Make Your Calling and Election Certain

Has Your Character Changed?

The Law of God

March 2, 2008 AM

What is our Character?

Rev. D. Van Dyken

The Joy of Birth in a Covenant Family

Rev. Donald Van Dyken 

SCRIPTURE:   Psalm 30  

SERMON

It is certainly true that we may gain moral lessons from Biblical stories—don’t be too friendly with worldly girls as Dinah was, for you see what happened. We find doctrinal truths—God is infinite and immutable.

But if you reduce the Bible to being a source book for moral lessons, great ideas, and doctrinal truths, you’ve missed the big story.  Perhaps more than anything else, the Bible is a story. It is the story of God’s great work, beginning in Genesis with creation and continuing to unfold until its grand conclusion in Revelation, to a glorious Eden complete with river and trees where God Himself is at home with His people forever.

It is a grand story with various themes. It’s the story of the Father getting a bride for His Son. It’s the story of the Son coming into the world, redeeming this bride, buying her out of prostitution for Himself. It’s the story of Christ through His Spirit transforming this ugly, misshapen woman into a lady of queenly grace and dignity. It’s the story of the Spirit cleansing her, clothing her, anointing her with sweet perfumes, decking her with jewels until the grand wedding feast of Revelation 19. And they lived happily ever after.

It’s the story of the perpetual conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It’s a story where the seed of the woman seems always so small and the seed of the serpent monstrous. It’s the story of the young-boy seed of the woman always standing on the fallen body of Goliath and hacking off his head.

It’s the story of two cities—Babel/Babylon and Jerusalem—the city of man and the city of God. It’s the story of Babel—built by and for the glory of man. It’s the story of Babylon: “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?” (Nebuchadnezzar) It’s the story of Jerusalem, the city chosen by God, the home of God, and the glory of God. It’s the story that ends with Babylon heaved into the sea to disappear forever. It’s the story of Jerusalem, floating down from heaven from God, with gates of pearl, streets of pure gold, clear as crystal.

It’s the story of the woman and the serpent—the woman barren and weeping as Hannah; the serpent always growling and giggling in the background, yet the woman bringing forth Samuel, “asked of God.” It’s the story of the dragon—through Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Athaliah, Haman, and Herod always ready to devour the man-child, and yet through death and resurrection the man-child emerges victorious.

I read from Psalm 30 because David writes down the experience of all the saints, that through death the Lord brings life. “O Lord my God,”  he said, “I cried out to you, and you healed me. O Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave.”  Again in verse 5, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Verse 11, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing.”

This is the universal experience of the church and of all the saints. I want to outline to you one of the main themes, the main story plots of the Bible, and that is Death and Resurrection. First from the Old Testament as it led to Christ’s death and resurrection. And then from the death and resurrection of Christ to the church, and to each of us too as we experience death and resurrection in the sufferings of this life, and of course, in our own physical death and resurrection that still is in our future.

Let’s begin with Adam in the garden. We read that God put Adam into a deep sleep, a kind of death, and during that time God took one of Adam’s ribs, closed up the flesh, and from that rib he fashioned Eve and brought her to Adam.

That sleep was a good sleep, that death was a good death. That waking was glorious.  But there is a death that is terrible, a blackness that is horror, and there is a sleep that is a nightmare. All that came through the sin of Adam and Eve.

Now all life begins with pain, for God said that Eve would bear children in pain. From the darkness of the womb, life would emerge into the light only through a channel of mother pain.

Cain was born and then Abel. Cain followed the prince of darkness and killed his brother. Death. And yet later through the grace of God, Eve could say, “God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.”  Death and resurrection.

Then God pronounced the sentence of death on all the world. The flood would destroy all flesh, yet through that flood of death God brought Noah and his family into a new life, a new world.  Death and resurrection.

Job, living in plenty and prosperity, was devastated by the loss of all his property, all his children, and finally his health. Stripped, as those who die, of everything. Then God restored him to health, life, and prosperity.  Death and resurrection even for those whom God calls blameless.

God called Abraham and Sarah out of Ur of the Chaldees and promised them life. Yet they traveled through the death of 25 years of barrenness before the birth of Isaac.  Death then resurrection.

God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice. He bound Isaac and lifted the knife to kill him. At the last minute God stopped the knife, Isaac was spared, and God provide a ram instead. In Romans Paul says that Abraham received Isaac back from the dead, as it were. Death and resurrection.

Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, and from there he went into the dungeon.  Down to death. And from there resurrection, for he was raised to the right hand of Pharaoh to bring salvation. Deliverance for the brothers of Joseph through his death and resurrection.  1600 years later the Jews, Christ’s own, sold him to be crucified. He rose, ascended, and sent forth his apostles to proclaim deliverance for the very Jews who delivered him to death.

300 years after Joseph, Israel was living in slavery under Pharaoh, their boy children condemned to die in the Nile. Through God’s great deliverance a nation was born, Israel emerged from the death of Egypt. Death and resurrection.

As I tell you of these events, beloved, remember that this is your history. This pattern of death and resurrection should be imbedded in your historical subconsciousness, this pattern is part of who you are. Without that historical sense of identity you don’t really know who you are. And if you don’t know who you are, any death and resurrection experience that comes to us as church, or to you as members, will be strange, unexpected, and seen as disastrous. But the greater disaster will be your failing faith in the Lord’s promises and sovereignty.

Death and resurrection for those God chooses, like David, to be king over his people. But first David needs to go through the fires of persecution, living so long under the death sentence of Saul, until he finally rose to be crowned king of Judah and Israel, then going on to victory after victory.  Death and resurrection.

Jonah, the  prophet God sent to heathen Nineveh. He was a man whose dark prophecy of destruction was superimposed on the death and resurrection message of hope he carried in his own body, buried in the depths of the sea for three days and then resurrected.

God sent Israel and Judah into captivity because of their sins and apostasy, yet at the same time God was bringing his chosen people through death and into resurrection. Hosea says, “Come, and let us return to the LORD; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight.” (Ho 6:1-2 NKJV)

Through that death of captivity God would purge away all sinners from among his people.  Amos quotes God saying, “”For surely I will command, And will sift the house of Israel among all nations, As [grain] is sifted in a sieve; Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground. All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, Who say, ‘The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.’” (Am 9:9-10 NKJV)

Through the death of captivity God purged out all the sinners from among his people, purifying his church, raising her to life again as she returned to the promised land.Death and resurrection. This is God’s pattern, this is the path God has set out for his people to come into the fullness of life. Would God himself follow this pattern?  Yes, for if you read just two Old Testament passages carefully, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, you will see that they both tell, not only about the suffering and death of the coming Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, but also about his resurrection.

Jesus Christ, our Savior, went down through suffering into death, that he, as St. Paul tells us, should taste death for every man. He tasted a death, the sentence pronounced against the first Adam, but deferred until the second Adam should appear. He tasted a death that meant an eternity of blackness, of separation from God. Yet in that death he completed eternal death, compressed into those moments of time, eternal darkness was then eclipsed by the light of the first day of the week, when, following the darkness that covered the primeval world in the beginning God said, “Let there be light.”  And it was so. And Christ rose from the dead.

As he was hanging there on the cross, when his death had been accomplished, when he was dead, the soldier pierced his side, and from the ribs of the second Adam there flowed blood and water.  And so the church was born of blood and water, a bride, a new Eve, the church was created out of the exquisite pain of the Son of God; through the great resurrection of Christ from the dead.

This church too, God quickly brought through death and resurrection.  One of my favorite episodes in the life of the early New Testament church is a kind of death and resurrection.  Stephen, appointed as deacon, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, preached boldly. The Jews ganged up on him, accused him of blasphemy, and brought him to trial. After his stirring defensive/offensive, the Jews killed him. Stephen’s death began a great persecution. It seemed to be the signal for Paul and he made havoc of the church. Satan, who has the power of death, seemed to threaten the church’s existence. The church at Jerusalem was scattered far and wide. Satan seemed to labor under the impression that  through persecution and death he would exterminate her. However, this new Eve gave birthed many churches through pain, and as a direct result of this persecution, the treasurer of Ethiopia carried the gospel to his land, and churches were established in Samaria, Antioch of Syria, and Cyprus.

Let me return to each of you. Each member of the church is born of water, the water of baptism, and through that water he is both crucified and risen with Christ. Through baptism God joins us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what St. Paul says in Romans 6, further saying that in this way we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. But my point here is that God, through baptism, brings us into union with both the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By faith in Christ then, we are purged from our sins, as Hebrews 1 tells us.

And although God acts upon the church and each member in baptism, bringing them into union with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he calls each member to bring that experience into his own life.  How?  By putting the old man, the deeds of the flesh to death, and by coming alive to righteousness, to the new man.  Here is the way St. Paul expresses it in Ephesians 4:22-24: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24) There is no resurrection into habits of righteousness unless there is first the death of sinful habits.

Through faith we are brought into the new life as children of God through baptism, through union by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In that life we are called to live out that death and resurrection motif by dying to sin and coming alive to righteousness. 

There is another way we experience death and resurrection. That is by the hand of God upon us in chastisement, in our sufferings and discouragements, in our pains and sorrows. Hebrews 12 tells us that our God chastises every son whom he receives. No chastisement, he says, seems pleasant during the time we are getting it, but afterward, yes, then it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.  Again, through the darkness of struggle, of pain, of suffering, God brings us into the light of joy. Death and resurrection.

Now let’s notice a change in the way the Bible talks about death after the coming of Jesus Christ who extracted the sting out of death. When Jairus’ daughter died Jesus said, “She is sleeping.”  Was she really dead? Yes, indeed. But Jesus called her death a sleep, and he woke her up from that sleep.

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died Jesus told the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go to wake him out of his sleep.” The disciples didn’t understand that Jesus was saying that Lazarus was dead, but he was, and Jesus raised him from the dead.

So the apostles were given a new word to use for death, sleep. And who fears sleep, at least who of God’s children should fear sleep?  Sleep is a time of unconsciousness, to be sure. Sleep is what we do when it is dark, or rather sleep is what comes upon us.  Yes, but we sleep in the dark in the confidence that two wonderful things will happen.  First, that when we waken we will be refreshed. While we are unconscious in sleep our bodies are rebuilding us, taking away the toxins and restoring us to strength. Second, when we waken it will be morning; it will be light and bright again.

Let me apply this to our struggles in life, to our battling against sin, dying to sin, to the chastisements the Lord sends us. This is our night. This dying is our sleep too. For it is during this time that our faith is tested, is tried, and we are purified. This is our time of weeping. But, as we read from David, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Why?  Because during these times of pain and suffering, during our struggles and battles against sin, the Spirit of God is working in our lives, purging, cleansing us from our old ways, and restoring us more and more to the image of Christ.

During those times we are in purgatory. I should first explain what purgatory means.  Purgatory is a time and place where you are purged, purified.  That is what it is.  Now I should explain that the Roman Church says that purgatory is something we will experience after we die, a time when God burns away all the impurities that still remain in us. But this is not so. We do not believe in purgatory if that is what it is. When we die it is all over except for resurrection. If God was going to send us through fires after we died, death would be a pretty scary thing, wouldn’t it?  But God says that it is given to man once to die and after that the resurrection. There is no purgatory after death.

But perhaps we may say that God brings us through purgatory now. First through baptism, because being joined to the death of Christ he purges us from our sins. Second, through our own dying to sin, and third through the sufferings and trials God sends us now. He is purifying us; we are experiencing purgatory. But that time will end, for we believe and know that God is restoring us, rebuilding us, cleansing us, now in this life.  Death and resurrection, God does both through Christ, in us.

Every Lord’s Day we should, by faith, experience death and resurrection, as we mourn for our sins, confess them, and then God resurrects us through His pardoning grace.

That’s our life, isn’t it? Six days work, sometimes struggle and sorrow, yet every seven is a cycle of death and resurrection, for God brings us to this day of rest and refreshment, raising us again to faith and joy.

I want to close this survey of death and resurrection in the Bible and in our lives by going back to the beginning, the very beginning. Let me read the first five verses of the Bible, Genesis 1: 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that [it was] good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5)

Evening and morning were the first day, and the second day, and so on throughout the days of creation. Strange isn’t it?  Not really our pattern, is it?  We would think “morning and evening the first day.” But this is what God established as the pattern of life, evening then morning, dark then light. However, something was happening during the darkness.  We read that the Spirit of God was hovering.

This is always true during the dark days of the church too. Those dark days are your history too. You recall that I  mentioned earlier that your ignorance of the Old Testament history of your church means that you have lost much of the sense of your own identity. The same is true for your knowledge of New Testament church history. Old Testament church history spanned 4000 years and closed with the ministry of John the Baptist. The Bible records perhaps 100 years of New Testament church history . How much do you know of the remaining 1,900 years?

We are Reformed churches and perhaps think of our history dating from the 16th century Reformation. But dear me, it was our church too during the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The scene became darker and darker. “And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

All during this dark time the Spirit was at work. Countless Christians were praying and working for the reformation of the church.  The churches made many attempts  at reform. The fourth Lateran Council of 1215 tried to deal with various heresies and failed.  The churches struggled through the schisms of the 14th century. She convened the Council of Constance in 1417, to deal with those schisms, but only increased the darkness by condemning both Wycliffe (dead for over a century of course) and Hus, subsequently burned at the stake.  During all this darkness the Spirit of God was brooding over the churches until the great day when the Reformation broke forth.

In the city of Geneva there is a monument to the great Reformers, and inscribed in Latin are these words, Post tenebras lux. After the darkness, light. Dark then light. 

Darkness, night, trials, suffering, death, for the church of Christ is but the evening that precedes the morning, for the child of God it is the crying that comes before the dancing. There is another darkness, beloved, and it is good that I fail not to mention it. There is the darkness of sin, the darkness of living under the dominion of the prince of darkness.  There is a bad night. And finally, as Jude says, there is reserved for such the fate of Cain, wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

But I am persuaded better things of you. So for you God works out his good pattern in creation, for when it is dark, do not forget the word of Genesis 1, “and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and God saw the light that it was good.”

This is the way you were born. Over the darkness of your mother’s womb the Spirit of God hovered, nestled, brooded, and your life was created. In that darkness the Spirit of God worked secretly, invisibly, knitting all your members so wonderfully together. Then time came for you to come into the light. Ah, you have no idea of the straining labor and pain it took to bring you into the light. But there you were, alive and kicking, whooping it up, glad to be alive and in the light.

Again, dearly beloved, there is for each of God’s children another birth, isn’t there?  And just as in your first birth, it began in darkness and pain. The darkness and pain weren’t yours. For darkness came over the earth from the sixth hour to the ninth hour. And Jesus, the creator of your new life, cried out in anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And he went down into the darkness of death, buried for three days in the heart of  the earth. That, my friend, was your burial, your darkness, until the dawn of the third day, when the one appointed to be a second Adam for you, rose from the darkness into eternal light and joy. 

So for you, a struggling child of God, for the church of Christ, when times are dark, when light seems so far away, the Spirit of God is hovering, is brooding, is warming, preparing you, preparing the church for the entrance of those great words, “Let there be light.” 

Under the warming, comforting presence of the Spirit of Christ, God’s final call for your sleep will come, and when you die, you will go into that good night, you will fall asleep in the arms of the Spirit of Christ, until that day when God again says, “Let there be light.”

The Light of the World shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory, and there shall be no night there.  Amen.

 

Lord’s Day, December 3, 2006 – Morning Worship.

Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; Hebrews 11:8-12

First Advent Sermon: The Birth of the Promised Son

Rev. Donald Van Dyken, OCRC, Sunnyside, Washington

Today I begin a series of sermons on the miracle births that led up to and prefigured the great miracle birth, the virgin birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Throughout the history of our fathers, our God gave previews of the great birth of our Savior, born without man, born without the will of man, without the action of man, born by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of a virgin whom no man had known.

The great seed of the woman came into this world without the help of a man. The help of man is vain, sang our fathers, be thou our helper Lord. Through thee we shall do valiantly, if thou thine aid afford.

A woman without a man. For although the woman had first fallen to the deceit of the devil, although it was Eve who led Adam into sin, it was Adam who failed his wife, who failed to protect, who failed to lead, who failed in his role. So God ordained that he would restore the woman to her rightful place, to a place of honor and glory, without the man, so that the man would be restored to his rightful place through her seed, through her man-child.

The miracle births I want to consider each Lord’s Day that brings us closer to Christmas are the births of Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. Today is Isaac, and my theme is The Birth of the Promised Son.

I have four points:

1. The woman. The Scriptures portray Sarah as a beautiful woman, a woman with a wonderful name meaning “Mother of nations” a barren woman.
2. The church. Sarah represents the church, the woman God chose to be the wife of his Son, the woman who although so blessed, in herself is barren.
3. The Lord. It is the Lord, the God of promise and power, the God of faithfulness and truth who brings bloom into the desert, who turns mourning into laughter.
4. Faith. In the words of Hebrews, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.”

1. The woman.

If you were a farmer in the days of Abraham, one day you might find yourself in your vineyard during a day something like this in winter pruning your grapes. As you went down the row and came near the road out of the mist came the sound of many feet and a great procession came into view. Camels and donkeys, cows and sheep, and so many people. Hundreds and hundreds of people, men and women, followed by so many boys and girls, so many families all traveling together. This was the great household of Abraham, a man of great wealth and possessions, yet a wanderer. As you watched all these families going by, you would see the great patriarch himself, Abraham, 99 years old, walking along that road at the head of this great procession. Just behind him you would see an honored woman, that you would surely know as Abraham’s wife, for a 12 year old boy walked at her side. But surely there is another woman there, and she is walking at Abraham’s side. Surely she is his wife, for she is royally dressed, she is beautiful. But where are her children? Alas, she has no children.

There are hundreds of wives in that procession, and they all have little crowds of children following them, but this woman is all alone. The most honored woman, the woman dressed more elegantly than any other, she alone has no child.

Sarah was a lovely woman. So lovely, that in days past the great king of Egypt, ruler of that great civilization on the Nile, Pharaoh himself wanted her for his wife. So lovely, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, desired her. A lovely woman, and a woman under the protection of the Almighty. For when her husband failed to protect her, God himself surrounded her with his care so that neither Pharaoh nor Abimelech were able to touch her.

And yet she was without child, for she was barren. Her womb was dry. There was something wrong there, for in spite of Abraham’s love, Sarah conceived nothing. She had first come to the land of Canaan, this land called the land of promise, at the age of 65. Now she was 90. And although she was still beautiful, she was now past any possibility of bearing children. She not only had a history of barrenness, she was past the age of bearing children. 90 years old, still beautiful, but still all alone.

Oh, she had tried. Some years before, in her frantic desire to bear a son for Abraham, she had attempted some form of surrogate motherhood. She had begged Abraham to take her maid Hagar to wife, so that Hagar could bear a son for her, instead of her. Hagar came to be with child, but that turned sour on Sarah, for instead of bringing Sarah joy, Hagar despised Sarah, and Sarah instead of finding happiness, found frustration and sorrow. Hagar had a son, but God told Abraham that this son, Ishmael, would not be the promised son. Sarah’s plans failed.

So there she was, beautiful but barren. There she was, still the wife of Abraham’s love, but too old to be fruitful when she received his love. There she was, a woman who had tried everything and failed.

Sarah filled the role of the church, Sarah pictured the church, for in her all the people of God, all the seed of Abraham was wrapped up.

2. The church.

If you read the prophecy of Ezekiel, especially chapters 16 and 23, you will see a beautiful woman like Sarah, the Israel of God, the church of God. You will see too that she was so favored and blessed. She was beautiful, and her beauty was seen by nations far and near. It is always so, that the people chosen by the Lord, the people blessed by the Lord, are a people set apart, a people seen by the world as something special. You yourselves, your sons and your daughters, are recognized by the world as people set apart.

Yet so often she was barren, powerless. So often she would cry out, Our hope is gone, we are all like dry bones. And so often too, she would do the Hagar trick, she would try by the power of the world, by the power and by the methods of her own making to find fulfillment, to find fruitfulness. How was it in the days of Ahab that instead of honoring the ruins of Jericho, that monument that Israel lived by grace, that she built those walls again, and instead of the birth of hope, the foundation of those walls was laid in the death of her firstborn, and finished with the death of her last son. How often was it that she allied herself with Syria, with Egypt, with Assyria, and then even with Babylon during the days of Hezekiah, to find hope and promise.

This was the church that during the days after the return from Babylon had to be reminded, “Not by might, nor by power, says the Lord, but by my Spirit. They were small, but the Lord said, Who has despised the day of small things.

This was the church that during the days when Christ was on earth trusted in their own righteousness, that finally believed that only a political and military machine like Rome could save them. This was the church that finally declared that their king was Caesar.

This was the church in the province of Galatia to whom Paul said, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Do you think that having begun by the Spirit you are now made perfect through the flesh?

This was the church at Laodicea who said, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” but did not know that she wsa wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

This is so many churches today, following the ways of Sarah with Hagar, looking to the proven success of the business model to increase the membership in their churches. This is the church that has forsaken the word of the Lord, the gospel of the foolishness of preaching, and has imported showtime, entertainment, and Starbucks in the foyer to increase her seed, to multiply her membership.

And so the church of today, satisfied with the son of an Egyptian handmaid, still walks along, rather beautiful still, but barren, and showing the signs of old age.

And what of ourselves? Do we begin to look at ourselves and wonder and think, and try to find ways and means to make the promise of seed, of numerous children, of multitudes of peoples joining us, to make that come to pass? But what we need is what Sarah needed. What the church of today needs is what Sarah needed. And that is that the Lord visit us once again, and bring back to us once again the power of the Word, the faithfulness of a Word that is never broken and a Word that always comes to pass.

3. The Lord.

For the Lord visited Abraham and Sarah. The Lord sat down and ate with Abraham.

This was the God who had called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. This was the God who had called the church out of Egypt to be his bride. This was the church the Lord has called out of every tribe and tongue and nation on earth to be his people.

This was the God who had given Abraham great and wonderful promises, promises that he would not only inherit the land of Canaan, but that all the earth would be the possession of his seed, of his children. This was the God who had promised that kings would come from his loins, that rulers would come from him. This was tahe God who had promised that his seed would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens and as many as the sand which is by the seashore. This was the God who had promised that his seed would possess the gate of their enemies. This was the God who told Abraham that he was his shield and his exceeding great reward. This was the God who had given to Abraham the covenant of circumcision, that in his flesh the evidence of God’s great covenant. This was the God of the great covenant promise, that he would be Abraham’s God and the God of his children after him. Circumcision was the great sign of the covenant that would always be present, and would be present at the very moment of the conception, so that the very origin, the genesis of all his children would be under the sign of promise, the sign of the covenant.

This was the God who himself had walked through the butchered halves of the animals, taking upon himself the liability for failure to fulfill the terms of the covenant. This was the God who had promised that in the seed of Abraham and Sarah, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

This is the God who brought again the great word of promise, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son.” This was the God , who in the face of Sarah’s laughter, a laughter of cynicism, a laughter of doubt, returned a word of grace, saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord? A the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.” And that son would be named Isaac, a name appointed before by the Lord, a name meaning Laughter, so that when he was born, Sarah could say, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? For I have borne him a son in his old age.”

This is the Lord who visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken.

And this is the God of whom Zachariah so many years later sang, “The Lord has visited and redeemed his people, even as he spoke to our father Abraham.”

And this is the God who visits us today, reminding us again of all his great and wonderful promises, and in ithe face of our skepticism saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” This is the God who visits us today with his word of promise saying, “All my promises are yes and amen in Jesus Christ my son.” You shall have a son, O church of Christ, and you shall call his name Isaac, for you will laugh, and all who hear will laugh with you.

4. Faith.

“By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.”

That seems to be an amazing statement, for in the account in Genesis it certainly doesn’t look like she had faith. Her laughter was the laughter of doubt, of unbelief. You remember what she said, don’t you? The Bible says, “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of child bearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Would God not be perfectly just to say to Sarah at this point, “Well then, just forget it. Forget the whole business. You don’t want to believe me, then I’ll just take my promises away.” But remember who this God is, a God of eternal faithfulness to his covenant, a God of the dearest mercy to sinful doubting believers.

For Hebrews says, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed.” What shall we say? We shall say that the God of Abraham and Sarah, our God, was and is a God of great mercy and compassion, he knows our frame, he knows how weak and frail we are, he knows the weakness of our faith, and he has mercy. He not only brings our failings to mind, he not only admonishes us because of our skepticism, he reminds us who he is, and he repeats his promise. “Is anything too hard for the Lord. At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

What shall we say? We shall say that God, through this word, through these words reminding her of who he was, and of his promise, changed Sarah’s doubt into certainty, changed her unbelief to faith. She believed, for she counted him faithful who promised.

And what shall we say about ourselves? We who so often doubt the promises of God? We who like Sarah and Abraham have heard those promises so many times, yet here we are, like Sarah, 25 years later, and still nothing, still barren, and past any human possibility of having those promises come true.

But God ministers to you and to me, to us as families, to us as a church, to every church where the great Word of the promise of the gospel is proclaimed.

We must believe. But what of our doubts and fears? What of our uncertainties? What of the long time we have waited for those promises to come to pass? What then? The Lord visits us, as he did for Abraham and Sarah, visits us, sits down with us, dines with us, receives from us what we offer to him, and repeats his promise. And when we hear those promises, and when we too express our doubts and fears, looking at ourselves, seeing our barrenness and age, think that the time has surely past, God confirms his promise to us.

What do you need that God has promised? Like Abraham and Sarah, you have followed the Lord all these years, and yet, yet.

Do you need vindication? Do you need God to maintain your cause before the face of those who oppose and slander you? Hasn’t he promised?

Do you need a family? Do you need your health restored? Do you need a wife, a husband? Do you need peace of mind? Do you need God to fulfill his promises for your children? Do you need strength to overcome the many obstacles in your path? Do you need solutions to the problems that nag at your faith?

What do you need? You need, the church needs the seed, the promised seed. You need your mourning turned into laughter, your pain into pleasure, your barrenness into fruitfulness. You need to come under the Word of your God, the power of the gospel of grace, the power of the Word made flesh. You need the Lord God of the covenant to visit you.

And you need faith to receive that Word. From where comes this faith? From the same place and in the same way that Sarah herself received power to conceive seed, from the Word of God declared to her, changing her doubt to faith, her fear to certainty. You need the power of the Word who made the lame leap for joy, the barren woman to become a joyful mother of children, the mourning widow to receive her son to life again, the dumb to speak and the blind to see. You need the Word that shone in darkness, bringing the beauty and glory of light again. Every Sunday morning again as you prepare to go to the house of Christ, you need to say with Peter, “Where else can we go? For he alone has the words of eternal life.” You need the love of God, born of a virgin, offered on the cross for you.

You need to know that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor height nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ your Lord. Amen.

Lord’s Day, December 3, 2006 – Morning Worship.

Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; Hebrews 11:8-12

First Advent Sermon: The Birth of the Promised Son

Rev. Donald Van Dyken, OCRC, Sunnyside, Washington

Today I begin a series of sermons on the miracle births that led up to and prefigured the great miracle birth, the virgin birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Throughout the history of our fathers, our God gave previews of the great birth of our Savior, born without man, born without the will of man, without the action of man, born by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of a virgin whom no man had known.

The great seed of the woman came into this world without the help of a man. The help of man is vain, sang our fathers, be thou our helper Lord. Through thee we shall do valiantly, if thou thine aid afford.

A woman without a man. For although the woman had first fallen to the deceit of the devil, although it was Eve who led Adam into sin, it was Adam who failed his wife, who failed to protect, who failed to lead, who failed in his role. So God ordained that he would restore the woman to her rightful place, to a place of honor and glory, without the man, so that the man would be restored to his rightful place through her seed, through her man-child.

The miracle births I want to consider each Lord’s Day that brings us closer to Christmas are the births of Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. Today is Isaac, and my theme is The Birth of the Promised Son.

I have four points:

1. The woman. The Scriptures portray Sarah as a beautiful woman, a woman with a wonderful name meaning “Mother of nations” a barren woman.
2. The church. Sarah represents the church, the woman God chose to be the wife of his Son, the woman who although so blessed, in herself is barren.
3. The Lord. It is the Lord, the God of promise and power, the God of faithfulness and truth who brings bloom into the desert, who turns mourning into laughter.
4. Faith. In the words of Hebrews, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.”

1. The woman.

If you were a farmer in the days of Abraham, one day you might find yourself in your vineyard during a day something like this in winter pruning your grapes. As you went down the row and came near the road out of the mist came the sound of many feet and a great procession came into view. Camels and donkeys, cows and sheep, and so many people. Hundreds and hundreds of people, men and women, followed by so many boys and girls, so many families all traveling together. This was the great household of Abraham, a man of great wealth and possessions, yet a wanderer. As you watched all these families going by, you would see the great patriarch himself, Abraham, 99 years old, walking along that road at the head of this great procession. Just behind him you would see an honored woman, that you would surely know as Abraham’s wife, for a 12 year old boy walked at her side. But surely there is another woman there, and she is walking at Abraham’s side. Surely she is his wife, for she is royally dressed, she is beautiful. But where are her children? Alas, she has no children.

There are hundreds of wives in that procession, and they all have little crowds of children following them, but this woman is all alone. The most honored woman, the woman dressed more elegantly than any other, she alone has no child.

Sarah was a lovely woman. So lovely, that in days past the great king of Egypt, ruler of that great civilization on the Nile, Pharaoh himself wanted her for his wife. So lovely, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, desired her. A lovely woman, and a woman under the protection of the Almighty. For when her husband failed to protect her, God himself surrounded her with his care so that neither Pharaoh nor Abimelech were able to touch her.

And yet she was without child, for she was barren. Her womb was dry. There was something wrong there, for in spite of Abraham’s love, Sarah conceived nothing. She had first come to the land of Canaan, this land called the land of promise, at the age of 65. Now she was 90. And although she was still beautiful, she was now past any possibility of bearing children. She not only had a history of barrenness, she was past the age of bearing children. 90 years old, still beautiful, but still all alone.

Oh, she had tried. Some years before, in her frantic desire to bear a son for Abraham, she had attempted some form of surrogate motherhood. She had begged Abraham to take her maid Hagar to wife, so that Hagar could bear a son for her, instead of her. Hagar came to be with child, but that turned sour on Sarah, for instead of bringing Sarah joy, Hagar despised Sarah, and Sarah instead of finding happiness, found frustration and sorrow. Hagar had a son, but God told Abraham that this son, Ishmael, would not be the promised son. Sarah’s plans failed.

So there she was, beautiful but barren. There she was, still the wife of Abraham’s love, but too old to be fruitful when she received his love. There she was, a woman who had tried everything and failed.

Sarah filled the role of the church, Sarah pictured the church, for in her all the people of God, all the seed of Abraham was wrapped up.

2. The church.

If you read the prophecy of Ezekiel, especially chapters 16 and 23, you will see a beautiful woman like Sarah, the Israel of God, the church of God. You will see too that she was so favored and blessed. She was beautiful, and her beauty was seen by nations far and near. It is always so, that the people chosen by the Lord, the people blessed by the Lord, are a people set apart, a people seen by the world as something special. You yourselves, your sons and your daughters, are recognized by the world as people set apart.

Yet so often she was barren, powerless. So often she would cry out, Our hope is gone, we are all like dry bones. And so often too, she would do the Hagar trick, she would try by the power of the world, by the power and by the methods of her own making to find fulfillment, to find fruitfulness. How was it in the days of Ahab that instead of honoring the ruins of Jericho, that monument that Israel lived by grace, that she built those walls again, and instead of the birth of hope, the foundation of those walls was laid in the death of her firstborn, and finished with the death of her last son. How often was it that she allied herself with Syria, with Egypt, with Assyria, and then even with Babylon during the days of Hezekiah, to find hope and promise.

This was the church that during the days after the return from Babylon had to be reminded, “Not by might, nor by power, says the Lord, but by my Spirit. They were small, but the Lord said, Who has despised the day of small things.

This was the church that during the days when Christ was on earth trusted in their own righteousness, that finally believed that only a political and military machine like Rome could save them. This was the church that finally declared that their king was Caesar.

This was the church in the province of Galatia to whom Paul said, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Do you think that having begun by the Spirit you are now made perfect through the flesh?

This was the church at Laodicea who said, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” but did not know that she wsa wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

This is so many churches today, following the ways of Sarah with Hagar, looking to the proven success of the business model to increase the membership in their churches. This is the church that has forsaken the word of the Lord, the gospel of the foolishness of preaching, and has imported showt
ime, entertainment, and Starbucks in the foyer to increase her seed, to multiply her membership.

And so the church of today, satisfied with the son of an Egyptian handmaid, still walks along, rather beautiful still, but barren, and showing the signs of old age.

And what of ourselves? Do we begin to look at ourselves and wonder and think, and try to find ways and means to make the promise of seed, of numerous children, of multitudes of peoples joining us, to make that come to pass? But what we need is what Sarah needed. What the church of today needs is what Sarah needed. And that is that the Lord visit us once again, and bring back to us once again the power of the Word, the faithfulness of a Word that is never broken and a Word that always comes to pass.

3. The Lord.

For the Lord visited Abraham and Sarah. The Lord sat down and ate with Abraham.

This was the God who had called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. This was the God who had called the church out of Egypt to be his bride. This was the church the Lord has called out of every tribe and tongue and nation on earth to be his people.

This was the God who had given Abraham great and wonderful promises, promises that he would not only inherit the land of Canaan, but that all the earth would be the possession of his seed, of his children. This was the God who had promised that kings would come from his loins, that rulers would come from him. This was tahe God who had promised that his seed would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens and as many as the sand which is by the seashore. This was the God who had promised that his seed would possess the gate of their enemies. This was the God who told Abraham that he was his shield and his exceeding great reward. This was the God who had given to Abraham the covenant of circumcision, that in his flesh the evidence of God’s great covenant. This was the God of the great covenant promise, that he would be Abraham’s God and the God of his children after him. Circumcision was the great sign of the covenant that would always be present, and would be present at the very moment of the conception, so that the very origin, the genesis of all his children would be under the sign of promise, the sign of the covenant.

This was the God who himself had walked through the butchered halves of the animals, taking upon himself the liability for failure to fulfill the terms of the covenant. This was the God who had promised that in the seed of Abraham and Sarah, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

This is the God who brought again the great word of promise, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son.” This was the God , who in the face of Sarah’s laughter, a laughter of cynicism, a laughter of doubt, returned a word of grace, saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord? A the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.” And that son would be named Isaac, a name appointed before by the Lord, a name meaning Laughter, so that when he was born, Sarah could say, “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? For I have borne him a son in his old age.”

This is the Lord who visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken.

And this is the God of whom Zachariah so many years later sang, “The Lord has visited and redeemed his people, even as he spoke to our father Abraham.”

And this is the God who visits us today, reminding us again of all his great and wonderful promises, and in ithe face of our skepticism saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” This is the God who visits us today with his word of promise saying, “All my promises are yes and amen in Jesus Christ my son.” You shall have a son, O church of Christ, and you shall call his name Isaac, for you will laugh, and all who hear will laugh with you.

4. Faith.

“By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.”

That seems to be an amazing statement, for in the account in Genesis it certainly doesn’t look like she had faith. Her laughter was the laughter of doubt, of unbelief. You remember what she said, don’t you? The Bible says, “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of child bearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Would God not be perfectly just to say to Sarah at this point, “Well then, just forget it. Forget the whole business. You don’t want to believe me, then I’ll just take my promises away.” But remember who this God is, a God of eternal faithfulness to his covenant, a God of the dearest mercy to sinful doubting believers.

For Hebrews says, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed.” What shall we say? We shall say that the God of Abraham and Sarah, our God, was and is a God of great mercy and compassion, he knows our frame, he knows how weak and frail we are, he knows the weakness of our faith, and he has mercy. He not only brings our failings to mind, he not only admonishes us because of our skepticism, he reminds us who he is, and he repeats his promise. “Is anything too hard for the Lord. At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

What shall we say? We shall say that God, through this word, through these words reminding her of who he was, and of his promise, changed Sarah’s doubt into certainty, changed her unbelief to faith. She believed, for she counted him faithful who promised.

And what shall we say about ourselves? We who so often doubt the promises of God? We who like Sarah and Abraham have heard those promises so many times, yet here we are, like Sarah, 25 years later, and still nothing, still barren, and past any human possibility of having those promises come true.

But God ministers to you and to me, to us as families, to us as a church, to every church where the great Word of the promise of the gospel is proclaimed.

We must believe. But what of our doubts and fears? What of our uncertainties? What of the long time we have waited for those promises to come to pass? What then? The Lord visits us, as he did for Abraham and Sarah, visits us, sits down with us, dines with us, receives from us what we offer to him, and repeats his promise. And when we hear those promises, and when we too express our doubts and fears, looking at ourselves, seeing our barrenness and age, think that the time has surely past, God confirms his promise to us.

What do you need that God has promised? Like Abraham and Sarah, you have followed the Lord all these years, and yet, yet.

Do you need vindication? Do you need God to maintain your cause before the face of those who oppose and slander you? Hasn’t he promised?

Do you need a family? Do you need your health restored? Do you need a wife, a husband? Do you need peace of mind? Do you need God to fulfill his promises for your children? Do you need strength to overcome the many obstacles in your path? Do you need solutions to the problems that nag at your faith?

What do you need? You need, the church needs the seed, the promised seed. You need your mourning turned into laughter, your pain into pleasure, your barrenness into fruitfulness. You need to come under the Word of your God, the power of the gospel of grace, the power of the Word made flesh. You need the Lord God of the covenant to visit you.

And you need faith to receive that Word. From where comes this faith? From the same pl
ace and in the same way that Sarah herself received power to conceive seed, from the Word of God declared to her, changing her doubt to faith, her fear to certainty. You need the power of the Word who made the lame leap for joy, the barren woman to become a joyful mother of children, the mourning widow to receive her son to life again, the dumb to speak and the blind to see. You need the Word that shone in darkness, bringing the beauty and glory of light again. Every Sunday morning again as you prepare to go to the house of Christ, you need to say with Peter, “Where else can we go? For he alone has the words of eternal life.” You need the love of God, born of a virgin, offered on the cross for you.

You need to know that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor height nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ your Lord. Amen.

CHRISTMAS SERMON, December 25, 2005

Rev. Donald Van Dyken

Scripture: Luke 2:1-20

Text: Luke 2:14

My message to you today is the song of the angels there on Bethlehem’s hills that night so many years ago. Angels are messengers, for that is what the word “angel” means. Throughout the history of the Old Testament the angels had many difficult messages to bring, for often they were messengers of death. There were the angels who rained fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah. There were the angels of death who killed all the firstborn of Egypt that fateful night so long ago. There was the angel who silently put 120,000 Assyrians to death in one night outside Jerusalem. But this night the news is good, and the angel who brought this good news of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was joined by a huge throng of angels, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” This is the Song of the Angels.

It is this message I hope will capture your attention for a few minutes this morning. The first line of their song is “Glory to God in the highest.” That’s a very important phrase: “Glory to God.” Jesus came to bring glory to God, glory to the Father, and at the same time, and this is what we must capture this morning, at the same time Jesus was the glory of God, the supreme, the highest revelation of God himself, for he was God in the flesh.

The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the whole world then and the whole world today really look for someone to bring glory, not to God, but to man. Man wants glory for himself, the glory of a great political career, the glory of scientific achievements, the glory of great new philosophic schemes, the glory of enormous wealth, the glory of invincible military power, the glory of being a great charismatic speaker, charming the multitudes by your wonderful rhetoric. But this is not the message of the angels. This is not the good news of the gospel. It is note glory to man in the highest, but it is Glory to God in the highest.

So the birth of Christ, the message of the angels, this Immanuel, God-with-us, God in the flesh, this one born in a stable became an offense to the world, and is an offense to the world today. Now we have to ask the question, Just how is the birth of Christ, how is he an offense to the world? Maybe if you went to a Muslim country, you would find very soon that it is. I have a wonderful book in my library called, “The Forgotten Legion.” It’s about two British missionaries in the 1930’s who went to Baluchistan, in the Himalayas. They recount that they were teaching wonderful people, and they loved those people for they were just wonderful, good-hearted people. But as they taught the children in school to read they read from the Bible, and every time the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned, the children would stand up and spit. Whenever they were called upon to read, they refused to pronounce the name of Jesus Christ. He is an offense, to them and to the world today. And we must ask the question, “Why? Why is Christmas, the birth of Christ, an offense to the world?”

To find that out we need to ask ourselves again, Who is this baby born in Bethlehem, who is he?

In Luke 1 we read that the angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her that she would have a son who would be called “the Son of the Highest.” And then later on in that same chapter Gabriel goes on to say, “that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” No, this is not just a great prophet, this is not just a great man, but this is God, this is Immanuel, God-with-us. So the apostle John when he begins his gospel, starts with those very familiar words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then he goes on in verse 14 to say, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And then he goes on in verse 18 to say, “No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” He has revealed him.

So when the angels say, “Glory to God in the highest,” we understand that this Jesus who was born at Christmas is God himself, the perfect and the complete revelation of God. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that he was the express image of the person of God. Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” So we understand why shepherds worshiped, why wise men worshiped. They didn’t just pay some kind of oriental homage. But they engaged in that activity of worship, which the Bible says is only reserved for God alone. This one who was born is God.

In Jesus God reveals his highest glory; the greatest, most splendid, awesome glory of God is revealed. How did Jesus reveal this greatest glory of God? How would God look and act if he actually came down here for a while? Well, we know, for we have the gospel records. Did God come in fire and thunder as he came on Mount Sinai? Did he sound his voice like the noise of many waters in the streets of the cities of Galilee and Judea? Did he come with thousands and ten thousands of mighty angels to bring judgment on earth? Did he come like some Greek super hero, filling the sky, just a massive monumental superman?

He came about 20 inches long, and about seven or eight pounds. He came to be humble. God showed himself in Jesus Christ that his greatest glory was to humble himself. You know, we find that our glory is in association with famous people. You would find it glorious, you would find that people would really look up to you if tomorrow’s newspaper carried a picture of you sitting down to dinner with President Bush, and next week with all the leaders of Congress. That would make you famous, that would bring you glory. But what was the glory of God in Christ? Do you know whom this Son of God, this Son of the Highest sat down to eat with? He sat down to eat with publicans and sinners. They said, “You are a friend of sinners. This is an offense. This is not the way our God looks. This is not the way our God acts.” But this is what the angels meant when they sang “glory to God in the highest.”

No, this is an offense. The world wants a god who identifies himself with worthy people, who loves the best, the greatest of men, who sits with the famous and the good. This makes a god fpr the world great and glorious. But what kind of a God is this, who calls himself lowly, meek, and who lets prostitutes wipe his feet with their hair?

“Glory to God in the highest.” This Jesus, my friends, is not just a man who is lowly and humble, who finds friends among demon possessed, publicans, prostitutes and sinners. This Jesus is God who the angels announce will find his highest glory in his humility. And so the world continues to be offended by this kind of God. Is it any wonder that the Muslims and the Hindus, the Mormons and the rest of the pagans find this Jesus offensive? They do not find him offensive because he was a man, or that he was a prophet, or even that he was a humble man who sacrificed himself for the great cause of love. No, they find him offensive because he is God.

What kind of a God is this, who loves his people so much that he dies for them? This cannot be. What kind of God is this, who lets his own people hang him? This is the offense of the Gospel, that God would come in human flesh, that God would identify himself with the poor, the lame, the broken, with sinners. This is the offense of the Gospel, that the highest glory of God would be in the death of God. Who can worship a God whose greatest glory is declared to be a hanging death on the cross? Are you embarrassed with such a God whose highest glory i
s displayed in his shameful death?

But this is the glory Paul boasted of, saying that he would glory in nothing else than in the death of Christ his Lord. This was the glory Paul praised to the Corinthians, saying that he was determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified. This was the God Paul preached to the Romans, saying, that Jesus was, Romans 1, declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead, and that he was not ashamed of that Gospel, for it was and is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

This is Christmas, isn’t it, and I must ask you, can you say that you are not ashamed of this Jesus, this God whose highest glory was to give himself in an ignoble death by hanging? For you must realize, must you not, that without Jesus you have no god at all. And without Jesus no one in the world has a god. The greatest glory of our God was to begin his visit on earth by birth in a cow barn, but not going up from there, but going down from there, humbling himself, God humbling himself to the deepest reproach.

Is it any wonder then that this Jesus, this God in the flesh, says to you and to me, “Set not your mind on high things, but associate with the humble.” Would you find it a glory if the newspaper carried a picture of you sitting down, not with President Bush, but if you’ve seen our big cities, and see the worst scum you can imagine on those streets, bleary-eyed, disreputable, and you sat with them? Well, we have some nearby, don’t we? And the Lord has given us opportunity to sit with them, people like the Yakama’s, who, well yes.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” Peace, what is peace? Peace is a state of tranquility. Here is a good picture of peace from Psalm 144:

“That our barns may be full, Supplying all kinds of produce; That our sheep may bring forth thousands And ten thousands in our fields; That our oxen may be well-laden; That there be no breaking in or going out; That there be no outcry in our streets. Happy are the people who are in such a state;”

Peace is not only such a state of outward quietness, prosperity, and tranquility, but it is an inward quietness, a happiness of soul that cannot be disturbed. You know sometimes as I go around, I notice that nobody can stand to be by themselves today. They can’t even take a walk without having some noise in their ears; something has to be going on. They need something talking to them, singing to them, there has to be noise all the time, and to be by yourself with your own thoughts, seems to be something most people want to avoid today. Because somehow, I guess, they can’t find peace within their own heart; it’s not there. Although we live in such enormous prosperity and security, there is a sense of peace that escapes many people.

Jesus was born in the days of Caesar Augustus. We just read that. Caesar Augustus brought peace, the peace of Rome, an outward peace. But that was not enough. Even the heathen in that day knew that. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, writing a few years later said, “While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief, and envy. He cannot give peace of heart, for which man yearns more than even for outward peace.”

What is true peace? Is it peace with one’s environment? With others? With self? Where do we even get the idea of peace? Because somewhere, sometime in our history as man there was a peace we lost. Why do we long for peace? What is peace? To know what is peace with need to know what is war. What is war? What makes war? Is that hard to figure out? What makes war in your house? When do you fight? What does your mom tell you about that? She tells you that you were bad, you were naughty. But that tells you something, doesn’t it? That tells you that sin is the reason for war.

Every sin breaks peace. Every sin that you and I commit, even the small sins, is a declaration of war against another. But not just against another brother or sister, against a father or mother, but every sin is a declaration of war against God himself. The question of peace is the question of peace with God. How shall we make peace with God, when the good that I sometimes would do, I don’t do, and the evil that I would not do, that I do? Christmas has to do with sin. Christmas is the answer of God for sin. And it’s tragic, isn’t it, how many Christmas celebrations today carry with them no mention of sin at all? But the angels announced, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin.”

So God himself, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, is the Prince of Peace. God himself came into man at Christmas to make peace with man, reconciling man to himself. God in Christ is our peace. God himself made our peace through death on the cross.

How can you and I have peace? How can we have peace with God? You know, it’s wonderful to feel we have peace with God. But how do you know? How do you know it’s real? It takes more than your own declaration, saying, “I have no more animosity towards you, God. You offend me no longer. I love you; I want to please you, and I’ll do my best. And so therefore God, I make this declaration of peace to you.”

And God says to you and to me, “By making that declaration of peace to me, in your pride, that you can make peace, you have committed a sin of presumption, and every sin is a declaration. So that your best declaration of peace is a thinly disguised declaration of war.”

What does God feel about you? That’s the important thing, isn’t it? What does God feel about you? What does he think about you? Is his animosity, is his ill-will, is his anger towards you ceased? He’s in heaven, isn’t he? Nobody has ever gotten there. So how do you know? How do you know for sure? It is only when God makes a declaration of peace. It’s only when you can know of a certainty, that this is the word that God speaks, and declares, and swears with an oath. Only when God has come in the flesh in the person of his Son, can we know for sure.

God alone can and has made peace with us through Jesus Christ our Lord. And it is only when God makes a declaration of peace that you can begin to have peace in your own heart. How do you know that God has made a declaration of peace? Well, we just read it, didn’t we? God sent his angels to sing, “Peace on earth.” Jesus said in John 3:17, that he did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Jesus said to James and John on the road to Jerusalem in Luke 9:56 that he did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. This is God’s declaration, his extension of peace to you and to me.

Following the cross, Jesus sent out his apostles to preach the gospel of peace, peace through the cross of Christ, peace through God himself giving himself in payment for our sins. And it is only God himself whose word cannot be broken, who can give peace by pronouncing the word of peace. Our peace must be based on what God says, not on what we feel about God. That’s why it is so vital for you and for me to come each Lord’s Day to Jerusalem, that’s the city of peace. For it is in the house of God himself, where we hear him say to us, “Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s why it is so critical to our peace to hear each Lord’s Day, his pardon of those sins of our past week, by which we again and again, even as children, declare war against our Father. That’s why it is so important to have the official Word of God in the Bible, and to have that word officially proclaimed, announced to us.
“Peace be with you all.” That’s why it’s so important that in this fighting world, in the struggles and dealing with the sins that make war in your own lives, you come each week where God of peace himself, pardons your sin, and gives you peace.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.”

“Good will towards men.” For some people this is a difficult phrase, for they cannot understand how God can say that his will is good toward men since he doesn’t elect all of them to salvation. But we need not worry about figuring that out, but have only to glory in that wonderful will of God, that good will of God towards all men, that precious will of God towards you and towards me. What a fabulous wonder that his will towards you and me is good.

We already know the goodness of God is shown in all creation, as Paul reminded the heathen a couple of times, reminding them that this is the time of God’s goodness, giving us rain and crops and good things, filling our hearts with joy. This God is good, sending his rain on the just and on the unjust. This God is good, as we confess in the old Belgic, and the overflowing fountain of all good. He is good to all men today. But the focus, the zenith, the height of his goodness was that he gave his only begotten Son. He gave that Son as a sacrifice. God could express his good will towards men in no greater way, with no greater glory and power, with no greater evidence of the sincerity of his good intentions, than by sending his own Son to live, die, and rise again for sinners.

Goodwill towards men. The apostle Paul, that great champion of the sovereign electing love of God, was not ashamed to announce to Timothy that God our Savior “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the Truth.” This is the good will the apostle John announced to us, saying, “If anyone sins we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” This is the goodwill of God, who through Jesus Christ, said to his disciples, “Go into all the world, go to all the nations, make them all disciples of me, that they too may have the joy you have, in believing, in knowing that through him you are truly children of God. The curse is gone, and God’s love towards you is manifested in his Son. So this is the great, the good, the free offer of the gospel, announced with joy to all men; God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

Goodwill towards men. It is this wonderful goodwill of God towards men that makes the rejection of the gospel so much more serious. You would have a hard time time, if God came down today with thunder and lightning, if the ground underneath this building was shaking, and the sky was torn with fire, and the huge sound of God’s voice came out of the heavens, and said, “SINNER! REPENT!” And you would get down and repent. But a God who comes, gets on his knees, and washes the feet of his disciples? It exposes him to your wretched foot to kick him. And how many today don’t do just that? That they find this God in Jesus Christ, humbled himself so far, and God expressed such incredible goodwill to men, that he sent this Son. And like those Muslim boys and girls in the high Himalayas of Baluchistan, they spit on him.

But oh, beloved, and oh, children, young people, this is not for us to do, is it? How terrible it will be if we reject such beautiful good will. If we say to God, “I don’t want to be identified with someone who was a friend of sinners, because I’m not a sinner. I’m good. I want to have a God who associates with the worthy people who have nice ties, white shirts, clean lives.” No.

This is the good will of God, that in spite of the hatred, and the opposition, and the persecution, in spite of the plots of evil men, in spite of the lukewarmness and fumbling of the church, for 2000 years it still comes. The gospel is still here today. What a wonderful good will of God. God has sent forth this message of his good will towards men into every continent of the world, into every city and village, to every nation, to every tribe and language.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.

This is the song of the angels. You know, sometime we think that the angels sing more beautifully than we do. Sometimes when you hear a really gorgeous voice you say, “She sings like an angel.” (I suppose that presupposes that all angels sing soprano. I don’t think they do; more likely tenor or bass, because they’re all “he’s” in the Bible.)

But the angels are servants and the Lord says the angels would just love to know what you know: the love of God in Christ Jesus for sinners, and the glory of the peace of God he makes for you and I his children. And so of course, we can sing with much more glory than the angels. As gorgeous as the sound of that angel choir must have been, more gorgeous still are the voices of the children of God, assembled round his throne giving praise to him and to the Lamb.

“Glory to God in the highest.” The absolute pinnacle, the zenith, the highest revelation of the glory of the invisible God, the creator of heaven and earth, the Jehovah of Hosts, came in the Son of God, God himself, in lowliness, in humility, in sitting down with sinners, in meekness and compassion, in mercy and grace, in humbling himself, letting his own people nail him to the tree. This is our God, and this is the greatest glory of our God. Can you believe it?

“Peace on earth.” This is the peace that neither man nor angels make. This is the peace that only God could make, and this is the peace that he announces through Christ. This is the heart that knows that peace, not because of any feeling inside, but because of the Word of God announced and pronounced it to us sinners.

“Good will toward men.” This is that good and perfect will of God, still published to you and to me and to all mankind, that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that God in the flesh was reconciling the world to himself, that the kindness and longsuffering of God continues to this very day.

This is the glory and the peace and the good will that God has shown to you. This is the gospel, still an offense to those who will not have such a God as Jesus, but this is the gospel, still the power and peace of God for salvation to all who believe. Amen.

Fourth Advent Sermon by Rev. Donald Van Dyken, Lord’s Day morning, December 18, 2005.

Scripture: Isaiah 9:1-7

Text: Isaiah 9:6,7

The book of Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah perhaps bring more specific promises of the coming of Christ than any other books of the Old Testament. In Isaiah 7 God promised a virgin would bring Immanuel, Isaiah 9 promises a child and Son, Isaiah 40 promised double pardon for sin, Isaiah 53 described the suffering and sacrifice of the servant of Jehovah, and Isaiah 61 promised the healing, liberating, comforting ministry of Christ.

Today our text is from Isaiah 9, and although I have chosen both verses 6 and 7, I want to concentrate on verse 6, the glorious, the beautiful description of the coming Messiah God gave through Isaiah. My theme is, WHO SHALL BE KING? I’ll explain that theme in these two points:

First, the problem. Isaiah spoke during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah kings of Judah. He was specifically commissioned, as we read in chapter 6, during the year Uzziah died. From where would a really great king emerge?

Second, the answer. God’s answer to the problem of a small kingdom, and the dynasty of David that instead of spreading its conquests through all the kingdoms of the world, didn’t seem to be able maintain its own small borders in tact.

The problem.

In chapter 7 we read that Rezin king of Syria and Pekah king of Israel conspired together against Judah and Jerusalem. Ahaz, king of Judah and all his people with him were terrified. The Lord sent Isaiah to reassure them, and Isaiah told Ahaz to ask for a sign of God’s favor. Ahaz refused, and it was then that the Lord promised the sign of a virgin would conceive and bring forth a son whose name would be Immanuel, God-with-us. Isaiah then told Ahaz that the great threat would not be Syria and Israel but would come from Assyria. This great empire would bring devastation and indeed Israel itself would fall prey to its advancing armies and be carried captive.

Empires would come and go as Daniel prophesied later. Assyria, Babylon, then Persia, Greece, and Rome. Each one instead of bringing peace would bring war and violence. Each one would bring pressure and persecution to the people of God. Each one, instead of bringing light for Israel, instead of bowing before the kings of Judah, would bring darkness. Over against that darkness and gloom, we hear the voice of the Lord, Isaiah 9:2, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.” Then Isaiah continues with the joy of victory and peace, “they rejoice before you,” verse 3, “according to the joy of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For you have broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every warrior’s sandal from the noisy battle, and garments rolled in blood, will be used for burning and fuel of fire.”

What is the problem? The problem is the weakness of the sons of David, the problem is the rise of enemy empires, the problem is that the sons of David, the kings of Judah and Jerusalem, even the most righteous of them fail. They fail as did Uzziah, who trying to come into the presence of the Lord with incense for favor only found that the Lord struck him with leprosy. They fail as did Uzziah who finally died, and left a wicked son to sit on the throne. They failed as did good king Hezekiah who stumbled by making alliance with Babylon. The failed as did Hezekiah who produced such a wicked son as Manasseh to sit on the throne. They failed to stem the evil empires, and instead were overrun by them.

What is the problem today? The evil empire of the USSR seems to have been defeated, crushed under the weight of its own incompetence, and by the weight of the prayers of God’s people. Yet we continue to be surrounded by evil empires. Is the USA the hope of the world? Do we indeed bring peace? Do our universities promote peace? Will the worldwide web bring hope and peace? Evil conspiracies eat at our own vitals, the empires of murder and filth threaten our very existence. The power of Islam, threatens conquest by terror and violence. The vast economic power of China looms over us larger each year. Where is the answer?

What about your problems, our problems? What is the answer to your health problems, job problems, family problems, financial problems, relationship problems, church problems, community problems, political problems?

The answer is not from man. The answer is not in science. The answer is not in Washington DC. The answer cannot be found in education. The answer is not in military might. The answer is from God alone. The answer is found in our text, and the promise of our text came true at Christmas.

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder.”

The answer. God’s answer. As Isaiah wrote this he placed the word “Child” first in the sentence, the place of emphasis and importance. “Child to us is born, Son to us is given.” And God’s answer is yet to be found in that little, weak, faltering nation of Israel. “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.” God gave his answer then, and God gives his answer now in Israel, from Israel, in the church, from the Church. This child, this Son is our Child, he is our Son. He is the Seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the Son of David.

It was never Israel’s size or power or wisdom that made her significant in the world. It is never the church’s size or power or wisdom that makes her significant in the world today either. It was the glorious fact that God chose her to bring forth the Christ, to give her a child, a son. It is the glorious fact that God has chosen the church to announce the birth of Christ, the coming of the child, the Son, on whose shoulders the government would rest.

I want you to notice that Isaiah wrote this as though it were already an accomplished fact, for he didn’t say, “Unto us a child will be born,” but he said, “Unto us a Child is born.” This is the wonder of the Word of God, for when the Word comes the reality is already there, and all of God’s promises although we may say they are only in words, yet that Word is the Word that was from the beginning, and that Word is charged with the power of the living God, ready to spring into visible shape and form. Such is the Word we have today, the Word that did come, and that Word that is coming.

God’s answer. “And the government shall be upon his shoulder.” God’s answer is the reign and rule of Christ, the government of Christ, of the Son, of our Son, of God’s Son. When you, when we, acknowledge and come under the government, the rule, the command, the power of Christ, our joy, as promised in verse 3 will be increased, the yoke of burden will be broken, the rod of oppression will be lifted, and the weapons against us will be burned.

“And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor; Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Let’s look at these names God gave, for they reveal this Child, this Son. There are four pairs of names, each one opening up to us the glory of this Son, this Child.

The first pair is Wonderful, Counselor.

His name shall be Wonderful. In a way the word is Wonder. He shall be a Wonder, a miracle. God uses this word to describe the miracles he did for our fathers in Egypt in Psalm 78. He is the Wonder, the Miracle. This is the word God used in Judges 13:18, when Manoah asked of the Angel his name and he said my name is Wonder. I am the incomprehensible.

So in this firs
t name of this child God brought Israel, and brings you and I face to face with God himself. This child is God, is Wonder, is the incomprehensible, the ineffable God in the flesh. All the following names come under the light of this glorious name, Wonder.

Counselor. In this king would be hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This King must be properly equipped to redeem his people, and to enlarge his kingdom until every tribe and tongue and nation was brought under the sway of his rule. This is the one to whom God would give the heathen for his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, as God promised in Psalm 2.

This one is the Counselor. He has no need to be surrounded by counselors and advisors as the rulers of this world need. He himself is Counselor. If you remember the ministry of Jesus Christ on earth, you will recall that never once did he have need to ask advise from anyone. He counseled his disciples and the multitudes, but he never asked them for advice. Indeed when they advised him, when the multitudes advised him to be king, when Peter advised him to avoid the way of the cross, he rejected their advise. He is Counselor. This is characteristic of God. This is the God who spoke later in Isaiah, Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, Measured heaven with a span And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales And the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has taught Him? With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, And taught Him in the path of justice? Who taught Him knowledge, And showed Him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:12-14)

He is the Mighty God. Again, what seems to be an adjective here, the word “mighty” is actually a noun. He is the Mighty One. This word could be translated Hero. And this Hero is none other than God himself. He is the Hero whose chief characteristic is that he is God himself. Therefore he could say in all truth, “I have overcome the world.” John 16:33. He is the mighty Son of David who is the Son of God, who by his power overcame the great Dragon and bound him so that his people might be loosed.

He is the Everlasting Father. What does that mean? In the struggle of God’s people to translate his Word from Hebrew to English, some have said that this means that Christ is the one who possesses eternity. And in some way we could acknowledge that this is true. Christ said, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself, that he should give everlasting life to those who believe in him.” He possesses eternity, eternal life.

Others have said, and this is the translation that is favored, that he is eternally a Father to his people. He is the one come here, dwelling among us, reigning now for us, who is forever the father of Psalm 103, “as a father pieties his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him.”

As a Father, he forever, everlastingly guards his people and supplies their needs. “I am the good Shepherd,” Jesus said. And this is the heart of the meaning of that phrase, “Everlasting Father.” You experience, each of you, the fatherly protection and supply of this Child. The question is, do you believe it, are you thankful for it, do you rest in it?

He is the Prince of Peace.

Throughout history, in pain and in violence, in war and in struggle, in famine and in plenty, he has been and he is the prince, the king who brings peace. Restoring peace he reigns in peace. He is the ruler, the King, who extends his kingdom, not by bloodshed and war, not by violence to stop violence, but by peace. He is the King who brings peace, not by breaking swords and spears, not by disbanding armies and navies, not by imprisoning bandits and thugs, but by breaking into hearts and lives, by transforming minds and feelings.

This is the Prince of Peace who disdains to bring about a temporary cessation of hostilities, a Prince of Peace who knows that even if your pockets are full of cash, even if your body is free from every cancer cell known to man, even if there are four cars in every garage and a t-bone steak on every plate, if your heart is untouched, you will still be at war, for it will erupt from your heart at the smallest provocation.

This is the Prince of Peace who knows that although you may experience all the outward signs of peace, although you may live in peaceful bliss for one hundred years, yet you will finally engage in a battle in which you will be defeated, and that is the battle of death.

This is the Prince of Peace who entered that battle for all of his people, who overcame, and who ever lives and reigns until this last enemy death is erased from the farthest horizon of your life.

But finally, and essentially this is the Prince of Peace who made peace for you with God. For with every sin in your life, the long war against God continues. You and I, all men, are at war with God and God is at war with them, and nobody ever won the war against God, nobody except the Prince of Peace, the One who wrestled with the justice and righteousness of God and won for all Israel.

The cause of this war must be removed. For the hostilities to cease, for man, for you and I to have peace we must be at peace with God. It won’t do, as so many people say, to feel at peace with God. Oh, this is important to feel, to know, if it is really so. But it is a terrible illusion if it is not so. It takes more than my feelings to make peace with God. It takes more than my statement that I feel that God is at peace with me to make it real.

We need the Prince of Peace, the One who is both man and God himself to make this declaration from the very throne room of God himself.