Reading
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Listen Link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw
Have you noticed that the sanctuary is pretty bare of Christmas decorations? Unlike many of our stores that are already celebrating Christ with all kinds of decorations and sales, we are holding back. The Advent season is used by the church to build anticipation of the great celebration of the arrival of God in the form of a man who would live a sinless life and turn the world right side up again. We are not just celebrating a famous birthday. We are celebrating the moment that God showed up in the neighborhood and moved in to be our next door neighbor.
Jesus is our Lord, the Righteous Savior. Thanks be to God! He has fulfilled the good promise he made to the people of Israel and Judah! Jesus is indeed a righteous branch sprouted from David’s line. Mary is a descendant of David, and wonder of wonders, so is Joseph, the adoptive father of our Lord. God made all the arrangements for the perfect fulfillment of his promise. We can therefore have every confidence that he will keep the rest of his promises, the ones that we will enjoy when he comes again!
We worship Jesus today because he has shown himself to be The Lord Our Righteous Savior. He is the Lord, God in the flesh, descended from Heaven for our sake. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:6-11)
He is righteous, sinlessly perfect and worthy of offering the sacrifice in his own blood as our great high priest. We have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Therefore let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
In his righteousness as our great high priest he is our Savior, the only being in the entire universe with the capacity, the ability and the desire to offer himself so that we could be forgiven of our sins. God is love. Love is what moves his heart to plan for and perfect our redemption. You know that you really get the gospel when it is God’s grace rather than God’s wrath that amazes you. Some people don’t believe in hell because they feel that nobody is that bad. Nobody deserves that.
If you think you’re really not that bad, then you don’t get the gospel. You don’t really believe what God has been trying to tell you about yourself. The truth is, hell is not a disgusting injustice deserved by no one. The truth is, what’s disgusting is our sinfulness. And it’s God’s grace that nobody deserves. Thank God he gives people what they don’t deserve instead of what they do deserve.
True believers express amazement at the reality of a gracious God. It is grace, not wrath, that baffles them. They marvel over: “Why? Why me? Why would God extend such grace to me?” And they are amazed at all that God gives in his grace. Here is a short summary of what God gives a believer. When you are born again by the Spirit, you are moved from death to life (Eph. 2:5), changed from an object of wrath to an object of adoration (Eph. 2:1-6) [When you are in Christ, God adores you!] And you are freed from the Devil’s control (Eph. 2:2). By grace he chose you for salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), transferred you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:4), and sealed you with the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). God, the Holy Spirit took up residence inside of you (John 14:17) and you were adopted by God into his eternal family (Rom. 8:15-17). None of that is your doing. It is totally all God’s work (Eph. 2:8).
But in contrast to all that, the basic human condition is to believe that God isn’t really all that holy and that I’m not really that bad. God is lenient toward sin, and, as it happens, I am not really all that deeply sinful anyway. So we are a good match, God and I. It takes no faith to believe that. It takes no great change of mind and heart.
But the gospel unmasks that kind of delusion. The gospel helps us see things as they really are. The gospel says that God really is far holier than I dared even imagine and that I am far more sinful than I ever could have guessed. And, right there—with the right assessment of both God and me—right there the gospel blazes forth. Right there the gospel gives hope.
Now in view of all that God has already done, can you believe, aren’t you amazed that there is still more to come? In Jeremiah’s promise there is a part that is yet to be. It says, “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” Today, as we know from the news, Jerusalem is not yet really living in safety, and many Jews are not yet saved. But they will be one day! And maybe soon! Certainly sooner now than back 2,000 years ago.
Here is a picture for you. Imagine if you will, a bedraggled homeless woman of ill repute. She has been trafficked, prostituted and drugged up for years. She wasn’t kidnapped though. She ran away from home and wanted that life. There she is laying in a gutter on a dark and stormy night, finally so broken that she is weeping uncontrollably, hungry, cold and knowing that she deserves this hell, that she did it to herself.
A white limousine rolls up close to her and a door opens. A warm light bathes her broken body and a soft voice says, “Will you let me help you?”
She wails, “How? How can you help me? Why would you even want to?”
He says, “Well, you may not believe this but, I love you, and if you do believe it or can even start to believe it, give me a try and let me help you.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything but believe. Say you believe and the changes will start.”
“Ok. I believe you love me and want to help me, now what?”
“Well, first of all, isn’t it nice to know that someone cares? Doesn’t that begin to help you feel better about yourself, that maybe you are not the worthless piece of junk you have been thinking you are?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so, but will it last? I don’t see mem changing.”
“Now, watch.”
And the man in a shining white suit stepped out of the limo. But he didn’t have a bag of money or food or clothes or anything like that to give to her. That would not have saved her, it would only have slowed her death. As he approached her, he took off his shining white jacket and gave her that. As he did so, the rest of his clothing transformed into tattered rags. His face began to change and become drawn and thin as if he was hungry and had been on drugs for years. Bruises and scars appeared on his arms and legs as he started to stumble and stagger. Then he fell into the gutter where she had been. She suddenly realized that she was standing there and couldn’t remember how she had ever been so uplifted so that she wasn’t in the gutter anymore.
She cried out, “What are you doing?”
He said, “I am taking all your sins on myself. I will suffer in your place and you will take my limo and go and tell the world what the Lord has done for you. I will always love you. And one day, you will see me again, if you keep on trusting and waiting, for there are others I must yet save. But when all my work is done, I will come to you and we will be married and live together in a real live happily ever after. Do you want that? Would it be good? Can you wait for me?”
Now she cried again, but a different kind of tears. She couldn’t understand why anyone would do this kind of thing for her and she almost wanted to take back all her sufferings because she deserved it and he did not. But, in the end, she knew she didn’t want to die like that. So she got in the limo and drove away and the man died, lying there in the gutter.
Of course you know I am telling you the gospel. The man is Jesus and he rose again from the dead and he will come back one day, just as he said, to give us all our happily ever after world. But not everyone gets that. You see, a lot of people look at their own lives and they think I am not that bad. I wouldn’t really need that kind of help.
The trouble is, such people are really only at a stage in life that would be like a few months or years before the lady in my story hit rock bottom. A lot of people don’t realize that rock bottom is coming. Before you hit rock bottom, you know you’re not perfect, but you think you can handle it. You don’t even know how big your problems really are. Isn’t that the way the lady would feel while she was still thinking she was enjoying the life she had chosen? Before you hit rock bottom, you are blind to the reality of what God sees in you, unless you believe the Bible. If you believe what God says about your sin, you don’t have to wait until life itself drags you down to the point where you finally despair of hope.
You can choose to believe God’s rock bottom picture of you now. Then you can be amazed that he would do for you exactly what he did for the woman in my story, and for so many millions of others who have lived out worse stories. But the end of the story is still yet to come. As the man in the limo said, “When all my work is done, I will come to you and we will be married and live together in a real live happily ever after. Do you want that? Would it be good? Can you wait for me?”
As Jeremiah waited for the first coming, so we await the second. It is a good hope! It is a certain hope! It won’t be pretty getting there. “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
We probably would do well to believe that these things are beginning to take place. Certainly every true believer who ever lived saw the evils happening around them and heard about natural disasters similar to what Jesus described and thought, “This could be it!” Martin Luther said that he would live as if Christ has been crucified yesterday, risen today, and was coming again tomorrow. Could you live like that? Would it make a difference in how you live?
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
There may be a rapture to whisk you out of harm’s way. But Jesus’ words here imply that maybe for at least some of it, Christians will be in the middle of all the suffering, because we are the ones who have hope and can offer it to anyone who will believe our story of what God has done, is doing and will do one day. As we seek to live lives that lead others to Jesus, we are also looking for that blessed hope.
Through faith we are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. May it be so more and more in all of us. Amen.
With inspiration and quotes from:
http://adam4d.com/deserves/
http://www.challies.com/articles/gods-not-really-that-holy-im-not-really-that-bad
Listen Link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw
Have you noticed that the sanctuary is pretty bare of Christmas decorations? Unlike many of our stores that are already celebrating Christ with all kinds of decorations and sales, we are holding back. The Advent season is used by the church to build anticipation of the great celebration of the arrival of God in the form of a man who would live a sinless life and turn the world right side up again. We are not just celebrating a famous birthday. We are celebrating the moment that God showed up in the neighborhood and moved in to be our next door neighbor.
Jesus is our Lord, the Righteous Savior. Thanks be to God! He has fulfilled the good promise he made to the people of Israel and Judah! Jesus is indeed a righteous branch sprouted from David’s line. Mary is a descendant of David, and wonder of wonders, so is Joseph, the adoptive father of our Lord. God made all the arrangements for the perfect fulfillment of his promise. We can therefore have every confidence that he will keep the rest of his promises, the ones that we will enjoy when he comes again!
We worship Jesus today because he has shown himself to be The Lord Our Righteous Savior. He is the Lord, God in the flesh, descended from Heaven for our sake. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:6-11)
He is righteous, sinlessly perfect and worthy of offering the sacrifice in his own blood as our great high priest. We have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Therefore let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
In his righteousness as our great high priest he is our Savior, the only being in the entire universe with the capacity, the ability and the desire to offer himself so that we could be forgiven of our sins. God is love. Love is what moves his heart to plan for and perfect our redemption. You know that you really get the gospel when it is God’s grace rather than God’s wrath that amazes you. Some people don’t believe in hell because they feel that nobody is that bad. Nobody deserves that.
If you think you’re really not that bad, then you don’t get the gospel. You don’t really believe what God has been trying to tell you about yourself. The truth is, hell is not a disgusting injustice deserved by no one. The truth is, what’s disgusting is our sinfulness. And it’s God’s grace that nobody deserves. Thank God he gives people what they don’t deserve instead of what they do deserve.
True believers express amazement at the reality of a gracious God. It is grace, not wrath, that baffles them. They marvel over: “Why? Why me? Why would God extend such grace to me?” And they are amazed at all that God gives in his grace. Here is a short summary of what God gives a believer. When you are born again by the Spirit, you are moved from death to life (Eph. 2:5), changed from an object of wrath to an object of adoration (Eph. 2:1-6) [When you are in Christ, God adores you!] And you are freed from the Devil’s control (Eph. 2:2). By grace he chose you for salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), transferred you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ (Col. 1:4), and sealed you with the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). God, the Holy Spirit took up residence inside of you (John 14:17) and you were adopted by God into his eternal family (Rom. 8:15-17). None of that is your doing. It is totally all God’s work (Eph. 2:8).
But in contrast to all that, the basic human condition is to believe that God isn’t really all that holy and that I’m not really that bad. God is lenient toward sin, and, as it happens, I am not really all that deeply sinful anyway. So we are a good match, God and I. It takes no faith to believe that. It takes no great change of mind and heart.
But the gospel unmasks that kind of delusion. The gospel helps us see things as they really are. The gospel says that God really is far holier than I dared even imagine and that I am far more sinful than I ever could have guessed. And, right there—with the right assessment of both God and me—right there the gospel blazes forth. Right there the gospel gives hope.
Now in view of all that God has already done, can you believe, aren’t you amazed that there is still more to come? In Jeremiah’s promise there is a part that is yet to be. It says, “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” Today, as we know from the news, Jerusalem is not yet really living in safety, and many Jews are not yet saved. But they will be one day! And maybe soon! Certainly sooner now than back 2,000 years ago.
Here is a picture for you. Imagine if you will, a bedraggled homeless woman of ill repute. She has been trafficked, prostituted and drugged up for years. She wasn’t kidnapped though. She ran away from home and wanted that life. There she is laying in a gutter on a dark and stormy night, finally so broken that she is weeping uncontrollably, hungry, cold and knowing that she deserves this hell, that she did it to herself.
A white limousine rolls up close to her and a door opens. A warm light bathes her broken body and a soft voice says, “Will you let me help you?”
She wails, “How? How can you help me? Why would you even want to?”
He says, “Well, you may not believe this but, I love you, and if you do believe it or can even start to believe it, give me a try and let me help you.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything but believe. Say you believe and the changes will start.”
“Ok. I believe you love me and want to help me, now what?”
“Well, first of all, isn’t it nice to know that someone cares? Doesn’t that begin to help you feel better about yourself, that maybe you are not the worthless piece of junk you have been thinking you are?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so, but will it last? I don’t see mem changing.”
“Now, watch.”
And the man in a shining white suit stepped out of the limo. But he didn’t have a bag of money or food or clothes or anything like that to give to her. That would not have saved her, it would only have slowed her death. As he approached her, he took off his shining white jacket and gave her that. As he did so, the rest of his clothing transformed into tattered rags. His face began to change and become drawn and thin as if he was hungry and had been on drugs for years. Bruises and scars appeared on his arms and legs as he started to stumble and stagger. Then he fell into the gutter where she had been. She suddenly realized that she was standing there and couldn’t remember how she had ever been so uplifted so that she wasn’t in the gutter anymore.
She cried out, “What are you doing?”
He said, “I am taking all your sins on myself. I will suffer in your place and you will take my limo and go and tell the world what the Lord has done for you. I will always love you. And one day, you will see me again, if you keep on trusting and waiting, for there are others I must yet save. But when all my work is done, I will come to you and we will be married and live together in a real live happily ever after. Do you want that? Would it be good? Can you wait for me?”
Now she cried again, but a different kind of tears. She couldn’t understand why anyone would do this kind of thing for her and she almost wanted to take back all her sufferings because she deserved it and he did not. But, in the end, she knew she didn’t want to die like that. So she got in the limo and drove away and the man died, lying there in the gutter.
Of course you know I am telling you the gospel. The man is Jesus and he rose again from the dead and he will come back one day, just as he said, to give us all our happily ever after world. But not everyone gets that. You see, a lot of people look at their own lives and they think I am not that bad. I wouldn’t really need that kind of help.
The trouble is, such people are really only at a stage in life that would be like a few months or years before the lady in my story hit rock bottom. A lot of people don’t realize that rock bottom is coming. Before you hit rock bottom, you know you’re not perfect, but you think you can handle it. You don’t even know how big your problems really are. Isn’t that the way the lady would feel while she was still thinking she was enjoying the life she had chosen? Before you hit rock bottom, you are blind to the reality of what God sees in you, unless you believe the Bible. If you believe what God says about your sin, you don’t have to wait until life itself drags you down to the point where you finally despair of hope.
You can choose to believe God’s rock bottom picture of you now. Then you can be amazed that he would do for you exactly what he did for the woman in my story, and for so many millions of others who have lived out worse stories. But the end of the story is still yet to come. As the man in the limo said, “When all my work is done, I will come to you and we will be married and live together in a real live happily ever after. Do you want that? Would it be good? Can you wait for me?”
As Jeremiah waited for the first coming, so we await the second. It is a good hope! It is a certain hope! It won’t be pretty getting there. “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
We probably would do well to believe that these things are beginning to take place. Certainly every true believer who ever lived saw the evils happening around them and heard about natural disasters similar to what Jesus described and thought, “This could be it!” Martin Luther said that he would live as if Christ has been crucified yesterday, risen today, and was coming again tomorrow. Could you live like that? Would it make a difference in how you live?
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
There may be a rapture to whisk you out of harm’s way. But Jesus’ words here imply that maybe for at least some of it, Christians will be in the middle of all the suffering, because we are the ones who have hope and can offer it to anyone who will believe our story of what God has done, is doing and will do one day. As we seek to live lives that lead others to Jesus, we are also looking for that blessed hope.
Through faith we are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. May it be so more and more in all of us. Amen.
With inspiration and quotes from:
http://adam4d.com/deserves/
http://www.challies.com/articles/gods-not-really-that-holy-im-not-really-that-bad
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