For Such A Time As This | Prideful Influence - Esther 2:19 - 3:15 - Daniel Barth by Midtown Presbyterian Church

For Such A Time As This | Complexity Of The Issues - Esther 2:1-18 - Gabby Gustafson by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Notes:

1. Pew study on Post-Christendom: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/

2. “The church is one of those former power brokers who once enjoyed a place of influence at the cultural table, but has been chased away from its place of privilege and is now seeking to find where it belongs amidst the ever-changing dynamics of contemporary culture.” -The Church in Exile: "Living in Hope After Christendom"

3. “The most important thing in your life is not what you do. It is who you become.” -Dallas Willard

4. “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.” -Mother Teresa

5. Story of Edward Kimball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kimball_(teacher)

The Search | Proclaiming Living Water - John 4:28-30, 39-42 - Luke Parker by Midtown Presbyterian Church

The Search | What's Driving You? - John 4:27, 31-38 - Gayle Parker by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Resources:

Scripture References - Amos 5:24, Jeremiah 7:1-11, John 14:6

1. “When the Patient goes inside the church building, he will see the local grocer with a rather oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors he has previously avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors…Provided that any of them sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the Patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. Work hard on the disappointment or anti-climax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a church-going man.” -C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"

2. “Make your patient a taster or connoisseur of churches. The perpetual search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil [remember, Enemy in the demon’s eyes is God]. So bestir yourself and send this fool around all the neighborhood churches as soon as possible…And then, if your patient can’t be kept out of the church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say “mass” and those who say “holy communion” when neither party could possibly state the difference in any form which would hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent things–candles and clothes and what not–are an admirable ground for our activities.” -C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"

3. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” -Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

4. “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” -David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water"

5. “The world is not divided between people who worship and people who don’t. The world is divided into people who worship things that will distort their life, and people who worship the only object worthy of the adoration of our soul.” -Tim Keller

6. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sermon Resources:

Scriptures - John 4, John 2:24-26, John 19:28

1. “Our stories are all stories of longing. We long for a good self to be and for good work to do. We long to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We long to love and to be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we long to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live…The word longing comes from the same root as the word long in the sense of length in either time or space and also the word belong, so that in its full richness to long suggests to yearn for a long time for something that is a long way off and something that we feel we belong to and that belongs to us.” -Frederick Buechner, "The Longing For Home"

2. “The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.” -John Cheever

3. “Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.” -A.W. Tozer, "The Pursuit of God"

4. “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country.” -C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"

5. “You have made us for Yourself; and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.” -Augustine of Hippo

Sermon Stat Correction: Suicide rates increase exponentially upon retirement age, doubling rather than going up by "three times," as stated.

Source Statistics can be found on:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db483.htm

Sermon Resources:

1. Franz Jägerstätter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_J%C3%A4gerst%C3%A4tter

2. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead

3. “For the growing good of the world is dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." -George Eliot, "Middlemarch"

4. “If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others…it is selfless prayer, even self-giving prayer. In the ongoing work of the kingdom of God, nothing is more important than intercession.” -Richard Foster, "Prayer"

5. "On The Powers of Simple Medicine," by Galen

6. “In careful scientific studies, forgiveness has been shown to reduce depression, increase hopefulness, decrease anger, improve spiritual connection, and increase self-confidence.” -Fred Luskin, "Forgive For Good: A Proven Prescription For Health and Happiness"

7. “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” -Brennan Manning

Sermon Resources:

Scripture References - John 8:31-32, John 14:6, Deuteronomy 23:21-23, Ecclesiastes 5:4, Psalm 50:14, Matthew 5:34-37, Luke 16:10

1. "Spin Room" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_room

2. “There is perhaps nothing that so marks us as human as the gift of speech…By speaking, we can reveal the hiddenness of thought, we can express the subtlest as well as the most devastating of emotions, we can heal, we can make poems, we can pray. All of which is to say we can speak truth—the truth of what it is to be ourselves, to be with each other, to be in the world—and such speaking as that is close to what being human is all about. What makes lying an evil is not only that the world is deceived by it, but that we are dehumanized by it.” -Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking"

3. "The essence of swearing that Jesus targets here is about invoking something or someone else, especially God, to make your own words more significant or weighty. The aim is to impress others with your seriousness or piety so that you get what you want. It’s a device of manipulation designed to override the judgment or input of others in order to possess them for our purposes. It’s manipulation, or, as we say in our culture, “spin.” And Jesus says it's evil. Instead of loving and honoring others with truthfulness, the intent is to get one’s way by verbal manipulation of the thoughts and choices of others.” -Dallas Willard, "The Divine Conspiracy"

4. “The tendency to lie is absolutely natural in the child, and if not checked, leads to deeper and deeper evil. That children lie, steal, cheat, and want to make reality what they want it to be is routinely observable. The fact that some people grow into honest adults is absolutely remarkable.” -M. Scott Peck, "People of the Lie"

5. "Just as forgiveness is the one way to be free from your painful past, so promising is the only way to be free from your unpredictable future. But it is not only that I know myself in the mirror of my promises. My people, the ones who belong to me, who depend on me, also know me by the promises I have made. What I promise is what I am and will be to them. Only if they really know what I am can they live with me in trust. They know me in the important way, not by reading my therapist’s notes, but by knowing my power to keep promises.” -Lewis Smedes, "Controlling The Unpredictable"

Sermon Resources:

Scripture References: James 5:1-11; Luke 12:15; Luke 6:20; Mark 10:24-25; Matt. 6:19-21; Proverbs 23:4-5; Proverbs 6:8

1. "God and Mammon in America," by Robert Wuthnow; additional study: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-09-24-me-42320-story.html

2. “We live in a materialist culture, we want money and possessions, and very few people have heard a powerful voice telling them to resist those impulses, or how to resist those impulses. Organized religion has not done a good job of challenging people to examine their lifestyles.The point isn’t that we are all just strapped. It’s a matter of making moral choices about how we use our resources.” -Robert Wuthnow, "God and Mammon In America"

3. Data on the wealth of Americans: https://www.sportofmoney.com/how-rich-are-americans-on-a-global-scale-very-rich/#:~:text=39%25%20of%20the%20world%27s%20millionaires,share%20is%20at%20%24145.8%20trillion.

4. “Upward mobility often ends not in satisfaction and peace, but in exhaustion, disappointment, and emptiness.” -Robert C. Roberts, "Just A Little Bit More"

5. “When success is equated with excess, the ambition for excess wrecks us.” -Jon Foreman, "American Dream"

6. “Riches are, from a biblical point of view, an affliction, a massive obstacle in entering the Kingdom of Heaven.” -Alasdair MacIntyre

7. “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.” -C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"

8. “God has not appointed gold for rust, nor garments for moths; but, on the contrary, he has designed them as aids and helps to human life.” -John Calvin