IN CHRIST ALONE!: FROM OUR BRETHREN... A CHRISTIAN DENOMINATION THAT IS IN UNION WITH US IN OPPOSING THE FALLACIES OF THE RH/RP "LAW": “The Spirit Makes Us the People of God"

"The Spirit Makes Us the People of God"

January 13, 2013

The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Isaiah 42: 1 – 9/Psalm 89: 20 – 29/Acts 10: 34 – 38/Luke 3: 15 - 16; 21 - 22

His Eminence

The Most Reverend Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines D.D.

Archbishop of Manila

and

Primate

of the

National Church in the Philippines

and

the Territorial Church of Asia

International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church

The Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. Each week, it seems like God adds something more to His Church – strengthening them, empowering them, guiding them, and enlightening them to His purpose and His plan. We are reminded that God’s kingdom includes all – all who fear Him and will do good. The Magi came; the Gentiles represented seeking Christ. It took them two years to make the journey to find Christ.

In today’s presentation to us from Scripture, we see something that probably a lot of us would not be happy with. We know, we understand, and we think that Christ came in Bethlehem. I do not deny that, but it was like God was speaking to us if only we would listen. He was showing to us the pattern of life. He was giving to us guidance and knowledge. God sent Christ, yes; but He sent Christ in the same way that everyone else enters this world – as a baby. It came through a family.

God set that a family would bring forth children. A family would train the children. It would be this powerful unit that God gave to man to build strength, to bring security, and to train in the ways of God. Christ did not reach His ministry instantly. He has to be prepared. The Wise Men took two years to find Him. For Christ, His preparation was thirty years.

We are so impatient in life today. Even in our interpretation of Scriptures, we want to make everything now. We don’t understand that God is teaching us – the process, the progression. How we change from glory to glory into His image. It is a progression which starts on one level, but it ends on a higher level. There should be this movement forward and upward in our lives constantly every day and every year.

Prophesies about Christ were great. We see them today in Isaiah 42. God set the course and the plans. The plans were set before the foundation. He had a direction, a goal, and He knew what He was doing. He did not fail. We misinterpret what He has done and we then think that we can have everything instantly in our lives.

In the past, the teaching would be, “If you would only accept Christ, as your Savior, you will never have another problem. All your problems will flee away.” Our impatience. It took Jesus, the Son of God, thirty years to prepare for His ministry. Was it really necessary? I don’t know but I doubt that it was. God was speaking to us, showing to us that as a people we normally don’t listen to God. We don’t pay attention to what He is doing. We do what we want, how we want to receive it.

We think sometimes that we are wiser than God and we can do things better than He does. God set the course. When Christ came, He would go about doing good. He would open blind eyes; He would bring out prisoners from the dungeon; and all those who dwell in darkness would be brought out into the light. God said, “I am declaring some new things; before they spring forth, I proclaim them to you.”

God is proclaiming something to us if only we listen and pay attention. I do not deny that the Son of God was there in the manger in Bethlehem. It was like a seed planted. It is real, full, but it hasn’t matured yet. It would be like a father with a great wealth, wanting a son so that he can give the son an inheritance. When the son is born, the father says, “Here is my heir, the one who will take my inheritance and built upon it.” He knows that child can’t do it yet. The child has to be prepared but his presence is that which he now works with to bring it into the fullness in reality of maturity.

The same way in our Christian life; God expects us to seek Him in such a manner that we grow in Him to a point of maturity that our lives are changed little by little as He works with us, as He guides and leads us. We don’t grow impatient and give up because we know that we are on a journey. We understand that today’s understanding will not be the same as tomorrow. Tomorrow, we will know more than we did today as we walk with Him because He reveals Himself to us as we are ready to receive.

God does not show partiality. Anyone who will fear Him and do right is welcome in His kingdom because He is Lord of all. How we judge and condemn people. The Protestants condemn the Catholic; the Catholics condemn the Protestants; the Christians condemn the Muslim and the Buddhists. We judge ourselves as more elite but yet God says, “He is Lord of all.” Not just for a few but all. His life and His power are in everything. Nothing or no one is exempted having the life of God. We think we are so awesome and so great boasting and bragging of where we are and who we are. When in reality, everything depends upon our God.

After the Baptism of Christ, Scripture show us that He went about doing good because the Lord was with Him. How many times do we hear in our Mass, “The Lord is with you?” I am wondering that if we hear that over and over again, do we understand that the Scriptures then say to us, “Where are the good deeds? What are you doing with what I have given to you? What is now taking place?”

The gospel is an accounting of the baptism of Jesus. Jesus comes to John as he is teaching in Jordan River. He tells John to baptize Him. John refuses in the beginning saying, “No, You should baptize me. I am not fit; I am not worthy to baptize You.” Jesus insisted. We know from Scriptures that He knew no sin. Why would He demand baptism when He was a God? When He had come from God and when He had known no sin? Yet, He would want that baptism.

Christ is speaking to us the necessity in our lives, as human beings, of cleansing and of setting aside the old so that the new could come. Did Jesus need it? No; He was flesh. Perhaps He was saying to us, “Because you are flesh, I want to show you that this is what you should be doing.” He was teaching us. He was showing us the path and giving to us the guidance.

John agreed to baptize Jesus. Some of the early Church Fathers say and I do not question their wisdom that the reason Jesus was baptized by John was to confirm the ministry of John; but then it was also for Him to become one with us. As He took our sin, eventually, He was saying to us, “I have come. I have taken on the flesh, and I am going through what you also need to go through.”

Some of the early Church Fathers said that as He went into the water, the water was not cleansing Him, but He was cleansing the water so that the water from that time forward, not just in the Jordan River, would be used for baptism and would cleanse away the sin. He was taking His righteousness and affecting that which was not pure. The Jordan River was not the cleanest river. Naaman, with his leprosy, didn’t want to be baptized there. He did not want to go into the river for it was so dirty.

Is this not Christ? Is this not Him speaking to us that even the most filthy, the most sinful, “I am going to cleanse and bring new life. I am going to make the dirtiest clean. I am going to take out the disease and I am going to make it pure.” God was bringing for us something so beautiful and so powerful if we would only think for a moment and let the Spirit talk to us.

As He was being baptized, Scriptures says, “The heavens opened.” In the Greek, the word is not open but torn. The heavens were torn, ripped. I see God with such zeal and hunger to come back to the world that He made to separate, to take away the sin that had separated man from heaven. He, with exuberance, zeal, and power, rips open the heaven very similar to the veil in the temple; renting the veil. It wasn’t just like He gently opens the heaven as in my understanding of how I would see this. He opens the heavens and shows His claim to creation and to mankind.

Sin separated us. In Genesis 2:7, when God created man, He breathed the breath of life into that dust and the dust became a soul. He warned man: if he would eat of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, he would die. It is as though that spirit that God had given to man, for a moment of time, was separated. It was no longer fulfilling the task because man decided that he was going to be controlled by knowledge rather than by God and by God’s law. Man wanted to do it his own way.

An example of this is in the Ten Commandments where God says, “Thou shalt not kill.” We have, as a nation, passed a law that will allow eventually murder to be legal. We think we know more than God. We see ourselves wiser than Him. In reality, we cover up one sin by even a greater sin – the knowledge of man. We have all the reasons. We can come up with all the understanding – logic. But God’s law and commandments, God statutes are what we are to follow. We have to live them out, not doing our own thing.

Perhaps, in John 20, when Jesus breathed on the disciples, could this have been His statement back to them, “I am going to restore My spirit upon you?” It was taken away after it was given but Christ brings it back and says to His disciples, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

God was doing something in a progression. Do we see the progression of God? Do we see how that it takes time? Christ took thirty years. He had three years of ministry. Thirty years of preparation; three years of ministry and yet, because of His commitment to God and the plan of God, not being impatient, not wanting to do things His own way, He changed the whole world.

We are so impatient today. We have to have everything now. You have heard me say about mothers who would spend hours preparing food for the family. There was this understanding love was being manifest. Today, we have the fast foods. We pick up the phone and they deliver. Where, when are we going to learn? When are we going to slow down and let God be the Master of our lives?

This is what God desires of us. Christ gave of Himself. When He was baptized, the heavens opened. The Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Him and a voice out of heaven said, “Thou are My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.” We see God – the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father.

Here is the Epiphany. Here is now God among us. Here is now God that takes away the sin. As Christ is baptized in the River Jordan, He brings cleansing into our lives. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Scriptures says that He went from there doing good deeds. It shows us in our own lives how that when we have been redeemed by Christ, the power that He has given to us, the freedom that we now have, should require of us good deeds.

Scriptures tells us that we will also be judged by our deed one day, not by the salvation. Have we brought them forth? Or are we too busy building our kingdom in man, in man’s world? We are too busy with our profession to be a witness to the greatness of God, and the freedom that He has given to us.

This Feast today should ring loud in our lives of the hope that we have been given, the joy that is ours, and the new life that is ours. The sin is gone; the iniquities are gone; and the Holy Spirit comes to empower us, to strengthen us, and to bring the grace of God into fullness in our lives. We are no longer the deprived, the down-trodden. We are no longer the separated, the aliens because of Christ, because of His obedience to God, because of His submission to God. Yes, Christ could argue and could come up with His own ways, “God, why do I have to do it this way? Can’t we do it another way?” Christ submitted to the will of God, and because He did, He changed the whole world. He brought hope into the lives of every man.

Scriptures tells us that even though there would be a lot who would argue about it, the day will come when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord – the power, the potential, and the ability of Christ because He was submissive, obedient. He did not do things His own way. He did not set things out in logic. Why would He who knew no sin be baptized in the dirty river? “Come on, God, this is not necessary. Change the river. Just speak and let the lightning down there. You could change the river.”

God does not always operate by logic. He has set the course and the direction. He works through man. He sent His Son to show us. He sent His Son to be a witness to us; an example to us.

Thirty years of preparation. How long does it take? I don’t know that how long it will be for us. God is setting something to speak to us so that we understand that we must seek Him. We must prepare. Yes, our preparation might be difficulty today. It might bring heartache to us today, but eventually, it sets us free and we then affect the world because we give in to the preparation. Not our way, not our logic, but God’s way.

This is what the Feast teaches us today. Yes, it sets us free, but it also then shows us how that freedom can come to its fullness in reality. This is the beauty of God in us. We are now commanded, by principle, to live out the baptism He has given to us. We are to demonstrate to the world around us our freedom. The fact that sin no longer has a control in our lives. No longer are we impatient; no longer are we under a situation where we lose our self-control, our discipline.

God has brought to us power and ability. He has created us in that which He created us in the beginning to be like Him so that we can bring forth character like unto His – gentleness, love, and patience. This is what He intends us to be. We have been set free from the old life so that this could be a part of us. This is what our salvation, our baptism does for us. We have been marked by the Holy Spirit. We have been claimed as His own. Should we not demonstrate this to the world?

We are right in the beginning of the calendar year of the Church and God is sharing with us the things that make us His people so that we can be prepared. When it comes to Ordinary Time, we are ready to go out in power. We are ready to go out in strength. We are ready to go out in confidence. “My God is with me. If He is with me, I am going to be like Him.”

We can’t claim God is with us unless we are walking with Him. It is easy to sing a song; it is easy to speak the words; but what is required of us is the life – living it out. It is living it out in such a manner that others see the greatness of God within us. How wonderful God’s grace is. We don’t have to be in sin. We don’t have to be in bondage. We don’t have to be oppressed because He set us free.

We must listen to Him. We must pay attention to what He has done so that our lives reflect what He has given to us. What blessing we have! We have been blessed by Him and it is time for us not only to recognize it, to claim it, but time to live it. Jesus went about doing good deeds. Can we say that in our lives today? Or are we so concerned about “me” that we don’t see others?

We don’t see that we have been set free! We have no need. We have the security we need that we don’t need all that is from the outside. We are secure because of Christ. We don’t need the money to make us secure. We don’t need the fame to make us secure. What we need is a relationship with Christ and then, whether we are rich or poor, whether we are slave or free, whether we are male or female, it doesn’t matter to us because we are secure in Christ.

Stock markets may go down; economy may fall apart; political situations may crumble; but it doesn’t touch us because we are in the kingdom of God. In Him, we are secure. Yes, these things around us are happening, but they don’t take away our peace and our joy. The peace of the Lord reigns with us. It is not our peace, but His. It is not the absence of turmoil or stress or opposition, but it is that assurance that He is with us. Being with us, even the mountains will melt like wax.

Here is the hope that we have in Christ. We are in the Second Sunday of Epiphany and God is sharing with us how much He has planned for us. Plans completed, perfect before the foundation of the world. They will never be changed because they were perfect in the beginning.

May we recognize that this is the day of our deliverance. This is the day of our hope. It celebrates the greatness of God. Maybe it is true that I have heard it said, “The date of our baptism is the date which is our birthday.” Look at the life of Christ. It was after His baptism that He came to the fullness of life. I don’t know what happened between His birth and His baptism. If God wanted us to know that, He could have told us that.

Christ was in a time of preparation. We must prepare ourselves. We must realize what God has given to us. We must recognize that it will not function fully in the beginning, but perhaps, as we continue to practice, as we continue to use it by faith, it will grow into maturity.

Here is the pattern that we have. We want it instantly because we are a very impatient people. We want everything excellent; we want everything so great. God deals in a different way. His process, most of the time, is slower because He is preparing us for eternity. He is not preparing just for a few years; He is preparing us for all time. We should not be impatient. We should be thankful and rejoice in the greatness of our God.

LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION