September 21, 2008
PASSING OF THE PEACE
ISA 64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
QUESTION If we are Clay, and God is the potter, what kind of pot or ceramic piece is God making out of you?
CALL TO WORSHIP (Matthew 11:28f)
The Lord be with you
And also with you
Come, all who are wear and burden.
Let us take the yoke of the Lord upon us.
Opening Hymn #64 Holy, Holy, Holy
OPENING PRAYER
Lord, we gather this morning knowing that you are Emmanuel, God with us. You are the God who knows us. You listen to our hearts. You know us before we even utter the words. We thank you for the opportunity to walk with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
PRAYER # 395 TAKE TIME TO BE HOLY
CLOSING # 528 NEARER MY GOD TO THEE
11 am
Open the Eyes of My Heart
IMAGERY: Living Water
THEOLOGICAL ISSUE: Eternal Life
THEME: Transformation
GREEK WORD: Metamorphous
Sermon Notes
September 21, 2008
Walking With God: Transformation
During the PASSING OF THE PEACE
Question: If we are clay, what kind of pot is God making out of you?
A love driven pot?
QUESTION: Do you think God is shaping us into the image of Jesus
POINT: Walking with God requires transformation
We as the clay are transformed by God’s impressions upon us.
Sometimes tht requires us to be (ps 46:10) be still and know that I am God.
Sometimes that requires us to listen to music ( ) and let God change us through music.
…mountains
….seas
…friends
…even the golf course…NOT!
BUT IT DOES REQUIRE A CONVERSATION, A LISTENING AND TALKING CONVERSATION.
INTRO (Walking With God, John Elderedge, p. 18)
QUESTION: Have you ever been ready to send a blistering e-mail and changed your mind? Was it the still voice of God saying “no” that caused you to “delete”?
Have you ever hit the delete key, have you ever not and wished you did?
God is transforming us to be better listeners to the voice of God
Do you think god is shaping us into the image of Jesus? How?
How would your life look differently if you were fully transformed (perfectionism)?
There are many ways God shapes us.
One way is when we are still (Ps 46:10)
God can shape us
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 11: 28 – 29
MT 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
YOKE sounds like a burden. But the correct yoke is someone who pulls alongside of you and gives you a helping hand.
The yoke of the Pharisees, is a yoke of burden (law) (a checklist of what it is to be religious)
Christians do this today as well, this is not an exclusively left to the pharisee, there are Christian Pharisees, do this “I’d rather burnout for Jesus than rust.’
We avoid burnout, when we are yoke with Christ. We are energized when we are yoked with Christ. We are involved in things that we have a passion for with Christ. We are love driven when we are yoked with Christ.
QUESTION: Who’s yoke?
The yoke of God is easy (grace and love)
The yoke of the Pharissess (hard) it is driven to be in obedience to the law
It is a to do list, it is time management:
ISSUE: The way we live our lives
God requires tous to be tgransformed
7th day of rest.
Ps 46:10 helps us not to run out of gas when we are running the race of life.
WALKINGN WITH GOD REQUIRES: Transformation
SETTING THE SCENE
Previous chapter, John 3 (new birth), John 2 (transforming water into wine)
In this chapter, Jesus will confront a Samaritan Woman
History of Samaria (why there is a disagreement) wanna be Jews
Sometimes we don’t get along with those closer to us than those who are further from us
SCRIPTURE: John 4: 1 - ??
N 4:1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
JN 4:4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
JN 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
JN 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. )
Question: “Who is your ‘Samaritan’”?
JN 4:10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
JN 4:11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
JN 4:13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
WATER
QUESTION: What “water” do you drink that never quenches (addiction)
AUGUSTINE
Each person is created with a God shape hole and only God can fill that shape, but the problem is that we attempt to fill it with other things when only God can fill and fully satisifies that need.
But we will find other things to fill that need.
(list of addictions, is sometime an attempt to fill that need)
JN 4:15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
LAST WEEK (PSALM 139: 1 – 4)
God knows us,
This week, Jesus knows the Samaritan woman
JN 4:16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
JN 4:17 "I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
JN 4:19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
JN 4:21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
JN 4:25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
JN 4:26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Is this an “I am” statement?
JN 4:27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
JN 4:28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.
POINT: God knows us (Psalm 139)
Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
THIS WOMAN WAS CHANGED (TRANSFORMED)
Notice: she left what she came for, water.
That is what happens when we are encountered by God, we leave behind what we think is important and leave with something more important.
“COME, SEE A MAN…”
At the very least this woman has been transformed into an evangelist
JN 4:31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
JN 4:32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
JN 4:33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
JN 4:34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying `One sows and another reaps' is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
JN 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
JN 4:42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
JN 4:43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.
JN 4:46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
JN 4:48 "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."
JN 4:49 The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
JN 4:50 Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live."
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."
JN 4:53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
JN 4:54 This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.
JN 5:1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
WALKING WITH GOD
We have a choice, we can walk with God and grow in our spirituality. We can move from a mediocre faith, to a faith that is love driven that walks with the God who calls us to love god and others.
TRIADS
SELF EXAMINATION - know thyself
JOURNAL
OPPORTUNITES (from the church): Mission, equipping, etc.
,
PUPPETS
Bob: What ya doin’ Julie?
Julie: I am thinking about butterflies.
Bob: Butterflies are cool.
Julie: My teacher says they go through a metamorphosis
Bob: Cool!...What’s a me-ta-mor-phosis?
Julie: Well, according to Wikipedia, Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s form or structure through cell growth and differentiation.
Bob: Huh?
Julie: Don’t you get it?
Bob: Those were some mighty big words Julie.
Julie: Yes, I am pretty much multisyllabic, if I don’t say so myself.
Bob: Well, I am Methodist and I don’t know what that all means?
Julie: I have no idea. But, I think I’ll ask my parents.
Bob: You do that Julie.
Julie: If I were to guess what it means, I think it has something to do with a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
Bob: Oh.
Julie: It also said in Wikipedia that Metamorphosis is derived from two Greek words: Meta, meaning “from;” and morphsis, meaning “change” and both words combined mean transformation.
Bob: Well it’s all Greek to me.
Julie: Multisyllabic Bob, Multisyllabic.
Bob: There you go with those big words again.
Julie: Let me explain it to you Bob.
Bob: I am all ears Julie.
Julie: you know how you can take a clump of clay and mold it into a pot.
Bob: Yeah. I’ve made stuff out of clay before.
Julie: Well, life is like that. God is the potter and he takes this clump of clay, which is you.
Bob: Hey wait a minute Julie! Are you saying I am mud?
Julie: Clay, Bob. Clay. Not mud.
Bob: Okay, that’s better. If I thought you thought I was mud and not clay, I might have to come up with my own multisyllabic word for you Julie.
Julie: Now, let’s see where was I.
Bob: I am a clump of clay.
Julie: Your words Bob. Okay. You’re a clump of clay, God is the potter. God molds the clay into a pot.
Bob: a pot?
Julie: What would you like to be?
Bob: a bowl of cherries.
Julie: Okay, God molds you into a bowl of cherries out of clay. That’s transformation. That’s metamorphosis.
Bob: Wow. that’s cool. God changes us.
Julie: Into something better.
Bob: Yeah, a bowl of cherries.
ISA 64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
QUESTION If we are Clay, and God is the potter, what kind of pot or ceramic piece is God making out of you?
CALL TO WORSHIP (Matthew 11:28f)
The Lord be with you
And also with you
Come, all who are wear and burden.
Let us take the yoke of the Lord upon us.
Opening Hymn #64 Holy, Holy, Holy
OPENING PRAYER
Lord, we gather this morning knowing that you are Emmanuel, God with us. You are the God who knows us. You listen to our hearts. You know us before we even utter the words. We thank you for the opportunity to walk with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
PRAYER # 395 TAKE TIME TO BE HOLY
CLOSING # 528 NEARER MY GOD TO THEE
11 am
Open the Eyes of My Heart
IMAGERY: Living Water
THEOLOGICAL ISSUE: Eternal Life
THEME: Transformation
GREEK WORD: Metamorphous
Sermon Notes
September 21, 2008
Walking With God: Transformation
During the PASSING OF THE PEACE
Question: If we are clay, what kind of pot is God making out of you?
A love driven pot?
QUESTION: Do you think God is shaping us into the image of Jesus
POINT: Walking with God requires transformation
We as the clay are transformed by God’s impressions upon us.
Sometimes tht requires us to be (ps 46:10) be still and know that I am God.
Sometimes that requires us to listen to music ( ) and let God change us through music.
…mountains
….seas
…friends
…even the golf course…NOT!
BUT IT DOES REQUIRE A CONVERSATION, A LISTENING AND TALKING CONVERSATION.
INTRO (Walking With God, John Elderedge, p. 18)
QUESTION: Have you ever been ready to send a blistering e-mail and changed your mind? Was it the still voice of God saying “no” that caused you to “delete”?
Have you ever hit the delete key, have you ever not and wished you did?
God is transforming us to be better listeners to the voice of God
Do you think god is shaping us into the image of Jesus? How?
How would your life look differently if you were fully transformed (perfectionism)?
There are many ways God shapes us.
One way is when we are still (Ps 46:10)
God can shape us
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 11: 28 – 29
MT 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
YOKE sounds like a burden. But the correct yoke is someone who pulls alongside of you and gives you a helping hand.
The yoke of the Pharisees, is a yoke of burden (law) (a checklist of what it is to be religious)
Christians do this today as well, this is not an exclusively left to the pharisee, there are Christian Pharisees, do this “I’d rather burnout for Jesus than rust.’
We avoid burnout, when we are yoke with Christ. We are energized when we are yoked with Christ. We are involved in things that we have a passion for with Christ. We are love driven when we are yoked with Christ.
QUESTION: Who’s yoke?
The yoke of God is easy (grace and love)
The yoke of the Pharissess (hard) it is driven to be in obedience to the law
It is a to do list, it is time management:
ISSUE: The way we live our lives
God requires tous to be tgransformed
7th day of rest.
Ps 46:10 helps us not to run out of gas when we are running the race of life.
WALKINGN WITH GOD REQUIRES: Transformation
SETTING THE SCENE
Previous chapter, John 3 (new birth), John 2 (transforming water into wine)
In this chapter, Jesus will confront a Samaritan Woman
History of Samaria (why there is a disagreement) wanna be Jews
Sometimes we don’t get along with those closer to us than those who are further from us
SCRIPTURE: John 4: 1 - ??
N 4:1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
JN 4:4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
JN 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
JN 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. )
Question: “Who is your ‘Samaritan’”?
JN 4:10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
JN 4:11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
JN 4:13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
WATER
QUESTION: What “water” do you drink that never quenches (addiction)
AUGUSTINE
Each person is created with a God shape hole and only God can fill that shape, but the problem is that we attempt to fill it with other things when only God can fill and fully satisifies that need.
But we will find other things to fill that need.
(list of addictions, is sometime an attempt to fill that need)
JN 4:15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
LAST WEEK (PSALM 139: 1 – 4)
God knows us,
This week, Jesus knows the Samaritan woman
JN 4:16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
JN 4:17 "I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
JN 4:19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
JN 4:21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
JN 4:25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
JN 4:26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Is this an “I am” statement?
JN 4:27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
JN 4:28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.
POINT: God knows us (Psalm 139)
Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
THIS WOMAN WAS CHANGED (TRANSFORMED)
Notice: she left what she came for, water.
That is what happens when we are encountered by God, we leave behind what we think is important and leave with something more important.
“COME, SEE A MAN…”
At the very least this woman has been transformed into an evangelist
JN 4:31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
JN 4:32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
JN 4:33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
JN 4:34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying `One sows and another reaps' is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
JN 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
JN 4:42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
JN 4:43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.
JN 4:46 Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
JN 4:48 "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."
JN 4:49 The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
JN 4:50 Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live."
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."
JN 4:53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
JN 4:54 This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.
JN 5:1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
WALKING WITH GOD
We have a choice, we can walk with God and grow in our spirituality. We can move from a mediocre faith, to a faith that is love driven that walks with the God who calls us to love god and others.
TRIADS
SELF EXAMINATION - know thyself
JOURNAL
OPPORTUNITES (from the church): Mission, equipping, etc.
,
PUPPETS
Bob: What ya doin’ Julie?
Julie: I am thinking about butterflies.
Bob: Butterflies are cool.
Julie: My teacher says they go through a metamorphosis
Bob: Cool!...What’s a me-ta-mor-phosis?
Julie: Well, according to Wikipedia, Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s form or structure through cell growth and differentiation.
Bob: Huh?
Julie: Don’t you get it?
Bob: Those were some mighty big words Julie.
Julie: Yes, I am pretty much multisyllabic, if I don’t say so myself.
Bob: Well, I am Methodist and I don’t know what that all means?
Julie: I have no idea. But, I think I’ll ask my parents.
Bob: You do that Julie.
Julie: If I were to guess what it means, I think it has something to do with a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
Bob: Oh.
Julie: It also said in Wikipedia that Metamorphosis is derived from two Greek words: Meta, meaning “from;” and morphsis, meaning “change” and both words combined mean transformation.
Bob: Well it’s all Greek to me.
Julie: Multisyllabic Bob, Multisyllabic.
Bob: There you go with those big words again.
Julie: Let me explain it to you Bob.
Bob: I am all ears Julie.
Julie: you know how you can take a clump of clay and mold it into a pot.
Bob: Yeah. I’ve made stuff out of clay before.
Julie: Well, life is like that. God is the potter and he takes this clump of clay, which is you.
Bob: Hey wait a minute Julie! Are you saying I am mud?
Julie: Clay, Bob. Clay. Not mud.
Bob: Okay, that’s better. If I thought you thought I was mud and not clay, I might have to come up with my own multisyllabic word for you Julie.
Julie: Now, let’s see where was I.
Bob: I am a clump of clay.
Julie: Your words Bob. Okay. You’re a clump of clay, God is the potter. God molds the clay into a pot.
Bob: a pot?
Julie: What would you like to be?
Bob: a bowl of cherries.
Julie: Okay, God molds you into a bowl of cherries out of clay. That’s transformation. That’s metamorphosis.
Bob: Wow. that’s cool. God changes us.
Julie: Into something better.
Bob: Yeah, a bowl of cherries.
posted by Pastor Stan at
3:27 PM
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