A Revival of Doing - Part 2

Such immense promises. This is the hope for all the world. This is the good news. This is the gospel. And especially palpable, as we approach Advent in the next three weeks or so from tomorrow. Christ is not dead, but as slain alive and active in his body, the church. He's now among the living creatures, the gospels. He has trampled on the passions of his own body to show that we can also. We don't need to live defeated lives. The spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit lives in us. And that same Holy Spirit that lives in us will raise us from the dead as well. St. Paul's letter to Timothy, the second letter, he reminds us in chapter two, verse 14. Keep reminding God's people of these things as we have been for the last three days. Warn them before God against quarreling about words. It's of no value and only ruin those who listen. See, it's not about words, dear family, or what translation or any of that, that is no value. It's about what we do. The divine liturgy that is celebrated all over the world and tomorrow was first laid down by the first bishop of the church, St. James, the cousin of Christ, and later refined by St. Chrysostom. You know that, but continues daily, these passages. What we've been reading and living in these last three days has never stopped being rehearsed on earth. Every Sunday, the Lord's table is served. The bloodless sacrifice, as we say, and his body and blood are given to the faithful, feeding them, feeding us the bread of heaven. The gospel lesson from last Sunday has kind of a mirror of our own lives. Zacchaeus, the story of Zacchaeus was a gospel lesson last Sunday, and it's much like most of us, me, before we received the gift of faith. Willful sinners, all of us, drowning in a sea of lies, deceit, and our own frailties. He, Zacchaeus, being afraid of the crowd because they knew his sins, he was afraid what they would do to him. Well, we don't have to wonder what they would do to him because of the accusations they made of Christ. A little later, he was gonna go eat with the sinners, Zacchaeus. But once an opening is made by the Holy Spirit, we, like him, respond in faith. His heart to see Christ gave him disregard for his own person. So think of this guy. He is the chief tax collector. Wealthy guy. Servants, certainly. Rich apparel, right? Can you see him climbing this tree? He's probably an old guy like me, right? No, he took action. He wanted to see Christ like us. We would see Christ. Notice the proof of his faith, though, was to give away all of his riches. But he's a smart guy, not being foolish. He gave away half to the poor. The other half he kept because he made a promise to restore fourfold those he had defrauded, right? So he needed something to pay that with. But stop here for a minute, and I'm not gonna talk about money, but you ever think about why so many people turn away from the practice of our faith, caring for the widows and the orphans by giving funds? I mean, there's an allergy in the world. I'm pleased for help. Fear to even talk about it. The greasy devil has gotten us all confused about the biblical teachings and practices of our faith. Anyway, there is an aversion to our apostolic faith, but Jesus here, he himself says, look at the demonstration, faith has come to his house. Just like him, we have a heavenly obligation to help the helpless, and not just because it's a good idea or you get a tax credit. No, there's even a link between wealth and the difficulty to enter the kingdom. It's hard for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, not impossible, hard. So many saints, once they experienced the awakening by the Holy Spirit as Zacchaeus, gave away all they had. St. Anthony, St. Francis, and the list is long. A monk I met in a monastery in Saskatchewan explained how upon entering the monastery, the monks give everything away to the poor. This is how the mission and the monks have been supported for over 200 years. I encourage you, you get out that way. It's a beautiful place, quiet. You can have lots of time for prayer. See, one of the qualifications even of baptism is the examination of the candidate's life. Is he humble? Is he forgiving? Is he a help to the poor, not greedy? Often, each one was examined for a really long time in the early church, up to three years, to see if they really had a life change. And this before they would be admitted to the church through baptism. In Zacchaeus' story, there were religious people all around Christ. They didn't want Jesus. And what's he do? He seeks out the one who does. He seeks out you and me, the one who wants, the one who's looking, the one who's seeking. None of them, they weren't willing to suffer sacrifice. They lost their reputation, their wealth or their power. Again, we see sacrifice. Sacrifice is needed for true worship. Our Savior came to seek and to save that which is lost. This is how he ended up at a tax collector's house. He came looking for him. He still comes looking today. He's here today. He's there today looking for you if you need him. The result will be love, joy, and peace by the Holy Spirit, not ease and comfort. Those aren't the same things. St. Chris Austen again says, and how you say can faith increase? It does so when suffering something horrible for the sake of faith, not words, but it's about what we do that opens the kingdom of heaven to us. In Matthew's gospel, chapter seven, verses 21 through 23, not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven. St. Paul starts off his second letter to the Thessalonians, telling them because of their endurance in trouble, their faith is growing. He says, we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as it is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, he adds, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and all the afflictions that you're enduring. And I'm reminded that St. Paul was ever mindful that even he could be disqualified, strove to persevere to the end. It's wonderful that our faith isn't shaken when some argument comes against us, sorry. But that's a very small thing. Words are just a very small thing, right? I mean, there was a time we were tossed about by every wind of doctrine, as described in Ephesians 4. But even more importantly, when we stand in the midst of hard trials and circumstances, forcing our deep rootedness in God's faithfulness, as Christ describes in Matthew's Gospel chapter seven, our ability to stand, building a house upon the rock, shows that our faith is growing. As we obey, like Father Abraham, faith will grow in us. For the love of Christ, we will obey our Savior, who asked us to prove our love for him by doing one simple thing. Do what I commanded you. You say you love me? Do what I commanded you. So today, let us, let me, keep our minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, as we were just reminded. Let our actions be guided by the awareness of who we are, the body of Christ. We would act as Christ, our minds on things above, not on things below. We're no longer people of the earth. Our home, the destination of this journey is heaven. And so together, the one body of Christ, there's not multiples, there's not 40,000, like we have divisions of denominations. There is one body of Christ. He's coming for one body. We must strive to care for each other, to build each other up, to help when I fall down, to care for, to strengthen the weak, because together, we can make it. We cannot make it on our own. The whole body requires all the parts. I'm a little weird, you are too. We need each other. No other way to make it happen. Okay, I'm a lot weird, but we need each other. And what will happen, as our brother quoted from St. John's Gospel, our Lord prayed, the world will know that the Father sent the Son, nothing about us. They will know that the Father sent the Son, and that'll be the only explanation for our lives. Amen? Amen, glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. I'm really grateful that I could be, we could be here with you all. Brother Greg has been a friend of the ministry for quite a long time, and some of you, of course, as well. Ministry meaning GFA World, the table is out there, and I got encouraged to share some things about who we are. The mission of GFA started 40 years ago, and by God's grace, we've been supporting, and training, and sending national workers into places where Westerners can't go as a mission. More than 15,000 parishes have been planted. There are something like four million people in the church that has been planted. The church is called Believers Eastern Church. This is my uniform. There's materials about that on the table there. If you like, there's a few copies of guiding principles. It describes a little bit about our church, and our distinctives. Please feel free to take that. In Hamilton, and in Texas, where the headquarters is in the U.S., we have a discipleship program. Our dear Anna is a graduate of our discipleship program. There's a little brochure about that there, making disciples. The magazine, this is our 40-year edition, tells you the whole story, which I'm not gonna do, because it's just not easier for you to read it than to listen to me babble on. And our Christmas catalog is on the table there for you. Every one of these gifts is an opportunity for the church in places where we're serving, in 20 countries, to be able to say Christ loves you. 200 plus thousand families are helped every year. You can grab one of those, and I'd be blessed for that as well. Can I pray to close? Is that all right? Our Father in heaven, you are worthy of every breath that you give us. You lend us, as the song says. You are worthy. When I lift my eyes, when we lift our eyes to the throne room, the center of the universe, to see our Savior with his trophies, and our destination around his throne, forever and ever, singing of your holiness and your worthiness. We long, Lord, to bring every single person we can to that throne room. Give us this grace, Lord. Yes, we're motivated. We want revival. We want, Lord, the world to know that you sent Jesus into the world. Dear Jesus, have mercy on us as you continue to pray for us. Allow us your grace, the grace that we share together in communion and community and precious Holy Spirit, to ask you, please, that you bind the church together. We're trying to run away from each other, God. Would you pull your spirit tighter? Pull us together. Help us, Lord, as we know we will all be around your throne. Grant us grace, Lord. Do we trust you for this? We thank you for this wonderful time to be together, for this free nation that we live in. Have your mercy that you've shown to us. Please, Father, we ask these things in the name of your Son, through your Holy Spirit. Amen. Thanks for listening.