Morning Message Texts: Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22 Acts 8: 14-17
15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.
16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
The Baptism and Genealogy of Jesus
21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened
22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Acts 8: 14-17
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria.
15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit,
16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Morning Message:
What is God’s will? The easy answer to that question is: we don’t know. From a basic Christian point of view, we understand that God’s will is perfect and that we should seek his will. We cannot pretend to know the mind of all mighty God. We can gain insight to his will by studying his Word and spending time in prayer. We know that God loves all mankind and seeks to save everyone; that is made very clear with the most basic readings of God’s Word. We can get all tangled up in theological questions about God’s will and the difference between his love for mankind and his justice that must be carried out. I believe that if we really try, and we draw close to God, we can make sense of why without justice God’s love cannot be complete. I don’t know about you but I want a God who is all-knowing and has all of the answers. God’s will is perfect because he knows all things; he knows how things will turn out; he doesn’t just see our actions, he knows our intentions and he knows the outcome. God’s will is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that it makes human sense.
I am trying to break this down so that we can understand it. I don’t pretend to know the things of God any better than you. I know that all I can do is study his Word and prayerfully seek understanding. Sometimes God seems to give me a perspective that I didn’t have and an understanding that is new. God’s will is the big picture. His will is for all mankind. Daily at the end of my prayers, I make this request of God: “Lord, for every person I just prayed for, your will be done in their lives; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Within God’s will is God’s purpose. Purpose is the reason for which something is done or made. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe in luck or chance; I believe that God has a purpose for everything that happens in the lives of his people. That doesn’t mean that nothing bad will happen, and it doesn’t mean that everything in our lives will go the way we want. What it means is: whatever happens, God is in control; and we need to embrace the results of God’s purpose for our lives. God has an intended result for the things that happen in your life; there is a desired result that God is trying to achieve in your life. Now I am not a big believer in spending years trying to discover what God’s purpose is for our lives. Time is precious and there is a lot of good that we can accomplish. We need to be prayerful, but we also need to be active. If we prayerfully seek God’s purpose and make ourselves available to God, he will take care of our purpose.
In our scripture today we hear about what the people are thinking. They have seen John doing wonderful things, and they are starting to jump to the conclusion that he might be the Messiah. John clears this up because he understands his place and knows his purpose. I want you to notice that John is baptizing, and his baptism is a baptism of repentance of sins. When Jesus is baptized and prays, we see the first signs of the Holy Spirit. There was a purpose in John’s baptism: to open the eyes of the people so that they might recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Now please stay with me. Today we celebrate the baptism of our Lord. There is a purpose for baptism in the church and in the lives of God’s people, but baptism is not salvation. Baptism is an outward sign of your inward commitment to Jesus. It doesn’t save you or protect you; it is a proclamation of your salvation to the Christian community.
Lastly, nothing is automatic. Everyone’s experience is different. We like things to be set in stone, we like to have a system that tells us if we do A, B and C, we will get the same result every time. There is only one way back to God: through Jesus, but we must be open to that looking different in every person’s life. Why? Because we are different, and God has a different purpose for every person and every situation. In our reading from Acts it would be easy to read through it and miss the purpose that was fulfilled in the way that this took place. The Samaritans accepted the Word of God and had been baptized in the name of Jesus. So why did they not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John actually placed their hands on them and prayed for them? Now listen, this is important: because God had a greater purpose. The Jews and the Samaritans had hated each other for hundreds of years. If the Samaritans had received the anointing of the Holy Spirit immediately when they believed, they would have found Christ without finding fellowship with the Jewish believers. God’s desire, his purpose in having it happen this way was to unify the church and bring these two communities back together. God is accomplishing more than one thing at a time in the lives of his people. God’s will, God’s purpose, nothing is automatic. God accomplishes his will and purpose in our lives in ways that we would never think of or choose.
In Christ’s Love and Peace
Pastor Bob
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