| |
June 5, 2005
|
Wesleyan Heritage
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
"The Means of Grace"
Ephesians 5:1-20
1Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.£ 6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7Therefore do not be partners with them.
8For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10and find out what pleases the Lord. 11Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
NIV
|
- We have been dwelling a bit in the past for a couple weeks now, looking at the work of God in and through John Wesley's life. You remember he was an Anglican clergyman, who with his brother Charles was used of God to change the course of English history through a great revival in the 1700s and also to start what is now the United Methodist Church denomination.
We have heard how God moved upon John in 1738 at a place in London called Aldersgate during a Bible Study. There John had his heartwarming experience shaking him free from the need to earn God's favor to walking day by day in God's favor. And then we heard how God took John from London to the highways of Bristol and loosed him into an outdoor preaching ministry reaching multitudes of people.
We learned that John believed because God is trinity we are meant to be in relationship with others. Christianity is a "social religion" he would say. Therefore, he organized converts into small groups called societies, classes, bands and select bands. He taught those converted to watch over one another's souls. Those in the classes and societies could be converted or not-yet converted folk, who were seeking God. Part of their disciplines were to read the Scriptures daily, pray and come to the local Anglican church to partake of communion as often as they could. Thus they were involved in what John termed the "Means of Grace" even prior to conversion.
So what are the means of Grace? John would say they are the "outward signs, words, or actions ordained of God, and appointed for this end - to be the ordinary channels whereby God might convey to all people preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace" (Sermon 16 on The Means of Grace, ubp).
- Channels, avenues, of grace into our lives. We can wait for grace to come in certain ordained ways.
The terms he uses there for "grace" are "preventing" "justifying" and "sanctifying." I will return to these next week.
The expression "means of grace" is also not something John Wesley thought up but had been used in the church for many ages prior to his time. The idea is that although we cannot earn God's grace, we can place ourselves in position to receive it. Although there are many, many means of God's grace from Christian conversation to ministry to the poor, there are three primary means we will look at today.
You won't find these listed in the Scripture passage I had read today from the book of Ephesians, but there we do find the invitation to walk in them. Ephesians 5 begins with this statement: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us."
So, how can we "be imitators of God…"? Well, the passage invites us to imitate God in how we love. "Live a life of love," the passage says, "just as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us."
How can I live such a life of love? It cannot just be put on like a comfortable set of clothes. Instead we have to be transformed and the only way we are going to be transformed is if we practice living like Jesus, the Son of God, lived.
For me then "imitate God" takes me to the Gospels with the question, "what is the central way in which Jesus chose to live his earthly days after which I can model how I live my days?" And I find throughout his style of living the "means of grace," the practice of placing himself into position to be encountered by God so that He could be listening to the Heavenly Father. Jesus did this so much that He could describe himself as doing "nothing" except that which he saw his father doing; saying nothing except what he heard his father saying.
If I want to be like Jesus, I best learn to walk in the "means of God's grace" that Jesus knew and walked in. For although Jesus was God he was also fully human, he had laid aside his deity during his walk on this earth, he never called upon any personal divine power for the living of his earthly life, but lived in the power of the Holy Spirit as you and I are called to live as well.
So, in this passage we are told to imitate Jesus, to walk as children of the light, to learn what pleases the Lord, to live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity.
- In order to do so, we too need to be walking in the "means of Grace" to which God has called us. The primary three are prayer, searching the Scriptures and partaking of the Meal of Holy Communion.
Spirituality cannot be imposed, in our lives, it must be grown. The early members of societies and class meetings were invited into the journey of tending the soil in their individual lives through the "means of grace" introduced to them in those relationships.
Everyone would not grow at the same rate or in the same manner. However, all did grow through the means of grace. Prayer is foundational. It is the "most deeply human action in which we can engage. Behavior we have in common with the animals. Thinking we have in common with the angels. But prayer - that attentiveness and responsiveness of the human being before God-this is human"
(Eugene Peterson Under the Unpredictable Plant, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publ Co., c.'92, p. 111, allusion in previous paragraph, p. 109, ubp).
Prayer is always my response to God. God always has the first Word. So, in prayer I respond to the God who has spoken. It is God who prompts me to pray. And I will always be a learner in the school of prayer. No one has "arrived".
So, how can I learn to pray? Jesus is the one we are imitating in this walk in the means of grace and Jesus learned to pray with the psalms. I was just checking again this week about how young Jewish boys were raised, and beginning at age 2 they were taught to memorize the Psalms. By the time he was 5 Jesus would have memorized all 150 psalms. So he had prayers memorized in his heart. You find him returning to these prayers throughout his ministry and using the forms learned there in teaching prayer. The principles of prayer, to not give up, to pray without ceasing, to ask, to seek, to knock, are all found in the Psalms.
When we begin to pray the Psalms our praying vocabulary expands. Don't just read them, but pray them back to God, use them as your words. Some talk of enemies, and you may not know of any physical enemies, but you do have spiritual enemies. Pray the psalms. They teach us to praise God, to honor God, and give you a vocabulary far beyond: "I praise you O Lord," with which to lift High the greatness of Jesus.
Certainly pursuing a life of prayer is difficult. As John Wesley said in 1757 "Nature and the devil will always oppose private prayer, but it is worth while to break through. That it is a cross will not hinder its being a blessing - nay, often the more reluctance, the greater blessing" (John Wesley Letters, Telford v. 3, p. 229, ubp).
In the Gospels we see Jesus relying upon prayer to the Father. He returns to prayer early mornings, in the evenings, off on a hillside, in the garden, in the Temple, in the synagogue. Jesus lived a life of prayer to the point that his own spirit as a man was so tuned with the heart of the Father that he would sincerely say, "I only do what I see my Father doing and only say what I hear my Father saying."
Prayer plants seed in the garden of the soul. It grants us root. It awakens us to the spiritual life. And Scripture relates to our life of prayers, but also Scripture can be a tool in the garden of the soul that nourishes, fertilizes, enriches the soil so that seed can grow.
In searching the Scriptures we are seeking to add "knowledge to our faith" (2 Peter 1:19) - we are seeking to learn to know God more deeply and intimately. How can we know the character of God except we spend time soaking in the Word of God? There is no set prescription that I can give for each of you, except to invite you into the Word. A friend of mine reads 11 chapters a day and has for many, many years. Others meditate on a single verse. Wesley called himself a "man of one book" referring to how much Scripture was his foundational resource for all of life.
The Berean Christians were called more "noble" than those in Thessalonica because they tested all that was being preached by Paul by reading the Scriptures for themselves and seeing if they indeed saw there what Paul proclaimed. In contrast the Pharisees searched the scriptures as if they were an end in themselves, so that when the Lord of the Word stood before them, they refused to come to Him, even though the Scriptures had spoken of him!
Again I cannot prescribe a diet for you, nor can I walk alongside of your life and say, "how about opening the Bible now," any more than I can do that with my daughters. However, I will tell you, God's Word needs to have a place in your life. How often do you return to the Word? Do you allow Sunday morning to be your entire intake of Scripture? If so, my friends, you are near death in starvation!
Do you return to the Scriptures just when hitting a wall in life or are they are regular part of your lives? By Searching the Scriptures the early Methodists encouraged hearing, reading, meditating upon the Word or memorizing of it. When you look at how the Jewish folk of Jesus' day respected God's Word and there had children learning it by rote from an early age, it puts our lackadaisical approach to shame. Imagine by 5 they knew the Psalms by memory and by 10 they had memorized and had a working knowledge of all of the first five books of the Bible. This was for all the Jewish boys and some of the girls too! After that the Prophets were added.
God's word and prayer are the first two primary means of grace. The third for Wesley was the meal of communion. John said you are no closer to God than when you partake of this meal. This was the actual taking in of what God had done for you in Christ's death and resurrection. Therefore he encouraged frequent communion.
So as you come today for this meal, think of it as receiving Grace into your lives through one of the means God has ordained. It is not a matter of cleaning yourself up to get close to God - we do confess our sins specifically on this day by way of reminder of the need for us to be a confessing people. But we cannot make ourselves "worthy" to receive communion, rather, we come to be made worthy. We come to allow the work of God to take place in our lives.
In this moment we have glanced at just three of the primary means of God's grace, prayer, the searching of the Scriptures, and holy Communion. There are many others, many other channels of God's active participation into our lives. My prayer is that we will be more open to placing ourselves in position to receive grace from God.
|
|
|