Following God (3)

We are in the last week of our sermon series “Journey with Jesus.” The Gospels, mainly Matthew, have allowed for us to recognize the many ways that God should impact our lives on our journey with him.

We have seen the importance of recognizing God at work around us, how we have been baptized for God. Why we need to testify about God, how we are called to serve God. The last two weeks we looked at the ways that God blesses us in order for us to be a blessing to others. You can find each of these sermons on our You Tube channel.

This week we focus on the importance of Following God. Our scripture comes from Matthew 6:1-12. The words will be on the screen.

6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, s but deliver us from the evil one.’”

Please pray with me…

We have a God who desires to be closely connected to each one of us. His desire is for us to have a close, intimate relationship with him. I was looking for a way to offer to us what it means to follow Jesus, and this is the song God led me to use.

Bryan Adam sang a song that wasn’t about God but offers to us what this can look like for us. The first verse says to us “Look into my eyes and you will see, what you mean to me. Search your heart, search your soul and when you find me there, you'll search no more.”

Don't tell me it's not worth trying for. You can't tell me it's not worth dying for. You know it's true. Everything I do, I do it for you.”

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We are supposed to view God as Bryan Adams views the person he is writing to for this song. When we are following God, we are showing him what he means to us. We should decide that we need to follow no one else but him.

We should decide that following God is worth trying and he is worthy of dying for. We should be living our lives in a way which shows God that everything we do we are doing for him. God desires for us to be connected to him. God wants for each of us to be willing to follow him.

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When we look back at our previous sermons in this series we can see that it is through following God that we are truly living out those areas of our lives. We have a choice if we are on a journey with Jesus.

We can decide to lead God on the journey. This would be us deciding that we know what God wants and that is what we are going to do. This could be the Pharisees during Jesus’ time. They were so sure of what they were supposed to do they followed the law in such a way that moved people away from God instead of toward God.

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We can walk along with God. This is not a bad way to live our lives. We are saying that we are going to follow the will of God and believe that God is working alongside us. He is helping us do what he desires for us to do.

Part of this idea of having God walk alongside us also can mean that God is walking ahead of us. This is us believing that not only is God with us but God is also helping us by preparing the way for us to be successful on our journey with him.

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This would include us recognizing God at work. It is us being able to see what is taking place and receiving understanding that God has prepared the way in order to allow for us to be able to succeed.

Following God also is us believing that we have been baptized for God. We are stating that we have not been baptized just as an outward sign of an understanding of what Jesus has done for us. We are stating that we are to choose to follow the will of God in our lives.

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This understanding of God preparing the way also should lead us to serve God and testify about God. We should have the faith to believe that when we are following the will of God that God will help us in what God desires for us to do.

We also can recognize by following God that we will be blessed by God. The blessings we receive are not for our own good but to allow for us to bless those around us. This is why in our scriptures for today Jesus’ focus is not on what we should do but why we should or shouldn’t do what we are supposed to do.

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After all, giving to the needy and praying to God are both good things. Our scripture lays out for us that Jesus is concerned with the way some people are “practicing righteousness.” Righteousness is a person attempting to be right with God. It is a representation of how we are supposed to choose to live our lives.

Being right with God should be our goal but Jesus is noticing that some people are wanting to make sure those around them see how good that they are. Jesus is saying that our outward appearance does not always reflect our inward righteousness.

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Jesus begins with a focus on giving to the poor and we will get there, but I want to begin with how we follow God. How we stay connected with God. That is the second part of our scripture. We are to focus on prayer.

As I point out each Sunday during our prayer time here at The Church of the Good Shepherd, prayer should be a conversation between us and God. Meaning, as we are asking for Godly intervention we also need to be listening to what God is saying to us.

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Jesus seems to believe that some of the “religious people” of the time had a focus more on how they would be viewed by those around them then they did about if they were listening to what God may be saying to them.

They wanted to look good in front of an audience instead of being on their knees asking for God’s forgiveness and help in the areas that they were struggling at in their lives. I am not saying every prayer needs to be done that way, but we should always have what we are doing and saying focused towards God.

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We can see from our first reading of what prayer should be about. It should be about building up those around you instead of attempting to make yourself look better to those that we meet. We are to use prayer to understand what God desires for us and to ask him for ways to help those around us.

Paul’s words should remind us of what we should be seeking from God when we are willing to follow him. We have the prayer asking for knowledge and bearing fruit. This is Paul asking for the Colossians what we should be asking for ourselves: Understanding of what God desires from us and to have what we do lead to those around us understanding and following God.

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We should be praying for these things not only for us individually but also as a church. We need to be together seeking wisdom from God. Seeking the ways that God desires for us to be a part of what he desires to do in us and through us individually and as a church.

Asking means that we also need to be willing to move forward serving God by serving those around us. I believe we are attempting to do this through our upcoming events. We are attempting to serve those around us through community, through meals, and through conversation.

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I have had a list made of what we have upcoming for you to take with you so that you can tell those around you about the ways that they can become connected to us at The Church of the Good Shepherd.

We want to be a place where people can feel loved and welcomed. A safe place for people to be so that they might discover depending on their background that not all Christians are like the Christians that they have meant before. So that we can show the love of Jesus to those that we meet.

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We also discover that Paul knows what they and us will often need in order to follow the will of God. We will need endurance and patience. That is why we have named this sermon series a “Journey with Jesus.” Our journey with Jesus never ends.

We need to have endurance. There is a parable that Jesus talks about seed falling in and around a field. Depending on where the seed fell a person would at some point fade away from the person that God desired for them to be.

There was one group that was the seed that fell in the good soil. It was in the good soil that a person was able to keep going until the fruit came to harvest. We are called to have the endurance to keep going all the way to the end.

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If you know a farmer, you also know that it takes patience. A good crop doesn’t just appear right after it is planted. It takes time and all the right conditions to cause the crop to come forth and to be plentiful.

For us we would like to see people show up to our events realize what wonderful people we are and what a wonderful God that we follow and begin becoming a part of The Church of the Good Shepherd.

Unfortunately, that is not usually how these things happen. We will have to earn the trust of those we meet on the journey. We will have to live lives that show the love, hope, joy and peace that can be available to anyone who chooses to be a follower of Jesus.

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We receive insight on how we are to relate to those around us through the focus on the poor and how we interact with those that we meet. There are two ways that we can show the love of God to those around us. We can make a production of what we are doing, or we can have us giving out of our heart.

Jesus is concerned that if we make a production out of what we are doing we are giving for the wrong reasons. We are giving in order for us to receive praise. We should instead be giving to others in order to allow God to receive the reward.

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This can be difficult to navigate at times. We want to do something good for someone around us but yet we aren’t supposed to let those around us know what we are doing.  We are to have God help us discern our true motives.

This in many ways relates to what we have been focusing on this whole series. It is through following the will of God that we can be reminded of why we do what we are to do. We are called to live lives allowing God to lead and direst us.

Some would state that our motives are what often separate followers of Jesus from those around us when it comes to what we often call “doing good”. Many people will do good in order to make themselves feel good. Followers of Jesus are to do good to allow us to share the love of Jesus with those around us.

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What does it mean for us to be on a journey with Jesus.? It means that we are seeking to follow the will of God while also serving those around us. It meansthat our motives are going to have us seeking to please God instead of pleasing those around us.

We are calledto be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus. We are called to live our lives in a way which shows the love that we have for God because God first loved us. Let us choose to show those we meet the love that they deserve as children of God.

Let us pray…