Communion: Jesus in You and Me

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We went to see the museum at Olney where Cowper and John Newton lived and it’s very good. There’s
this garden where he wrote the hymns and a desk where he wrote certain ones that we know well. He
seems to have been a dear man. They pronounce his name Cooper and not Cowper.

There’s a tendency for us all to come back from holiday and think, “Great, let’s get at it and let’s
do all the things that we’re able to do.” And I think it’s just good to see that that isn’t what
we’re about at all. It’s not about you using your talents and me using my talents and us all doing
the things that we think we should do. It’s far more exciting than that.

And the truth is, left to ourselves like that in the midst of our own hearts we’re kind of boring
people. We don’t think of many new things. We just keep going through the motions. And the fact is
that it’s not that at all. It’s that each one of us here is in Jesus and he is in us. I can’t even
apologize for the boredom of these sermons where I keep saying this. That’s it, that’s all of it.
He was the first born of all creation and everything that is made was made in him and everything
that is created hangs together in him and he was before all things. And that’s it.

We don’t have any existence apart from Jesus. We don’t. We’re all little bits of Jesus. And it’s
not that you’re not an important bit because no other bit of Jesus is like you. Jesus has things to
do in you and through you and through me this coming year that nobody on earth knows. That’s the
great thing, nobody actually knows except that he does. He knows what he wants to do through you.

And I could share all kinds of thoughts I have about the Internet and about radio and the businesses
but really it will all come about if you do just one thing — honestly see that you are in Jesus and
Jesus is in you. He has thoughts and ideas to impart to you, things to do through you, and words to
say through you that he cannot say, or do, or think through anybody else.

I do believe if each of us would tackle every day like that you’d begin to see beauty coming up
where you never expected to see beauty. We’d see things happening with some of us on the Internet,
some of us in business, some of us on the radio, and some of us in the newsletter, that would just
surprise us. I don’t think for instance that Martha would have to prod us for the newsletter,
including me. I don’t think that would happen. I don’t think Myron would have to say to this
person, “Now will you do that, or will you do that, or will you do the other?” I think that the
anointing that Jesus gives enables us to move according to his Father’s will spontaneously and yet
somehow miraculously together.

And that’s the greatest thing that I’ve to say to you. You don’t need to look at it but it is that
verse in Colossians 1:15, that Jesus is the first born of all creation. When he became God’s son he
became the first man at that same moment and at that moment God foresaw all that would take place.
He foresaw every action that his son would have to do, every pain he would have to bear, every
resurrection that he would have to experience, and he saw all that happen in him. That’s why you
come across a verse like that one in Psalm 1:37 that says, “God has everyday of our lives numbered
in his book before there were any of them.”

That’s why you get those strange verses that we’ve joked about as being the wrong tense you know,
“God who is rich in mercy out of the great love with which he has loved us even when we were yet

sinners made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him and made us sit with him in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” And you think, “Well wait a minute, that hasn’t happened yet.
Isn’t that all to happen?” But that’s why that kind of verse occurs because it has all happened.
Christ has already been raised and us with him.

And if you say to me, “Well why are we still here?” We’ve said it before, so that God who conceived
the whole thing in one millisecond could make it clear to us over years, and years, and years. It’s
so that we would see it, understand it and know why we were here and why we were his children and
what we were together for. God lovingly created time so that we would have time to realize all
that.

What Satan tries to get us to believe is that time is just a long, long, long endless train of years
where we have to struggle as best we can with this world and make something of this life. And of
course that’s not it at all. The fact is that God has already done it all. He has already seen it
all done. The works are prepared before hand and we have only to walk in them.

So really what I’m encouraging you to see when you come back into things now is all we have to do is
walk in works that God has already done in his son. That’s all we have to do. We don’t have to
strive and strain. We just have to walk in the works and do a work of faith. A work of faith is a
work that you do because you know it’s already been achieved by Christ and so you’re just walking
through it. That’s a work of faith.

We think a work of faith is that I exercise my mighty faith like George Mueller and I bring about a
tremendous revival. It’s effort, and striving and straining. That’s not a work of faith. A work of
faith is something that you do that God has already achieved in Christ. He has already overcome the
world; he has already reconciled the world to himself. It’s the kind of thing that Moses did when
he stretched out the staff over the sea. He stretched it out but that didn’t cause the sea to go
back. The sea had gone back in eternity in Christ Jesus and he was simply walking in a work that God
has already done. That’s what we’re called to do.

So I don’t want it to come as a law or a burden to you. I don’t want this to be a cause of
condemnation for you, but really there’s no reason why we shouldn’t walk gaily through life and
through each day. There is not. There is no reason why we shouldn’t walk through a day and be as
tireless at the end of it as we were in the beginning because the works have been done. Why we get
tired is because of the anxiety. The self likes the feeling that we’re achieving something. We’re
doing something usually because we want to exalt ourselves or we want to make ourselves virtuous.

Let’s cast it all away and let’s see we’re a little bit of Jesus, Jesus has already done it all and
we have the fun of walking through it — cutting the grass here, arranging the apples there, hitting
the computer keys there, and at times apparently lifting mighty weights which aren’t mighty. God
gives us the ability to do what we have to do. So I’d encourage you to see it differently, maybe
it’s the way you’ve always seen it, but to see it differently when you get back into things now.

This is Jesus’ work. This is his work, his business. He has already achieved all that needs to be
achieved. He’s giving us the fun of walking through these things. And if you want the scripture
for it here it is, Ephesians 2:10, “We were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

And that’s all he calls us to do, just walk through those works listening to him. Listen each

morning, “Lord, what is it today?” The glory and the wonder of it is that he won’t even give you
the burden of a list at that moment. He won’t even say, “Yes, number one you have to do this,
number two….” He will take you at your word and you’ll get up and you’ll walk out in him and his
life will begin. So it’s a wonderful thing.

Let us pray.