Listen here.
Welcome to Devotions for Worship where we meditate on the
appointed Scripture readings for the upcoming Sunday. I am Pastor Eric Tritten
from Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Hudson, OH.
Thank you for being with me today.
At Gloria Dei we use an Advent Wreath, as I am sure many
churches do, to mark off the weeks of the season leading up to Christmas. There
are four candles and three of the candles will be either royal blue (as we have
at our church) or purple, and one candle will be pink. (I have a friend who
likes to insist that the color of that candle is “rose” – but I have yet to ask
me about the rose candle. They always ask about the pink one.) The pink candle
represents joy, and in the past when Advent was more like Lent – a time of
repentance and serious reflection to help us prepare to celebrate our salvation
in Christ – the third Sunday of Advent was a little moment of relief and a
mini-celebration. After all, we are saved and blessed by God even now while we
wait for the completion of our salvation when Jesus returns!
So this week we light the pink candle, and our New Testament
Lesson immediately reinforces that we are people who rejoice even while we
repent and conform our lives to God’s will while we wait for Jesus to return.
Let’s read it.
The epistle reading for the 3rd Sunday of Advent,
Let’s read it.
The Reading:
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 (ESV)
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without
ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will
of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20
Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is
good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.
23 Now may
the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and
soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24
He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Thess. 5:16-24 ESV)
Comments
Paul often includes lists of instruction for Christian
living in his letters, and this is part of one of those lists. So he urges us
to rejoice, pray, give thanks, to listen to God’s Word, abstain from evil and
to trust God in faith.
In a previous devotion I noted that the Epistle lesson
reinforced the theme of the Gospel lesson during the season of Advent. Well, in
our Gospel lesson we heard John speak of the One who is among us – Jesus – who
would be greater than John. John prepared the way for Jesus calling people to
repentance, to change their thinking and actions to align with God’s will. Paul’s
letter is a description of what that might look like.
Instead of grumbling in our circumstances, we rejoice in
what God has done for us. Instead of worrying and handwringing, we pray without
ceasing. Instead of being obsessed to our self-interests we give thanks in all
circumstances. We listen to God’s Word where the Spirit works to transform us
into the image of Christ, giving us forgiveness, and guiding our thinking and
actions. We abstain from every form of evil. (That is a topic that volumes
could be written on!)
Before we turn this into a to-do list that we must
obsessively follow, we need to hear clearly what the passage says, “Now may the
God of peace himself – God himself – sanctify you completely” God is the one
who sanctifies you – that is, He makes you holy. “And may your whole spirit and
soul and body – your whole self – be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Kept blameless – by whom? By you? Certainly we strive for
holiness, but we cannot achieve it. So who keeps us blameless? God does. He who
calls you is faithful – God is faithful – he will surely do it. So our life of
repentance and obedience is rooted in God’s faithfulness. And as we trust Him,
He works in us to bring about all that He desires so that we are free to rejoice,
to pray, to give thanks, and to listen to His Word, trusting Him.
The day will come when Jesus will return. Until that day we
want to live the kind of lives that reflect our hope in Him as our Savior and
Lord. But on that day, our hope and confidence will not be how we lived our
lives – it will be in His faithfulness, because He is the one who saves us.
Prayers
Lord God, Heavenly Father, You are faithful and because of
Your faithfulness we rejoice, we turn to You in prayer, we give thanks in all circumstances,
and we abstain from all forms of evil. Thank You for saving us and for giving
us hope and a future through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Thank You for
giving us Your Spirit to transform us so that we can live as You desire. Yet
despite all You have done for us we recognize times that we do not rejoice or
give thanks. Too often we are slow to pray. And as far as abstaining from evil
goes, we all too often embrace the evils of this world. Please forgive us
because You are faithful to Your promises and because Jesus died to atone for
our sins. Please sanctify us completely, make us holy in our whole spirit and
soul and body and keep us blameless until that day when Jesus returns and help
us to trust that You will do it. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
Memory Verse:
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 - 16 Rejoice always, 17
pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this
is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Thank you so much for using Devotions for Worship, I pray
that our time together has blessed you and given you something to meditate on –
some reminder of God’s grace to rattle around in your brain – for the rest of
the day.
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God bless you!
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