Voice of the Nazarene 4-21-24

I'm coming to you from North Central Ohio, we share with you the voice of the Nazarene, a week by week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene, we joined our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle. And the voice of the Nazarene.

Reads here in verse 52, and Jesus sent messengers for for his face. And they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Jesus. And they did not receive him because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.

And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we come and fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Allies did? But Jesus turned and rebuked him and said, you know, not what matter of spirit your love, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. They went to another village. Nobody had the passion that James had. I think he meant well, but he didn't always get it right. I think a lot of us are that way. I think it was very obvious to Christ when he, when he called James he, he knew what weaknesses what flaws he had, and, and myself and you included he, he knew all about us before he ever called Sydney. And he's still working on us, the kids are singing. One of the amazing things about James is found here and identified in Mark 317, where Jesus gave James and John, his brother nicknames. He gave him nicknames, both at the same time together. He didn't separate them. He called them Sons of Thunder. Can you imagine what he nicknamed him that in front of the crowds and how no doubt, they high five each other and they thought, Man, when we get our little donkey and we start cruising down the highway, we can put Sons of Thunder on the back of our leather jackets. And we're gonna look cool. I imagine. They said to the other disciples were the sons of thunder. What nickname did he call you? Kind of hard not to get a little arrogant, and high minded, pretty impressive. And from this son of thunder, this disciple of passion, we have some lessons that I think that we can learn, as we look at it was live with the first is a lesson of separation. Here in mark one verse 19, records where Jesus called James and John become disciples. Reason when he had gone a little further since he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. And straightway he called them and they left their father's Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him, did you catch that little phrase left their father, I believe in the story of James that what Jesus called and we learn a lesson of separation. James left everything that he was familiar with. I mean, he had grown up in the fishing business. It was his lifestyle, get up early in the morning, before the sun backs out and head down to the docks in the wharves and get on the boat and, and to begin to get the nets laid out and plan their day and begin to loosen the ropes and head out to fish familiar with water nets and boats and fishing and the smell of fish and the docks was all he had ever been familiar with. And now he's leaving all of that behind and he's embracing that unknown future. But it not only left that that was familiar he left his father just said they left their dad in the boat with a hard hands I mean, here is two sons that he's counted on a walking off the boat and walking away from the business and and left the old man wondering what in the world am I going to he he also left his family and we can talk about that I'm not take the time, but he left his finances, everything that they did to earn a living as a result of fishing.

They're in entire income came from the fishing business. I mean, that's the way they paid their bills. catching fish.

They've been financially ever they became in secure, no more income, they left their finances. May I say that he left his future by all intents and purposes. This would have been his future. This would have been the security. Their father, Zebedee was a very successful fisherman. He was a good businessman, he owned boats, and he had hard help. And he had docks and, and these two brothers were to take over the business, they would run the business where they dad got old and his hair became gray and shoulders became suit. So they're walking away from the business. The Bible said he left, he left, he left it. And this is the only time in the Bible where we have the same thing happening back in First Kings chapter 19. will read about Elijah and Elisha roll Prophet, great preacher, by the name of Elijah saw this huge guy in a yoke with 12 yoke of oxen.

1 Kings 19 · chapter mention

And in the last joke was an ox on one side of this great big brute of a guy by the name of Alicia. And Elijah called to him and told him that God wanted his life and wanted him for ministry. And I guess he's the new up and coming. He's the next heir apparent. He'll be the new prophet, he'll be the spiritual leader. The Bible seven Elijah left his plow. But he not only left his plow, he burned his plow, kill the oxen fad, the crowd celebrated, but he was saying, I'm not coming back, my hand will never touch that plow again. I'm leaving no way that I can never look back, I'm moving forward. But you also find the same situation and Mark chapter 14, a woman by the name of Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was, in her past, famous as a prostitute, no longer on the streets of the city. Beautiful woman had to be calling out to men and alluring and attracting the guys in selling herself. By the time you get to this 14th chapter of Mark, you'll find this woman who Jesus had cast seven demons out of her, you'll find her kneeling at the feet of Christ. And she's pouring out this real nice expensive perfume on his feet. What she no doubt was, had used in marketing herself. When she had ply the streets at night, she would wear this expensive perfume that attracted men. And now she's taking that perfume and she's pouring it on the feet of price and wash you saying I don't need this anymore. That was the old me but this is the new me. I'm going to annoy Christ and anoint his body for the berry and, and it's no longer about me and what I used to do it Start who I am now. My life has changed. And I'm a new me and I'm not what I watched was. I think of the life of James, we see a lesson on separation. And when you come to Christ and I come to Christ, we have to separate from some things just like James did. For most of us of your like me letting the old things pass away. Sometimes it's difficult.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

It's not always easy. It's hard to do. It's not just something that's magical and takes place in a snap. And you never have to worry about sometimes it's a struggle. It's a day in and day out, allowing the Holy Spirit who now lives in us, to help us not be who we used to be. They help us to be who we ought to be, to be better and to be like Jesus Christ. Separation, a lesson in separation but not only a lesson in separation from the life of James, we learn a lesson in servanthood. Scripture tells us that mother of James, her name was Salome. Salome was the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus that made Jesus her nephew. She's Aunt Salome. And Salome and both Marys the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene.

According to the Scripture,

40, In Matthew 27 and 56. They were all three together at the crusifixation.

We know that Salome, James mother, according to Mark 16, verse one was at the resurrection with both of the Mary’s.

By the time you get to Mark chapter 20, verse 20, we find dear old and Salome, slipping up with her best dress and looking pretty, use your family connections. And she's coming up in a very respectful way kneels before Christ, and she asked him for a favor. You know, I'm your aunt, you're my nephew. And I've got two sweet sons, the sons of thunder, only a mother could look at some faces can call them sweet. And she said, I'm just wondering, in the future, could my two boys, my wonderful sons, when you come into your kingdom, could one sit on your right side and the other on your left side?

She didn't have a clue what she was asking for. They didn't understand. And that's just for starters. And furthermore, why these sons would put their mom up to try to manipulate a key spot on the board is beyond me using their connections. It had to have upset the other disciples because we know that James and John had put their mom up to it. And this is what they sent us. We look forward into the story. It's Matthew 20, verse 24, when the 10 other disciples heard what James and John did ask. They were indignant, not indifferent. They were taught. They were upset.

Matthew 20:24

Now, I don't know if they were upset because they didn't think of it first. I mean, the story can go in a lot of directions.

But Jesus took this whole awkward, uncomfortable, weird moment and weird situation. And he turns it into a lesson on servanthood. And in Matthew 20, verse 25, here's what Jesus said, He called them all together. And he said this, we know that the rulers in this world Lord had over their people. And officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you that he's talking about, if you're going to lead in my kingdom, he said, it'll be different. You know, the kingdom of God is different than the world's kingdom. But who, whoever wants to be a leader among you, you must first be a servant. And whoever wants to lead must first be a slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom. For men. Now Jesus takes this uncomfortable. And this moment, and he turns it around, instead, it's not about who's sitting on my right side, or over here on my left side. If you want to be high in my kingdom, you've got to get down low, you've got to take the lower seat. Now I notice everybody's running the aisles and shouting right now, about this lesson on service that I imagined it was pretty quiet, then to You see, Jesus is saying, it's not about me. It's not about you. And we can learn a lesson from the life of James about servanthood. To follow after Christ. It's a life of serving others, not about me, and you never has been. Fact of the matter before you ever were it wasn't about you. And somebody didn't die so you can take their place when you got born. It's not about us. It's about Jesus. It's about making his name known. It’s about taking everybody to heaven that we can. Back in 2014 Simon Sinek brilliant man of thinker, and author, a leader expert, and he had met with his publishers and they were discussing the name of his new book. And they were arguing and tossing it around and discussing it and rolling it around on the table and it got very heated and then Simon recalled a conversation that he had with the United States Marine, Lieutenant General George Flynn. And he had asked Flynn he said, What is it about the Marines that make them so special? Without any hesitation Lieutenant General said these words of officers eat last. And Simon didn't get it. He said, Would you mind clarifying what you mean by officers eat last?

Matthew 20:25

He said the higher you rise in leadership, you're encouraged that we move them to a position of servanthood which is to take the back of the chow line. And everybody else moves up and they eat first and officers eat last.

That's what he entitled that new book. Leaders eat last. It became a New York Times bestseller. Do you know it wasn't a new concept with Simon?

Nor with the Marines. It was a concept taught several 1000 years ago to James and to the disciples. If you're going to follow me you need to decrease, it can’t be about you. And from James, we learn the valuable lesson of servanthood. Here’s another lesson I caught from the life of James, a lesson from the Samaritans. Now you say there was a divide between the Jews and the Samaritans. That's an understatement. Fact of the matter. It was a colossal divide, they hated each other.

It wasn't like the Jewish soccer team had beat the Samaritan soccer team. It was a whole lot deeper than that, and a whole lot more ferocious than that. It had taken place hundreds of years before and in your Bible it records when it divided it was back in First Kings chapter 12 was after the death of Solomon. And his son's name was Rehoboam. And Rehoboam took over the kingdom and sat on the throne and made some terrible decisions. It was so divisive that it caused a split in the 12 tribes. Who had once before been so united. Suddenly 10 of them, they move northward and separated themselves from the other two, and they set up a new capital city called Samaria. The two remaining tribes fade south and became known as Judah. And their capital, of course, was Jerusalem. And their place of worship was where Solomon had built his temple called the Temple Mount. And a lot of divide between the two was obvious. And as the years grew, it became even further apart, hundreds of years passed and both sides were conquered by other kingdoms, especially the Syrians conquered the Samaritans. And in the midst of all of that was a lot of intermarry until Judah looked on and saw these Samaritans as half breeds. Just filthy, just scum.

1 Kings 12 · chapter mention

And the Samaritans felt the Jews were the same way. And under this context, you come to this ninth chapter of Luke. And in this chapter, Jesus is passing through from Judah. He's passing through Samaria, and evidently is heading to the city of Jerusalem, which is not the capital of Samaria. And it meant that he was not respecting they thought their place of worship.

And they were angry. And they said, No, we're not allowing a campaign to be held here. And the village said, we're not accepting Him and just move on.

Just keep on walking. We don't want you to stop. And you'll find that in Luke chapter nine, verse 52, in verse 53, so you have a group of Jews thats strike number one, and because they seem to be disrespecting their place of worship, which they were going to Jerusalem, they refused that strike number two, they said, there’s no room, we don't want you. And it's at this place and under this circumstance, that we have the scripture that stated, that we started with today. And if you don't mind, I want to pause just for a quick moment. Because in the earlier part of chapter nine, Jesus's sent his 12 disciples out, and they had gone up around the region of Galilee, in the sea, and all through that area, and they were empowered to heal people, like healers.

And they, if they encountered anyone that had demons, they could cast the demons out. They even have the authority to call fire down from heaven and lightning. They had all kinds of power with the problem. In that same chapter in that same conversation in verse five, Jesus had already told him what to do if you go to a town and they don't accept you and they refuse you Just simply shake the dust off their feet. I didn't tell you to burn them up. Just shake the dust. You don't have to start a fistfight. Let it go.

You don't have to say, well, I don't like your mom. You don't start that kind of stuff. He's simply saying, No, that's not the way we do things. Now you got James and John with all of their passion and a little bit of their carnality they hadn't been to Pentecost yet. They said, We just ought to burn them up. You know what the problem is? Of course, Jesus, the rest of the disciples are looking on their thinking out Sons of Thunder again, here they go. And Jesus responded, and we don't we don't get any additional context on what we have. didn't say that. He giggled, didn't say that he cried. It didn't say anything. Jesus responded the Sunderbans didn't come to take away man's life as he came to save them. That's a thought ended. And from that teaching, we learned that Jesus is showing us how to handle people that don't like us. Now, no, that's not hasn't happened in many of your lives. And how do you get along with people you don't like? That just kind of set your trigger off. How do you respond to others just call fire down on Oh, God, strike him dead? How do you handle now the Sermon on the Mount have just been preached this just a little earlier, and had already taken place that Jesus said, Love your enemies.

And he said, do good to them that hate you and bless them that curse you. Pray for them that hurt you. Now that's a problem. You say, Well, Pastor would be a lot easier to love them if they were dead. I mean, let's just burn them and then we'll love them. But Jesus said, Love your enemies, not burn them. Do good to them to hate you bless those who curse you kind of hard to do. Pray for them that make it difficult. And so Jesus sets the standard for those to follow him that and it's really different. It didn't make a lot of sense. May I just say to you this morning, that we all have a lot of Samaritans in our life people that we'd rather not be around people that are not been honorable to us behind her back. People who've done things and have never straightened it out and probably never will. How do you treat them? Can you still walk up and shake their hand and smile? We want to burn them that's what Facebook Facebook does. It doesn't make the lame to walk but it's your made the dumb to talk to the people are yak, yak, yak, and they're just burning each other up and far we're calling far down from heaven or from somewhere else. In 1951, there was an old SATCOM now my, my parents didn't have TV so I didn't grew up with it. I didn't get to watch it. Okay. They had an episode called Amos and Andy.

And Amos. He was in one of his moods. And he just in the face of Andy and he's thumping him on the chest and prodding him and pushing on him and poking him until Andy Abe was fed up and Powell and he said okay, I've at all I want to amis. So he goes gets a stick of dynamite. And he strapped it to his chest. And he said, Just watch next time he hits me in the chest is gonna blow his hand off now. I would not advise you to do that. Go cause if they do hit you, it's like a blow hole in your heart.

That you'll have to deal with the rest of your life.

fundamental problem and some of us we were kind of like, Andy, we get so busy. We're trying to blow people's hands off, but we're only hurting ourselves.

And we need to learn this lesson from the Samaritans that Jesus was trying to teach him that were to do good to people. Were there a lot of people who are not even always honorable, that's got a burr in their saddle. And whether they're right or we're right, or they're wrong, or they're only we're right. We're supposed to bless him. Pray for him. Love him. No, I can't help but Jesus said that I'm just relaying it to you. I'm just the messenger. But we learn from the life of James some lessons from the Samaritan. But what about a lesson in sovereignty? Lesson not from the life of James but from the death have James, specifically, from his death we can learn a lesson in sovereignty Acts chapter 12 Verse two verses records the death of James. It tells the story of King Herod Agrippa. And how he had had the Apostle James, the brother of John had him killed with a with a sword.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And we know that James was the very first disciple to be martyred. Now, Stephen was martyred earlier, but he was a deacon, not a apostle.

Interesting that James was the first to die, and his brother John was the last of the 12. To die. James was the first, the Bible does a record a struggle.

He didn't say that he begged for his life that he was a wimp, and that he cried. It was just a matter of fact. And I think there's something in that because James was a part of that inner circle. They were nine others, they were disciples too, but they were never a part of that inner circle that Jesus had Peter, James and John, and they got to experience a lot more than the other nine. They were part of the group and Mark 29 That went to Peter's mother in law's house. Bible said that she was sick with a fever, sick nearly under death, and he got to stand there. And he watched Jesus take authority, and literally deliver her from her sickness, what a miracle. And James was there with his own eyes, saw Jesus commanded the sickness to be loose from her.

He got the see the Son of God, rebuke the sickness. And then James got to be with Peter, John and Matthew 17, on the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, and he saw Jesus in all of his glory transfigured with his own eyes. He witnessed Moses and Elijah alive standing there on the mountain who had been dead for one at least 1000s of years.

James and Mark five was able to walk into Jarvis's home, and they walked through the house, and they saw this father weeping and sobbing, because his daughter that he loved was dead there laid her lifeless body.

They were silent, they were quiet. They were standing in the presence of death, and sorrow and grieve. And Jesus reached out and took command over her death. And James saw that. He saw him rebuked death, that he had ahold of that little girl and he watched Jesus give her life back to her. And James had to see something that prepared him to be the first disciple, to be put to death. James had to

25, when Jesus said to Martha on the resurrection of the life, He that believers in me though he were dead, yet, shall he live, even when you die, you're going to live, not even death can hold you forever, James was changed.

And I think he saw the sovereignty of God, that God had absolute supreme power, and authority. That's what sovereignty is supreme power, and authority, even over death.

And I believe as they thrust that sword into his body, James was saying, God, I trust you. I trust you. I know all this death isn't the end. And I know that there's nothing that I have to fear. I heard you in the garden as you pray to your own father, and you agreed to die on the cross. You yielded, and I yield now to my own death. And if you're going to follow Jesus, we're going to have to trust him. Do you know that not everything in life is going to make sense? Sometimes what you think is better becomes backwards to you. Sometimes what you think is good, didn't work out like you thought maybe it ought to and you've got to trust God, even when it don't make sense. God, I know that you're allowing this, I yield to you. I trust you in life, I trust you and death. I mean, if you're going to trust God with your soul, which is eternal, then why not trust God with your life, which is temporal? So we learned from James, out of all the 12 we learned from James that you have to separate yourselves from some things. You can't live your own life and do a new life at the same time you got to let go the past the old you, who you used to be back when you used to have sin in your life, and you give that away and you say Lord, I take this new life, I'm a new creature in Christ Jesus. From his life, we learn servanthood that we serve others, not ourself first. We will learn how to treat people we pray for we love them. Sometimes you can't fire back, you bite your tongue, you got to walk away. There's no getting even. And even when we come down to the crossing of the old river, Jordan, and life is slipping away. In those moments lying there looking at your friends and loved ones gathered around you say I trust God. I have all my life. And I'm going to trust Him now in my passing, for God is sovereign. God has my life under control. And even when you're standing there with your loved one, and you're holding their hand and you feel them slipping away, you trust God, that he knows what's best.

And only God knows the future.

God. I've left all to follow you and I'm moving into the future with you. I trust you with everything.

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene visitors every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor Ray LaSalle. For more information regarding BNC visit Bucyrus nazarene.org.