God's Patience in Me
I stand before you this morning as nothing more than an example of God's patience and faithfulness. I am a sinner through to the core – sin lives in my body and wants nothing more than to tear me away from the life of faith that God has called me to live. But God has taken me in my sin and washed me clean from my sin. He has robed me in garments of righteousness and he has set me before you to be a pastor in his church. He has sanctified my heart, my mind and my mouth so that I can preach and proclaim God's Holy Word of forgiveness and so that you can know for certain that this forgiveness is for you. The fact that there is a pastor, that there is any pastor, who serves in your church is nothing but by the grace and the mercy and the love of God.
God's Patience in all of us – Our Unworthiness
This is the message today – this day that we place into service our called teachers as well as our contracted teachers. The day that these servants of God and of this congregation pledge themselves to serve your children faithfully and in accord with sound doctrine. This is the message as each one of us considers our service to God and His Holy church here in this place. There is work to be done. There are people to do it. We might be miserable examples of Christian love and faithfulness yet God himself has called us to follow him and each of us in our own way are called to do the work that he has set out before us as examples of God's grace, his faithfulness, his mercy, and his almighty power. Amen.
We are all unfit for God's Service
As we read in our text this morning, this was Paul's message to Timothy the young pastor and protege of the Apostle Paul. Paul was writing to Timothy to encourage him to be faithful in his service as a pastor to the church in Ephesus. The congregation at Ephesus was challenged by false teachers and therefore false doctrines. There were sure to be detractors to Timothy's ministry. There were sure to be those who would try to undermine his authority and undermine his message. These sorts of attacks are likely to cause one's confidence to waiver. “What am I doing here?” Timothy might have thought. “What right do I have to serve? I am not up the task. They should find someone else who is better suited to this job.”
We have all felt this way at some time or another. There are always times that our confidence waivers. There are always times that we feel intimidated by the task laid out before us. There are always times that we look at the abilities of those around us and feel inadequate to the job.
Sometimes this happens in the work place or perhaps at school – you feel less capable than your co-workers or classmates. Sometimes it happens at home: you feel unfit and unqualified as a parent, perhaps to teach and instruct your children in the Christian faith or you feel inept when it comes to getting your children to behave the way you know they should. Sometimes we feel unqualified as husbands and wives – husbands at times feel that they don't have what it takes to provide for their wives. Wives at times feel they can't meet the needs of their husbands.”
Sometimes we feel that way at church. We might say, “I can't serve in any positions at church, I can't be an elder, a chairman of some board. I am not qualified to serve in that position. What do I know? What do I have to contribute?”
And then, sometimes teachers feel that way in their class rooms. Sometimes pastors feel that way in their pulpits.
God's Call – Serve Me by Serving Each Other
Despite how we feel about what we are gifted to accomplish, each one of us has been called by God to his service. Timothy was called to be a pastor. This morning we are highlighting those who have been called to be elementary school teachers. Each one of us have received from God a job to do. A work of service to perform. We carry out that service to each other. Did you know that we serve God by serving each other? After all, If God is truly able to do anything should we think that he needs our help to preach and teach, to paint and vacuum and clean, to attend meetings, to lead meetings, to witness, to teach our children, to make plans and decisions or to meet our annual budget? God is capable of accomplishing these things by himself. God does not need our help. Our neighbors however do. Your children need parents to love them and care for them and teach them. God has given you to them to provide this for them. Union County Ohio needs to hear the true message of Jesus spoken to them so he has created ST Paul Lutheran Church as a place where the residents of Union County and Madison County can come to receive that gift from God. The parents of St Paul Church as well as residents from the surrounding community need a school where they can send their children to learn about the world that God has made so he has given St Paul Lutheran School so that children can come here to learn.
And so that St Paul church and school can exist it needs lights and walls and pews and hymnals and bible heaters and windows not to mention desks and chalkboards and text books and people to care for these things and pay for them and maintain them. It needs people to serve on its boards and committees. It needs teachers to fill its classrooms. It needs a pastor to preach from its pulpit. God has given these tasks to us so that we can serve him by serving each other.
God's Faithfulness demonstrated in Paul
And guess what – each one of us is totally unqualified to do the job. We are unfit to be servants in God's church. That was Paul's message to young Timothy as he was doing his best to scrape by as a pastor thrust into the challenge of pastoring the Christians in Ephesus. He was young. He was inexperienced. He was (of himself) unqualified and unfit for the task given to him. And worse than any of those things Timothy was a sinner. But God gave this task to him and God would support him as he fulfilled this task. Paul knew this to be true – after all he had personally experienced it.
To help Timothy understand God's faithfulness, Paul uses himself as an example. If Timothy considered himself to be unfit – just imagine how much less was Paul fit to serve as an apostle. After all, look at his track record. Paul was at one time a murderer of Christians. He was an sworn enemy to Jesus and to all who professed faith in the name of Jesus. He hunted them down. He arrested them. He threw them into prisons. He beat them. He refers to himself in our text as a “blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent.” “But,” Paul says, “I received mercy. I was ignorant. I was hardened in my sin. I was an enemy of the Gospel of God. But God chose me. God made him his servant. God demonstrated his divine power in that he turned me around. He made me a public spectacle of His mercy when he broke my will and turned it so that I now follow him.”
Paul was fit to be an apostle because Jesus chose him. Jesus selected him when he was still a murderous enemy of His church and Jesus himself came to him and confronted him. Jesus himself knocked Paul to the ground. Jesus humbled him, reducing him to nothing. Jesus rebuilt him. Jesus used him to be the famous apostle who is responsible for evangelizing the Roman empire and writing the better part of the New Testament. This man who accomplished so much as a servant of God was unfit to the task. He was, at his own admission, the chief of sinners. Yet God in his great and unsearchable mercy made Paul into the vessel of honor that produced such a bountiful harvest for the kingdom of God.
That perfect patience that was at work in the apostle Paul is now at work here among us. Here at St Paul Lutheran Church, (the congregation that bears witness to the name of the apostle who was formerly a murderer and blasphemer and enemy of God), right here Jesus is again displaying that perfect patience. He is again displaying that mercy and love. He is again displaying his almighty power.
Jesus has taken you and he has taken me, when we were still in our sin. He called us out of that sin and into a life of faith. Even though you and I are chief of sinners, even though we are miserable failures at leading a life of perfect righteousness, he has redeemed us from those failures and from sin. He with his blood has bought us from the judgment that we deserved. He in his mercy has chosen to look past the many sins and failures that we are responsible for committing. Instead of seeing us as sinners he has counted us as righteous. The sin is gone, the slate is clean and we are ready and prepared to live life as servants of Jesus and as servants to each other.
And having been thus prepared we have been called to serve. We have been called to be fathers and mothers - teachers of the Word of God in our homes. We have been called to be pastor, teachers in a Lutheran Day school, teachers in the local public schools. We have been called to be farmers, factory workers, engineers, managers, accountants, medical assistants, nurses, students. We have been called to be elders, school board members, trustees, out reach or stewardship committee members, treasurers, congregational chairman or vice-chairman, and so on and so forth. Each unfit for the task given to us. But each one equipped and made ready for service to God and to our neighbor through the almighty power of God who loves us and who loves this world that he has created and who cares for this world using our hearts, hands, and voices.
This morning as our teachers pledge themselves to the work that they will do in our classrooms this year. We thank God for them and for their service. As they promise to do their work, we have the opportunity to make that same promise before God. As we are here in His house we can each quietly in our hearts pledge ourselves to serve our God joyfully and gratefully because of how he has s served us. We can devote ourselves to the jobs he has called us to do and understand that as we are serving each other we are ultimately serving the One who has called us to faith and who has sealed us in that faith through the blood of His Son Jesus. We serve in His name, even as he has served us. We will continue to serve God and our neighbor because of the immeasurable grace and patience and love and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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