Advent Service

Pastor Phillips' Sermon

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Good news is fun to share and tonight's theme, Tell About the Savior , is good news. Think about it. When you got engaged and you couldn't wait to announce it to your family and friends or when your child was born and you just couldn't wait to tell the news and how that all worked out. Good news is fun to share. We are thrilled to be able to announce good news. And telling about our Savior is the best news of all.

The bible reading we heard a little bit earlier is a great example of what it means to tell about our Savior. In the bible story, Jesus visits a location, a location called the pool of Bethesda where people waited in desperation to be healed at the pool. John 5 says, “Here a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned he had been in this condition for a long time, He asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?'” That doesn't seem to be a real difficult question to answer, does it? Just imagine if you're one of those people lying there, lame, paralyzed, and all those conditions that must have existed there, blind, and you hear that question, “Do you want to get well?” the answer is pretty clear and obvious, isn't it? “Of course, we want to get well. Of course, I've been an invalid for 38 years.” The invalid was more patient than us, though. He took the time to explain why he had been an invalid so long and why he wasn't getting healed. He said, “I have no one to help me when the pool is stirred. While I'm trying to get in,” and you can just picture this person dragging himself to the pool, “while I'm trying to get there, someone gets there ahead of me every time.” Just imagine the countless times he had made the effort unsuccessfully.

The belief of the people gathered around that pool was as they watched the water and saw little ripples in the water, they believed an angel was stirring that water with his wings as a signal to the people, “Come. Come into the pool and be healed.” I kind of wonder if that's actually how God would set something up. Only the first person gets to be healed? I don't know. The God I know is loving and generous and provides healing for everyone, especially through Jesus, His Son. But that was what they believed. The first person to enter the water when the water was stirred was the one who had received the healing. The man had no one to help him and, therefore, he could not successfully respond to the opportunity. He had no one to help him. No one, that is, except Jesus. Jesus listened to the man, thought about the explanation, and His response was very direct, “Get up. Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” Now the man could have made an argument out of this and said, “Get up and walk? I've been an invalid for 38 years. If I could get up and walk, I'd have beat those other guys down to the pool and been healed.” He could have said that. He could have explained how impossible it was for him to carry his mat. But he didn't. Because, as Jesus spoke, that man's faith was strengthened and he simply obeyed. An invalid for 38 years obeyed. He got up, picked up his mat, and walked. What do you think the other invalids were thinking? All those disabled people, the lame, the paralyzed, and the blind, what do you think they were thinking? “Wait a minute. The rules are you have to get in the pool to be healed. This guy didn't get in the pool. I beat him every time. How come I didn't get healed and he did?” Jesus is making a clear point. Trust God's Word. Trust His commands.

The story continues with the authorities interrogating this former invalid. You can't call him that anymore. He's been healed in the name of Jesus. They're asking him questions. “Don't you know it's the Sabbath? What are you doing carrying your mat around?” “Well, this guy told me to pick it up and go.” “Well, who is He?” Now they're after Jesus. “ Who told you to break the Sabbath?” “I have no idea. I don't know who He was. He healed me and He told me to get up and go.” Later on, Jesus saw him at the temple and said, “You know, you're healed. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” So the man went from there and He told the interrogators, the Jews, “Jesus is the one who healed me.” Jesus is the one who healed me. It wasn't too complicated a message, but he was telling about the Savior.

I think many times when we hear that God calls us in the Great Commission to tell about the Savior, we think it's something really difficult or complicated or intimidating, something we have to go to seminary for or something like that, but it's not. It's just talking, just sharing. All God is telling us to do is talk. Talk about how we came to know God and for many of you, that was as little children brought to the waters of baptism and nurtured in your faith through Sunday School and bible stories and learning how to fold your hands and pray and saying table prayers and coming to worship with your parents. That's your story. It's not hard to tell. It's very simple.

Talk about the comfort your faith gives you when you face adversity, when you're going into the hospital, when a loved one dies. Talk about the benefits of your relationship with God. That's not too hard to do. Talk about the hope that is part of every day of your life, that you know this isn't the end of everything. What happens in this world is just a temporary experience. But God gives us a guarantee of eternal life in heaven, a beautiful, beautiful place. Talk about what Jesus has done for you. Now again, this isn't some sermon or anything like that. It's simply the facts. What has He done for you? Well, the guy who had been an invalid for 38 years knew real clear. “He healed me.” And I think you know, too, what He's done for you. First of all, He's given you forgiveness and salvation but then all the blessings in your life, you know they're from God. The strong body you have, the strong mind, the ability to work and earn a living, the house you have, the family you have, the friends you have. Talk about what God has done for you. That's what it means to tell about the Savior. Just talk. Not in some preachy way but in the same way we talk about anything we celebrate or about anything we have a passion for, like our kids or our grandkids or our hobbies or the sports teams we follow. Just talk. Talk about the Savior. Speak from your heart and God will do the rest.

The Iditarod is a famous dogsled race that many of you know about. It's held every year in Alaska , and the story behind the race is also very well known. The Iditarod was inspired by a monumental historical event, a dogsled relay of lifesaving serum from the Anchorage port to Gnome in 1925. That January, in the middle of a frigid winter, deadly diphtheria broke out in Gnome, remotely located along the Barring Sea. Between the stricken town and the nearest serum in Anchorage was nearly 1,000 miles of Alaskan wilderness. The Alaskan railroad carried the medicine 250 miles north to Nenana. From there, 20 volunteer dogsled drivers relayed the serum nonstop the remaining 674 miles. When the first musher left Nenana, the temperature hovered around 50 below 0. According to legend, the serum was nearly lost when a huge gust of wind toppled the sled of the final musher. The musher frantically dug in the snow to find the serum, and he dug with his bare hands, 50 below 0. He righted his sled and continued on to Gnome. Through the efforts of those heroic mushers, the serum arrived in Gnome 5 days and 7 hours after leaving Nenana. The town was saved. Those who had dedicated their time and worked so hard to deliver the serum were focused on one thing, saving that town. And as they worked through that night, night after night, through the cold and the weather, they thought of the people, the men and the women, the boys and the girls of that town of Gnome and they kept going. They kept going so they could get that lifesaving medicine to those people.

What would have happened if one of those 20 teams faltered, if one of those mushers said, “Ah, the weather is just terrible. I can't go out in this. My dogs won't make it.” The serum would have been useless. Worse still, think about this. If they worked so hard to get it all the way to Gnome, risking their lives and everything else just to get this medicine to the people who were dying, yet when it arrived nobody used it, nobody distributed it to the dying population. What would you think of that? What a tragedy. What a shame. A whole town lost when the serum was right there for them. Here is the point. We have what the world needs. We have the cure. We have Jesus, and God has chosen us to deliver the good news about our Savior. We are the team He has assembled and what will drive us on. Think about the world around us. Think about the people who will be saved, the men, the women, the boys, and the girls who will be in heaven because you were willing to tell about the Savior.

May God grant us this Christmas season an extra measure of His Holy Spirit to have an intense focus on carrying that wonderful message to the world around us. Amen.

Copyright 2006 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church