Sermons on the Mount

By David Alley

Staring at just 19 years of age, with a church of 3 people, David managed to "empty the church" and found himself starting from scratch. From here his many adventures began including murder threats, midnight baptisms, cursing fig trees, amazing answers to prayer, and meeting a most fascinating cast of characters. Each event recalled also includes truth learned and the author hopes that these sermons will give hope, faith and blessing to each reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Alley
• Release date: Oct 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370310364

David Alley

From the young age of 19 David pastored his own church in the once gold rich Mt Morgan, Australia. For 14 years David experienced the up and down life of a rural minister in a small town with high unemployment and the ebb and flow of life.Back when Google was new, David discovered Adwords as a method to promote non profit ideas and started using Google Ads to share the gospel with people linking them to resources and information on his websites. This was a novel idea at the time, the ads were cheap with no competition. In a space of 2 years David introduced 3000 people to Christ and shared the gospel with over 40,000 people in about 20 languages from over 100 countries. Many people joined churches as a result.In addition, David has built a number of ministry websites has written a number of articles and short books promoting evangelism and mission. David is currently Personal Assistant to John Alley and youth pastor at Peace Australia. In addition to preaching weekly at youth services, David leads teams of young people to various places to share the gospel and to grow ministry gifts in them.David has travelled to a number of nations including Haiti, India, Sri-Lanka, the Philippines, and has also lived in Papua New Guinea for 5 years as a child with missionary parents.David is a drupal developer in addition to his work with youth and mission and has a number of blogs of a variety of subjects at www.davidalley.com.au

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Introduction

Being a pastor in certain places can be harder than elsewhere, and additionally, some towns or cities are unique, exotic, or quirky in their own ways. Mt Morgan is one of those interesting, challenging, and sometimes eccentric locations, which offered up a challenge to all who wanted to work there for the Lord.

The contents that follow are true, and represent some of the interesting things that occurred during my 14 years as pastor of a church congregation in Mt Morgan, also known as ‘the mount.’ They are worth telling as a preservation of what God did in the lives of people, as well as being beneficial for an educational and human interest perspective. Some stories have been left out because of personal reasons in light of those affected.

In many of my experiences, I learned something and the events became living illustrations with meaning. Each story is therefore a sermon. This book is therefore a collection of these sermons on the mount.

The names of certain people in these stories have been adjusted. In sharing the struggles of those people, some of whom still struggle with various issues, it seems prudent to have done so.

It is my hope that these stories, which share the good and the bad, and the reality of life in an ex-gold mining town, will help you to learn and grow and find something encouraging in the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I pray that the message from these sermons on the mount will help you, just as the Lord’s sermon on the mount has most likely done too.

Chapter One:

Never A Dull Moment

As I walked up the path to the church I noticed a paper sign on the door that I had not placed there. Drawing closer, I noticed that what held it in place was a small sharp knife stabbed into the door. Finally I drew close enough to read the words, written in poor though large handwriting stating, David you are next.

Once, many years earlier, someone had indirectly threatened me, but I knew who that was. My mind started racing.

As I opened up the church, and removed the sign, I went inside. Everything had been rearranged. Chairs and tables were upside down, and papers laying all over the place. Where the in-floor baptismal tank was situated, the floor was no longer flat and even, but sagging down. Upon closer examination, someone had removed the flooring, then replaced the carpet to create some type of false floor. Presumably this was intended for someone to fall through into the font.

In addition, many items had been removed from the church, such as the computer, sound and musical equipment, plus numerous food and drinks from the kitchen. Thousands of dollars of equipment had been stolen.

The thing about my experience of Mt Morgan was, I never knew what would happen next. I would often describe the town to others by saying there was never a dull moment. This didn’t mean that it was always fun and exciting. It meant that a variety of things never seemed to stop happening. Driving through the town, outsiders would not naturally come to this conclusion. The mount seemed like just another sleepy old ex-mining town with not much to offer. That may have been true-ish on the one hand, but on the other hand, the town was unpredictable, exciting, and had a history of intrigue.

I remember reading about another minister elsewhere who described his ministry years like driving down the road going past a power pole every one hundred yards. He said the power poles were Sundays, and after so many Sunday services, the journey ended. Mt Morgan was nothing like that.

There was never a point where I felt life had become dull, monotonous, or predictable. Ministry was far from routine. Being a pastor in Mt Morgan was more akin to cross-cultural ministry in your own country. I had to learn a new way of thinking. The people didn’t behave in the typical way and the usual things you said to others didn’t work here. It was its own place.

Since about 1886 when the Baptist Church was first established, there had been a succession of ministers come and go from Mt Morgan. Each stayed one month, or three, with the longest staying just a few years. Mt Morgan wasn’t the easiest of places to serve the Lord. Somewhere along the way, the town was labelled a graveyard for ministers. They came, but generally didn’t stay. It wasn’t monotony that did that to them, but something else. One hundred and eleven years later it was myself in 1997 that started serving as pastor of the Baptist Church. How that came about was very much unexpected and all of God’s choosing. I’ll say more about that in the very next chapter.

So there I was in the middle of the church building looking at a huge mess. There was nothing to do, but go back to the Police... again.

This was not the first time the church had been illegally entered. It had occurred dozens of times over the last few months. The first thing I had noticed was that cans of soft drink began to disappear from the fridge in the church kitchen. Perhaps I had not been diligent enough in accounting for the small drink sales. So I began to meticulously monitor the number of drink cans in the fridge. What I noticed, is that while the church was locked up, drinks were being taken. Someone was getting inside without my knowledge.

These little thefts seemed only a juvenile issue to me. Each week I gave free guitar and drum lessons to a number of teenagers, and I thought probably one of them was stretching the friendship a little far by taking some drinks for personal enjoyment. When questioned, they all stated their innocence and I was left with having to presume they were telling the truth. However, one of these youth was known for his dishonesty, and I continued to privately consider if it was him.

Then a few items disappeared that were more significant than cans of soft drink, so I reported matters to the police. They began to make some informal investigations, and in doing so, they disturbed a hornet’s nest. Whoever was responsible did not like the questions being asked. The next thing that happened was that lovely note, plus knife, stabbed into the front of the church.

Down at the station the second time, the police took a statement from me, then asked me who I thought was responsible, and I named the teenage boy I suspected. They knew of him, and told me that they also believed him to be responsible. They asked if I would be willing to press charges against this young man.

In this situation, what would your response be? Does a pastor press charges against someone who has broken into their worship facility? Is that a good example for a minister of the Lord? What would people in the town think about that? What would the Lord want? Shouldn’t we show mercy to others, and practice forgiveness. What about the murder threat? Was it better to just ignore what had happened, and hope for it to go away?

I did forgive, but I also decided to proceed and press charges. I determined that should he return what he stole and if he was also sorry for having done so, I would consider dropping chargers. I advised the police of this, and they further advised the young man. Later that week, he quietly arrived at my home with his bag, full of things. He said sorry, and appeared genuine. Of everything stolen, he was unable to return them all because he had sold many of them, and spent the money. He did however return some of the items.

I forgave him, prayed with him, and let him go on his way. He was a man forgiven, experiencing the release of Christ and with a sense of the heart of God. And I dropped all charges against him.

It’s a bit like Christ and us. We can hardly make up for the wrongs we have done against God, in fact we cannot. We have all fallen short of God’s glory, and our very best effort is insufficient to merit anything like a full returning to Him of what we have stolen.

Christ forgives us, and drops all charges. Additionally, He has called us into His family and made us heirs. All of those things we tried to get on our own, are now superseded by the tremendous grace we have in Christ. Paul said in Romans 8:32 that He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things.

All we have to offer God is a humble repentant heart, and eyes of faith. But what glory and goodness amazingly come from that simple response.

After this, that young man didn’t try to break in again. We also installed a security system onto the church building to prevent other similar incidents, and, as you might have guessed, I wasn’t murdered.

Chapter Two:

Teenage Pastor

Many years earlier, I was still living at home with my parents. It had been my habit to wake early to pray for several years. I was nineteen at the time and it was Sunday morning, the 19th of January, 1997. On this particular day, a strange thing happened.

Each morning between 4 and 5 a.m., I would awake and head to the kitchen to make tea. I pressed the button on the jug to boil the water and start the process. With tea in hand I would seek the Lord for my life, the future he intended for me, and for other needs around me. I had been doing this ever since I left school at the age of seventeen, when my future began to weigh heavily on me.

I had a prayer list of things I would pray for. I would pray down the list asking God to do the things I thought were good. I had a time of prayer for personal needs and wants, some for the needs of others I knew, and also for other churches, towns, places, and mission organisations.

After this, I would read the Bible, which I had already read through several times by the age of 19, and spend a little time in silence allowing God to speak to me through my thoughts.

I had already seen a number of quite amazing answers to my prayers. I had prayed just months earlier somewhat