A Direct Blessing From God
Keith M. McFarren
June 28, 2026
Matthew 10:40-42
    There is a small metal sign that hangs
above the door at the Copper Kettle Restaurant near New Castle, Indiana that
reads: "Our success means serving you to your satisfaction."  The entire staff of this little restaurant
located just northeast of New Castle lives by that adage. When you go in you’re
hungry but when you leave, you leave fed, filled, and very pleased with the
little roadside restaurant.
    Molly, the "chief cook
and bottle washer" smiles and says, "Everything good in my life comes
together here: I have the gift of cooking, the perfect location, and a steady
stream of hungry people. If that isn't a recipe for a successful restaurant,
then I don't know what is."
    When Dan R. Dick, a writer
for the magazine Discipleship Dateline, left the Copper Kettle, he left with
one thought in mind: What is true for Molly is true for The United Methodist
Church and all of its people.  We have
the gospel, which we could look at as being the good food, we have thousands of
prime locations throughout the country; and we have a steady stream of
spiritually hungering people. But there is one more element that brings all of
this together, an element that ties all of this together to make it successful.
    What makes the Copper Kettle
the success that it is, is the hospitality that is offered inside the four
walls of this roadside restaurant. From the moment you enter, you have no doubt
that the customer is important.  All the
attention turns to you as a customer and you soon know that your comfort and
your satisfaction are the primary concerns of the entire staff.
    Business is good, the owners
are happy and the people just keep coming back.
The food is good, but you see, it’s all in the hospitality.  It’s all in how we treat others.  It’s all in where we put others in our life
and where we put ourselves in relationship to those other people.  That’s what Jesus meant this morning when he
said that giving unselfish service to others will bring you great rewards.
    In the New Living
Translation Bible, Jesus uses the word “welcome” –“Anyone who welcomes you
is welcoming me, and anyone who welcomes me is welcoming the Father who sent
me.”
    But there is a better word
than “welcome.”  People aren’t just “welcomed”
as they come into the Copper Kettle.
They aren’t just spoken to; they aren’t just shown a table and then made
to wait for the waitress to come and take their order.  There is more to the success of the Copper Kettle
than just welcoming people.
    The King James Version and
the New International Version of the Bible use the word “receive” instead of
welcome.  “He who receives you,
receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.”  “Anyone who receives a prophet” and “anyone
who receives a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward.
“Receive” is a word
meaning “to admit” or “to accept” or “to take into one’s possession.”  That’s what happens at the Copper
Kettle.  When you walk through the door
you are more than just welcomed as a visitor, you are “received” by the entire
staff.  
    You are “taken in.”  You are “accepted.”  You become part of them and they want nothing
more than to make you feel comfortable and to satisfy your wants and needs and
to take care of you the best way they know how.

    It’s about hospitality.  They, the workers at the restaurant, become
the person with the cold water that Jesus was talking about this morning and
we, as the customer entering the restaurant, become the person who is in need
and receives that cup of cold water.  
    Here’s something else about
good hospitality.  The person that really
cares about good hospitality will give you as much cold water as you need.  They won’t stop with just one cup.  The person that cares about providing the
type of hospitality that is described in our text is willing to give you as
much water as you need until you are satisfied.
    How much we love God can be
measured by how well we treat other people.
The example Jesus gives us of giving a cup of cold water to a child is a
perfect example of giving unselfish service to others because a small child usually
won’t return the favor that we do for them.
They are grateful for what you do for them but their minds aren’t
developed enough to think that they should pay you back for what you did for
them.  
    As Christian’s we don’t
expect a reward for what we do because what we are doing comes naturally.  What we do comes straight from our heart with
no strings attached.  We are willing to
"go that extra mile,” always willing to extend ourselves with a form of “radical
hospitality” that shows others that we are here to serve, and not to be served.
    In the 17th
Chapter of 1st Kings as Elijah was running for his life from King
Ahab and his wife Jezebel,  God told him
to go to the town of Zarephath.  Go to
Zarephath and there will be a widow there who will feed you and take care of
you.  
    How strange, Elijah thought,
to go to a poor widow for food right in the middle of a draught that God had
created to punish Ahab and his people.
After all it was always the poor people who ran out of food first during
the time of a famine.  
    But Elijah obeyed God and
the first widow that he came upon was a Gentile, but she was a Gentile who
believed in the Lord. She was a poor woman who had no bread and only a little
flour and oil – enough only for herself and her son– but she willingly gave all
that she had to Elijah.
    But she willingly baked a
loaf of bread with what little oil and flour she had and gave it to
Elijah.  And because of her hospitality
she reaped the reward of being guaranteed by God to have enough bread to last
throughout the draught.  God had rewarded
her heartfelt hospitality by providing bread for her and her son as long as it
was necessary because she had taken the time to help someone in dire need.    
    The widow woman did more
than just welcome Elijah.  She “received”
him.  She went beyond giving just “a cup
of cold water” to someone who needed it.
She was willing to provide heartfelt hospitality to someone in need by
giving him as much water as he needed.
God knows of every good deed we do and don’t do as if he were the one
receiving it.  It may be small, that
little touch of hospitality, but it’s as if God himself were the one receiving
it.  
    We all come from different
social and economic backgrounds.  But
what Jesus tells us this morning affects all of us no matter where we are on
the ladder of life – no matter if we are at the top of the ladder with
everything we need in life financially and materialistically or if we are at
the bottom of the ladder – struggling to make ends meet maybe even not knowing
where our next meal will come from.
    Billy Graham circled the
globe time and time again to become the most recognized evangelist of our
time.  While he was going all over the
world, it was his little known wife Ruth who was always behind the scenes
staying at home raising their 5 children and taking care of things on the home
front.
    Billy Graham was known
throughout the world but it was Ruth Graham who was in charge of the
family.  Ruth Graham gladly stayed in the
background as a supporting cast and ran the show at the Graham household and
she was happy doing it.
    Billy Graham always said
that, next to God, Ruth provided the greatest support for him and his ministry
and without her love and patience and caring he would have never gotten as far
in life as he did.
    Ruth Graham was serving God
by giving her husband a “cup of cold water.”  That is what God called her to do and she was
more than happy to provide not only for him but for others who came to their
home.  God placed her there as a servant
and being a woman of God she accepted God’s task and did what he asked of her.
    There are so many different
people throughout the world, people who shoulder public and political
responsibility on a daily basis.  And
those same people will tell you that they could have never survived the daily
pressure and daily demands of the job or of life itself if it had not been for
the love and the care and sacrifice of someone at home – someone who was never in
the public eye – someone who preferred to remain in the background.  Someone who only cared about handing out cold
cups of water to others.  
    Not everyone wants to be in
the forefront and stand out before the world, and not everyone needs to be, and
yet Jesus tells us that because of the way they receive others, because of
their heartfelt hospitality these are the people who will receive God’s
greatest reward.
    The good
news in all of this is that the circumstances in our life do not limit our
potential rewards.  We don’t have to be a
well known person.  We don’t have to be
100% healthy.  We don’t have to be
rich.  We don’t have to be handsome or
beautiful.  
    We don't
have to be a prophet to receive a prophet's reward; we only have to show
heartfelt hospitality to others.  We
don't have to be a great evangelist to receive a great evangelist's reward; we
only have to offer our hospitality.  "Whoever
gives one of these little one’s a drink of cold water will not lose his
reward.”  The smallest gift to the
littlest disciple will bring God’s biggest reward.  
    Just as God
knows and cares about every hair on our head, God also knows and cares about
every generous act that we commit.  These
generous acts toward others are counted as acts toward Jesus -- and acts toward
Jesus are also counted as acts toward God.
So you see, there is a direct line of blessing from the littlest
disciple…all the way to God and back again.
    The beauty
of our text this morning is that it focuses on the simple things.  The world will always need its great leaders
and politicians.  The world will always
need people who offer shining examples of sainthood.  The world will always need great teachers and
people whose names have become household words.

    But the
kingdom of God will also always need people who offer themselves and their
hospitality.  Jesus and the church will
always need the behind the scenes people, those people who are willing to work
behind the scenes doing the simple things… keeping a family intact, making a
house a home, making a business run smoothly, or helping a church reach out to
its visitors and to the rest of the world.

    Jesus and
the Church will always need those whose hearts are filled with Christian love,
people who are willing to reach out and receive others with Christian
hospitality…offering something as simple and refreshing as a cold cup of water.