Seeking Out The Good of Others-9/12/11
Good Morning,
Well I only posted twice last week but the week I made my commitment to post three times a week I actually posted four so my average is intact. Last night I preached a sermon on seeking out the good of others over your own needs, I won’t put the whole thing up but I will give you the gist of it.
24 Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others-1 Corinthians 10:24
I really love this passage but it has been eating at me because I haven’t really been doing the best job of seeking out good for others lately. Here are three ways that I believe might be able to help us help other people.
The early church was always extremely active in their community and they were blessed for it. If you don’t believe me just look.
Acts 2:46-47
46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Another way we can seek out the good of others is to be aware that there are people in our world who are not as fortunate as we are. There are children out there who don’t have mothers and fathers, there are women out there whose husbands have died and they have no one to take care of them. As God’s people we have the opportunity to look after these people and help them live a better life.
James 1:27
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Probably the best thing we can do to meet the needs of someone else is to find people living in sin and minister to them. I think we hear this one and agree with it and then we just kind of forget about it. All of the community awareness and taking care of widows cannot take care of the sin problem in the lives of people. In order to help people with their sin problem then we must become involved in their lives just like Jesus did in Luke 19.
Luke 19:1-10
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’” 8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
It would have been so easy for Jesus to dismiss this sinful tax collector, some probably thought that he should have made an example of him to the people there, but that was not Jesus’ way. Instead Jesus went to the man’s house and that impacted him so much that he changed his ways. Imagine what would happen if showed Jesus to the people you are around on a daily basis through your example and through his word? Not every case would be a Zacchaeus but I believe if you shared Jesus enough times with enough people that you would eventually find someone to respond to the Gospel message.
Think about how you can help someone today. You hace all helped me and blessed me by being my friends.
Be Strong and Courageous,
Paul
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