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<div style="font-size: 11px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: verdana, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Sermons for Proper 17</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Matthew 16:21-28 – “The Lure of the Easy Way”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Matthew 16:21-28 – “Five Mission Killers”</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[Members: Please see Matthew 16 the sermon title “The Lure of the Easy Way”]</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I like the story of the young man, eager to make it to the top, who went to a well-known millionaire businessman and asked him the first reason for his success. The businessman answered without hesitation, "Hard work." After a lengthy pause the young man asked, "What is the SECOND reason?"<br>
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We want to deal this morning with the lure of the easy way. Jesus and His disciples were at Caesarea Philippi. Their ministry to this point had been a stunning success. Crowds pressed in on them everywhere they went. People eagerly reached out to touch this attractive young teacher from Nazareth. The disciples themselves were caught up in the excitement of it all. Jesus asked them, "Who do you say I am?" and Simon Peter answered enthusiastically, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" It was one of the most dramatic moments in the disciples' pilgrimage with Jesus.<br>
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Then Jesus changed the subject. He began to tell them that the crowds would soon turn against Him; He would be crucified, on the third day he would be raised. The disciples didn't know what to make of all this. Simon Peter took Jesus aside: "Forbid it, Lord, that these things should happen to you." Jesus' response to Simon Peter is as harsh as any words in the New Testament: "Get behind me Satan! You are not on the side of God but of man."<br>
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Perhaps Jesus called Simon Peter ‘Satan’ because of Jesus' experience in the wilderness immediately after His baptism by John. In today's parlance, it was there that Satan revealed to Jesus the way to make a million dollars in three easy steps turn stones to bread, leap off the pinnacle of the temple, "Bow down and worship me!" I see Satan not as a red caped figure with a pitchfork but dressed in a $400 suit and offering in a glib and polished tongue instant success, instant glamour, instant gratification. We can see Satan almost anywhere today. Jesus encountered him this time in Simon Peter: "Forbid it, Lord, that you should have to suffer and die."<br>
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If there is any doubt that Jesus is resisting the lure of the easy way, listen to the words that follow: "If any man would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."<br>
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We are the devotees of the easy way even though everyone in this room knows two important truths.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">1. The Path to Personal Success Is that of Self-Denial. <br>
2. Self-Denial Is Essential to the Salvation of the World.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">[Members: Please see Matthew 16 for the sermon titled “Five Mission Killers”]</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Although autumn does not officially start until September 23, we all know that this weekend, Labor Day Weekend, signals the end of summer. The "holiday" season is over. It is time to "get back to work" Tuesday morning. And we all, all generations, know it — whether we are in kindergarten class or on a corporate totem pole. After Labor Day it is "business as usual." No more holidays.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Holidays used to be "holy days," times to mark the moment by calendar days which paid special attention to historic happenings, commemorated special events, and celebrated significant milestones. Instead of acknowledging the sacrifice of the saints, this weekend is all about one last barbecue, one last swim in the lake, or maybe one last packing up a kid heading off to college. It is a "holiday" that is important, but not really a "holy day."</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">One of the least celebrated, but most participated in "holidays" in the United States falls on April 17, although it is "moveable feast," depending on who is in office and how active our politicians. It will probably get pushed back a few days more in the next several years, but right now the "holiday" of note falls on April 17.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyone know what I’m talking about? It is "Tax Freedom Day." From January 1 through April 17 all the income you earn goes to pay your taxes. Not a fun fact. But as of April 17, or 18, or 19, depending upon your tax bracket, you are free. For the rest of the year you are working, and earning a living, to support your own family, to pay down your own mortgage, to keep your own bills from taking over your life. But for 107 days of the year, everyone is working to pay off their taxes. And we’re not the only ones. Someone described London as filled with "the exhausted, the timid. The burgled, raped, assaulted. Overtaxed. Underrewarded. Choked on thin air. Allergic to everything."</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Not good. Yet that is definitely NOT the biggest crimp in our lives. The tax crunch is not the biggest elephantin-theroom blocking our creativity and missional life. We might spend 107 days or almost one third of a year paying off our federal tax bills, but we spend the rest of the year, except for a few brief "holiday" moments, paying "time taxes." Life imposes "time taxes"…</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">___________________________ </span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It Is Not I</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It is said that St. Augustine was accosted one day on the street by a former mistress sometime after he had become a Christian. When he saw her he turned and walked the other way. Surprised, the woman called out, "Augustine, it is I". Augustine as he kept going the other way, answered her, "Yes, but it is not I."</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It is an amusing story - one that comes close to making the same point the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer made when he wrote "When Christ calls a man to follow him, he calls him to die."</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Richard J. Fairchild, "In the Way or on the Way"</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">______________________________</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Taking Risks for Faith</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It doesn't seem to me that many of us are risking very much for our faith. I once heard someone describe the average Christian today in terms of a person dressed in a deep-sea diving suit, oxygen mask firmly in place, marching resolutely into the bathroom to pull the plug out of the bathtub. An old slogan says: "Expect great things from God; Attempt great things for God." We're pretty good at the first; not so hot with the second.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Remember the words of Shakespeare: "Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt." (Measure for Measure, I, iv.) Peter at least dared to attempt.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Donald B. Strobe, Collected Words, <a href="http://www.sermons.com/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">www.Sermons.com</a></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">________________________</span></div>
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