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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.
Consider these words from the
Collect:
… who never
failest to help and govern those whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear
and love; Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good
providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name…
We must acknowledge God will help and lead us if we
will look to him for that help and leadership. We need His Help, in the form of the Holy Ghost, to direct
our hearts, minds and souls to look to Him for that Help in our time of need.
Speaking of time of need; when do we need God? Only when we are falling short of
perfection. That would be all the
time.
The Epistle is a great illustration of why we need
guidance from the Holy Ghost all the time. If we want God’s love, we have to love those around us. That is pretty easy. It is easy to love people. The problem is that we actually have to
act on that claim of love, not just say we love them. We have to give of our time and effort to help those around
us who have problems. John tell us
“And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son
Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that
keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know
that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”
So how far do we have to go to fulfill our obligation
to love our fellow beings? We have
a leader, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is not only the Propitiation for our sins[1],
but who set the standard for our performance. As John reminds us, “He laid down his life for us.” So, too much work or I don’t
have time are probably not valid excuses. There is no excuse for not doing
as Christ did and loving our fellow beings even unto death. There is no excuse
that is adequate to get us out of this job. So we must perform this task with
great cheer. For you cannot have true love without cheerfulness and a giving
heart. We may be serious at times, but we can still be cheerful in that we have
the love of God within our hearts and we can spread that to others.
Speaking of time, many times people put off church
for other “more important” things, do you? Like the certain man who made a great supper, the Lord sets
aside a time every week for us to worship with Him. Actually His time is pretty flexible. The Lord’s worship can be done at times
other than 1000 on Sunday morning if you really do have to work, you have
weekend duty, you are on alert or something you really cannot get out of. But, where are your priorities? Is a football game, a fishing trip or
just plain sleeping in the “reason” for your failing to show for the great
supper? When you fail to plan
ahead, you plan to fail. So always
plan ahead and plan for success, that way you will never fail to show for the
great supper.
The Gospel is about more than just going to church,
it is about priorities. We need to
put the things that are really important in the list of things to do above the
things that are not really important.
We need to think about what is important to us and to God. Sometimes they are different. Then, we need the Holy Ghost to get our
priorities in order.
People do what is important to them. When they feel guilty they come up with
excuses, but in reality, they please themselves.
So, what we need to do is ask the Holy Ghost for help
to make God’s agenda ours; thus when we please God, we please ourselves. A win – win situation. And it will make
us far happier people as a result, which is what God’s plan is for us all
along. Whenever he tells us not to do something, it is to make us happy not sad.
If we do not make time for God, how do we expect Him
to make time for us? If we will
not diligently study the lessons He has left for us, how can we expect to know
what He wants us to do?
Do you recall the words
of GK Chesterton:
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has
been found difficult and not tried.”
We need to come to church and
read the Bible so we can find out what God wants. But, the idea is not to find out what He wants so we can
work around it or live with it, but rather live in it. Think about the 613 Mosaic laws and the
Pharisees who made a good living telling people how to comply with them to the
letter and still do just what they wanted to do.
If we find out what God wants
and decide to actually do it instead of avoid it, we are still faced with an
often huge problem of where do we get the strength to accomplish this
task. The answer is circular, from
God, the Holy Ghost. He never asks
us to do anything we cannot do good enough for Him if we rely on Him. Never.
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
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