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Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and
Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion - Descanso, California
Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and
Gospel together and is partly contained
in the forewords above.
… hear us;
and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by
thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities
…
The Collect starts as they often do by asking God to
hear us. It seems to me that this is
rather odd a thing to ask as He hears us all the time; the problem is that when
we need His Help we so rarely ask, then when He answers, we will not hear
Him. That being said, when we do accept
the Holy Ghost’s Help to pray, we can expect to receive spiritual, mental and
physical comfort from God. But, as the
old radio talk show personality Bruce Williams was fond of saying, “If you
don’t ask, you don’t get.” So, ask. And
don’t be afraid to ask, as God can help us with whatever difficulties we happen
to be facing. That is what the part of being defended and comforted in all
adversities is talking about. No problem is too big for God to solve in our
lives. We are talking about the same God who parted the waters of the Red Sea,
who inflicted the 12 plagues on the Egyptians, who took Abraham and made him
the patriarch of a great nation, whose Son rose up from the dead. With all of these
deeds and many more that He has done, do you think your problems are too big
for Him to handle? I do not think so! We just have to trust Him that He can and
will help us. We just have to pray to
Him for Guidance but then act upon that guidance! And He will defend us and comfort us
24/7/365. We just have to let him into
our hearts, souls and minds and accept us the guidance we need to carry out
actions for Him on this Earth. We have to let him in also to provide us with
that protection and comfort.
When we ask for help and get it, we get great
results. But, when we get those results,
who should really get the credit? As
Peter tells us in his epistle, we should not spend or time being proud of what
we have been given, rather we should use those gifts to the benefit of those
around us. God should be the one who gets the credit, it is all His doing in
the end and not ours. We have been given His Grace and Inspiration, and all of
our talents are sourced from Him, who is our creator. It is wasteful of our
talent to be bragging about it, but to effectively use our talents, we should
use it to further God’s work here on Earth instead of focusing on ourselves.
This is what He wants for us, to paraphrase the Great Commission, to carry out
the Word to all Nations and Baptize all of them who would believe on His Son
Jesus, in Jesus’ Name. He will give us the needed guidance and talents to carry
out this magnificent task. He gives us these talents so that this task will be
accomplished. They are not for our own personal gain, but to be used to glorify
Him who created us. This is a far more glorious task than using the talents for
our own self-serving purposes.
When we have troubles, we should bring them to God
and ask Him to carry our concerns and worries so we might tend to the tasks set
before us. We cannot do this mission
alone, we desperately need His help at all times, this is something everybody
struggles with. Fortunately for us we have the Church as our wonderful support
system, the Body of Christ, to give us assistance here on Earth. And we also
have the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide us and inspire us in our
actions. We will find we are never
lacking for people to assist us, we just have to remember we have these
valuable resources to turn to in our days of trial and troubles.
However, before we can get His help, we must first
ask for his help and be willing to listen to Him. Often times He answers and we
do not hear, due to our selfishness, we must clear our ears and be able and
willing to listen to His response to us. That is critical if we are to follow
the principles our Lord has set forth for us. The biggest message in the Bible,
which repeats, is that actions have more meaning than mere words. We must strive
to make our actions fit our words of belief.
We must pay attention to the
world around us and take care not to fall prey to the devil, for he is
constantly looking for ways to help us drift off our path towards heaven. We must keep situational awareness at all
times, so we do not fall into any of the traps he has laid for us. You must
understand that other Christians come from the same pool you do, humanity, they
have the same frailties and problems you do. We all are sinful creatures in the
pattern of Adam. The word pictures painted of “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking
whom he may devour” is both vivid and true!
It is not enough to just not follow the devil and look to him for
help. We must actively turn away his so-called
help and look to God for Guidance, Help and Comfort. We must fight our evil
nature which would lead us towards the side of the devil and to follow the
voice of our Creator, of His Son Jesus, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit and
stand fast in His Word.
Hang in there and do your very
best, God will take care of you in the end.
There are none so poor as cannot purchase a noble death. Never ever forget that.
Trust in God and dread naught.
For there are sufficient evils to the day thereof, as Christ said (Matthew 6:34). There
will always be a form of evil in the world, because of our nature, but we will
also have the goodness of Christ within us, through the Holy Spirit, to
withstand that temptation in the times of trial. That is a great comfort we
always will have, and also it will be easier to bear these trials, knowing Christ
has prepared a place for us in His Father’s House.
When Saint Luke tells Jesus not only talked to
“sinners” but broke bread and ate with them, he related a story of particular
concern to the Pharisees. They were quite
appalled those who were particularly sinners in their very qualified eyes were
attracted to Jesus. They knew a sinner
when they saw one (except in the mirror) and were quite certain sinners would
never get in to heaven. But, not only
did Jesus appeal to the sinners, He even talked to them. My goodness, He went so far as to break bread
with them and engage them in conversation at meat! We should not be like the Pharisees and make
a proud and loud show of how we are better than anybody else (not true, some of
us may well be less worse than others but none better), and act “superior” to
the modern day Gentiles, the non-believers. For truly while some are less worse
than others, none are really better. If we act like that, we give Christianity
a bad name. It does not need any more help getting a bad name, with the lies of
Satan spreading around the world, so let us act in the manner Christ would have
us act and show the world the light of Christ.
This really bothered the Pharisees who thought they
knew everything there was to know about the Law. They counted upon the Law
saving them. They were wrong, as it is Our Lord Jesus who saves, and the fact
he talks and engages the sinners, meant He cares for each person in this World
deeply, and loves them enough to die for them. The Law has no power of its own
to save, for if it did, Jesus would not have needed to come down and die for
our sins. All they have to do is accept Him and follow Him. The Pharisees just
could not grasp this.
With a clear view of the inner most thoughts of their
hearts, Jesus tells the Pharisees the story of the shepherd who loses a sheep
and searches for it. When he finds it he
carries it back to the flock on his shoulders.
He goes on to tell the story of the woman who loses a piece of silver
and turns her house inside out to find it.
That story ends in a very interesting word play in English, “Rejoice
with me; for I have found the piece (peace) which I had lost.” Jesus ends the story with, “there is joy in
the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”
The moral of the parable is that Jesus is all about
saving the sinners, not those who are already “righteous.” But for us, there
are none who are already “righteous.” I liken the church as a hospital for
sinners. And all of the saints were sinners in the past too, to paraphrase my
mother. Having said that, there is also joy when we do not sin, but choose
God’s way. And we enjoy it more also. So,
it is preferable if we do not sin in the first place, but if we can’t do that,
then God finds joy when we truly repent and turn back to Him and ask for His
help and be willing to listen.
Notice Jesus’ actions when He finds a lost sheep, He
carries it back to the flock on His shoulders with a smile on His face. He
rejoices in each lost soul saved. This is what the Church is about, bringing
lost souls to Our Shepherd of Souls, Our Savior, Our Advocate, Jesus Christ, to
His Kingdom of Heavenly Joys.
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
