MAKING HOLIDAYS, HOLY DAYS
November 20, 2005
Pastor Brian Matherlee
Matthew 25:31-46
Video Introduction, “Be Thankful” from Sermonspice
Video scene is set in a kitchen where people come and go by themselves and we hear their thoughts. Each one is complaining about something someone has done or what they have to do for others or even God. It closes with words appearing on the screen that tell us what we can be thankful for.
Thanksgiving is the beginning of an important time of year. This time of year brings out the best and worst of people. Generosity seems to peak during the winter months. People give to the Salvation Army and shelters. They pack toys into shoe boxes and send them to a 3rd world country. They buy gifts and send cards, bake bread and cookies to give to their neighbors. But they also wrack up more debt than at any other time of the year.
• The average American has four major credit cards with an average total credit card debt of $9,000.00.
Now, add to that those that a sucked into the minimum payment plan scheme and you have a recipe for financial disaster. Did you know that if you have a balance of $3,900 and you pay the 3% minimum it will take you nearly 42 years to pay off the debt, and those monthly payments would total $14,530.44.
Cicero said, “Thankfulness is the foundation for all other virtues.”
• Fanny Crosby, the great hymn writer of 8,000 plus hymns in the last half of the 19th Century used to describe herself as "the happiest woman on earth" , though blind since she was six weeks old. She wrote 17 hymns included in our hymnal including, “To God Be The Glory” and “Blessed Assurance”.
Thanksgiving has for years been overshadowed by shopping, football and food. And Christmas grows more commercial every year. Next week Advent begins. Advent season covers the four Sundays prior to Christmas and therefore with Christmas being on Sunday this year—Advent this year is the longest.
How can we observe this season of the year in a meaningful way? Let’s look at a story Jesus told in Matthew 25 to discover 4 principles and then make 4 applications of truth.
Four Principles:
1. Give simply
a. Food for the hungry
b. Drink for the thirsty
c. Compassion for the down & out (stranger, prisoner, sick)
d. Clothing
2. Give to what touches you
a. The sheep who were commended had no idea that they were doing something extraordinary in the eyes of Jesus, they simply were acting on the things they saw.
b. Keep your eyes open.
• If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of one hundred people; here’s the way the world would look:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, and 8 Africans.
50 would suffer from malnutrition and one would be near death. Only one would have a college education, and only one would own a computer.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read.
6 would possess 59% of the world’s wealth and all 6 would be from North America.
We attend church without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death. We are better off than 3 billion people in this regard.
We have money in the bank and spare change in a dish, food in the refrigerator, clothes on our backs, and a roof over our heads. We are richer than 75% of this world.
3. Give unselfishly
a. Jesus tells them that they gave to “the least”.
b. These people had no means to repay; they were in a vulnerable position.
c. If you have never been in need you cannot possibly imagine the feeling of those who are truly in need by their own fault or by no fault of their own.
4. Give—because that is who you are!
a. Verse 34 tells us that people act out of who they really are.
b. Verse 46 says, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” We are rewarded according to who we are.
The Application of Truth
1. Fight greed aggressively
• In his book, Jumping Hurdles, Hitting Glitches, Overcoming Setbacks, Steve Brown writes,
“The most unhappy person in the world is not someone who didn’t get what he or she wanted. The most unhappy person is the one who got what he or she wanted and then found out that it wasn’t as wonderful as expected. The secret of a happy life is not to get what you want but to live with what you’ve got. Most of us spend our lives concentrating on what we don’t have instead of thanking God for what we do have. Then we wake up, our life is over, and we missed the beauty of the present. You think about that.”
a. Take whatever you intend to spend and cut it in half.
b. Give the other half to the needy
c. Focus on family traditions that build faith and not greed
d. Some might say, “Start small” but I encourage you to think big and where affordability is an issue budget well or think of something besides money.
2. Give to Jesus
a. It is his birthday anyway
b. To the building fund
c. To the food pantry
d. To the coat closet
e. New things to be distributed instead of what you wish you hadn’t bought or has gone out of style or you outgrew (either up or out)
f. A love offering that you don’t insist on being used a certain way
3. Give personally
a. Perhaps giving money is too easy
b. Involve yourself in the life of someone who is friendless
c. Share your faith any chance you get
d. Make your church relationship a greater priority through Sunday School, the Women/Men/Senior/Youth/Children’s groups.
e. Find a place to serve in the church.
4. Seek a deeper walk with Christ
a. Read the Bible accounts of His birth
b. Study about how Jesus interacted with the needy
c. Pray for a more compassionate heart (and then act on it because action is the mode of cultivating, watering and harvesting what God plants in you.)
During World War II, England needed to increase its production of coal if it was going to have any hope of winning the war. Winston Churchill called together labor leaders to enlist their support. And at the end of his presentation he asked them to stand with him and picture in their minds a grand parade, which he knew would be held in Piccadilly Circus after the war.
First, he said, would be the sailors, then the soldiers, then the pilots. Last of all, he said, comes a long line of sweat-stained, soot-streaked men in miner’s caps. Someone would cry from the crowd, ’And where were you during the critical days of our struggle?’
And from ten thousand throats comes the answer, “we were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.”
I want to be coal worker. I want to know that even if my part seems small to all others, there is someone who knows my worth. I may not the person, who is seen doing the great things in the kingdom, but I can serve a meal to someone who is sick, I can visit a shut-in, I can send a note to someone who is lonely. I can be a coal worker in the kingdom.
Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me whole. Thank you, Lord, for giving to me—Thy great salvation so rich and free!
