Forgiving the Unrepentant

A few weeks ago, I preached from Matthew 18 about Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant, and a few of you have had some good follow-up questions since then.  As we’ve probably all experienced, forgiving people who’ve wronged us can be really hard. Small slights may be easy to forgive, but sometimes the wounds we receive never fully heal, and then forgiveness can be incredibly difficult. That’s true even if the person who hurt us recognizes his sin, repents of it, and asks us for forgiveness. So, what do we do if the person who sins against us doesn’t repent and ask for forgiveness? What if he won’t admit his wrongdoing? Do we still have to forgive in situations like that? Does God?

These aren’t simple questions to answer—at least not for me. Nonetheless, this morning I’m going to try to address those questions because some of you have asked them. As we consider what God’s Word has to say about these things, let’s remember that our default posture and attitude toward one another has to be based in love. We cannot be like God if we do not love one another from the heart.

Patrick Barber

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Covenant Renewal In Communion

Good morning and welcome to worship! I’ve been looking forward to today’s worship for quite some time. This is one of those special Sundays when we tie everything we do in worship to what we call the Lord’s Supper or Communion.  We continue to follow what we believe was the practice of the first-century Christians who gathered every Sunday morning to worship God and remember the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. That’s why we “take communion” every Sunday, but it’s not just based on church tradition. We also do it to remember, to celebrate, and—this morning—to renew our covenant with the risen Lord. This is a very special experience for all of us who have entered into a covenant with God in our baptism, and I pray that you will leave having been refreshed, cleansed, and strengthened for whatever lies ahead.

God bless,

Patrick Barber

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Covenant Renewal In Communion 07.09.2023

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The Unforgiving Servant, Ears to Hear, pt. 7

Hello everyone. Welcome to worship this morning! Whether this past week was great, rough, or something in between, it is good for us to be together again to thank God for his forgiveness and grace.

God’s forgiveness is one of the themes we’ll be emphasizing this morning, especially during the sermon time.  As we continue this series dealing with selected parables of Jesus, we will spend our time today in Matthew 18 where Jesus answers Peter’s question about forgiveness with a parable.

Forgiveness is one of those topics that can really frustrate us. We all want to be forgiven both by God and the people around us, but we know from experience how challenging it can be to forgive others. Our pride can get in the way. The hurt we’ve experienced can still be present and unresolved. We might feel like we’re being used or taken advantage of already, and the idea of not holding people accountable for their sins against us can feel really risky. Still, Jesus tells us we have to move past judgment and forgive.

As you hear the sermon today, I challenge you to do so with someone specific in mind: think about someone in your life who you find hard to forgive. I understand that this is uncomfortable, and I’m not trying to trigger any distress in you. I’m simply trying to help us work through this topic in a way that hears the teaching of Jesus and acts on it in ways that honor God. He never gives us a task without giving us the strength and resources to accomplish it. May his will be done in our lives as it is in heaven.

— Patrick Barber, preaching minister

The Unforgiving Servant

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The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

My first experience with real poverty came during a three-week mission trip to Ghana in 2007. The country was experiencing a significant drought, which affected food supply, water availability, and the production of electricity.  The result included horrific living conditions for the majority of the country.  I saw women carrying five-gallon buckets nearly five miles from their rural village to the nearest water source, which was a mud hole about the size of one of our backyard swimming pools.  I was shocked.  I saw children no older than 8 covered in dirt and tattered clothes who were forced to dig all day for gold and other minerals.  I was astounded.  I met a young boy who was once featured on the Oprah Winfrey show who had been redeemed (bought back) out of actual slavery from a fisherman on Lake Volta. It had been his job to dive from the little fishing boat into the crocodile-infested lake waters to untangle the fisherman’s nets every day.  I was horrified. 

The poverty and the resultant living conditions of the majority was in stark contrast to the living conditions of the upper class. The wealthy received the lion’s share of the electricity being produced.  The wealthy had access to clean drinking water.  The wealthy inhabited nice neighborhoods in nice homes without having to rub shoulders too often with the riffraff in the streets or in the countryside.  It was hard to believe how different the poor and the wealthy lived.  The rich didn’t seem to care.

We, of course, have our own version of this great divide in our country, and so did the Jews in Jesus’ day.  In this morning’s sermon, we’ll explore a famous story Jesus tells about a rich man and a poor beggar that would have shocked, astounded, and possibly horrified many of Jesus’ hearers.  May God give us ears to hear this morning.

— Patrick Barber, preaching minister

Ears to Hear: The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

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Ears to Hear, part 4: What God Hears

Good morning, Church. Our study continues this morning through selected parables of Jesus, and we’re going to give a fresh reading to the familiar parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. If you are familiar with Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you know that Pharisees and tax collectors didn’t often get along. The Pharisees were some of the Jewish religious elite who thought of themselves as the only ones who were really right with God. They thought they knew how to worship, how to follow all the religious requirements God gave Moses, and they surely thought they knew how to pray.

When the Pharisees thought of tax collectors, they thought of people who had sold out to Roman paganism for the sake of profit. In the Pharisees’ eyes, tax collectors were “sinners” of the worst kind, and they were pretty sure that God didn’t hear the prayers of sinners. Bear that in mind when we hear Jesus’ story today about two men who went to pray—one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. And, as usual in Jesus’ teachings, there is a big surprise that causes us to rethink some of what we think we know about ourselves, those we consider more sinful than us, and the way God looks at us all.

As always, try to hear today’s story in a way that allows it to speak to your life. It’s not just an exciting illustration of humility and honest self-reflection; it’s an invitation to think about the way we look at people, listen to people, and think about people. We cannot ignore these things if we want to be like Jesus. May God give us ears to hear and the faith to be different.

— Patrick Barber

What God Hears, Ears to Hear, pt. 4

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A Mother’s Love

Happy Mother’s Day! We have been blessed by the Lord to gather again in his name, and I’m prayerful that we will leave this place more filled than when we arrived.  I suppose it’s okay if we come on Sunday mornings out of a sense of obligation to God, but it’s far better if we come because we truly want to be here. God has been good to us even in ways we haven’t noticed, so we should always be thankful from the heart. That’s part of why we offer our worship to the Lord.

We also come together to build each other up. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 12:15, we are told to “rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” God calls us together to be his family so that we can feel that kind of genuine support. We’re here for one another in the good times and in the bad, and we’ve been blessed in recent weeks to do a lot of rejoicing. We’ve rejoiced together as many have confessed Jesus as the Christ and been baptized into him. We’ve had the chance to celebrate an upcoming wedding, a new pregnancy, birthdays, anniversaries, and other pieces of good news. 

Today, we have another good thing to celebrate.  A number of years ago, we started a tradition here at Manchester of making Mother’s Day more inclusive and honoring all our ladies. This is one of my favorite Sundays for reasons you’ll see later when our children bless all the ladies with roses. Please enjoy those few minutes, and try to soak up the love and appreciation we are trying to show the ladies of this church. It’ll do your heart good, and I’m confident that it pleases God as we mimic the love he models for us.  

— Patrick Barber

A Mother’s Love – Mother’s Day 2023

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Ears to Hear, part 3, The Persistent Widow

Good morning, Church. Over the last few years, we’ve made a significant effort to grow in prayer here at Manchester. We’ve had seminars on prayer, we’ve gone through multiple Forty Days of Prayer, we’ve been using the Daily Scripture/Prayer Guide for about a year now, and we can point to specific ways the Holy Spirit has blessed us through this focus. But I imagine there are still some of us who struggle to pray.

When people are asked about the challenges of having a healthy prayer life, they often will say they don’t have enough time or that they don’t really know what to say or how to say it. However, even those who have a consistent prayer life can still find themselves struggling to pray. I’ve had times in my adult life when I started to lose the motivation to pray, and that happened when it seemed like God wasn’t giving me what I was praying for even though I was sure it was a good and righteous request. 

This morning, we’ll be learning from a parable of Jesus that Luke records in Luke 18:1-8, and Jesus was teaching that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Lk 18:1b).  I hope that our time in the Word today will encourage us to take that lesson to heart and pray in ways that God accepts.  You might be surprised to learn that God accepts more from us in prayer than many people think.

Just because God hears, however, doesn’t mean that God will always respond in the way we think. And that’s the problem.  For us at least.  Part of the way we deal with that disappointment is to remember who we’re talking to.  Our God is always good, always right, and always just—except for when he’s gracious, which is even better.   

— Patrick Barber, preaching minister

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Ears to Hear, 3, The Persistent Widow

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Ears to Hear, 2: Parable of Two Lost Sons

Good morning, Church. Today we will be studying in Luke 15 as we work through the second parable of Jesus in this new sermon series “Ears to Hear.”  It’s a familiar story popularly known as The Prodigal Son, but the parable is really about all three of the main characters in it and the ways they relate to one another in light of the grace of God.  It’s also the third parable in a series that Jesus tells about the lost being found.  You’ll hear the first two read as part of this morning’s scripture reading, and it’s in the introduction to those parables in Luke 15:1-2 that we find the context and reason for the parables in the first place.

You probably already know that Jesus’ primary opponents were the religious leaders of his day. They’re often referred to as scribes and Pharisees. Part of their problem was that even though they had knowledge of God’s law as recorded in the Torah, they too often didn’t know how to apply it with the same kind of love and mercy that is integral to God’s character.  They thought they were loving God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, but they weren’t paying close enough attention to how God’s compassion motivated God to be more like a shepherd than a sheriff.  Jesus, of course, was/is the Good Shepherd, so he loved people in ways the Pharisees couldn’t understand. 

It’s that love of God that permeates the parables we find in Luke 15, and that love is seen in the joy expressed when the lost are found and those that were dead come to life again.  That’s good news for all of us who need a Savior, and it’s an ongoing challenge for all of us trying to live like him.

— Patrick Barber, preaching minister

Ears to Hear, 2: Parable of Two Lost Sons

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Parables of Jesus, 1 – The Sower

Good morning, Church and guests. Welcome to our weekly time of worship to which our God has called us in unity and praise.  May our ears hear clearly and our hearts be receptive to whatever truths God gives us this morning through his word.  We know that the Holy Spirit is active all the time, and when we focus our minds and hearts on drawing near to him, he will bless us with wisdom and courage so that we can keep on living each day for the Lord.

I’m excited to kick off a new sermon series with you this morning that will have us engaging some of the most fruitful but frustrating teachings of Jesus—his parables.  We won’t go through all of them, but I have ten or twelve that I hope to preach about over the next few months. 

If you’ve studied Jesus’ parables before, I hope you won’t tune out thinking this is all old material.  The parables and their applications are rich enough to continue to challenge us year after year, no matter how familiar they might initially seem.  And if you’re new to the parables and are a little bit uneasy about them, because you’ve heard they’re hard to understand, have courage.  God does give understanding to those who seek it, and while we may not understand everything Jesus has to say, I am confident that there will always be something we can take away from these studies and apply to our lives.

This morning’s text is Matthew 13:1-23 and covers material best known as the Parable of the Sower.  I hope that before our worship time begins, you’ll pause to pray silently for all of us that we might have ears to hear Jesus’ message.  God hears our prayers and always gives us what we need at the right time.  I’m hoping that we will experience that goodness for ourselves today.  May the Lord be praised.

— Patrick Barber

The Sower, Lesson 1 from The Parables of Jesus Sermon Series

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Jesus Our Passover Lamb

Welcome to our Easter Sunday time of worship. If you are visiting today, please fill out a blue card located in the back of the pews in the auditorium, and please turn it in at the Welcome Center in the foyer. We’d love to get to know you soon.

While we hope that every Sunday is significant in its own way, there is something just a little extra special about worshipping together on Easter. While we don’t really know when Jesus was born, we do know that he was crucified during Passover, and Passover is a time that’s easy to track each year. Just this past Wednesday night at sundown, Passover began.

Stretching back over three thousand years, Passover continues to be an annual time of celebratory remembrance of the night God crushed the strength of Pharoah and spared the lives of the Israelite faithful. It took place on the evening of the tenth and final plague that God used to punish the idolatrous Egyptians, and it marked the beginning of a journey of freedom that took the children of Israel out of slavery and toward the Promised Land. 

When Jesus died for us, he functioned as our Passover lamb. He was without blemish—innocent of sin of any kind. And yet he willingly suffered and died so that we could be free from sin and guilt. His death paid a price that we could not pay, and his resurrection pioneered a path that we still follow today that leads us to the Father. Those are clear reasons to be thankful and rejoice, and I hope we do that this morning. There’s also a lesson there for the way we should think about our time when we celebrate Communion (the Lord’s Supper) each week, but I’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, let’s enjoy this special day of worship together.

— Patrick Barber

Passover can be found starting in Exodus 12:21

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