Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Melbourne Heights, and welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live, or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode's sermon. Our church was officially founded back in 1957, and that means for the last 69 years we have been gathering together to worship on Sunday mornings. It means that we have worshipped together over 3,500 times on Sunday mornings.
And on the vast majority of those times that we have come together to worship on Sunday mornings, there's been a sermon. So let's think in for just a second. Over the last 69 years, there have been 3,500 sermons preached in this church alone. Just to help kind of wrap your mind around how many sermons have been preached in this place, if you were to start today and try to listen to every single sermon that has been preached in the history of Melbourne Heights, without stopping to do anything else at all, it would take you until after Father's Day this year to finish listening to all of those sermons.
That's a whole lot of sermons. But when I think about how many sermons have been preached in this place, how many sermons I've preached since becoming a pastor, there's a question that I can't help but ask, and I'll be honest. It's kind of a hard question for me as a preacher to ask, but here's that question. How many sermons do you remember?
How many sermons do you remember? Like, how many of you remember what last Sunday's sermon was about? Good, that's not a rhetorical question. If you remember what last Sunday was about, yell it out.
What was it about? Singing, it was about music and why we sing in church. How about the week before that? Do you remember what that sermon was about?
Why we have worship. Why we worship. But in all fairness, both of those are part of the series that we're working our way through right now. It's a series called Church Explained where we're talking about why we do some of the things that we do in church.
So those might be a little bit easier for you to remember. But how many of you remember the sermon series that was preached back in January? Or how many of you remember what sermons I preached last August or last April? How many of you remember sermons that were preached two years ago or three years ago?
How many of you remember any sermons that were preached 10 or 12 years ago in this place? I mean, the simple reality is that even if somehow somehow you were actually able to be here for every single sermon that had been preached in the history of this church over the last 69 years, you wouldn't remember the vast majority of them. So if we don't remember most of the sermons that we hear preached on Sunday mornings, then why is it that we always have a sermon when we gather together for worship on Sunday mornings? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today.
But before we can really start talking about why it is that we have a sermon every single Sunday morning, it would help if we better understand what a sermon is. So let me ask you, what is a sermon? What is a sermon? What's a sermon supposed to be?
What's it supposed to do? What's the purpose of a sermon? Is a sermon supposed to be a lecture about some kind of moral or religious topic? Is a sermon supposed to be some kind of sales pitch where the preacher convinces you to do something?
Is a sermon supposed to be a time where you feel convicted after the preacher stepped on your toes during his or her message? Well, a sermon's not any of those things. You see, the word sermon comes from the Latin word sermo, and the word sermo refers to a discourse. And what's a discourse?
Well, it's a discussion or it's a conversation. But when was the last time you heard a sermon that sounded anything like a conversation? A model, sure. But a conversation?
Not so much. That is, we don't really hear sermons that sound like conversations unless we've been misunderstanding who this conversation is happening between. Like in this first scripture passage, I want to take a closer look at today. So if you've got a Bible close by or Bible app on your phone, I encourage you to go and open it to 1 Samuel chapter 3.
1 Samuel chapter 3. And as you're finding them, I'm going to let you know that in this chapter, we're going to be introduced to a boy named Samuel. And Samuel is working as an assistant in the temple serving an older priest named Eli. I'm just going to pay attention to what happens in Samuel's story.
We'll start reading in 1 Samuel chapter 3, verse 3. This is what it says. It says, Then Eli realized it was the Lord who was calling the boy. So he said to Samuel, Now in this story, Samuel doesn't understand who is actually speaking to him that night.
Samuel thinks that it's the priest, it's Eli that is calling out to him, when it's actually God who is speaking to the boy. And I think sometimes we have that same problem when we're listening to sermons in church. We don't realize who is actually speaking through those sermons. You see, when we think about sermons, we think about somebody standing up at the front of the church and talking for 20 or 30 minutes about God or faith or something along those lines.
But that's not what really is happening inside of a sermon. Inside of a sermon, you and God are supposed to be having a conversation. And your preacher, your pastor, well, I just get to be an intercessor that helps things along the way. And what does that mean?
Well, it means that a sermon is not just about listening to somebody else talk. No, instead, what a sermon is, it's one of the primary ways that God speaks to all of us. And what that means is that whether you're talking about one of the sermons that I've preached for the 19 years that I've been in ministry, or a sermon that Billy Graham preached during one of his famous crusades, or a sermon that Jonathan Edwards preached back during the Great Awakening, or even the sermon that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, every sermon is preached because God has something to say to you. Every sermon is preached because God has something to say to you.
Now, what God has to say to you is going to be different from one week to the next. What God has to say to you, sometimes it might be uplifting, and sometimes it might convict you. What God has to say to you, sometimes it's going to make you want to jump into action, and sometimes it's going to make you want to slow down and think. What God has to say to you may make you make a decision to commit yourself to following Jesus, or it may make you want to make the decision to take your next step in your relationship with God.
But every single time we gather in this place, God has something to say to you. And we just forget that sometimes in church. We forget that God is speaking. So we have a sermon every week to make sure that you take some time to listen.
And I can stop right here. I can stop the sermon right here because I told you what we were talking about. I told you we were talking about why we have a sermon every Sunday. And I've just explained to you why we have a sermon every Sunday.
We have a sermon every Sunday because God has a message that he wants you to hear. So this sermon that's about sermons could be the shortest sermon that I've ever preached. But before we sing our closing song and we all head to lunch, there's another question that we all need to wrestle with first. There's another question we need to ask, another question we need to talk about, and here it is.
If every sermon, if we believe that every sermon is an opportunity for God to speak to us, then why don't we do a better job of listening? If we believe that every sermon is an opportunity for God to speak to us, then why don't we do a better job of listening while we're here? And I'll be honest, there are a bunch of different ways that you can answer that question. But I think that there are a few answers to that question that are worth us spending some additional time talking about today.
And I think the first reason why we don't always do a great job of listening to sermons is because we have the same problem that Samuel had in the passage of Scripture we just read. I think sometimes we all do a great job of listening to sermons because we forget that God is speaking to us through them. You see, here's what I realized. I've been a pastor here at Melbourne Heights for over 14 years at this point.
And over my 14-plus years as a pastor of the church, I have preached over 700 sermons here. And that means that you're used to hearing me talk. You know what my sermons sound like, so it is really easy to just tune me out because you hear me talk so much. But when I'm standing up here preaching a sermon that I have spent days and sometimes weeks preparing, it's not really me that you're listening to.
What's really happening is that God is trying to have a conversation with you. I get reminded of this fact all the time, it feels like, because every few weeks when I'm standing out in the lobby talking with you all after the service comes to an end, you're like, somebody's going to come to me and they're going to tell me how much that morning's sermon spoke to them. And then you'll go on and you'll tell me why that sermon spoke to you so much. And if you're sitting there sharing with me what God was saying to you through that sermon, I'm sitting there thinking, I didn't say that.
Or, are you sure you were actually listening to the sermon that I was preaching and you didn't have something else pulled up on Facebook on your phone? But when that happens, what I realize is that you weren't listening to the words that were coming out of my mouth. And that's okay. What was really happening is that God was having a conversation with you and God was speaking to you in a way that I never would have imagined.
That's what sermons are supposed to be. But sometimes we forget that God speaks to us when we're in this place. So, the first reason why we sometimes struggle to do a better job of listening to sermons is we forget that God wants to speak to us through them. But that's not the only reason why we sometimes struggle to do a better job of listening to sermons.
The next reason why I think we sometimes struggle to do a better job of listening to sermons is because there are times when we don't feel like we are worthy. Like we don't deserve for God to speak to us. Let me think about it for just a minute. When you spend half an hour on Sunday mornings having to argue with your kids about putting their shoes on just so you can come to church, once you make it here, you don't really feel like you deserve to be here.
Or when somebody cuts you off in traffic right before you're about to turn into the church parking lot and you butter some words under your breath that you would never say inside a church, you don't really feel like you're worthy of being here. Or when you're still arguing with your spouse about some chore that they didn't finish up around the house yesterday, right up until the moment where you grab that door handle, open the door, and come into our building, you don't really feel like you deserve to be here. You don't feel like God would actually want to speak to you. And we all have those moments sometimes when we just don't feel like we are worthy of being in this place, worthy of having God speak to us.
But when we start feeling that way, it's helpful if we can remember an encounter that Moses has with God back in Exodus chapter 3. And in Exodus chapter 3, God is speaking to Moses through a burning bush. But as we read this story, I want you to pay attention to the way that Moses feels about this whole situation. So you can follow along if you want to turn in your Bible to Exodus chapter 3 or you can just look at the verses on the screen.
We're picking up in Exodus 3 verse 4. This is what we're told. We read, When the Lord saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush. Moses, Moses, and Moses said, I'm here.
Then the Lord said, don't come any closer. Take off your sandals because you were standing on holy ground. He continued, I am the God of your father. Abraham's God, Isaac's God, Jacob's God.
And Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, I clearly see my people oppressed in Egypt. I've heard their cry of injustice because of their slave masters. I know about their pain.
Skipping down to verse 10, we're told, so get going. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt? But God said, I'll be with you.
So in this passage, God speaks to Moses. And he tells Moses to take his sandals off because he's standing on holy ground. And did you notice how Moses responded? Book of Exodus tells us that he hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.
But Moses didn't feel like he deserved to be in God's presence. He didn't feel like he was worthy to have God speak to him. And there are times we all feel the exact same way. And we feel like we're not worthy of having God speak to us because we know us.
We know who we are. And we can't imagine that God would ever want to talk to somebody like us. But when you start feeling that way, it's helpful to remember that when God starts talking to Moses in Exodus chapter 3, Moses is a fugitive. He's on the run because he killed someone.
But God still invites Moses to stand on that holy ground. Not because of who Moses is, not because of what Moses had done, but because God had a message for Moses. And the same thing is true for us. Even if we don't feel like we deserve to be here, even if we don't feel like we're worthy to be on holy ground in the sanctuary, God wants to speak to you.
Read that again. Let that sink in for just a minute. God actually wants to speak to you. The God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them, including you, wants to talk to you, has a message that he wants you to hear.
But we don't always do a great job of listening to it. So, we don't always do a great job of listening to sermons because sometimes we forget that God is speaking to us. And we don't always do a great job of listening to sermons because there are times when we just don't feel worthy to have God speak to us. But then there's still at least one more reason why we don't always do a great job of listening to sermons.
It's worth talking about today. And that last reason why we don't always do a great job of listening to sermons is because we get distracted. We get distracted. We're busy people.
We have a lot of stuff that's going on in our lives. There's always a million different thoughts that are running through our minds. I remember having a preaching professor when I was in college talking about the fact that everybody inside of your sanctuary on a Sunday morning is there kind of flipping through their mental remote control, their channel surfing throughout your sermon, and you just hope that they tune in and listen from time to time along the way. We're busy people.
We've got a lot going on. So there are times when you're sitting there listening to me preach, and what you're really thinking about is your grocery list. Or you're thinking about the chores that you need to get done this afternoon before the work week starts tomorrow. Or maybe you're feeling a little bit stressed out because you've got a big presentation that's coming up at work or a big project that's new where you're thinking about a test that you've got to take in school this week.
Or maybe you're feeling stressed out because you know you've got a doctor's appointment that's coming up or you're waiting for some test results to come back in. But there are times when all of us are at least a little bit distracted when we come into church. But when we start feeling these distractions creeping in, there's something else that we need to remember. There's something that we read about in the book of 1 Kings.
In 1 Kings chapter 19, there's a story that really talks with us about these distractions that keep us from listening to God. So let me share this story with you. 1 Kings chapter 19, starting in verse 11, this is the story we read. We're told, The Lord said to Elijah, Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord.
The Lord is passing by. And a very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord. but the Lord wasn't in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord wasn't in the earthquake.
After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord wasn't in the fire. And after the fire, there was a still, small voice. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat. He went out and he stood at the cave's entrance.
That still, small voice was the voice of God. In the story, there are all sorts of things that are trying to pull Elijah's attention away from God. There's this mighty wind and an earthquake and a fire. So many things that could distract Elijah and pull him away from paying attention to the voice of God, that still, small voice.
The most important part of the story is that God had a message for Elijah. God wanted his voice to be heard in spite of all of those distractions. And when you come into this place, God wants his voice to be heard in spite of all of the things that may be distracting you while you're here. So when it comes to a sermon, Sunday after Sunday, one of the biggest things that we have to realize is what I've been talking about from the beginning of the sermon.
God has a message that he wants you to hear. You just have to be receptive to it. And this is a lesson that one of my favorite preachers and authors, Tony Campola, remembers learning when he was still pretty young. As Dr.
Campola tells the story, he writes, One summer when I was still a teenager, I went off to a church Bible conference in the Pocono Mountains. And the man who led this conference was a prominent evangelist from Philadelphia named Percy Crawford. This man preached the gospel with such clarity and effectiveness that I was caught up in his message and I went down the aisle at the invitation time to give my life to Christ. And when I returned home after this Bible conference, I was ready to attack my pastor.
I was ready to question him as to why he had never preached the gospel before because it was clear to me that I had never, never once heard the gospel preached in his church. So why do I have to go all the way to a Bible conference down the mountains somewhere to hear the story of salvation? Why hadn't that pastor and all the sermons that he had preached made the salvation story clear to me? So I was committed to confronting my pastor at the first possible opportunity.
So the next Sunday I went to church and I sat down firmly and I seat in the pew and I got out my pen, I got out my paper and I was ready to take notes because I wanted to provide the pastor with a critique about what his sermons were missing. And wouldn't you know it, that was the first time I ever heard this pastor preach the gospel. And you know what? He did it again the next week and again the next week and again the next week and again the next week.
And then it finally started to dawn on me. It was never my pastor's fault. He had always been proclaiming the word of God. I just wasn't ready to hear it.
God wants to speak to you and every Sunday we have a sermon because God has a message he wants you to hear. But are you actually ready to listen? Or are you too distracted by what's been happening in your life? Do you feel too unworthy to actually let God speak to you?
Have you just forgotten that God does in fact want to talk to you? Because every week we have a sermon because God has a message for you. But you have to be ready to listen to it. Let's pray God.
God, if we come to you now in this time of prayer, we are so overwhelmed but also so thankful that you actually want to talk to us. So God, help us to do a better job of listening. Whatever message it is that you have for us today, God, in the coming weeks when we gather together for worship, open our ears so that we may hear. Whether that message lifts us up or brings us down.
Whether it makes us think or makes us want to jump into action. Whether it's calling us to begin a relationship with you and to continue further on that journey with you. Open our ears and let us hear. And God, let us never take these sermons for granted.
Let's not just see them and take time for us to maybe hear a good story and then tune out the rest of the message. Open our ears. Let us hear whatever it is you have to say to us. We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen. Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of our sermon podcast. And I hope that you've been blessed during our time together. If that's happened, once again, I want to invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m.
Eastern time. You can do that by joining us on our website at mhbclouisville.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, you can also worship with us in person. And that's going to do it for this episode of our sermon podcast.
But I want to invite you to come back and join us again when our next episode drops next week. But until then, I'll be praying for you. I hope that you have a great week and we'll see you back here soon for another sermon podcast.