Scripture referenced 2 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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1 Peter 1:3-9 Read aloud as the opening doxology Peter begins the letter with, about being born again to a living hope and rejoicing through trials
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 to an incorruptible and undefiled inheritance that doesn’t fade away, reserved in Heaven for you,
5 who by the power of God are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been put to grief in various trials,
7 that the proof of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes even though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ—
8 whom not having known you love; in whom, though now you don’t see him, yet believing, you rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory—
9 receiving the result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
World English Bible · Read it in another translation
Keep this verse
1 Peter 4:7-11
The main passage for the sermon, covering sober prayer, fervent love, hospitality, using spiritual gifts, and glorifying God
7 But the end of all things is near. Therefore be of sound mind, self-controlled, and sober in prayer.
8 And above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins.
9 Be hospitable to one another without grumbling.
10 As each has received a gift, employ it in serving one another, as good managers of the grace of God in its various forms.
11 If anyone speaks, let it be as it were the very words of God. If anyone serves, let it be as of the strength which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
World English Bible · Read it in another translation
Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
This message came from 1 Peter 4:7-11, and Pastor Ray used a vivid personal story about 70 pounds of green bananas to press home what that passage is actually asking of us. The core question he kept returning to was simple: what do you do with a gift you have been given but have not yet used?
What was said
Pastor Ray opened by connecting this passage to where Peter began the letter, reminding the congregation that Peter writes to people who already know Jesus, people living in the far-flung reaches of the Roman Empire, pressed by real trials. The doxology Peter opens with, the living hope through Christ's resurrection, is the foundation underneath everything else the letter says. Verse 7 introduces urgency into that foundation: "the end of all things is near."
Because time is short, Peter says to be sober and prayerful, to keep fervent love among the brothers and sisters, and to be hospitable without complaint. Pastor Ray spent time on the Greek behind "hospitable," philos and xenos together, which simply means loving toward strangers, and he noted the word for complaint is an onomatopoeia that sounds like grumbling, gongizmo. The call is not complicated: love hard, stay clear-headed, welcome people without grousing about it.
Then the passage turns to spiritual gifts, and Pastor Ray followed it there. Peter does not produce a long list the way Paul does in other letters. He reduces everything down to two categories: speaking and serving. But he does acknowledge that the grace of God is "manifold," a whole spectrum of gifting, and he tells every reader plainly that each one has already received something.
The banana story is where those two pieces came together. Pastor Ray described three weekends in southeastern Costa Rica helping a Korean missionary named Santiago and his wife Elena finish a small church building on the Talamanca Indian Reserve. On the last Sunday, Santiago put Pastor Ray on the spot to preach at a church deep in a banana grove. The congregation there paid him with 70 pounds of green bananas, a genuine gift from people who had very little.
Back home in San Jose, he hung the bananas in the backyard on a hook and more or less forgot about them. Weeks later he heard them, one by one, dropping off the bunch and hitting the terracotta floor below, fully rotted. The smell and the mess and the waste of something that had been a real gift stayed with him. He described the regret plainly, and said he hoped God had redeemed the illustration by making it useful here.
The point he drew from it was not abstract. You can use green bananas before they are fully ripe. You can fry them, give them away, do something with them. What you cannot do is hang them up, ignore them, and expect them to still be there when you finally feel ready. Pastor Ray said that God had been doing exactly that with him, moving him from a service-oriented missionary who hated standing up to speak, toward someone who speaks, and that the congregation at First B had affirmed that gift early, before there was much visible reason to.
He closed the argument where the text closes it. The reason any of this matters, Peter says, is "so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever." That is the why behind the fervent love, the hospitality, and the stewardship of the gift. The gifts belong to God, the glory belongs to God, and the opportunity to use what you have been given is already in front of you.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Pastor Ray described Santiago going to pray over the sick chief even though he was uncomfortable with it, and said God honored that obedience. When have you done something for God that you were genuinely uncomfortable with, and what happened?
- Peter writes that love covers a multitude of sins. What does that look like practically in this congregation, and where have you seen it work or break down?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 8,426 words
0:00
Speaker 1And how about it? Would y'all stand with me? And we're gonna sing them in from the vestibule out there. Sing them in or run them off, one or the other. I'm not sure.
0:07
He keeps me singing. Hymn number 746. There's within my heart Amen. You know, the cartoons where the guy runs off of the cliff and then he has to look down to see that he's gonna fall? When the black screen comes up there and y'all stop singing, I feel like I've just done that.
3:26
I run out and like, oh, that's why nobody's singing with me. Alright. Sunshine in my soul today, hymn number seven forty seven. We're gonna going to sing four verses. No matter what comes up on that screen, we're going to sing four verses, alright?
3:39
Am I right, Blake? Okay, good. There is There is gladness. That's so funny. We we were going to sing for it.
5:36
Here it is. Amen. Y'all can have a seat. So, we sang a verse that's not in the book. So, we did sing four of em.
6:22
That was good. Monday nights are happening this week. Monday nights at First B happens at 06:00 with meal, music, and a message. Carl, would you like to share a little about that? James, tomorrow night, first part of James.
6:40
It's the first message he's done. So, if you want to track with him through it, meal, music, and message. The meal is going be enchiladas. So, if that brings some of you in, come on. The music will be the band playing.
6:51
It's it's a good time. Monday nights at first B happens at the same time as Awana and Awana is happening in this room while we're going down there. We're pouring scripture into the minds of the kids to reach their hearts and to give em a deep well to draw from for the rest of their lives and so Awana because kids matter to God. That's at 05:45, six right around in there. They gather in this room first, and they split up into age appropriate groups.
7:17
And tomorrow night is Sparky's parent night. So the Sparky's are the in between age. I said middle age of Awana, but they're not middle agers. Okay? They're between the littlest ones.
7:29
Those are cubbies, and the truth and trainers are the older ones, but the sparks are the red vested little ones. And if you have a child in Awana that is a sparky, then come on and join in with them and come to Awana. Dan, do have anything else or did I say that? You and Matt can come on up for the next announcement. Yeah.
7:51
Kindergarten, first, and second grade are the Sparkies. The little clicky is not clicky. There it is. The youth group is on Tuesday, but they've got an a special announcement right here.
8:13
Speaker 2We are starting up men's fraternity next Wednesday the twenty fourth in this room 6AM. Every Wednesday thereafter 6AM, breakfast and coffee is provided. Men's fraternity is what we call our men's ministry and it's a community wide men's ministry that just happens to be facilitated right here at first b. And we usually run it from fall to spring through the winter. So we're starting that up next week, but in order to kick it off, we felt it was appropriate to set the the culture for the year by getting together this Thursday night to have a movie night.
8:47
We're gonna show the movie Courageous. It's hard to see on there, but the tagline is honor begins at home. And I feel if you come, you'll be encouraged, you'll be challenged, you'll be inspired, and we have a special location to show the movie. Bob Lucas has opened up his barn. First time he's ever agreed to let me have an event there.
9:08
And and it's a so it's a special opportunity. The the upstairs of Bob's Barn is a is a historic place with a a nice floor and and a really neat setting to get together with guys to have, an evening of fellowship encouragement. And, Matt's gonna give you the a little deeper.
9:29
Speaker 3First, I'd like to say that it takes men to make men. And I can see here that there are some men in this room, and I wanna invite you personally to come and share your experience and your wisdom with us. So men's fraternity is about following and pursuing Christ. It's about learning and walking out his character and honor and integrity and sacrifice and learning to lay down our lives for our families and friends and community. So I just first wanna encourage all of us to pursue him to the deepest level that we could possibly, to steep as we can get to pursue God but please come and join us and and share your experience with us and
10:23
Speaker 1come. I just don't know what else to say.
10:26
Speaker 3Good. Thank you. Join us.
10:27
Speaker 1Thank you. Thursday night this week and then Wednesday morning the following week.
10:31
Speaker 2Join us every Wednesday if you can.
10:33
Speaker 1Yep. Thank you and that that's one of the kind of Bible studies or the small groups and this is bigger than a small group. It's usually a pretty good room full of guys. It'd be a good time to come in 6AM on Wednesday mornings but there are more Bible studies mentioned in your bulletin. So, along with announcements and what's going on there, prayer request, check your bulletin.
10:53
They probably handed you one on the way in. If not, you can grab one on your way out and you'll know what's going on. Anybody have anything else I've forgotten? Anything? Anything?
11:02
Alright. Then, would you all stand up and greet one another And we will bring you back together with a little music and keep it going. Alright. So, how many of y'all heard that song before? Everybody, sung it at camp, right?
13:17
How about I've got peace, love, joy, like a fountain? Can we do that one again? I've got, wait just a second. You ready? I'm ready.
13:24
I've got peace, love, joy, like a fountain. Got got peace, love, joy, like a fountain. I hadn't heard that one long time. What a day that will be. Y'all can have a seat.
15:57
Can I get the frontline team to come forward, please? Would y'all pray with me? God, I thank you for this beautiful morning. There there is sunshine not just outside but there's sunshine in our souls this morning and it's because Christ Jesus is the light and lord, I pray that you would shine that light through us that would be reflective lenses that we would show the picture of Jesus to a lost and dying world that we would show hope and salvation and love, fervent love for one another and that we'd be honoring and loving to all peoples. In Jesus name, lord, we ask you that you would use us to advance your gospel, that we'd be clear in our message and that would be loving in our comportment.
16:47
Lord, would you do your will and your way through us this morning? We come to the time of offering and we take lord from that which you've given us and give it back, recognizing you and your advance of the gospel. That's what we want to be a part of, lord. So, would you please take your gospel to the ends of the earth starting from this place, may we impact this and every corner of this world. In Jesus name, for Jesus purposes, amen.
21:38
Amen. Thank you, Judy. So, I have the the illustrate the the sorry. Let's start over. Thank you, Judy.
21:48
So, first Peter four seven and through 11 is where we are today. Now, when I first got here, six years and four months ago, I first got here, the very first book that I started preaching out of was first Peter. There are probably a few of you in the room that still remember that but the reason I did that then is because I was scared to death. I was scared to be here and do this because this is not something I had ever done before. Being a pastor in The US was not something that I had done before and it was scary thought to think I'm the one that's going to be standing up front and teaching people but we've been talking for the last few weeks about first Peter, right?
22:24
It's about suffering for Jesus. Suffering for the sake of righteousness and getting into position sometimes that you are uncomfortable with and I found myself in that and I feel like Peter especially after he had denied Christ. After he had jumped out of the boat and sunk. After he had done all of those things, cutting off the guy's ear. All of those mistakes that he had made and Christ just graciously restored him and put him to use, you know?
22:51
And so, Peter has really has a a special place in my heart and so we started with that. I think I did the whole book of first Peter in four sermons, maybe five. I didn't do word for word like I do nowadays and I told probably a couple more stories But this particular passage, I preached three weeks after we got here. And I look back on it and I think, I think that this still works. I'm pretty sure that this still works.
23:20
And I hope that it helps prove the point of the sermon the first time around. I hope. But Bananaology is what I titled this one. A few weeks ago, we talked about Peter's opening doxology. So he starts off this book of first Peter.
23:35
And for me, that first three through nine, three through 12 right in there is an amazing thing. We're going to read some of that. Blessed be, amen. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. So, this is a letter to Christians.
23:51
It's a letter to people who already know Jesus. They're in the far flung reaches of the Roman Empire. We're in the far flung expanse of the American Empire, right? Out here. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again, Christian.
24:10
To a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and it's undefiled and it will not fade away and it's reserved in heaven for us. We who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation that's ready to be revealed in the last time. It's ready to be shown, ready to be manifested, uncovered, but revealed in the last time And in this, you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. Can you agree that we have been distressed by various trials? I meet a lot of people in the week and I don't meet anybody who just doesn't have any trials.
24:50
Everybody has trials. Everybody has struggles. So, now for a little while, we have been distressed by various trials so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revealing of Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you have not seen him, that's Jesus. You love him.
25:18
And though you do not see him right now, but believe in him. You, Christians, greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory even though you've had various trials. Obtaining as the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. That's his open and volley right there. That's the first thing he comes right out of the box with and it's beautiful and it is Doxa Lodgy.
25:39
It is Lagos, a study of Doxa, God's glory. So, that was our opening. This is a page out of Tanya's sketchbook from when we first married. We were first married in Italy. We were sitting around breakfast probably that day, and she did this drawing of bananas.
25:56
And it's just a quick, you know, color pencil drawing. And then she wrote at the top with a pen, Banana Study, Study of Bananas and Bananaology. And it always has cracked me up. I've always thought it was funny. Put the slide up there for that.
26:11
She, I did that in her drawing book. Today, today's message is entitled Bananaology and usually, especially now, I spend more and more and more time with directly scripture. I have very few pictures and stories and things like that. Most of what I put up on the screen is text, is words. But today I've got some pictures.
26:29
This is one of them. So this picture is from my office right down the hall. Lot of y'all have seen it. It's a little picture this big. We had it developed while we in Costa Rica.
26:38
We lost all of our computer pictures when we were down there. Just lost them all, but this one we had already printed. And that is me, typical missionary picture, flip flop tan, wearing flip flops, blue jeans, missionary shirt that has the two stripes right here. Every missionary has to have one of those, you know. And 70 pounds of green bananas on the hood of a '68 Land Rover.
27:00
So that is a very typical missionary picture. It was I thought it was cool. When she took it, it was pretty neat. And we've had that, and I've had it there to remind me of that time, But it's more than just reminding me of that time, but it's sitting there. I'll get into that in a minute.
27:14
The way that those bananas came to be in my possession was partially because we were in Costa Rica. We'd spent three years in Mexico. I'm gonna go for a little while here. Don't get worried. I'll come back to the scripture, I promise, okay?
27:26
We were in Costa Rica for one year from August 2003 to August 2004. When I arrived down there, Bora Lee was in my Spanish class. We tested in the different levels of where we were, and she coming from Korea spoke Spanish about as well as I did coming from here. And she spoke Korean and English, and she was learning Spanish. And when we were sitting in class, we were talking about what we did, and we had been missionaries for the to the deaf, building schools for the deaf in Mexico for the last three years at that point.
27:58
And so when she asked what we did, I said, we're construction foreman, work team host, we do that sort of thing. Tanya and I together, she mixes the, you know, helps mix concrete, makes the mix right, and gets a lot of things just so. And so we've done this together for a long time. Well, Bora said, my dad Santiago, now I don't know, Bora is her Korean name. Santiago, I don't know his Korean name, probably couldn't pronounce it anyway, but he went by Santiago when he was in Costa Rica.
28:25
He had left the home and the land that he knew and went from his Korean Presbyterian Church in Korea to the Bibri Indian Reservation, the Talamanca Indian Reservation in Southeastern Costa Rica, Santiago, her dad. And Bora, when she found out there was a construction guy, said, Oh, my dad's been working on this church. He's been working on this church for a long time, and we're finally getting to a place where we need some help. She told me a little bit more about the story. So Santiago and Elena, her mom and her dad had heard the call, felt the call, the impression upon their spirit that they should go to to help at this little indigenous people's reserve and so they were going.
29:04
There was not a church there when they got there and so they started having meetings in their little hut. It was up on stilts, you know, wooden house and they were inviting people in on Sundays and they were inviting them in for Bible studies and they were having, they're very hospitable to the people and they're inviting them in and most of the church or most of the people that were listening at all were ladies and their children, women and kids, but not a whole lot of men, hardly any men really. And that rocked on along for a while and there are more ladies and more children and they were entertaining them and Bible stories and things like that, but they didn't have any Christian background whatsoever and no training. This was basically an unreached people group. And so Santiago and Elena with their broken Spanish speaking to Bibri Indians who spoke Bibri and Spanish and their broken Spanish.
29:53
This guy is speaking to them and they're starting to gain some momentum. But then comes a time they had gotten to the point where they had been through the book of Santiago, James. James is Santiago in Spanish. So James Santiago was presenting to them from that. And came upon a time where the chief of their tribe got sick.
30:10
It's a real story, really happened. Chief of the tribe got sick and some of the ladies and some of the kids who had been through the Bible study and the Bible story time with them had been reading the Bible and they knew that one of theirs had become sick. Now, he's his background is Korean Presbyterian. Mine's Southern Baptist. When somebody says to us, hey, this book says that if one among us is sick, that they should contact the elders and the elders will come and they'll anoint their head with oil and they'll pray for em and they'll get well.
30:47
I believe the Bible. Santiago believes the Bible but at the same time, theologically, it's not something. He was not sent there as a healing minister. It's something that I would be kind of uncomfortable with. I said, I will do it.
30:59
Now, especially, I will do it. But Santiago said, lord, I don't feel comfortable doing this. I don't feel comfortable doing this at all because I know it's not about the blessings and prosperity gospel and it's not all about health and wealth they came to me. I've been presenting this book. Lord, please help me.
31:19
As I go in to do this, I'm not comfortable with it and so, he went. He took some oil with him from the kitchen and he anointed the guy's head with oil and the man got well. Praise God. The man got well. Before that, Santiago and Elena had been receiving death threats from these indigenous people that they were trying to serve but after that, people started coming.
31:43
Men started coming. The chief started coming. Then it became okay if you wanted to come to their services and if you wanted to. So they got to listen to the Bible and a lot of people got saved through that. But he was not comfortable with it.
31:54
That's the point of my story. Okay? She told me about that and then she said, well it's down here, Southeastern Costa Rica. This is Panama right here. Southeastern Costa Rica.
32:04
You can see the river and cross it and be in Panama from right there. The Talamanca Indian Reserve right there. So we lived in San Jose or just on this side of San Jose. Have to drive over to Limon and then down. So Tanya was busy that weekend and could not do this trip with me.
32:20
And so I wrote went to a ticket stand for a bus and got on a bus and drove. And in a car, in a normal car, it's about four and a half to five hours to get to this place. In a bus it took about seven. And then they dropped us off and we had to have somebody come meet us and take us back into the bushes, the bush. And through lots of banana groves and through lots of other things.
32:44
There we are San Jose across to Limon down past Cahuita in Puerto Viejo. It's very different, culturally different on that side. The people are more Caribbean. There are lots more African descent in that area. Rastafarian looking guys were the norm in that area.
33:03
Until you get there and you take that inland turn back up into the mountains, and we met all these tiny little Bree Bree Indian people. So I went that week. I had not been I've been a builder, but not a preacher, you know, and so went in, kinda made a list of what needs to happen in this place, saw what was going on, met some of the people, experienced Korean hospitality, which was spread out a great spread of great food, you know, and then got to see that, got kind of excited about it. I went back home and I invited Tanya and said, listen, look, we need to go back. I told Santiago to make a list of everything that they needed to finish the church.
33:42
Took time well, Tanya and I went back the first thing they needed was electricity. That was what was left. And so Tanya and I went back and wired in all of supply lines, all of the other lines, did all the electricity in a weekend, borrowed that car from a friend of ours. It was much better than the bus. Took us like five and a half hours to get there and that.
34:01
And then we waited one more week. Now the two of us went back to our language school buddies. All of these this was a missionary language school. Everybody there was gonna be sent out into the world somewhere, Spanish speaking world, and they were gonna go out and do missions. And so when we were with them talking it up and saying, oh, you gotta come on.
34:19
Bora invited Ray. You know, we we've been there. We've got the electricity. Getting all the cement. Everything will be ready when we get there next week.
34:26
Come go with us. And we borrowed a school bus. I don't have a picture of the school bus. We lost all our pictures. But it was an old school bus and we borrowed that and we rode down, took 25 language school students back down with us the next weekend and we finished the church and this is the Lee family in that church in Talamaka which was pretty cool.
34:45
You know, it's pretty nice. Construction wise, we went down on Friday afternoon, worked Friday night, Saturday morning, Sunday, had the service and we were just closing, painting, finishing up, finish the church on Sunday. So, it was an inaugural Sunday and when he got to the point and the message after the kind of the singing and he got up and he said, brother Ray is here from The United States and he's going to preach. They don't know Bible stories. They don't I didn't know I was preaching.
35:15
It was like, I was scared to death. I I mean, I'm fine with, you know, talking it up and getting people to work there. Tanya's been fine with that. We're great with, you know, making sandwiches and helping people, being hospitable while people are trying to work, all that. We did that in Mexico all the time.
35:31
But when it was time to preach, was like, oh, I don't think he knows. So I read a story that time. And we went back. I think that was three weekends in a row and then, if you fast forward a while, I went back to class. The church is finished.
35:46
They're meeting there every Sunday. He was not just a preacher at that one big church building. 60 by 60 was the whole building. 60 feet by 60 feet. Pretty big building.
35:54
And he also preached at that one and then another one that was further out without a building, and another one in the middle of a banana grove that was further out than that with just nine poles and some corrugated tin on top of it. It was fun. It was a really missionary experience being out in the bush. It was cool. Tanya did, since we were at a school for the deaf, she did sign language to a song that I sang and we ran slides, believe it or not, on a Honda generator.
36:21
They didn't have anything else but they had a slide thing to do, overheads, overhead projector, you know. But we're fast forwarding to that time. I bought this car. I have to be able to tinker. You all know that about me if you know me at all.
36:34
So we got this car really, really cheap. It was on fire when we bought it, but that's another story. Got that, and top end on that thing is 35 miles an hour. It does not fly. It'll only go faster than that down a mountain.
36:47
The brakes were so bad, you don't want to go faster than that. But we're in La Tortuga which means the turtle and we went back when he invited us to come back to preach. He didn't come. He didn't say come back and work. He didn't say come back and fix.
37:01
Come back and do. There were any problems. He said, would you come back and preach? And I was like, oh, I don't really wanna do that. He said, well, I've gotta go back to Korea for a medical procedure, and I'm gonna be gone on Easter Sunday.
37:14
Oh, I really don't wanna do it on Easter. You know. That's a big Sunday. That's the Super Bowl of Sundays. That's why I'm not gonna do that, you know.
37:22
And he said, no, we really want you to do it. And so on Easter of that of 2004, we went and actually took a couple of people back with us this time. That guy is Mark Clubb. It's not a great shot, it's kinda dark. That's me playing guitar, and that's Mark Clubb singing and playing guitar on an Easter sunrise service on the beach right there just not far from that place.
37:45
And then after that, we went to the church where we had been building and he told me he'd leave good directions for how to get in La Tortuga all the way to these different places and stop and go through the banana field and everything and so I got to those other three churches and the last church that was in the middle middle of that banana field paid me to preach and that's what they paid me with. That's cool and I thought that at the time, I thought, man, that is a really cool thing. The first time I got paid to preach was 70 pounds of green bananas. And and I and I recognized that it was a gift. I recognized that.
38:24
They didn't have to do that. Santiago wasn't there. They didn't talk about it ahead of time. It was just like, this is what we have and so this is what we're given. Praise God.
38:31
That's wonderful. I'll come back to the bananas. What do you do though with 70 pounds of green bananas? I mean, I need a hand of bananas probably by myself in a couple of days but what do you do with 70 pounds of green bananas? That's something to think about.
38:47
I think I learned a lot about bananas in the aftermath of this, and Pascal has actually done a project on bananas. If you want to know anything about bananas, ask Pascal. She's really knowledgeable about it. Typically a banana tree, and that's in quotes, produces just one racemo of bananas. One racemo is the Spanish word.
39:06
We don't really have a name. It's a big bunch, but it's more than just a little bunch or more than a hand. It's a bunch. The whole tree's yield is that. One banana tree produces just one racema of bananas.
39:19
Just one crop. And then that banana tree, and if you ask Pasco, she'll say it's not really a tree. It's a pseudo stem, okay? It only grows that one time for that one product. Does that make sense to you?
39:33
That's it. When that banana group is cut down and harvested, or if it falls to the ground, that's it for that pseudostem. That tree is gone. It only has one shot. So that pseudostem dies after that.
39:49
Bananas too are actually large berries. Did you know that? So we don't think of them as berries, but that's what they technically are. And the cover that you're pulling off of them is like the round or the hole on a a berry. Bananas are large berries and the seeds are in the fruit itself.
40:05
So those tiny little black dots are seeds. The little black dots when you slice a banana and you see them, that's seeds. And so the only way to get more bananas is for one of those to fall to the ground and spread. Does this make sense to you? It's not exactly Jesus' reference about the wheat falling to the ground but it's really close in a very Central American.
40:26
So, this is the way that the the scripture for today starts. The end of all things is near. I sent Carl a text. He says, what are where how far are we going this week? He knows we're going to start right where we left off.
40:36
How far are we going this week? And I said, just read verse seven and build a song service around that. The end of all things is near. There's something about this that just screams there's urgency here And if you're considering your life as being this is the one you've got, whether it's the end of time eschatologically or not, you've only got one. You're like the pseudo stem.
41:00
You've got one chance to plant the seed and grow. Right? Other bananas. I'm mixing my metaphors a little bit. Urgency, the end of all things is near.
41:10
So therefore, because the end of all things is near and there's not a lot of time, Be of sound judgment and be sober. The NASB adds the word spirit. Be of sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Now, you can add that word and I think that that is good to be sober as in the disposition or your comportment. That's wonderful but it also just means be sober, okay?
41:34
Don't be drunk. Drunkenness is prohibited throughout scripture but this one just is saying, there's purpose for that. Don't be, don't dull your senses to the need because time is limited and you need to be prayerful and in contact with God about what he would have you do. That make sense? Okay.
41:54
So, the end of all things is near. Therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer and above all, keep fervent in your love. You know, when you come to Christ, you automatically have a family of all the others who have ever come to Christ and been born again to this life that Christ has given. So, you automatically have a loving family that will welcome you in. Above all, he says, keep fervent.
42:20
Keep on being fervent in your love for one another. It's the second time he said that in first Peter this way to to maintain this fervent love for the brothers and sisters in Christ. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another and why? Because love covers a multitude of sin. We all have sins in our lives.
42:41
Some are more conspicuous than others and some are honestly more difficult to deal with than others but if we can keep fervent love among us, it'll cover a multitude of sins and it helps us through them. It helps us get over. If I have somebody that calls me and says, brother, I'm struggling with this sin and I say, first thing is, I love you, brother. I love you and I will help you work through that as best I can or I know another brother who struggles with the same thing but has experienced some victory. Can I give him your number?
43:13
Can we get together? The three of us and talk about it, pray about it. Yes, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers multitude of sins. It also helps you through em. It helps you get to the other side of em.
43:24
Can I get amen? Amen. It's so good and he says, be hospitable. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. So be hospitable to one another is is hard enough.
43:37
Without complaint, he adds to the end of that. Right? Be hospitable to one another. Hospitable, the word there. We've talked about it a lot actually because it's this same word is found in in first Timothy as a qualification for an elder and a deacon.
43:51
It's also found in Titus as a qualification for an elder and a deacon and and the wives of both of those and it's found in first Peter. So, the last three books we've studied together have had this word in there and the two words, Greek words that it's made up of are philos and xenos. In this case, it's philosanoi which is plural. It means be loving strangers. Have as your normal disposition, be loving strangers, people that you don't know.
44:20
Whether they're in the body or not. Now, it does say just above that, the fervently love one another, that means the brothers and sisters in Christ but down below, when it says be hospitable, it doesn't break it down. It just says, be loving to strangers and without complaint. Actually, I didn't say this in the first service, but the word for complaint is gongizmo. Gongizmo.
44:42
Gongizmo. Gongizmo. It's actually an onomatopoeia word that sounds like a gong. Gongizmo. It's without complaint.
44:51
Don't be doing that. Don't be just noisy grumbling. Paul would say, do all without grumbling or complaining. Be hospitable. And then this is really where the banana story starts to kick in.
45:04
Have any of y'all ever received a gift that you didn't know what to do with? So I received when I was like in the seventh grade, sixth or seventh grade, a triple extra large corduroy vest, flannel interior, corduroy, and it was banana yellow just by coincidence From my aunt Connie, that was a triple extra large. She has some forethought, but she didn't know I was gonna be this big in the seventh grade, right? Triple extra large corduroy vest in Georgia. It was a padded like a vest you'd wear out here.
45:37
So, that special gift. I did not know what to do with. This verse right here says, just as each one of you has received a special gift. So, it's speaking to Christians. People who've already been born again and know Jesus.
45:51
Just as each one of you has received a special gift. There's no doubt about whether or not you have received a special gift. In this verse, there is no room for error left. Just as each one of you has been given a special gift. Employ it.
46:07
Just use it. Employ it in serving one another. If he's just said fervently love one another and be hospitable, then you can lay out the best for others to serve others. What God has given you is a gift and you should be employing it to serve one another. Just as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
46:32
I like the word manifold there. Some translations say, variegated, the variegated graces of God. It's it's there's a spectrum of gifting. Now, Peter's going to reduce it down to just two things. Paul gives us various list in different places in the Bible where he has lots of different spiritual gifts mentioned.
46:51
Several of, you know, there's helping and administration and service and pastor, teacher. There are lots of different gifts that are given in Paul but Peter just breaks it down into two But he recognizes that there's a whole spectrum of gifting that God has done. So just as each one has received, and don't argue over whether you have or have not received it, you've received it. Employ it in serving one another as a good steward of the manifold grace of God. So, that gift that I received, the bananas, what I do with those?
47:23
Know, I've already asked a couple times what you do with 70 pounds of green bananas. The green bananas, can't you can't really eat them. Of course, I'm an American. I only know one way to eat bananas, and you just eat a banana or banana pudding. I knew that.
47:36
But they actually fry green bananas down there. I didn't really know that because I did grow up down there. But I asked my neighbor because I'm a community guy, know, I asked, what do with you this many bananas? No way I could eat this many bananas. He said, well you can't eat them right now anyway.
47:53
You have to wait for them to mature. Oh, okay, well I guess that's true in the grocery store here. You go, you get green bananas, and two or three days later they're yellow and you can eat them. He said, Yeah, but they've traveled all the way from here to get to where you are. And so it takes a while.
48:08
It might take a couple weeks, or whatever. It might take a while before you can even use it. So just hang them up somewhere out of the way. So I did. I went out in our backyard.
48:17
Our backyard had a matrix of rebar over the top of it. It looked like a prison to anybody that didn't anybody from here that go in and say, wow, you're trapped in your backyard. 15 foot walls, and then on top of that was this matrix of rebar, and that was to keep the monkeys out. We had, you know, a few plants here and there, but I went back. There was a hook in the ceiling.
48:37
I hooked this thing on a rope and hung these bananas there because that's they're supposed to hang like they do from the tree, just hang there to ripen. Okay. And I left them back there. And I didn't really think about them very often because, you know, don't go back in the backyard too much especially. Busy as we were.
48:54
I I wasn't thinking about em but they were just hanging there. Now, what happens if you don't pay attention to a special gift that you've been given? It was awesome to get that gift and I really thought that it was it was really nice, you know. And I really thought it was great what Santiago was doing. I felt uncomfortable but I still did it anyway preaching at the church that first Sunday and then again on Easter and God was blessing that congregation and then the blessing they gave me, they didn't have to do that.
49:30
I recognized it was a gift but then I hung it up and just didn't use it, ignored it And have you ever had a banana that got over behind your toaster or behind loaf of bread or something and you didn't see it for a few days and then you went, something something is not right in here. And you move it out of the way and you see a tarry little black banana. Can you imagine what 70 pounds of bananas looks like? So I don't have a good sense of smell, but I heard them. I didn't see them.
50:00
I wasn't paying any attention to them. I had completely forgotten about that I really. Had And I heard one day, and they had rotted to the point, fermented to the point where they were falling off and hitting the terracotta porch below them. The mess to clean up. It was just plain awful.
50:21
And what an I can't even tell you what an overwhelming sense of regret took on at that point because it was so sweet of those people, and they could have used those bananas. And I I had listened to my neighbor who said, yeah, just wait until they're mature. And then I had just forgotten about it completely, and they're they're gone. And there's nothing that I could do with them now. There's nothing that can be done.
50:43
Now you can use a banana a long time. Banana pudding. The best part of a lot of funerals that I've been to is Roseanne's banana pudding. And you can use bananas that are over behind the toaster for a long time until they turn absolute these were completely gone. Absolutely gone and I I can't tell you.
51:04
Now, you might think, well, if that's the worst thing you've got to regret, then, that's no big deal but to me, it was like, man, Tanya and I have sought to live a life without regret. That's that mean we've always done that but it it's been our intent since we married. The day we married, we made each other promise that we do the best we could to not live a life of regret looking back but just keep looking forward and it, I tell you, it was hard. That was hard for for me to think about that but I hope that God's redeemed it last, you know, service and this service to say, wow, that that's a vivid illustration. You know what it smells like?
51:39
The fermented yuck that's hit the floor and then when you're cleaning it up, let's go on. Whoever speaks. So, Peter breaks down just into two spiritual gifting. Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking the very utterances of God and then, whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength that God supplies. Those are spiritual gifts.
52:08
It's either speaking or serving and for me and for Tanya, we had been service oriented missionaries. Although, Tanya was always good with standing up. She could stand up and extemporaneously just have something that was beautiful and I fretted over it and I hated it. I couldn't stand it, didn't like it. I'd always been a service missionary where we worked on stuff, worked with stuff, worked with people but not necessarily speaking.
52:31
And what God was doing in between the time we're in Mexico and then beginning in Costa Rica and then really beginning when I came here, he was switching me over from someone who serves to being someone who speaks and I was really uncomfortable with it. So, I equated that to having some green bananas and the church elders actually called me while I was in seminary and said, send us a sermon. It's down to two different people we're considering for this position. I don't have a sermon because I'm not a preacher. I didn't have anything at all recorded period.
53:05
So, I called the little church that I grew up in and I said, hey, brother Don, can I preach Sunday night? And he said, well, yeah. We'd love that. 300 miles away. I drove in and preached this sermon on this passage and I said, so, I feel like and I was scared to death then and I said, I feel like God shifted me from being a service missionary to being someone who speaks but recklessly going into this believing this, that God is going to use these green bananas because you know, truthfully, green bananas can be fried.
53:38
You can cut em up and hand em out four, five at a time to a neighbor or a friend or I could cook em at the house. You can take green bananas and cut them apart and just give them to people and let them decide what to do with them. You can, if I had only known, I could've dug holes in my backyard and planted banana plants with the even with the rotten stuff. God will build back what the locusts have destroyed. He can do that.
54:00
You know, but it's a very vivid illustration to me that you gotta use the green bananas. You gotta use bananas while you got em because they're going. They're fleeting. Yeah. So that the next part of the verse says, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and there ever.
54:21
Amen. So, I have a couple. I usually I try to take my takeaways are exactly from the text. It's usually a rewritten in the first person or second person straight from the text but I think that these are experiential takeaways. So, I would say first thing, never hoard the blessing of almighty God.
54:41
If you've got more than you can say grace over, share it with somebody else. If you've got a mind that can understand and teach, be teaching. If you've got money, resources, and you can share, share. If you can do music, do music. If you are a person with the gift of helps, be helping.
55:07
If you're an administrator, we have a serious dearth of administrators in a lot of places. Be administrating. Be helping, okay? Use it. Never hoard the blessing of almighty God or waiting for it to mature, right?
55:25
Because you can use green banana. You can't. You just gotta figure out a way to use it and you will most likely only discover what your special gift is by using it. For me, this has been a reflective time thinking about this sermon coming back to preach here after I've been doing this for six years and four months because I feel like God, y'all have affirmed the gift early on before there was any real promise there at all. Y'all are affirming to me and to my family and it's something where God is using it and discovering that has happened here and so experientially, I'm taking that away and I want for y'all to say, hey, oh, yeah.
56:05
I don't exactly. I feel that. So, you'll most likely only discover em by using them and I add a little rider to that. People will affirm a gift. If people are not affirming it, it might not be your gift.
56:19
There are some folks that think that they have a gift that they don't really have. Does that make sense? I could use some illustrations but I'm not going to. He's already gone there in his mind. Experiential takeaways.
56:34
God will provide opportunities for you to exercise your spiritual gift even before you feel that they're ready to be used. Do you agree with me? I I say that saying yes, just being ready to say yes to the opportunity that God presents is a huge hurdle to get over but if you say yes, you get to experience what it's like to live in the center of your gifting and if you don't say yes, you might not ever know and those bananas will just rot. I think that's it. Oh, this last portion of this section right here gives us the why.
57:12
I love so that. Hanna Clauses, the so that. So that in all things, whatever it is and all the gifts and everything else and all the times so that in all things, God may be glorified. That's what we're looking for. Through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and the dominion forever and ever and it closes out even mid chapter with amen.
57:33
Amen. So be it. He couldn't help it. Amen. It's for God's glory through Christ because that's where the glory belongs but he will use the gifts that he's given if you'll just let it.
57:46
Amen. And Judy, I think that's it. Is it my faith looks up to thee? Alright. Y'all sing loud if you know it.
58:00
Does that sound like I don't know it? Alright. It's a green banana closing song here. Lord, would you go with us and let us sense your presence, lord? May we sense your presence and understand your heart.
59:32
Lord, when we cannot trace your hand, we want to trust your heart and when we feel inadequate and when we feel like we are not gifted, when we feel like we don't know what we're doing, lord, I pray that you would put firm foundation up under us. That we'd sense the firm foundation that your word provides up underneath us and that lord, we would be able to speak as though we were speaking the very oracles of God. Whether that's in front of a lot of people or just with our friend across the street. May we speak with the very utterances of God and may we serve with the strength that you supply. In Jesus name, lord, we ask your blessing this afternoon and this next week as we go into the world.
1:00:18
Would you plant the seed deep in our hearts lord that it may flower up? In Jesus name, amen. I have I have a benediction right here too. It's kind of, this is probably the most obvious portion of that scripture, I think, is, above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins and be hospitable to one another without complaint. Jesus name, we pray.
1:00:44
Amen. Amen.
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