 |
| If you enjoy this, the entire AOC Sunday Report is RIGHT HERE! |
Sermon – Reverend
Jack Arnold - Time and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion -
Descanso, California
Today’s sermon tied the Collect, Epistle
and Gospel together and talked, as is oft the case, of the need for action, not
simply diction.
Consider the words of the Collect, “…grant thy people
grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and
with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God …”
When you hear the word GRACE, what do you think of?
· · Help;
· Heavenly
dispensation;
· A
gift freely granted;
· The
free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and
the bestowal of blessings.
The word can be any of these, it comes from Middle
English: via Old French from Latin gratia,
from gratus ‘pleasing, thankful’ and
is related to grateful.
In this case we are asking God’s help, for which He
charges nothing, except our faith and loyalty to Him, to withstand the
temptations of this world. We ask for
help to withstand what? Actually, what
we are looking for is help to not follow our own devices and desires. We are asking for help to withstand
temptations that not only come from external sources, but also from internal
sources, namely our hearts and minds. This seems like an odd request, until one
considers the fact that our own devices and desires are the root of all of our
troubles. We are naturally inclined to the sinful things which separate us from
Our Lord. We are simply requesting help in combating the evil desires of our
heart that would separate us for all eternity if they were left unchecked. We
are simply asking for help to make His Will our will. To help us to do what will make us happy and
not just what we think fun, but to be permanently happy, which boils down to
following His Word. For we know that we ourselves will not do what His Will is
of our own volition, but rather we must ask God to plant the seed of His Will
on our hearts so that we will do it.
Paradoxically, we are asking for help to do not what we
want, but what is best for us. There is a difference between what we want, and
what is best for us, as there is a difference between the words want and need. What we want and what is best for us are not necessarily
interchangeable. We often confuse wanting something with needing something,
when that something we want is not something we truly need and or is good for
us. We are asking God’s Help to make us
want to do what He wants us to do, so that not only will we have “fun”, but be
happy! We are also asking His help to see
what is good and needed for us, to help us clarify the difference between
things that are needed and those we want, and to see what is bad and not
helpful.
We are, in short, asking for His guidance to guide us to
the path of being truly happy and not just having a fun time. For, being happy is far more important and
helps our spiritual lives more than the temporary state of fun. Fun only lasts
a few moments, happiness lasts forever. There is a distinct difference between
the two states of being. Fun is short lived while happiness can carry on
through periods of time be it days, months or years. On the surface, it does not really seem all
that reasonable, but here we are imperfect creatures with free will! The free will sometimes, or rather most of the
time, seems more like a curse than a blessing, at least to me.
Using it properly to follow God’s will is what free will
was intended by God to lead us to. He intended for us to follow Him willingly
without any coercion whatsoever. He wants each and every one of us to come to
His throne willingly and with all of our heart souls and mind for Him. He will
give us the help of the Holy Spirit, His guidance to withstand all the trials
and temptations this world throws our way. We have to have confidence in Him
and be able and willing to listen to that guidance to help us through these
periods of temptation and difficulty in our lives.
So, when Paul writes the people of Corinth, it is not
just them, but us for whom he thanks God we have been the beneficiaries of His
Grace, that through Jesus we might have salvation, that through Jesus our sins
would in the end be forgiven. We are not
made perfect by Jesus. That is a common
misconception among non-Christians. It
would be convenient if we were made perfect.
This is an issue which sorely needs addressing in today’s church, to
combat the misperceptions of the non-Christians. The common complaint most
non-Christians have of Christians is that we have a holier than thou attitude.
There may be some indeed who have this attitude, which is simply an
illustration of imperfection.
People who have the misconception that Christians are
made perfect are shocked when Christians act less than perfectly, so they just
presume the faith is false. There is nowhere in the Bible that states when we
become Christians, we are magically made perfect. But this is not so. They fail
to realize Christians are no more perfect than non-believers, as we are all
human and all are sinful creatures. We just realize this fact more than
non-believers do. They fail to consider
although we are not perfect, our faith is in the One who is perfect and we seek
guidance from Him. We may fail from time to time, but as long as we keep
returning to Him, it will be all right. They fail to realize we are just trying
to be perfect the best we can, but we won’t be perfect, but that does not mean
we can’t give up. They are blinded by not having the Holy Ghost’s guidance in
their heart.
The world confuses our righteous judgment of the world’s
behavior with a holier than thou attitude. But they do not see we realize we
are not perfect, but we are striving for perfection. And there would be no point behind
Christianity if that we had been made perfect. If we were made perfect, then
there would be no strife in the world today I believe; thus no reason to even
have any of the parables Jesus gave.
This is simply not so! While we
are accounted as perfect before God in the final judgment, we are not perfect
at all. If anything, we are more
conscious of our imperfection. And we
are working harder than before to try to overcome it. We will not succeed, of
course; but if we don’t try, then we will never get there.
As a side point, none of us is perfect, none of us is
better than others; however, some of us are clearly worse than others. We
certainly know more than those who do not believe we are fallen far short of
the goal He expects from us, being in our fallen state, and we know how far we
have to go to as get close to perfection as we possibly can. We need the help of the Almighty to travel on
this path!
Which takes us to Paul’s next point; if we follow Christ
in both out words and deeds, as the testimony of Christ is confirmed in them,
through our actions, we will be “In every
thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge…” For
by acting on Christ’s words, we not only gain eternal salvation, but are far
more likely to prosper here on earth.
This prosperity is not the mega wealth sometimes associated with
“prospering”, but rather the surplus of resources over our worldly desires and
the true happiness that comes from loving and helping others. It will make us far more happy than people
like Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, etc, who have far more money than even they
know what to do with, and money cannot provide true happiness. Only God and
Jesus can step in and fill that role, if we let him into our hearts.
But, not everyone is content to take Jesus at His
Word. After the Sadducees lost their
round with Jesus, the Pharisees, feeling they were superior to the Sadducees,
came together to trip Him up. However, as we know ourselves, one cannot trick
God, and if you try, you will come out looking the fool. An expert in The Law,
of which Pharisees were very fond, asked Him a question, trying to trick Him,
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus answered, “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.” Thus, He provided the Summary of the Law we hear every Holy
Communion.
The Pharisees made their earthly living by providing
guidance on how to get around the 613 Mosaic Laws with as little inconvenience
as possible. They were astounded when
Jesus boiled the intent of those laws down to two sentences. They were much more comfortable getting
around laws than complying with ones which might inconvenience them. They could
be closely compared to lawyers today as a matter of fact, in the striking
amount of dishonesty that is in their profession (no offense to the good
lawyers!).
Boiling down the intent of the laws into those two
sentences, gave the Pharisees a hard and fast law that for once, they could not
find a loophole in. There is no way to get around the basic intent in the
Summary of the Law, Love God, and love
your neighbor as yourself. The Pharisees would much rather follow the
complicated system of the 613 laws than the simple, basic Summary of the Law.
This is why they were so against Jesus’ ministry and why they wanted him dead.
They didn’t want the Summary of the Law and Jesus’ teachings destroying their
comfortable earthly living. This new way was a threat to their existence,
because they could not find loopholes in it, because there were none. And plus Jesus was on to their dishonesty and
was always pointing out the flaws in their thinking. He was a threat to them.
They could or would not see that it was far better to follow the Summary of the
Law than try to get around all 613 laws.
Apparently tiring of the game with the Pharisees and
wishing to confound them instead, Jesus asked them, saying, “What think ye of Christ? Whose son is He?” They say unto him, “The son of David.” For the scripture is clear that He should be
of the House of David. As God, Jesus has
been from the beginning, so he queried them, “How then doth
David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on
my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him
Lord, how is he his son?” Not grasping the concept
that God was, is and always will be, they could not answer and “from that day forth” no one would “ask him any more questions.” They
realized that they could not trick him with any more questions and that it only
made them look bad when He answered them.
There have always been and always will be people who want
to pick nits with the intent of avoiding doing what should be done, thus making
it seems acceptable to do what they want to do.
You can see people every day who fill the shoes of the Pharisees,
insisting on complying with arcane and useless rules and regulations while
studiously avoiding doing what God so clearly asks, that is to be a Christian
and do as Christ asks us to do. People
are always going to avoid doing what God wants us to do, that is in our nature.
You can see this as the government attempts to replace the Rule of God with the
rule of man. When a group of men believe that they have the right to control
other humans with the rule of man and disregard the rule of God, you know that
a society is in trouble. Ask Sodom, Gomorrah, Rome, Nazi Germany, and Imperial
Japan how that worked out for them in the end. No country has ever fared well
when it replaces God with the rule of Man. We are to be Christians, not “good”,
to do what God asks, not Go with the Flow! When you think about being a Christian, consider
these quotes from GK Chesterton:
·
Christianity
has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not
tried.
· The
word good has many meanings. For
example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred
yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
·
The
Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably
because generally they are the same people.
·
Tolerance
is the virtue of the man without convictions.
·
A
dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
We are called to a new and different life, we ask the
Lord, in His Grace, to lead us and follow us, to keep us always. Our goal is to do the Lord’s will, not to
avoid 613 laws or to replace Him altogether.
To do what is right, no matter how hard that may be and be humble. This
is the summary of what the Christian life should be all about.
Action, not diction, is what counts. It is by your actions you are known.
Be of God - Live of God - Act
of God
