Hear the words of the Collect for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity:

LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. Amen

Last week we heard about the call of God to follow and obey Him while we are in this world. Today the Collect is a prayer to give us the grace to stand resolutely within that call when we face the temptations of this world. Notice I said when, rather than if, for we are all sorely tempted in this world.

This prayer tells us that the means for us to withstand temptation is the grace of God. It is free for the asking; yet it is not free in its consequences on our lives. Does that sound strange, free but yet not free? Well it is not, because one flows directly from the other.

Saint Paul tells us in Romans 3:23 and I have used this piece of scripture many times:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

Yet the next two verses illustrate how one idea flows from the other:

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

Verse 23 tells us the truth of our human condition, that everyone is a sinner and in need of a way back to The Father. Verse 24 tells us that God has provided this way back to Him through the grace freely available through Jesus Christ who is the “propitiation”, i.e. the one who has paid the penalty for our sins, for all mankind.

Now comes the not free part. Verse 25 tells us that this sacrifice is for “sins that are past.” Not for what we will do tomorrow, but what we have already done yesterday. We cannot ask forgiveness for what we will do, but only what we have already done. It would be interesting to hear a confession that began, ‘Father forgive me for what I am going to do as soon as I get out of here.’ I think it would be a rather short and direct answer on my part, followed by a rather long discussion on the idea of, ‘What part of thou shalt not didn’t you understand?’

Therefore, once we have asked for grace because we know that we have sinned by going against the will of God, we can no longer plead ignorance in our actions. We have admitted to ourselves and to God that we know what sin is and that we should not be doing it. We must then change our behavior to avoid the sins we have just confessed to God that we know we are doing.

We no longer have any defense to offer God for our sins. It is like a court room drama where the prosecuting attorney gets the defendant to admit that they are the guilty one. What possible thing can the defense attorney say that will override that confession? The jury will convict them in as long as it takes them to hold a ballot and return to the courtroom.

Now this would be a sorry state of affairs for all of us, for it would mean that we could only ask for forgiveness once and then not be able to do it anymore for that type of sin. However, please remember what I said last week? It is a saint that readily recognizes that they have sinned and are continually turning from sin back to God. We are to begin the process of sanctification in our lives. To begin to recognize sin before we do it and turn away from it.

We must always remember that we have a choice in whether we perform an action or not. So when we look at a situation we must choose the godly solution, and I would be willing to bet that it will not be the easiest solution to choose or to carryout.

Facing this choice of action is not easy. However Saint Paul in the Epistle for today tells us that when we follow the commandments of God through the grace provided by Jesus Christ:

That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul is here telling us that when we follow in Christ’s footsteps we will not loose anything that is truly important. It may seem to the world as if we are loosing, but the reality of Christ overshadows it all:

Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

After all that is what we are looking for isn’t it? To be able to stand before our Maker on the day of Judgement and have Him say, “My Son has paid for your sin. Enter thou into the presence of God.” Who among us could ask for anything more?

This brings us back to the change that must accompany our acceptance of the grace and forgiveness of God. In the Gospel lesson for today Jesus is talking with the Sadducees about a point that was hotly debated within the legal circles of Judaism. Namely, which is the greatest commandment of the Law. Now their question was innocuous enough. However their intention was to get Jesus to commit to one particular commandment and then upbraid Him for ignoring the others.

Jesus’ answer is enshrined within the Liturgy as The Summary of the Law.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Here is the change that must occur in our lives. We are to love God and show it by turning away from sin. We must love our neighbor and not do anything to them that we wouldn’t want done to us either. In other words we must just plain love God and love our neighbor.

Our Lord Jesus wants us to change the way we behave in our everyday lives. He has provided the means and method of doing so, grace freely given when asked for and forgiveness of sins on top of that. As the Collect for today says we are “with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God.” Those ideas changed the world from pagan to Christian and it has been when the Church has not lived and breathed these laws that the world is the worse for it. It is when we do not live and breath these laws that we are the worse for it also.

We have nothing to loose and everything to gain when we follow Christ every day. Saint Paul has told us this through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in the Epistle for today and the experience of the Church for almost two thousand years has confirmed it to us also. I wonder what the world is waiting for?

I know the Sadducees were waiting for the messiah to lead them to world dominance. When Jesus asked them who this messiah was they answered, “The son of David.” Jesus tells them that their answer is too limited, because more that the descent within the line of David is needed to overcome the world.

The next question that Jesus asked was framed within the context of Psalm 110 verse 1 where David wrote:

The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

Jesus asks the Sadducees in effect, “How can one who comes after be greater that one who comes before?” In Jewish thought and practice preference was always given to the eldest, so how could the descendant have the ascendancy?

David spoke these words in the same sense that John the Baptist would speak the words recorded in Saint John’s Gospel chapter 1, verses 29 and 30:

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me.

Jesus was before us, is with us, and will be there when we are no longer here. His love has gone before, is here now and will always be. His grace is here for us if we just ask. His love for us is ours either to accept or reject. All He asks is that we try to follow Him in all that we do.

God’s grace and love are there for all of us. So let us reach our to our family, our friends, and our neighbors in the Love of Christ and invite them into the Kingdom of God where grace and love abound for all. And in so doing change our lives to follow our Lord Jesus more closely every day.

Amen,

Rev. John R. Jacobs