Luke 10:1-12, 16-20 Pentecost 4
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
July 6, 2025
Jesus Establishes His Church His Plan and Purpose, the Place, the Proclamation, and Power You've heard something like this before: "I believe in God, but I don’t believe in organized religion." That seems weird to me because it's kind of like saying, "Flying is fine, but I don’t think airports are a good idea." or “I love baseball, but I don’t like the idea of teams at all.” Maybe you find it curious too, but, then again, maybe we can understand how a person comes to feel that way. The other day a driver in front of me was clearly on his phone as he weaved his way to the stoplight, stopping abruptly…and remained there far too long after the light turned green. A friendly tap of my horn was intended to simply draw his attention back to the road. It was not hard to see the decent-sized cross that dangled from his rearview mirror, as he sent me a message: it was not expressed with a friendly wave of his hand but by an unfriendly wave of just a part of his hand. The way the man behaved spoke more loudly to me than the cross which was intended to represent who he was. Since you and I are not immune from behavior and language that is sometimes contradictory to our faith, maybe you can see why people are sometimes unimpressed with Christians and their churches. That’s not the only reason people are sometimes against “organized religion though. People have been hurt. They’ve witnessed what they call “church politics.” They’ve experienced sitting through what they felt were boring rituals. Add in some horrible, hurtful things from history and a handful of horrendous news stories, and it’s tough to blame them. But even all that doesn’t exactly get them off the hook—there’s still the matter of their sinful nature rejecting what God says about his Church. His Plan and Purpose When someone claims to be spiritual but not religious, when a person claims to be a Christian, but they don’t have a church, a pastor, and a weekly routine of worship… there’s something I think is worth sharing. Any of us can remember this and share it in a very simple way. Here it is: God has always organized his Church and, as an example, you can see it in the worship life he designed for his people. It’s really simple to see. God organized his people under the leadership of Moses. He set up the tabernacle for regular worship. He arranged for priests to lead and the people to listen to them. When Jesus came along, the very Son of God made time every week to go to listen or to lead at the local synagogue. The New Testament tells us that God gives pastors who bless his people gathered in churches as they share God’s Word.