3rd January 2021 Second Sunday After Christmas
New Journey in God’s Plan and Action
(Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3–14)
By Heeyoung Lim
Happy New Year! I pray we can continue to worship and gather in a COVID-less environment in 2021. As we begin a new year together, may the light of Christ fill our life this whole year.
Many of us think of New Year’s Resolutions looking back the past, and plan something good for new year.
We can have some questions to ourselves regarding our faith too. For instance, how much time will I spend in prayer, praise, and God’s Word? How my spiritual life will be? Do we expect God will do a new thing for individuals and communities? What is our priority? How it is possible for a person to begin again?
The ”new thing” would be better, bigger, greater, and mightier than what we expect in us and our church. New Year’s celebrations provide a bit of excitement trusting God’s plan.
Psalm 147 starts and concludes “Praise the Lord!” I hope “Praise the Lord” will be our beginning and the end in 2021.
“The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (11)
The Lord strengthens and protects His people, and He bless their children generation to generation and guards them against the surrounding nations who have endangered them. (12)
The people are at peace with one another because God makes peace in our borders. This is God’s grace, and this harmony is from God. (14) All the world is at God’s command, and God’s spoken Word and written Word are all important and powerful. (15) God’s Word is the greatest blessing to us, and obeying it is our greatest response to God. (19) Praise the LORD is the last verse of this Psalm, and God’s people are rightly grateful.
Psalm 147 is classified as a Community Hymn, and it is a call to worship as well as a reminder of why we should praise to God. This text also invites to glorify God. There was praise for God’s protection in the text, and it can be called a new exodus or new healing and settling by God’s shalom. We also have our own reason to praise God, and all worship is centred in God who he is and what he has done. (19)
Many people would pay for sports, music, and dancing lessons regarding their hobbies if they are affordable. Those lessons would make more vivid life possible for us and for our children. It takes time and can be extended to our work life, but instruction is always necessary. There are many frustrations of installing and using new media and apps in a changeable society. We had to adjust or learn many things such as isolation, wearing masks, and using Zoom. How grateful we are when someone explains clearly and shows us by example how to use the media or apps as we do not know how to do something. God provides us with instruction and directions through His living words for salvation in God’s Plan, and Jesus explains clearly and shows by example how to live out faithfully until the very end before God.
How thankful we are when Jesus died on the cross for all of us, and how delightful we are as we have chosen and adopted by God as God’s family.
Ephesians is a letter about living together in human differences. Many of Paul’s letters open with thanksgiving for the faith or spiritual gifts of the recipient community. Ephesians includes both a thanksgiving for the community and for God’s action (1:3-23).
We have received the blessing of being chosen by God and adopted by him as his spiritual children. We have been chosen for relationship with God in the love, power, and initiative of God. (14) “God chose and adopted us to be saved as God’s children, but He does not choose those who will not be saved
Nobody has been excluded for salvation in God’s love. “God desire all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1Thimothy 2:4)
In Today’s Scripture, diverse communities and people are more highlighted than individual believers regarding God’s relationship. God has gifted the community with his blessings in the heavenly places where God is with us and God’s work is shown through Christ. We are weak and shaken, but God wants us to be holy and blameless before God in love together. Our sins are forgiven in him as we believe in Jesus as our Saviour. This does not mean that true Christians never sin, it means our sin is paid for by the death of Christ on the cross. We can be holy and blameless in God’s sight as we are in Jesus. (4)
I hope we will all be standing before God holy and blameless when the Lord’s day will come. God gave us blessings to be freed and redeemed from our sins, and He led us into His spiritual family. That is to bring praise to God for grace-filled blessing and his salvation, and it needs to be continued until Christ’s return or the last moment of our life on earth. (12, 14)
God is praised in the Today’s scripture for having chosen us as God’s children and adopted the church as God’s own people. The adoption of churches and communities by God is also a blessing and it is an action plan by God. (10,11)
In Ephesians 1:5-6, both the goals and the means of God’s planed actions are graciously presented through Jesus. This was accomplished according to God’s delightful will, and the dual goals of God’s plan were adopting us and praising God. (5,6) God made us his children, and it pleased him.
God graciously presents his blessing on us so that we would praise God’s grace-filled glory. I hope and pray our appreciation and praise toward God will be soared in our lives in 2021.
We become enlightened in our relationship with God who is our redeemer, and we are enriched in Christ who is our Saviour. (11)
We are in different situations, but we are all under God’s protection. The Holy Spirit sealed us and made us secure in Christ for the completion of redemption. We are given and empowered through the Holy Spirit, who is at work in the church (13).
The Gospel is for all people, and we are thankfully in the presence of God and have a share an inheritance from God through the Gospel. (14)
However, there are so many people who still do not know Jesus around the world. Our responses will be to shine in the plan of salvation in 2021, and our hope in God’s desire will be continued until our final redemption when we will see the Lord face-to-face.
There are lots of God’s plans and actions in the form of verbs of chose (4), destined (5), bestowed (6), lavished (8), made known and set forth (9), and accomplishes all things (11). Those are God’s actions in accordance with God’s plans. All happenings were in the God’s pleasure and will, and his plan and purpose. (5-11), and all things went beyond human ability. Christ fills all things and Christians response in the Praise of thanksgiving.
This passage invites the community to praise God in terms of God’s grace and blessings in Christ and God’s plan and action for all believers. God’s grace is inclusive and redemptive, and God’s salvation is planned by God and accomplished through Jesus Christ. (9-10)
In addition, it is written for a largely Gentile audience too in Christ, and this message goes to dividing groups which are Jews and Gentiles in Ephesians 2.
God has “made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14)
God wants us to be one in Jesus, and He makes groups into one, and He breaks down dividing walls. New journey just started, and the direction of it should be in God’s plan and action.
We can stay and rest in God’s love even from our battle fields and suffering moments in the hope of salvation because God is with us and we belong to the family of God.
There might be still exclusive boundaries, excluding walls, and discriminatory factors that communities have and build in the world.
However, love and unity are required in churches wherever Christians stay, and the church will always be challenged by God’s presence in Jesus Christ to love and serve God and others.
Glory to God! I hope our church can serve and work in the name of a loving and righteous God and we can worship and praise God as true believers. I also pray we will be in the riches of God’s grace through praising God, and we can witness reconciliation and peace with justice by words and deeds in God’s plan and action. All we are thankfully Invited to Glorify God in 2021, this is not just duties or responsibilities, but it is also our delight response and obedience.
May our new journey be for each of us a year when we pray our Saviour’s Name with faith, a year when we discover that this world can be a quite different place with God’s love and protection through Jesus Christ.
Lastly, I hope and pray praising God from individuals and communities will be included and continued in our new journey of 2021.
Thanks be to God. Amen!
(Ref. Bible, commentaries, theological books, UCA materials)
