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Part I—Africa 45 For you, Jesus is asking, “Do you want to get well?” If so, get up and give Him your life. The work of God is to give us His Son, the work of the Son is to bring us to the throne of grace where there is grace and mercy, but He will not force us to receive it. It is said that you can make every effort to take a cow to drink water, but you cannot force it to drink water. So the Scripture says in Revelation 3:20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me.” Only when you say yes will He come in. So open your door today and let Him in. When grace looks your way, miracles will happen when you take God at His word, get up, and take your steps toward your destiny. Conclusion There is misery all around us with all kinds of people suffering as a result of sin. But there is good news: grace is still looking for those who need help to get well. God is ready to do miracles in many people’s lives. But they have to be willing to say yes to God. Are you grateful grace looked your way? Pick up your bed—do something. Walk toward your destiny with all thy might! 5 The Plight of the Boy (Luke 9:37-45) Manuel Moises Quembo First Baptist Church Beira, Mozambique BIOGRAPHY Manuel Moises Quembo has served as pastor of First Baptist Church of Beira, Mozambique, since 2005. Quembo also participates with the Baptist Convention of Mozambique, in which he has been the general secretary from 2004 to the present. Quembo is married to Celina Vicente Muriane Quembo, and they have two children: one boy and one girl. He has received his bachelor of theology as well as licentiate in law. Quembo seeks to use his education to provide opportunities for people in Beira to improve their circumstances through his church’s focus on continued education, health awareness, job skills, and the teaching of English. 46 Baptist Preaching SERMON COMMENTARY Quembo’s sermon stands out in the collection as something of a porcelain miniature, a finely detailed painting that is more like a brooch and possessed boy at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration and finds in his tortured frame the African boy of the streets of his city in Mozambique. Quembo moves effortlessly across the hermeneutical arc from the nowness of the African boy to the then-ness of the lad seized by a demon and cured by Jesus. The quality of the sermon is such that each sheds light on the other. We have as much empathy for boy in Luke generated by the street boy in Mozambique as we do the reverse. Without a hint of the biblical text in the introduction Quembo describes the diverse dilemmas of those ill in Mozambique. Some lurch toward folk medicine, ritual healers, and ancient nostrums. Others have simply given up. Still others persevere in seeking some help in their illnesses. This presages the persevering father of the demon-possessed boy who stands out from the crowd, refuses to be discouraged by the failure of the disciples, and presses himself into the presence of Jesus while the multitude becomes the backdrop. The introduction is a proleptic anticipation of the text itself. Quembo magnifies the nameless, incognito anonymity of the boy in Luke’s account and uses this apparently minor detail to mirror the difficulty of namelessness in the maze of a digitized medical system where only the affluent are known by their names. Luke’s boy and the boys of Sudan and Mozambique meet in a middle ground of pathos where the preacher weaves into the warp of the text the weft of Africa with such finesse that one disappears into the other. Suddenly the big idea of the sermon sounds like a cry coming out of the deserts of pain and the Serengeti of sickness: “My African boy is sick and needs healing.” One can inescapably feel the heart of a preacher/pastor who walks the streets of his city and sees in the faces of African boys the face of the boy in Luke. The sermon reaches an intensity of pathos in Quembo’s exhortation that we call on Jesus to heal the African boy of illness...

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