Sunday
01/13/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “That they might receive the Holy
Spirit”
Old Testament
Scripture: Psalm 29
New Testament
Scripture: Acts 8:14-17
Gospel Lesson:
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
My friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, once again
it is good to be back after a week off. Last week, I went to Rev. Ben Shaw’s
Quaker Church in Unadilla, Friends Church. The service and the church were
great, but I was let down that we were not served Quaker Oatmeal after the
service. I figured that since it was a Quaker church that they would at least have
Quaker Oatmeal. I was wrong.
Last Sunday was the “Epiphany,” which is the Sunday that we
celebrate the Wise Men or the Magi coming to visit Christ, with gifts of gold, frankincense,
and myrrh. “Epiphany” also celebrates the Incarnation of God in the Jesus
Christ, meaning Jesus being God in the flesh on earth, or being fully God and
fully human. They came to worship and adore him.
Two weeks ago on December 30th, I preached about
young Jesus at about 12 or 13 years old being in the Temple during and after
the Jewish Passover. I talked about, among other things, how this is the only
story we have about Jesus as a child. Sure we also have the birth narrative
that we celebrate every Christmas, we have the visit of the Wise Men or the Magi
that we celebrated last Sunday, but that’s it.
Today
though, Jesus is now 30 years old. Remember we don’t have much information at
all about young Jesus’ life, other than his birth, the Wise Men, and him being
12 or 13 in the Temple during the Passover.
So now this morning, Jesus is 30, and he is going to get
baptized by his cousin John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Or as I heard a
Pastor joke once, that a few weeks ago we were celebrating Jesus’ birth, and
now he’s 30! The Pastor said, “Boy they grow up so quick!”
This morning I am
not just talking about Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River though, as I am also
talking about the realities of our lives and our faith. I really love the
scripture that we have for this morning from Acts 8:14-17, that once again
says:
“Now when the apostles
at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter
and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive
the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of
them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter
and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:14-17, NRSV.
In this scripture, once again, the apostles, those called
by Jesus, minus Judas Iscariot, have heard that people in neighboring Samaria have
become believers. So in response they went to them. The scripture says once
again that these new believers in Samaria had:
“accepted the Word of God”
(Acts 8:14a, NRSV).
So these folks in Samaria now believe in the gospel, they
have accepted Jesus Christ as there Lord and Savior, and the Apostle Peter and
John came to pray for them. Specifically, Peter and John are praying that these
people will receive the Holy Spirit. They are going to pray that these people will
be filled and transformed by the personal, loving, and overwhelming power of
God.
This scripture also does say that these Samaritans were
baptized in the name of Jesus, but that they hadn’t yet felt the Holy Spirit
fill them. Peter and John laid hands on them, prayed for them, and they did
indeed receive the Holy Spirit.
For me, in the moments that I have received the Holy Spirit
in my life, which have been many, it was amazing. I felt peace, love, and hope
that was overpowering. Some of these moments brought me to tears, and filled
the love of God. They have cemented into me my faith in Christ, and my belief that
his gospel is the hope of the world.
I can also imagine that the Samaritans that became
followers of Christ from our Book Acts scripture for this morning felt amazing
when they received the Holy Spirit. I can imagine that they felt peace, love,
hope, and were changed forever. Some of us here likewise have felt the love of
God, and maybe it changed and filled us. I sometimes refer to these moments or
these periods of our lives as “mountain top moments”. In these moments
everything seems bright, and full of life and love.
Yet as we know from scripture and from our own lives, we
don’t stay on the mountain top forever. Those Samaritans that Peter and John
laid their hands on were changed, and filled with the Holy Spirit. I wonder how
long that feeling of the Holy Spirit lasted for them. A day? A week? A year?
What I mean by this, is that feeling of the saving grace of
Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is transformative. In that
moment we know that we are forgiven of our sins by Jesus Christ, and we feel
God’s love fully. We are reborn, we are saved. Yet that “mountain top moment”
never lasts forever. Eventually we will come back down from the mountain, and
maybe even go into valley. In fact, Psalm 23:4 says:
“Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with
me; Your rod and
Your staff, they comfort me”
(Ps.
23:4, NKJV).
So we know
that God is always with us, but we will not always be on the mountain top. Things
in our lives will not always be good every day. Amen. I think that some
Christian in this era that we are living in lose their faith, or their faith is
weakened during hard times. For me, my faith has been strengthened during such
times because I know that God is with me. Receiving the gift of salvation in
Jesus Christ is a great gift, and being filled with the Holy Spirit is amazing,
but that elevated feeling won’t be a constant reality in our lives as Christians.
To say it another way, as many of us know all too well, after we come to Christ
and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we will still have bad days once and
awhile. In fact, some of us might have bad weeks, months, or even years.
Being a
Christian, following Christ doesn’t mean that things will always be great in
our lives. I would argue that this is one of the top five reasons that people abandon
their faith. Something or something’s happen that are bad, and as a result
people surrender their keys to the Kingdom if God. They say things like, “Why
would a loving God have allowed this to happen?” The reality is there are times
in our lives when we will suffer, but we have the promise that through the
highs, through the lows, that God is with us. The last recorded statement that
the founder of Methodism, John Wesley said before he died, was:
The church was created so we can live this faith out together,
because “The best of it all is, God is
with us”. As
the church, we can laugh together. We can cry together. We can have pot lucks
together. That last one was more just for me. This life, this journey of
following and living our faith in Christ is one that isn’t always easy. Yet if
you have truly felt God’s all-encompassing love, you know that it is worth believing
in and following.
In the same
way that Peter and John laid their hands on Samaritans in our Book of Acts
reading for today, and they receive the Holy Spirit, highs can quickly go to
lows.
I don’ think
that our gospel reading for this morning in any different either. I really love
our gospel lesson for this morning, as we get one of the three gospel
narratives of Jesus’ baptism. Like Peter and John laying of hands on Samaritans
in the Book of Acts, and them receiving the Holy Spirit, the gospel lesson from
the gospel of Luke for this morning is a “Mountain top moment”. Why is the
case? Let’s look again at this morning’s gospel lesson. It starts when John the
Baptist, and then shifts to Jesus Baptism. Once again it says:
“As the people were filled with
expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether
he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I
baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not
worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in
his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his
granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Lk.
3:15-17, NRSV).
So according this gospel lesson, we
can be baptized with water, and we can also be baptized or filled with the
power of the Holy Spirit.
The gospel then shifts to the baptism
of Jesus and once again says:
“Now
when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and
was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in
bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased”
(Lk. 3:21-22, NRSV).
So Jesus comes up out the Jordan River in his baptism. In
this moment, Jesus the Son of God is present. Heaven opens, and the Heavenly
Father speaks. The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, but not in Jesus. For you
have in this Baptism scene, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Trinity, of one God in three persons all represented. The baptism of Jesus I
would say was certainly a “Mountain Top Moment!” Yet, as exciting, and as fulfilling
as this moment must have been, things will quickly change for Jesus.
Jesus’
baptism at the age of 30 is when Jesus starts his three year public ministry
that will end at a cross and an empty tomb. Before Jesus goes forth to preach,
to love, to heal, and to forgive though, Jesus according to chapter four of the
gospel of Luke, says that Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40-days.
In fact, Luke 4:1-2 says:
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit,
returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for
forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days,
and when they were over, he was famished” (Lk.
4:1-2, NRSV).
So like the
Samaritans received the Holy Spirit in our Book Acts reading for this morning,
and how they no doubt struggled at some point, for Jesus it is immediate. Jesus
has this glorious baptism, where He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit all
present.
Before Jesus
officially starts his public ministry though, he goes through what I call his “basic
training”. If you enlist in the military, you go to basic training. Jesus is
baptized as the messiah, but he then suffers for 40-days in the wilderness,
tempted by the devil, before he is really ready. I can’t image what it would be
like to be tempted by the devil for 40-days by the devil. Yet Jesus said that
his Father was with him.
Friends, we
all want to be happy, none of us want to suffer, but when we do, the Bible
promises us that God is with us. Your church is with you. Whether you’re being
tempted by the devil in the wilderness, or whether your life has taken a turn
for the worse, He is with you. I hope that many of us can live through many
more “Mountain Top Moments” in this church and in our lives. Be ready though,
eventually we will all go down from the mountain, and maybe into the valley. In
following Jesus, we all will have ups and downs, but as the Apostle Paul wrote
in Romans 8:38-39:
“For I am convinced that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39, NRSV).
God is with us
here this morning. God is with that scared soldier in Afghanistan. God is with
the woman that has dementia in the nursing home. God is the man in prison. God
is with the woman who just lost her husband, and he is with us. We can’t live
on the mountain top forever though. So when things are great, let us remember God
is with us. When things fall apart, let us remember that God is with us. When
things are average, let us remember that God is with us. May this church, this faith
community be a life boat and a safe haven where you can come and laugh, cry,
and where we move and grow together. We do all this for the glory of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
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