Know Jesus, Know Peace, - No Jesus, No Peace!
Advent 2021 • Sermon • Submitted
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Review from last week...
Review from last week...
I do want to take some time this morning and discuss from last week what the technology failure stole from us.
By the way… I certainly appreciate your willingness to log onto your electronic bible provider and follow along. The bad part about that is that it bombed out the internet connection for everyone.
There is an answer for that and we implemented it…
As Scotty from StarTrek would say… “more power cap-in.” So yes we have more band width than we had last week and hopefully this solves the issue.
Let’s get to our review. This advent season and really for the next 6 months we are going to be on an Old Testament course.
So let’s look at the prophets
Jeremiah was a prophet… God called him to be His mouthpiece to the people of his time and to a time in the future that were lacking any HOPE.
We have may have trouble looking at what is going on in our world today and seeing God, Jesus or the Spirit being present.
I actually am kind of embarrassed to show the Creator of the Universe what we have done in our world and to our world.
Invoking the name of God in the same breathe as rules, obedience to those rules.
He came and died for our sins and what we offer back to him varies.
This is the place that Jeremiah was in...
Jer 33.14-16
14 “The day will come, says the Lord, when I will do for Israel and Judah all the good things I have promised them.
15 “In those days and at that time I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David’s line. He will do what is just and right throughout the land.
16 In that day Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this will be its name: ‘The Lord Is Our Righteousness.’
V.14 - “Behold” Hey everyone stop and listen. What you have done for generations has not lead to HOPE but despair. God says I am willing to try again… But listen carefully.
I’m going to fulfill the 6000+ old testament promises...
How exactly is God going to do that...
V.15 - Without specifying “how” God says I will cause a “righteous” branch to spring up.
This idea of a “Righteous Branch is mentioned several times in Jeremiah.
Literally, this phrase “righteous branch” is a “new shoot.”
5 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
Is 11.1
1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
Here is a prophecy from Ezekiel
Ezek 36.8
8 “But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people Israel, for they will soon come home.
and finally from
Malachi 4.5
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
Who will you send, God will what will you do?
Mal 3.3-4
3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
There is this HOPE what the prophets expressed.
Finally from the New Testament
Mt 11.10
10 This is he of whom it is written, “ ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’
and one more that completes this whole idea concerning the “righteous branches”
Revelation 7:9 (ESV)
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
The HOPE that we have is in this “Righteous Branch,” Shoot of Jesse, Offspring of David. Is...
Jesus Christ.
This week our message and our dedication is to Peace
Our passage is from the book of Malachi. Malachi has the distinction of being the last book in the Old Testament.
You can find it very easily… Just before the book of Matthew.
Our passage is Malachi 3.1-4.
The Book of Malachi was written some 400 years before the very next book in your bible, The Book of Matthew.
1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
God’s judgment should not, be understood as solely punitive, even though the people seem to deserve punishment. Even we deserve judgement and justice.
God’s justice is not the justice expected by the restoration community. Instead, in this text we find that the divine judgment to be exercised on the Day of the Lord has a more long-range happening.
That issue is a process of purification that makes a place hospitable for the abiding presence of God.
God’s plan of justice is restorative rather than judgemental.
He wants to restore us to our place in His world. But no mistake, judgement does await those who consistently and with no regard continue to move in ways that oppose God.
Look again at V1.
1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
and compare that with
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
Scripture continues to be one story from Genesis to Revelation.
You and I are a part of that living history.
You and I are a part of scripture that should come alive when we find ourselves in the midst of our lives, in the midst of the worst of difficulties.
It is part of the plan. How do we know that… Because God sees apart from circumstances, apart from our decisions, he sees us in our current and our future place with him not in the garbage that we participate in.
WE AS FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST WE FIND OUR PEACE IN COMMUNION WITH THE SAINTS AND WITH JESUS.
WE, people of 2021 and beyond as our world becomes more integrated, becomes more like a technological mess it will be easy to push God, Jesus, The Spirit and The Bible aside.
Our answers already come from a google search, Alexa or Siri.
Now I’m talking to the people under 50 here in the room and those online. You all as a group are going to need to make a decision...
That decision is very important… it has eternal consequences.
Where are you, how are you going to model for your kiddos, when push comes to shove.
It’s easy to say… Well of course, I’m a Christian my fallback position is with God.
But our example so far is not with God.
I want to share a statistic with. Frankly, I looked at several different sources this is from Pew Research…
A well respected company that looks at trends in the Christian world
68% of 18-29 year olds don’t believe or don’t know if they believe in God
That should scare us. We should be terrified by that statistic.
Seven of 10 - 18-29 year olds… Don’t even know if they know a “God.”
There is NO PEACE in that for them or for us… Just terror!
We, collectively as adults to these kiddos have failed them. We have said, “well… let’s have them find their own way.
The master plan of PEACE in our world through a building, growing relationship with God through His Son Jesus… Is kaput.
Adults don’t rely on God, they don’t model that for their family… So, shocker… the kiddos don’t either.
We pray and fret and worry and cry for our sons and daughters and then pull a bible and hit them over the head with it.
It’s not going to work… PEACE is a process. It comes with building blocks, then lumber, then shingles, then paint and whatever else it takes to help others turn to God first.
Please understand me… We all can make changes, we can accept the Lord into our lives. That means it will no longer just me making decisions it will be Christ that is in me.
That is the pathway to PEACE!
In case I didn’t tell there is another side to the story of PEACE.
It comes in Malachi 3.2-3.
2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
There is a judgement that is coming, Malachi is asking this question to the fellow Jews at the time.
During our lives with Christ we have had the opportunity to put on the full battle garments of God, We’ve had the Fruit of the Spirit pressed on our hearts, we have tasted and enjoyed His Peace, His fellowship and His communion.
It is all of these things that prepare us for those times ahead when EVERYTHING is going to ramping up to the coming of the Lord.
“For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers soap.”
In the final process of becoming like Jesus… we will be refined with something like fire. When you refine you heat the metal up and then skim off the “dross” or “slag” that is the impurities in the metal.
We will be made pure… We will be made pure.
A fuller’s job was to cleanse and whiten cloth.
You see to be at PEACE with God, we must be clean. That comes with personal reflection, personal confession to God or the person that you have wronged.
That’s what makes us clean and accepted to God.
This celebration of this PEACE WITH GOD happens today with communion.
The score is forever settled between man and God because of Jesus. That’s our reminder for today.
Let’s do a recap from today...
The LORD purifies us
The purification process can be harsh and difficult.
The LORD is with us throughout our lives. Leading, guiding and protecting
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The Lord purifies us. Like clean, white cloth or brightly shining silver, the end product of our purification is something beautiful and valuable—a soul at PEACE with God.
The purification process can be harsh and difficult. The trials of this life are not only unavoidable but also necessary.
The Lord is with us through our trials. The refiner of silver and the fuller of cloth could not set their processes in motion, walk away, and return later when it was finished. They had to be there at every stage and see it through to the end. Likewise, the Lord is not distant from us in our trials but is intimately engaged in our lives.
PEACE!
As we move now into communion. Take the next several minutes to be at PEACE with God. That comes with confession, repentance, changing our path and then changing our results.