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"I will not leave you comfortless"Preached at St. Barnabas Church, Bellville, TX Whitsunday, 2009 by The Rev. Stephen E. Stults John 14:18 (NKJ) I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. We have come to a miraculous day in history. The day of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, as we Anglicans call it, is a day like no other. It is a unique day in history and a unique day in religion. It is a day that sets Christianity apart from all other religions. How can we claim this? How can we say that Pentecost changed the “theological landscape” forever? The reasons are many, but they coalesce down to one: on this day, some two-thousand years ago, God Himself fulfilled a prophecy by “pouring out” His Spirit on all flesh. As we discussed briefly last week, the Prophet Joel told us this would happen: "And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions.” In God’s complete and wonderful faithfulness, so it happened. Just as He promised, He sent the Holy Spirit to tabernacle with us, forever. In the Old Testament the feast of Pentecost commemorated the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, on the fiftieth day of the Exodus. In the New Testament Pentecost marks the birthday of the Christian Church. As an item of interest, it was the last Jewish Holiday St. Paul kept, just prior to his conversion.1 Thus, the feast of Pentecost, as recorded in the New Testament is remarkable. No other major world religion has a recorded event like this. In no other religion, has the deity chosen to manifest himself to his believers in such a universal way. It is true, other religions have had ecstatic events, but these usually come to one prophetic individual, who then interprets the events for others. No other religion has God’s Spirit being poured out so abundantly, so manifestly, and so freely as what happened on Pentecost. Even Islam, which claims to be a revealed religion, as it claims to reveal the Will of Allah to mankind through the revelations of Mohammed, is decidedly more restricted. Whereas Christianity has many voices from many sources, all speaking of the truth of Jesus, Islam has only one, that of Mohammed. This last point needs some elaboration. Only in Christianity do we see God giving of Himself so freely, without regard to priestly or prophetic credentials. There are no racial, cultural, societal, or gender-based restrictions on those whom God pours His Spirit. Not to be trite, but Jesus Christ is truly the “Equal Opportunity” Savior. As that wonderful old hymn says, “In Christ there is no East or West, in Him no North or South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.” God will indeed come to abide with those forever who fulfill one requirement, one rule. That one requirement is that they love Him. God loves us and He wants us to love Him back. That’s it. That is the “golden nugget,” so to speak, of Christianity. We are to love God with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole strength. We are to love Him to the exception of everything else. In short, as much as humanly possible, we are to attempt to love Him as He loves us. When we really love God, we will want to do something else; we will want to please Him. Just as we strive to please someone we love on a human level, as we do things for them that bring them pleasure, as we grow in Christ, we will find that our whole desire in life becomes how we can please God. You see, we really do have a friend in Jesus, a very, very good friend. This friend of ours cares so much for us that He literally gave up everything for us. Christ held nothing back from us, including his earthly physical life, so how can we be so stingy with our affections towards Him? Why is it that we can’t love Him as He loves us? There is one major way that we can show our love for God and for His Son, Jesus Christ. That is stated simply in today’s Gospel: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15 KJG ). Just as we do things for those we love, let us do this for God. If we love God, we will keep His Commandments. This is where the beauty of the New Testament “flavor” floods in, sweet and satisfying. Christ is not commanding Christians to keep the old Jewish ceremonial law. We are not to be slavish keepers of every little precept of the law, the washing of pots and the slaying of heifers and such. All of that old law was fulfilled in Christ. To fulfill it, he gave a new commandment, found in John 13:34: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” This new commandment, so deceptively simple, is what we are to do as Christians. But that is a topic that by itself could merit many hours of fruitful discussion. Returning to our main topic, if we love God, we will keep His commandments, which are contemplated in the Law of Love, which Christ summarized, simply, in two parts: love God and love your neighbor. This, he said, is the entire duty of Man. When we do this, that is, keep God’s commandments, we will find something else has happened in our lives. As we strive to get closer and closer to God in love, we will find that we have another Person living with us. This new “guest” is wonderful, for He is polite, well-mannered, infinitely wise and always helpful. He picks us up when we fall, He suggests good things for us, and He gives us strength to carry on when we think we just can’t do it anymore. He helps us realize new and wonderful things both about God and ourselves, as we read God’s Holy Word. He reveals the truth in Scripture to us and He gives us a sense of peace that is truly beyond understanding. Our new guest, the Holy Spirit, comes to us as God’s free gift for loving Him. Just as Christ told us, if we love Him and keep His commandments, God Himself will come to us and live with us forever. All we must do is one thing: love God more than we love ourselves. How incredibly simple this is, yet so fiendishly difficult! In the long and short of our Christian life on earth, we will fight this battle. We will fight it for as long as we live on this Earth. Yet, we must, if we are to keep God’s Commandments, de-throne Self and enthrone Christ. We must remove Self from the center of our universe and put Christ where He most deservedly belongs, in the very center of our thoughts, our wants, our feelings, and our desires. We must make Christ the very center of our life. When this happens, we will find something else, too. Rather than giving up anything, truly we will find everything. What we will shed are those things which are not profitable to our soul’s welfare. What we will gain are those things which give us a better appreciation of our life on earth, and best of all, a view towards our eternal life with God. If that’s not a good deal, I don’t know what is. How? How do we accomplish this seemingly Herculean task of removing ourselves from the center of ourselves? Impossible, you say; surely it is impossible. A man can’t cease from being a man. How can he lose himself without ceasing to be himself? Just as Christ advised His disciples about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we too have the same answer: "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). Yes, it is totally impossible for us, by ourselves, to dethrone ourselves as the King of our own lives. In fact, left to their own devices, most people, without God, become more focused on themselves than anything else. Yet, in that wonderful, paradoxical, mysterious way of God, it is only through Him, through Grace, that we are able to draw closer to Him to enjoy more of the glorious Holy Spirit in our lives. So, in a wonderful cycle of interdependency, the more we confess our need for God, the more He gives of Himself to us. This cycle of love will continue for eternity, with our souls enjoying the endless refreshment of the Holy Spirit along the way. True fulfillment comes only from God. Everything that is not of God is a counterfeit and a cheat. All pleasures, all joy, and all fulfillment begin and end in God, and it is only in Him can we really enjoy these things completely. When we truly learn this lesson, we have begun our maturation in Christ. We will no longer be babes in Christ, no matter what our physical or chronological age, but we will sense that our eternal sanctification in Christ has begun. This journey began for the Christian Church some two thousand years ago on the Feast of Pentecost. On that date, the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all mankind was fulfilled. Let us pray that a similar outpouring of the Spirit occurs for us today. 2 Corinthians 6:2 2 For He says: "In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Amen. 1 Faussett's Bible Dictionary, Bibleworks 7.0, "Pentecost" |
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