Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time
and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion
Descanso, California
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 we might be
governed and thus preserved by His great
goodness, we are in effect asking for His Guidance for us to be
guided. This concept is constant
throughout all the collects. It is constant because it is the truth. We are in
need of His Goodness and His Guidance to be able to follow the narrow uphill
path towards heaven. Guided means means we need to ask, then
listen to what He Tells us, then actually follow those instructions. 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.
It is not just the listening part but then after hearing the guidance to
act upon that. Only then can we truly
be guided by Him. 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 His 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 meaning only the safety of our
soul, our eternal life. Protection from what we deserve by our own nature,
eternal damnation. That is a more important safety than here on the temporary
physical plane. This existence is only temporary and will be over in a blink of
an eye. Eternity is far longer than that. So, the safety of us on this plane of
existence is not nearly as important as in eternity.
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 in a terrible death
on the Cross did for us. An animal is a poor substitute for a divine being who
is our conduit from heaven to earth, and vice 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 Saint Paul, was our teacher to make us ready
for the coming of Christ. Saint Paul in the Epistle pretty much explains 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
in following The Law. 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 intended. Before the
world began God knew of both the New and the Old Covenants. He also replaces
the many intermediary priests of the Old with Himself, the single, High
Intermediary Priest. The Old Covenant had to be put in place before the New
Covenant, that is to say Jesus, could come to Earth. The people had to be
prepared for Him.
At the same
time, as imperfect creatures with free will, even if we do our very best to
follow His Word, we will still not ever 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 Old Testament sacrifices, 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 we should always remember and be thankful He was willing to die for our sins.
We should
be willing to remember this and act upon it by fulfilling the Great Commission
and spreading the Gospel, the story of Jesus’ death and sacrifice for us for
all time, and for all mankind, to all nations. In this, He has pretty much said
if we are His followers, we will do as He asks, in acting for Him. Action, not
just that of diction is what He is looking for. So, let us act for Him!
In the
Gospel, Jesus reminds us 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. He makes the same point He makes time after time, if
we are truly of His Flock, we will act for Him. Act, not just talking nice
words, but acting upon those words as well. Action shows where a person’s heart
truly is. If they truly are of His Flock, then their actions shall show their
belief. Few of the Pharisees could conceive, or peradventure would not
conceive, 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 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. They were
looking for only what would be a temporary power, power on this physical plane.
Like mentioned earlier, this pales in comparison to safety in eternity. 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 as 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
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
[1] If the text of this sentence
seems familiar, it is John 3.16, probably the most widely quoted text of the
Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment