Nazarene Heritage: Unity (Snakes in a Church)

Numbers 21:4-9
 4 Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, 5 and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”
 6 So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.
 8 Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

    Snakes on a Plane was possibly the worst movie made in the last ten years.  The basic concept is that someone releases hundreds of poisonous snakes on a plane flying over the Pacific Ocean.  They can’t land, and they can’t get the snakes out.  Just so you don’t have to watch it, let me give you the summary.  It’s a bad movie, and lots of people die.
    At the risk of extreme cheesiness and possible biblical irreverence, I want to use snakes as a theme for our talk today on unity.  You might call this sermon Snakes in a Church.   Let me give you the summary.  It’s a bad problem, and lots of people die - spiritually. 
    In Moses’ story, God sent the snakes as a punishment for Israel’s complaining and lack of faith.  In our story, the snakes are more the cause of the problems.  Our snakes are our sneaky, sneaking sins that hide in the darkness, tell us lies, and masquerade as truth.  They poison our lives, and they poison our churches.  Both stories point to Jesus as the cure. 

Nazarene Heritage Week 2: Wesley and Bresee (All Saints Day)

Today is All Saints Day - a day to remember people who have followed Jesus especially well. Nazarenes donʼt usually celebrate All Saints Day, but weʼre missing out.
All Saints Day is an important part of Christian tradition, and it was actually John Wesleyʼs favorite day of the church year. All Saints Day is a great opportunity for us to remember the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us (Hebrews 12:1).

Listen to how John the Revelator describes this great crowd in his vision of
heaven in Revelation 7:9-17.
 9 After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. 10 And they were shouting with a mighty shout,“Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!”
 11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God. 12 They sang,
   “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor
   and power and strength belong to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
[3] 13 Then one of the twenty-four elders asked me, “Who are these who are clothed in white? Where did they come from?”
 14 And I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.”
   Then he said to me, “These are the ones who died in the great tribulation. They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white.
 15 “That is why they stand in front of God’s throne and serve him day and night in his Temple.   And he who sits on the throne will give them shelter.
 16 They will never again be hungry or thirsty; they will never be scorched by the heat of the sun.
 17 For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd.  He will lead them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

There will come a time, when we will stand with the saints from every tribe and language and culture and time - all those who have ever trusted in the Jesus as the Lamb of God. Together we will sing praises to God. We will be one people, healed together by his love.

All Saints Day is a day to practice this corporate worship and unity now - here on earth. We stand today with the saints of Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas. We stand today with the saints of the first humans, the first Israelites, the first Christians, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Industrial Age, our own time, and all times yet to come. Together, we are Godʼs people. Together, we worship him. Together, we learn what it means to follow him.

Today, as part of our study of our Nazarene Heritage, we are focusing on the two most important saints in our history: John Wesley and Phineas Bresee. As we talk about these two leaders and how God used them, my prayer is that we will catch some of their passion and let God use us in similar ways.

Nazarene Heritage: Holiness

Isaiah 6:1-8

John 17:13-26
Galatians 5:13-25

    I grew up hating holiness.  I hated hearing about it.  I hated singing about it.  I hated talking about it.  I hated everything about holiness.
    That was a problem - especially for someone in the Church of the Nazarene, which is a “holiness denomination.”  We talked about holiness a lot.  We preached about it.  We sang about it.  We talked about it in Sunday School.  But I hated it.
    Then, I went to MidAmerica Nazarene University, and I discovered that I was not alone.  “Doctrine of Holiness” was required for all ministry students, and it was one of the students’ least favorite classes - right behind “History and Polity of the Church of the Nazarene.”  When special preachers came and did revival services and talked about holiness and entire sanctification, we felt this awkward tension between wanting to stand up and argue and wanting to run to the altar and repent and pray -- again -- for the hundredth time.  Any time “Holiness unto the Lord” was sung, we cringed inside and kind of turned to our neighbors with an uncomfortable smirk, like “There they go again.”  We might even swing our arms in mock joy (“Sing it, shout it, loud and long”), while inside we were scoffing at such an overplayed and under-lived song on an over-preached subject.
    What’s the deal?  Why all the resistance?  Why all the bitter feelings?  Why on earth would future pastors not want to talk about being holy?  And if the theology majors didn’t want to talk about holiness, you know everyone else was either clueless or hostile.  What happened?