The WOW of Thanks-giving

One of the big stories this past week was how Black Friday is slowly creeping into Thanksgiving. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Target have now opened their doors on Thursday evening to get a jump on the Christmas shopping season. So Thanksgiving is literally being consumed not by Christmas but by Christmas consumerism. Before we get too critical of the culture around us, the sad truth is that sometimes this happens in the church as well. Many years the first Sunday of Advent, which is the 4 week season leading up to Christmas, begins the Sunday after Thanksgiving so we end up having to decorate and get ready for Christmas before Thanksgiving, but not this year. This year the Advent season begins next Sunday which means we can take time today and throughout this week to linger a little bit on one of the most important and foundational teachings of our faith – giving thanks.


For the past three weeks we looked at 3 simple rules that John Wesley gave to the early Methodists. When people asked Wesley what they needed to do in order to faithfully follow God, he replied, do no harm, do good and stay in love with God. These general rules form the foundation of how we are to live out our faith, but maybe there should be one more. As we heard from 1 Thessalonians 5, giving thanks in all circumstances is part of God’s will for us, so let me bold and add a 4th rule to the 3 Wesley gave us – give thanks. We live out our faith by giving thanks to God and the reason we do this isn’t because God has called us to, and it’s not because it is God’s will for us; the reason we give thanks is because God is the one who has given us everything in the first place. All that we have and all that we are has come from God and ultimately belongs to God and that is the reason to give thanks.

During the long presidential campaign we have just endured, President Obama got into some trouble for one particular comment he made back in July. At a speech in Roanoke VA he said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.” While there was a lot of controversy around that you didn’t build that comment, maybe there was more truth in that statement than the president or anyone else thought. If we have created a successful business or nurtured a strong family or developed a solid faith – we didn’t do it on our own, we did it with the help and power and resources given to us not by the government but by God.
The opportunities we have come from God.
The creativity we have comes from God.
The hard work ethic which helps us succeed comes from God.
The ability to solve problems comes from God.
The help we need when things get hard comes from God.
The resources we have to build a strong business, family or faith comes from God.

In so many ways this is the story of the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims understood that all they had in this world was a gift from God. Their ability to survive the first harsh year in the new lands was because of the grace and power of God so they stopped to give thanks. Like the Pilgrims, we are not who we are today and we do not have what we have today because we have done it on our own and (let me be clear) it is not because the government has given it to us, it is because God, the creator, provider and sustainer of all things has given it to us. Look at Colossians 1:15-17. All things have come from God and all things hold together because of God which means that all that we have in our lives is a gift from God and what God desires most from us is to simply say thank you, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

So we are to give thanks at all times, but how do we do this? How do we give thanks to God? To help us think about that this morning, I want us to focus on just one word, and my hope is that maybe this was a word you heard on Thanksgiving. How many of you, when you gathered around the table with your family and friends said, Wow?

Maybe you said wow because the turkey looked picture perfect. Maybe you said wow because the turkey didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. Maybe you said wow because the pies were delicious or maybe you said, WOW, I ate way too much! I hope at some point on Thanksgiving Day you said wow because that is the word that teaches us how to give thanks. We give thanks through our Words, Offering and Worship – WOW.

Let’s start with our words. Words have power and meaning, so it is important for us to say thank you. My parents are visiting for Thanksgiving and one of the things they taught my sisters and I was that we needed to say thank you – for everything. I remember going out to eat as a family when my sisters and I were fairly young and every time the waitress came to the table do anything, we said thank you. She handed us the menus and we said, thank you. She took our orders and we said thank you. When she brought our food and then later took our plates away we said thank you and every time she filled our water glasses, which was often, we said thank you. After hearing thank you so many times from three children she commented about how nice it was to hear. The words meant something to her – it encouraged her.

Words are powerful and words can be a blessing. I remember at one of the 5th Quarters last year I was working at the sign in table where we were giving out the wrist bands to students and I was encouraged and blessed to hear so many of them say, thank you. It was just a wrist band – but they stopped to say thank you and I appreciated it; it blessed me. Now if I appreciated those simple words for something as insignificant as a wristband – think about how God must feel when we use those two simple words to thank Him for all he has given us. We know those words are important to God because they were important to Jesus.

In one of the classic stories about giving thanks we find in the Bible, Jesus was travelling to Jerusalem and when he entered a certain village he was approached by 10 lepers. Now because of their disease they had to keep their distance, but they came close enough to shout to Jesus and ask him for help. When Jesus saw them and heard their cries for help he had compassion on them so told them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason he does this was because the priest was only one who could pronounce them clean. So they went to the priest and as they were walking something extraordinary happened - they begin to see their skin clear up. As they traveled their dead skin became healthy and alive, they were being healed and you can just imagine their excitement.

Their entire lives were going to be transformed. They were going to be reunited with their family, friends and community; they were going to be able to return to a normal life. Now I picture it this way, when they saw their skin becoming healthy, their walk turned into a run but as they ran, one of them stopped. He realized that what was taking place in his body was not his doing – he didn’t heal himself, what was taking place in his life was a gift from God so he turned and ran back to Jesus. When he got there all he had to offer Jesus were simple words of thanks, but those words meant something to Jesus.

Those two simple words were important and powerful and the truth is that Jesus wanted to hear it from all 10, look at Luke 17:17. It’s not that Jesus healed them to get the thanks and praise, but he wanted them to acknowledge the power and love of God working in them. Jesus shows us that our words of thanks-giving are important because they let God know we are grateful for his power and love working in our lives, so can we use simple words to thank God?

These words can be spoken, they can be prayed or they can be written down. We can simply speak words of thanks to God but if talking out loud to God makes us feel uncomfortable then we can use the words God gives us in scripture. For example, we can simply read Psalm 138:1-3. But our words don’t have to be spoken, we can also pray in the silence of our hearts and share with God simple thoughts that express our deep appreciation, or our words can be written down. Many people love to journal and find it helpful to write things down so they can see it, so we could make a list of things God has given us and use that list to help us see the power and love of God working in our lives.

So words are important but sometimes they don’t go far enough in expressing our gratitude so another way we can give thanks is to give God an offering. Making an offering to God is one of the earliest expressions of giving thanks that we find in the Bible. In Genesis 4 it says that in the course of time both Cain and Able brought a portion of what they produced and gave it to God as an offering. Cain was a farmer so he brought an offering from his harvest and Able, as a shepherd, brought the best cuts of meat from the first born of his flock. He gave God the best of his best. Now no one told them they had to give this offering. There was no law saying they had to give a portion of their lives to God, they did it because at some point in time one of them said, Wow, look at all God has given me, this is all God’s doing not my own so I am going to give a portion back to God. And at least Able said, I’m going to make sure that the portion I give to God is some of the best.

So offerings have always been used as an expression of giving thanks and they continue to be used that way today. When we take up an offering in worship we aren’t paying our dues to the church or giving to some specific need, the offering we take up in worship is an expression of our thanks and gratitude. We are saying thank you God for all that you have given us. As a genuine expression of thanksgiving, our offerings need to be a generous and sacrificial portion of all that we have and not just a fraction of what we have left over. And like Able we need to strive to give God the best of our best. This is where the discipline of tithing is helpful. Tithing is the practice of giving 10% of our income to God, which requires us to actually sit down and figure out what this amount would be. Once we figure out the amount of our tithe, we can then determine the best way to give that to God. Do we give it weekly, monthly, or once a year? That doesn’t really matter; what matters is to give faithfully as an expression of thanks for all God has given to us.

Tithing is a good practice because it helps us give to God first, and we are giving God some of our best, but the tithe is just the place to start, there are many other ways we can say thank you to God through our offerings. We can offer God our time and energy by serving the people of God in the church or serving the needs of those in our community. The truth is that God doesn’t just want our money, God wants our full lives dedicated and devoted to him, which means giving him a portion of our time and energy and talents as well. There are so many places where your hands and heart and faith are needed in the life of Faith Church and so many ways your gift can make a difference in the lives of others.

So our words and our offerings are expressions of our gratitude, but so is our worship. The leper who returned to Jesus to say thank you for the healing he received didn’t just say thank you, it says he prostrated himself at the feet if Jesus. He literally laid himself down on the ground in an act of humble worship. Our worship is also an expression of thanks to God. When we gather for worship we are communicating to God and the world around us that our lives are a gift from God and that we appreciate the grace, mercy and love that God gives us. Worship is the time and place where we say thank you for God’s gift of forgiveness and salvation that leads to abundance and eternal life. One of the ways we give thanks in all circumstances is to commit ourselves to a life of worship both personally and as part of the church so I want to invite you to keep making this time part of your spiritual discipline and practice. Make this time an ongoing part of giving thanks.

As we enter into the busy Christmas season it might be tempting to say, I need this hour on Sunday to get ready for the holiday, or to get some rest, but the truth is we need this time in worship to make sure that we are keeping our hearts and minds focused on what this season is and what it isn’t. The coming Advent season is a time for us to focus on God, it is a time for us to thank God for his daily presence in our lives, it is a time for us to remember that God has come to be with us in the person of Jesus. This is the time for us to remember that God has given us the best of his best in the gift of his son Jesus, it is not a time for us to go deeper into debt buying gifts that won’t make it to the New Year. So worship is an opportunity for us to not only thank God, but it also helps us sustain that attitude long after the turkey is gone.

So the word that I hope we heard a lot this thanksgiving is the same word that can teach us how to give thanks all year – WOW. Through this week and this coming Christmas season let’s thank God through our words, our offerings and our worship. Wow, thank you God.


Next Steps
The WOW of Thanks-Giving

Thank God through your words.
• Thank God for what He has given you.
• Read Psalms that express in words our gratitude to God. (See Psalms 19, 92, 95, 100, 107, 138)
• Make a list of all the things for which you thank God.

Thank God through your offerings.
• Does your regular offering to God reflect God’s generosity to you and your family?
• If you are not currently tithing (giving 10% to God), commit to it for the month of December. If God blesses you as you give, commit to tithing in 2013.
• Consider giving a gift of your time during the Advent and Christmas season to the Christmas Dinner or a community service agency like the Faith Centre.
• Consider an Alternative Christmas gift for your family and friends.

Thank God through your worship.
• Commit to being in worship for the Advent Season.
• Consider using an advent devotional for personal worship. (Last year’s devotional, Let Heaven and Nature Sing, is still available.)

3 Simple Rules: #3. Stay in love with God.

Scott Chrostek is a pastor at the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas and he is also a proud graduate of Duke Divinity School where he met his wife while waiting to purchase basketball tickets for the Duke Blue Devils. Now you need to understand that for graduate students to purchase season tickets you have to camp out in line for 48 hours at the beginning of the school year so Scott got into line and struck up a conversation with the woman next him. They ended up talking non-stop for those 48 hours and they talked about everything, life, family, hopes and dreams, but mostly they talked about sports and so after those 2 days Scott thought maybe he had found someone special so he started asking Wendy to every sporting event he could think of. They went to all the basketball games together, they went to lacrosse games, Durham Bulls games which is a minor league baseball team, and even some hockey games in Raleigh. After a few years of this sports-dating, Scott finally realized that it just doesn’t get any better than this so he asked Wendy to marry him and she said yes.


Now Scott proposed right before Thanksgiving so they travelled to Michigan where Wendy could meet everyone in Scott’s family and he thought it would be great idea to take his new finance to a Detroit Thanksgiving Day sports tradition so he purchased tickets to the Detroit Lion’s football game and surprised Wendy with the plan. Won’t it be great, he said, for us to spend our first Thanksgiving as an engaged couple watching a professional NFL game. Now I know what you are thinking, romantic huh? Well, Wendy replied, Scott, you don’t know me very well. I hate sports. I hate football and basketball and baseball and lacrosse and hockey. I just hate sports. Scott was completely shocked. Then why for the past few years have you been spending all this time talking about sports and going to games with me? Her reply was, because you love sports so much, and I love you. Scott said he fell in love with his wife all over again that day.

What Wendy understood, and what she shows all of us, is that love is not a feeling or an emotion, love is an action. Love is doing something for someone else, it is sacrificing for someone else, it’s placing their wants and needs and interests before our own. Wendy ran after Scott, she pursued him and gave it all she had. She was willing to place his love for sports over her dislike of sports and she was willing to prove her love by going to countless games just so they could be together. She ran after Scott because she loved him, and God runs after us because he loves us. God has been called the hound of heaven because like a good hound dog, God is willing to pursue us and chase after us no matter what. Jesus tells us how God’s love literally runs after us in the story we know as the prodigal son, but maybe should be known as the story of the loving father.

In this story, a father has two sons and the younger of the two asks his father if he could have his share of the inheritance early. Now this would be like me going to my Dad and saying, look – you are going to die someday anyway, so why don’t you just give me your hard earned money now. With most fathers, this would not go over well, but in an act of outrageous love, this father gave his son the money and the son went off and spent it all on hard and fast living. When that young man ended up broke and working on a pig farm feeding hogs food he wished he could eat himself, he decided to head home and beg his father to forgive him. Maybe his father would take him back and give him some kind of job in the family business. So he heads home and this is what it says in Luke 15:20.

While the son was just making his way over the horizon, the father saw him. Now let’s just stop here. How was it that the father saw his son when he was so far away? I think it was because every day that father spent time scanning the horizon hoping and praying that he would see his son coming home. The love this father had for his son was so strong that despite how he had been treated, he never stopped wanting his son to return, so when the day came and he finally saw him on the horizon, the father ran out to greet him.

Again let’s stop for a moment. In Jesus’ day, honorable men didn’t run. It was undignified to run and you certainly didn’t run out to welcome home a son who had not only offended you but squandered half of your estate. But this father did run out to greet his son because he loved him. His love not only searched for him daily, but his love literally ran out to welcome him home and this, Jesus says, this is the love of God.

God pursues us every day. Every day God is searching the horizon for us, longing for us to turn to him, to think about him or talk to him and when we do make that turn, even though we may be far away because of poor choices we have made – God’s love runs out and welcomes us home. God’s love not only pursues us and forgives us but when it connects with us – it changes us. When Scott suddenly realized just how much Wendy loved him, he said he fell in love with her all over again. Her love helped strengthen his love for her and the same is true with God’s love. When we begin to understand just how much God loves us it melts our hearts and begins to transform our desires so that we will now want to run after God and the life God wants for us. This is what we hear in Hebrews 12:1-2.

The author of Hebrews says that living out our faith should be like a race where we love God so much that we are willing to run after him constantly. So let me ask, how much do we love God? If love is seen in our perseverance and sacrifice and action – how much do we love God? What are we willing to give to fall in love with God? What are we willing to do, remember love is an action, so what are will to do to stay in love with God? Are we willing to run with perseverance this race of faith? It is this very race that John Wesley turns into his third general rule which is: stay in love with God. Staying in love with God means that we keep running the race of faith and according to Hebrews there is one thing that can help us in this race, and that is to keep our eyes on the cross.

Now we need to stay focused on the cross for several reasons. First of all, it reminds us just how much God loves us. God loves us so much that he was willing to send Jesus, his only son to lay down his life for us. God set aside his own interests and his own life so that we could be forgiven and experience eternal life, but beyond that, the cross also shows us what it means to love. The cross arm ↔ shows us that our love needs to reach out to those around us in very real and tangible ways.

John Wesley called the love we show to others acts of mercy. This means doing no harm and doing good. It’s making sure we don’t do things that could tear people down like gossip, but it also means we do everything we can in every way we can and in every place we can to build people up.

Acts of mercy are when we feed the hungry; clothe the naked, care for the sick and those in need. It’s when we give shoe boxes to Operation Christmas Child, help provide food for the Faith Centre and give to our own Community Christmas Dinner. Acts of Mercy are when we reach out in love to someone lonely and in need during this holiday season. For the past two weeks we have been talking about these acts of mercy and showing this kind of love to others and when we reach out in love others we are in some sense loving God. But the cross isn’t just this the cross piece ↔, there is another ↕ and this also need to be our focus and anything that helps strengthen our personal relationship with God John Wesley called acts of piety.

These acts this include things like prayer, the reading and reflecting on God’s word and sacraments like Holy Communion. It is these disciplines and activities that help us stay in love with God.

Think about prayer, prayer is just conversation with God. It is talking to God and then being quiet so we can listen to God. We all know that any good relationship, whether it is a marriage, or the relationship with our children or friends needs conversation. We need to be able to talk with one another and share our hopes, dreams and needs with others and when we do this, our relationships grow. No healthy relationship can survive without conversation, no marriage can survive without good communication, no family can remain strong without sharing and listening to one another and every friendship needs times where we can speak and where we sit together in silence, and the same is true in our relationship with God.

There is no way we can stay in love with God without good communication with God. We need times to share our hopes and dreams and fears and doubts with God and if we are willing to listen, God will do the same with us. God has hopes and dreams for us, God has fears and concerns for us and God wants to share those with us if would stop and listen. In Scott and Wendy’s story they came together because they had 48 hours of talking and sharing and listening. In the story of the loving father it was when the young son’s life finally came to a stop that he was able hear in his heart and mind the love of his father.

If we are going to stay in love with God we need times of prayer, and we need to remember that prayer is not just giving God our list of things we want. Prayer is not just telling God about all those people we know who are sick and in need, it is also sharing with God our hopes and fears and dreams and disappointments. While God is always willing to listen to the depth of our heart, we also need to include times of silence so we can listen to the depth of God’s heart and we also need times when we can simply just praise God. The Bible has an entire book set aside just to help us communicate with God, the book of Psalms. If we are willing to pray through the psalms we will find in there our words of love and praise and adoration, like Psalm 145. But we will also find words of confession and thanksgiving and love. If we want to stay in love with God, then this is a great place to start reading, listening and praying.

But prayer is just one way we can stay in love with God; John Wesley said that we stay in love with God by using all the ordinances of God. Now ordinances are simply all the means of connecting with God that God makes available to us. There is prayer but there is also reading and reflecting on God’s word, and there are the sacraments like Holy Communion. For Wesley, communion was a means of God’s grace. Communion is one of the primary ways that God’s grace and love flows into our hearts and lives which means it was an activity that helps us stay in love with God. Every time we share in communion we are coming to a table to eat with Jesus and eating together is important to keeping relationships strong.

I don’t know how many of you who are married make this a practice, and if you don’t – you should, but setting aside a date night is important and while some people may prefer to go to a basketball game, others just like to go out and eat. There is something about eating together that brings us together. Studies have shown that families that eat regular meals together every day are stronger and healthier. Children in families that eat meals together are more stable and even smarter. Eating together is a means of staying in love with one another and eating with God helps stay in love with him. When we come to the communion table to share in a meal with Jesus, we are listening to his words, seeing his love in action as he serves us and sacrifices for us, and it can be at the table that we fall in love with God all over again.

So communion and prayer and reading God’s word are all important acts of piety that help us stay in love with God and we do all of these things when we gather together for worship. Perseverance and commitment to times of worship are important because in so many different ways this is the time and place where we can stay in love with God. It is here that we pray together, hear God’s word together, share in communion together, sing of our love for God together and even sit in silence and listen together. But beyond all of that, it is right here that we can also find people who will run the race of faith with us and who will help us stay in love with God. The church is important because when we are ready to give up (and we will all face those times when we will be ready to give up) there will be someone who will come along side of us and say – look, don’t give up on God and don’t give up on loving God because it is that relationship that will help you and bring you life.

So staying in love with God means running the race of faith which in turn means loving God with acts of mercy and acts of piety, which form for us the cross. Acts of mercy are the simple rules of doing no harm and doing good, and acts of piety are making sure we persevere in our times of prayer, reading and reflecting on God’s word and sharing together in worship and communion. While we have been calling these 3simple rules, the truth is that they are hard to live out and we can’t do it alone, in fact, we aren’t meant to do this alone.

John Wesley gave these general rules to the small groups that he helped form because he knew that it would be in these groups where people would work together to support one another and love one another and hold one another accountable. My hope is that we will do the same today as we work to come together in small groups, Sunday school classes, mission teams, ministry teams and just deep faith based friendships. It is only together, that we will find the strength, the power, the love and inspiration to live out these 3 simple rules and stay in love with God.

Next Steps
3 Simple Rules ~ Stay in Love with God

1. Set aside some time every day this week to pray. Make sure to include times of praise, thanksgiving, confession, supplication and silence. Consider setting aside one day for each type of prayer.

2. Read and reflect on the word of God. A good place to start this week would be on psalms that express our thanksgiving to God. Check out Psalm 145 – Psalm 150

3. As you spend time with family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday, take some time to give thanks and pray together.

4. Set up a cross in your home as a reminder that we need to persevere in acts of mercy ↔ (doing no harm and doing good) as well as acts of piety ↕ (staying in love with God).

5. Commit yourself to being in worship for the Advent Season (the month of December) as we prepare ourselves spiritually for the celebration of Christ’s birth.

6. Help others stay in love with God by sharing with them an Advent Devotional – Let Heaven and Nature Sing. Last year’s devotionals are available at no cost for you to share with family and friends.

3 Simple Rules: #2. Do Good

When asked what they needed to do in order to be faithful to God, John Wesley gave the early Methodists 3 General Rules. They were not long complex rules, but simple ones that would be easy for people to remember and follow: do no harm, do good and stay in love with God. Now Wesley didn’t make up these rules himself, they were rules based on the guiding principles and commandments given to us by God. Last week we learned that the one guiding principle God gave his people was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. This command was to be recited by the people of Israel every day and taught to their children, which is not a bad idea for us to consider doing today. The command to love God was to be the one guiding principle for all of God’s people.


In an effort to be faithful, however, the people took that one principle and turned it into 613 laws. When Jesus came he tried to once again make things simple. When asked which of these 613 laws was the most important Jesus’ answer was, love God, but then Jesus added this, and love your neighbor as yourself. What Jesus did was to say that loving God couldn’t just be expressed in our words to God and the attitudes and feelings of our heart toward God, love for God has to be lived out in our relationships with one another in very real and tangible ways. Love for God has to be turned into loving actions towards others.

The disciple John really understood this. Years later as he was writing to the church he said this: 1 John 4:20-21. So to love God means that we love our brothers and sisters but then John makes clear that loving our brothers and sisters means reaching out to help them, look at 1 John 3:16-17. So to love God means that we love others and loving others means we reach out to help them in real ways and it’s all of this that forms the foundation for John Wesley’s second rule – do good. It’s not enough for us to simply do no harm we have to be proactive and take God’s love for us to the next level and use that to love and help others. So doing good is putting God’s love into action. Doing good is loving our neighbor as ourselves and the bible is full of passages that affirm this teaching.

Look at Luke 6:27-36. Again we see here that Jesus links together loving God with loving our neighbor – and even our enemy – and that loving others actually means doing something good for them. Loving others is not a feeling or emotion it is helping meet their real needs and offering them grace and mercy.

Jesus says this again in John 13:34-35.

And we hear this teaching affirmed by Paul in Romans 12:9-13. Paul is also making it clear that our love needs to extend to others in very real ways. So it’s clear that the foundation of the Christian faith is to love others which means that we seek ways to do good for them and John Wesley made sure people understood the depth of this call to do good by telling people that not only should we do good but we should:

Do all the good we can.
By all the means we can.
In all the ways we can.
In all the places we can.
At all the times we can.
To all the people we can.
As long as ever we can.

This statement begins to answer some of our questions about doing good. If we were to ask, who should we do good for? The answer is to all the people we can. If we were to ask where should we do good, just in the church or in the community and schools and homes as well? The answer is that we do good in all the places we can. Do we do good by just giving our money or do give our time and talent and prayers as well? The answer is that we use all the means we can, we do whatever we can to do good. Are we ever able to stop doing good? The answer is no, we do it as long as we can. What Wesley is saying is that the call to love others is extensive. There is no limit to the love we are to show God and others and the reason is because there was no limit to the love Jesus showed us when he died on the cross and there is no limit to the love God has for us today. Again, look at 1 John 3:16.

This makes clear that Jesus was willing to love us so completely that he gave up his life for us, he died on the cross for us, and if that is the example of love and doing good we are to follow, then there is simply no limit to the love we are to show others. We do all the good we can at all times and in all place and by all means and for all of our lives.

Now if you’re like me, you start asking this question, so just what does this mean? What is the good I am supposed to do? And when we ask this what we tend to do is start making a list, we love lists. Even though Jesus gave us a list of some good things to do for others like feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the naked and visiting those who are sick and in prison, I don’t think Jesus ever wanted us to take the command to love our neighbor and turn it into a comprehensive check list to follow. I believe Jesus wanted us to make this our way of life.

The same is true of John Wesley and this simple rule. I don’t think Wesley told us to do good with the intention of us making a list of all the good we can do and then going out and doing it. This rule is to be a guiding principle. In every situation we find ourselves we need to instinctively ask ourselves, what is the most good I can do? Am I loving my neighbor the best way I can? If this rule becomes part of our lives and if it truly guides our actions then we will find ourselves doing good more and more without having to check the list.

I have shared this before, but when I was a student at MSU, some friends and I were in downtown Lansing one afternoon and as we walked by an alley we saw a man picking through the dumpster. We all saw him take a bag out of the dumpster, open it up and eat something. One of my friends and I kept on going, but our other friend, guided by this principle, stopped. She asked us, what can we do? We weren’t following the commandment to feed the hungry when we stopped, we weren’t checking some list, were being guided by a rule to do good, to love our neighbor. What we ended up doing was pooling our money and taking the man to lunch because our doing good wasn’t just to feed him, it was to let him know he was loved. It was such a powerful moment I can still tell you what he had, a hamburger and strawberry shake, and our desire to do good meant we made plans the next week to go back and invite him to dinner.

When I was the pastor of Second Avenue Church in Altoona and we started an afterschool program it wasn’t because we were following some command God had given us to care for and teach the children, we were simply being guided by a rule to do good – to love our neighbor. When this church started the Faith Centre 9 years ago it wasn’t to follow God’s command to feed the hungry or clothe the naked, you were simply responding to the general rule - do good. You were seeking to love your neighbor where love meant reaching out to offer real help. By giving us this rule, John Wesley is reminding us that while following God’s laws and commandments are important, what is ultimately important is allowing our hearts and lives to be shaped and guided by love, a love for God that turns into a love for others.

When our lives start being guided by this principle and we actually start doing good, it will be important for us to make sure we keep our motivations in check. For example, we don’t do good things to be noticed, to get praise or to be rewarded. Jesus addressed this in what we heard from Luke 6. We don’t lend to others expecting to get something in return. If we are doing good for what we will get back, it ceases to be good. If we are motivated by pride and ego, which is that desire to be noticed and recognized, then our actions stop being good, they are sinful, so we need to make sure the good we do is for the sake of others and Christ alone, not us. Jesus spoke about this in his sermon on the mount; look at Matthew 6:3-4.

When we do good it should be done as quietly as possible so that we aren’t seeking any kind of recognition or reward for ourselves but just trying to do good for others.

We also need to make sure we aren’t following this rule in some vain attempt to earn our salvation or to earn God’s love for us. When I first became a Christian I was overwhelmed with this idea that I needed to repay God for what he had done for me. Too many times we end up doing good in some effort to repay God or because we think we need to earn our salvation and God’s love. The truth is that there is nothing we can do which will make God love us more than he does at this moment and there is nothing that we can do to earn the salvation that God has already given us in Christ Jesus, look at Ephesians 2:8-9.

So our salvation is not dependent upon any kind of good works, we aren’t saved or loved by God because we do good, God’s love and grace are a free gift. So why do we need to make sure we follow this rule? We make sure we follow this rule because God calls us to us, but there is another reason, let’s keep reading in Ephesians 2:10-11. We do good because we were created to do good. We were created for good works and that is because we were created in the image of God who always does good. If we go back to the creation story we see that after God created things he stopped and reflected on the work of his hands and do you know what he said? This is good. 6 times in the story of creation God looks at his work and says, this is good. From the very beginning God has been doing good so as children created in God’s image, we have been created to do good which is why God calls us to do good.

One last comment on this rule, part of the good we need to do is to ourselves. We learned a few weeks ago that rest and refreshment and taking care of ourselves is part of God’s plan for our lives so we need to take time for some self care – not to be selfish, but because we are also God’s children, created in God’s image and deserving of God’s love and attention. And the truth is that if we don’t truly take care of ourselves, we can’t do good to others. That’s the message that the airlines get right. Every time a plane takes off, what is the message we hear during the in flight safety lecture?

In the event that the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. First, place the mask over your own nose and mouth; then, assist others. In other words, do good for yourself so that you will be able to do good to those around you.


While we need to take some time to think about the good God is calling us to do, we also need to make sure we don’t take this simple rule and make it complicated. It’s easy to take this rule and turn it into 613 or more rules to follow, but that is not the point, the point is to allow this rule to shape our hearts and lives so that in every situation and in every moment of life we will be guided by God’s spirit which is itself – good.


Next Steps

3 Simple Rules ~ Do Good.

1. Take some time to reflect on why we need this rule to guide our lives. Read and reflect on the following Scriptures:
• Matthew 6:1-4
• Luke 6:27-36,
• John 13:34-35
• Acts 10:38
• Romans 12:9-13
• Ephesians 2:4-10
• 1 John 3:11-24, 4:7-21,
• 3 John 11

2. After reading these verses, what is the good you feel God calling you to do?

3. From now to the end of the year, what good can you do in these three specific areas of your life?
• Family
• Community (church, school, work…)
• Those In Need

3 Simple Rules: #1. Do No Harm

Think about how many decisions you have already made this morning. When the alarm went off, you had to decide if you were going to get out of bed or hit the snooze button for an extra 10 minutes of sleep. You had to decide what to eat for breakfast and if you had cereal then you probably had to decide which of the different kinds of cereal on your shelf you wanted because most of us don’t have just one kind of cereal. Do you know how many different types of cereal there are in the new Weis store? 240! Yes, I counted. So at some point you had to decide which ones you would buy to put on your shelf so that today you could decide which one to eat. You then had to decide if you were going to come to church and that decision forced you to make another decision, what were you going to wear. I had to decide which shirt to wear and then which tie would go with the shirt and if I was going to wear a suit. We had to decide what time to leave the house and then once we got here we had to decide if we had enough time to get one more cup of coffee or make one more trip to the bathroom. Once we actually entered the sanctuary we then had to decide where to sit? Actually, that decision may have been made weeks, months or even years ago. How many of you are sitting in the same exact spot that you sat in a year ago, 5 years ago… Decisions, decisions, decisions…


We all have a big decision to make this week, right? We’ve been thinking about it for months, weighing the pros and cons in our mind, figuring out what will be best for us and what will be best for others and what will be best for our financial future. That decision? How much money we will spend at the holiday bazaar on Saturday? That’s what you thought I was talking about, right? Is there some other decision we have to make this week? Right… the election.

For some, the decision on who to vote for is easy, for others it’s hard and understanding all the different issues is a challenge. Where does each candidates stand on foreign policy, domestic policy and financial policy? What will they really do with health care and entitlements like Social Security? What is their plan to grow the economy and shrink the deficit? The issues are complicated and each candidate’s response to the issues is complicated. The truth is, we live in a complicated world. Political, social and economic issues are complex. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had just a few simple rules that could guide us in all the decisions we have to make?

We may not have simple rules that will guide us in political, social and economic decisions, but we do have simple rules that can guide us in faith. God gave us one simple rule in the Old Testament and that was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. This rule, known as the shema, was to be recited every day by God’s people and it was to be the one guiding principle that would direct God’s people in every decision that they made. What’s kind of sad is that the people took that one rule and expanded it out into 613 laws. It seems like we always know how to take something simple and make it really complicated. Now when Jesus came he was asked which of the 613 laws were the most important. Jesus’ answer was an attempt to once again make things simple. Jesus gave the people two simple rules to guide our faith, Love God and love your neighbor. But as you can guess, the Christian Church took those 2 rules and once again made them so complicated and complex that they struggled to know what they needed to do in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus.

What do we need to do to faithfully follow Jesus was the question asked by many people who followed the teaching of John Wesley in the 1700’s. As the popularity of Wesley’s preaching grew he organized people into small groups known as class meetings where they asked this question and like Jesus before him, Wesley tried to keep things simple so he gave the people 3 General Rules. If someone really wanted their lives to be changed by the power and grace of God and if they in turn wanted to change the world then they were to follow these 3 rules: do no harm, do good and stay in love with God.

Now today, just like it was in the 1700s, our world is a confusing place and change is taking place at a faster pace than ever which means that we need some simple rules that can cut through the complexities of life and keep us walking in the footsteps of Jesus. So we are going to begin a series which will look at these 3 General Rules of the church, and the first one is – do no harm.

To help us understand what this rule means, let’s look at Romans 12:14-19 and 13:8-10. What we see here is a list of things we know are wrong and so we need to make sure we just don’t do them. We don’t murder, steal and covet because we know those things are wrong and hurt people. We don’t lie, cheat or commit adultery because we know those things are wrong and hurt people. We don’t gossip and say unkind things about people, whether in person or on facebook and twitter, because we know these words are wrong and they hurt people, at least we should. I’m afraid that today many people don’t think that their words on facebook and twitter really hurt people, but they do. Did you know that the #1 cause of teen suicide is cyber-bullying? The #1 cause of teens hurting themselves and taking their own lives is people saying harmful, hurtful and untrue things about them on facebook and twitter. It is a huge problem and not just for teens but for adults as well. I am amazed and at times horrified how mean spirited and vicious people can be online when they feel anonymous, but their words have power and their words can be destructive. When we are tempted to say something negative about someone we know or even someone we don’t know, we need to be guided by this one simple rule – do no harm.

Now what we begin to see in Romans is a list of things that we should not do because they cause harm, but Wesley’s rule wasn’t given so that we would make more and more lists of things to do and not do, it was given to guide us in our lives and help make us aware of how our attitudes, words and actions effect others. We need to stop every once in a while and ask ourselves, did any of my words or actions this week cause someone harm? This coming week, when passions and emotions are running high because of the election can I make sure that my attitudes and words and actions don’t cause anyone harm? After all, just because someone might hold strong political views that don’t line up with mine doesn’t make them a bad person and it doesn’t necessarily make them evil. We are all children of God; both democrats, republicans and even independents are precious and valuable in the eyes and heart of God.

And that is the primary reason we are to do no harm, because every person is a child of God who is loved by God. Jesus showed us this constantly throughout his ministry. Look at Matthew 19:13-14. People wanted Jesus to bless their children but the disciples didn’t see children as being important enough to take up Jesus time so they spoke sternly to these parents and told them to take their children away, but Jesus made it clear that everyone was valuable to God so he took the time to bless them. Jesus took the time to value and honor all those in society that others tried to put down. Jesus took the time to heal the lepers and to teach and heal the women and to bless the children and even welcome the Samaritans who were seen as the enemies of the Jews. Welcoming the Samaritans would be like supporters of Obama and Romney coming together for dinner. Over and over Jesus modeled a life of do no harm because to him every life was valuable and every person was a child of God.

So one of the reasons we do no harm is because God values everyone but the only way we will be able to follow this rule is if we place our trust in God. One of the times and places where we often do harm others is when we are trying to defend ourselves or get our own way. When we are hurt or injured it is easy to lash out and hurt others. When we feel like we have been wronged we want to make sure that person is going to pay. During our Life apps series we learned that forgiven people forgive, but the opposite is also true, hurt people hurt people, but as followers of Jesus, doing no harm even in those situations where we have been hurt and injured is the path that we need to follow, that’s what we heard in Romans 12:17-19.

Don’t repay evil for evil, never avenge yourself, as far as it is possible live at peace with others; in other words, let go of your rights, let go of seeking revenge and trust God to bring justice. The only way we can do no harm in a world that tells us to seek revenge and get our own way is if we are willing to trust God.

This is where the simple rule of do no harm becomes difficult and the truth is that during this series we will see that while these rules might be simple, they are not easy. It is not easy to give up our rights and it’s not easy to let go of our desire for revenge when we have been wronged but that is the way of Jesus. Do no harm is the message we are confronted with every time we gather here for worship because that is the way of life we see reflected in the cross. On the cross Jesus gave up his rights. He did not deserve to die and yet he chose that way of the cross knowing it would bring about the healing and redemption of the world. Jesus didn’t seek revenge but allowed God to work through his sacrifice to bring victory and peace to the world and when we do no harm, we have the potential to do the same thing.

When we follow these 3 simple rules, do no harm, do good, stay in love with God, we have the potential to change the world because we are walking in the way of Jesus. Doing no harm, doing good and staying in love with God is also the way of life we affirm and commit ourselves to as we share together in communion, so let us come to the table today to trust God and ask God for the strength to live out these simple and yet difficult rules.


Next Steps
3 Simple Rules ~ Do No Harm.

1. What individual or groups of people do you struggle to see as valuable children of God? Ask God to help you see all people the way He does.

2. Reflect on your attitudes, words and actions of this past week, did any of them intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to someone? Are there certain decisions you make on a regular basis that cause intentional or unintentional harm to others? If so, seek forgiveness and then seek out a new path.

3. Sometimes our need for justice or revenge can harm others. What would it look like for us to trust God to bring justice in these situations?

4. John Wesley gave these 3 General Rules to small groups of people to live out together. What small group of believers can help you live out these rules? If you are not part of a small group – seek one out today.

Suggested Prayer for the week:
Heavenly Father, I want to be the kind of person who will bring goodness into the world. I don’t want to be a person who harms or destroys others but a person who will do the right thing. I want to be your child and a reflection of your love and grace. Fill me with your Spirit, Lord, for I know that if your Spirit dwells in me, I will do no harm. In Jesus' holy name I pray, Amen.