Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action
Church of the Faithful Centurion - Descanso, California
Rev Jack's sermon can be viewed on video RIGHT HERE.
Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above.
Consider these words from the Collect:
… hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities …
The Collect starts as they often do by asking God to hear us. It seems to me this is rather odd a thing to ask as He hears us all the time; the problem is when we need His Help we so rarely ask, then when He answers, we will not hear Him. That being said, when we do accept the Holy Ghost’s Help to pray, we can expect to receive spiritual, mental and physical comfort from God. The key word in this is accept. In order to receive the comfort from God, we have to first let him into our hearts to begin his renewal of our spirit. If we do not accept the Holy Ghost’s help, then God will not be able to help us.
It would be foolish not to accept the Great Physician’s help to transform our spirits. It would be like having cancer, and there being a cure for cancer and rejecting that cure because we don’t like it. Without the help of the Holy Ghost into our hearts, we truly cannot follow Christ. We, of ourselves, cannot follow God without His Divine Assistance. We are sheep gone astray from our shepherd and without Jesus, are wolf food. But with Jesus’s protection, we are safe from the wolf/lion known as Satan.
In order to have the Holy Ghost’s help into our heart, we must let go of self centered and prideful ways. Prideful beings cannot be followers of Christ. Peter makes this point when he says that God resists the proud and gives His Grace to the humble. The humble are those who are more likely to accept His Grace and the Holy Ghost’s help to renew their spirit. The proud believe they are self-made people and scoff at the very idea of God sending his only begotten Son that we should not perish but have life everlasting (John 3:16). These people are very resistant to God and the Holy Spirit. These are the people that scoff at us and do not understand the benefits of the power of God and the Holy Spirit. They will continually be living in their own delusion unless they are otherwise shaken from it. And this is an extremely powerful delusion and it is difficult for these folks to be shaken from it. It is possible, but it does require that they allow the Holy Spirit in them, in order to be snapped out of the delusion. They do not understand that our self centered and prideful ways hurt us way more than it can ever help.
The humble know they cannot make it into heaven on their own; thus they know they need that divine help and are willing to accept it. They know that without God’s help they are nothing and thus they are more willing than the proud to rely on God.
We must strive to be humble in our lives and less prideful. When we let go of our pride, we can see where we are in error. This is a life long process for most of us. It is a very difficult thing to let go of our pride, but it is something that must be done to further our character development all the same. Next time you are thinking prideful thoughts, stop and try and switch to a more humble attitude. In life, being humble will get you a lot farther than being prideful ever will.
When we accept help from the Holy Ghost, we can begin to fix the cracks and faults in our spiritual character. He can shine a light into the darkest areas of our hearts. Jesus could do this as well and He knew very well the spiritual character of each person He encountered in His Earthly Ministry. He knows which areas we need to most work on and He will tell us. We just have to listen to Him and then act upon it. Listening and then acting is the key phrase here. Without listening we’ll never know what we need to change and without acting we will never be able to change. So we must listen to what He has to say, regardless of how we feel about it and then act
With a clear view of the inner most thoughts of their hearts, Jesus tells the Pharisees the story of the shepherd who loses a sheep and searches for it. When he finds the sheep he carries it back to the flock on his shoulders. He goes on to tell the story of the woman who loses a piece of silver and turns her house inside out to find it. That story ends in a very interesting word play in English, “Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece (peace) which I had lost.” Jesus ends the story with, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” No doubt the Pharisees missed the point of the parable as their hearts were too blackened by pride to hear His Word.
The moral of the parable is Jesus is all about saving the sinners, not those who are already “righteous.” But for realists, there are none who are already “righteous.” I liken the church as a hospital for sinners. And all of the saints were sinners in their past too. Therefore Jesus is all about saving all of us, as none of us are truly righteous without His Influence in our lives. Having said that, there is also joy when we do not sin, but choose God’s way. And we enjoy it more also. So, it is preferable if we do not sin in the first place, but if we can’t do that, then God finds joy when we truly repent and turn back to Him and ask for His help and be willing to listen. There are no holier than thous in Christ’s flock, we are all equally non perfect folk or sinners that have let the Holy Ghost into our hearts to inspire us to change and become better humans and children of God.
Notice Jesus’ actions when He finds a lost sheep, He carries it back to the flock on His shoulders with a smile on His face. He rejoices in each lost soul saved. This is what the Church is about, bringing lost souls to Our Shepherd of Souls, Our Savior, Our Advocate, Jesus Christ, to His Kingdom of Heavenly Joys.
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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