 |
| If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE! |
Sermon – Rev Jack Arnold – Time and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion - Descanso, California
Today’s
sermon tied the Epistle and Gospel together talked, as is oft the case, of the
need for action, not simply diction, the general content is in forewords above.
Consider
the words from the Collect, wherein we ask God to give us … the spirit to think
and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do any thing that
is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will …
This is
kind of a follow-on to last week’s Collect.
We are asking God to give us direction so we might know right from wrong
and follow the right way. If we listen
to our hearts and minds, like the aviator, mariner or adventurer without a
compass, we will soon be hopelessly lost.
With the compass God gives us we can find the One True Way, much like
the compass always points North.
The Collect
acknowledges without God’s intervention through the Holy Spirit in our lives we
cannot do anything that is good or right. Indeed, our own very natures prevent
us from doing what is right. Our nature
is inclined towards being away from God, but with the help of the Holy Spirit,
we can reset our nature to be towards God. We just have to ask for His help and
not just ask for it, but willingly receive it.
By receiving, I mean that we have to be willing and ready listeners,
ready to listen to what He wants us to do, and then act upon that. We must let
His will be our will. We have to put aside what we want to do, and put what God
wants us to do in the forefront. This is a very difficult matter, a concept we
have always struggled with.
This
is nothing new. As Paul reminds us we
have a common spiritual past, regardless of our actual lineage. Spiritually, we are descended from the Jews
of the Exodus. Their God is our God; God
directed their actions. He was a Trinity
then as He is today. Their reality is
our reality, whether we choose to understand or accept it. Our forefathers
drank of “the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that
followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”
We are like them in that we stubbornly, due to our own nature, resist
His will. We murmur and grumble, when in fact we should be praising Our Father
Almighty. We are also like them, in that if we do not look up to Him who was
lifted up on the cross, like Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, we
will perish. However, if we will look up to Him who was crucified on the cross,
and believe on Him and His Name, we shall be saved. By looking up, we also are to believe on Him
and His Resurrection and acknowledge that without this event, we would not be
saved.
He
also points out with God’s help there is no temptation we are not able to
withstand. We just have to call upon His Name and follow His Way out of it. He
will always provide us with an escape route from whatever difficulty we are
facing. We may not like it sometimes, but His Guidance is always the best path
to follow in the end.
Those
who have gone before provide examples, both good and bad. We should aspire to
follow the good examples of those who have gone before and not the bad examples
that they left behind. In this letter Paul addresses the bad and suggests we
should see what their ill behavior gained them before we set our course and not
after. We should not strive to emulate
the murmurings of the people, though we may feel that way sometimes, as we can
learn from their bad examples. We must
see their bad examples and do not emulate those; on the other side, we must see
the good examples, and strive to emulate them.
Following
after the Jews, we should strive to not incorporate those bad examples, but the
good examples into our lives. And, lest we think ourselves ever so special, he
reminds us we are subjected to no special temptations, only those “as is common
to man.” Every man on this planet is a
sinner who desperately needs help, every bit as much as the next, albeit likely
in differing ways. In sin, all are
equally lost to death, unless they accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
Which is to say, common to everybody within the human race who is not Christ,
which is all of us. This is another example of the adage, “Those who are
ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.”
It is an old saw, but one as valid today as the first time it was used.
That
is a reason the Old Testament should be read and reviewed and compared to the
New Testament, to see where we came from, how we got here and where we should
go next. It works like a process flowchart, from the beginning from Adam, down
through the various figures of the Old Testament, the flowchart ends at the
arrival of Christ and the Holy Ghost, and in our redemption. Analyzing this
flowchart, we can see our temptations and sins are nothing new, and sins are a
waste of our spiritual life. We must practice continuous improvement, kaizen as the Japanese called it, and or
Total Quality Management of our spiritual life.
Just
like Total Quality Management requires each and every member of the
organization work together to achieve quality and serve the needs of the
customer, so too, do the Scriptures require all believers work together, to
serve the needs of those we serve, namely other believers and the Church. We
must continuously improve ourselves in our day to day lives, not just in the
church, but in our business and personal lives. This is the message Paul is
conveying to Corinthians, we must see how our forefathers acted, emulate their
good qualities and dispose of the wasteful, bad, sinful qualities. We must continually improve upon ourselves
throughout our lives. We must continually work on turning our bad qualities into
good qualities. Only God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ can really provide us the
spiritual guidance we need to do this. We must trust that they will give us the
correct guidance when needed.
Speaking of
lessons, when Saint Luke recounts the story of the prodigal son we oft think
ourselves as that prodigal one returning to God so late in life. Yet there is far more to be learned than the
titular son.
Consider
the two sons. The older is a wonderful young
man who strives to please his father in everything he does. The younger son asks for his inheritance, now
rather than later, and sets off to spend it wastefully in a far off land. In dire straits, he decides to go home to his
father and beg to be allowed to live as one of his servants. He decides to tell his father, “Father, I
have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called
thy son…” Before he can get the words
out of his mouth, his father welcomes him, gives him new clothing and calls the
servants to prepare a fatted calf for a big party. The elder son is very angry and hurt. He asks his father what he did wrong; he
followed his instructions every day to the best of his ability, worked hard,
and yet his father had never even given a small party for him. The father answered, saying, “Son, thou are
ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”
“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found.”
This story,
like that of the workers in the vineyard has a number of meanings. Like the father in the story, God wants us to
be His faithful child always, but rejoices when we return to Him. Like the prodigal son, we should be grateful if
we live long enough to come back to Him.
We should recognize when we have erred and strayed from our ways like
lost sheep; as soon as we recognize that, we should immediately return to Our
Lord in prayer, asking for His forgiveness.
Like the father in the story, our Lord will warmly welcome us back with
open arms.
The moral
of the older son’s story is that we should not be jealous of those returning to
Christ’s flock after years away, but instead, be more like the father and
rejoice when one of the lost sheep comes home to us. For jealously is something
that will chip away at our hearts and make us into less kind people and more
evil. But genuine love and affection can only make us into a more kind and
better people. So let us learn from the older son’s mistake and not be jealous
or hold a grudge against the lost for having been lost, but rather, rejoice in
the act that they have been saved.
The moral
of the younger son’s story is that God is always waiting for us, and if we are
not too late, we can always return to Him.
Today preferably, rather than tomorrow! He will always accept us with
opening arms, but we must make sure it is not too late. Don’t wait until you
die! If you feel you have erred and strayed, repent now! Do not put off until
tomorrow your repentance. If you are led by the Holy Spirit to repent, please
do it today, you may not live to see tomorrow.
Do not let
the sun go down on your sins and wrath, you may not live to see another day! On
the other hand, consider the oldest son, let us learn from his mistake and be
joyful when our brothers and sisters come home to our family. Let us put aside
the anger and jealousy and replace those hurtful emotions with the emotions of
pure love and joy! Let us join in the celebration and not begrudge the fatted
calf. We should not be jealous or angry
when our long lost brethren return to the flock of Christ! We should be merry
and joyful they have returned to us! Do not let your pride become anger and
cloud your emotions like it does so many of us. But, rather see a sinner coming
back into His flock and rejoice in he is no longer headed towards The Pit!
Action
counts. For by their actions ye shall
know them.
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
