These are the words of Jesus Christ. And
Jesus talking to us about this Spirit of truth this evening on his way to Gethsemane,
he has already told earlier in that same discourse, "You shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free." Paul later would write,
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty." And Jesus also
earlier in the evening said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life,"
And now he promises that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all the truth.
Transcript of the sermon preached on June 12, 2022, at Briensburg UMC | [Audio Podcast]
Holy Trinity & Peace with JusticeProverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
We gradually move into the fullness of God's truth led by
God's own Spirit. And just as the Bible says about Jesus during the childhood
narratives, that as a child, he grew in wisdom and grace, so we, God's
children, all of us, grow into that same wisdom and grace by the guidance of
the Holy Ghost. These eternal qualities of faith, hope, and love grow within
us, expanding our ability to embrace all God's people with inclusiveness,
forgiveness, and love.
And he said the Holy Spirit would show us things to come.
Now, Jesus said this, remember, on his way to get arrested at Gethsemane. So,
perhaps he was referring at one level to the things that were just about to be
coming their way just that evening. But then there was the promise also that
this Spirit would always be with us, always to guide us, and so on another
level, giving us guidance and wisdom for each and every day. Not just those who
first heard the words, and reported them, but those to whom they reported those
words and that promise, that is to you and to me, to each of us forever in this
life and in the life of the world to come, God's guidance, God's strength,
God's assistance and wisdom.
We know so little about what is coming our way each day.
We kind of get some general ideas about those plans always tend to not work out
just exactly how we were thinking. And even if they're pretty close, there's
usually some kind of little nuances to it that were unforeseen. But the Holy
Ghost provides us with wisdom for each moment, and the strength to move forward
through even the most difficult days.
Wisdom was alive with God before Creation
The Lord possessed me [Wisdom] in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. (Proverbs 8:22 KJV)
This wisdom, according to Proverbs and other places in the
Bible, this wisdom was alive with God before creation. "The Lord possessed
me," said in Proverbs in verse 22 of the reading for today. He said,
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of
old." Wisdom is literally older than dirt, older than dirt is old. Wisdom
has always been with God in eternity.
Wisdom is personified in the Book of Proverbs and
elsewhere in the scriptures as a woman, calling to people, inviting everyone to
listen to her guidance. In Isaiah 11:2, it said, "And the Spirit of the
Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of
council and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord."
Sometimes that verse is referred to as the Seven Spirits Before the Throne or the Seven-fold Spirit of God. Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1:17 was that God would
give us this same Spirit. So, having entered into a personal relationship with
God, a saving relationship, a very personal saving relationship, each of us, we
are growing to love more and more like God loves.
Having entered into a personal saving relationship with God, we are growing to love more and more like God loves
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1 KJV)
In our reading from Romans today, 5:1 said,
"Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord, Jesus Christ." We are justified by faith as a gift
of grace. We're made right. We're set right with God. And in our
theological way of explaining that grace or of studying that grace, we are
first given this prevenient grace whereby God reaches out to us. As Paul wrote,
"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." God reaches out to
us and to our friends and to our family. Before anybody ever reaches back to
God, God's the one making the first move to reveal God's self, to reveal love,
to reveal nature, and to reveal creation, to reveal the Spirit.
And by this Spirit of God, moving among us and within us,
God is seeking out each and every person and pushing our buttons for response,
looking for us to respond favorably to the love that we're being offered. And
looking for us to accept the invitations, the many invitations that come our way every
day, to go more deeply into love with God, by the Spirit. God is doing this.
And so, we encourage ourselves and each other and the world to hear and to
respond and to accept those invitations.
And as we do, then when we begin for ourselves to
acknowledge and accept that invitation, then we enter into a relationship that
continues to grow throughout eternity. It may be very fragile to begin with, it
may be fragile for a long time, but we have entered in, and we're growing and
they're growing. And so, that's something we can praise the Lord that it's not
just us in this room, not just us in other rooms like this, but everyone
everywhere, as they hear and accept this invitation to be in a relationship
with their Creator, by the way of the Spirit. Then they find themselves coming
into a rightness, little by little, day by day, teaching on teaching, precept
on precept, relationship with God.
And as that continues to grow then, and we classify that
in our theological heritage as sanctifying grace. And this grace, this faith
and this grace, continues to grow, and to help us to learn more about love, and
to continue to apply the principles we're learning in our daily lives, by the
power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. Holiness, holiness of heart and mind,
sanctification, being made perfect in love. That's where God's leading us to be
just as perfect. And as Jesus said, when he was talking about love and he said,
"You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," because he
knows that may take a while, and it may take some work and it may take
eternity. But this is the life that we have that will lead to that, and into
that.
It's a life where the love that is in us, God's love,
that's already perfect. Now we're living into it, where our love matches the
love that God has put in us, God's love. And where we see that it doesn't, then
that's where we know we need to make adjustments until it is, and then move on
to other places, other points where we see more changes are needed in our life.
But not only in our life, but the life of the world around us, whatever we can
do to influence the community and the nation, the church and the world, to be
more perfect in love, to love better, to love more widely, to embrace everyone
in this love, because that's where our peace comes. Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God.
Today is Peace with Justice Sunday in the United Methodist Church, and we emphasize the importance of what Wesley called social holiness. And often now we call it social justice. Social holiness, when he wrote,
The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.
That's what John Wesley taught. He wrote
that. And Wesley's mission for the church was defined like this, "To spread
scriptural holiness throughout the land." That was what he thought was the
mission of the church, to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land. And
we continue this emphasis with today's mission statement in our United
Methodist Church, "to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of
the world."
In Micah 6:8, God famously spoke through the prophet,
"He has showed thee, O man, what is good. And what doth the Lord require
of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God." This faith, this holiness, this walking towards love, the life of
love, this is the grace that brings us a "peace that passeth
understanding," as Paul phrased it. Christ said, "My peace, I
leave you. Not the same as the world's peace, my peace." We all want that.
Amen. We want that not only for ourselves, but for those we love, and for
people we don't even know. We hope they all find peace because if they do, then
they find love and joy, and they'll be a whole lot nicer to each other. And the
world will be a whole lot better place if we have peace, Christ's peace, not
the world's peace, Christ's peace, that comes when we love one another as
Christ has loved us.
That's his commandment, "Love as I have loved you," and St. Paul wrote about it, and a song was written about it, "Joy unspeakable, and full of glory." (Barney Elliott Warren, 1900). How wonderful God is to have this kind of a whole plan of salvation. Amen. How wonderful to think about what God wants for us is to join God in this heavenly state of love and peace and confidence and joy, the thing that completely transforms our lives and the life of the world, and to spread that, little by little, word by word, person by person, through the whole world, generation to generation, that we can be a part of that.
How wonderful God is
O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:9 KJV)
And with the Psalm/Psalmist, we can exclaim, "O Lord, our God, how
excellent is Thy name in all the earth."
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