Revealing God

 

Text: John 14:22-29

Focus: the Spirit

Function:

²²Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” ²³Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.²⁵“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. ²⁸You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. ²⁹And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur you may believe.

Good morning to God’s beloved children!

Today we are going to see part of the reason why God loves us so much.

I want to make sure that we understand at the end of the message this morning that since God created everything and permeates everything, God’s love is universal and extends to everyone.

I get a little bit nervous when I read that if we love God we will keep their word and then the Father will love them as if the Father didn’t love them before.

The idea that the author, John, is trying to express here is that the one who is doing God’s word is the one who is actively working to show God’s love to others and when we abide in love, we feel it more and more and it increases, seemingly exponentially as we live the Spirit filled life.

Kids raised in the church sometimes leave the faith for a while as they decide for themselves what it is they believe. It is an important part of our spiritual development and although parents may be afraid of the consequences, God isn’t because God is faithful to them.

God promises to keep us in God’s love.

And oftentimes, those children come back to some sort of faith, maybe not a regular church attendance, but an heartfelt desire to live in a way that promotes love between others in their own way.

Sometime they are back in church. One of my children has recently came back to Church and I was talking to them about spirituality and they were telling me the amazing revelation they had about how when they started praying again and looking for God in their lives, they found them right there with them all along. God is faithful and will never abandon us.

The point is that as we walk in love and in God, more and more, we sense and see God at work and the Spirit’s presence becomes more real to us.

We stress this point a lot to our Kairos brothers in the prison. The spiritual disciplines of prayer, study about God, and love through action, along with forgiveness, rely on the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives and as we allow the Spirit to work on us, we grow more and more in love.

And that is the point John is making here about Jesus’ teaching when he says that God will love the one who obeys, or is walking in love. When we walk in love, more and more love is evident and available to us.

So, the first point is that when we walk in love, God’s love increases in us and flows to others. Our reaction to that point? We make the choice to love.

The one who loves God walks in God’s love and it becomes evident to those around them.

This story takes place on Maundy Thursday and it is Jesus’ final words to the disciples before his death and resurrection. In today’s story, Jesus explains why he is telling them this so that they to aren’t shocked by the events of next couple of days.

He knows what they need to continue to have faith in him and he assures them that he will supply it.

And he explains to them a little bit about one of my favorite subjects: the Holy Spirit.

He explains that he is leaving them and the reason that is good is because the Spirit of God will replace him and be with them always.

He gives us a name for the Spirit. The text says The Advocate. If you go to Bible Hub on the web, you will see that the word for Advocate translates in several different but similar ways. It is also called the helper, the counselor, and the comforter.

We can get an idea about the meaning of the word from those different translations. The Greek word is ParaClete. “Para” like Parallel means to come along side and Clete means to speak.

So, the Holy Spirit comes beside us and speaks both to us and for us. The Spirit is there to guide us.

And Jesus wants us to rest in the Spirit’s leading and guidance. He tells them this so that they will not be afraid in times of crisis.

By the way, I really feel the prayers of everyone during this time of crisis with Philip Jr. and I do hear the Holy Spirit continue to tell me that he has my son in his hands and that through this he is healing him beyond his heart and kidney conditions.

So: Pray and then rest in God is the counsel that Jesus gives to the disciples and to us.

After he explains a little bit about the Spirit who lives inside of us, he gives them a spiritual gift: Peace.

He gives his peace to us. And he says that it isn’t a conditional gift, based on performance, but it is divine and permanent.

This is another blessing that is given to us by the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives. We can have peace and confidence in the midst of trials.

And it isn’t because of our great character, strength or will power, it is a divine gift, a grace given to us by God that empowers us to rest in God’s care for us.

God wants the church to grow. God wants out church to grow. I believe we grow by showing God’s love to others. God’s love is revealed in our love.

God is revealing their love to the world through us, the Church, as we learn to walk in God and in God’’s love.

What God Has Cleansed

 

Text: Acts 11:1-18

Focus: Cleansing

Function: to see how the Spirit sets people free

11:¹Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Good morning to the beloved of God.

For those of us who are not born Jewish, this is a pivotal passage as it is the story whereby God includes all races in Their kingdom instead of just the Jewish peoples.

Except for the leading of the Holy Spirit with the early church, this could have become an huge issue of conflict and debate for the early church that could have split it and stunted its growth. Instead, it was the spark that ignited the flames of the Spirit to spread the gospel across the world.

Now that history has settled the issue and we are past it, let me explain the story a little bit because this was huge for those in the Church from the Jewish faith, which was most of them at this time.

I’ll give you a short history lesson of the people of Israel to help us picture the importance to them of circumcision and racial purity.

Abraham had a vision whereby God promised him that he would have children and they would possess the land of Canaan which was occupied by nations that refused to give justice to the weak and marginalized among them. God, knowing the future and how corrupt they would become sent prophets to warn them and when they didn’t listen, according to the Old Testament, God decided to make an example of them with perhaps the hope that others would see what happened and fear God enough to have a just government and welcome the stranger.

By the way, welcoming the stranger, a biblical command has always been the Mideastern sign of the righteousness of the host. Lot proved this when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.

So after Abraham died, and his two sons and the Israelis went to Egypt to escape a famine and then were made slaves and brutally treated until God miraculously delivered them from their slave-masters, they came back to the land of Canaan, claiming this divine mandate to wipe out the inhabitants of the land because if they didn’t, they would accept the wicked ways with which God was displeased.

But destroying everyone is a tall order and they didn’t have the heart to do it. And true to the predictions, they started worshiping foreign gods instead of Y*W*H. And the problem with these cultures was that was that their pagan worship included evil things like institutional rape, child sacrifice and other acts of injustice or evil against innocent peoples. The cultures didn’t care for the least of these. They violated God’s law of treating other people as well as you treat yourself.

So, the Hebrew faith got corrupted with these evil practices and God allowed them to be punished like the nations they were to dispossess. And the punishment was severe, most of them were murdered in the war they lost to the Assyrians around 400 BCE.

But God is faithful, and after 70 years, a remnant returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the city.

All that happened only 400 years before this time when Jesus walked the earth. And in their memory and religion they held it dear that if only they had refused to mingle with non Jewish people, they would not have been corrupted and suffered so terribly.

So when Peter went to the house of the uncircumcised, it was indeed a huge sin in the eyes of the Jewish people.

Keeping themselves separate from Gentiles was one of their most important commands. So, in this passage, Peter is fending off a conflict brewing in the church about spending time with non Jewish people because Peter had blatantly broken an important Old Testament command. They wanted to know why.

And of course, Peter gives a great defense, which we read in today’s passage, about how the Holy Spirit gave him this vision about unclean food and it was a metaphor about unclean people.

By the way, the Jewish people also had very strict dietary restrictions and the vision that Peter has is God telling him that the dietary restrictions the Jewish people had no longer apply because God makes the unclean clean.

God makes everything new.

In this story, we see two examples of where God changes the OT law in order to bring mercy to the NT peoples.

Peter sees that God is able to cleanse the non Jewish person as well as the Jewish person.

God cleansed the Gentile crowd that Peter had been preaching to and the proof of it was the way the Holy Spirit fell on them. They sensed the Spirit’s presence even before Peter finished preaching and a visible demonstration of the Spirit happened to them just like it did in the beginning of the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost when they saw what appeared to be tongues of fire.

The Holy Spirit moved and a very important Old Testament law against fraternizing with other races is abolished because God wants to redeem everyone, the world entire.

In order to include us non Jewish persons in the Kingdom of God, God reversed an OT law.

In order to fulfill the principle of loving others as much as we love ourselves, the Holy Spirit removed the barriers set by the scriptures.

And God’s Spirit is still moving and setting people free and including them in God’s family.

The principle Peter was to follow was that when God cleansed someone, then we must include those persons in the fellowship.

And God’s Spirit is still moving today.

In the last 20 years, several of us Christian leaders have felt the moving of the Holy Spirit to include those whom we used to call sinners in the family of God.

Pray for us at Annual Conference this year as we will be discussing how to include us folks from the LBGTQ+ community in the Church.

I know for me, the Holy Spirit fell on me in a dramatic way, first when I was baptized and subsequently several times since then, and cleansed me, and accepted me in the Kingdom.

I have spent time with my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters at Annual conference and witnessed the moving of the Holy Spirit with them as well.

The conflict was avoided when the Apostles realized that the leading of the Spirit can override a Scripture in order to include more and more people in God’s family.

So I realize that what God has cleansed belongs to God and is a part of the Church regardless of their sexual orientation.

Mercy!

 

Text: John 21:15-19

Focus: Mercy

Function: to help people see how God restores us in failure

¹⁵When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” ¹⁶A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” ¹⁷He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” ¹⁹(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Good morning to the beloved of God!

I want to bring you greetings from the Warren County Correctional Institute where I spent yesterday and last weekend witnessing the mercy of God as it was poured out on a group of men whom society has rejected and deemed unworthy of freedom.

I am profoundly struck by the passage in Matthew 25:34-40: ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷Then those who do justice will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’

This morning, when I call you the beloved of God I mean it based again on this passage that I just read because it names you, right here at Painter Creek as “Blessed by my Father” because of the way you encourage and support our ministry to the prison.

There are a lot of rules about going into the prison and not everyone can get in, or is equipped to do this kind of work.

What you did for me last weekend by baking cookies, praying, and allowing my absence for a Sunday and at yesterday’s meeting was you also visiting the prisoner vicariously through our collective work together.

It is good to be blessed by the Father.

And last weekend, I saw a lot of mercy happening.

Our text for today is about mercy after failure.

I punctuated the title with an exclamation point to illustrate the wonder and awe we feel when we experience God’s mercy.

Let me give you a background to our story this morning.

Peter is a rock, according to Jesus, but he is also impetuous, according to me. What I mean is that while Peter is zealous and seems to be the first one to speak, he sometimes speaks before he thinks. Jesus has to correct him a few times in the gospels, and Paul, later on in the epistle to the Galatian church. But his heart is pure and he loves the Lord. His problem is our problem, he is not yet perfect.

So, earlier, when Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to be betrayed and they will desert him, Peter, knowing his heart and devotion to the Lord, brags that he will die with Jesus before denying him. And the rest of the disciples join in.

But Jesus calls out his confidence in his own ability and zeal and prophecies that he will deny him three times before the night is over. Which he does and weeps bitterly when he realizes his failure.

You know the story, Jesus is arrested, the disciples flee, one of them was grabbed and slipped out of his tunic and escaped naked according the gospel of Mark. Except. Except Peter who trails the arresting party and follows Jesus. He is holding to his bravado.

I mentioned Jesus calling out his confidence in his own ability because that seems to be the spiritual lesson that we learn from Peter’s failure.

Jesus is telling him, and us through Peter’s failure, a few things. The first is that God is the one who keeps us faithful and inspires us. We do not need to worry if we will react correctly when being tested for our faith because God will give us the confidence we need when we are faced with a crisis situation.

The second thing Jesus is showing comes from today’s passage and that is again, Mercy.

Peter denies Christ three times and in this story of redemption when Jesus rebuilds his confidence in God’s plan for him, Jesus re-commissions him for his ministry.

In response to the three denials, he asks him three times if he loves him and by the 3^rd time, Peter is upset that Jesus is questioning his loyalty. Then we figure out that Jesus isn’t questioning him, but forgiving him and including Peter with all of his human weakness to be a part of God’s great redemption of the world. God includes you and I as well.

Peter fails three times and three times Jesus re-instates him to what our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers call the Pope. And Peter, as the head of the Church, is entrusted with caring for the flock of God.

God redeems the church and then the church cares for its own and builds its own up, nurtures them and gives them a future and a hope.

Again, Peter’s sin is not zeal. It is zeal without knowledge of the power of God’s mercy.

It isn’t that Peter has a death wish, but his faith is so strong that he is certainly willing. And Jesus tells him, in the last few verses of the passage, that he will also be given the courage to face death again and this time, not cower away in fear. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us strength to bear witness to Christ with our lives and actions.

Incidentally, history records that Peter was eventually crucified for his faith, but he was crucified upside down so that he would not take away from the image of Christ crucified for us as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Now, we are three weeks post -Easter in our worship.

It is a time when we focus on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

I suppose the martyrdom of the Apostles, like Peter being crucified for his faith, is another proof of the resurrection. Why would they have been willing to die for a lie if it wasn’t true?

And I submit they their willingness to follow Christ came from the kind of faith that God promises to plant inside of all us to take us through trials and bear witness to God’s love.

God’s mercy extends through our weaknesses.