Bishop Jerry is on travel to Atlanta today and asks that you consider this sermon by Rev Jack Arnold of the Church of the Centurion, Descanso, California. We are confident you will enjoy this. If you do, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE!
Today’s sermon brought
the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the
forewords above.
The
Third Sunday in Advent
The
Collect.
O
|
LORD Jesus Christ, who at thy first
coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; Grant that the
ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready
thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable
people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy
Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The
First Sunday in Advent
The Collect.
A
|
LMIGHTY
God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us
the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son
Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he
shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee
and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
¶
This Collect is to be repeated every day, after the other Collects in Advent,
until Christmas Day.
In the Collect for the Third
Sunday in Advent, we are referred to as the ministers and stewards (caretakers)
of the mysteries of God: the Scriptures and His Word. We ask for help in
getting the hearts of the disobedient, by the wisdom of the just, to turn and
look to the Kingdom of God for answers and not this world. In view of the recent events, how
timely can this prayer be? When we
look to the world for solutions, we find the solutions of this world. This world, ruled by the Prince of this
world, the Prince of Air, the devil himself! But, what will people think when we reject worldly solutions
to worldly problems. There is an
answer for that, conveniently following the Collect.
In the Epistle, Paul says that we
must not fear of what others would think of us, but rather be concerned about
what God would think of what we are doing and what direction He wants us to go
in. Rather than fear man, we must switch to fearing God, and doing what He
wants. Then perhaps maybe, some in this world will see what we are doing for
Him and come to know Him and join Him. We will never get anywhere if we follow
the ways of this world. As in John 1:11-13 “He came unto His own and His Own
received him not. But as many as
received Him, to them he gave the power to become the Sons of God, even to them
that believe on His name. Which
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but
of God.”
If we are born of God, then it is
He to whom we must return and not man. As the verse from John points out, even
Jesus came to us and we refused him, so how can we expect any better treatment
from man, than of God Himself, who came down for us? But the next part of the verse, tells us what we will get if
we join with him. He gave us the power to become the Sons of God, as we are His
adopted children. He is giving us our eternal inheritance, if we will but
follow Him. We are going to get an absolutely wonderful reward, if we do our
very best to follow Him. The treatment we receive in this world will pale in
comparison to the treatment God will give us in the next world if we but do our
very best to follow Him. He has given us the power to become the Sons of God,
we are God’s adopted children. This is a power greater than any in this world
not of God’s Hands. This is a power which cannot be taken away from us, as we
are tightly in God’s Hand. The enemy cannot pluck us out of God’s grasp, once
we have willingly joined ourselves to God through the help of the Holy Ghost.
We need the unifying spirit of the Holy Ghost to help us understand the
concepts of Scripture and not only to understand them, but to follow them. With
the help of the Holy Ghost, we can understand what we are to do and more than
that, we will be able to apply the concepts we learn from Scripture in our
every day lives.
In the Gospel, Christ asks the
crowd of what they expected to see?
Some great big flashy sign He was going to overthrow the Romans and
unite the Jews to conquer the world?
No, He did not come to do this, for that would be only a temporary and
in fact temporal thing to rule the world.
He came for far more than that; to prepare our hearts for eternity and
change us from unjust to just creatures, worthy of God’s creation and His
Hands. He came to mould and to shape us from being roughly made to something
very valuable. He came to transform us from death to being truly alive in all
of the senses of the word.
To be worthy of the charge and
care of His mysteries, we must willing to listen to Him and do whatever we need
to do to line ourselves up with what He wants for us, not what we want for
ourselves. We must think of
others, instead of thinking of ourselves all the time. I must confess that I am guilty of
this, but I am always working on trying to reverse this, as we must, in order
to walk with Him. We must be willing to never give up and persevere; if we
follow this, we will keep getting better and better all the time.
Life is a continual process of
learning in every aspect of our lives, not least of these aspects is our
spiritual growth and development.
The Japanese have a word for this, introduced into their industry by the
American engineer W. Edwards Deming, Kaizen (改善) that is to
say continuous improvement. Never
perfect, but always endeavoring to improve. Day by day. Our goal is to make the next day better than the
last. This is how we must continually develop as Christians.
To care for the mysteries of God
properly, we must keep learning in our spiritual lives and if we do this, we
will keep growing more and more every day. Reading the Scriptures is one way to further our spiritual
development, as well as helping others without thought for ourselves. We must keep doing a combination of
these and similar things, if we expect to be able to facilitate our spiritual
growth and change the minds of the disobedient and the unjust. We have to
undergo our spiritual rebirth before we can help to transform others and to
serve others. We need to have the mental state that only the Holy Ghost can
give us, to do this. We must keep trying our best to improve and learn from the
Scriptures and the Holy Spirit and to trust in God and dread naught.
As He came to change us for the
better, Paul and the Collect remind us to do the same for the others. We have to keep trying to help our
friends and family and to do our best to do so, while shining the light of
Christ as His ambassadors. We know not what seeds we plant when we perform such
actions and in a future time they may bear fruit. We must not try and rush the
work of the Holy Spirit, who works on God’s time and not that of our own time.
All good things will happen in due course. If we do our part by planting the
seed, the Holy Ghost will nurture and develop this seed to bear fruit. We must
put our hearts and minds together and think about what God wants us to do in
the end rather than what we want to do. Put God first and all will be well, is
what can be taken from today’s collects and lessons, ultimately. We must be willing do to this, then we
can be properly caring for the mysteries of God.
Heaven is at the end of an uphill trail. The easy downhill trail does not lead
to the summit.
The time is now, not tomorrow. The time has come, indeed. How will you ACT?
It is by our actions we are known.
Be of God - Live of God - Act of God
