Worth's Sermons

Acts 2:38, Ephesians 4, Romans 12, 1st Cor. 12, Etc.

This is the third sermon of a series entitled, “The Gift that Goes on Giving.”

I refer to the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2:38 Peter says: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit enables us to come to Jesus Christ and come to him. In 1st Corinthians 12:3 the apostle writes, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ but by the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit is the lowest common denominator of our Christian experience. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

In Romans 8:16 St. Paul says that Holy Spirit bears witnesses with our spirits that we are “the children of God.” The Holy Spirit does this through an inward impression in the mind, heart, and, ‘soul,’ if you will. That is not all. The Holy Spirit also produces in the believer the observable signs of a changed life. St. Paul calls these signs “the fruit of the Spirit.” In Galatians 5:22, the apostle says that the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, long-suffering (patience), gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, against which there is no law.” Moravians teach “temperance” when we talk about “moderation in all things.”
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Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

1 Corinthians 12:1-13; Romans 12:6-8; Ephesians 4:8-12

Last week we talked about the Holy Spirit as “the gift that goes on giving.” (See Acts 2:38 for the Holy Spirit as a gift.) We talked about the two-fold work of the Holy Spirit as regards faith.

First, we saw that it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to come to Christ in faith. In 1 Corinthians 12:3 St. Paul says that, “No one can say that ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

Second, we also spoke about the witness of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. In Romans 8, St. Paul writes:

When we cry “Abba, Father!” is the (Holy) Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:15-16)

The Moravian Liturgy sums up this two-fold work of the Holy Spirit when it declares:

By our own reason and strength, we cannot believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord or come to him, but thou dost call us and enlighten us by thy grace.

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A Gift from a Young Member.

Last week I had prepared a communion meditation based on Matthew 2:1-12. Due to illness, I did not get to deliver that meditation, but John stepped in and did an admirable job with a mediation of his own. On Tuesday of this week, I thanked him for stepping in, and I asked him if he would mind if I expanded my original mediation into a sermon for the 1st Sunday in the Epiphany season, and he agreed that I could.

The facts of the story are these. The “magi “ or “wise men” came from the east, following a star, and they traveled to Jerusalem, and later to Bethlehem, so that they might worship the King of the Jews.

This text raises several questions. I will take them up in order.

First, how many wise men were there?

Most people note the three gifts, of Gold, and Frankincense, and Myrrh, and suggest that there were three wise men. By the 5th Christian century, tradition named them Caspar, or Gaspar (GAS-PAR), Melchior (MEL-KEY-ORE), and Balthazar (BAL-THA-SAR).
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In September of 1971, I was installed as the Associate Pastor of the Little Church on the Lane in Charlotte, N.C. There were only two Moravian Churches in the whole city, and we were the larger of the two. By Christmas Eve, I felt like a celebrity.

We had three lovefeasts and each of the three was packed. It proved a very interesting experience for me.

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A sermon by Dr. Green on Hebrews 10:5-17. To be preached on Sunday, December 20th at 11:00 a.m.

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The life of Jesus touches the life of the man we call John the Baptist at several points.

Their earthly fathers were both devout men, but they did not have that much in common vocationally. Jesus was the son, “as was supposed,” “ (Luke 3:22) of the carpenter Joseph. John was the son of Zechariah, who served in the temple as a priest. (Luke 1:67) John was a p. k.—a priest’s kid, a preacher’s kid. He was not as mean as the typical p. k., because he was “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15)

Their devout mothers were related. We know from the 1st chapter of Luke’s gospel that John’s mother, Elizabeth, was a kinswoman of Jesus’ mother Mary. (Luke 1:36) Perhaps they were cousins. At the very least they were close enough that Mary visited in the home of Elizabeth. (Luke 1:39)

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This morning I want to do something a little different. I want you to hear Psalm 25 as I heard it as I studied it in preparation for this sermon. The version I offer you is not a new translation or a paraphrase. Rather, I have just taken the phrases from the Psalm as they occur in the RSV and rearranged them to fit into my outline of the logical flow of the text. I have occasionally clarified a pronoun and substituted “you” and “Your” for “thou” and “thy.”
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