Sermon
Series: The Marks of the Kingdom
Part II: PRESENCE
Sept 12,
2021
Fr. Phil Eberhart
Isa 50:4-9
Ps 116:1-16
James 2:1-18
Mark 9:14-29
This
morning I want to talk about the second mark of the Kingdom of God: The Presence of the King!
The
question isn’t IS God with us?
That is a settled fact, hidden in His Son’s name, “You shall call His
name, Emmanuel, God With Us.”
Jesus said over and over again that He was “sent” from the Father. But He also commented to Thomas in the upper room
after he put his hand in Jesus’ side – “SEE! Thomas! You believed because you have seen! Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet
believe!”
So the
question is how do we know The Presence of the King?
I’ve
known people who had eyes that could see into the unseen realm, the realm of
angels and demons – a gift of discernment or a “seer anointing”. I just call it the “oooo-eeee-ooooo” factor. But they are few and far between. They tend
to be wounded by the churches they are in, floating from church to church
sometimes or out of the church all together, so wounded that they just don’t
open their eyes any more.
Pollster
George Barna, a couple decades back, asked if people had ever had a discernable
encounter with the “presence” of God – no definition of that experience. Just however you would define it, have you
had that experience in church, … in worship?
Only about 10% said that they had.
So how do
the 90% of us sense, feel, intuit, or otherwise know that God is WITH US? I describe myself as an Eastern Colorado Wind
Meter: A Post with a log chain bolted to
the top. You know the wind is blowing
hard when it’s whipping the links off the log chain!
+
And in
our experience of life there is a lot of evidence blowing in the opposite
direction: Paul describes it in 2 Cor 4 –
his own lived experience. The verbs are
striking:
“Afflicted
; Perplexed ; Persecuted ; Struck down; Carrying about death; Given over to death.”
Ever feel
that way, and you say, “where are you Lord?”
Said it
this week?
But Paul’s
perspective was different somehow. The
Presence of God in him – THE TREASURE IN HIS JAR OF CLAY – taught him to
see those things differently. Listen
again…
[2Co
4:7-10 ESV] 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the
surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every
way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of
Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
Paul
begins the chapter with the words, “we do not lose heart” and he repeats
it here later in v. 16: “So we do not
lose heart. Though our outer self is
wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light
momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory
beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the
things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient (or temporary),
but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Friends,
how can God be with us, when we’re “under the circumstances?”
What are
the evidences that God is with us? That His
Presence abides with us and is even IN US!
Well, #1
is that He SAID IT WOULD BE. Over
and over. Jn 14 & 15…
“I will
NOT leave you as orphans,” Jesus said. “I
will come to you. … In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you
in me, and I in you.”
And here
is this Key to the Kingdom:
“Whoever
has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me, will be loved by my
Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
The
disciples asked him the same question we are asking today!
“How is it that you will manifest yourself to us…?”
Jesus
answered, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
As they
walked from the Upper Room over to the Garden of Gethsemane, they strolled through
a vineyard. Jesus used the opportunity
to teach, once more:
“Abide
in me, and I in you… I am the vine; you are the branches. … apart from me you
can do nothing.”
So the #1
proof of the Presence of God, isn’t a feeling at all, it is The Word of His
Promise! HE SAID HE WOULD BE WITH US. PERIOD.
But like
Thomas, still we want to see! Jesus
turns our old saying on it’s head: ‘Seeing
is believing.’ Actually in the KINGDOM
it’s ‘BELIEVING IS SEEING!’
+
The 2nd
proof of the Presence of God is FRUIT IN OUR LIFE.
But fruit grows. Have you ever seen a
tree, grunting and groaning, trying to produce apples? Ever walked into a wheat field and heard
millions of little groans and whining as wheat tries to grow and bring the
heads of wheat out?
NOPE. They just grow. They root themselves deeply in good soil and
wait on the things that make for growth, sun and water.
Paul
prayed something like that for you and me in his letter to the Ephesians, in
chapter 3:
“… according to the riches of his glory he
may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your
inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded
in love, 18 may have strength
to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length
and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of
Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with
all the fullness of God.”
Friends,
this doesn’t happen by our trying harder!
Or wishing it so. It happens by our abiding and obeying. That is why we are called Human BEINGS, not human
DOINGS. We turn it on its head every
chance we get – we come to be known in our communities by what we do!
James
tells us in our reading this morning that Faith without works is dead. True that is, but works without faith? Equally dead.
A bridge built to nowhere! We end
up nowhere, breathless!
The Kingdom
is both Faith and Work. Bound
together as one. Two sides of the same
coin, tossed in the air or spinning on the table, where the two sides are
almost indistinguishable from each other!
They cannot be separated.
The Fruit
that Jesus talks of in John 15 is this combination of faith and work – of intention
and outcome.
If you
want to see the proof of the Presence of God, look at the Fruit of the Spirit
in your own life!
LOVE,
JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF CONTROL.
Have you ever done a Word Study on those words? Challenge for the week!!
Or the
Character of Jesus called The Divine Nature in Peter’s 2nd letter:
Add to
Faith – Virtue
To Virtue
– Knowledge
To Knowledge
– Self Control;
To Self-Control
– Steadfastness;
To Steadfastness
– Godliness;
To Godliness
– Brotherly Affection;
And to
Brotherly Affection – God’s Unconditional LOVE.
There is
a seven week sermon series!!! Or seven
months!!
I call it
Peter’s Ladder of Character! And here is
the Promise:
“… if
these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being
ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
God’s
Presence in our lives is not primarily a feeling that we get in worship, though
that is nice when it happens. Tears and
goose bumps are more common for others and we need not judge one another for
having them or NOT HAVING THEM!
The real
proof of God’s life in our midst is the FRUIT of our lives, lived in rootedness
in His Love, and in the outflow of that rootedness; in the FRUIT that we bear
in His Kingdom, both the internal fruit of His character, empowered by His
Spirit; and the external fruit of lives that are touched and changed in our
world, in our families, in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, again empowered
by His Spirit in us.
Then the
world, even our enemies will say of us: “I
think these people have been with Jesus!”
May the
KING of the KINGDOM be seen to be PRESENT in the Church and to the World, in
our lives and through us, in every place we set our feet, to every person we
meet, and in every circumstance that we find ourselves under!
Let us
pray…
O God,
because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your
Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
for ever. Amen.
O God
of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church,
that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence,
carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and
know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had
grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their
perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our
Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever and ever. Amen.
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