“His Promise Awaited”

Wednesday after the First Sunday of Advent: November 30, 2011

Isaiah 64: 1 - 9a/Psalm 80:  1 – 7/1 Cor. 1: 1 – 9/Mark 13: 33 – 37

Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines, D. D.

As we look at the Scriptures that has been given to us, the challenge that the gospel speaks is: being on the alert; be watchful.  We live today in a society that wants everything to be peaceful.  We want leisure. We want pleasure.  We don’t find many people looking for a job as far as responsibility is concerned.  We, instead, want the blessings.  We want the prosperity.

For some reason, we are not given attitude or desire to go through the difficulties in order to come from them.  A people who had been given everything, normally, don’t appreciate what they have been given.  Eventually, they lose it.  But a people who had paid a high price to get whatever it is that they have, normally, appreciate very highly what they have earned because they put their efforts into it.  They put their energies into it.  They put their own sweat and blood, and they will protect it.  They will respect what they have been given. When things are just given, we find that there is not the same intensity of respect and protection for what is ours.

God sets a course and a plan for our betterment, for our good.  Yet, many of us want everything given but we are not willing to pay the price.  God has given the Church much, through Christ.   Of course, we have to go back to the very beginning when God gave us everything we are.  We have nothing that did not come from God.   From the very beginning, everything was given to us.  Along with that giving came responsibility because He did not give us everything in its maturity. He said to us, “You cultivate it and you keep it.”  In order for what we have been given to be brought into maturity, there is the necessity of us cultivating it, putting it into practice, and using it.

If you are a farmer, you may have been given a field, and that field is not going to do anything for you unless you cultivate it.  To cultivate means to sweat.  It means you have to use your own energies.  Your back is going to be sore; your arms are going to be sore; your legs are going to be sore.  You are going to be sunburned, and perhaps, you won’t have a nice complexion.  You will be darker because you have to work.

Then, you plant the seed after you have cultivated and prepared the soil.  Even then, when you put this seed in the ground, there is a regular necessity of working on the field because you’ve got to pull the weeds. You’ve got to make certain that there is plenty of water.  You are cultivating before there is the harvest.  When the harvest comes, you have the results, the benefits, the rewards.

In the day we live in today, we just want to get to the store and buy whatever we need.  It is amazing how we complain about the prices of things.  Everything is too expensive; but what are we doing to get whatever is there?  Have we put our energy into the cultivating of the vegetable?  Have we spent our time making certain that the cow was healthy and taken care of so that when we see the meat in the market that it is a good, beneficial, and nourishing? Or do we just stand back out of no responsibility at all and expect everything to be what we want and we murmur and complain when it is not our way?

I hear a lot of complains about the prices, but what are we doing to counteract and take care of ourselves?  In Proverbs, it says that he who tills his own land with his hand will never be hungry.  We don’t till the ground anymore.  We don’t take what God has given to us and cultivate it.  At the same time, we want it to give to us.  We have a different system now, and yet, it isn’t exactly the way God intended it to be.  We murmur and we complain because it doesn’t give us everything we want.

Advent helps us understand spiritually what belongs to us and put it in our hearts and work for it.   When God created us, He created us in His image and likeness.  When He created us, He breathed His breath into us.  So what we have in us is of God, and what it would do for God, on a certain level, it does for us.  If we have forgotten what God has given to us, and have not really gained the knowledge of all that God has given to us, how can we expect then anything good and productive to come through our lives if we don’t know who we are?   We don’t know our potentials.  We don’t know what we were created to be and to fulfill.

Scriptures help us understand that, but in order for us to get that, we need to spend effort and time knowing God.  It is cultivating what we have been given.  It takes time of meditation.  It takes time of prayer.  It takes time of gathering together in assembly and listening to God speak to us so that we know who we are, and we know who He is so that we know what we can expect and what we can look forward to.  If we don’t know that, if we haven’t cultivated what we have been given, then why would we murmur and complain when we haven’t done our part?

In the writing of 1Corinthians, we know from history that it was a church having problems.  The church was sizeable; the church had been very prosperous.  It had leadership that had gone through some great events of conversion and there should have been the evidence of greatness in this church. For some reason, they failed.

Paul goes to them and he ministers to them, and look at how Paul starts his ministry.  He doesn’t start talking about their problems.  He doesn’t start talking about the circumstances.  He takes them back basically to their beginning.  He says to them, “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Sanctified is cleansed, made holy.  He reminds them what was given to them.  He brings it out again.  He knows there is a problem; He is not ignoring the fact that there is a problem.  But before he addresses the problem, he reminds them who they are so that they can bring forth from the past their history.

”To those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.”  This had nothing to do with them.  This had everything to do with what they had been given.  They had to cultivate it.  They had to use it, but they had been given sanctification, just like justification – just as though they have never sinned, and called saints by Jesus Christ. No higher power!  He doesn’t fail and He doesn’t lie.  What He does, He does in excellence and in perfection.

“Saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Do we understand grace?  Do we understand that the grace, the power, and the ability that God has empowered us with and given to us?   If we don’t know that, we are constantly at a place in our lives where we say we can’t do something.  We set in our mind, “It is impossible for this to happen, and I can’t take care of it. This will never happen to me.  I have not been trained properly. I don’t have this and that.”  We have all these things set in our minds which tell us, “We can’t do.”  When in reality, what God says, “I have given you the grace.”

“In everything, you were enriched in Him, in all speech and in all knowledge.” Paul is telling the church, informing them, “This is what God has done for you.”  He is reminding them of it so that they cannot say, “We did not know. We forgot.”  History that which has been done and given to us so that we can manifest and bring it out and make it real.  “In everything, you were enriched in Him.”  Do we understand everything?

Most of us when we hear the word everything, we put in a lot of exceptions.  Paul is telling them the truth from God. “This is what you have been given.  This is who you are.”  Later, he is going to tell them some other things about their problems.  He is going to address their problems, but before he starts, he tells them their history.  “This is what Jesus Christ has done for you.  This is who you are. Why have you failed?  Why are you not manifesting what God gave to you?  The seed He implanted in you was perfect. The seed, the power, the ability, the knowledge He gave you was perfect.  Why are you in the condition that you are in?”

“Even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you.” Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  It has been confirmed.  He is there.  He has come to live with you, to dwell in you.  He has come and He has given His life to redeem you and to strengthen you; to give you the power and the ability to rise up.  Paul is reminding them, “What is this?  This is what God has given to you, through Christ – everything!  You lack in nothing.

“So that you are not lacking in any gift.”  Can we be confident and faithful to God to believe that He has given to us everything we need?  That He has ordained for us what we need and we are not lacking in anything?  Can this be our confidence in Him, in Advent, that we start the year by believing He has given to us everything that we lack in nothing?  It may not be manifesting it yet; we may not yet have understood and cultivated it, but we don’t lack in anything because of what Christ had done for us. Knowing our history you “eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When these things are within us, there should be this expectation.

This is what Advent is all about.  It is an expectation; something is going to happen that is good.  Something great is going to take place because God has given to us all and we are not going to fail and to give up.  He is going to cause it to come forth in greatness.  Looking forward down the road at some place knowing that He has given to us all,  and there comes the time when all of these, if we have cultivated it, is going to bring forth a harvest.

If you know God, if you know His principles, what He has done will not fail.  He who began a good work in you will complete it.  We may not be at a place where we can say, “Okay, it is mine.”  Let me remind you when the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt, they had been given everything.  They have been in slavery for four hundred years plus, but when they came out, they had the wealth of Egypt in their hands for the people of Egypt gave everything they had – their jewelry, their gold.  Israel went out with all the wealth of the world.  They just went through the famine, and all the people had been cared for by Egypt. Egypt was the wealth of the world.  But when Israel left, they had the wealth of the world in their hands.  It was like they were given the wages for four hundred years of slavery.  When they went out to the Red Sea, the enemy was destroyed and so, there was no Egypt.

Egypt has really never risen up to a place of high ability even since.  They are not in total poverty, but they haven’t done much.  Israel was given all of these, but when they got to the wilderness, they cried out to go back to Egypt.  They had everything.  This is where we stand today.  We are in the wilderness because we have been given everything but we are not putting it into practice.  We are not manifesting it.  Advent encourages us to know what belongs to us and expect it to work.  There is an expectation, an alertness. It is going to happen.  It is going to be.

Why is there death?  It is because we haven’t yet come to an awareness, a revelation, that it belongs not to us anymore because Christ conquered it.  The Bible says that it will be the last we conquer, but wouldn’t that mean that we are going to conquer it?  If He says this is the last thing we will conquer, would it not still mean that we are going to conquer it?  Can we see that with an expectation?  I have said that many times and many people say I am a fanatic.  Death has been conquered!  Christ conquered death!  He destroyed its power.  He destroyed the enemy as far as Egypt was concerned. He took away all the power.  He took away all their wealth, but yet the children of Israel in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, still wanted to go back and submit to Egypt even though they had been given freedom, a new life, and a promise of a land of milk and honey.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  This is Paul sharing with the Corinthian church.  “I know you’ve got a problem, but I want to remind you who you are.  I want you to understand what God has given to you because you will not come through these problems. You will not come out on top. You will not be victorious unless you know what belongs to you.  What is yours?”

The Church starts at the very beginning and we come back to Advent.  We come back so that we can know what belongs to us, what is ours.  We know what the other side of the picture is.  We don’t want that anymore.  We are tired of it.  We want what God has given to us. We want it manifested and so the Church Fathers has put the litanies together with purpose and goal and it flows from Advent right on through until we come to Christ the King.

It is a journey that we are one, a drama if you please.  The drama cannot be effective unless we know who we are.  What is our part in the middle of the drama?  What is the story that we are telling?  What is the message that needs to come out?   We must know how we fit into the whole picture because Christ redeemed all.  Where do you and I fit in the middle of that?  What has He given to you?  What are the provisions, the gifts?

Scriptures says that we are lacking in nothing.  He has given to us every gift we need; enriched, not just given.  I have said many times that we are not poor.  We are blessed!  We are enriched! We have been created in the image of God and the power of God dwells within us.  The Holy Spirit was given to dwell in us.  “Know you not that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”    We are not just man.  There is an element of divinity in everyone of us.  That divinity is supposed to be brought out because it is greater than the flesh.  Life is greater than death.  We are to manifest and bring it out so that there is within us an assurance, this confidence and this hope.

We are to be the witnesses before the whole world of the greatness and the provision of God. How is the world going to know unless we live it out?  This is what Paul was trying to tell the church in Corinth.  “Listen, don’t you know the whole community knows you’ve got problems?  The whole community knows that you are arguing and that you are divided?  The whole community is being affected by the fact that you are not living out, you are not being the witness God intended you to be!”

Advent encourages us to set in our hearts the goals.  What has God given to us?  Enriched in everything!  We are blessed, holy, sanctified, and righteous!  It is amazing how that even if I don’t know you all individually in what you think, I guarantee you that “our” thoughts are so negative about who we are, of what we have done wrong, our failures, our weaknesses.  We let these things be prominent in our lives and they hinder us from doing what we should be doing.  We haven’t renewed our minds.  We don’t have all of theses written like the church at Corinth.

“The Messiah” is a message given through George Frederich Handel, a message that came from the heart of God.  Handel was a man who was obviously very close to God that God could give him a message in just a few days that was put into a whole musical – instrumental and vocal.  He had such as awareness of God because he wrote several powerful musicals that had to do from the Scriptures.  He ministered by that because God spoke to him. He had suffered a stroke and he was an outcast in some areas.  He was not accepted in all places, and yet here could come forth, from a man who would be registered as the most powerful and the most respected musician in the world.  “The Messiah” is the greatest thing that he did.

“The Messiah” speaks to us of the greatness of God and yet, it is reaching out, “God, come and help us. Get these things straightened out.  We can’t do it.  We need You to help us.”  So powerful was the message that when the king heard it, he stood at the end.  The king, listening to Christian music, and a man who has murdered and slaughtered many people in order to get where he is, recognized God!

This is what our lives are supposed to be like.  We may not be Handel to write a Cantata; maybe, that won’t be our job, but what our lives do proclaim should point people to God so that they see God so powerfully in us because we have been enriched.  We are not poor.  You won’t hear me ever say that we are poor because we are not poor!  We need to erase this curse that has been upon this nation.  We are a wealthy nation!  We are prosperous.  Why do you think China wants to take this Spratlys away from us?  It is because it is rich with natural minerals with billions and billions of dollars of wealth in those small islands.  We are wealthy.  We have so much, and yet our minds had been set, “We can’t!”   We pay tremendous prices for this electricity when we have natural power that comes out of the earth that could provide energy for this whole nation at a price that would almost be a give-away. But we don’t want to develop it because we won’t make any money out of it so we just leave it on the ground.

We need to listen to who God created us to be.  We need to set a goal ahead of us, and realize we are a blessed people. It is about time we demonstrate our blessings.  Instead of the beggars, we are the givers because God has blessed us.  His provision is more than enough for all of us, but we have to cultivate it.  We have to put into use.  It just won’t happen.

The world just wants everything to be pleasing like the people who occupy New York and who works in the top ranks of Wall Street.  These are people who started at the bottom.  When I was working at the business world, I started out in the mail room in an international corporation.  When I quit, I was an Executive Vice-President of an international conglomerate.  I had to put years of labor.  It did not just come to me.  You take what you have, and then you use it until eventually you rise to a place of being on top because each of us have that potential.   All we have to do is use it. Your gift makes place for you.  God has given it to all of us.

As we begin Advent, let it set it in our minds, set it in our hearts, “I am not going to stay here.  I am rising us.  I want to bring glory to God.  I want to bring honor to Him. I am not just going to stay here as common, ordinary.  I am going to begin what God wants me to be.”  When we begin that, we will see the great things that God intends us to have.

I’ve got to remind you who you are.  You are royal priesthood, a holy nation.  It is not because of what you have done, but of what Christ has done for you.  God’s chosen people – for what reason? To declare His excellence in all that we do!

This is God’s provision for us.  When you hear “The Messiah,” in your mind, don’t just listen to the tones, to the music.  Hear the words as they come from Scriptures to remind us what God has given to us and what belongs to us.  Let it be that which encourages us to realize Christ wants to come back to a glorious people.  Scriptures says that He comes back in glory, not in the poverty, to a people who are battling and struggling and haven’t overcome.  He is coming back to a people who have proclaimed His greatness to the whole world.  We don’t see it at this moment, but it is happening.  It is taking place for the glory and the praise of God!