SERMON
– United Congregational Church of Christ (Armada, MI)
“Who Are We?”
·
1 Samuel 3:1-10 [11-20]
·
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
·
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
·
John 1:43-51
This
morning, the lectionary gives us four scripture passages. I generally try to evaluate each passage
individually and then pray asking God to lead me toward a unified understanding
of them so that I might be able to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus most
effectively. This morning is no
different and I pray that what God has given me I might pass on to you in some
meaningful way.
We’ve
begun the service with the Call To Worship as we read our Psalm 139
passage. (Read highlights from the Bulletin Call to Worship.)
We
begin by acknowledging that God is our Creator and that He knows us
unreservedly and completely.
·
Does it make you nervous to know that
God knows your every thought?
o
Mabey not – or maybe it should.
o
I personally have an issue with my
thought life. I say things in my head
that I would never dream of saying out loud.
§ I
think things that I would never tell someone else because I am supposed to be a
minister of the Gospel, and spiritually beyond all that.
§ Often
I struggle with myself because I have
a pretty big expectation for myself than what I actually demonstrate.
God
knows our every thought, whether good or bad, but despite that he calls us
anyway.
Our
second and third scriptures this morning are from 1 Samuel 3 and John 1; the calling of Samuel the Prophet and Philip
the Apostle.
In
1 Samuel 3, the child Samuel is established as one of God’s greatest
Prophets. He was trained by Eli who was
the temple priest of God.
·
Eli and his sons performed the duties of
the priesthood where the Ark rested in the House of the Lord.
·
Eli was OK, but his sons were corrupt
and evil in the eyes of God
o
The sons kept the choicest meat for
themselves rather than giving it rightly to the people, thus treating the
sacrifice of God as contemptible
o
They even slept with the women who
served at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
(Sexual-harassment is not something that is new in our world.)
·
And so it was that Eli knew about the
sins of his sons but he did not put a stop to it and so God put the boys to
death and took Eli’s entire family-line out of His service as priests.
While
Samuel was an exemplary man, he too was just a man, like all of us, and I am
betting that he had his thoughts that he too struggled with. And the point is that God called him and had
him do great things for His Glory despite those struggles that he had.
I
believe the difference between the sons of Eli and Samuel was the
struggle. The sons of Eli rationalized
that their deeds were above reproach and so did not struggle with them, where
Eli was humble and fought with his inner demons.
·
I think this is because I am more apt to
be sympathetic to someone who struggles because they know something is wrong
than I am with someone who has rationalized their bad actions and no longer
struggles with them but just lives out the wrong action as though it were
right.
·
This is the problem that we all have
with Adolf Hitler and the Germans during WWII.
Somewhere along the way they convinced themselves that the atrocities
they committed against the Jews were right, and they easily performed mass
executions and enslavement of many thousands and millions of Jews.
·
And In America today, we have many
Christians who believe that many acts are OK because it’s popular in our
culture to believe it, but often we are not honoring God with those actions,
but actually dis-honoring Him without any internal struggle to the contrary.
Then
in John 1
Jesus
met with Philip and told him to “Follow me”, he did so knowing that Philip was
completely human, completely flawed, and a total sinner. But despite those attributes Jesus still called
him to “follow me.” Philip demonstrated
that he struggled within himself, for he was there with John the Baptist when
many Israelites came out and were baptized responding to John’s message of
repentance.
So,
I see the message of God knowing mankind intimately and calling us into His
service despite ourselves is dominant in our texts. So long as there is the
struggle.
Do
you have the struggle in yourself this morning?
Do you want to do what is right but struggle with the desire to do what
is sin?
“I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is
right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war
against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work
within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
that is subject to death?
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ
our Lord!”
Our
final scripture passage is from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Paul
uses the arguments the Corinthian church is using to justify their actions. They understood that the Grace of Jesus
completely made them free to live without law and restriction in relation to
God.
·
“I have the
right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial.
·
“I have the
right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.
·
You say, “Food
for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The
body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the
Lord for the body.
To
be sure this entire sixth chapter is a good one to use when discussing morality
but at the very end I believe it shows that it is just as much about identity
as it is about morality, and so I want to spend our remaining time together to
discuss Who We Are as Christians and
the Church.
WHO
ARE WE?
ROMANS
7:19-20
19 Do you not know that
your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor
God with your bodies.
