New Year;s Eve Sermon 2011

New Year’s Eve 12/31/11 Text: Psalm 63:1-8 Title: Early will I seek You. Tonight’s sermon is based on God’s Word Psalm 63:1-8 with particular attention to the last verse, especially the last sentence, “Early will I see thee.” It is a Psalm written by King David as he was being pursued by his enemies in the wilderness of Judah. “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. 3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. 4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, 6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. ‘Early Will I Seek Thee.' ” Do you ever get a tune or song in your mind and you can't get rid of it? I remember once getting the tune to "Gilligan's Island" stuck in my mind like a broken record. For three days I couldn't stop it! Drove me crazy! Just mentioning it now starts it playing in my mind. “Just sit right back and you will hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.” Sometimes a verse from the Bible does that. Some verse or phrase from my daily Bible reading just lodges in my mind and for days, even weeks I find myself reflecting on it. Unlike a silly tune from a television show, you don't want to try to get rid of it. In fact, you find it of great comfort and guidance. God, you see, has a way, as we study the Word, of putting those verses, those truths we most need right there into our hearts and minds, ready when we need them. That is why I chose this Psalm for tonight, especially the last sentence “Early Will I Seek Thee.” There is no greater tragedy than to try to go through life without knowing God. We can make a lot of friends; have many companions in our days, but none are so important or meaningful than our relationship with God. I know that you just as I do want many things in your life and out of life. We have a lot of dreams and desires and what we think of as needs, but we have to be careful to not be misled, for our greatest dream, desire, and need must be to be in a right relationship with God. Without a meaningful relationship with God, you will never be completely whole or know true happiness. As St. Augustine one of the great early Christian fathers once said, "Lord, you made us for yourself, and we can never know true rest until we rest in thee." You can have everything your heart has ever desired, but without a right relationship with God, you will always, in the end feel empty and unfulfilled. You like to listen to CD's? What would happen if you took a CD or a record for us older members and bored a hole just off center of it and then tried to play it? It would not work, as it was designed to work. Yet, if you placed the CD or record where it was designed to be placed it would respond with the music it was designed to play. We are the same way. We need to be centered on God to live the lives we were designed to live showing God’s glory. Tomorrow morning when you wake up in the New Year seek the will of God first thing and continue to do it the rest of your life, for when you do that you will be blessed by the Lord, for his mercies are new every morning. Does seeking God’s will early mean that all the decisions you make will turn out to be good decisions? Hardly, for we are sinful people living in a sinful world and thus even while we believe that we are seeking the will of God when we pray and read his Word sometimes what we are seeking is justification for our will. Seek the Lord early, for his mercies are new every morning. Can you think of a better way for God's children to begin each day this New Year than with thoughts of God and a desire to seek God? As much as I like my morning coffee, the "best part of waking up is not Folgers in my cup, but God in my heart, on my mind. This gets the day off right, for it focuses us on the right things, the most important priorities. Best of all it gives us a sense of God's presence throughout the day. When we know God is with us, we are then better able to face whatever the day may bring. My prayer for you and for me this New Year’s Eve is that each day next year we might find ourselves with a greater desire to seek God early in each new day, for his mercies are new every morning. Amen.

Christmas Day 2011

Christmas Day, December 25, 2011 Text: John 1:1-14 Title: Let us Rejoice for the Word is among us It’s no surprise to find God “in the beginning,” as we do in the first chapter of Genesis. After all, he’s uncreated, infinite, and eternal. He is without beginning and without end. If it were any other way, he wouldn’t be God, for something else would have had to create him. Everything else; that is everything except Jesus who is God Incarnate, whether it is visible or invisible, is part of his creation. We know this because in Genesis 1:1 we are told “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He made everything out of nothing when he spoke all creation into being by his word. The Gospel of John also starts before creation with the words “in the beginning” but adds “was the Word” Prior to the creation, when there was nothing besides God, there was God’s Word as John tells us “The Word was with God” The Word and God are two distinct persons while being one God. Personal pronouns, such as “he” and “him” and “his,” must be used for the Word. He’s a divine person uncreated, infinite, and eternal. Through this Word, there in the beginning with God, “all things were made”. He was the agent by whom God spoke the entire creation into being. Light and life have their beginning and source in him, for the Word was there when everything seen and unseen came into being and it was very good. Zoom forward from “the beginning” to this moment, and what you find is far different. There’s spiritual darkness, thick darkness, and deep gloom over the whole world. The world in which we live doesn’t know God. Oh many would say different, but it is true, for they don’t know the Word that is Jesus, as God Incarnate. They are spiritually ignorant and blind, living in the darkness John talks about in his Gospel. With a single word “darkness” John describes creation’s fall, sin, death, and hell. The word “darkness” captures the confusion and misunderstanding and futility is in us and around us. For the “Darkness” John is talking about means that man can’t find God, no matter how many times he bumps into the stuff God made. He’s lost, as he lives in an upside-down world that he thinks is right-side up. Disoriented and alienated from God’s creation he constantly is inventing false gods and false worship to try and fill the emptiness he fills deep inside of himself. If the creation were to be redeemed, saved, and rescued from this darkness of sin and death, then God would have to make himself known to us. But how would he do this? God would come to the place where we are, descend to earth, enter his creation, so that we are living in the darkness lost and condemned creatures might know him and be brought back into the light. That my dear forgiven and restored brothers and sisters in Christ is the wondrous mystery of Christmas. God shows up in a place where we certainly don’t expect to find him, as John tells us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God the Word, who was there in the beginning and participated in the creation of all things, took on a human nature like yours. The one who was uncreated became created as one of us. The one who lives outside of time has willing become bound by time and place. The Word became flesh, Jesus Christ, true God and true man in one person. What a surprise. God’s human creation left on their own cannot find the creator, so the one who creates became human. The one who formed man from the dust has come in blood and flesh with hands and feet and eyes and mouth, as we are. He was born of a woman. Mary his mother wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger for a bed. Yet he was before Abraham, even before Adam, and yet he can be found in Bethlehem as a tiny babe. What a mystery. O come, let us adore him. The one who made the mountains and the tree that he was nailed to suffered and bled and died for his creation. The one in whom “we live and move and have our being” according to Acts 17:28 was once more wrapped, not in swaddling cloths, but in linen and laid in a tomb. He did not stay there but came bursting forth on the third day giving us assurance of our resurrection. O come, let us adore him. God Incarnate did not just come a long time ago and then leave us. He who made the wheat and the vine comes now in bread and wine to you. His true body and true blood are present on this altar. Eternal life, the light of the world, is so near that in just a few minutes you will touch him and taste him. For Jesus the Word who was in the beginning is now and forever incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. That makes Christmas a blessed surprise. The uncreated, eternal, and infinite God comes right here among us as our light and our life. O come, let us adore him. Amen.