2nd Sunday of Advent
Luke 3:7-18
Prayer
(1) Focus statement:
The
one has come who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire, giving us reason
to rejoice and to prepare.
(2) Function Statement:
This
sermon will cause the congregation to rejoice in the gift of the Holy Spirit
and to yield more fully to the Holy Spirit in order to prepare for the second
coming.
1st movement
I knew a family as I was growing up who lost two of their
children to death by natural causes about a year apart. The family had 6 children, four of which were
girls. The four girls were in church,
but the parents or the boys didn't come to church. The girls sung with a group of girls at the
church. They were very active in our
youth group. We had prayer meetings on
the school campus at noon, and these girls were almost always there. We had cottage prayer meetings for the youth
on Thursday nights and again these girls were almost always there. These girls were probably some of the most
active among our youth. They were very
likeable. Two of the girls died: one in
about eighth grade with encephalitis or spinal meningitis. She came down with some type of hepatitis and
as a side effect of this she contracted the other and died. She had been healthy up until this time. It was one of those things that you couldn't
believe happened. Then, about a year
later, one of her older sisters died in about 10th grade with heart
failure. It was like any other day. The parents got up to fix breakfast and get
the kids off to school. They called them
in for breakfast, going around to their rooms and calling them through their
doors, but this one didn't come. They
went again to wake her, but this time to discover that she was dead. The autopsy showed that she died of heart
failure. Very tragic! How can someone make it through something
like this? This is a real story; it
could happen to you and me!
2nd movement
The only way to make it through something like this without
getting bitter is with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our comforter, one who
hurts with us, one who gives us what we need to make it through life, one who
helps us to put life back together, one who gives us a purpose in life, and one
who helps restore us back into the image of God thus preparing us for the
second coming. Our part is in letting
the Holy Spirit do this for us, yielding!
As we yield to Christ, Christ baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wanted to help this family
put it all back together. One of the
girls in this family let the Holy Spirit do this; the last count I had of her
she was still a happy, energetic person serving as a missionary with her
husband for their church. Many of the other
family members literally fell apart.
They turned from the Holy Spirit.
The family had started to church after the first one died, but they had
left the church again after the second one died. The last account I had, the parents had
gotten a divorce, and the father had become an alcoholic.
I don’t share this to run down or belittle this family; they
probably reacted like anyone would who had been given the counsel that they
were given. We all face difficulties,
and they certainly did. They had really
received some bad advice from our pastor at the time. After the first one’s death, our pastor had
told them “God is trying to get your attention!” Wow!
That tells them God did this terrible thing to their daughter to get
their attention! God is a manipulative God!
God does bad things! Well, it
seemed to work; they got into church and were really trying to serve. Then, the second one died! What could our pastor say then? God had their attention! Well, they left the
church. They didn’t reach out to a God
who loved them very much because they had been given a much different picture
of God!
I wish our pastor had ministered to them in a way that said,
this is a terrible thing. Sickness and
death are a part of life, but God is a God who wants to help you through this
through the Holy Spirit. Whatever
happens to us in life God is working to help us through it. He could have continued to give the family
something to hang onto after the second one died had he ministered in this way.
He would have been painting a much
different picture of God, and I believe a much more accurate picture of God and
God’s workings in our lives! I also feel
sorry for that pastor who had this kind of understanding of God; I have to wonder
what ever happened to him. What did he
do when tragedy struck his house?
3rd movement
On this 2nd Sunday of Advent we need to rejoice in this gift of
the Holy Spirit and yield our lives to Christ, so Christ can Baptize us with
the Holy Spirit: the one who can give us a purpose, and can get us through
life. This story may almost seem so
tragic that you would suspect that it was fiction, but it is not. This is a true story with real people; I have
not disclosed the names to protect them.
This type of thing could happen to any one of us; it happens to someone
every day. We are not promised that we
will have no problems and that we will be sheltered from bad things. Tragedy happens! We need the Holy Spirit to help us through
life; we can't make it on our own. When bad things happen, we need the Holy
Spirit to help us be better and not bitter!
God, through the Holy Spirit, is working to bring something good out of
everything that happens to us, but we have to let God. We can’t run from God. It may not even be
immediately noticeable to us; many times, we think “how can God bring something
good out of this?” We just need to trust
and let the Spirit continue to work in our lives, and as we look back, we can
see how God through the Holy Spirit has indeed brought something good out of it
for us. We need the Holy Spirit to fit
us for the Kingdom of God. Through God’s
Sanctifying Grace, God works through the Spirit to transform us throughout our
lives to become the best, most loving, most graceful person we can be, that
masterpiece that God has planned for us.
As we yield our lives to Christ and are baptized with the Holy Spirit,
we will truly be preparing for not only the celebration of Christ's first
coming, but also, the reality of Christ's second coming.
As you
encounter Christ at the table this morning, bring all that you are to the
table. Bring your hurts, your pains,
your concerns and let Christ through the Holy Spirit minister to you! Yield to the Holy Spirit and let God
transform you! Trust in the Holy Spirit
to bring you through whatever you are going through! That is the kind of God we serve! That is what God wants to do!
Prayer
of Confession
Service
of Communion
No comments:
Post a Comment