IBCD Sermon Weekly

The second Sunday of Advent has the theme of “Peace”. Peace is not just the hiatus between conflicts. The scripture tells us that there will always be wars and rumors of war, at least so long as sin is present in the world. So, peace has to mean something more than just the space between conflicts. This even goes for personal relationships. It is not really all that “peaceful” to be in between conflicts when you know sooner or later, another fight, argument, or whatever is coming.

So, peace is not the time between conflicts. In the Bible peace is associated with the presence of God.

The first Sunday of Advent has the theme of “Hope”. The first candle is called the “prophet’s candle” because it represents the Old Testament expectation of the coming Messiah. Hope is more than wishful thinking, it is living with expectation. As Christians, we are to be people of Hope because we have the risen Christ to assure us of our own victory over sin and death.

Today we are looking at an argument Paul had with Peter regarding Peter’s relationship with non-Jewish believers.

Paul retells the story of this conflict in order to illustrate the point to the Galatians that they are making a mistake by placing themselves back under the law of Moses.

In the letter to the Galatians, the old belief which is having a hard time dying was the necessity for a person to become first a Jew, men by circumcision, women by baptism, before then becoming Christians.

It was essentially placing oneself under the Old Testament Law, and then, somehow, fitting in Jesus and his sacrifice for our sins. It was trying to have both of these religious beliefs somehow live together.

The problem is, they cannot.

In the letter to the Galatians, Paul gives a lot of autobiographical information. One reason he does this is because he is a living example of God’s grace and forgiveness, which the Galatians seem to be trading in for going back under the Mosaic Law.

Today we are starting a sermon series through Galatians. It is a letter in which Paul gives a lot of insight into who he is and why he believes the way he does. (He is an intense guy.) Understanding the man helps us understand what he wrote, so today we will be looking at Paul’s perspective on himself and on Christ.

As the prophecies of Amos come to an end, just like we so often see in the Psalms, what begins as sad or broken ends with a note of hope because, even though sometimes it does not feel like it, God does have a plan. And the plan for Israel was to be a nation from which salvation would come – a fact Jesus reminds the descendant of the Northen Kingdom of Israel of when he speaks to the woman at the well: John 4:22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Amaziah the High Priest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He is undoubtably aware of the parallels going one between the first Jeroboam and the unnamed prophet 150 years earlier and the current Jeroboam and Amos. (1 Kings 13:1-10) Amaziah is not about to let this turn into the kind of event which took place 150 years ago - so he decides to cut this whole thing short. As a result, he is only remembered for compromise.

One of the questions Amos forces us to ask is what makes a nation, a community or individual righteous? How does God measure righteousness? This is the lesson in the plumb line.

As we continue in the book of Amos, one of the themes in his preaching was the abuse of the poor by the rich. It was an abuse of economics, and an abuse of justice – both of which often went hand in hand. In Chapter six, he uses words to paint a picture which presents a group of people who are living lives completely numbed to reality by their comforts and entertainments.