Ephesians 3:14-21,Psalm 145:1-18,& John 6:1-21 on July 28th, 2024
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.
Let's just think about one Sunday when somebody came out and wasn't particularly impressed by my sermon and said, you know you should have just stopped after the children's sermon. Grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The official name of this community faith is St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Merrill Beach, South Carolina. Yep, you got that? St. Peter's, you know what? I did an en-roman St. Peter's and I forgot. Please forgive me for that and remember we're in the forgiveness business.
Yeah the official name is St. Philips with an apostrophe as Lutheran Church of Merrill Beach, South Carolina. That better? Yep. And that is the official name, right David? Didn't we discover that we're working on the Constitution? Yep. We do business as St. Philip Lutheran Church. For a long time we used the term Evangelical it dropped it. We were formed under the United Lutheran Church in America some years ago, which in 1960 I think it was merged to become the Lutheran Church in America, which in 1988 became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Just so you'll know that little bit of history.
St. Philip Lutheran Church is what we go by now. We dropped the apostrophe S because we don't belong to Philip. We belong to God. That's why we dropped it. Isn't it? Yep. Evangelical is redundant. We know we proclaim the gospel. Lutheran we kind of need to hold onto that identity a little bit. And church we want people to know for sure that that's what we are right. People gather together in the name of Christ under the label of St. Peter Lutheran. St. Philip Lutheran. I've got to straighten this out. Some of our newer members when I was the interim pastors at St. Philip, excuse me, at St. Peter's, are now members of St. Philip and one of them was the president of the congregation council. So when I look in her direction, St. Peter's is going to come out automatically.
But I want to talk with you this morning about Philip because he's the one in the gospel not Peter. Philip and Andrew are the two that show up. But because Philip is the name of our congregation, I think we ought to take a little bit of time and find out about this dude. Don't you?
I was mentioned in the list of apostles of Jesus in all four gospels, but John tells us the most about who Philip is. And it starts for the very beginning right after Jesus' baptism when he has been declared by John the Baptist to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus is walking by, John Satan, the whole of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And John has disciples and they're standing there and they're looking at one hand confused and the other enlightened. And some of them decide to follow Jesus. In fact, two immediately Jesus calls forward.
And then he decides, well, the baptism takes place, we think, on the Jordan River in an area called Bethany beyond the Jordan, which is in the southern part of Israel. It's probably about 12 miles above where the Jordan River runs into the dead sea. That's the usual site that is accepted. So it's down in Judea. Jesus decides to go to Galilee, which is 70 miles to the north that's a four-day walk. And he sees a guy from the Galilee there. His name is Philip. And he is originally from Bethesda, which is one of three key cities in Galilee, along with Corazine and Copernium.
Jesus says to Philip, follow me. And he does. And as he's following Jesus, he comes across a friend of his named Nathaniel, who is from Galilee. And Philip excitedly comes up to Nathaniel and says, we found him. We found the one that was promised by Moses and the prophets of Israel. It's Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathaniel's not impressed. He's going to see what he ends on his hips. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip's answer is amazing. Three words. Come and see. Come and see. Come and see. We're going to come back to that phrase. Yeah, don't believe me. Hang around, come and see. Come and see.
Jesus then begins to teach and preach. And Philip begins to understand. That's the first four stories about Philip and John's gospel. The second one is our gospel for today. And it's actually a double story. In John's gospel, there are seven miracles identified. He did more than that, but there are seven that are called the signs that are reported by John. And these are signs number three and four. Sign number two is the one before the gospel for today. You remember the words after this that started the gospel? Did you wonder what that this was? No. I'm disappointed. Now after this was the healing of a lame man on the Sabbath in Jerusalem that Jesus did. That was a sign before this.
So after this, after healing the man on the Sabbath and getting in trouble for that, Jesus now is up in the Galilee again, but he's on the east side of the sea of Galilee. That's what it means when it says the other side. The other side is the Gentile territory, where the decapolis, the ten cities of Gentiles are. It's where you find, for example, the miracle where Jesus turns the evil spirits in the guy in the cemetery into pigs. You remember that story? That's the same area where that was. It's the east side of the sea of Galilee.
Now I need to say a word about the sea of Galilee. It's not much of a sea. It's actually a modest-sized freshwater lake. These days it's about 14 miles from the northern tip to the southern tip and about eight miles across. At the time of Jesus it was about a mile bigger, maybe two in each direction. It's not really all that big. It's called the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Taiberius. The locals call it Kenereth, which means harp shaped. Because it's shaped, it's kind of like the musical instrument, the harp. At the south end, north end is the Sea of Galilee, rather the Jordan River winding out, at the south end, the Jordan River regathers. It's just an abox canyon where the Galilee and hills to the west, the Gohan Heights to the east, and the Lebanese mountains to the north. And winds come through there that can create devastating storms. They're horrific. At least seven of the disciples were fishermen, and they knew the storms, and they were terrified by them.
Now hold that in mind for a few minutes because we need to talk about bread first. Jesus, after that hailing miracle, is now back up in the area on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. And people are coming out to him because of the hailing he has been doing. They are curious about it, and they're curious about his words. And he sees this huge mob, it turns out to be about 5,000 people, that just come out and show up, and he gets worried about him. And so he asks, Philip, where are we going to find bread to feed all these people? They're here to hear us. They came along way, some of them. We need to give them at least a little lunch. Where are we going to find bread?
And Philip gives a perfectly logical answer. It's hopeless. We can't do it. Six months, wages, 1,200 dinari, or not enough to give everybody just a bite of bread, we can't do that. Philip's answer is one of hopelessness, but Jesus is a person of hope. Andrew comes around, and he says, well, there's this little guy over here who has a child's lunch. It's a little of the last lunch. Five small barley loaves and two fish, by the way, in the Sea of Galilee, there are tolapia, and they're fantastic. They are really good. This guy has two fish, and that's all I see. That's not enough for this group.
And Jesus issues a command. Had the people sit down, let them sit. And then he tells the disciples to start giving them out food. Now, the math on this is kind of weird for me. Twelve disciples, five loaves, two fish. Seven items of food, and five more people than their items of food to give it out. I'm not sure how this works, but I know it did work. I know that somehow Jesus was able to let those twelve hand out all the food that was there, and multiplication took place that is beyond my comprehension. There was enough bread and fish to feed five thousand people, somehow, out of that little meal. And then enough for twelve baskets, small baskets, a lunch baskets for the next day, left over. That's a big sign. It's a powerful miracle. It is Jesus providing for the multitude, providing for the multitude, and telling them who he is.
Now, I have a hunch that the two people who were most impressed by this miracle were Philip and Andrew. I kind of got the idea that Philip learned a big lesson that day. Later on in the Levithe chapter of John's Gospel, wait a minute, let me get back to this, because I'm not quite through with this. I need to tell you about the sea and walking on the sea.
Jesus then, as the next sign, goes up, well, to start it, he goes up to the mountain to pray, because he sees that the people are probably going to try to make him a king. They want to make him into a bread king, and he wants to get out of there. So he goes up the top of a mountain by himself, and he prays, and he spins the afternoon there. And the end of the day comes, and the disciples decide that they're going to go back over to their home ports. Most of them are from Bessata or Capernaum, Philip in particular is from Bessata, and they were going to go back over and go home.
So they got into a boat and they started going back across. And if you listen carefully, you notice that they were in the boat, a storm came up. Storms on the sea of Galilee are torrential. They can be very, very scary. And they're terrified. And they're in the boat, and all of a sudden they notice this figure coming across the sea, walking in their direction. Now, an important point here that's very often missed. The Bible, the text of the Bible itself, never actually says Jesus walks on water. Did you know that? It never says he walks on water. It's always he walks on the sea. Why? Peter later on does walk on water. He doesn't walk on the sea, but Jesus always walks on the sea. It's because the sea is the source of chaos and confusion. The sea has within it evil components that are behind that storm. So Jesus is able to walk with confidence on evil. That's why he walks on the sea.
He gets within range of the boat, and the disciples are not real sure who this is. Walking on the sea, they haven't seen this kind of thing before. And they don't recognize Jesus. And so he says to them, it is I, do not be afraid. Now I have to admit, I really prefer the Old King James Version of this story, what Jesus says. Don't be afraid. I like Jesus saying, fear not. Don't be afraid. I'm the one who's here. The storm calms down. The disciples want to take Jesus into the boat, but he declines their invitation. And all of a sudden the disciples find themselves over at the port in Capernaum. That's the next sign.
Now the third one I was going to get to was Jesus introducing some Hellenistic Jews, excuse me, some Hellenistic Christians to Jesus. He encounters them. And Philip is interesting as a disciple because he's the only one that has a Hellenistic name, a Greek name. Most of the others have Hebrew names. Philip is Greek. Do you know what it means? Exactly. Lover of horses. It's exactly what it means. Lover of horses. Now we don't know whether he was a horseman or not. We know it wasn't sea horses because they don't live there. But Philip, we are pretty sure had Greek background in addition to being Jewish. That he was able to speak what that town is called, Coenate Greek, the New Testament Greek. He was able to speak that probably fluently as well as Aramaic, which was the variation of Hebrew that was spoken then. And some Hellenistic Christians come and say they want to see Jesus. Jesus has just finished the trial flintry. And Philip gets Andrew to help him take them to Jesus and confer with him.
The final place where we see Peter is in John's 14th chapter. In the upper room where Jesus is just given his farewell discourse. He goes to the verses, I am the way, the truth in the life. No one comes to the Father except by me. You remember that, right? The disciples are asking you all kinds of questions about how he's going to deal with things in Jerusalem, what's going to happen. And Philip comes up with a really off the wall question, but one that everybody probably was wondering. And it's not so much a question as it is a request. Show us the Father of Lord and we'll be satisfied. We'll be okay. Show us the Father and we'll be okay. Jesus' response is, Philip, Philip. Have you been with me all this time and you do not know? Have you seen me? You've seen the Father. The Father and I are one. And Philip begins to understand.
To such an extent that he takes his life on it, we presume that Philip was president of the crucifixion. There are traditions that say that Philip after Jesus' crucifixion resurrection was a missionary that visited at the very least Greece, Asia Minor, what's now Turkey, and Syria. It's also said that he and Bartholomew and Philip's sister interestingly, his name is Mary Omni, were in a town, it's actually Harapolis, in Harapolis, in modern Turkey, frigid at that time. And they offended the governor. And the way they did it was because their main temple in Harapolis was the temple of the snakes. And in this temple there was a huge snake that was poisonous and Philip prayed it to death. You got that? He prayed it to death. He prayed that the snake might no longer be a curse to these people or a governance for these people. And it died. And he started healing people of snake bite that were in the town. And the governor got very upset. You killed my snake. And so he had Mary Amni beaten and Bartholomew and Philip were crucified.
While he was on the cross dying, Philip continued to pray for the people of Harapolis. He even prayed for that cruel governor. And the people were so concerned and so thankful for the prayers that they begged the governor to take them down from the crosses. Bartholomew was still alive, but in very bad shape, Philip was dead. There is a small church in Harapolis that is dedicated to Philip.
I thought you might be interested in knowing today a little bit about this guy because our congregation bears that name. And we're going through a program where we're going to turn things around, literally and figuratively. We're going to make a big difference in the community and increase our visibility. We have a pastor who has a vision of how that's going to work and is really working hard to learn how he can make it happen even better. We have the wherewithal and the will to make it work too, don't you think? We have the ability to become a beacon in Mertle Beach and the surrounding area where we can tell people come and see. See where we find God here, but more importantly, see where God has found us here. See how we can serve Christ here, but also see how Christ proclaimed here as died and resurrected. Come and see what we're up to. Come and see what you can be a part of. Come and see. Come and see.
But there's a second part to come and see. After the gospel there is discipleship. After the grace there is sanctification. So come and see is followed necessarily by go and serve. Come and see. Go and serve. Parts of the same community. Come and see is first because it helps us understand why we go and serve. I think that's what we can learn from Philip. We can also learn from Peter, but Philip is the one I'm talking about today. Come and see. Then go and serve. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.