Sermon Summary for 10th Sunday after Trinity, 24 August 2025, the Anglican Orthodox communion Worldwide
“I would not have you ignorant.” 1 Corinthians 12:1
The Collect.
LET thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ignorance is a great affliction of the spiritually lazy Christian. It cannot be due to an inaccessibility of Scripture teaching as these are available around the world in our day except in isolated regions such as North Korea. The greater spiritual ignorance in America is found in homes which possess more than one Bible that goes unread and unheeded. The average Christian feels he has done his part in the simple attendance of a single worship service on Sunday. He folds his Bible, if he even brought it, and returns it to the security of his desk until next Sunday when he bears it in pride to worship services. A closed book imparts no knowledge.
Of course, it is quite possible to possess knowledge without understanding as well. Many can cite page and paragraph of the Scriptures without having the slightest heart-knowledge of their meaning. Biblical wisdom may be viewed as knowledge imbued with love, and that love is too often missing in the hearts of some Christian scholars. Christ counseled the Woman at the Well, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23-24
We may have great biblical truth, but lack the spirit of love; or, we may have much spirit (of a sort) and be missing biblical knowledge. There are churches that strongly preach the Gospel but absent love. There are others that demonstrate a high level of spirit that is not refined by knowledge of Scripture. Both truth AND Spirit are needful.
Our Prayer of Collect petitions God to hear our prayers, and to guide those prayers to ask for those things pleasing to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. How shall we know what things are pleasing to God if we have failed to study His Book which He has given us for our benefit. That would be equivalent to an airline pilot flying an aircraft without studying the operator’s manual. The operator’s manual of the Christian is the Holy Bible.
In our Epistle, we are counseled that “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” True. However, the Holy Ghost works through the purview of the Holy Scriptures to bring to our REMEMBRANCE all things written of Christ in the Scriptures. If we have failed to study diligently, how can the Holy spirit bring that to remembrance which we have not even taken the trouble and time to read?
We are reminded by Paul that we are given various gifts as individuals – no man is possessed of all gifts for these are particularly granted by our Lord. Boasting of our gifts diminishes our testimony in Christ. One particular gift that is mistaken claimed today is the so-called gifts of tongues. Paul does, in fact make references to the gift of “divers kinds of tongues.” This clearly points to established languages of various kinds – not ecstatic utterances that are neither understood by the people, nor even by the one speaking them. If their were a heavenly language being spoken, it would be particular and certainly not diverse.
In our Gospel reading from St. Luke 19, we learn that truth may cease to be available to those who habitually reject truth. This is the case of the Jerusalem and Hebrew nation of which Christ makes reference when He says, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” Luke 19:42 Habitual sin and habitual rejection of truth makes the heart of man calloused so that truth can no longer penetrate the hardened sinews of the heart.
How man professing Christians in earshot of this sermon today have opened your Bible to learn more of God at lease once in the past six days, much less six times?
Our Lord makes a stunning prophecy of the calamity that would befall Jerusalem in the near future. In fact, that calamity did come when Titus and roman Army besieged Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and put the entire population to the sword. Now Jesus proceeds to cleanse the Temple after His entry into Jerusalem this last time in His ministry. He cleansed it at the beginning of His ministry (John 2:13-14), and now He cleanses it this last time. What is the meaning of these two cleansings? Among other things, it means that we are never clean in our own hearts solely by our own measure. We were cleansed of our sin at our first confession, and we must seek forgiveness continually for the sins of the day that we surely will commit.
Our Lord considered daily Bible study supremely important for “. . . he taught daily in the temple.”
Does he teach us daily by His Word which He makes available to us, or do we slack off the privilege of allowing Him to “teach us daily” today and every day. Bible study is a form of fellowship with the Lord, and we should fellowship with Him daily if we truly love Him.
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST. AMEN
