Rev. Deacon Allen J. Batchelder
†
Trinity Church
Waltham, Massachusetts
May 26, 2013 – Pentecost I
Trinity Sunday – Memorial Day Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15

From the book of Proverbs:
Does not wisdom call; does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the sons of men.”

From St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:
And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

And from the Gospel of St. John:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation.
Amen!

What is truth?

Truth is most often used to mean in accord with fact, reality, sincerity or honesty. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in several contexts, including philosophy and religion. Many human activities depend upon the concept, which is assumed rather than a subject of discussion, including science, law, and everyday life.

There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth: what things are truth-bearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective or objective, relative or absolute.

We have heard in the news lately, several scandals involving our Federal Government.

The first one involves the terrorist attack on our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya back on September 11, 2012, where four Americans were killed and many wounded. The concern has been that the American people and the world were told that the attack was a “spontaneous” protest brought on by an anti-Muslim video and not a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. After several weeks, this narrative was found to be not true. The other accusation was that there may have been military forces available that could have come to their rescue, but were told to “stand down.” It has now been eight months. What is the truth?

The second scandal involves the Justice Department seizing emails and phone records of news organizations, such as the Associated Press and Fox News and their reporters, thus violating the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is Freedom of the Press. Supposedly, it was done to find out, who had leaked information, but instead of looking on the government side, they looked at the press, with a far reaching scope. Were they looking for the truth or was it intimidation? What is the truth?

The third scandal involves the IRS, where the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups such as the Tea Party. The IRS delayed or didn’t process their application for non-profit status. They also obtained donor lists of these organizations and then conducted audits on the donors, to intimidate donors not to give. Some of Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s donors were also targeted for audits. Congress has just started to hold hearings on this matter. What is the truth?

There are other scandals that people have probably forgotten about: voter intimidation by the Black Panthers in the 2008 Presidential election, where the case was dropped; and Operation Fast and Furious, which was gun-running operation where a border patrol agent, Brian Terry was killed and numerous Mexicans as well.

What is very disturbing is that when our government officials are asked to tell the truth, they refuse; they withhold information or mislead the people. All the American people want is to be told the truth. If mistakes were made, fine. Correct them so that they don’t happen again. If people broke the law, then they should be prosecuted. Just don’t lie to us; tell us the truth.

What is this teaching our children about our government; about right and wrong; about telling the truth; and are there consequences for not telling the truth?

Let us remember our brave American men and women on this Memorial Day weekend; many whom have given the ultimate sacrifice, so that we may live in peace and freedom; away from the tyranny of government.

When Jesus was betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and arrested, he eventually was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate asked Jesus a number of questions to determine His guilt or innocence. One of the questions that Pilate asked Jesus was: “What is truth?”

Jesus not only told Pilate of His origin, that His kingdom was not of this world; He also explained His ministry: to bear witness unto the truth. His was a spiritual kingdom of truth; and He won people to His cause, not through force, but through conviction and persuasion. He spoke the truth of God’s Word, and all who were His people would respond to His call. Rome’s weapon was the sword; but our Lord’s weapon was the truth of God, the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17).

Our Lord was always careful to give His disciples the right amount of truth at the best time. This is always the mark of a great teacher. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher today, and He follows that same principle: He teaches us the truths we need to know when we need them, and when we are ready to receive them.

The Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of what Jesus had taught them; this gives us the four Gospels. The Spirit would also “guide” them into all truths; and this would result in the epistles, St. Paul’s letters. “He will show you things to come” refers to the prophetic Scriptures, especially the Book of Revelation.

In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, he talks about “justification by faith.” What does this mean? Justification means that God declares us righteous, which is a declaration of peace, made possible by Christ’s death on the cross. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Ps. 85:10). But when you are justified by faith, you are declared righteous and saved, and the Law cannot condemn you.

Through Jesus Christ, we now have access to God. Before Christ’s death, the Jew was kept from God’s presence by the veil in the temple; and the Gentile was kept out by a wall in the temple with a warning on it that any Gentile who went beyond would be killed. But when Jesus died, He tore the veil and broke down the wall. In Christ, believing Jews and Gentiles have access to God (Eph. 2:18); and they can draw on the inexhaustible riches of the grace of God (Eph. 1:7). We stand “in grace” and not “in Law.” Justification has to do with our standing; sanctification has to do with our state.

“Peace with God” takes care of the past: He will no longer hold our sins against us. “Access to God” takes care of the present: we can come to Him at any time for the help we need. “Hope of the glory of God” takes care of the future: one day we shall share in His glory!

Justification is no escape from the trials of life. “In this world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). But for the believer, trials work for him and not against him. No amount of suffering can separate us from the Lord (Rom. 8:35-39); instead, trials bring us closer to the Lord and make us more like the Lord. Suffering builds Christian character. As we go through trials and tribulations, and depend on God’s grace, the trials only purify us and help to get rid of the sin.

Jesus has promised us that one day we will share in His glory, but as we wait for this hope to be fulfilled, the love of God is “poured out into our hearts.” Before we were saved, God proved His love by sending Christ to die for us. Now that we are His children, surely He will love us more. It is the inner experience of this love through the Spirit that sustains us as we go through life’s tribulations.

Faith, hope, and love all combine to give the believer patience in the trials of life. And patience makes it possible for the believer to grow in character and become a mature child of God (James 1:1-4).
The book of Proverbs is a guide to attaining wisdom and truth, but here and there King Solomon points out several important characteristics of the wise man. Of course, the first step toward wisdom is saving faith in Jesus Christ.

Wise people listen to wise instruction, especially the Word of God. Wise people pay attention to spoken instruction as well as to the written Word of God as His Holy Spirit teaches us His will. Jesus warns us to take heed what we hear (Mark 4:24) and how we hear (Luke 8:18).

This means that we must diligently spend time reading and studying the Word of God, appropriating its truths into our hearts, and obeying what God commands (Prov. 2:1-9). It isn’t enough to own a study Bible and read books about the Bible, helpful as they are. It’s one thing to know about the Bible and quite something else to hear God speak through His word and teach us His wisdom so that we become more like Jesus Christ.

People today have numerous translations of the Bible to read and to study. They have a church fellowship, and can look back at centuries of faith as recorded in church history and the Bible. Yet many refuse to believe or they are just not interested.

It is essential that we see that the work of the Spirit of God is never divorced from Jesus Christ or the Word of God. “He will bear witness to me” (John 15:26); “He shall glorify me” (John 16:14). Jesus is the truth (John 17:17), and the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth.” Where the Holy Spirit is at work, there must be truth.

The teaching of the Spirit through the Apostles was not different from the teaching of the Spirit through Jesus Christ. The same Holy Spirit communicated the truths found in the four Gospels, the epistles, and the Book of Revelation; and He also wrote the history and doctrine found in Acts.

It is the ministry of the Spirit to enrich us with the treasures of God’s truth. He enlightened us with God’s truth and enriches us with God’s treasures. The Word of God is a rich mine of gold, silver, and precious jewels (Prov. 3:13-15). What a joy it is to have the Spirit illumine His Word.

We do not study the Word of God in order to “argue religion” with people, or to show off our grasp of spiritual things. We study the Word to see Jesus Christ, to know God better, to glorify Him in our lives.
As we witness in this hostile world, the Spirit uses the Word He has taught us; and we share Jesus Christ with the lost. It is our job to witness; it is the Spirit’s job to convict.

As we study God’s Word, we need to allow God’s Holy Spirit to work through us and teach us the will of the Father and to become more like His Son, Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee that thou would keep us steadfast in this faith and worship and bring us at last to see thee in thy one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son, and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever.
AMEN †

Rev. Deacon Allen J. Batchelder
†
Trinity Church
Waltham, Massachusetts
May 12, 2013 – Easter VII
Ascension Sunday – Mother’s Day

Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelations 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26

From the book of Acts:
And the jailer said: “Men, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

From the Revelation to St. John:
Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.

And from the Gospel of St. John:
The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.

Let us pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation.
Amen!

It’s been about a month now, since the terrorist attack at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. This horrible event continues to be in the news. The FBI and other law enforcement officials continue to gather evidence; government officials are working backwards to see if they missed some intelligence that might have prevented this attack from happening. Perhaps this information might help to prevent another attack from happening. The last couple of weeks we had the drama of where to bury the body of one of the terrorist. “Not in my backyard” was the common response from one town after another. We now know that under the cover of darkness, his body was buried in a Muslim cemetery in Virginia.

If we can see some good to come out of this, it was the uniting of the people in love, compassion, grief, pain and sorrow. Those directly affected, will have to carry these feelings with them for the rest of their lives.

As Jesus neared the end of His ministry here on earth, He begins to pray for His disciples and for us who live today; for the whole church throughout all ages. His prayer is for unity. He is concerned that His people experience a spiritual unity that is like the oneness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christians may belong to different fellowships, but they all belong to the Lord and to each other.

We would like to think of Jesus’ disciples as devote and holy men, but that was not always to case. Like us, the disciples had often exhibited a spirit of selfishness, competition, and disunity; and this must have troubled the Savior’s heart. I wonder how he feels when He sees the condition of the church today! The Puritan preacher Thomas Brooks wrote: “Discord and division become no Christian. For wolves to worry the lambs is no wonder, but for one lamb to worry another, this is unnatural and monstrous.”

What is the basis of true Christian unity? It is the person and work of Jesus Christ and His glory (John 17:2-5). He has already given His glory to us, and He promises that we will further experience that glory when we get to heaven! All true believers have God’s glory within, no matter what they may look like on the outside. Christian harmony is not based on the externals of the flesh but the internals and the eternals of the Spirit in the inner person. We must look beyond our physical characteristics, such as race, color, abilities, etc. – and build our fellowship on the essentials of our new birth in Jesus Christ.

Over the last few decades, the mainline Protestant denominations celebrated diversity. Unfortunately they got it backwards. They welcomed people’s different beliefs and then incorporated them into the church’s beliefs and values. It didn’t matter too much what you believed; all roads lead to heaven. Our Christian beliefs were watered down thinking that somehow that would unite us. They forgot that the only uniting force is the belief in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.

There was also the feminist movement, where the way to equality was the removal of any and all reference to men. Liturgy and hymnals were rewritten for this purpose. There were even some women clergy, even Bishops who refused to worship God the Father, God the Son, because of the male reference. Around the 1990’s some women clergy and even women Bishops chose to worship the goddess Sophia and nothing was done about it. This heresy is still going on today.

Grace Chapel in Lexington had a very successful men’s ministry. There were several men from our church that went to it. They often had over 700 men from around New England that attended the once-a-month meeting. They would start with fellowship and a lasagna dinner, followed by a speaker. Then the church hired a feminist, a male, and the ministry was shut down because it excluded women, yet all the women ministries (that exclude men) were allowed to continue.

Did these changes in the church unite the people or divide it? Did our churches experience growth or decline? Unfortunately our church leaders concentrated on the physical external elements of the person and forgot about the internal and eternal spiritual elements to unite us. United we stand, divided we fall.
We already possess His glory within, and one day we shall behold His glory in heaven (John 17:24). As we grow in the Lord, the glory within begins to grow and to reveal itself in what we say and do and the way we say and do it. People do not see and glorify us; they see the Lord and glorify Him (Matt. 5:16).

After His resurrection, Jesus remained on earth for forty days and ministered to His disciples. He had already opened their minds to understand the Old Testament message about Himself (Luke 24:44-48), but there were other lessons they needed to learn before they could launch out in their new ministry. Jesus appeared and disappeared during those forty days, and the believers never knew when He might show up. This is how it is today. We never know when our Lord will return. God has not revealed His timetable to us and it is futile for us to speculate. We need to be ready at all times.

Our Lord’ ascension into heaven was an important part of His ministry, for if He had not returned to the Father, he could not have sent the promised gift of the Holy Spirit (John 16:5-15). Also, in heaven today, the Saviour is our interceding High Priest, giving us the grace that we need for life and service (Heb. 4:14-16). He is also our Advocate before the Father, forgiving us when we confess our sins (1 John 1:9-2:2). The exalted and glorified head of the church is now working with His people on earth and helping them accomplish His purposes (Mark 16:19-20).

As the believers watched, as Jesus was being taken up to glory, two angels appeared and gently rebuked them. The two messengers gave the believers assurance that Jesus Christ would come again, just as He had been taken from them.

One of the things about the Christian faith that most impresses the world is the way Christians love each other and live together in harmony. What better example is there than the love that a mother has for her child. It is this witness that our Lord wants in the world “that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me” (John 17:21). This is a very big responsibility. Because the world will hold us to this very high standard; but have a very low standard for themselves. The lost world cannot see God, but they see Christians; and what they see in us is what they will believe about God. If they see love and unity, they will believe that God is love. If they see hatred and division, they will reject the message of the Gospel.

There is every reason why believers should love one another and live in unity. We trust the same Saviour and share the same glory. We will one day enjoy the same heaven! We belong to the same Father and seek to do the same work, witnessing to a lost world that Jesus Christ alone saves from sin. We believe the same truth, even though we may have different views of minor doctrinal matters; and we follow the same example that Jesus set for His people, to live a holy life. Yes, believers do have their differences; but we have much more in common, and this should encourage us to love one another and promote true spiritual unity.

Jesus declared that many in the world do not know the Father and that is true today. But we believers know Him because the Son has revealed the Father to us. The world certainly has many opportunities to get to know the Father, but it prefers to go on in blindness, darkness and hardness of heart. Our task as Christians is to bear witness to the lost world and share God’s saving message.

He also declares the importance of truth and love in the church. Believers know God’s name (nature) and even share in that divine nature. Jesus makes it clear that truth and love must go together. It has well been said that truth without love is brutality, but love without truth is hypocrisy. The mind grows by taking in truth, but the heart grows by giving out in love. Knowledge alone can lead to pride (1 Cor. 8:1), and love alone can lead to wrong decisions.

“What must I do to be saved?” was the cry of the Roman prison guard who had the responsibility of St. Paul and Silas. Paul had saved a demonized girl who had made her masters wealthy by telling fortunes. The owners had no concern for the girl; they were interested only in the income she provided, and now that income was gone. So, the owners complained and had Paul and Silas arrested. Paul and Silas were stripped and beaten and put in prison.

Instead of complaining or calling on God to judge their enemies, the two men prayed and praised God. God responded by shaking the foundations of the prison, opening all the doors, and loosening the prisoners’ bonds. They could have fled to freedom, but instead they remained right where they were.

Paul’s attention was fixed on the jailer, the man he really wanted to win to Christ. It was Roman law that if a guard lost a prisoner, he was given the same punishment the prisoner would have received. As it turns out, it was the jailer who was actually the “prisoner” (to sin); not Paul; and Paul not only saved the man’s life, but pointed him to eternal life in Christ.

“What must I do to be saved?” is the cry of the lost people worldwide, and we had better be able to give them the right answer. The answer is faith in Jesus Christ! And Paul spoke the word of the Lord to the jailer and to all in his household. The jailer in turn washed Paul and Silas’ wounds and he and his household were baptized at once.

It is touching to see the change in the attitude of the jailer as he washed the wounds of these two prisoners who were now his brothers in Christ. One of the evidences of true repentance is a loving desire to make restitution and reparation wherever we have hurt others. We should not only wash one another’s feet, but we should also cleanse the wounds we have given to others.

In the Revelation to St. John, John assures us that Jesus Christ will return. God is mindful of our sufferings and our service, and nothing will ever be done in vain if it is done for Him. “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates” (Rev. 22:14).
Those who accept His Word may enter; those who reject His Word are excluded. Obedience to God’s Word is a mark of true salvation.

The “morning star” announces dawn’s soon arrival. Jesus Christ will come for His church as “the Morning Star.” But when He returns to judge, it will be as “the Sun of righteousness” in burning fury (Mal. 4:1-3). Because God’s people look for their Lord’s return, they keep their lives clean and dedicated to Him (1 John 2:28-3:3).

Christ’s return has been “delayed” for some 2000 years! Yes, He has; and Peter tells us why: God wants to give this sinful world the opportunity to repent and be saved (2 Peter 3:1ff). In the meantime, the Spirit of God, through the church (the bride), calls for Jesus to come; for the bride to meet her bridegroom and enter into her home. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

It is up to believers to invite lost sinners to trust Christ and drink the water of life. Indeed, when the church lives in expectancy of Christ’s return, such an attitude provokes ministry and evangelism as well as purity of heart. We want to tell others of the grace of God. A true understanding of Bible prophecy should both motivate us to obey God’s Word and to share God’s invitation with a lost world.

After God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ’s glorious resurrection, He appeared to His disciples; and in their sight ascended into heaven, to prepare a place for us; that where He is, there might we also be, to reign with Him in glory.

Shall we join John in the Bible’s last prayer? “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
Are we ready?

Let us pray:
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you, and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.
AMEN †