Sunday Aug 24/2025

Today we begin our series that will take us through the end of this Christian year, up till Advent.

We are in the season of ordinary time, which is the time between Pentecost Sunday and the first Sunday of Advent,

Since we have just completed the book of James we will be preaching out of the lectionary for the next couple months.

What is a lectionary?

Lectio is the Latin word for “reading” or “lesson”

Therefore a lectionary is a collection of readings or lessons.

Here at Trinity we use the Revised Common Lectionary for our scripture readings each week.

There are different lectionaries, but this one was put together in the 1970s by a inter-denominational group, and is now used by Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Congregationalists, and even Lutherans.

Thus when we read these texts every sunday, there are millions of Christians around the world who are engaging with the same texts.

In many traditions it can be common to have your sermon drawn from one or more of these texts.

Vocation of Christ

Our vocation

Our relationship with God is one that starts in the womb

No fear for God’s messengers

Jeremiah 1:4–10 HCSB

4 The word of the Lord came to me: 5 I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. 6 But I protested, “Oh no, Lord, God! Look, I don’t know how to speak since I am only a youth.” 7 Then the Lord said to me: Do not say, “I am only a youth,” for you will go to everyone I send you to and speak whatever I tell you. 8 Do not be afraid of anyone, for I will be with you to deliver you. This is the Lord’s declaration. 9 Then the Lord reached out His hand, touched my mouth, and told me: I have now filled your mouth with My words. 10 See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and demolish, to build and plant.

The vocation of Christ

In the old testament we see that the people of God are served and ruled by three types of offices

Prophets (Reveal the word of the Lord to the people no matter the cost)

Priests (Mediate between God and the people, lead the liturgical and festive life of the congregation)

Kings (Rule and protect, enacting God’s law in Israel which will bring about blessing)

Jesus fulfills all of these offices.

When you read your old testament and you encounter someone doing their job well, we can look to Christ and see Him doing it better.

David the King who pens the psalms and delivers Israel from her enemies.

Jesus is the worship leader of the church, the focal point and way to God, he is the lamb who was slain, and He is also the Lion of Judah, roaring in victory on the outside of a tomb to all who would threaten His bride the Church.

Samuel the prophet who leads the people with the words of God

Jesus IS God, so when He speaks, He is always without sin and to have Him is to have the Father.

Aaron the priest who enters the most Holy Place in the sanctuary to provide atonement for the sins of Israel.

Jesus, the Great High Priest, who does not need the blood of bulls and goats, but by the sacrifice of His own perfect blood made atonement once and for all, thereby reconciling lost mankind to God in an unshakeable way.

Jesus vocation also is the answer to all of the bad prophets, priests, and kings.

Eli the priest who doesn’t discipline His sons - Jesus lovingly disciplines those who belong to Him.

Jonah the prophet who tries to run from God. - Jesus says “Father if it is your will take this cup of suffering away from me. However, not my will but your will be done.

Every wicked king of Israel who left the people longing for justice - Jesus brings perfect justice, and leads his people

The vocation of the church

Royal Priesthood

1 Peter 2:9–10 HCSB

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

How can this be?

Because in baptism you have been united to Jesus who is the ultimate royal priest.

You have been adopted into a family of royal priests.

A family with a vocation.

Some families are shoemakers,

some families are bankers,

some families are bakers,

Our family?

The family of God?

Royal Priests who co-participate with the Lord of the Harvest to reconcile all things to God.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 HCSB

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. 18 Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” 21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

What we learn from Jeremiah

God chose you to be united to His son before you were even born.

Even though your vocation may be different than Jeremiah’s, the fact remains that

Jeremiah 1:4–5 HCSB

4 The word of the Lord came to me: 5 I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah was appointed to be a prophet to the nations,

and

You were appointed to be a Royal Priest.

We often protest our vocation:

When we are gripped with the reality of the work we must do we have a tendency to be afraid.

This is a common theme in the biblical story,

God gives a vocation,

and man, knowing his weakness, declares His weakness to God.

Did you know that this is actually a sign of maturity?

A weak person who knows they are weak asks of God for what they need.

A weak person with no faith will try to take what they need instead of trusting God.

Adam in the garden needed to move from immaturity to maturity.

Jeremiah’s statement to God that He did not know how to speak is a true statement.

The fact that He was just a boy a is a true statement, but what is God’s response?

Jeremiah 1:7–8 HCSB

7 Then the Lord said to me: Do not say, “I am only a youth,” for you will go to everyone I send you to and speak whatever I tell you. 8 Do not be afraid of anyone, for I will be with you to deliver you. This is the Lord’s declaration.

Matthew 10:16–20 HCSB

16 “Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as harmless as doves. 17 Because people will hand you over to sanhedrins and flog you in their synagogues, beware of them. 18 You will even be brought before governors and kings because of Me, to bear witness to them and to the nations. 19 But when they hand you over, don’t worry about how or what you should speak. For you will be given what to say at that hour, 20 because you are not speaking, but the Spirit of your Father is speaking through you.

What we learn from the Psalm

Psalm 71:1–6 HCSB

1 Lord, I seek refuge in You; let me never be disgraced. 2 In Your justice, rescue and deliver me; listen closely to me and save me. 3 Be a rock of refuge for me, where I can always go. Give the command to save me, for You are my rock and fortress. 4 Deliver me, my God, from the power of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and oppressive. 5 For You are my hope, Lord God, my confidence from my youth. 6 I have leaned on You from birth; You took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is always about You.

What does this teach us about the nature of faith?

Is faith only an intellectual ascent?

Or is it at its core relational trust?

This is an important question for the life of a church such as ours that is over 50% populated by people under the age of 12.

If faith is only an intellectual response to propositional knowledge, than what hope do short people have?

In particular people who are so short that they could fit into their mothers womb?

And what about people with special needs, learning disabilities, injuries that effect the brain, and those falling victim to the horrors of dementia?

Do these people lack the ability to have faith?

No.

They possess the ability to have faith like a child.

Which is exactly the type of faith God requires, and gives.

What we learn from Psalms like this is that God is engaging with His people, His royal priests, working faith in their hearts, teaching them to trust Him in their own baby ways, right from the womb!

This is also an important question for adult converts to the faith

This is the psalm book of God’s people,

If you weren’t raised in a Christian home,

this doesn’t change the fact that even before time began God had you in mind.

The fact that you were not taught to know God does not mean that God wasn’t your God while you were in your mothers womb.

We don’t make God our God, our God makes us His people.

Faith is a gift from God that he bestows like a good and fatherly King on whomever He pleases.

If all of these things are true,

If God has chosen you from eternity past,

if He has given you faith as a gift,

if He has been your God from your mother’s womb and breast,

if He has protected you every moment of your life,

if He has adopted you to participate in the vocation of His Son,

If He has made you a Royal Priest in His nation the church,

If He has placed His words in your mouth,

If He has given you His Spirit as a downpayment of the kingdom,

If He has seated you with Christ in the heavenly places,

and if He, the one with all authority in heaven and on earth, the alpha and the omega, the one who holds the keys of death and hades,

the one who holds the churches in His hands and has the voice like roaring waters which has commissioned you to go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything He has commanded us…

then

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO FEAR?

NO FEAR for God’s Messengers.

Jeremiah 1:8 HCSB

8 Do not be afraid of anyone, for I will be with you to deliver you. This is the Lord’s declaration.

He goes on,

Jeremiah 1:9–10 HCSB

9 Then the Lord reached out His hand, touched my mouth, and told me: I have now filled your mouth with My words. 10 See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and demolish, to build and plant.

Doesn’t that remind you of Jesus’s Great Commission?

This is the vocation of the church.

The gospel, all on it’s own is capable of these things.

Nations will rise and nations will fall, but the word of the Lord will stand forever.

And the church who is equipped with these words of God will never fail.

When Jesus said that the gates of hell will not prevail against His church that wasn’t a weather forecast that was a promise from the living God.

Romans 8:31–39 LEB

31 What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, together with him, freely give us all things? 33 Who will bring charges against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. 34 Who is the one who condemns? Christ is the one who died, and more than that, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or hunger or lack of sufficient clothing or danger or the sword? 36 Just as it is written, “On account of you we are being put to death the whole day long; we are considered as sheep for slaughter.” 37 No, but in all these things we prevail completely through the one who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.