Songs For Sunday

We're going to start our singing Sunday with Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know. Consider that word "know." The first sense of that is the theoretical: Here is an idea, a fact, that I know. I know that Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God, "delights and stirs me," "defeats my fiercest foes," "consoles my saddest woes," "revives my fainting heart, healing all its hidden smart," is "life in life" and "death of death," and "who will place me on his right?" We who sing know these things to be true.

But there's another sense of "know" implied here. We see these two senses in scripture in places like Ephesians 3 where Paul prays that the Ephesian church will "know this love that surpasses knowledge." How can you know something that surpasses knowledge? Well, consider another translation. We can take Paul to be praying that they "Experience this love that surpasses understanding." God's love in Christ is so great, so intense, so extensive, that we cannot ever completely understand it. But we can experience it.

Let's apply this sense of know to our singing this hymn. "Ask ye what great thing I experience." Sure, I know that completely ruins the poetry and musicality. Consider, however, that declaring the truth of the facts expressed in the hymn is one thing - surely a good thing! Declaring that this is our experience of Jesus, that's something different. We don't just know about Jesus, we know Jesus. We've experienced these things for ourselves.

It might be that come Sunday morning when it's time to sing this song you might think that it'd be nice to have had this experience of Jesus, but you haven't yet. That's one of the advantages that comes from preparation for worship. By knowing shat song we'll be singing you can look at it in advance. Even this very moment as you read my words - or Sunday morning as we sing the hymn - you can pray, "Lord, I want this to be my experience. I want to have this experience of Jesus and life in him. Do this work in me so that I will joyously share the news of Jesus with everyone who asks me what great thing I know, what the thing is that stirs me and excites me."

Our second hymn is one of the best known hymns of the past century, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Because we have Jesus as our friend (see where he calls his disciples "friends" in John 15), we can bring every need and concern to him.

Our final hymn , Here I Am, Lord, perfectly expresses how the service we offer God is much more than just doing our duty or performing required functions. This hymn, today's scripture text, sets the question of service in the context of what God is doing in and through his people. 

The logic of the hymn is rooted in who God is more than who we are. Each stanza identifies God in a particular way: "Lord of sea and sky," "Lord of snow and rain," "Lord of wind and flame." Each of these descriptions is followed by statements of what God has and will do for his people. Consider some of these actions God has done:

- "I have heard my people cry"

- "I have borne my people's pain"

- "I have wept for love of them"

Considering what this God has done, consider also what he says he will do:

- "I will make their darkness bright"

- "All who dwell in dark and sin my hand will save"

- "I will break their hearts of stone"

- "I will give them hearts for love alone"

- "I will speak my word to them"

- "I will tend the poor and lame"

- "I will set a feast for them"

- "My hand will save"

- "Finest bread I will provide till their hearts be satisfied

- "I will give my life to them"

That's a long list, isn't it? Isn't it good news that God wants to do all these things? But notice how God plans to do these things: Through the people he calls. In each case, God announces who he is, what he intends, and then asks, "Whom shall I send?" That's the framework we see in Isaiah 6. There it's Isaiah who practically jumps up and down, "Here I am, Lord! I'm willing to go!"

It all sounds so positive, doesn't it? Well, if we've been paying attention, maybe not. Remember those "hearts of stone" the people have? There's also the line, "They turn away." Isaiah is told to expect rejection and unreceptive audiences. He may be jumping up and down with the joy of being able to join in with what God is doing; many others will not be.

Scripture & Sermon

We have two texts we'll be looking at Sunday, Mark 10:35-45 and Galatians 6:1-10.

James and John, like many of us, were thinking of their status relative to others. They wanted to be ranked highly. They had come to believe that Jesus had the highest rank, so they wanted to be next to him, over the other disciples - and over everyone else in the world.

They had no clue what they were asking for. The way the world understands things, status is always and necessarily a zero-sum game. That is, status is the kind of thing such that if one person has more, others necessarily have less. Imagine we had ten people and 100 pennies. If I give one of you 60 pennies, there's no way any of the others can have anywhere near as many. Because status is a zero-sum game, we have to push and compete with others - and can never let up, lest someone come along and displace us.

Jesus totally rejected this way of thinking, saying of himself, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." How could the disciples square this claim with what they had confessed of Jesus ("you are the Messiah, the son of the living God") just a short time before?

Reminders & Events:

• We have our outreach at Texas A & M Texarkana on Thursday. We could use volunteers to come out - and to pray for our work.
• Wednesday night dinners & classes start up again the Wednesday after Labor Day.

Ways to Prepare Yourself for Sunday

1. Pray for a fresh move of God in your life and in our church. The world gives us plenty to stress us out and to derail our life in Christ. We need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
2. Don't stop inviting people. Pray for God to draw them to him and that when they come they will experience him for themselves.
3. Watch for people you don't know Sunday morning. Introduce yourself and strike up a conversation. If they're new people (not just people you hadn't yet met), you can introduce them to people you already know - maybe even invite them to sit with you and your family.
4. Ask God to open your eyes to people around you and show you who can invite. You can invite people to come Sunday.
5. Pray especially for people - including yourself - to respond to God's calling.

Connecting Online

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