The Church We Have
or
God Loves You and So Do I
A Sermon inspired by the Gospel of John 3:1-16
Dwight A Moody at Third Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky
On the Occasion of the 125th Anniversary of the Church, August 8, 2021
A religious man came to Jesus to question him further about his teaching. Jesus said, God loves you. God loves your religion. God loves your world. And John the gospel writer summed up what Jesus was trying to say with these familiar words: God loved this world so much, the world of Nicodemus, that God sent Jesus to live and love, to teach and inspire, to heal and help, the suffer and die, to rise and live again, this Jesus, God sent to Nicodemus, and to you, that you and I and Nicodemus might have eternal life, abundant life, flourishing life, faithful life.
The message to you today, Third Baptist Church, is this: God loves you. Your world. Your family. Your church. Your history. Your gospel work. This church: Trusting God. Blessing Others. Celebrating Grace.
We are here today to say together, we also love this church. We love this congregation, this ministry, these pastors, these people, this church. I love this church, Third Baptist Church. In my very first sermon here I said, when Christ is first, and others are second, Third is where I want to be.
I am glad to be here today, to say, God loves you and so do I.
To illustrate this, I want to tell you three more stories, stories that illustrate how this church, our church, your church has touched the life of one family, my family. When Jesus wanted to illustrate the love of God, he told three stories, now famous, as recorded in the 15th chapter of the gospel of Luke: the story of the search for the lost coin, the story of the search for the lost sheep, and the story of the search for the lost boy. This is a pattern worthy of imitation; so today I have three stories to illustrate this truth: God loves you, and so do I.
I.
Your church history brochure tells us this: On December 12th, 1909, this sanctuary was dedicated with B. H. Carroll preaching the sermon. What it does not tell you is that B. H. Carroll was president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, and that he was the father of the pastor of this church, C. C. Carroll. It does not tell you that the dedication was not held until after the building was paid for, the pattern in those days. It does not tell you that 2,500 people were in this sanctuary for the occasion, sitting in all the familiar places, sitting in your seat.
It does not tell that less than one year later, in 1910, this church held a revival. The pastor C. C. Carroll called upon the pastor of First Baptist Church of Ft. Worth to come and preach that revival. His name was J. Frank. Norris. He was smart as a whip, as talented as they come, and close to a nervous breakdown. He was a young man, but tired of preaching, weary of church work, and on the verge of quitting. He said, “I promised my friend C. C. Carroll I’d preach this revival.” He came intending this to be the very last event of his ministerial life.
By all accounts that revival had little impact on this church; the church then was a going, blowing concern, famous in all corners of the state, and in the center of everything. But the revival here was a life-changing event for J. Frank Norris. He famously wired his wife in the middle of the night, “We’ve had a great meeting. I’ve been converted. I’m coming back to Texas to build the biggest Baptist church in the world.”
Frank Norris found the church to inspire him, change him, propel him to national prominence—sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. For the next 42 years he was the most influential and controversial fundamentalist preacher in the country. His death in 1952 earned a column in Time magazine.
Norris did indeed build that Texas church into the biggest white church in the country. Then in 1935, he accepted a call to pastor, at the same time, the Temple Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan. Long before the modern multi-campus strategy became common, Norris was traveling between Detroit and Fr. Worth, preaching, pastoring, caring for souls, and stirring up trouble.
So it came to pass that the man who was saved for gospel work at Third Baptist Church of Owensboro welcomed to Detroit an 18-year-old boy from Owensboro, Kentucky. His name was Tom Moody. Tom Moody had just graduated from Daviess County High School, class of 1940. No work here, a war on the horizon, and already the factories were gearing up for production of tanks, ships, and planes.
My dad, Tom Moody, stayed with his aunt and uncle, found work in a airplane factory, and attended the preaching of J. Frank Norris. My dad liked pastor Norris, and Norris took a liking to Tom Moody. He invited Tom Moody to move to Texas and join him on the staff of First Baptist Church. That young man opened himself to whatever good qualities there were in this unusual minister.
I don’t endorse all the wild and whacky things that famous minister did during his career; but I testify to this today: the man transformed by his encounter with Third Baptist Church in 1910 changed my dad’s life: Norris planted a seed; he stirred up a calling; he launched a career. Tom Moody never went to Texas; he moved to Kentucky, attended the University, fell in love with Reita Redden, raised a family of four children, settled in for a 40-year career as a minister of the gospel, and in 1977 preached at my ordination at First Baptist Church of Murray.
I loved Third Baptist Church before I ever arrived here in 1991. I was, in some sense, a product of your church, your life, your ministry, your gospel work. God loves you, Third Baptist, and so do I.
II.
A second story comes from the middle years. Your program records this for January 27, 1937. “Wednesday night prayer service was cancelled due to flooding. One hundred forty people were housed in rooms around the sanctuary for four weeks.”
What it doesn’t report is this: from June of 1936 to June of 1937, two things happened in Owensboro that caught the attention of the nation. Two other things happened out of sight and out of mind, but both signaled the greatness of Third Baptist Church. Both are reasons for God to love you, and for me as well to love you.
First, On Sunday morning, June 7, 1936, Lishia Edwards was murdered in her apartment just three blocks from this church. A young black man named Rainey Bethea was arrested and charged with her murder, although some local residents have a very different story to tell. Young Rainey was incarcerated in Louisville until Friday morning, August 14, when he was transported back to Owensboro. At 5:30 in the morning, before a crowd of 20,000 people, he was hung by the neck until dead, then that afternoon buried in an unmarked paupers’ grave in Rosewood Cemetery.
My dad was a 13-year-old boy living out in west Daviess County. He and his brother got up before dawn, took their prepared lunch bags, and hitchhiked into town to watch that last legal public hanging in the United States. I once asked him about it. “It was over so quick,” was all he said.
Most of the national attention was on the sheriff, Florence Thompson. Would she become the first elected woman in the nation to pull the lever and hang a man? Speculation filled the national press. What was not in the press was the behind-the-scenes story of the other woman, the woman murdered in her own bedroom. Had she not met her death that day, you know where she would have been? Right here, in this sanctuary, sitting somewhere in these pews, perhaps right where you are sitting today. She and her husband and their son, who went on to earn a PhD from Yale University and teach at the University of Kentucky, were members of this congregation. Before the police found Rainey Bethea, down by the river, the pastor of this church, the longest-serving pastor of this church, Rev. Alonzo Cagle, found his way to Glenn Funeral home just across Third Street, and conducted the memorial service for this member of his flock. Unnoticed, out of the limelight, doing good gospel work, your pastor was representing you to a family in need.
Before a year had rolled around, Third Baptist Church confronted a second crisis. Not just this church, but every church, every business, every farm, every family, not just here but up and down the Ohio River. January 1937: the greatest flood in the known history of the Ohio River.
And where would it flood? Out there in west county, the most expansive and fertile farming land in all the Commonwealth, still today, the place to be and work if you aspire to farming as a vocation. Then it was full of small farms, and very small houses where lived the tenet farmers who rented land and eked out a living.
In one small three room house, on route 2 Stanley, Kentucky, lived Harv and Mae Moody, and their three children, including my dad, Tom. He was not yet saved, not yet baptized, not yet attending Sunday School. Later I found the Sunday School records of Sorgho Baptist Church, January of 1939. You think that kind of thing should be tossed. Who would keep such a thing? But somebody did, and somebody took it to the library, the Kentucky Room, where last year before the pandemic shut down everything, a clerk brought it to me and said, “This has never been examined or catalogued. Maybe it will help you.” There, on page 11 was the list of two teachers and all the boys of the church, including the names of the two Moody boys, Bill and Tom. It was the first evidence I had uncovered of my dad ever attending church. I cried when I saw it.
One of these days I will find another piece of evidence: evidence that when the river rose and flooded all of Daviess Country, especially the rich, fertile, low-lying fields around Sorgho and Stanley, among the hundreds of people who fled for their lives: fled to town, fled to higher ground, fled to Third Baptist Church, was Tom Moody. The pews on which you are sitting became the beds for refugees, among them, perhaps, perhaps my dad and his family. The newspapers of that day tell the story. In a crisis, one that drove my dad from his boyhood home, you, Third Baptist Church opened the doors of the church. Maybe they were singing, 38 years before it was written by Bob Dylan, some version of that great song, “Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
You are ready, Third Baptist Church, to open the doors of your church, not just to people wanting to join, as we say nowadays; but also to people seeking refuge, safety, shelter, help, welcome, hospitality, perhaps even a vaccine. “Come unto me” Jesus famously said, “and I will give you rest.” This has been your calling, your vocation, your gospel work, receiving anybody and everybody, even my 13 years old dad.
When you minister to the grieving or welcome the desperate, you are doing the good gospel work to which you have been called. Never give it up. God loves you and calls you to this work. God loves you, and so do I.
III.
Finally, a story from the centennial year.
Your program tells you this: On August 11, 1996, Third Baptist Church celebrated its Centennial, with a homecoming, morning services, dinner on the ground, and afternoon programs. It does not mention that two former pastors were here to preach, that a new church history was presented, and even that the KBC executive Bill Marshall and his wife Alice were in the crowd.
It does not tell you that on Friday morning, two days earlier, August 9, the Owensboro Messenger Inquirer printed these bold headlines: “Moody Arrested for Robbing Days Inn.”
I’ll tell you what happened. At 6 am the previous day, Thursday, my friend Jack Braden, a member of this church, a faithful member of the Dr. Moody’s Bible Class, and chief of detectives for Owensboro Police Department, came knocking on my door. “Pastor,” he wanted to say, “We arrested your boy this morning.” I was asleep and learned about it later that morning. Thus began an ordeal no parent, no pastor, no person wants to endure. I was glad I was not scheduled to preach three days later. I don’t recall much about that centennial celebration.
I was in a daze. Ike was in a jail.
It was the beginning of a long journey of jails, courts, hotels, prisons, and prayer rooms. But you, Third Baptist Church, were with us, every step of the way, even long after we had moved to Lexington. I do not recall a single snide remark, a single negative comment, a single rude letter. You gave me three weeks off, a mini sabbatical, of sorts. I came back and preached on the wonderful text of 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 3: “Blessed be the father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles so that we may be able to comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received.” One woman walked the aisle to join the church, and this is what she said to me, “I have been attending a long time. But today is the right day for me to join this church. My son also is in jail today.”
A year later, I resigned to accept a position at Georgetown College. But for the next decade as Ike learned to live, first, in county jails, then in state prisons, and finally, in federal penitentiaries, you were faithful. You prayed for him and for us; you wrote him letters; you bought his artwork. You were a lifeline of hope and healing.
You remember what Jesus said, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you, for I was in jail, and you came to visit me.” The book of Hebrews commands this: “Remember those in prison as if you were in prison with them.”
For many years, a member of this choir was Karl Gilbert. You saw his face every Sunday morning. What you might not have known is that for 40 years Karl Gilbert taught Sunday School at the county jail. What you might not have known is that for one short stretch his son got into a little trouble and was incarcerated in that county jail. At the same time, my son was in the county jail. I used to stand in the hallway back of this sanctuary as the choir filed into this choir loft. I remember the Sunday in 1996 when Karl Gilbert, he dressed in his choir robe and me holding my Bible and sermon notes, said to me before he entered this choir loft, “I saw the boys this morning, pastor, and they are doing fine.”
I am glad to report today that Ike is doing fine, thanks in part to your love, your prayer, your support, your visits, your obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the morning, I will pick him up in Louisville, drive him east on Interstate 64, all the way to Louisa, Virginia. I will drop him off at the Community of Peace, a spiritual living community run by the Benedictines, an order of the Roman Catholic Church. He will spend the next few months as their Artist in Residence, drawing pictures of the members of their community and of those who come for retreat seeking spiritual direction.
Today, you are celebrating 125 years of gospel work. During that time, you have been one of the most colorful and consequential congregations in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I am proud to have been your pastor. I am proud of what you have been, of what you are today, and of what you will be for another 125 years.
Who knows what other episodes of trusting God, blessing others, and celebrating grace will become part of your illustrious history?
Thanks be to God!
