The Loving Father`

 

Text: Romans 8:12-17

Focus: The Spirit

Function: How the Spirit of God connects us to God

¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— ¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Good Morning! This passage is packed full of promise for us as we continue the theme of Pentecost and look a little more closely at the role and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

In the beginning, The Word of God, Christ, created everything. Everything came from God, and according to scripture, God is all and in all. That is part of the purpose of God’s redemption for us.

And if Christ created everything, then Christ is in everything. Or, as Fr. Richard Rohr puts it, the Universal Christ. And if Christ is in everything, then everything is divine. That is how Saint Frances of Assissi was able to communicate with what he called Brother Rabbit and Sister squirrel. Because Christ embodied them as well as us. They too, are divine. They are loved and cared for by God. At least, that is what Jesus said when he said that even the sparrows cannot die without God’s love.

According the Fr. Rohr, the Spirit is in everyone, because everyone is created unique by God.

The Spirit of Christ is already in you.

And again, maybe we could say that Christians are those that recognize that the Spirit of Christ is inside of them and they allow the Spirit to lead and guide them. There is a focus in Jesus and the Apostle’s teaching on the power of the Holy Spirit our lives.

For example, the Scripture speaks of healing when it says that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in us and it helps our mortal bodies as well.

There are many promises about the Spirit in our lives.

Believers are those that Trust Christ. Trusting Christ can be made as simple as letting the Spirit lead in our lives.

I need to tell you that the Spirit’s leading for me is through contemplation, prayer, study and then actually doing it.

That is why our passage says that we are not obligated to follow our fleshly desires that go against the principle of loving our neighbor as ourselves. Things like unforgiveness, jealousy, and greed.

It implies then, that we are obligated, as it says, to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in our lives.

I try to spend time in prayer and contemplation, not trying to tell God what God already knows, but trying to listen to that still small voice of God that always leads me to forgiveness.

And as I mentioned a few weeks ago. The one thing that blocks the Spirit’s leading in my life is unforgiveness.

Without forgiveness of others, the scripture says, we are not forgiven ourselves and remain in bondage to unforgiveness.

Forgiveness sets us free.

So the passage says, put to death the deeds of the body.

A lot of us grew up hearing that putting to death the deeds of the body meant that we lived holy lives abstaining from swearing, even saying gosh and darn and shoot, abstaining from alcohol, gambling, dancing and jewelry for the women.

None of those things mattered in comparison to the holiness of love that God calls us to. The sins of racism, gluttony, greed, gossiping, judgmentalism, and placing patriotism over our love for God were encouraged in our churches over the teachings of Jesus.

But that was the past. I hear the Spirit doing something new. And now I hear preachers all over the world calling us to repent for the arrogance of that old kind of faith and start loving like Jesus calls us to.

So, he says put to death the deeds of the body. Put to death bitterness, jealousy, greed, hatred, unforgiveness and pride.

When forgiveness is hard for me, I remember that it is the spiritual discipline of putting to death the deeds of the flesh.

It is our fleshly nature, not spiritual nature, according to Paul in Romans, that causes us to want to hang on to unforgiveness, bitterness, jealousy and the pride that comes from being judgmental. The passage says that this leads to death. It means that these deeds do not bring the life giving power of God to us.

Okay, let me sum all that up so that I can segue away for a moment before I come back.

The Spirit is here in us. We have a choice to let the Spirit lead. Sometimes our baser instincts get in the way of loving others and that hinders the work of the Spirit in our lives.

Now the segue:

I titled the sermon the Loving Father because what impresses me the most about this passage is the way he speaks of the power of community with God that the Spirit brings to us.

He says the Spirit bears witness with ours that we are indeed Children and heirs with Christ.

And then he speaks of the community with God when he says that the Spirit calls out to God the Father with the very fond and familiar term, “Abba.” Abba means daddy, or Papa.

It is a term of endearment.

I used the word Loving as a qualifier in my sermon because I realize that the experience of a loving father may not be the experience of everyone here in the room.

And I want to give grace and understanding to those people because there is a difference between a loving father and a cruel, or self-serving one.

I understand how imperfect parents can confuse our concept of love. For me, the confusing problem with a parent’s love came from my mother. My Father represented the unconditional love of God to me. And I am grateful for that, I wanted to please my father because I loved him and I knew he believed in me.

God is the loving father who believes in us and encourages and enables us.

And Paul tells us that there is indeed a great blessing to be had for those who follow after the Spirit of Christ in their lives.

But now I am going to segue back.

He says that blessing comes to those who suffer with him.

What does he mean by suffer with him?

Again, I am not talking about becoming an actual martyr, unless God gifts us with the eternal blessing that that entails, but I am talking about the sacrifice that it takes to die to unforgiveness, bitterness, jealousy, greed, fear, pride and prejudice.

But don’t forget the promise of this passage. The promise remains. This relationship with God through the Holy Spirit is promised to those who trust in Christ.

Hang on to and nurture that blessing in your lives.

The Helper

 

Text: John 15:26-27; 4-15

Focus: Holy Spirit

Function: to help people experience the Spirit’s power

15:²⁶“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

16:^“4b I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. ⁵But now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. ⁷Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

¹²“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Good morning and I guess I should say, “Happy Birthday Church!”

Today is Pentecost. It is the day that we celebrate the beginning of the Church when the Holy Spirit filled the 120 gathered in a large room in Jerusalem.

It is an amazing story. Pentecost is the Jewish celebration that always occurred 50 days after the Passover celebration.

So, this group of believers after seeing Jesus appear to them several times in different form, is coming to terms with the reality that Jesus did indeed die and rise from the dead as Christ.

Some of them have witnessed his ascension into heaven and heard his instruction given to them in the book of Acts 1:8 when Jesus told them that they were to go to Jerusalem and wait for the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon them so that they too can testify to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

It seems to me that this early group of disciples are grasping the reality of their faith and are starting to trust in the promise of Jesus that he will send the Holy Spirit.

And that leads us to today’s text. They are parts of Jesus’ final instructions to the disciples in the Upper Room right after he washes their feet, dismisses Judas for the betrayal and right before he prays a lengthy prayer for them.

Jesus tells them about the mystery of the Holy Spirit in this passage.

He first wants to assure them not to grieve at his absence because by leaving, he will come back to them in the form of the Holy Spirit who will give to them the power to testify as he did.

That phrase I used, “The power to testify” takes me back to Acts 1:8 when he told them they will be his witnesses.

The word for witness is martyr. He tells them literally that they as well will testify to Jesus death by their own martyrdom.

And they didn’t shrink away. God was compelling them to follow God no matter what happened to them.

I keep preaching that we need to follow Jesus example and be willing to take up our cross and follow him as well.

They were not afraid to die because Jesus set the example for them. Jesus resisted the political power, because the spiritual powers were also the political powers, by dying on the cross and and forgiving the political powers in the process. They lived in faith of Jesus’ example to not resist or fight back but to trust in God.

Fighting back leads to more fighting and does not bring us to the peace that Christ intended for us.

But I digress.

Jesus gives us an example of hope in the justice of God.

He tells them that the Holy Spirit will prove their faith and the love and justice of God as he makes us just and righteous people.

We are to testify about his love and sacrifice for us by living loving and sacrificial lives for others.

That is what he means by being his witnesses. They are the ones who bear witness to his resurrection and the way he died. They recognize as well that he didn’t compromise his teachings even though they killed him for them.

We live in culture wars. I had a colleague tell me he was in trouble for “being woke” because he preaching from the Bible about how we are to turn the other cheek and disarm oppression through non violent means, like Jesus did, even if it cost him his life.

I don’t want to scare or shame you about being willing to be a martyr.

The promise from Christ is that we will live an a life without boundaries for eternity life in Christ.

The power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, according to Jesus is like a river of living water running out of us.

I might define Christians as those who allow the Spirit of Christ to move in their hearts.

As we allow the Spirit to move in our hearts we grow deeper in our faith.

And maybe it is because of the emphasis on forgiveness during Kairos, but I find the one thing that frees or limits the moving of the Holy Spirit in my life, is my faithfulness to the spiritual discipline of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a way we testify to Jesus. It almost always contains an element of our own martyrdom because it involves the sacrifice of our pride. But sacrificing our pride is always spiritually beneficial for us.

Even though John mentions Jesus speaking about how the Spirit will show Jesus love and justice to the world through us, the main emphasis of the passage is on the fact that the Spirit is here to help us. Hence the title, The Helper.

The passage translates the idea of helper into the world advocate. An advocate is a sort of counsel who has the power to make things right.

I remind myself that Jesus came to earth to restore the creation back to God by restoring us back to each other and breaking down the walls, not building them up, between the races and cultures and religion and all peoples of the world. And he came to restore all of creation, so it includes justice for the planet without poisoning our children’s future.

And I this passage reminds us that if Jesus leaves planet earth and he will return as the Christ Spirit inside of all of us, made evident in this passage to those who rest in Christ. He left planet earth as Jesus the Nazarene and returned as the Christ just like he promised and it was marked by the miracles of the appearance of flaming tongues and people being able to speak languages that they didn’t know previously.

The Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit and God began doing great things in their midst.

As then we see in the next few chapters of Acts that they gave up their greed and shared in common and helped the poor, who also became believers and shared and helped others and the community prospered because they took seriously the command to love their neighbor just as much as they love their own selves and families.

So the promise is that we will not only be baptized in water, but in the power of the Holy Spirit and it will transform us so that we can follow Jesus and transform our culture into a more loving place.

The Meaning of Baptism

Text: 1 John 5:9-13

Focus: Baptism

Function: to help people see what the symbol of baptism is all about.

⁹If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. ¹⁰Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. ¹¹And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹²Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

¹³I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Good morning. Today we are going to talk about baptism. I choose this passage to introduce the theme, but I am a little bit hesitant because of the way we interpret “believe” and then it might sound like the arrogance of “we are in and they are out.” And I don’t want us to focus on that. Today, we focus on what it means to give our lives to Christ.

Because, in essence, Baptism is the symbol of our desire to live according to the teachings of Jesus. Baptism is the outward sign of the inward act to follow the way of Jesus.

The passage tells us that when we believe, God lives in our hearts.

So what does it mean to you to believe? (Later on, we are going to ask that question.)

The word “believe” is always followed with the word into.

It is a statement of trust. We believe into Jesus.

It is more than just believing that Jesus exists but it’s the statement that we trust in him.

Let us do an experiment. For those who are able and willing, for just a moment, would you please stand?

Okay, thanks.

Now, please sit back down.

When you were sitting down before you stood up, you knew that the chair you were sitting in would support you.

As a matter of fact, I guess that before you sat in the chair the firs time, you didn’t check it to see if it was safe, you trusted it because you have sat in the chair before.

That is what trusting Jesus is like. When you sat back down, you trusted the chair, and rested yourselves.

Our experiences with God lead us to rest in God and trust God more and more.

Baptism then, is that outward sign of our inward decision to trust, or rest, in Jesus.

We acknowledge that Jesus is here, living in our hearts and our Christian journey is learning to walk with Jesus here (point to heart), in our hearts.

The promise is that this kind of life will lead us to love one another.

Why do we trust Jesus? Because Jesus came to us from God and showed us how God wants us to live.

Jesus came to restore the world to God. He was killed by evil people for telling people to always love others. But he rose from the dead as the Christ and his death and coming back to life has made the way for us to have hope in living Jesus’ way. We don’t have to be afraid anymore. God now calls us God’s children.

This passage tells us that this new life from God is the way we are saved. And since Jesus has restored us to God, we call it “salvation.” Christ is the Savior of all. Those who trust in him get baptized as a symbol of their trust in Christ.