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“Fearless
Hearts”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 14:23-29
“Do not let your hearts
be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Dear Sisters and
Brothers, we are not
of this world, we are resident aliens, whose true citizenship is in the
family of Christ. Jesus has
just been asked about how, in upcoming time, he is going to be revealed
only to the faithful of God and not to the world.
God, as the Advocate in the Holy Spirit, is gracefully giving to
us, in this very Word, a revelation of the faith of Christ and how he
experienced peace in his heart at the very time he is being confronted
with a torturous death. This
kind of peace is a gift to us from him as our Lord.
When Judas, not the Judas
who was betraying him, asked Jesus about the disciples seeing him some
more, but not people outside of faith, Jesus’ first response had to do
with our keeping his word within us.
As we live daily with Christ’s word in our hearts, we come to
know him better.
Christ speaks to us in many
ways, through circumstances in our lives, through answers to prayers, in
our own Bible studying and reading the Scriptures for the very purpose
of hearing God speak to us. And
when Jesus Christ, the Word of God, communicates with us, as we keep his
word in our memories, in our thanksgivings, in the very meanings of our
lives, God’s presence is continuously shown to us.
One of my high school
students, a young lady, very popular, and a good student and athlete,
was hospitalized this past week because she fell off a four-wheeler and
was hit by a motor vehicle. She
did spend a couple of days in ICU.
But, when I went to see her last Tuesday, she had been moved to a
room, and when I walked into her room, her mother called out her name,
Tamaran, and she opened her eyes and smiled at me.
I think she is going to be okay.
And when I told this story
to her class, the next day, another of my students, a young man named
Roland, told me about a time, a couple of years ago, during the
two-a-day football practices in the summer, when he had a heat stroke,
passed out, his heart actually stopped beating for a few minutes, and
he, himself, woke up in the hospital, too.
He then told me, when he awakened he was so frightened because a
football player from Carter H.S. had just died in this way about a week
earlier.
However, the end of his
story, for him, was what Jesus Christ had said to him through it all.
Roland told me, “I was not close to Christ, when this happened
and I awoke. I was so
scared that all I did was pray, and from that time Christ has been at
the center of my life. That
is why God let that happen to me, so that I would come closer to
Christ.”
Whether that is actually the
reason that event happened in Roland’s life, only God truly knows.
But, still, because of where God led Roland in his faith, Roland
is loving Christ and keeping Christ’s word in his heart.
As he experiences this, he is experiencing the revelation of
Christ in his life.
Loving Christ and keeping
his word within our hearts, also leads us to the peace that he gives to
us, HIS peace.
Peace is the absence of struggle, anxiety, fear, worrying, battling
something attacking you. It
is all this being over. However,
the peace of Christ, which has each of these attributes, is a unique and
special peace that comes from the victory he has experienced.
Satan, the devil, the world’s evil power attacked Christ with its
most powerful weapon, tortured crucifixion based on human authoritative
hatred. Christ has won over
this. This battle is over.
Death has been defeated because Jesus Christ is raised back to
life in his humanity. That
is the peace he is sharing with us. His peace is the peace experienced by victory over death.
The war with death is over for Jesus Christ.
He is living in his resurrected humanity, in his eternal
relationship with God, as the Father’s Son, in the Holy Spirit, and he
is totally in victorious peace over death.
This is the divine peace that he gives to us, which is why we are
not to be scared. One
special word that we may keep, from Christ, is that in our hearts, at
the center of our beings, in our inner most feelings, we may not be
afraid, because we have been given Christ’s peace over death.
We are blessed by the presence of Christ in our lives as we grow in
living with what it means to keep his word in our lives, and the more
profound peace that we are given by Christ, by the grace of the Holy
Spirit is to realize the truth of our victory over death in Christ.
Christ said that the Father was greater than he because Jesus knew at
that time that he was going to be raised from the dead, in the power of
the Holy Spirit by God the Father’s love for him.
Then Christ said, “But
the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,…will teach you everything.”
Another aspect of the truth of God, in our lives, that Jesus is
teaching us (words that we are to keep) is that God the Holy Spirit is
the Spirit of our justice, our salvation, our eternal life being
proclaimed on our behalf. This
does not mean that God the Father is against us.
Every aspect of God is applied to love for us.
We are having shared with us three ways that we may keep the word of
Christ in our hearts with the continuing experience of coming to know
Christ even more and have his peace in our hearts, putting our fears at
ease. We have just seen the
faith of Christ. He is
telling us, about his willingness to die for our salvation.
It would be much like him standing beside us, putting his arm around
us and saying, “I know that I am the Son of God, and God sent me here
to accomplish winning all of us people back to him, from the devil, who
has taken control of us through the power of sin in this world.
I am going to be killed by the devil, through the misguided type
of thinking from people. But, this is God’s will.
And I know this. This
is how God is going to put an end to the power of evil in our lives.
And as painful as a crucified death could possibly be, I am going
to do this because I know this is God’s will, and that he is going to
raise me from the dead, so that this will be what is giving to all of
you who know me and believe in me.”
This teaches us about the faith of Christ that is given to us through
his word, as we keep it in our hearts. And it is teaching us that we may always put our ultimate
trust in the victory of our eternal life in Jesus Christ, because of the
love of God the Father.
And thirdly, we are being shown that the Holy Spirit is our advocate.
God the Holy Spirit is speaking
on our behalf. We often think of an advocate as a defense lawyer, someone
arguing on behalf of someone else, on one side of the dispute.
Here is a new truth, a word from Christ that we may keep in our
hearts for the rest of our lives. The
Holy Spirit is not merely our advocate before God who is our judge.
We often do think of God in this way.
Guilt and shame from the devil, try to tell us that we are under
the judgmental wrath of God. And
so we often think that Jesus is for us, but if Jesus were not around God
the Father would be hard on us. And
know, as we first hear these verses telling us that the Holy Spirit is
our Advocate, then we think he must be pleading our case before God our
judge.
But, this kind of case is not actually what our defense is all about.
The Holy Spirit, who is your Advocate, is in your heart, through
the word of Christ, presenting the love of God for you when you are
troubled in your heart. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
The person the Holy Spirit is defending your justification to is
you when you are troubled in your heart.
The Holy Spirit is the great schoolmaster, and his whole work today,
in our lives, is to continually share with us the experience of the very
faith of Christ in God the Father.
The devil is the one making us feel guilt and shame in our lives,
and the Holy Spirit, through the word of Christ in our hearts is freeing
us from this kind of fear.
When you feel shame in your heart; when you feel separation from God;
keep the word that Christ has spoken to you before, rehear it, and know
that the Holy Spirit’s whole purpose in your heart is to hear the
meaning of these words with you and to help you hear them once again to
free your heart from the fear of this world.
Let us pray…
Amen
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