We continue to have many opportunities to participate at First Baptist, with Food Pantry and Hot Dogs on Tuesday, Bible Study on Wednesday, Book Club on Thursday, and Sunday School, Worship Service, and Snacks/Fellowship on Sundays. Check the calendar for times, and welcome to join us!
30 May 2021 Sunday Service: What is Spiritual Cleansing?
Call to Worship:; Psalm 29
A psalm of David.
1 Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of hisholiness.
3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion(Mt. Hermon) like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord strikes
with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;
the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the Lord twists the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord is enthroned as King forever.
11 The Lord gives strength to his people;
the Lord blesses his people with peace.
Invitation, Praises, and Prayer Requests; Father of all the creation and beyond, so hallowed and praised is your name in this room and in our hearts. Lord today we dedicate our very being to you and your will, thank you Father for all of your blessing in our lives. Lord, we ask you to help us in our walk in you and to forgive us our many shortcomings, and to help us to learn forgiving others as you forgive us. In your Heavenly Name;
Amen!
Message Reading: Romans 8:12-17
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Message: What is Spiritual Cleansing?
Today on this Memorial Day weekend, I am excited to share with you an observance that much of the church celebrate as Trinity Sunday. In the western church it occurs the Sunday after Pentecost unlike the eastern Orthodox occurring on Pentecost. This observance is a reminder that we celebrate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and thank God for affording us a balance of all three in our lives. Meaning that all three contribute to a vibrant, robust, and cohesive Faithwalk in and with our Lord God.
Last week we as already mentioned, we celebrated the unleashing of God’s Spirit into a world hurting and yearning for relief, and in most cases without knowing it, healing from itself. The world was a mess, lost and adrift in a sea of abyss, with the expectations of God’s children (Israel), hinged on the Lord cleaning house and fixing things according to their own; fears, egos, wants, and needs.
A world that was full of itself, with many people back then imagining God to be an extension of their own selves (the way they wanted God to be), instead of acknowledging God as God. That God will be who God will be, and human beings would spend a lifetime trying to grasp just what that really meant then, and means now.
Yes, last week we observed God not only affirming His law of the covenant with Israel, but with the unleashing of His Spirit, it was and is possible for His Law, His will, God’s very Spirit to reside within heart of all mankind. More importantly, last week’s celebration of Pentecost (the unleashing of the Holy Spirit of God), marked an event that was not relegated to a time back then, because God’s Sprit is even more relevant and needed today.
Like the people back in Jesus’ day, we people of the modern era are still struggling with making God in our own image of what we think God should be, or want Him to be. As much as the world has changed in two thousand years, the reality is that the sin that resides within us remains pretty much the same.
All that’s really changed perhaps is the amplification of my sin through application of all the high technology that you and I have access to. Increasing my desire for instant gratification. Because when I want something, society has instructed me that I not only desperately need whatever (and I mean whatever) my heart’s desire, but that I also deserve it. And what a concoction that recipe for disaster is!
You see all of us in western society suffer from the privilege our technology has afforded us. I not only want everything, but receiving it yesterday was getting it late on my advanced schedule of serving me, my desires, my wants, and my needs. At least what I think I need. And I have an endless list of me, by me, and for me. Hey have you herd about me. Get to know me. No really let’s talk about something more interesting, how about me. My phone has a selfie.
Hey, but really, I’m bored. Did you hear about what I did? Should we talk about my yearly physical? I won’t even go into detail about turning my head and coughing. And, no, it’s not Rogane, it’s Loreal, and I’m worth.
I am like a kid at a candy store most days. With the question not if I’m going to get some (I will!), but how long; will it take for my appetite to be warped with all that sugar, the weight to pack on, or for the signs of diabetes to show positive that I am making myself sick?
Apply the same metaphor towards all of the junk you are struggling with in your life right now, and you start to get an idea of just how much we need God’s spirit in our lives today. To at least show us how to think about others, to empathize, and sympathize with someone or something besides ourselves.
Regardless of if we know it or not, we inwardly desire, we require, we outright need the Spiritual Hygiene (or cleansing), the inward scrubbing and enlightening that only the Spirit of the sovereign Lord God can provide upon a real request by you. It was drastically needed on Pentecost back then, and even more so today, as we battle our addictions.
Case in point. I am going to present again today’s “Call to Worship”, but before I do, I want to ask you to: really focus by praying inwardly to God for His enlightenment, His Spirit as you ponder His incredible scripture within your very being. Take a moment to prepare yourself, after all this is God’s word given through a man after God’s own Heart. Listen to what God and His servant David have to say.
Psalm 29
A psalm of David.
1 Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of hisholiness.
3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion(Mt. Hermon) like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord strikes
with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;
the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the Lord twists the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord is enthroned as King forever.
11 The Lord gives strength to his people;
the Lord blesses his people with peace.
On my own, these are mere words. Sometimes, I can comprehend their poetic beauty and meter. But I fall short in appreciating their deeper value in both my own, and my loved one’s lives when I try to grasp God’s Word or Will with my own intellect and abilities.
You see until I turn to the Lord asking for His Spirit, grace, and yes, forgiveness, I remain largly deaf to His word, ignorant of His will, and blind to His majesty. This is why our Church opens and closes all our meetings, classes, and worship services with prayer to the Lord, asking for His Spirit, and will to be done is implied in our very actions.
That is what Spiritual Hygiene in a church looks like. Our continually asking for God’s Will, His Majesty, Jehovah’s Glory, and the Lord’s Grace, through the Holy Spirit to be our Shepherd without ceasing in all things. Before you know it, that Spiritual hygiene and cleansing becomes who we are and automatic.
And when I am in and with my Lord, I begin to get an idea of what His voice sounds like instead of imposing my own, I start to live His Kingship instead of hosting visions of my own grandeur, and He visits His peace of mind upon my sole. David’s psalm (love song) grows in meaning!
That’s when God’s power, majesty, and strength thunder within our very being in this Church Family by housing His will within us. Not overwhelming us or others, but gently guiding us in sharing His grace in a sick, needy, and hurting groping world.
Yes, last week we observed the unleashing of God’s Holy Spirit, but Pentecost must never be dismissed as an event that happened back in the day. No. Each day we recommit ourselves to God, each time we make a decision to follow our Lord instead of ourselves we relive and revive last week’s observance of the Spirit all over again fresh and anew.
The Apostle Paul had a sense of this renewal that takes place and our accepted responsibility as adopted children of God’s family. Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, discussed who we are in the family of God, and instructed the Spirit’s role in our family life. Again, today’s “Message Reading” from Romans 8:12-17, Paul shares through the centuries with us;
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
No one else in the room has to know what your thinking, but everyone should at this point form a mental list of the stuff of the flesh, that you want to put to death!
Our slavery to the world and all of its high-tech gloss, the stuff that titillates and resonates so deeply within us, ends when we choose to live in and with God’s Spirit. By doing so, we get to leave all that form and style stuff to the Pharisees of life and concentrate on loving God, and God’s children. Simple stuff, because real prayer is Spirit led by God for us, instead of man directed by us!
Our obligation is to grow beyond those petty things of our childhood. You know the stuff that has consumed your whole being at times. The stuff we: schemed for (coveted), cheated to own, strived to possess, hurt others to assume, backstabbed for dominance of, murdered in spirit to get and have, deprived ourselves of sleep to acquire, lied to hide, and fought to overpower others in holding on to.
I am worn out just thinking about it, but will probably be ready to go at it again (in my quest to serve me). Yes, and on autopilot without even thinking when triggered mindlessly by a commercial, or what the Jones’ just pulled into the driveway with, or the vacation my buddy just booked and bragged about, or the latest smart phone someone at work showed up with. That’s me at my immature best (or worst), and that is what we must mature and grow up from.
The things of our spiritual childhood that Paul touches upon in his first letter to Corinth, couched in the Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:11-12;
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
That junk which sabotages our soles, disrupts our faith, and seeks to dispossess us of our heavenly adoption into God’s family begins with our own; egos, fears, selfishness, and immaturity. The deal is formalized by our declining to try and walk in God’s Holy Spirit, and gains strength and weight with each day I exercise that bad decision to follow my own addictions of me over Him.
So, what does good Spiritual Hygiene look like? Well, my thought, and like all things, this is just my thought. You have the heavy burden of praying and studying scripture, both alone and with people you trust and then prayerfully, thinking for you self. My thought, is that a good Spiritual cleansing is like other items in your life is a lifestyle that becomes a habit. Like brushing teeth, cleaning house, going to the store fore snacks, and stuff like that.
Unlike other habits that become automatic, the hope remains that we never take prayer and asking for God’s Spirit for granted, or it begins to take the form of my old bedtime prayers when I was a child and I would speed-prayer to get it over with each night. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my sole to keep, If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my sole to take. Please bless….
Amen!
No, alone or with your Church family, good Spiritual Hygiene (a sole scrubbing from God), which is the practice of walking in the Spirit with and in our Lord, is a way of life that gets easier with practice. I think that perhaps one way that we avoid getting to the point where we begin to take the Spirit and even the whole idea of God for granted is that from time to time, we emphasis the Holy Spirit in Church and in our prayers communally. That way we can remind each other of the importance of the Spirit in our Faithwalk.
It is my hope and prayer this Memorial Weekend that all of you are afforded the opportunity during this week of remembrance for loved ones passed, to really look deep within yourselves as you reflect on the majesty that is our God, and bring the grace that is last week’s Pentecost into next week’s Spiritual Faithwalk.
Amen!
Benediction: Romans 5:1-5, and Numbers 6:24-26
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.
5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
And
24 The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.