Someone once did a survey of his church group, and he asked them: On a scale of 1-10, “1” meaning that you are very cold-hearted towards God, and “10” meaning that you are really “on fire” for Him — what number would you say you are? He said his group members’ answers were almost all “4,” “5,” or “6.” Then he said: If you want to know what God thinks about you, just read Revelation 3:16! “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”
Is OUR church like that? Are YOU personally like that as a Christian? What does it mean to be lukewarm, and what can we do about it? The Lord shows us in our passage for today in Revelation 3:14-22, “The Church That Made God Sick.”
A brief overview of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Jeremiah 12:1-13 for Sunday, June 25, 2023, with the title, “Exclusive.”
A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO ??? Can you share a time when you/someone you know, suffered for doing the right thing???
(Some Biblical examples would be Joseph in Genesis, who resisted Potiphar’s wife’s advances and was falsely accused for it; or Daniel, who prayed and was arrested and thrown into the lions’ den for it.
But there are many modern examples as well: For example, in 2013, Aaron Klein, co-owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Oregon, was fined $135,000 for refusing to make a gay wedding cake that violated his conscience. Last year the State reduced the fine to “only” $30,000. Klein and his wife had to shut down their business and leave the state. They did the right thing — but they suffered for doing it.
There are many such examples; you/others in your group can share examples from your lives/ones you’ve heard.
There’s something particularly difficult about suffering when you have done the right thing. When we do something wrong and suffer for it, we kind of know we deserve it, so we can be at peace with it. But when you do what is RIGHT and suffer for it, something in us that revolts at that; it’s unjust. THIS is the situation that Jeremiah faces in our lesson for this week in Jeremiah 12:1-13.
When Cheryl & I first began dating, she had been on “Cloud 9” for weeks. She had told everyone at her job at Jack’s Service Company in Oklahoma City about this great guy she was now with. They all said they couldn’t wait to meet me at the Christmas party that year, which would be held at the owner’s home. The evening finally came, and we made our way to the very upscale residence. As we approached the home from over a block away, with cars parked all up and down the streets, we could see that the house was lit up for the occasion, and I remarked to Cheryl that it looked like the front door was open. As we got closer, Cheryl could see that the door was not open, but rather there was a clear glass door that the lights were shining out of. She assumed that I saw this too. She was wrong. I walked right up to the door and SMASH – right into it! Thankfully, it didn’t break, but the impact knocked me down, and my glasses flew off my face and onto the ground. People inside were, obviously startled, and now they were all staring at us as we tried to gather our wits about us. Utter humiliation now replaced any trace of pride (or sympathy) Cheryl may have had. She said, “Let’s go!” I dusted myself off, and picked up my glasses, and whatever remained of my dignity, and I said, “No, come on, let’s go on in.” Thus it was that Cheryl got to introduce her “dream guy” to all her work associates. Things were just beginning to settle down, and we were all standing in the buffet line, when someone said: “Hey, it looks like there’s a nose print on the door!” Everyone in the line chuckled when they passed that nose print! So much for the “dream guy.” I thought it was an open door — but it wasn’t!
But in this sixth letter in Revelation 2 & 3, Jesus says to the church at Philadelphia: “I have put before you an open door.” What was He saying to them — and what is He saying to US today through this letter?
A brief overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Jeremiah 7:1-15, for Sunday, June 18, 2023, with the title, “Personal.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: In 1870, France was at war with Prussia (what we know as Germany today). The Germans had the better of it early, and their army advanced all the way to Paris. But the Parisians were “cheerful,” one observer said. They thought their city was invulnerable to enemy armies. The entire city was surrounded by a wall 30 feet high, and there was a moat in front of that. There were 16 fortresses in the walls that made a 60-mile ring around the city, with 500,000 soldiers guarding it. The Bois de Bologne, the huge “Central Park” of Paris, had 100,000 sheep and 80,000 cattle to feed the people in a siege. They were not worried; they trusted their defenses. Their city would not fall. Victor Hugo, the famous French author of “Les Miserables” said “There has been an Athens, there has been a Rome (but) Paris will conquer.”
But on Monday afternoon, September 19, 1870 the Prussians cut off all roads to Paris, and the city was under siege. It went on for months. The Prussians began shooting artillery into the city, and the food began to run out. Soon they were eating horses and pets. People were dying, and starving — and on January 27, 1871, about four months after the siege began, Paris surrendered. Their trust that Paris could not fall, was misplaced. (David McCullough, The Greater Journey, pp. 268-301)
The people of Judah and Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day found themselves in a similar position. They trusted that because they had “the Temple of the Lord” with them there in Jerusalem, they would be delivered from their enemies — but God told them through Jeremiah this was NOT so, if they didn’t get their lives right with Him.
In 2010, Cheryl & our youngest son Michael & I visited England, and one the top things on my list to see was the Metropolitan Tabernacle Church in London: once the “megachurch” of the 1800s, where Charles Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher of all time, had been pastor. The church held over 5000 people — in the 1800s! They said there were times that 8000 people crammed into it. I couldn’t wait to see it. We arrived at the front of it, and it had an impressive front edifice, with great columns, as you can see. (This picture really doesn’t do it justice.) But I was dismayed to discover that the impressive front of the church was just a FACADE! Most of the rest of the building besides the front burned down after Spurgeon died, in 1898, and when they rebuilt it, they kept the imposing facade, but behind it is a much smaller, unimpressive 1950s building that doesn’t hold anywhere near as many people. From the outside, Spurgeon’s Tabernacle today looks much more impressive than it really is inside.
That is something like how it was with the church at Sardis that Jesus addresses here in the opening verses of Revelation 3. He said to them: “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” They appeared to be a better church than they really were. Unfortunately, many churches today are just like that: they appear outwardly to be a “great church” — but the reality is far different — especially in the eyes of the Lord. And many of us as individual Christians are the same way too: we may “appear” to many people to be “great Christians” — but Jesus knows the truth — and again, the reality is far different! Let’s look at how Jesus says this church at Sardis “Looked Better Than It Really Was.”
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” series lesson of Jeremiah 2:1-13 for Sunday, June 11, 2023, with the title “Judges.”
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: Ask your group: ??? “Is there something in your life that you USED to do, that you wish you were still doing now”???
(Maybe a habit, an exercise, a hobby. EX: I was swimming 45 minutes a day at the Angleton Rec Center until COVID hit and the gym closed, and I’ve never gotten back to it.)
You/your group can discuss that for a while, then I’d say: in today’s lesson we’ll see how God’s people in Judah used to follow Him, but they were not doing it any longer.
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers & Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Jeremiah 1:4-19, for Sunday, June 4, 2023, with the title, “Prepares.”
A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: When I was first in college at Oklahoma Baptist University years ago, I was a political science major, looking to go into law or politics. But I love to sing, and I had been on a mission trip, so I felt like God might be calling me to music ministry. It was winter, and we had a heavy snow and everything was closed, and I was basically snowbound at school for a week. I had just recently begun having a daily time in God’s word & prayer, and was enjoying it, so I basically spent that whole week, snowed in, reading my Bible. I thought, “Maybe the Lord will show me whether I should continue studying law, or go into music?” One of the places I read that week was the Book of Jeremiah, 1:4 says “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” And the Lord showed me outlines of messages to share, from what I had been reading. So that by the end of the snowbound week, I knew I wasn’t going into law OR music ministry, but that the Lord had called me to preach.
So Jeremiah 1 is a special chapter to me. God used it to call me to ministry. If you want to share that story, you are free to. OR you might share how God called YOU to a special place of service — and ask others in your group to share their experiences of being called to serve Him as well.
Then I’d say: Today we are going to look at the call God gave Jeremiah to serve Him in Jeremiah Chapter 1.
I read a very interesting article by a Christian parent last week, who said that they asked their 15-year-old daughter: “What is a name that kids in your school do NOT want to be called? (I thought that was a pretty good question for them to ask their child!) But the answer was very revealing: his daughter said, “The worst thing you can be called at our school, is ‘Intolerant.” That says so much about where we are as a society right now, doesn’t it; that the worst thing you could be called, is “intolerant.” Call me anything else, but don’t call me intolerant!
And toleration can be a good thing; we are going to talk in just a minute how a degree of tolerance is an important ingredient in having a well-functioning, democratic society like we have in America. But you can also take tolerance too far. And when Christians begin to tolerate in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, what He has forbidden, then it has gone too far, and will bring down the judgment of God upon them. This is the message Jesus gave to the church at Thyatira — and to us, in this 4th letter to “The Church That Tolerated The Intolerable.”
A brief overview for Sunday School teachers & Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of John 21:15-23, “Do You Love Me?” for Sunday, May 28, 2023.
(A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:
INTRO: POST FACEBOOK QUOTE: “People don’t always say: ‘I love you.’ Sometimes it sounds like: ‘Be safe. Did you eat? Call me when you get home. I made you this.’”
I would ask my group: ??? What do you think about this quote???
Then after you hear everyone’s response, ask: ??? Besides saying “I love you,” what is something that somebody said or did for you, that showed you that they loved you???
(For example: when Cheryl & I were sick for about 10 days a couple of weeks ago, James Peterson, one of our deacons, showed up one morning and mowed & weedeated our whole lawn for us. He never SAID “I love you” that day — but he sure showed it!!)
You/your group can share examples like that for a while.
Then I’d say: In today’s passage, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him — but then He asks him to SHOW it with his life! He asks US to do the same thing too! Let’s look at what Jesus had to say to Peter — and to US, here in John 21 this morning:
In 2008, the U.S. men’s 4×100 relay team was favored to win the Olympic gold medal. They had won the world championship the year before, and they were off to a good start in the first Olympic race. They finished three legs of the race, and all they had to do was hand the baton off to Tyson Gay, perhaps the fastest man in the world, to win the race. But when he reached back his hand, the baton was not there; he kept reaching for it; he could barely touch it; but he couldn’t get a grasp on it. Finally the baton fell to the track, and favored U.S. team LOST the Olympics, because they couldn’t pass the baton. In fact, a New Yorker magazine article said, if there’s a way to blow a baton pass, the United States team has done it over the past 15 years: they’ve dropped the baton, missed the baton, been too early with the baton, too late with the baton. And the thing is, in a relay, it doesn’t matter how fast you are; if you can’t pass the baton, you can’t win.
The Christian faith is very much a matter of “passing the baton”: of sharing the gospel of Jesus and the truth of His word with the next generation, and the next, through our churches, and our families. Many of us today are celebrating our mothers and grandmothers, who have successfully “passed the baton” of faith in Jesus to us. We need to realize how important that is. It doesn’t matter how strong our own faith and practice is — if we don’t “pass the baton” down to the next generation, our faith will soon be extinguished from the earth!
And that is what Jesus showed this church at Pergamum here in Revelation 2:12-17. They had some good things going for them, but in some crucial areas, they were “dropping the baton.” Let’s look at what He had to say to them, and to US, as He writes to “The Church That Dropped The Baton.”
I'm a retired Southern Baptist pastor of almost 40 years. My wife Cheryl & I moved to Norman, OK in March of 2025. I share a weekly overview for Sunday School teachers of the weekly Lifeway "Explore the Bible" lesson, as well as texts of my sermons and other articles.
shawnethomas 