The Bethany Bullet Sermon Message - Week of February 17, 2019

Sermon: “Signed, Sealed, Delivered…I’m Yours!”

Text: 1 Corinthians 15:19-28

During the Epiphany Season the assigned Scripture readings have manifest two equal truths.  We are the delivered people of God and at the same time, we are the deployed people of God.  

In the 15th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, (its 58 verses you can read it in a few minutes) St. Paul articulates how the epiphany of the Easter event, the revelation of The Resurrection, clearly demonstrates these two truths.  

Through 57 verses Paul shows how Jesus' perfect life, suffering and passion, and victorious resurrection has delivered us from, as Luther put it, "sin, death and the devil."  Then Paul caps this description of the delivered people of God with these words, "Therefore, Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."  We who have been delivered are now deployed as "epiphanies", "manifestations", and “revelations".  Our congregational values, The Bethany Blueprint, show "how to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord."  Such a deployment is not dysfunctional (such labor is not in vain).  Therefore as His delivered person, deliberately embrace being one of His deployed disciples.  

-Pr. Kevin Kritzer