethel Church? I don’t think so. I for one want to keep the light burning here, so we can help people make it through treacherous waters in this life and be saved for all eternity.
The question is: How? How does God want us to behave in His spiritual lighthouse? How does God want us to conduct ourselves in His church? How does God want us to act in His household, so that people are saved on a regular basis and come to a knowledge of the truth?
Well, there is a little book in the New Testament devoted entirely to answering this question, and if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to that book. It’s the book of 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 3, 1 Timothy 3 and vs.14. The Apostle Paul is writing to a young preacher and he says…
1 Timothy 3:14-15 Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. (NIV)
1 Timothy tells us how to conduct ourselves in the church, which has been entrusted with the truth that saves lives. Chapter 1 talks about the kind of teaching we should listen to. Chapter 2 talks about our worship. Chapter 3 talks about leadership in the church. Chapter 4 talks about dealing with those who stray from the truth. Chapter 5 talks about how to care for the young and the old. & Chapter 6 talks about how to handle our money. These are practical subjects for all church members, and they will help us be a whole lot more effective in accomplishing the mission God has called us to.
First, we look at the kind of teaching we should listen to. Skip back to 1 Timothy 1.
1 Timothy 1:1-4 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith. (NIV)
Paul left Timothy in Ephesus, so he could stop people from teaching false doctrine. Now, in this context, the false doctrine was the straightjacket of legalism. In chapter four, these teachers are described as those who “forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods” (1 Timothy 4:3). In other words, they were teachers who forced people to adhere to a strict set of standards before they were accepted in the community, and Paul wants Timothy to stop that kind of teaching in the church.
Why? Because it only leads to arguing over meaningless stuff, and thus it keeps people from doing God’s work. My friends, if we want to be about doing God’s work, then we too need to stay away from such teaching. We need to keep legalism out of the church. We need to stay away from teachers who insist that we conform to a strict standard in order to be accepted in the community. In other words…
DON’T FOCUS ON LAW.
Richard Foster tells the story of Hans the Tailor, who had a reputation for being the best tailor in the city. He was known around the world, so when a well-known businessman arrived in Hans’ city from out of town on a business trip, that businessman made a special effort to see Hans and order a tailor-made suit.
Later, when the businessman came to pick up his suit, he found that one sleeve twisted that way and the other this way. One shoulder bulged out and the other caved in. He pushed and pulled and finally, wrenched and contorted, he managed to make his body fit.
As he returned home on the bus, another passenger noticed his odd appearance and asked if Hans the tailor had made the suit. Receiving an affirmative reply, the man remarked, “Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit fit so perfectly someone as deformed as you.”
Foster says, “Often that is just what we do in the church. We get some idea of what the Christian faith should look like: then we push and shove people into the most grotesque configurations and call it “amazing!” That is death. It is a wooden legalism which destroys the soul. (Richard J. Foster in “TSF Bulletin,” Nov.-Dec 1982; Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 2)
And we cannot allow that to happen here in our church. We don’t help people by forcing them to conform to a rigid set of rules, and you don’t help yourself by listening to such teachers. Instead, we must release people to be all that God wants them to be. Set people free by equipping them to discern God’s will on their own.
That’s the way we accomplish God’s work. Otherwise, we just hamper ourselves with meaningless talk and arguments about unimportant issues. People out there are looking for the meaning of life. We cannot waste our time arguing over petty issues like music and clothing styles, or someone’s entertainment choices.
1 Timothy 1:5-7 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these – lit., they have missed the mark – and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. (NIV)
Those who want to teach law miss the point. They get so lost in the details, they can’t see the big picture. They end up studying themselves stupid and forget the whole goal of God’s Law.
Jesus put it this way in Matthew 23: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).
Jesus said the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40).
If we miss that, then we’ve missed the whole point, but that’s what teachers of the law do. They miss the point of the law, which is love, and they misuse the law.
1 Timothy 1:8-11 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law a is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (NIV)
The law is not for the righteous, the one who lives by faith, no! The law is for sinners, for unbelievers, to reveal their sin. We don’t use the law like a club to make people righteous. No! That never works. No law, no list or rules, no set of principles can make anybody better. The only thing the law can do is reveal how unrighteous people really are.
Sandy and I enjoy watching Kitchen Nightmares every once in a while on TV. It’s a show in which Gordon Ramsey, a top chef in the culinary world, comes to the aid of a failing restaurant and tries to turn them around. He ends up doing a complete makeover of the entire restaurant from its interior design, to its cooking techniques, its menu, and even the way they do business.
But before he can do that, he often has to convince the owner that there is a real problem, because many times they’re in denial. They’re just looking for a quick fix, thinking that a small adjustment will solve their problem. Well, Ramsey has to show them that they need a complete makeover if their restaurant is going to survive.
On one occasion, he used a black light to show the owner just how filthy his restaurant was. A black light causes body secretions to glow brightly, and when he brought it into one of the bathrooms, all four walls, the floor and even the ceiling were glowing. It was gross, but it convinced the owner that he had a real problem.
That’s what the law does. It shows us that we have a real problem, but we can’t use it to clean up the problem. Gordon Ramsey didn’t start scrubbing that bathroom with his black light. No! He brought in professional cleaners to clean that restaurant from top to bottom.
In the same way we cannot use the law (or a list of principles) to clean up our lives. We need to invite Christ into our lives do it for us. We need to trust Christ to do a complete makeover on us. That’s why He came to this earth. That’s why He died on a cross for our sins. & That’s why He rose again. When we couldn’t save ourselves, Someone greater than any Gordon Ramsey came to turn us around. God Himself came to completely make us over from the inside out.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Depend on Christ to change you, not a list of do’s and don’ts. That’s the Gospel. That’s the Good News which changes lives for eternity.
So if we as a church want to make a real difference in people’s lives, then we need to preach and teach the Gospel, and we need to stay away from anything that’s contrary to the gospel. We need to keep legalism out of the church. In other words, don’t focus on law. Instead…
FOCUS ON LOVE.
Emphasize compassion. Stress grace and mercy in your teaching.
1 Timothy 1:5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (NIV)
Why is love so important? Why is it the goal of God’s command here in 1 Timothy 1? It’s because love works where the law cannot.
Many years ago, a little girl named “Little Annie” was locked in the dungeon of a mental institution outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The dungeon was the only place for those the doctors considered “hopelessly insane.” In Little Annie’s case, they saw no hope for her, so they consigned her to a living death in a small cage which received little light and even less hope.
About that time, an elderly nurse was nearing retirement. She believed that there was hope for all of God’s children, so she started taking her lunch into the dungeon and eating outside of Little Annie’s cage. She wanted to communicate some love and hope to the little girl inside that cage.
In many ways, Little Annie was like an animal. Sometimes she would violently attack the person who came into her cage. At other times, she would completely ignore them. When the elderly nurse started visiting her, Little Annie gave no indication that she was even aware of her presence.
One day, the nurse brought some brownies to the dungeon and left them outside Annie’s cage. Little Annie gave no hint that she knew they were there, but when the nurse returned the next day, the brownies were gone. From that time on, the nurse would bring brownies when she made her Thursday visit.
Soon after that, the doctors noticed a change in Annie. After a period of time, they decided to move Little Annie upstairs. And finally the day came when they told their “hopeless case” that she could return home. But Little Annie did not want to leave. Instead, she chose to stay and help others. Today, the world knows her as Anne Sullivan, the one who cared for, taught, and nurtured Helen Keller. (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, pp.289-290)
Love did what nothing else could do. It transformed a hopeless case into a helpful young lady. Love is a powerful thing! It does what criticism could never do. It does what a list of rules could never do. It does what the law could never do. Love transforms lives forever!
It started when God demonstrated His own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. & It continues as we demonstrate and teach His love here on Washington Island. So if we want to make a real difference in people’s lives, then we must emphasize love, not law.
John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, put it so well when he wrote:
Run, John, run. The law commands
But gives me neither feet nor hands.
Better news the gospel brings;
It bids me fly and gives me wings.
