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Sermon - Rev Jack Arnold
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:
… thy people; … by thy great
goodness … may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul …
In the Collect, we ask
God to help us to look to Him for leadership and direction that we might be
saved, both our physical bodies and souls. For, if we do not look to God for our guidance and direction
we are surely lost like a man in the wilderness without a compass. When we ask that we might be governed
and thus preserved by His great goodness,
we are in effect asking for His Guidance for us to be guided. Guided, that means we need to ask,
then listen to what He Tells us, then actually follow that guidance. Recall to mind this quote from GK
Chesterton:
·
“Christianity has not been tried and found
wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”
It does absolutely no good for us to ask God for
guidance, then when He gives it to us for us to ignore or pretend we did not
hear. After all, there are none so
deaf as those who will not hear, a concept discussed more fully in Matthew
13.13. Thus, we need to ask for He
Help, His Guidance, then actually do our very best to follow Him.
If we look to Him for guidance, we then look to Him
for safety. Safety means only
the safety of our soul, our eternal life.
Things may get tense here, for as Aslan is not a tame lion, God is not a
tame god. He is the one true and
triune God. Not tame, but the
savior of mankind. Think about
this; pretty clearly the Mosaic Law with its 613 rules did not really work to
save mankind. The constant
sacrifice of animals could not make us accounted for as perfect in God’s
eye. After all, an animal would
never work to cleanse our sins, account us as perfect and let us enter into
heaven, as Christ’s sacrifice by the terrible death on the Cross did for us. An
animal is a poor substitute for a divine being that is our conduit from heaven
to earth, and visa versa. Yet this was only an intermediate step towards Christ
as we will hear about more in a minute.. The law to paraphrase the words of St.
Paul was our teacher to make us ready for the coming of Christ. Without having
had the law as our base, we would not have been ready for Christ. It was a
needed step to prepare the world for Jesus. We were always destined to
fail. We cannot make the grade on
our own. We need the One
Sacrifice, One Time, for all mankind, for all time.
Our only means of being accounted as perfect when we
come before God is to rely on the sacrifice and intermediary priesthood of His
Son, our Savior Jesus Christ to account us as perfect before God on that final
day. Your AOC ministers, while officially
titled as priests are not intermediary priests, there is one high priest, Jesus
Christ the Righteous who is also the propitiation for our sins! He is our Savior, our Leader, our
Teacher, our Master, our Example!
Christ came to succeed the Old Covenant which was
marked by sacrifices of innocent animals, that really did not do the job, with
the New Covenant which is marked by His death on the cross for our sins, and
this has done the job which was intended. Before the world began God knew of
both the New and the Old Covenants. The Old Covenant had to be put in place
before the New Covenant or Jesus could come to Earth. The people had to be
prepared for Him.
At the same time, as imperfect creatures with free
will if we do our very best to follow His Word, we will not be perfect. On the other hand, we will be better
than we will if we do not. Thus,
without the sacrifice of His Son, we will not make the cut. It is a better solution than
sacrificing the animals like the Hebrews. Without Him, we will end up in the
pit. We need that one sacrifice,
one time, for all mankind, for all time. If we did not need that sacrifice,
then we wouldn’t be seeing all the troubles in the world today. Today’s world makes clear the need for
the sacrifice He made for us; one time for all time. Unlike the sacrifices of
the Old Testament, which required multiple sacrifices a year, this sacrifice
was made one time, one year, for all time. It is a far superior arrangement,
but it came at a heavier cost than the Old Covenant, the cost of His death. It
is a cost that we should always remember and be thankful that He was willing to
die for our sins.
In the Gospel, Jesus reminds us that if we believe in
Him and keep His Word (keeping His Word meaning acting upon it), then we shall
make our seamless journey from the Shadowlands to His Home. Few of the Pharisees could conceive, or
peradventure would not conceive, that God would send His Son to this world for
us. They did not even believe He had a son, they were looking for the Messiah
figure they thought couldn’t be Him. The Messiah was in fact Jesus, the Christ
of God. They expected an earthly
savior, one who would drive the Romans out and put the Jews in charge of that
corner of the world. They did not expect a divine savior and could not conceive
that this savior would come from God, as His Own Son, to offer himself up as a
sacrifice in our stead.
Their problem was that Jesus came to save our souls
and give us eternal life, eternal life starting right then. Not just for the Jews and Israel, but
the whole wide world, Jew, Gentile, Greek and all others. Jesus brought salvation and life to the
entire world. That was not what
the Pharisees were looking so hard for with their magnifying glasses as they
examined Torah and The Law.
Pharisees were not big picture people, and as Calvin told Hobbes, “We
big picture people rarely become historians.” It would seem that also applied
to the Pharisees though they were not “big picture people”, they misinterpreted
the prophecies of the Messiah. Regardless, even though some people chose to
misunderstand the prophecies, He came and He made that one sacrifice, at one
time, for all mankind, for all time. For God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life[1].
Who is Jesus?
Our Savior? Indeed. But, more He has been since before the
beginning of the world, for He is one with I Am.
Through His Actions, we are saved.
Do ye likewise:
ACT
It is by our actions we are known.
Be of God - Live of God - Act of God
[1]
If the text of this
sentence seems familiar, it is John 3.16, probably the most widely quoted text
of the Bible.
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