FBC Morning Light – November 7, 2022

Well, good Monday morning to you, hope you had a wonderful weekend, and looking forward to a new week of faithfully serving the

Lord in whatever capacity He's called you to serve Him. Well, today in our Bible reading plan, we're reading in 1

John chapter 3, hope you got a chance to read that, if not I hope you will before the day's out, a couple of verses in this chapter that remind me of, well, really several instances in the course of my ministry where people flat out violated what

John writes here and tells us that we need to do. I'm thinking particularly today of an incident that happened, oh, it was probably 25 years ago in a local church, it was in New York State, it was nowhere near where I'm living now, so don't try to figure out who it is or anything like that, but there was a church that was pastored by a man who was approaching retirement years, in fact, by the time this all, this process all began, he was at that magical age 65, you know, that's supposed to be the retirement age, which

I think is bogus, but anyway, he was approaching that point where he's looking forward to retirement, and so what the church did was called an assistant pastor to come and serve under him for a few years, a couple of years, and the plan was that after two, three years, the younger man would assume the responsibility of the pastorate of this church, and the older man would retire and move on.

And that's actually a very good process for things to happen. And of course,

I don't know, I don't remember exactly if the church made the commitment to the younger man that he would, or that if things developed well, if there was a good relationship and so forth, that he would be the prime candidate to take over the senior pastor's position.

But nevertheless, the younger man came to the church, and he did well, he was well -received, people appreciated him, he was a good preacher, people responded well to his preaching, and the older man, well, he was an older man.

And as we get older, of course, our energy levels wane, and sometimes our minds aren't as sharp as they were when we were 35, but he was getting older, and it was showing.

But when it came to the point where he was about to retire, as everybody expected him to, he decided he didn't want to do that, that he still felt like he had some energy and still could preach, and so he wanted to continue on, and maybe for another two or three years.

Well, that didn't go over real well with the younger man, and he chafed under that decision.

By the time this all came down, there were a lot of people who really appreciated the younger man's abilities and so forth, and so what really came down here, the church ended up splitting, and it split because the younger man was jealous of the older man's position.

He wanted it for himself, and the older man was jealous of the younger man's popularity.

He wanted his people to be loyal to him, and now their loyalties are divided.

So when all was said and done, when it became very clear that the senior pastor wasn't going to retire anytime soon, everybody got impatient.

The younger man's jealousy took over his thinking, and he took a good chunk of the people with him and went and started another church, left the senior pastor with just a handful of people in a huge building, couldn't hardly pay the bills, let alone the salary of the pastor, and the church just really kind of fell apart.

Sad. And what was the root of it all? Jealousy. Jealousy on the part of these two men who should have known better.

I thought of that when I read what John writes in 1 John 3 verse 11. He says,

This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another and not be like Cain, who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother.

Why did he murder him? Because Cain's works were evil, and his brother's,

Abel, were righteous. In other words, Cain was so filled with a spirit of jealousy in his heart that he murdered his brother.

He hated his brother for the acceptability that his brother's sacrifice had and his own did not.

This command to love one another will negate the attitude of jealousy, the heart of jealousy that can come into a man's heart.

So down in verse 16, John gives us a good way to know whether or not we love one another.

He says, By this we know love, because he, Jesus, laid down his life for us, and we ought also to lay down our lives for one another.

I think back of that incident in that church in New York several years ago. How could that have been better resolved?

Probably if both the younger man and the older man had a genuine love for one another.

The older man, in his love for the younger, should have stuck to his commitment, made the sacrifice, and stuck to his commitment that he made to that younger man when he came on three or four years earlier.

He should have just stepped aside like he said he would do, instead of allowing the jealousy that he had for the younger man's popularity to cloud his thinking.

And the younger man, if he truly loved the older man, he could have and should have expressed a sacrificial attitude as well, and said,

Okay, if you want to continue on, it confronted him about the agreement and so on and so forth, but if that's what you want to do,

I understand. I'll serve under you for two more years.

Give a deadline there. I'll serve for you for a couple more years, and just help you be the blessing to the people that you can be.

Have that kind of a spirit, rather than a spirit that says, No, I need to have this now. Brethren, we need to love one another.

We need to love one another and kill that spirit of jealousy that can really kill our own heart, and kill even a church.

We don't need to have that. Our Father and our God, I pray that you would deliver us from such a corrupting, corrosive spirit.

We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well, I hope your week gets off to a great start, and the