Lord’s Day Morning, December 11, 2005

Third Advent sermon by Rev. Donald Van Dyken

Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:15, 28:58-68; John 20:19; Romans 1:7

This is my third advent sermon. Advent means a momentous coming, and we use that word to describe the first coming of Jesus Christ into the world. That coming has happened, and we celebrate that coming at Christmas, knowing that it was truly important. In fact we, and the entire world mark every event in relation to that coming, for our calendar marks the years since that first coming. The first world war began in 1914, 1,914 after the birth of Christ. If you were born in 1983 your birth is marked as happening 1,983 after the birth of Christ. Advent, the coming of Jesus Christ as a babe in the manger. We need to realize, however, that we live between two advents, the one that has happened, and the one that is to come, for Jesus Christ will come again. There will be another advent, when Jesus Christ will come, not as a baby this time, but as King of kings and Lord of lords to judge the living and the dead. As we look then back at his first coming, we must also look forward to his second coming, for only if we have believe in, rejoiced in, and participated in his first coming will we be prepared for his second coming.

So I am calling you to look for an in-between coming. His first coming was before you were born. His second coming will probably come after you are dead. But now you are alive, and I need to ask you, “Do you want and need that he comes to you now? Do you want that he comes to you today and brings the death and resurrection of his first coming into your hearts and lives to prepare you for his second coming? Do you really want him to descend upon you in Word and Spirit, to live in you? Do you want the reality of Christ crucified and risen, his very own body and blood to be in you today?”

Today my theme is The Pursuit of Peace. I have read from Deuteronomy 5 to show that God gave our fathers a Sabbath rest, one day of peace out of seven. I have read from Deuteronomy 28 to show you what restlessness God would bring to those who reject his peace. I have read from John 20:19 to show that Christ Jesus through his death and resurrection brought peace again to his people, and I have read from Romans 1:7 to show you that our ascended Savior commissioned his apostles to pronounce peace to his church, those who believe in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

That outlines the points I want to bring this morning:

First, that peace for you and for me, for all mankind, is given by God alone.

Second, that man abandons that peace and chooses war instead, war against God and war against his neighbor, God’s image.

Third, that Christ, through war brings peace, peace through his first coming, peace through the Spirit, the dove of peace, and will bring that final peace when he returns.

Let’s first look at this word peace for a minute. Peace is a wide word. Peace is completeness, where nothing is missing, where all your children are gathered around you, where there is nothing more you would wish to make your happiness complete. Peace is soundness, health, where you feel just great, when you haven’t a cold, when your body feels so good you could do anything. Peace is safety, when there isn’t a single threat to your life and welfare. Peace is tranquility, when all is peaceful, when no yells of anger, no groans of pain shatter the quietness. Peace is prosperity, when there is simply no lack, when there’s plenty left over when the last bill is paid, when your every desire is met. Peace is contentment, when you are so completely satisfied that you sigh and say there is simply nothing more you could wish. Peace is success, when you can lay down your tools and with a great sigh of satisfaction know that there is nothing more to add to the work you have done. It is good. Peace is a big word.

Peace is found in God alone, he alone gives peace. Hebrews 13 says that he is the God of peace who brought from the dead our Lord Jesus. Peace in all its fullness is the gift of God, for God alone is both the source and the definition of peace. He is the God of peace. He is the God of peace because he is a holy Trinity of peace. In the Godhead, between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there is perfect peace, harmony, completeness, tranquility, joy, and love. It is that perfect peace that God gave to his image, to Adam and Eve in the garden. It is the perfect peace of Sabbath, of rest, of glory in the creative work of God completed, done well, nothing lacking. That perfect peace, where trees and streams, where beasts and birds, where man and woman lived in beautiful harmony, is the peace that came from the Father of lights, that perfect gift of the peace of God.

This is the peace that God brought to Noah and his family following the flood, the peace of God, the peace of the rainbow in the clouds, the peace that God gave through his work of cleansing the earth of the sinners and violence that shattered the Garden of Eden.

This is the peace God brought to our fathers in Egypt when they worked seven days a week, where their families were shattered by the death of their sons thrown in the Nile, where they slaved for the gods of Egypt. This is the peace God brought, a peace that sheltered them from the angel of death, and sheared the shackles from their wrists. This is the peace of joy and victory on the shores of the Red Sea, a peace brought through God’s triumph over Pharaoh and his army.

This is the peace God brought at Sinai, covenanting with our fathers, giving them his Sabbaths. This is the peace of God, God calling man to enter into the rest, the peace he secured for them by deliverance from Egypt.

This is the peace of God, brought by fulfilling his promise to bring them to the land of rest, the land of Canaan. This is the peace of God, delivered to his people by the hand of Joshua, leading them on to victory after victory until every man could sit quietly, with glad hearts, feasting with joy and mirth in the peace of God.

This is the peace of God, the peace God brought through the struggles, the battles, the victories of David. This is the peace of God, that God brought through Solomon that the God of peace would live at peace with his people.

God is the definition and therefore the author of peace. Peace cannot be found in you or in me. It cannot be found in armies or wealth. It will not be found in politics or business. It will never come through philosophies or education. It was not found in Palestine 2000 years ago in the Pax Romana, the peace of Augustus Caesar. It was only found when God announced, “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

Second, man abandoned that peace, broke it, and chose war rather than peace. You know to me one of the greatest ironies, one of the greatest lunacies of this day is the persistent illusion that all men want peace. We have just finished a century full of horrific wars, two of them we called world wars. We have just finished a century filled with the gruesome deaths of more people than all the previous centuries combined. What is wrong with man? He thinks he wants peace, but he always makes war.

The answer is simple and yet man refuses to face up to that answer. The answer is that man has abandoned the God of peace. The answer is that man has chosen to make war with God. The answer is that man has chosen the way of death instead of the way of life. The answer is that man has chosen to believe the lie of Satan rather than the truth of God. The answer is that man refuses to believe God when he says that there is no peace for the wicked. The answer is that man finally worships the only peace he can make, and that is the peace of death. The answer is that man shoves his filthy fingers into the very womb of life and brings death. The answer is that man has rejected the God of peace and the peace of God
.

Adam chose the way of rebellion and found death. The seed of the serpent, Lamech, chose violence and vengeance rather than peace. The seed of the serpent, Lamech, shattered the peace of the covenant union of one man and one woman by taking two wives. After the flood, mankind chose to disobey God, and striving to build an empire of peace and prosperity, brought the confusion and disintegration of Babel.

Our fathers in the wilderness chose the way of rebellion and disobedience rather than the way of peace by rejecting the commandments of the Lord, molding a golden calf, worshiping the work of their own hands. In the land of rest, in Canaan, they chose to believe that the Baals of fertility brought peace and prosperity, but instead brought slavery and death again. They forsook the God of their fathers, the God of peace, and chose instead the gods of decay and death.

Solomon, the great prince of peace, abandoned the ways of his father David, that man who loved God’s law, and built temples for his heathen wives, leading Israel to division and weakness, war and desolation.

Man abandons God’s way of peace, forsakes the God of peace, and makes his own peace, the peace finally of death.

Just think a minute. What is your way of peace? If someone offends you, treats you wrongly, do thoughts of peace arise in your mind? No, immediately your mind is filled with ways to get back. Your mind is filled with the thoughts of Lamech who said, “If Cain is avenged seven fold, I will be avenged seventy-seven fold.”

Man’s way of peace. But there is no peace apart from God. You may take the gun out of a man’s hand, but you cannot take the hate out of his heart. You may bring him houses and bread, by you cannot bring him peace to his soul. Man’s way of peace. In this world of strife, of bickering, of complaining, of bills that can’t be paid, of overspending, of selfishness and greed, where is the answer? I find it no wonder at all that there are so many homeless today, for what they have done is to make their own peace by escape. Escape from the battles at work, at home, in politics, in universities. And yet, and yet, even when all alone, he hasn’t found peace. For man finds he is at war with himself. He is at war with his conscience, for it too accuses him. The good that he would do, he does not do, and the evil that he would not do, he finds that he does. He cries, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” But instead of crying with Paul, “I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord,” like Cain he continues to wander until he kills himself.

Beloved, the world offers you 15,387 ways of peace. Everyone of them is simply a hell hound of deceit, a reconditioned lie of Satan, who was a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. There is no peace for the wicked. There is no solution for wickedness, for the sin that erupts out of your own heart apart from God in Christ Jesus, whose advent was to save his people from their sin.

Last, that peace is restored by Christ alone.

The coming of Christ alone brought the peace of God, for the coming of Christ was the coming of God in the flesh, not just any flesh, but your flesh and mine. In the first coming of Christ, God condemned sin in the flesh, poured out the fullness of his wrath and war against our sins and rebellion, and brought peace. He did not bring the peace of useless death, but the peace of the death of the Son of God, who then rose and brought life.

In Christ alone man finds the God of peace, for this Christ brought a greater peace than the peace of Eden, for into this war torn world, the very God of peace himself came. This peace is greater than the peace of Eden, for into this world, God brought giving and sacrificial love of the Trinity, the Father giving up the Son of his love into the hands of spiteful sinners; the Son giving himself up fully to the Father in love and obedience. It is that peace through giving and sacrifice, that peace of life through death that the Son brings into this world.

In Christ alone a better world than the one emerging from the flood of Noah is being prepared, a world in which the last taint of sin and sinners has been erased. In Christ alone the trees and the hills eagerly wait for redemption from bondage, for Christ came to restore the world God so loved.

In Christ alone there is a rest that remains for the people of God, a better rest than Joshua gave, a better rest than the land of Canaan, a rest in which all the promises of God are Yea and Amen in Jesus Christ.

In Christ alone, there is a better peace than David brought, and greater security than the temple of Solomon implied, for in Christ alone the battle against Satan, sin, and death has been won. In Christ alone we have a house of God, a home for God in the flesh, dwelling among us, in us, at perfect peace, eternally.

This is the peace the first coming of Christ restored for us. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you really know that peace of God? Do you really understand how critical that peace is? We spend so much of our lives trying to make our own brand of peace, peace with credit cards, peace with our neighbors, peace in Iraq, peace in the economy, peace in our health, peace in our homes. But how much time do we give to our relation to God? Do you live in the peace of God? For that peace of God Christ secured for us in his first coming, in the advent we will soon celebrate at Christmas is a peace that only Christ can bring if he comes to you now, and if you are in constant communion, fellowship, union with him now.

What I am saying is that unless Christ comes to you now you will have no peace. Unless you come to Christ you will have no peace. How does Christ come to you now? How do you come to Christ now? How can the advent be today? Where is Christ today?

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, that tells us about the final coming of Christ, also tells us in the first chapter how he comes to us now. Christ came to John on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, and showed John that he walked in the midst of the seven churches. Christ presents himself to you each Lord’s Day in his house, his temple. This is where Christ reconciles you again to the Father, forgiving your sins, and restoring you to peace again. This is where Christ calls forth your praises to his Father. This is where Christ officially declares to you, “Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is where Christ communicates himself to you, where he gives you the peace of his righteousness, leading you in the paths of peace, of obedience to his commandments. This is where Christ redirects you, turning you away from paths of sin, paths of restlessness, paths of war against God, and brings to you again the wonderful peace of God that passes understanding. This is where he officially declares to you “there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit of life.” This is the place where you can with your brothers and sisters, the family of God, do all things in wonderful unity and harmony, singing, listening, praying, worshiping together with one voice, praising the God of peace. This is the place where you can depart with the hands of Christ raise over you, crowning you with the peace of God.

The church, this church is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of peace. How central to your life is peace with God? How central to your life is the church of Jesus Christ? Is Jerusalem your chief joy? Can you say with the Psalmist, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning?”

This alone is the place where you can sit down with God himself at the table he has prepared, a table of peace and fellowship, of love and harmony, a table where he communicates to you, where he offers you,
implants in you, the only connection to the blessed peace of the Triune God, the very flesh and blood of the one who is our peace.

Come, and may the peace of God through Christ, and by the power of the eternal Spirit of Christ, fill your mouths, enter into your veins, penetrate your bones, fill your lives, spread into your homes, flow into your neighborhoods, and finally cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

Sermon by Rev. D. Van Dyken, Lord’s Day, November 27, 2005, a.m.

First Advent Sermon – OUR SEARCH FOR A HOME

Scripture: Genesis 3

Text: Genesis 3:15

We call this the Advent season, and Advent means the coming of Jesus Christ into the world at Christmas. We look back at advent, for Jesus came, but there is another advent, another coming, for Jesus Christ will come again into this world. So we must every keep in mind that we celebrate his first coming in order to get ready for his second coming. The Advent is history, and the Advent is future.

This is the holiday season of the year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and during this time the thoughts of most people turn to home. Today you have come from your homes to this home, this house of God, for like Abraham, you confess that you are pilgrims and strangers, and have here no abiding city, but look for a city, a home, whose builder and maker is God. That is the home that Abraham saw coming, and that is the home that came at Christmas, Jesus, the Son of God, the one who proclaimed himself to be the temple, the house of God, the home where God met with his people.

In the first coming of our Savior we have a home, for Hebrews 3 says that Christ is a Son over his own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

During this holiday season we are often asked to remember the homeless, and in remembering the homeless, we should also remember that our history began in search of a home. Our history is the history of Adam, the history of Everyman, for Adam is Everyman and Everyman is Adam.

OUR SEARCH FOR A HOME. In this first Advent sermon I want to start at the beginning, at Genesis, where it all began, where we, where everyman was born. Where so soon after the birth of Everyman, he was lost.

1. Lost.
2. The way back.
3. Dead ends.
4. The end that began.

First: Lost.

We live in a world of displaced people. We live in a world of the homeless. Wars and fighting force so many families out of their homes. Wars and persecution, where cruel men enter into homes, turn women and children into slaves, kill and mutilate men and boys, and destroy homes. A world where earthquakes in Pakistan cause houses to fall in on families. A world where hurricanes drown people in their own homes, and force thousands to flee their homes.

This is a world gone wrong. This is a world where fate or chance rule, and impersonal forces destroy life and home. This is a world of emptiness. Is that home?

This is a world where even in America, with its high standard of living, so many leave home because home is not home, but home is a place of noise, of yelling and screaming, of fighting children, of brutal husbands, of slatternly wives who abandon their children to the devil. Home is a house of the noise and the omnipresent flicker and motion the TV. Home is full of dirty dishes, of loathsome smells, of filthy clothes, and children who say, “If this is home, I want out.”

This is a world where in America the homes of the wealthy are not homes at all, but with 26,000 square feet of carpeted rooms, with home entertainment centers, with fireplaces, with indoor pools, Jacuzzis in every bedroom, a place where strangers walk past one another, with cultured manners, with studied politeness, each living their life alone. This is a world where wealthy old people, abandoned by their upscale children, cuddle Pekingese puff balls and speak endearments to dogs.

This is a world where we export the American dream home to the weary and homeless of the world, export a home that is defined as peopled by husband and wife, one and a half children clothed by Abercrombie and Fitch, driving three BMW’s, an iPod in every pocket, and a martini for every lunch.

But is that home? Where did we come from. Why are we so far from home? Where was home anyway? If America had the answer America wouldn’t keep her ear to SETI, the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, listening, hoping, for some clue of the home that was at the beginning.

But here in the house of God, the Word which was in the beginning has come to us. So the Lord directs us to the beginning of Everyman, of Adam, Genesis chapters 1 through 9. In the beginning, for man, for Adam, for Everyman was born at home and his nursery was the Garden of Eden. But man is no longer at home. What happened?

Man soiled his nursery, he polluted it. Adam sinned, rebelled, revolted against his God and Father. Everyman wrecked his home, he brought its walls and roof crashing down on him, it was ruined, he had no home. Playing with fire, he burned it to the ground. Looking back, Everyman sees only the ashes of his past, and the grey dust of his old home settles in his hair and chokes his throat.

Everyman is alone, wandering, cast out, and the way home is now barred, the gates are shut, the door is closed, and the path of neither rest nor roof stretches out before him. Where shall Everyman go? Where shall he find home? Into that despair the Lord his maker, his rejected Father returned with,

Second, the Way Back Home.

Everyman, Adam and Eve hid themselves. They had turned home to a place of fear and terror. They hid themselves with leaves, in the bushes. They shivered in that hiding, knowing it wasn’t enough.

But God came to them, for it is only when God comes, when God speaks, when the Word of God arrives that hope can begin again, that the outlines of home begin to take shape again.

This is the great question God poses to Adam, to Everyman: Adam, Everyman, where are you? This is the great question to all the world, the great question that the coming of Christ the Word, challenges Everyman. This is the great question Christ passed on to his church, to broadcast this question, to print it, publish it, shout it, insistently, courageously, continuously, “Adam, Everyman, where are you?” Are you home? Is this home? Look at you.

Then the follow up question: Have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you not to eat? This is the great question posed by the Word, by the coming of Christ, “Have you sinned?” This question is the great answer to homelessness, to the ruin of Everyman’s past. This is the great question Christ commissioned his church to proclaim, the message of the Spirit, of sin.

These are the basic questions Christ the Word has given the church to present to the world, to Everyman. Where are you? Have you sinned? Have you heard the curse God has pronounced? Have you seen the way barred? Have you seen the ashes of the home you ruined?

Then you can hear the Word that begins your journey home. Then you can listen to the Word that intervenes, that separates you. Then you can hear the gospel, the bad news spoken to Satan but good news to Everyman, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”

Only when God through the Word intervenes, separates, can Everyman glimpse a home on the horizon. Only when God through the Word promises the Word will be made flesh, is there hope for your wandering. Only when God performs, sheds blood that Everyman may be covered, is there security in the fearfulness of being alone.

This was the experience of Adam and Eve, of Everyman, so long ago. This too must be your experience, an experience ever more full and rich through the Advent, the coming of Jesus Christ, the coming of the Word into this homeless world. Is it?

Third, Dead Ends.

Alas, not everyman receives, believes, grasps, takes hold of this experience, of this work of God. For so many follow the way of Cain, rejecting the questions of God, turning their backs on the promises God gave, on the blood he shed for Everyman. Cain chose the way of wickedness, and
God told him, Sin lies at your door. His desire is to rule over you, but you must rule over it. God had given Cain the privilege of being born of a family, of a mother and father who were covered by the blood of animals slain to clothe them. But Cain rejected that covering of blood. Just as God tells you today, you were each born into a family loving Christ, therefore you must not give into the impulses of sin, it may not rule over you.

But Cain sinned, and killed his righteous brother Abel. God cursed Cain, and Cain went out a vagabond, a wanderer. But Cain made his own home, he built a city, the city of man, the home of man. And out of that home we read that Lamech was born. Lamech, the man who built his house with the blood of his brothers, who killed a man for insulting him. The home of man, the home of violence and hatred, the home of death. Lamech the man who took to himself two wives, and so wrote the death song of happy marriage, of the unity of man and wife.

And Cain is Everyman, born to kill, born to live by death, born to die. So finally, and how much we see it today, Everyman finally wishes for death, and finally believes that the only real home, the only place of real rest, the only place of peace is the grave. But man’s desire cannot overcome reality, for death is not the end, death will not bring peace, but death brings another, more fearful death, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Man will find that instead of finding peace in death, he will find eternal war. Man will find that instead of finding rest in death, he will find unending restlessness. He will find hell. And yet in the beginning God showed that there would be a death that would bring life, a war that would bring peace, a restlessness that would bring rest.

Fourth, An end that began. An end that was a beginning.

And God said, “The end of all flesh is before me.” And God sent the flood to bring death to his creation. But yet in that death was a beginning, for through that death of judgment, through that holocaust of torrential rains and bursting fountains, of heaving tectonic plates and erupting mountains, the Lord carried Noah and his family into a new world. That flood death was the end of all flesh, but that death too was the beginning of all flesh, a beginning of hope and home again.

With the flood God brought Everyman, Noah and his family into the ark. For this too is our history, the history of Everyman. Noah went into the dark ark. For forty days and forty nights the rain fell from above, the fountains raged from below. The wrath of heaven above beat down upon the earth, upon Everyman, and from below the fires of hell flamed out against him. This was the dark ark riding through the dark storm. Yet there was light, for there was, at the command of God, a window in the ark, and through the darkest storm days the light shone, dimly, but with the promise of sunshine again.

So they were brought into a new world, a world clean and fresh, for all the rage of heaven, all the explosive force of hell had spent itself. And out of that flood-death a new earth and heaven emerged, crowned with the bright colors of the rainbow. This is the gospel, and this is the history of Everyman, if he but knew it.

Since that time Everyman, all the descendants of Noah, enter life through the dark pain of the birth channel, but mercifully he does not remember either the darkness or the pain. Yet, after a brief moment of light, after a few minutes of relief from pain, Everyman enters another dark channel, the tunnel of death, and emerging from that tunnel, he will remember, he will know, a fearful, crushing, tearing, eternal pain, the pain of hell. Yet, there would come another way, another Everyman, who would travel that tunnel for Everyman, who would be born through that dark birth channel, and who would enter that dark death channel, traveling its entire bitter, crushing length.

This is the good news, breaking out the headlines that Christ was coming. This is the gospel today, for Christ has come, and more than Noah, he has, as Hebrews 2:9 says, tasted death for Everyman.

This is the Advent, the coming of Christ, the Word of promise that became flesh, that entered into the ashes of our burnt out home, who entered into the fires that destroyed it, who has placed us on the ark, although still somewhat dark, yet pierced by the windows of grace, the windows of promise, that he will carry us through, that he has gone through it all for us.

This is our story, the story of Everyman.

This is the story of Everyman, wandering alone and lost because he left home, he sinned against his Father. This is the story of Everyman, imprinted with the Words of the way back home through the call of God, the questions of God, through the blood shed by God. This is the story of Everyman, of you and of me, abruptly crashing into our dead ends. This is the story of Everyman, of you and of me, I trust by the grace of God, led to the coming of Jesus Christ, the advent of the Son of God, who entered life through that same dark channel of birth and pain, who traveled the dark tunnel of death, fire and brimstone for you and for me, and will bring us, when he comes again, into a new heavens and a new earth. Amen.

Thanksgiving Day Worship, November 24, 2005

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 1

In Acts 14 we read that Paul told the people of Lystra that God “did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” He was talking to heathen, who as he remarks in Romans 1, “although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful…” The dominant characteristic of the heathen infidel then is thanklessness.

By contrast Paul instructs the converted Thessalonians, “in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) For surely if there is one virtue that should peak all others in the Christian life, it is the virtue of thankfulness. Paul himself gave the example, for in chapter 1 he said, “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers.” Again in chapter 2 he said, “For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.”

Today is thanksgiving and we survey the grace God has brought into our lives. Grace is a very big word in the Bible, for it includes all the gifts God sends us, all the way from the cranberry sauce for your turkey to the great gift of his Son to save you, material gifts and spiritual gifts. Today I want you to think about the people God used to bring these gifts to you, whether the gift is material like new socks, or spiritual like love and peace.

This Thanksgiving Day I want you to thank God for all the people he has brought into your life, those who touch your lives and by that touch enrich you. Paul starts us off, thanking God for the people God has given Paul to bring into the fellowship of the Gospel, to teach and lead in Christ. As he starts the letter to the Romans, to the church at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Philippi, at Colosse, at Thessalonica, as he writes to Timothy and to Philemon, Paul gives thanks to God for these people.

Let’s begin where Paul begins, and thank God for all the people he has placed under our care, our teaching, our influence. That means that fathers and mothers need to look at their children and thank God for placing them in their care. Thank God for all the different personalities your children have, for their faith and love, for their progress in maturity, in love, and obedience. That means that minister and elders and deacon need to look at the congregation, and thank God for you all, to thank God, as Paul thanks God for the Thessalonians, for your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Elders, minister, and deacon praise and thank God for choosing you to be members of this church, for it is God who put all of you together here, and we must thank him for joining you to the glorious body of Christ. We thank God for children, for church members, for all those he has given us to love and cherish, to guide and teach.

We should thank God for all the people who pray for us. In 2 Corinthians 1 Paul told of all the troubles he encountered, praising God for delivering him from death, and then adds, “you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many.” Paul is saying that when many people prayed for him, and God through their prayers delivered Paul, that deliverance gave opportunity for those same people to give thanks to God. So today we give thanks for the many prayers you as God’s people offer for each other in times of stress, in times of trouble, for those with illnesses, for those away, for family struggles, for church and federation struggles. God answers those prayers, he delivers his people, and then each of those who prayed may offer humble and hearty thanks to God. So we think with grateful hearts today of the many people here and throughout this country who pray for us, and we thank God for them.

We should thank God for the many people he uses to restrain our hearts from sin. We have the stirring example of David. When he was fleeing Saul, he sent messengers to a rich man named Nabal asking food for his men. Nabal rudely refused. David strapped on his sword, swearing he would not leave a male left to Nabal’s house. Nabal’s wife Abigail heard of it, prepared a vast supply of food and went out to meet David and his men. She met him with a wonderful speech, a model of womanly wisdom and courage. David responded with thanks to God, saying, “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me. And blessed is your advice and blessed are you, because you have kept me this day from coming to bloodshed and from avenging myself with my own hand.”

Today we thank our God for the many people he uses to restrain us from sin, for the preacher who brings the Word every Sunday, for elders who stand guard over the flock, seeking the wandering, for mothers and fathers who curb our sinful desires and ways, for brothers and sisters in the family and in the Lord whose presence keeps us from following sinful desires, and keeps us from opening our mouth foolishly. We thank God today for godly friends in whose presence we would be ashamed to sin. We sometimes call this “social pressure,” but what we want to do is thank God for placing these many people in our lives for he uses them to keep us on the path of holiness.

Today we thank God for our mothers who brought us into this world through much pain, and who sacrificed their comforts and time to care for us, to love us, to feed us, clothe us, protect us and train us. Today we thank God for the tender touch of our mothers, for the hours they spent in prayer for our souls, for the struggles they went through because of our sins and rebellion, for their patience, and above all for their faith in God, that although their efforts were weak, the God who had given them to us would not fail them or us.

Today we thank God for our fathers, strong, not fearing to discipline us, leading us to know our God, reading the Bible to us, building a home for us, always there to protect us, working hard to keep us clothed and fed. We thank God for our fathers, for it has pleased the Lord to make his own Fatherhood known to us in the strength, wisdom, patience, and riches of our fathers.

Today we thank God for our wives, for a godly wife is a treasure above rubies, the rarest of jewels in this misbegotten generation. We thank God that they patiently endure the follies of their husbands. We thank God that they joyfully bring beauty and peace into our homes. We thank God for their feminine perspective, seeing life from a vantage point that we as husbands cannot reach. We thank God for their special grace of endurance, a strength we as husbands never quite achieve. We thank God that we may stand with Lemuel and say, “Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.”

Today we thank God for strong husbands, husbands on whom we can lean, husbands who calm our fears, husbands whose hands fix our troubles. We thank God for husbands who don’t turn away when we cry, who listen to our concerns, who support our labors with the children. We thank God for husbands whose eyes do not stray to other women, but whose hearts cling faithfully to us in love. We thank you that their strong hands and bodies belong to us. We thank you that when our beauty fades with age, their love grows stronger, and their hearts are more convincingly allured by our looks.

Today we thank God for the beautiful young women of godly form and grace the Lord has given our families
and church. Today we thank God for the strong young men of gentle spirit and strong will he has placed here, and through whom he gives us great encouragement for the future. We thank God for the strength of their beginning labors, in study and in the market place. We thank God for their strong faith in the Word of God, for their steadfastness, for their resolve to marry only in the Lord, for their commitment to build enduring houses in Israel.

Today we thank God for Christian friends, the friend who sticks closer than a brother. We thank God for their words and deeds of encouragement, for an arm around our shoulder, for a hug when we’re down. We thank God for their companionship, for the interests we share with them. We thank God that they are always there when we need them, that they put up with our strange quirks, that they forgive our blunders. Today we thank God for the hospitality of friends, their warm open heartedness. Today we thank God for the homes of friends where we feel healing and strength just through their presence. We thank God for their ears, just quietly listening to all we empty out of our hearts.

Today we thank God for the wonderful variety of personalities he has given to those we know. We thank God for the invisible influence of cheerful persons, for the infectious spirit of energetic people. We thank God that just being around persons of serious mind and thought, makes us think more seriously about life. We thank God that the company of studious people turns our heart towards more study. We thank God for the company of those who love and know birds, and flowers, and art, and music; who open to us dimensions of life otherwise closed to us. We thank God for people of vision, those who make us lift our eyes from the narrowness of our own little world, and see more clearly the vast and victorious work of Christ throughout the world, and into the glorious future. We thank God that the company of kind and thoughtful people causes us to strive for more kindliness. How wonderful it is that the Lord makes these wonderful varieties of personalities to rub against our lives, and in doing so, infect us with some of their virtues.

Today we thank God for the many people through whom he has enriched our lives, but people whom we have never met, for their bones have long since turned to dust. We thank God today for the countless soldiers who gave their lives to secure us in the freedom and prosperity we enjoy. We thank God today for the countless men and women who walked before us in the faith and have given us this wonderful heritage of faith. We thank God today for the long line of faithful people who preserved the line of God’s promises throughout the Old Testament. We thank God today for the great number of people, big and small, important and insignificant, who were faithful to God’s word through centuries of persecution and trial, and whose legacy we enjoy today.

Today we lift our hearts and voices to the three persons of the holy Trinity; to God our Father, who has sent to us his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, the one who visited us, came to us, born in this world, lived among us, died, rose again, and ascended for us into heaven to sit at the right hand of God for us. Today we thank God that this Jesus, our own flesh and blood, reigns over all, bringing all of his and our enemies under his feet. Today we thank God that through Christ we may know the love of the Father. Today we thank God that he has sent the person of his Spirit into the church, into each member. Today we thank God for his nearness, the closeness of the Spirit of Christ. Today we thank God that the Spirit is not merely a power, but is a Person, and that his Person who is God, has done the unthinkable, made his very home in our hearts. Today we thank God that through the Spirit of Christ, we may say, Abba, Father. Today we thank God that this person of the Holy Spirit, prays for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Today we thank God that this person of the Holy Spirit, incredibly making his home in our hearts, is the guarantee of our salvation and eternal life.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, 2005, and today we give thanks to God for the grace he has given us through the many people he has brought into our lives. Let us thank God for

Those he has placed under our care, children and church.

For those many people who faithfully pray for us.

For those around us whom God uses to restrain us from sin.

For mothers, for fathers, for wives, for husbands.

For our young women and young men.

For our lovely Christian friends.

For the beautiful variety of personalities God uses to bring sparkle, beauty, and wisdom into our lives.

For the many people of the past, lives disappeared, but lives and people the Lord used to bring us what we have today both materially and spiritually.

Today we thank God for the glory of our relationship to him, to the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today we thank God for the Son he sent into our lives, that we may know and joy in our adoption by the Father and our deliverance by the Son. Today we thank God that in the person of the Holy Spirit, he has made his home here in the church, that he tabernacles, he has set up his tent in our hearts. Today we thank God that although this tent of our mortal bodies will someday be dissolved, yet when Christ comes back here again, he will make our mortal bodies like his glorified body, eternally, permanently fit for him to live in forever.

And then comes the day when we will all be surrounded by friends, by brothers and sisters, by the glorious variety of personalities God has gathered from every race, from every tribe, from every color, from every language, all enriching each other, all enjoying one another in Christ, through Christ, and to the praise and glory of Christ for ever and for ever. Amen.

Sermon, Lord’s Day morning, November 13, 2005

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15

Confession: Lord’s Day 17, Heidelberg Catechism

It is not strange to celebrate someone’s birthday. But it is strange that Christians should celebrate the death day of their leader, and stranger yet that they should feast in remembrance of the death of their God. But we rejoice in the death of Christ on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of his triumphant resurrection. “But now is Christ risen from the dead.”

If it were not for the resurrection, the memory of Christ’s death would only cause deep regrets, and we would say with the two disciples traveling to Emmaus that first Sunday 2000 years ago, “We had hoped he would redeem Israel, but alas he died, and today is the third day.”

“But now is Christ risen from the dead.” For, as we read in 1 Corinthians 15:17 “if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” For this Christ, as we read in Romans 4:25, “was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.”

This morning we celebrate LIFE THROUGH DEATH, our life through the death of the Christ who rose from the dead.

Following our confession I want to show:

First, that through his death and resurrection Christ opened up for us a life of righteousness.

Second, that he has given us life through his death.

And finally, that through his death and resurrection, we have the promise of our own resurrection, for if we died with him, we shall surely be raised with him.

First then, through his death Christ opened up for us a life of righteous.

Our confession says, “by his resurrection he has overcome death that he might make us partakers of the righteousness he has obtained for us by his death.”

What do we mean? To understand we need to listen to David a minute in Psalm 16. He said, “Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance.” What did David mean? David meant that he believed the Lord’s promise to Abraham, that he would be his God and the God of his children after him. David understood that in saying, “I am your God,” God was giving and would give himself to be the possession of his people. God fulfilled that promise in Jesus Christ, giving his only begotten Son, entering by that Son into our very own flesh and blood, and in that flesh and blood obtaining, gaining for us, performing for us, the very righteousness of God in the flesh. That righteousness is ours in the body and blood of the Son of God, the Son of man. That was David’s inheritance and it is ours to take, to eat, to drink.

Through his death and resurrection Christ has freed us from our slavery to sin and to Satan. The promise God made to Adam and Eve in the garden, that the Seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent, he fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Through Adam and Eve we became friends of Satan, we became his bondservants. It was even as Christ said of Israel, "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” (John 8:44 NKJV) So to Israel then and to you and to me now, Christ says, “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:34,36)

How did Christ free us from sin? “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NKJV)

How did Christ set us free from Satan? He bound Satan and plundered his house. "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. "Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.” (Matthew 12:28-29)

Christ set us free from the curse of God. How did Christ free us from the curse of God? Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” (Galatians 3:13-14)

So just as the Lord delivered Israel from their bondage to Egypt and Pharaoh, to all its gods and ways, and brought them into the promised land, so through Christ, he has delivered us from bondage to sin and Satan, and brought us into the promised land of fellowship with him, a land of righteousness, a land where we, as Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist prophesied, “to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life.”

In the death and resurrection of Christ he has freed us from sin and Satan, and freed us unto righteousness and life, a life of joyful obedient service to his Father. This is the truth, and, as Christ said, “the truth shall make you free.” Do you believe this? The Lord will give you the very taste of freedom and righteousness in your mouth today.

Second, he has given us life through his death and resurrection.

Our confession says it this way, “we are also raised up by his power to a new life.” This is the power that gave new life to Abraham, who, as Christ said lives, for his Father is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not the God of the dead but the God of the living.

This is the power that called Abraham out of the idolatry of Ur of the Chaldees, and the power that joined him in covenant with this God, bringing him into the land of Canaan as a stranger. This is the power that enabled Abraham to walk in friendship with God, looking for the city whose builder and maker is God. This is the power of life that convinced Abraham that he would have a son from his dead body.

This is the power of life, the life given to Isaac, when God raised him from the death of sacrifice on Mount Moriah. A new life, a life purchased by the blood of the covenant, the blood of lamb slain for Isaac, the blood of the Christ who would come for Isaac, and for every child of Isaac.

This is the power of life, the life given to Jacob, that deceiver, that liar, that supplanter. This is the power of life that gave Jacob victory over the Angel of the Covenant who wrestled with him so that Amos many years later testified that Jacob had power with God. This is the power of Christ that gave Jacob a new life, a life as Israel, a new name, Prince, Overcomer of God.

This is the power of life that came to our fathers, the Jews that momentous Sunday of Pentecost 2000 years ago, hearing the message of condemnation, “Him who was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God , you with wicked hands took and slew. But it was not possible that death should hold him. God raised him up of which we are all witnesses. Him God has set on the throne until all his enemies are trampled under him.” This is the power of the Spirit of God whose word penetrated the very hearts of those sinners, and made them cry out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

This is the power of life that said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” This is the power of life that comes to you with that same message today.

This is the power of life, the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that came to that Gentile jailer of Philippi as he stood there with his own sword about to pierce his heart, crying out, “What must I do to be saved?” This is the power of the Gospel of life in Jesus Christ saying to him, &#x
201C;Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

This is the power of life, the power of the death and resurrection of Christ, “that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel,” (Ephesians 3:6 NKJV)

This is the power of Christ, crucified, risen, and ascended. For ascended he sent forth his Spirit, that through that Spirit the apostles might bear witness to Christ, recording for us the words of the New Testament, and through that same Spirit, preserving it down to this very day, the words of life.

This is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of life, who frees us from the power of sin. “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” (Romans 6:5-6 NKJV)

“Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” (Romans 6:11-13 NKJV)

Life. What is life? To live is to die to sin and to be alive to righteousness. How then shall we live? We can only live by the Spirit of Christ. We can only live if the very Spirit of Christ, the very person of Christ lives in us. How can this be? This can be if you believe, if you receive, if you believe in your heart that Christ died for sinners, that God raised him from the dead, that through him you are dead to sin and alive to righteousness. This can be if you receive Christ, if you take this Christ into your very person, the very body and blood that died and rose again from the dead.

Finally, the death and resurrection of Christ is our assurance, our hope for eternal life. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Our confession says, “His resurrection is for us a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection.”

Life, then death, then what? There are a thousand exciting stories out there, lives of heroism, lives of luxury, lives of fame and fortune, lives of misery and suffering, lives of debauchery and shame, lives of love and kindness, short lives and long lives, wicked lives and righteous lives. But they all come to one end, and that end is death. Finally, what sense does it all make? Why all the striving, why all the struggle, why all the pain and suffering, why try if everything ends in death? This is the song of man, this is the lament Solomon sang in Ecclesiastes, saying all is futility, a striving after wind. One thing happens to all, to the rich and to the poor, to the master and to the slave, to man and to beast, death comes to all.

And all this seems especially true for those who follow Christ, for we follow the one whose life ended in suffering and death. We follow one who said, “in this world you shall have tribulation.” We follow one who said, “Deny yourself, take up your cross.” We are numbered among those who, in the words of Hebrews 11, “were tortured, had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.”

So the words of the Holy Spirit through Paul cry out, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” If there is no resurrection, if the dead do not rise, if this life is all there is, then we are truly a sorry sight.

“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Christ is the firstfruits. “For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even son in Christ all shall be made alive.” “For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.”

Beloved, as you know the power of Christ in your own lives now, through his Word and Spirit, the power to put to death the deeds of the flesh, and the power to live as servants of righteousness, this same Christ assures you that his power in you will not cease until he has fully and finally defeated death in your mortal body, and brought you fully into life. Do you know that power in you right now? This is the power of Christ’s Word and Spirit coming to you through your mother and father, through brothers and sisters, through teachers and preacher, through elders, through catechism, through the experiences the Lord brings into your life, through sickness and health, through trial and suffering, through prosperity and comfort. So Paul cautions us, “Quench not the Spirit.” So Stephen warns us not to resist the Holy Spirit as did our fathers.

Christ will not stop working in you, Christ will not cease through Word and Spirit, transforming you from the image of the earthly, the first Adam, into the image of the heavenly, the second Adam, Christ Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:49, “And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.” The resurrected, eternally living Christ Jesus our Lord.

“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—-not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:10-13 NKJV)

This then is the Christ who presents himself to you today through Word and through sacrament. This is the Christ who says to you, “ I am yours. Take eat. Take drink.”

This is the body he offers that was made sin for us that we might be the righteousness of God in him.

This is the body he offers that conquered sin, Satan, and death in our flesh for us.

This is the life your resurrected Christ offers you that you might say with Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 NKJV)

This is the guarantee of your resurrection into life eternal, for as he offers to you his body and blood he says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." (John 6:51 NKJV)

Sermon, Lord’s Day Morning, October 9, 2005.

Scripture: 1 John 1 – 2:2

Confession: Lord’s Day 13, Heidelberg Catechism

33. Q. Why is He called God’s only begotten Son, since we also are children of God?

1. Because Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God¹; but we are children of God by adoption, through grace, for Christ’s sake².

34. Q. Why do you call Him Our Lord?

A. Because He has redeemed us, body and soul, from all our sins, not with gold or silver, but with His precious blood, and has delivered us from all the power of the devil, and has made us His own possession¹.

I want to present the Word of your God to you this morning as we confess it in Lord’s Day 13 of our Heidelberg Catechism as the Word that announces your adoption and your redemption, and then certifies it through the sacrament of Holy Communion.

This is the testimony of God, that through his Son he has adopted you, as members and families, as his children, through the redemption worked by Christ, and he verifies, seals, applies, makes personal that adoption through the Lord’s Supper, that just as John testifies, so you may be able to say, “That which we have seen and heard, our hands have handled, and our tongue has tasted, even eternal life, which was with the Father and manifested to us, so we have fellowship with God at his table through the body and blood of his Son.”

My theme is: Adopted and Redeemed.

I would first review our adoption papers, the Bible, the Word of God.

Second, I would review our redemption papers, the Word and work of our God that has brought us into the possession of Jesus Christ, now our Lord.

Third, I would direct you to the sacrament, that through the bread and wine, through the real body and blood of Christ, God signs, seals, and delivers to you your adoption and redemption papers.

First then, our adoption papers.

I don’t think we have trouble understanding what adoption means. Parents adopt a child who is not naturally theirs. They adopt someone who was born of another father and mother. They take a baby or child and make it their own child. It was not theirs naturally, but they made it theirs.

Adoption then is not something children do. I cannot make myself adopted. A baby or child cannot get themselves adopted into another family. There is no work, no pleading, there are no tears, no achievements I can put forth to cause someone to adopt me. It must be the act and desire of someone else entirely.

We then understand that we are not naturally children of God. We are, as Christ said to our fathers many years ago, children of our father the devil, and what we do, our works, instead of gaining us favor with God, continually show that we work the works of him who is from below, Satan himself.

Our adoption papers then, the Bible itself, gives us some pretty plain facts about our natural origins. We are born, as our baptism form says, children of wrath. The Bible leaves us no doubt whatsoever about our nature, our natural family, our birth parents. Our adoption papers clearly show the historical evidence of our natural parentage. We have the history of Adam and Eve, the history of the brothers of Joseph, the history of our fathers in Egypt, serving false gods, the history of Israel in Canaan falling away constantly, all to show us, as the prophets constantly reminded Israel, that their father was a Canaanite, and their mother a Hitite.

This then God calls you to believe, not relying on the illusion that you have Abraham for your father, but believing Christ when he says that you naturally have the devil for your father. Covenant people often have trouble with that. Do you?

But these same adoption papers, not merely relating the fact of our adoption, relate the act of our adoption. They relate the acts of our God adopting us. They relate the act of God finding Adam and Eve in the garden, the act of God coming to our father Abraham in Ur, the act of God adopting Israel out of Egypt, the act of God adopting Israel again and again out of bondage, the act of God taking them from Babylon.

These adoption papers relate the acts of God through Christ in the New Testament, making those who were no people, now people of God, those who had received no mercy, making them those who had received mercy. These adoption papers relate the acts of the apostles, coming into Ephesus and Corinth, into Samaria and Cyprus, calling, adopting Jews and Gentiles, barbarians and pagans, bond and free, into the family of God, making them sons and daughters of the most high God, through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This gospel proclaimed that although we all were conceived and born in sin, all children of sin and Satan, there was one who was from eternity the natural Son of God. There was one who was born without sin, the very Son of God himself, spotless, innocent. There was one who became man, that as the eternal, natural Son of God, through his work he might bring many sons to glory.

These are your adoption papers, declaring to you your natural parents, and declaring to you your adoption through Jesus Christ into the family of God. These are the papers that God preserved against all the rage of your natural parents. This is the Bible that has survived burning and banishment, confiscation and shredding. This is the Word delivered to you, recording the fact and the act, God’s announcement and God’s work in Christ to adopt you.

Second, our redemption papers.

The Lord brought about our adoption through the process of redemption, the work of redeeming us.

Redemption is easy to understand. To redeem someone is to purchase them, to buy them. To be redeemed means that someone was a slave, owned by someone else, and then bought from that person. Redemption is a change of ownership.

If you were a slave, owned by a master, you would have no means of buying your freedom, you could not buy yourself, for you had no power to do it. You could only wait and hope that someone would buy you free, that someone would pay the price to free you from your cruel master, and make you belong to someone who loved you and cared about you.

Again, in this Word of God, he not only announces to you that he has redeemed you, he shows how he does it and did it. In other words, we not only have the fact, we have the act. God not only sets a proposition before us, he relates to us the history of his work of redemption.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, this glorious document of redemption, God tells us of his work to redeem his people, to redeem you. He tells us of the animals whose blood he shed to clothe our parents Adam and Eve. He tells of the ram who redeemed our father Isaac from death on the altar at Mount Moriah. He tells of the lamb slain whose blood redeemed our fathers from the slavery of Egypt and from the ownership of Pharaoh. He tells us of his redeeming love, who bought our fathers back time and again from the dominion of Canaanites, Hititites, Amorites, Edomites, Moabites, Philistines, Assyrians, and Babylonians. All these acts of God demonstrate in a living way his love and his power, releasing his people from their slavery to the heathen, and bringing them back again into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

This is our redemption paper. This is the document that tells us of one who came to fight against our cruel master Satan, and deliver us from the bondage of sin and death. This document tells us of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, without our aid, without our cooperation, without our efforts, indeed against even our evil desire to remain slaves of sin, conquered sin and death for us, freeing us from its dominion, and bringing u
s into his own possession.

This is our redemption paper, showing us the joy of the Gentile and the Jew, of men and women, of those whom the gospel of Christ’s redemptive act brought freedom, purchased them to be his own. So when we say, “I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil,” we sing the same song that came from the lips of millions before us, from India to Ethiopia, from Argentina to the Yukon.

These are our redemption papers. These are our adoption papers.

But do I know it is for me? Did God adopt me? Did God redeem me? Do I belong to Jesus Christ? Is he really my owner, my master?

Ah, my friend, what child of God has not had these doubts batter him? Who of us has not wondered, Am I really a child of God? Who of us has not heard the voice of Satan in our ears, saying, You? You a child of God? You still sin, you still follow my directions so often. Do you really believe that God loves somebody like you? Do you really think that he would actually call you one of his children? How can you be sure? You say you believe, but don’t you doubt so often?

Don’t you hear a voice in your ear saying, If you are really one of God’s children, why do you have so many troubles? Why does your heart want to sin so often? Why do you find following Christ so hard?

Let me ask you a question now. Does God want you to doubt? Does God want you to think that because of your failings, because of your fears, because he brings trials and sufferings into your life, does he want to convince you that you are not really one of his children? How do you really know that these adoption and redemption papers have your name on them? How do you really know that this adoption and this redemption is real, and that it is really yours?

Third then, signed, sealed, and delivered.

This is the way God confirms, assures us. It is not doubt that pleases God, but faith. This gracious powerful Savior not only generates this faith, but when it is small, just a baby faith, barely able to wiggle fingers and toes, he feeds it, nourishes it, cuddles it with love that it may grow strong.

Jesus does not pinch out a smoking flax, or toss out a bruised reed.

How do we know it’s real? If you were adopted into a family and later wanted to know if it was real, what would your adoptive parents do? They would take out the certificate, and on that certificate you would see that it had been processed through the courts, and was sealed by the courts, and they would put it in your hands.

How did God in Christ sign and seal our adoption and redemption papers? He signed and sealed them in his own blood in our own flesh and blood on the tree of the cross. He took himself, the sign and the seal of God’s redeeming and adopting work in our flesh, into the court room of heaven itself. He presented himself to the Father for us, and the Father said to him, “Here, sit at my right hand. You are my beloved Son. I have given you the heathen—you and me brother—for your inheritance. Bring them to glory.”

So the Spirit of Christ himself bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of God. How does the Spirit bear witness? Christ sent his Spirit upon the apostles, those apostles anointed their successors, and those successors, the elders among you, Christ has commissioned, anointed to say to you, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life, that Word, the Word of your adoption and redemption, these papers, made flesh, we give to you.” Take eat, take drink, remember and believe, that this body and blood of Christ, the eternal natural Son of God, the power of God, is the sign and seal of your adoption, the sign and seal of your redemption.

We deliver them, at the command of Christ, and these elders are saying, to you and in delivering them to you, we deliver them to your family. For the promise is to you and through you and your faith to your children, that this God, this Christ, the sign and the seal of your adoption and redemption, is yours.

These are the official papers of your adoption and redemption. And this table of fellowship, this table with the body and blood of Christ, this bread and this wine, is the signature of the Son of God, and the seal of heaven that you are the beloved children of God. Amen.

Sermon Lord’s Day Morning, October 2, 2005.

Scripture: Psalm 133

Confession: Lord’s Day 12, Heidelberg Catechism

31. Q. Why is He called Christ, that is, Anointed?

A. Because His is ordained of God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Spirit¹, to be our chief Prophet and Teacher², who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption³; and our only High Priest⁴, who by the one sacrifice of His body has redeemed us⁵, and makes continual intercession for us with the Father⁶; and our eternal King, who governs us by His Word and Spirit, and defends and preserves us in the salvation obtained for us⁷.

32. Q. But why are you called a Christian¹?

A. Because I am a member of Christ by faith², and thus a partaker of His anointing³, that I may confess His Name⁴, present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him⁵, and with a free and good conscience fight against sin and the devil in this life⁶, and hereafter reign with Him eternally over all creatures⁷.

The Psalm I read to you is a poem, a song about Christ and the Christian, about Jesus our Lord and priest and his body, about how we relate to him through the work of God.

It is no accident that Christ, the Word, brings us a large portion of divine revelation, of the revelation of himself to us in poetry. For although in this scientific age of definitions that we think need to be so precise, poetry expresses the reality of things in a way scientific prose never gets close to.

Consider this: you want to describe your darling. What will you say? Will you say this? She is five feet, six inches tall, she weighs 122 pounds, 83% water, the remaining 17% compounded of phosphorus, calcium, potash, carbon, with trace amounts of boron and cadmium. She has a digestive system consisting of an esophagus, stomach, duodenum, 35 feet of small intestine, and a large intestine of two feet. Her gall bladder is green. But that’s enough.

Let’s try something else, a poem, a song—

Behold, you are fair, my love!

Behold you are fair!

You have dove’s eyes behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats, going down from Mount Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep which have come up from the washing,

Every one of which bears twins, and none is barren among them.

Your lips are like a strand of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely.

Your temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate.

O my love, you are as beautiful as Tirzah,

Lovely as Jerusalem,

Awesome as an army with banners.

Psalm 133 is a poem, a beautiful poem about Christ and the church, Christ and the Christian.

The word Christ, as you well know from our confession, means anointed. He is God’s anointed. My theme this morning is God’s Anointed and You.

First, why Jesus is called Christ.

Second, why you are called a Christian.

Why Jesus is called Christ

Christ is our English sounding of the New Testament Greek word, Christos, and that word simply means, Anointed One. The Hebrew word, used for example in Psalm 2, is Messiah, and means the same thing, that is Anointed One.

Christ then, is not a name, but a title, just like the word president. We say, George W. Bush, president, just as we say, Jesus, Christ, or Jesus, the Christ. It is a title describing his office, just as the word president describes an office.

Just as Psalm 133 implies that the anointing oil that came upon the head of Aaron was poured out upon him by God using the hand of Moses, and just as the dew came from the heights of Mount Hermon to descend upon the mountains of Zion, so God anointed Jesus.

No man, says Hebrews, takes this honor to himself but he is appointed and anointed to his office by someone else. No one anoints themselves. No one crowns themselves. No one gives themselves an office. God took Moses and through him anointed brother Aaron to be priest. Through Moses God promised that he would take one of our brothers and make him king. God took David from among his brothers and anointed him king. God promised through Moses that he would raise up a prophet like Moses from among the brothers. God promised that he would raise up a priest from among the brothers. This prophet, this priest, and this king was Jesus Christ. He was, as we confess in the Heidelberg, ordained by God the Father, and anointed by the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus the Christ, God fully restored man to his created offices of prophet, priest, and king. In Jesus, the Son of Man, God brought these offices back together again as he originally placed them upon Adam. Remember what we confessed about Adam before the fall? “God created man good, and after his own image, that is in true (this refers to the prophet) righteousness (as king) and holiness (as priest), that he might rightly know God his Creator (as a prophet), heartily love him (as a priest), and live with him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify him (as a king).” So in Christ God restored fallen man back to his original glorious image of God, prophet, priest, and king.

You need to remember that the name Jesus was not uncommon name to given to children in Israel. We come across that name in the Old Testament in its Hebrew form, Joshua, twice. But the title Christ was special, for this was the promised one, and this, you will remember was the title for which he was crucified. “Tell me,” said the high priest at Jesus’ trial, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” “I am,” said Jesus. “This is blasphemy,” said the high priest, “Let him be crucified.”

Let us examine the meaning and significance of this title, for if we are Christians our calling is to follow this Christ and to fulfill these same offices. What is a prophet, a priest, and a king? Again, just as Jesus did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension, opening up to them the revelation of himself in the Old Testament, so we too, without Christ revealing himself in the Old Testament we will neither understand Christ or ourselves as Christians.

Prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament. First we come to the prophets. Moses was a great prophet. God came to him in the desert at Mount Horeb and revealed to Moses his Word of redemption for his people in Egypt. Moses took that Word and brought it to Israel in their misery and slavery, and through that Word brought redemption to our fathers.

So, says our confession, Jesus is our chief prophet and teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption. So you see that Moses was this shadow of the prophet that was to come. Moses brought this counsel and will of God revealed to him, to Israel concerning their redemption. Jesus Christ comes from the Father, telling his people that he spoke no things but what he heard of his Father. We confess then, that he reveals the secret counsel and will of God concerning that which Old Testament prophets saw at a distance, that which angels long to look into, Christ has revealed to us. The great redeeming plan and work of God for our salvation. Christ is the revelation of God’s redemption, for Christ is the Word of God himself, the Word made flesh, and the flesh that in his life and in his death on the cross fully secured our salvation. A prophet does two things, listens to God speak, and then speaks those words to God’s people

Jesus is the Christ, our only high priest. What was a priest? This is the second office we come to in the Old Testament, as Moses the prophet by the direction of God, poured the
anointing oil on the head of Aaron, appointing him to the office of priest. What was the function of a priest? What did priests do? Where did they work? Let us remember now, that this is not just a matter of curiosity for us from the pages of the Old Testament, but these are the words spoken by the Spirit of Christ so that we might understand who he is, so that he might reveal himself to us in the Old Testament.

What did priests do and where did they work? They worked in the temple of course. What did they do in the temple? They took the offerings of God’s people, the sacrifices, and presented them to God on the altar. The Lord our God gives us many and wonderful descriptions of the many different kinds of offerings they brought. All those offerings picture in such beautiful ways the offering that Jesus was going to bring as the Christ, the great high priest.

So we can say that the priests in the Old Testament represented the people in their service to God. The priests carried the names of Israel on their shoulders and on their breastplate before the Lord. So we confess that when Jesus came, Jesus the Christ, the great priest, he took himself, and offered himself as all the sacrifices of the Old Testament brought into one, for us, before God. Hebrews connects this so wonderfully, and it is a book that all lovers of Jesus the great Priest really delight to read. Jesus is the great Priest who not only offered himself, but also as we confess, makes continual intercession for us before his Father. Jesus the Christ always carries our names on his shoulders, and on his breastplate, near his heart, to the Father for us. Our priest does two things, brings his own sacrifice before God, and brings our names before God in intercession.

Christ, our prophet, our priest, and our king. What did Old Testament kings do? David is the wonderful picture God gave our fathers, and gives us, of the work of a king. A king also did two things. David first fought many battles against all the enemies of God’s people, protecting them, freeing them from their enemies. The David gained a kingdom. Then the king rules his kingdom, his subjects, and brings them into the liberty of the law of God.

So Christ our king, through his power as the Son of God, as a righteous man, came to grips with all the power of Satan, battled against him, battled against sin, against the judgment and wrath of God against us, against the demon of death itself, and won the victory. Following that victory, he brought to us the perfect will of God, ruling us by his Word and Spirit, leading us into the green pastures and the quiet waters of perfect fellowship with the Father, as he so lovingly explained in John 14 – 16, through obedience to his commandments.

Jesus, the one ordained by God the Father, and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption (by the way, some time you ought to think about those words that our fathers confessed and we confess today—“the secret counsel and will of God.” Through the Spirit and Word we do have access to the secret will of God. This echoes the apostle in 1 Corinthians 2:9,10, where he said these beautiful words, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us through his Spirit.”)

“Our chief prophet and teacher, our only high priest, who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us, and makes continual intercession for us with the Father, and our eternal king, who governs us by his word and Spirit, and defends and preserves us in the salvation obtained for us.”

Second, why you are called a Christian?

Psalm 133 tells us that the anointing oil that was poured on the head of Aaron went all the way down his beard, down his garments, and all the way to the hem of that robe. When God through Moses poured the anointing oil on the head of this priest Aaron, it flowed down his head, over his beard, and spread all over his clothes, right down to the hem of his robe. The oil God poured on the head flowed down to the body.

The same Psalm tells us that the refreshing dew from Hermon, descended upon the mountains of Zion. It was just as God said to our fathers in the wilderness, “You shall be to me a nation of priests, a holy people.”

You will notice that God did not ask his people for volunteers to become priests; for volunteers to become his people. He took them for himself. He called them, redeemed them, and appointed them to office, calling them to be faithful in the fulfillment of that office.

When we ask the question, “Why are you called a Christian?” we need to understand from the Old Testament and from the New that this is both a present reality and a continuing work of God. When God took Israel out of Egypt they were a nation of slaves, and they carried with them all kinds of rubbish and baggage. But he said, “You are my people.” Then he said, “You shall be my people.” And then he said, “I will make you my people.”

This won’t be too hard to understand if we just take a small example. One of our brothers went into the Army just recently. When he was sworn in he went from being a civilian to being a soldier in one moment of time. So he was a soldier, but you see he was made a soldier to be made a soldier. He became a soldier to be made a soldier. This is what God said to his people. This is what God said when you read some of the epistles. This describes the glorious reality of what God makes out of all of us. He took rubbish from the city of Corinth, that gutter of the Roman world, brought it together, and said to them, “Now, you have a holy calling. Don’t be like you were, but be transformed,” as he would say to the Romans. “Fulfill your calling,” as he would say to the Ephesians. Place yourself under the mighty hand of God, as he would say through James. Because God is working in you to make you what he declares you to be in Jesus Christ.

So we need to notice that our confession asks, “If you are a Christian, why are you called that?” It doesn’t ask, “If you become a Christian, what will that mean?” The question assumes, acknowledges, declares that you are a Christian. The word Christian itself tells us that it is not an office, not a calling that we take to ourselves. It is a title, a status given to us by God through Jesus the Christ. Just as every member of Aaron’s body was covered with the anointing oil, right down to his feet, so every member of the body, the church of Jesus Christ, anointed in baptism, is a Christian.

This our Heidelberg echoes the catechism of our Reformed fathers, Calvin and Bucer. They prepared catechisms that asked this question of children in the church, “My child, are you a Christian in fact as well as in name?” Answer: “Yes, I am, father.” “Why, how do you know.” And the answer they were taught to say was: “Because I was baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

But, you say, our catechism says, “I am called a Christian because I am a member of Christ by faith, and thus a partaker in his anointing.” How could I be made a Christian through baptism since I didn’t have faith then? Our catechism continues that dilemma when it talks about baptism saying, that in baptism infants are made members of the Christian church, of the body of Jesus Christ. Let’s ask another question? How was the daughter of the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus healed of her deathly illness? By the faith of her mother. She could say, “I was healed by faith.” You became a member of Christ by the faith of your father and mother believing in the grace of God tha
t the promise was not just to them but for their children, even you when you were without strength or knowledge.

What then are the responsibilities to which God calls you in Christ? For you see that you can’t escape them. You can’t say, “Well, I don’t have the responsibility to be a Christian until I decide to become a Christian.” So what are the responsibilities we have? In our confession we say that as a prophet you are to confess his name, as a priest, you are to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice of thankfulness to him, and as a king, with a free and good conscience you are to fight against sin and the devil in his life and hereafter reign with him eternally over all creatures.

Let me say here that God places two paths before you: the path of faithfulness, following your Christ, your prophet, priest, and king, or the path of your own making, following the world. Now remember, you can strive to escape this path by saying, “I’m not really a Christian, so it’s really not so serious.” That’s just like someone in the Army saying, “Well, I really don’t believe I’m a soldier, so what I do isn’t that serious.” What makes his actions serious is that he is a soldier, he has that office. And what makes it serious when you speak lies is because you do so as a prophet charged to tell the truth. When you love the world, you do so as a priest charged to love the Lord. When you choose wrong instead of right, you do so as a king, charged to battle wrong and champion the right.

Again, remembering the words of Paul telling us that one of the reasons for Old Testament history is to caution us in our walk before the Lord, we must receive instruction from God’s account of their lives. God appointed many prophets, priests, and kings from among his people Israel. Some of them were good, and others were bad. Some prophets were false prophets as Hananiah during the time of Jeremiah. They brought false news, they didn’t bring the Word of God, but a word they fashioned out of their own imagination. They brought a word of peace, peace to the wicked, and did not reveal the counsel of God at all. Hananiah brought judgment upon himself. So we too, can be false prophets or true prophets. We can speak the truth about God and man, or we can speak the lie. God gives us offices and tells us to be true to those offices.

God calls us to be true prophets, to listen carefully to his word, and to speak his word in truth, not adding to it or subtracting from it. He commissions us to speak the truth about Jesus Christ, about God, about his attitude towards sin, the full revelation of God.

Some priests in the Old Testament were false. There were priests who had the anointing oil of Aaron on their head, like Hophni and Phineas the sons of Eli. See how terrible they profaned the office of priest. Instead of leading the people in holiness, they despised and polluted the offerings of God. They did not lead God’s people into wholeness, but led them into fornication. God judged them, because he had anointed them priests, and they forsook their office.

We hear the words of Paul to the Corinthians crying out, “What are you doing, joining yourselves to Belial? What fellowship has Christ with devils?” You are priests of God. He has through Christ washed you, and says to you, “Do not become defiled, polluted with the filth of the world. Keep yourselves holy, for he has made you holy. Be holy as he is holy.” The path of faithfulness or the path of corruption.

God appointed kings from among his people. There were good ones and there were bad ones, but they were both anointed by God. Saul was anointed by God, David was anointed by God. So God says, “You’re a king, and there is the path. I have brought you the long history of Saul, as Paul would say, for your instruction, for your admonition, that you may not fall as he fell.” Saul was a king who sought glory for himself instead of the Lord. He was a king who could not wait on the Lord. He was a king who trusted in his own strength and power. He disobeyed the commands of the Lord. So the Lord said, “Now I reject you.” And he was a king who finally used his own strength in self-destruction.

God calls you to be a king like David, a man after his own heart who loved the Lord, who knew that his strength did not come from himself, but from the God of Israel. We can be true kings, loving and promoting obedience to the precepts of our God.

We have been anointed in and through Christ, and we cannot escape our calling to be true Christians, to be true prophets, priests, and kings. We should not want to escape our calling, for it is truly glorious, but only as you are united to your head Jesus Christ. And again, this is one the anomalies of Scripture, if we call them that, that when he calls the Corinthians, for example, saints, he also says that they are called to be saints. We are called Christians, we are called to be Christians. We are called to come under the power of Christ our Lord, to transform us more and more as his image as the Christ.

For truly he calls you to be united to him by a true and living faith. He has given you his Word, he has promised and promises you his Spirit. He equips you, furnishes you with every grace, all knowledge, all love, and all power to fulfill your calling.

Let me close with this little picture, trying to capture some of the essence of your offices of prophet, priest, and king, and your relation to Jesus Christ. For you must embrace him. For you see, you might say in a certain sense that in baptism he embraces you, and he embraces you that through his love and his care, you can come to the day when you can return that embrace. Then you are truly and fully united to him. There are those who fear the embrace of Christ and they back off. They are judged, not because they weren’t embraced by Christ, but because they were. So let me give you this picture.

I’ve given it in catechism so some of you will remember it. The office of prophet deals with truth, with knowledge, with what is in your head. The office of priest deals with sacrifice, with love, what you give, with what is in your heart. The office of king deals with fighting and ruling, what you do with your hands. Bring these three together then, with prophet, priest, and king we have head, heart, and hands. Through these three we are united with Christ, and in that union, bound together with and in him, we may live and faithfully perform our calling.

So here is the picture. It’s a wedding picture. It’s a picture of the groom and the bride after the minister says, “Ok, you may kiss your wife.” And the groom forgets all about her fancy clothes and they just embrace one another. How did this come about, this passionate embrace, each one seeking the other?

It started a few years earlier, when he got to know this girl, and she got to know him. First the knowledge of a lovely girl filled the mind of this young man. He got to know this girl, and she got to know him. They got to know each other more and more. This knowledge then did not remain just some academic, intellectual acquisition in their head. They didn’t speak of each other as I spoke earlier, in some scientific description. They spoke as Solomon spoke about his love. Because this knowledge went down to their heart; it made it beat faster, it gave them a little shortness of breath. They were in love, weren’t they?

Their heart started longing, but it didn’t stop there. It didn’t stop in their hearts. They had to do something. The young man had to be a king; he had to call dad, and say, “Can I bend my knees before your daughter?” So that action was taken, and to his knees that young man went, and secured the hand of his bride. That culminated in this embrace.

Jesus Christ, our prophet, priest, and king; who b
rought us the knowledge of God, the heart of God, and the hands of God nailed to the tree. Those hands have embraced us, and in that embrace he anointed us to be prophets, priests, and kings.

Our first response always has to be this, doesn’t it? “Fill my head, O Christ, with the knowledge of you. Kindle a love in my heart through that knowledge. Cause me to embrace you.” Embrace Jesus, your Christ, for in him, and in him alone you will be a faithful, growing, lovely Christian, confessing his name, offering yourself a living sacrifice, and triumphant in battle, wise in ruling. Amen.

Sermon Lord’s Day morning, September 25, 2005

Scripture: 2 Chronicles 16, Galatians 3:1-9

Confession: Lord’s Day 11

29. Q. Why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, Savior?

A. Because He delivers us from all our sins and saves us; and because no salvation is to be sought or found in any other.

30. Q. Do such, then, believe in the only Savior Jesus who seek their salvation and welfare of saints, of themselves, or anywhere else?

A. They do not; for though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny the only Savior Jesus; for one of two things must be true: either Jesus is not a complete Savior, or they who by a true faith receive this Savior must find in Him all things necessary to their salvation.

Our confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, was written in 1562/3, at the time of the Reformation. The church needed reforming, and in particular the doctrine of salvation. The teaching of the church at that time had become a gospel of uncertainty, uncertainty because salvation largely became a matter of your own efforts to make you one of God’s children, to make you really a member of Christ. It was this threat that we identify now as coming from the Roman Catholic Church, that our fathers particularly addressed in this Lord’s Day.

So although this confession is historically conditioned, that is, it speaks to an issue especially relevant at that time, we may see that underlying this is an unchanging principle. That principle is that the whole of our salvation, from first to last, from beginning to end, and everything in between, is the work of God in Jesus Christ.

Our study of deliverance, of salvation in the Heidelberg has concentrated on the Apostles’ Creed, and having considered the first article, we now go to the second, confessing in Jesus Christ. The confession begins with his name, Jesus. Jesus is his given name, the name given to him the eighth day when he was circumcised. The angel had previously instructed Joseph to give him that name, saying, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” The name Jesus means, “Jehovah saves,” or “Jehovah Savior.”

My theme then is, Our Blessed Savior, Jesus.

Following our catechism then I have two points:

First, that Jesus gives perfect salvation. By perfect I mean, complete, whole, sufficient at every point to save, as Hebrews says, to the uttermost. A perfect salvation is one that includes everything, birth, life, job, marriage, health, and death.

Second, that our confession in Jesus as the perfect Savior, must not only be one of words, but one of deeds. Our lives must show that our salvation in Jesus is complete, that it does not need to be supplemented with either our efforts or the efforts of other men.

First, Jesus gives perfect salvation.

The name of our Savior is a precious name. “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, in a believer’s ear.” It is “Jehovah Saves,” our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth. He is our salvation, and that salvation is a complete one, with nothing lacking. He is the beginning of our salvation, the middle and the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.

Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Joshua, or Je Hoshea. The prefix “Je” stands for Jehovah, and “hoshea” means salvation.

Let’s look at this word “salvation”. Going to the New Testament for a minute, we find the word used in three tenses: past, present, and future. Listen:

1. As something that has been accomplished, that we are saved.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, (Ephesians 2:8 NKJV)

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, (2 Timothy 1:9 NKJV)

2. As something that is going on right now, that we are being saved.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18 NKJV)

3. As something that will be completed in the future, that we will be saved.

But he who endures to the end shall be saved. (Matthew 24:13 NKJV)

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. (Romans 5:9 NKJV)

Now lets apply that to our fathers, Israel of old. They were saved. God delivered them, redeemed them, saved them from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, from the hand of the Angel of death, from the armies of Pharaoh pursing them at the Red Sea. This was the great salvation event that defined them. God’s great act, done entirely apart from their efforts, their consent, or any help from man at all. This is the foundational event, the salvation from which all salvation in the future would come. The Lord was their God, he saved them, and made them his people, he was Jehovah Savior.

This event looked forward to the great event, the work of Jehovah Savior, Jesus, to save his people from their sins. In that event too, the Lord delivered us, redeemed us, saved us from the hand of Satan, from his own judgment for our sins. That great salvation event of Christ on the cross defines us. That great act of God, Jehovah Saving us, was done entirely apart from us, 2000 years ago, without our consent, without the consent of our fathers, without any help of man at all. In Jesus, Jehovah has become our salvation.

For our fathers, as for us, the Lord continued to be their salvation. As they journeyed through the wilderness, he saved them from fiery serpents, from thirst, from hunger, from the Amalekites that threatened them, from their own sins, from his wrath that threatened to consume them. They had been saved by grace from Egypt, and that same Lord in Christ was continuing to save them. Salvation was a present reality, based on a past reality.

They also had a salvation that was to come, just as we have one that is to come. Israel was journeying toward the promised land, to the land of rest, where their salvation in a typical sense, in a pictured sense, would be complete. The Lord was their salvation in the past, in the present journey, and would be their salvation in bringing them into possession of the promised rest.

We see here an important point that the Bible makes for us and that we must realize, and that is, that we must be careful not to fall into the error that so many fall into, and view salvation as something that is static. That we view salvation as though God saved us, and then places us, you might say, into the deep freeze, so that we are preserved there forever until the day he thaws us out to enjoy the promised land. Or that salvation is something like a beautiful vase that God puts on the shelf and leaves it there. But salvation is like Christ said about the vine. He takes you and he puts you in a vine, and you have a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. It an attachment of you to him that gives you life, and out of that life you can live. It is Paul speaking about the olive tree, taking wild olive branches, you, and grafting you onto the tree. Therefore you have a living relationship, and that relationship by grace brings forth fruit, the fruits of salvation.

So salvation is not something static, but dynamic, so that we speak, because God does, of a salvation that has been given to us—we have been saved, of a salvation that God presently gives to us as we journey through this life, and as a salvation that God will complete when Christ returns and we enter into that final p
romised rest.

Now to Asa. Asa demonstrated a beginning by faith, but a failure to continue, as Hebrews puts it, failed to hold the beginning of his confidence steadfast to the end. Asa was the son of Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, the son of David. Asa was a good king. We read in chapter 13 that Asa began his reign by purging the land of idol gods and altars to false gods. He then called Judah back to the Lord and led them in the Lord’s ways. He fortified Judah against her enemies and raised a great army, 300,000 from Judah and 280,000 from Benjamin.

After he completed that great Reformation, the Lord tested him, brought him a trial, for God sent Zerah the Ethiopian with 1,000,000 men and 300 chariots to attack. Then as we come to the battle scene we hear this beautiful prayer of Asa. A prayer that was based, if you listen carefully, on the great salvation that identified them as God’s people, and called for this same God, the God of their salvation, in this moment, when they needed salvation. “Lord, it is nothing for you to help, whether with many or with those who have no power; help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on you, and in your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God, do not let man prevail against you.”

He called on the Lord as his God because this God had given himself to them, as their God in the great salvation from Egypt. So we read that the Lord struck the Ethiopians before Asa and Judah and they fled. They won a great victory, the Lord gave them a great salvation.

Again, following this victory, Asa continued his great reformation in the land of Judah. Then the Lord gave him another test, not so overwhelming as the first one, but a test nevertheless. In the 36^th year of his reign Baasha, king of Israel came out against him. But instead of presenting his petitions before the Lord as he had so wonderfully did before when Zerah came out against him, instead of relying on the God who had saved his people from Egypt, he relied on his own resources. He gathered silver and gold from his treasuries, and sent them to man, to BenHadad, king of Syria, and made an alliance with him. He looked for salvation from the threat of Baasha from BenHadad. He denied the only Savior, Jehovah. He testified that Jesus was not a complete Savior.

Again, he continued, in spite of the prophet Hanani’s warning, to find salvation in man instead of the God of his salvation, instead of Jesus. When he became severely diseased in his feet when he became older, we read that he sought the physicians and not the Lord. God doesn’t mean that we may not look for doctors, but that before we look for doctors, we look to the Lord, and we seek from him direction, provision, and guidance. And when we find that he provided us doctors and physicians and nurses, we give him thanks and we use what he has given to us. But Asa did not.

The Lord our God, Jehovah Savior, Jesus, is our salvation, past, present, and future. His work on the cross secures us as children of God, redeemed from sin and death, hell, damnation, and Satan. His work ongoing as our living king, our eternal high priest, our teaching prophet, saves us as he brings us towards the great promised rest remaining for the people of God.

This is the burden of Paul’s message to the Galatians, who began by faith, believing in the all sufficient work of Christ on the cross, but then continuing by the power of the flesh, living their lives as though religion was a Sunday thing; living their lives as though salvation was something apart from whether you had enough food for breakfast or not, or whether your child broke his leg, or whether you were being threatened by enemies. Salvation was over there, it was some kind of a “spiritual” thing.

But God is the God of the salvation of his people every day. But Jesus is a complete Savior, his salvation is perfect. By his Spirit, he has not only saved us, he is saving us in the present, bringing his perfect salvation to perfection in our own lives.

And that brings me to my second and final point, our lives must show that we believe that Jesus is a complete Savior.

The apostle Paul says the lives of our fathers were written in great detail for our instruction. The lives of our fathers were continually punctuated by disbelief in the perfection of Jesus’ salvation. After God redeemed them from the slavery of Egypt, they cried out in dismay and unbelief when they found themselves trapped by the armies of Pharaoh at the Red Sea. Following the great salvation at the Red Sea, we read that they believed. But so soon they faltered in faith, complaining that God couldn’t give them water in the wilderness, that he couldn’t set a table for them in the desert. They forsook this God at mount Sinai and made for themselves golden calves. They failed to believe in the salvation in the future, refusing to go into the promised land.

These things were written for our instruction, that believing in the great salvation God has given us in Jehovah Savior, in Jesus, we may continue to believe that he saves us in the present, and will save us to the uttermost, to the great day of final salvation, when we enter into the promised rest.

Asa’s life showed he failed to believe. His was a failure of faith, for although he first believed in the God who was the God of Israel, who had taken Israel by a great salvation from the land of Egypt, although he believed that God could and then did save him from the great army of Ethiopians, when a smaller test came, and the armies of Baasha threatened him, he turned to his own resources, and to the help of the Syrians.

We need to examine the nature of these failures so that we may not fail in a similar way. Salvation is something that we need for us on Monday; and we need on Tuesday, and we need on Wednesday as well. I have already said that they were failures of faith. Hebrews shows us how important it is to continue in the faith. Hebrews also tells us that these failures of faith were evident in disobedience. And that leads us to understand in at least one dimension, how Jesus works out our salvation in the here and now. How we actually acknowledge and experience that Jesus is not only the salvation that occurred two thousand years ago on the cross, but he is a God who saves his people in the present tense.

We’ll go back to Israel again. When Israel needed to be saved from the Midianites, what did God ask Gideon to do? He told him to break down the altar of Baal, to gather an army, to dismiss all the fearful, and then to dismiss so many there were only 300 left. So salvation for Gideon, God’s salvation for Gideon and for Israel because Gideon listened to the Word of God, and he followed the commandment of God even though it seemed to be the most foolish thing in the world to do. He was obedient, and so God worked salvation for Israel and for Gideon because he listened to the Word of God and he obeyed the Word of God.

How did Jesus bring salvation to Naaman, salvation from leprosy? He gave him an instruction, “Go wash in the Jordan seven times.” Naaman thought, as so many of the world always think, that the salvation that God presents in his Word is just too simplistic. That’s it? Just wash in the Jordan seven times? But when he did, when he obeyed the Word of the Lord, he received salvation, a present salvation.

To live by faith, to really confess that Jesus is a complete Savior, that his salvation, past, present, and future, is complete, when we need a salvation, when we need deliverance, we must ask this, “What does Jesus tell us to do?” You have his Word from Genesis to Revelation. “Lord,” we must pray, “What would you have me to do? Where will I find your salvation?” And if you are sick, says James, And “If any of you are sick,” says James, “let him call for the elders of the church.”
; Simple direction when we need salvation.

What did Jesus say to the rich young ruler? He gave him a path. He said, “What do I do to inherit eternal life, to enter into that great final salvation?” Jesus said, “You need to be saved from your attachment to your riches. Go sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and follow me.” Those were Jesus’ instructions for salvation to a child of Abraham.

What does Jesus say to his disciples, to you and to me? “Deny yourself.” Number one, you can’t save yourself in any of the circumstances of your life.

Salvation. Our confidence in the salvation God has given us in Jesus Christ on the cross, we demonstrate our faith in that salvation by believing that we find our salvation today and each day in that same Jesus Christ, following his instructions, finding salvation through his Word, by his Spirit.

So we ask ourselves when we face a problem, when we need to be saved from something, I don’t care whether it’s a bill or it’s a broken finger, or it’s a screaming child, or it’s an unfair employer, or it’s an insoluble problem in the church, where do we look? What do we say? So many times we go like Asa did. We look into our treasuries, “Do we have enough money to handle this problem?” Or we write someone, or we seek help from here or there. Not after we have sought it from the Lord, but before that. And finally when all help proves vain, when Olympia fails us, and Washington, DC fails us, and our pocketbook fails us, then, well, all we have left is to pray. And then so often the prayers are not prayers that say, “Lord show me. Give me a set of instructions, like you gave to Naaman, or like you gave to Gideon. Show me a plain path that I can walk it, and that in following you, in following what you say, I will find salvation.” So, whether we are elders, husbands or wives, citizens, employees, employers, mothers, we all have struggles, problems, and times when we need salvation. So we need in this coming week to stop a minute when we face a problem. To stop a minute when yhou are trying to deal with something, when you want a solution. Stop a minute and say, “Where do I seek salvation? Where am I going to find it? Where am I looking? Where do I look?”

Is Jesus just some kind of a religious idea there somewhere or is he a living, reigning King, and the author of our salvation, and the fountain of our salvation? We are not looking for some kind of mystical ‘me and Jesus’ experience. We are looking for the plain way, for he directs us by his Spirit to listen to his Word. He directs us and says, “You are members of my body, and I framed my body in such a way that there are a lot of different members, so that each member can supply what the other member is lacking.”

This is the salvation of Jesus, isn’t it? This is the way he has set up his church, that we might find our salvation, not in each other, but in him. In him. This is why he gives us the sacraments, so that we can again be assured, and testify that we find our salvation in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. Every day, every week, we find it there alone. That he is the one who saves us.

Sometimes salvation is in a tough way. You might have been a member of the Corinthian church. There were members in the Corinthian church who were short of money, and the reason they were short of money was because they loaned it to another member, and that member would not pay them back. And so they started to fight, and then said, “Well, here’s the solution. We’ll go to Yakima County Superior Court and we’ll file a lawsuit and we’ll get that settled. That’ll save us.”

Paul said, “What are you doing? Isn’t there one wise man in the church, a member of Christ’s body, that you could find salvation there? Beside that, if nothing else works, just allow yourself to be defrauded. Be saved from what? Your allegiance to money.

Jesus is the complete Savior, and we must show in our lives that we believe that, that he saves us each day and every day on our journey. It is a salvation that we must experience every day. We seek it by prayer, by his Word, in among his body, because he is the one that ministers. Amen.

Lord’s Day, September 18, 2005, Morning Worship

Scripture: Psalm 139

Confession: Lord’s Day 10, Heidelberg Catechism

This morning’s sermon is about the providence of God. The word “providence” means God’s ability and actions of providing, that the Lord meets every need, he provides what his creation, his creatures, his people need.

The Psalms in many ways celebrate the providence of God. They speak of how God provides for the birds and the flowers, the grass and the cattle, and especially how God provides for his people, his children. Psalm 23 begins by confessing in the providence of God: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” “I shall not want.” I shall lack nothing, for he will provide for my every need. He makes, as we sometimes sing, he makes my needs his care.

Lord’s Day 10 of our catechism confesses in the providence of God. It was written in 1562 & 3, during the time of the great Reformation. During this time the Lord brought his Word back to his people again, and this provoked the frantic and insane fury of Satan. As Satan raged, God’s people entered a time of great persecution, and it was during this time that this confession was forged. It was hammered out in the fires of the stake and watered with the blood of the saints. From that confession then, my theme this morning is The Lord Who Cares.

First, we confess how he cares, and second we confess how we should answer that care of our Lord.

The providence of God, we confess, is because of the nature and character of God. God is omniscient, all knowing—Psalm 139 verse 2, You know my sitting down and my rising up, you understand my thoughts afar off. God is omnipresent, his presence is everywhere—verse 7,Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? And to these we may add that God is omnipotent, he is all powerful, there is nothing too hard for him, there is nothing that keeps him from caring for us. He can stop the mouths of lions, he can quench the power of the flame. Further, God is faithful, he does what he says he will do. When he promised to deliver Abraham’s children after 400 years in Egypt, he did just that. The providence of God is good and loving, he faithfully brings rain on the just and on the unjust.

How God cares.

The word “cares” has two related and very beautiful meanings as they apply to the providence of God. First of all it means to keep something, to preserve it, to take care of it. We may say, “Please take care of the house while we are gone.” Or, “Here is your little sister. Please take care of her for a while.”

Second, it means to have concern for something or somebody. We may say, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care about your school work?” That’s concern about something. We may also ask someone, “Do you really care about me?”

How God cares. So first of all, God takes care of us, he provides for us, giving us food and clothing, health and safety, peace and prosperity. God takes good care of his people.

Second, God cares about us. We know this because “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” We know this because the apostle said, “Cast all your care upon him, for he cares for you.”

The providence of God. God cares, God cares for his creation and about his creation. God cares for his image and about his image. God cares for his children, and about his children.

God provides for, governs, maintains, keeps all the work of his hands, his entire creation. He provides for it. He sends rain and clouds, he brings day and night, he changes the seasons, bringing winter when trees and tulips go into sleep that they may spring fresh from the earth again in the Spring.

God is faithful in his care of his creation. He loves it, he cares about it. When we consider science and science discovers all the laws of nature, these so-called laws are merely evidence that God is faithful, for it is he who insures that when you plant a tomato seed, you get tomatoes and not pine cones. It is God who makes water expand when it is frozen, contrary to most everything else which contracts with cold. Water expands, so that when lakes freeze over, the water is still liquid under the ice so fish can survive. It is by the Word of God that day and night follow one another. It is by the providential word of God that springtime and harvest, summer and winter follow one another faithfully.

God is faithful in his care of his image, for he cares about his image. God shows his care for every baby, from Siberia to Zaire is born with arms and legs, fingers and toes, and he so governs the growth of each baby, that each arm and leg grows to its proper length, and you don’t have people with one 12 inch leg and another five foot leg. God cares about his image, and that care is shown in his hatred for those who deface that image, in his law that those who destroy his image must be destroyed themselves.

God loves his image, and his care he has shown by sending his only begotten Son into this world, to be abused and defaced, to be spit on and mocked, to be punctured with thorns and nails, to have his back lacerated with scourging. All so that we, those who have defaced and made his image ugly with sin, may be restored and cured. The providence of God. God cares about his image.

The Lord who cares about his image, and when he has redeemed them, in that redemption he implants the incorruptible seed of the word, that we may have in us, in the very core of our being, in our hearts, the promise that although worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh we shall see God, we shall be raised incorruptible through that incorruptible word.

The Lord cares about his people. God promised Abraham and all his children that he would bless those who bless them, and he would curse those who cursed them. And so even though Abraham sinned by lying about his wife to Pharaoh, yet because Pharaoh touched Abraham, God brought a curse upon Pharaoh until he restored Sarah, and gave him many gifts besides. God cares for his chosen.

God says, “Do not touch my people, for if you touch them you touch the apple of my eye.” Christ said to Paul, “When you persecute my people, you persecute me.” The Lord cares for and about his people.

Does the Lord care about you? When you are lonely, when you feel lost in the crowd, do you really think that God remembers you, that he pays attention to you, that he really notices you? Listen to me a minute. I hope you read the Bible all the way through, I command you to do it. When you come to the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, and even in Ezra and Nehemiah, you find long lists of names, names hard to pronounce, and names you may be tempted to skip. Have you ever asked yourself why did God give us so many names? Why did God write them all down? Stop and think for a minute. Didn’t Paul say in 1 Corinthians that all these things were written for our instruction? So how is God instructing us? God is telling us that he never overlooks one of his children, that he records all their names, that he never loses track of one of them. Think for a minute. Although the many people whose names are recorded in these books are long gone and forgotten, God has not forgotten one of them, he knows them all by name, and even in this world, the record of their names has continued faithfully for three thousand years and more.

The Lord cares for each one of you, he knows you by name, he records your names. For the Bible is not a book of impersonal ideas and philosophies, of spiritual thoughts and abstract doctrines, but of a creator who loves his creation, and of a Father who has through the person of his Son, adopted a people, and cares for each one of them,
from the cradle through the grave, and resurrection, numbering all the hairs of their heads, and providing, as we confess in the previous Lord’s Day, all things necessary for body and soul, as his dear children and heirs.

The providence of God, the Lord who cares.

How then should we answer this providence of God? What should be our response? The answer of our catechism is both simple and profound. We should and must be thankful in prosperity and patient in adversity.

We should be thankful in prosperity. When God led our fathers into the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, full of houses they had not built, of vineyards and orchards they had not planted, God warned them saying, “Beware, lest when you are full, and you have prospered, that you forget the Lord your God, and say to yourself, By my strength and wisdom, by my energy and work, by my brains and brawn I have gotten all these things. But it is because the Lord loved your fathers, and because the Lord was faithful to his covenant, that you have all these good things.”

Thankful in prosperity. When people forget God in their prosperity, and credit themselves for what God has done, that they become god in their own eyes, and so often rich people believe themselves above the law. They forget God, and then deny God, and then rebel against God.

Patient in adversity. Before the Lord brought his people into the prosperity of the promised land, he brought them through the adversity of the wilderness. Were they patient? No, they complained. So the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:10, nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Patient in adversity. After the terrible catastrophes that struck Job, his wife urged him to curse God and die. But Job responded as an upright and blameless man, and said, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil?” “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

You know that the Lord Jesus has promised that we shall reign as kings. He will have us sit down on his throne as his Father also had him sit on his throne. But we shall ascend that throne in the same way our master did, for we are not greater than he. The way to the crown is by way of the cross.

Consider Joseph. The way to the crown was by way of the cross, by the way of adversity. When he was sold, did he rage against his brothers? Did he scream and shout? Did he blame God? No. Joseph entered the house of Potiphar as a slave, but in this adversity he remembered that he was a child of Abraham, the one whose seed God said would be a blessing to all people. So Joseph was a blessing to the house of Potiphar. Then as Joseph prospered, Satan tempted Joseph to believe that he was so big he was above the law, and could have his master’s wife. But no, Joseph refused, saying, “How can I do this great evil and sin against God?” And what did Joseph get for this faithfulness? He was thrown into the dungeon. What did Joseph do in this adversity? Did he complain? Did he become bitter against Potiphar, against the whole government system of Egypt that would throw an innocent man into prison? Did he go on a hunger strike in jail to protest this kind of treatment?

No, Joseph believed in the God who cared, and the God who preserved him even in the dungeon, so that as a seed of Abraham, even there Joseph would be a blessing. And when he brought blessing to the butler and the butler forgot him after that blessing, did Joseph again lift up his voice, bitterly complaining about the fickleness of man? No.

So the Lord raised Joseph from the dungeon to be even greater blessing. Joseph became an instrument of God’s providence, and through this seed of Abraham, blessing came upon the entire land of Egypt, and indeed many nations came to Joseph for grain, for provision, to experience the providence of God. The Lord raised Joseph from the dungeon so that through Joseph God would provide food and salvation for his sinning brothers, for his father’s entire house.

The providence of God. The Lord who cares for us and about us. That we may be thankful in prosperity and patient in adversity, remembering that all things come not by chance but by his fatherly hand, and that all creatures are so in his hand that without his will they cannot so much as move. At the same time, let us remember the purpose of this providence, that in prosperity and in adversity, the providence of God, the care of the Lord is that we can be true children of Abraham. We must be men and women, boys and girls of faith, knowing that God has chosen us for a purpose, and that purpose is to be a blessing. A blessing to all people, like Abraham, who rescued his erring nephew Lot, and all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and prayed for them.

Thankful in prosperity, and in that prosperity being a blessing to all people. Patient in adversity, knowing that even in sickness and poverty, even in pain and under persecution, the Lord uses his saints as a blessing for others. Consider, and remember, how often you have visited a sick person to bring them comfort and blessing, and when you left you felt as though you had received a much greater blessing than you brought. Remember how when you visited Mrs. Schryvers, you were so blessed by her contentedness, by her cheerful thankfulness always.

Thankful in prosperity, patient in adversity. Again, remember that even in adversity, the Lord provides that you will fulfill your mission in life, to be a blessing. Remember the apostles who gathered together after they were beaten and threatened. Did they grind their teeth in anger? Did they go out and start a revolution? Did they wave signs and go on protest marches in front of the temple? Did they send letters to Herod and Pilate?

No, instead of complaining, they made their needs known to God, they told God all about their troubles, yet at the same time did not forget that they were children of Abraham, and that they had the gospel of the seed in whom all the nations would be blessed. So they prayed, “Lord, give us boldness to proclaim the Word.” “Lord, in this adversity, continue to use us as blessing to all people, even the people who crucified your Son.”

Let me conclude by directing you to the Word of the Lord, and especially to the Psalms to understand the providence of God.

The Psalms direct our attention, so that in our prosperity, we may see each day, in the entire creation around us, in the blessings that surround us, in the love that cares for us, the good hand of our God, the faithful protection he affords his saints, and above all, the love of him who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. The Psalmists, you will discover, could really never look anywhere, either at the heathen that raged about them, nor at the clouds that billowed over them, without seeing the providential hand of the Lord. And in adversity, the Psalmists did not lift up their voices, and go about grumbling and complaining about the injustices of life, but instead, made their needs known to their heavenly Father. And so must you.

Leave off complaining to and about others, whether it be your children or your spouse, or Governor Gregoire. Make your needs known to the Lord who cares. Leave off complaining about your car or your bills, or your shoelaces that break. Remember the Lord who cares for you and about you, and promises that all things, prosperity and adversity, are governed by the hand of the Father of your Lord Jesus Christ, all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. And what is his purpose? Why does he work all things together for good? That through Christ, you may be a blessing. Amen.

Sermon, Lord’s Day, September 11, 2005, a.m.

Scripture: Psalm 23

Text: Psalm 23:5

Psalm 23 is a poem, a song expressing the great comfort and joy of David in the care of his Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is or should be one of our favorite songs. It is a short Psalm, and one that we often have our children memorize, and one that we should have memorized as well. We call that “learning by heart.” That’s a wonderful expression, “learning by heart.” For then the truth of God’s promises are hidden away in our hearts. “Your Word have I hid in my heart.”

David expresses that child-like faith in the care of his Lord, through all the trials and temptations of life. So David, as he struggled with his own doubts and fears, as he faced the treachery of his friends, the hatred of his own king, the stress of his refugee life, the continuing hostility of Israel’s enemies, the Edomites, Philistines, Moabites, and Syrians, found comfort and strength in the table his Good Shepherd had set for him. “Come aside,” said his Shepherd, “sit down a while, and be refreshed.”

And so your Shepherd, the one who has laid down his life for you his sheep, says to you this morning. “Come aside, sit down a while, and feast at the table I have prepared. It is for you, and I myself will serve you, while your enemies gaze with envy from every side.”

The Lord’s Table.

First, he prepares it.

Second, he prepares it for me.

Third, he serves me in the presence of my enemies.

“You prepare a table before me.”

The world, and we ourselves at times, look for assurance in ourselves. We try to convince ourselves that we can do things, that we have the strength and knowledge to accomplish our goals. The world sees the solution to our problems in raising our self-esteem, in convincing ourselves that if only we set our minds, nothing is impossible. And the world is full of the wrecked lives of those who built their future on the assumption that they could do anything they wanted to do.

We don’t and we can’t prepare our own table. We cannot create our own peace. We cannot calm our own fears. We cannot conquer our enemies. We cannot solve our own problems. We cannot bring peace to our souls. We cannot, as Christ said, by thinking add one inch to our height.

We are children, and the table we come to is not a table we have prepared. The table of life, the table of this day, the Lord’s Table, is a table he has prepared for us. To come to his table means that we have to abandon all the tables we have prepared for ourselves. To come to the Lord’s Table means that we have given up trying to pick ourselves up and see that the Lord must pick us up. To come to the Lord’s table means that we see that our nourishment must come from outside of ourselves. To come to the Lord’s Table means that we recognize just as the Lord causes the wheat to grow for bread and the grapes to grow for wine, so without his life-giving power we will starve.

We are children, and he has prepared a table for us. We need to see what kind of a table this is. On our tables we set the good things of this earth, the best of everything the gardens and fields of this world have to offer, we set before our children. Yet this table is different. The food of this table, did not come from this world. God went outside of creation itself to place food on this table. This food does not come from the field, not from the flocks or herds, not from the seas or the air. For this food the Lord reached outside of his entire creation. For this food, as Christ told the Jews, is from heaven itself.

For this food, the Lord God reached into his own heart. He took his only begotten Son, the Son of his eternal love, his beloved Son. He brought that beloved Son into this world from heaven, and prepared this meal on the slaughter house of Golgatha, that place of the skull. Yet, that meal was not yet complete, for although the body of his Son was slain, broken, that body went through three days further preparation, that it might rise, a living, life-giving body.

This is the food, this is the table, the table furnished from heaven itself, the body and the blood of the eternal Son of God, slain, and risen, presented to you and to me on this table for our life. So as we come to this table, the Lord calls us to turn our backs on the tables of our own making, on the tables the world prepares of corruptible things, and feast on the risen, incorruptible, immortal body of the Son of God.

“You prepare a table before me…”

Second, this table is for me, for you.

“You prepare a table before me…” How could David say this? What do I mean? When you look in the Bible you will find that when people have meals together they are showing that they accept each other, that they belong together, and that meal, where together they eat and drink, means a oneness, a fellowship, a harmony, a bond.

How could David say that God was showing oneness, a bond with this man, this sinner? How could David have the presumption to say that God himself prepared a table for him? Did David look into himself to find that assurance? Did David look at his life and find that he was so holy, so perfect, so righteous that this thrice holy God, would prepare a table of fellowship and love for him? Who was he, anyway? Just as he said later, “Who am I, O Lord, my God, that you should make such wonderful promises to me? But you have spoken, O Lord, and your words are true. And because you have spoken, I your servant have taken your words and believe them.”

David did not look into himself, nor into his own life, but he looked to the faithful word of his God. He looked to the word of the prophet Samuel who anointed him to be king. He looked to the oath of the Lord made to his father Abraham.

Where do you look, my friends? Look to your own homes, fathers. When your children gather around your table, where should they look for assurance that they belong there? Do you expect them to evaluate the worthiness of their own lives to find assurance that they belong at that table? What does it take? It’s simple, isn’t it? What you expect in your children is the simple faith and obedience that hears the call, “Time for dinner,” and then comes. How do your children know that they are your children? Because you have told them. When they come, you don’t find it a huge expression of faith, but instead just a simple faith, an ordinary faith, a child-like faith that believes what dad says. How do you children know that you have prepared a table for them? They hear you call, they come, and there is the table, set before them. There is their seat. It’s that simple.

Where do you look, my friends? Look to your home, this church. Look to this table. You are here. The table is here. It is set, the bread and the wine are here. And you too have a place in this banqueting hall of the Lord God. How do you know you are one of his children and that he invites you to sit down here? How do you know he has prepared it for you? How does Christ tell you? Do you not know that he has appointed waiters, those who serve at this table? Do you not know that he has appointed elders in this his house to seat you at the table? Do you not know that he has given them the authority to seat you here? What more could you ask? Are you not hungry? Do you not desire this food from heaven? This feast of joy and gladness is for you. You may say, “You have prepared a table before me.”

I’ve been studying a book on the history of Dutch Reformed Covenant theology in South Africa. There was time there when coming to the table of the Lord was a terrible, hard experience. They came to believe that before coming to t
he table, you needed years and years to know how great your sins and miseries were. After ten, fifteen, or twenty years, maybe, just maybe, you might know how great they were. Let me show you a little contrast.

Would you ever find a greater and more horrible group of sinners than those who had crucified Christ our Lord? Would you ever find a sermon more convicting than Peter’s on Pentecost Sunday? How many years after that Sunday did those sinners find peace? Let me read a verse from Acts 2. Verse 41, “Then those who gladly received his word were baptized.” Gladly; years later or minutes later? What else could be expected? Peter preached the gospel, and the word gospel means good news. For those people, those terrible sinners, the good news chased away the bad news as quickly as the light chases away the darkness when you flick on the switch. Then verse 46, “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.”

“You prepare a table before me.” The Lord has prepared it for you, and he expects you to receive this as good news, gladly, and eat this bread and drink this wine with gladness and simplicity of heart.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Oh, how this table infuriates the enemies of the church, the enemies of God’s people. How Saul hated the favor the Lord showed to David. How Saul hated that the Lord had withdrawn his Holy Spirit from Saul and given that Spirit to David. How Saul hated the grace and strength, the courage and righteousness the Lord had given to David.

And later, when the gospel came to the Gentiles, in the book of Acts we constantly read of the joy that immediately came to the Gentiles who believed the gospel, how the hearts of the Jews who rejected that gospel were filled with fury.

The world today hates you, and particularly hates you as you eat this meal prepared by the Lord for you, publicly in this worship service, before the face of the world. They taunt and say to you, don’t they, “Do you people think you are holier than we are or something? What is this, that you think that God himself, your holy God, actually says that you are his children?” And we must answer them and our answers will infuriate them even more. “Yes, we are holier than you are. We are holy with the holiness of the only begotten Son of God, whom you hate, whom you slew on a cross, but God raised up for our justification. Yes, we are the saints, the holy ones of the most high God. And this meal testifies to our holiness, for in giving his Son to us, the Almighty has given us his own righteousness and holiness, and through Christ we are without spot, holy and beautiful in the sight of this holy God.”

“In the presence of my enemies.” Christ said, “They hated me, they will hate you.” Do we really experience the hatred of the world? Do we find ourselves as David did, persecuted and hated? Do we find ourselves as the apostles did, hounded and persecuted, defamed and hated? If not, have we perhaps forgotten that our Lord has sent us out as sheep in the midst of wolves? If not, have we perhaps forgotten that we have an offensive mission in this world, to bring every thing into captivity to Jesus Christ? Have we perhaps forgotten that we preach another King, one Jesus, and that it is our mission too, to turn the world upside down?

“In the presence of my enemies.” Our enemies are not only those outside of us, but those enemies that rage against our souls. We may have enemies of doubt and despair. Whether we are little children, or gray haired we may have fears and doubts about tomorrow. We may, like David, cry out in anguish at times, “Has the Lord clean forgotten his mercies?” When we have sickness and diseases, when things go wrong, one thing after another, when it seems that everything is against us, are these not enemies? It is in the face of these enemies, that the Lord has prepared this table before us. It is in the face of these enemies, the enemies of loneliness, of fear, of uncertainty, the enemies of our own past failures, those failures that tell us that we will never amount to anything at all, that the Lord commends his love to us.

“In the presence of my enemies,” the Lord says again, Nothing, shall separate you from my love. This table says again, “God is for us. And if God is for us, who and what can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors thorough him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This is the day that the Lord has made. This is the house that the Lord has made. This is the Lord who has brought you into this his house of wine. This is the table he has prepared for you with the food from heaven. This is for you. This is the table prepared for you in the presence of your enemies, that in the face of fears and taunts, in the face of your own conscience that accuses you, you may taste of the Christ whose love has justified you, and seated you at his table as his beloved child. Amen.

When faced with the hurricane, the winds, the rains, and the flooding that struck New Orleans, and the gulf coast of Louisiana and Mississippi the unbeliever looks at the Christian and asks, “What kind of God do you have to let these things happen?” And if the unbeliever knows this Christian is a Calvinist, he really gets upset and asks, “What kind of a God do you have who does things like this?”

The Christian himself must face this question too, “How do I explain what God has done?” How does this fit into the scheme of things? What is the reason that these calamities come upon us? Should I just say, “Well, with all the gambling casinos strung along the Gulf coast, it’s no wonder God brought judgment.” Should I say, “Our God is a God of vengeance and wrath, and this is a taste of the devastation the Lord will bring to New Orleans, this Sodom of the South?”

The insurance companies call these hurricanes “acts of God.” That phrase distinguishes these events from others. If a hurricane strikes, a tree blows down, and kills your neighbor, the insurance company says it was an act of God. If you take a bread knife and sink it into your neighbor’s chest under his fifth rib, we call it an act of man, murder. If you lock your brother in your basement for five weeks without food and water and he dies of starvation, we call it an act of man, murder.

The question here is one that David faced, “Into whose hands would I rather fall; into the hands of God or into the hands of man?” David had no hesitation, for he answered quickly, both for himself and for his people, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

Whose Hand?

First we ask, Into God’s hand or into man’s hand?

Second, having looked at both and recognizing that in falling into the hand of God, one falls into a hand of great mercy, what then shall we do? What shall we do as church, and as churches in North America? What shall we as churches proclaim to the world regarding such events as we have seen this past week?

First, into God’s hand or into man’s hand?

The dilemma David found himself in was one of his own making. David had sent Joab and other officers into all the land of Israel to take a census. This appears to have happened near the end of David’s reign. By that time David had conquered all his enemies, and peace reigned throughout Israel. Every man rejoiced under his own vine and his own fig tree. David apparently wanted to see exactly how great his kingdom was, how many people the nation of Israel actually had.

It seems as though David’s heart was lifted up in pride, that he would use this census number to boast of the glory of his kingdom. But when the census was over and the number brought to David, we read that David’s heart condemned him. So it is that although the Lord allows his dear people to follow the ways of their own heart at times, he also brings that heart to see its own folly of their own ways. So David’s heart condemned him and he confessed his sin. Gad the prophet brought the message of the Lord to David, and offered him a choice of three things. Seven years of famine, three months of fleeing from his enemies, or three days of plague in the land?

That difficult choice brought the words of our text from David. “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” So when faced with the dilemma, with the choice of falling into the hand of man or into the hand of God, David chose to fall into the hand of the Lord, for, said David, “his mercies are great.”

I have chosen this text because of the great calamity that the Lord brought upon the Gulf States in this hurricane. This hurricane came directly from the hand of God. What I want to do for a few minutes this morning is to show you, to compare for you, the difference between falling into the hand of man and falling into the hand of God. To do that I want to recount some of the great calamities that happened during the last century, the 20^th century; the catastrophes that came from the hand of God and the catastrophes that came from the hand of man, to see that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, but the mercies of the Lord are great.

The 20^th century began with a feeling of optimism and hope in the United States. Because of the advances in industry, science, and medicine, because of the wonderful teaching of Darwin, the hope of man was for progress, ever onward and ever upward. But, and now I quote from a book by George Grant, “What they did not know was that dark and malignant seeds were already germinating just beneath the surface of the new century’s soil. Josef Stalin was a twenty-one-year-old seminary student in Tiflis, a pious and serene community at the crossroads of Georgia and Ukraine. Benito Mussolini was a seventeen-year-old student teacher in the quiet suburbs of Milan. Adolf Hitler was an eleven-year-old aspiring art student in the quaint upper Austrian village of Brannan. And Margaret Sanger was a twenty-year-old out-of-sorts nursing school dropout in White Plains, New York. Who could have ever guessed on that ebulliently auspicious New Year’s Day that those four youngsters would, over the span of the next century, spill more innocent blood than all the murderers, warlords, and tyrants of past history combined? Who could have ever guessed that those four youngsters would together ensure that the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the twentieth century would be smothered under the weight of holocaust, genocide, and carnage?” End of quote.

Before I continue with the hand of man during the twentieth century, let me recount some of the calamities wrought by the hand of God during that century. The figures I give you are approximate, but will give you a pretty good picture. I’ll recount what we call “natural disasters,” earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and typhoons, floods, and epidemics.

Earthquakes. The death tolls in these earthquakes include those brought by tsunamis and mudslides. Italy 1908, 100,000 dead. China 1920, 200,000 dead. Japan 1923, 142,807 dead. China, 1927, 200,000 dead. China, 1976, 655,237 dead. The total figure from the hand of God in major earthquakes in the 20^th century: 1,298,000.

Volcanoes: There were nine volcanic eruptions that brought a significant number of fatalities during the 20^th century, and the total deaths were 45,000.

Huricanes: In the United States the thirty deadliest hurricanes during the 20^th century brought about 15,000 deaths. That includes the first one in 1900 in Galveston, Texas, that caused the death of 8,000 people. Japan 1959, 5000 dead. Bangladesh 1970, 300-500,000 dead. Philippines 1991, 6000 dead. Bangladesh again, 1991, 138,000. Caribbean, 1998, 11,000 dead. Total deaths from typhoons and hurricanes in the 20^th century, about 575,000.

Major floods: China, 1909, 1 million, 1928, 3 million, 1931, 3,700,000, 1959, 2 million. Iran, 1954, 10,000. Vietnam, 1971, 100,000. Total flood victims in the 20^th century, 9,700,000.

Epidemics, pandemics. At the end of World War I, the Spanish flu spread throughout the world, and from 1918-1919, about 20,000,000 people died in that pandemic.

In the 20^th century then, about 31,618,000 people died from what we usually term acts of God.

Now I want to turn to the tender mercies of man during the 20^th century.

1910-20 the Mexican Revolution, 1,000,000 were killed.

1914-1918, World War I, 8,500,000 military and civilian deaths.

1915, Armenia, the Turkish government&
#x2019;s genocide killed about 1,500,000 Christian Armenians.

1931-35, the campaigns of Mao Tse Dong, killed 700,000 in China.

1932-33, Stalin set about to forcibly collectivize the Ukraine and starved 7 to 10 million farmers to death.

1939-45, World War II, 56,000,000 military and civilian deaths.

1949, China, Mao Tse Dong killed 3,000,000 Chinese.

1950-53, Korean War, 2,800,000 military and civilian deaths.

1958-1962, Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, 38,000,000 peasants killed or starved to death.

1959-1995, tribal warfare and genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, 1,350,000 slaughtered.

1962-1992, war and revolution Ethiopia, 1,400,000 dead.

1966-1970, Nigeria, tribal warfare, 1,000,000 dead.

1966-1976, China, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, 15,000,000 killed.

1971, war between Pakistan and Bangladesh, 1,250,000 killed.

1976-1979, Cambodia, the terror of Pol Pot, 2,000,000 Cambodians hacked to death.

1980, revolution in Mozambique, 1,000,000 dead.

1980-88, war between Iran and Iraq, 1,000,000 killed.

1979-2000, Afghanistan, 1,800,000 dead.

1983 – present in Sudan, 1,900,000 dead.

Total murders from the hand of man in the 20^th century in very round figures: 147,900,000. And if we add to that another epidemic that came from the hand of man, a self-administered epidemic, AIDS, we see that from 1981 to the present, 20,000,000 more could be added to that 147 million figure.

The hand of God in earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and floods during the 20^th century, brought about the death of 11,000,000 people compared to 147,000,000 by the hand of man. If we add 20 million from the flu epidemic we get 31,000,000 from the hand of God. If we add the 20 million from AIDS to the figure of man’s hand, we get 167,000,000. We will cry, will we not, with David, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

Let me conclude this point by returning to George Grant’s book, titled, “Killer Angel,” and to Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Margaret Sanger at the beginning of the 20^th century:

“As the champion of the proletariat, Stalin saw to the slaughter of at least fifteen million Russian and Ukrainian kulaks. As the popularly acclaimed Il Duce, Mussolini massacred as many as four million Ethiopians, two million Eritreans, and a million Serbs, Croats, and Albanians. As the wildly lionized Fuehrer, Hitler exterminated more than six million Jews, two million Slavs, and a million Poles. As the founder of Planned Parenthood and the impassioned heroine of various feminist causes celebres, Sanger was responsible for the brutal elimination of more than thirty million children in the United States and as many as two and a half billion worldwide.” End of quote.

“Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” I trust you are convinced.

What then remains for us to do? We need to follow David to see our duty as church and churches in this world.

David went to the mountain, confident of the mercy of the Lord, and there offered the one sacrifice that caused the Lord to draw back his hand of judgment. This was the place where Abraham offered Isaac, and this was the place where Solomon later built the temple of the Lord.

The great message of the Lord in this world has ever been and is today this one simple phrase: Repent and believe in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

We already know, do we not, that times of prosperity when, just as David, we are tempted to lift up ourselves in pride, that we are to see again as Paul so eloquently told us in Romans 2, “Do you not know, O man, that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

So, as the Lord gives us opportunity to participate in relief and comfort to the victims of hurricane Katrina, we and all Christ’s churches, must not neglect the great message. “Behold the severity and goodness of God.”

This is the day of grace. Listen up America! Look and compare, the mercies of God to the mercies of man. You have fallen into the hand of God. He has not even begun to deal with you according to your sins and iniquities. Look at the multitude of iniquities piled up by that sin-sick city, New Orleans. Look at the Gulf, horribly diseased with the paralyzing leprosy of casinos up and down the coast. Look at ourselves, still engaged in this horrible business of killing our children, burning them in the arms of Molech, pulling them limb from limb out of the wombs of their mothers. Look at ourselves before we bemoan $5 gas, still wallowing in homosexual perversions, killing ourselves, and cutting off our future.

This is the day of grace. This is the day of God’s mercies. This is the day when God calls the church in America, as he called David, to come to the mountain, to Mount Moriah, and there return to the place of the temple, and to the sacrifice that was laid there many years ago. Not the sacrifice of David, but the sacrifice of David’s son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

David, as you see from 2 Samuel 24, set up an altar there, and when the smoke of that sacrifice ascended, the Angel of Destruction put up his sword into its sheath and the plague was stopped. The Lord’s hand was withdrawn, and his mercies prevailed.

This is the message, the message of that sacrifice. This is the message that must be proclaimed faithfully and fearlessly in the pulpits of this land. This is the message of the mercies of the Lord, calling men and women, boys and girls, back to the Mountain, the mountain of the Lord’s house, the temple, the church of Jesus Christ.

This is the message, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” This is the message. Turn from your sins and idolatries.

Repent. Repent of your Allah’s and your Molech’s. Repent of your religion of toleration, the toleration of evil. Repent of your idol worship. Repent of your pleasure seeking. Repent of your adulteries, your fornications, your pornography, your stealing, your Sabbath desecration. Look and see, that you are up to your elbows in the blood of innocents, slaughtering babies, hiding their torture from your eyes. Repent of sending your daughters, wives, and mothers into the battlefields. Repent of setting the United States up as the Savior of the world. Tear down your fancy Hollywood extravaganza’s masquerading as worship services to the Holy God. Erect once again churches built around the bloody sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God, for the only final and eternal mercy of God comes through his one act in history that totally withheld mercy, his sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And yet through that one act, in which Christ received no mercy, sinners the world over, have received mercy for time and for eternity.

In a time when the hand of God strikes the land, we need to tell people to fill the churches once again. But before that, we need to tell the churches of this land, here is the message, “Judgment begins at the house of God.” If we have made the house of God into a house of man, what kind of mercy do we expect? If the churches of our land are glorified houses of man, what hope for mercy have the terrified sinners we gather in? Will they find mercy in the house of man? The tender mercies of man are cruel. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to those who fear him.

Repent of seeking mercy at the hand of man. Washington DC is not the place to turn. The mercies of the Federal government are the mercies of man, do you want the tender mercies of 20 >th century man? Have you not seen, has it not been told you? This is the task of the church, to tell. This is your task, you, who have known the mercies of the Lord in Jesus Christ. If you have not, you have nothing to tell. But if, like David, you have been brought to repeat his words, “Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

This then is how the Lord directs us to respond to this great calamity, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. We must turn to the God who smote us, first as church and families, saying with the prophet of old, “Let us return to the Lord, for he has hit us hard, but he will bind us up, and after three days will raise us up.” We must turn to the God who bound his Son on the altar there at Moriah, opening up a stream of mercies that flows to all peoples.

We must call for the churches of this land to repent, that they again may provide true sanctuary for those whom the Lord in his mercy calls to repentance through this hurricane. We must call for this land to repent, to turn away from the vain help of Federal aid and grants, to turn away from their dependence upon the cruel mercies of man, so horribly demonstrated in the 20^th century, and turn to the living God. We must call for this land to repent of her sorceries, her gambling, her idolatries, her constant spilling of innocent blood, her homosexual and lesbian filth, and turn to the God who mercifully holds back the full extent of his wrath. Today is the day of the mercies of the Lord. Amen.