Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Alright. On this sad day. It is gloomy out there, isn't it? So gloomy.

So gray. Yeah. Mhmm. I managed to get a half a lap walk with the dog before the rain started, and it wasn't enough for either of us. Was that a sentence you ever pictured yourself saying?

Not more than a year or 2 ago. Now we we got a dog when we were first married. Yeah. Oh, that's true. I forgot about that.

I just think of you guys such as so so much as cat people. Cat people. I know. Yes. But Henry.

I remember that. Little brindle. She's your named Henry. He was a great dog. Mhmm.

We bought him from a great dog dot com. So Henry and Lewis Mhmm. Well, we had a dog named Angus for 6 months. We got him aft just after Anna was born and then having a newborn, and the puppy was not smart. So Mhmm.

Bud and Betty Coleman have raised him for the last 12 or 13 years. Aw. They took Angus. I didn't know about that. Alright.

Joey, we've got, Nathan, you know, I didn't hear your sermon in real time. I listened to it after the fact. But Nathan had nothing but really good things to say about he just felt like it was really, really solid sermon. They all are. It'd be rude to say that some are better than others.

But some are definitely better than others. It was really good. And also solid b minus this week. No. No.

But why don't you give us a rundown from your sermon on Sunday, and then we'll, cover a few relevant questions. Yeah. For sure. So we were in, Acts 20 verses 7 through 16. This is the story of well, the first 5 or 6 verses of it is the story of Eutychus and his, fateful fall.

Yes. Sort of a Humpty Dumpty story, I suppose. But, yeah, it's it's a fascinating little story because there you know, there's some of the background that I talked about is that Paul and these traveling companions are taking the the offering that they've collected from all the gentile churches and they're or in gentile Jewish churches, they're taking it back to Jerusalem to help with the famine. And, but there's some time enough time, you know, in in verse 16, we learn he's trying to get back in time for, Passover, I think, or Pentecost. I forget.

And, so he's got a narrow window, like, 50 days to make this journey, but there's enough time to stop in a couple of places. So one of the places is Troas. He's got a week there, a church he didn't plant, and so he's working on just some basic, like, what do you need to know stuff. Plus, he's just fired off his letter to the Romans, and so, you know, all of that's top of mind as well. And so there's plenty to talk about, not enough time to deal with and then deal with everything.

And then this guy, Eutychus, falls out of the window while he's preaching after midnight and falls 2 and a half stories down and it you know, is killed by the fall. So, Paul goes running down and picks him up, and there's this miraculous healing. And then it's right back to teaching. It's like, alright. Let's let's take a snack break.

Let's get some food and then back to teaching until Mhmm. First thing in the morning, set up, and then all moves on. So it it's one of those passes where you're like, why is this story here? Yeah. You know, why tell us this?

Yeah. And I think as we talked about in the sermon that, it's not just because, hey. It's an embarrassing story and those are fun to tell sometimes, though it kind of is for Paul's case. But, also, there's a couple of things. That one is it it puts Paul solidly like, oh, Peter did something similar, not kill the guy with his preaching, but raise somebody.

You know? And Jesus did that. And the Old Testament prophets, it's like, this is definitely where God is working. But also the story around the story is, hey, I'm I'm working with this church for, like, a week, and there's a lot to get across. And even at this point, like, miracles aren't the big deal.

It's teaching and preaching and building churches centered around Jesus. That's the big deal. And that's what we keep coming back to. So that's why my bottom line was just that there's nothing bigger than Jesus. Like, not even a miracle.

A death and a resurrection, is gonna stop him from talking about the death and resurrection that's at the center of everything. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I loved your, connection to the eclipse because I could picture it.

Like, it was just like a great analogy, because we have all experienced those moments where something big, takes up all the space in your vision, you know, like in your view, we just, can't seem to get around it for a hot second. Right? Whether it's like a celebration or a tragedy or anything in between. And then Or even like, you know, when your kids throw in a tantrum in the grocery store, it's a small thing, but you're like, all of a sudden my life is this tiny. Like, this is the only thing I can think about right now is this moment and everybody looking at me and all.

Yeah. Yeah. And then when you get out of those moments and you can see the big picture Does it? It certainly opens up. And so comparing that to the picture of, like, nothing in our life is going, like, could even eclipse, just God and no in Jesus, and I'm like, I could relate.

I read that resonated with me. Oh, man. Great. So, you had said, you know, when we first got online, you said that the time between us recording this on Monday and Oh, yes. Public on Wednesday, something major is happening.

Something big. And then I have and yet I feel like that's the point of the sermon. It's like Right. Okay. Who care not who cares.

Okay. That sounds that's a little too Right. But it does matter. But still, at the end of the day, what has changed between Monday and Wednesday is very little because God is still God. Right.

Yeah. Right. And, you know, I I made the comment first hour, and I forgot to make it second hour because it was just spur of the moment. And I know you were there. You were helping downstairs with kids, and so you heard the the recording of it.

Did the recording include communion and all of that? No. Okay. So in communion, 1st hour, I talked a little bit too about, like, I brought it I pulled the the thumbtack out of my pocket again because I had that basketball and the thumbtack up there. Okay.

I was like, this thumbtack is tiny. It doesn't mean it can't hurt. Right? And I poked myself 3 or 4 times trying to get it out of my pocket. Like, it hurts.

It is still significant, but it's small in comparison. Right. And that's the important thing. Not to say that it doesn't matter, but that it matters in relation to other things that matter so much more. Mhmm.

Yes. Exactly. So how would you have preached this passage differently if it wasn't the week that it is? Yeah. If it wasn't the election week.

Well, I think the bottom line would have been the same. That there's nothing in life that's bigger than Jesus. Mhmm. And I would have used the, the solar eclipse analogy as well and brought the basketball up on stage and had the thumbtack and all of that stuff. But definitely the the ending coming around to no matter what happens was affected by, of course, what's going to happen or what might happen on Tuesday.

So probably if it weren't the week of the election, if or just before a couple weeks ago, that might have made a mention you know, no matter what happens in November. But it would have been probably more I would have tried to be a little bit more broad, in terms of what are you facing? What's the crisis that you might be facing right now? Because there's always somebody who's just gotten bad news from a doctor or bad news from their financial advisor or, you know, they just found out they missed paying a couple of bills or they got a, you know, the car broke down or someone they care about passed away or a friendship fell apart or something like that. Right?

So there's always those things. And all of those things are important, and they matter, and they hurt. Yep. But compared to the kingdom of God, it was just I think with this week, it was a little easier to compare, like, kingdom of God, kingdom of earth. You know, those things were more it was a little more top of mind for all of us.

Mhmm. And and one of the things I said in communion, setting up communion was because I'd looked it up Sunday morning. The the repug Republican Party has existed for a 170 years, and the Democratic Party has existed for a 196. And depending on who you read for when you know, what year Jesus died, the church has gathered around the communion table for 1,994 years. Mhmm.

Like, we'll be fine no matter what happens because the church is gathered around the table inside cathedrals and mud huts and out in open fields and hidden in caves underground in order to escape, persecution. And the church is gathered around the table, whether it was in a democracy or a totalitarian regime or a communist country or a Soviet bloc or wherever. Right? The church has always gathered to be united around something bigger than who you're voting for or what's happening in the politics in the country you're in. Yeah.

So you actually that was a part of your communion? Yep. Okay. Yeah. So that was how we set up communion.

Taking communion then again next Sunday. Oh, doing it again? Yeah. Even afterwards? Yeah.

Or after the election? It's a good idea. I know it's not what we do. No. No.

I mean, we do it once a month, but that that's not, you know, that's not that. Then that's us doing what you said we should be doing is Right. Right. Matters, you know? Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, I told everyone the most important thing you'll do this week is not cast a vote. It's unite around the body and blood of Jesus across all the differences that exist within any given church. Mhmm. So we should get stickers that say, I made this joke.

We should get stickers that say, I broke bread with someone you think I should hate. Yeah. I I think that, if we've learned we've learned a lot of things in acts, but one of them is that we've literally seen the gospel go beyond all of the boundaries that people feel like should exist. Right? Whether it's, like, ethnic or religious boundaries or, socioeconomic boundaries.

Like, the gospel just doesn't care, you know, and so, Yeah. I know the gospel's more like watch this. This week. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We do get to practice that this week. In a lot of ways, I've felt like our, series and acts lines up really well with I, you know, I just feel like God has used it to really I think I don't know. Just demonstrate his power and his sovereignty in our lives in the last few years through Faith Church and just, like, what's been going on in our church and in our lives and in, around the world and in our culture, giving us, like, real life learning experiences to practice what we're Yeah. And it just keeps happening.

Like, I shouldn't be surprised. It just continues to happen. It aligns with another opportunity to learn. Yes. Like, life is a lap for scripture right now.

Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting observation because you can read something like acts and think, like, oh, it's at such a different time in a different place. Like, there's nothing that overlaps. But it's humans facing uncertainty and difficulty and existential questions of what matters, you know, and where do I belong and all those things that we face now.

We just have iPhones. Like, that's really the only difference. And, you know, penicillin. Yeah. Yeah.

We shouldn't be surprised. Well, Joey, is there anything else that so people are hearing this on Wednesday. Mhmm. Want them to remember? What are we walking away with?

What are we holding on to on Wednesday? Yeah. Wednesday is gonna be a day where it's gonna be really easy to forget that what's happening on the news is not the most important thing that's happening in the world. You know, Wednesday, it we're all gonna be pretty myopic, like, focused in on just what's going on in America right now. Yeah.

And who's saying what and who's contesting what. And do we even know yet? I don't know. Right? Wednesday is gonna be a day when Christians are gonna have to remind themselves, that, yes, this is important, but it is relative in its importance to the kingdom of God.

And no matter what happens here, we're still gonna get together on Sunday, and we're gonna open the word together, and we're gonna sing, and we're going to pray, and we're gonna remind ourselves that our ultimate allegiance is in Jesus. And we're gonna invite other people into the kingdom of God no matter who's president. Yep. Because we're a church. That's what we're here for.

That's what we do. That's what we're here to do. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast at faith, live it out.org or text them into our faith church texting number. And we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode.

If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.