March 6 Sermon: New Creations
Consider these questions as you listen to this message from Isaiah 12:1-6 and 2 Corinthians 5:16-21:
1. Why is worship considered an essential part of the Christian life, and how does it serve as a response to God's grace?
2. In the sermon, the tension between the present and the future is discussed regarding the passage in Isaiah 12. How does this tension shape our understanding of God's salvation and reconciliation?
3. The concept of God's anger and wrath is mentioned in the sermon. How does the understanding of God's anger relate to the need for salvation and reconciliation, and how does Christ's work address this need?
Transcript:
This morning we are gathered here to worship God. We have come together as his covenant people as we do each and every week. Worship is a very important part of the Christian life. We get out of bed on Sunday morning for a reason. We are responding to the grace of God and being reminded of just how much we are in need of God and his grace. In both our Old and New Testament lessons this morning we see what is that God has done for his people and we see what our response to that good news should be.
As we get into our Old Testament lesson today we see a passage of scripture that in some ways seems a bit out of place. In most of the times that I have read Isaiah I have honestly sort of blew past this chapter. Unfortunately, much of my Bible reading ends up being of the mindset of reading for volume and I often don't stop and smell the roses like I should. As I began to look at this passage for today I really came to notice how this chapter of Isaiah feels like it belongs in the book of Psalms as opposed to being in a prophetic book that calls people to return to God. As we slow down and look at this twelfth chapter of Isaiah we see that this is a beautiful hymn. It could be included in the Psalms without missing a beat. You can even easily see the two stanzas because they both start with the phrase "You will say in that day".
The first verse of this hymn tells of God's work for his people. The second verse tells of what the response of the people should be to this amazing God. As I said previously we can tell where each verse of the hymn starts because it begins with "You will say in that day". As we come to this we need to acknowledge something about this chapter. There is a real tension between the present and the future as we read this. It says "You will say in that day" so it is looking to the future….yet, we are reading it now and we can speak or sing these words in the present and they are still true. In other words, there is an already-not yet tension to this passage. As we read it and try to understand we need to hold that tension. It is a reality for us now but there is still greater yet to come.
As we look at the first stanza we see that we are to give thanks to the Lord. Isaiah makes it clear that we are not just randomly thanking God here. There is a specific reason that we are thanking God. It says that even though you were angry with me, your anger turned away. There is a lot to digest in that verse. The first thing that we have to take some time on is the idea that God might be angry. This is something that I think we really struggle with. We don't necessarily spend too much time dwelling on this fact. We are more prone to focus on God's love….and rightly so. Yet, we cannot deny what we see in the Bible. Even when we do address the anger or wrath of God we tend to think of this as a trait of God in the Old Testament and God being love is more of a New Testament concept. As we will see in this text and we can attest to throughout the whole of scripture, the idea of God's anger is not limited to the Old Testament and the idea of God's love is not only found in the New Testament. Here in this passage it not only talks about the anger of God but immediately talks about how God's anger was turned away. The punishment of God on the people that Isaiah is writing to is no more. This idea of turning away the wrath of God is big throughout the whole of scripture. We actually see it several times in the New Testament referring to the work of Christ. It is the work of Jesus and his paying for our sins with his perfect sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God.
Like I said before I believe we really have a problem with the idea of an angry God in 2016 but it important that we understand just how important this concept is and how it shapes our view of who God is. If God is angry, there is a reason. God is not angry because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed or is having a bad hair day. God's anger is the result of the sin of humanity. God is holy and he cannot look upon sin. Therefore, something has to be done to pay the price for the rebellion against a holy God. While this is a bit of a difficult concept it is important to understand. While we may not be necessarily too happy about the idea of God being angry, if we are honest with ourselves there are times that we like it a lot. We don't want to look back at the holocaust and think that God was indifferent to it, do we? We don't want to think that God thinks that terrorism and killing the innocent is not a big deal. While it would be a lot easier if we only had to think in those extreme examples regarding the anger of God we are not left off the hook quite so easily. All sin regardless of its scope or severity is an affront to God's holiness it isn't just the big and heinous stuff that is worthy of punishment. It is because we know that God is angry with sin that we know that one day a reckoning will be required for evil. Injustice will not go unpunished and so we see just how necessary the anger of God toward sin is.
But anger isn't the only attribute of God that we see here in Isaiah. We also see God's love on display because that anger has been turned away. The salvation that comes from God is a major theme in Isaiah. In fact, Isaiah's name literally means "The LORD is salvation" and salvation that comes from God is what he points to here in this hymn. He says "Behold, God is my salvation". Therefore, we are to say with Isaiah I will trust and not be afraid for the Lord, the Lord is my strength and my song and he has become my salvation. Those are beautiful words and they express an understanding of salvation that is rooted in God's work to save us. As we look at what Isaiah says about salvation we see he repeats "The Lord, the Lord". Now when I hear something repeated in a song like that I usually assume that it is to get the right number of syllables in the sentence to match up the rhyming correctly. In Hebrew though when something is repeated it is all about emphasis. So Isaiah, by repeating the phrase "the Lord" is putting the emphasis on what God has done to bring salvation to us. It is like pointing a gigantic spotlight on who the focus of this song is. What we are seeing Isaiah tell us is that God is not generally involved in the salvation story. He IS the salvation story. God does not help us get saved, he saves us and him alone.
This message continues in our New Testament lesson where Paul tells us that we should no longer look at one another according to a worldly point of view. He tells us that at one point we viewed Jesus in this way and when we looked at him that way humanity did not understand who he was. From a worldly point of view Jesus was a great big letdown. The people expected him to get rid of the Romans and set up a new kingdom of Israel. When that didn't happen they killed him. Thankfully that was the plan of God all along, to use the worldly failure to understand who Christ was to bring about our forgiveness. Paul tells us that because of this anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. That is an important phrase: in Christ we are new creations. Why? Because the old creation was fallen, broken, and tainted by sin. When we understand who Jesus was from a spiritual point of view we see just how desperately we needed Jesus to take on human flesh, live a perfect life, die, and rise again for us. It is the only rescue method possible for people who have been separated from God. Just as we saw in Isaiah Paul tells us that this salvation is from God. It isn't that we have risen from the depths of our sin to please God by our own works. That isn't possible. Instead we need a divine rescue and Paul spells out what that means for us. He tells us that through Jesus we have the ministry of reconciliation.
So, what does it mean that we have been reconciled to God? We don't really talk about reconciliation much other than perhaps in reference to friends or family members who had a disagreement and they have gotten things worked out. In the New Testament the idea is that the breach between God and humanity has been removed. This reconciliation that Paul talks about shows us precisely what the prophet Isaiah was pointing to in our Old Testament lesson. The anger of God for our sin has been turned away and we have been shown the grace and favor of God. At the end of this lesson we see that the news is even better than we can imagine. Verse 21 tells us that it was for us that he made him sin to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This separation between us and God that needed to be reconciled was no small matter. It was so important that Jesus became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. This is a very important theme and a huge Christian distinctive. As humans we can easily fathom the idea of forgiveness. We understand the idea of forgiving wrongs toward us because each of us has had to forgive someone in the course of our life. What we can so easily miss is this idea that we are the righteousness of God. It is hard to believe that I am not only forgiven but declared righteous on account of what Jesus has done for us. We are more than forgiven, we are righteous on account of Christ. Heidelberg Catechism Q & A #56 sums this up and helps us to understand this very clearly.
That makes it very clear that we are free from judgment forever because of Christ's work for us. This isn't a license to sin. As the catechism states we need to struggle against our sinful nature our entire life. If we see the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins as a free pass to go do whatever we want because God will forgive us and we are righteous already, it is likely we don't understand Christ's saving work for us at all. Instead the freedom we have is a freedom to praise God and serve our neighbor. Why do I use the word freedom? Because we no longer need to keep score. There is not a mystical, spiritual scale someplace out there with our good deeds on one side and our bad on the other and we need to hope that in the end the good outweighs the bad. Instead, because we have been declared righteous we can go out and serve others because God has first served us. If we received merit for our good works we wouldn't be doing them for others, instead we would be doing them for ourselves in hopes of getting rewarded by God. If we are doing something for someone else to get something for ourselves that isn't a good work….it is a selfish act. Christ sets us free from keeping score of our good works. Our two lessons this morning show us two ways in which we respond to God's grace given to us.
In our New Testament lesson we see that God has entrusted this message of reconciliation to us. We have been entrusted with ensuring that others hear the good news so that in the hearing of it God may give others the gift of faith. That is a humbling reality. God uses ordinary folks like us to spread this good news. I think it is important that we step back and think about this for a moment. We often get tied up with this. We think that the way in which we get people to come to faith needs to be something big and elaborate. Perhaps a Billy Graham Crusade or music festival. Maybe we think all we need to do to transmit this message is get those kids to Rocky Mountain High every three years. None of those things are bad but it isn't just the professionals who have been entrusted with this message. It is easy to give this job to speakers and big events but until very recent history that wasn't how the message was transmitted. God has not only entrusted us with the message of reconciliation but he has also entrusted us with family and friends. When we tell our children and grandchildren that Christ died for them we are being faithful to the message of reconciliation that God has entrusted to us. Each and every Christian is an ambassador for Christ. God making his appeal through us. It's here. It's us. We have been entrusted with handing down the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. The great commission applies to us and it starts in our homes and in our church and goes out to the world from there. Like I said, it is humbling but God uses our homes and our church for this message of reconciliation to go to the ends of the earth.
The other response we see to God's grace in our lessons for this morning comes to us in our lesson from Isaiah 12. You will say in that day Give thanks to the Lord. Our right response to God's mercy and grace shown to us is to praise him. As Christians our ultimate source of joy is in knowing that Christ has saved us. We praise God in many different ways. We give thanks not only for his saving work for us but also for the blessings he has given us in this life. We thank and praise God by gathering together as his covenant people. Isaiah also says that we make known the deeds of God among the people. We sing and shout for joy because great in our midst is the Holy One of Israel.
That same Holy One of Israel is in our midst. We know this because he has gathered us together. He has forgiven our sins and declared us righteous on account of Christ. Wherever two or more are gathered he is with us. We also know that he is in our midst because we have gathered not around what we have done but what he has done. Our unity comes not from a worldly point of view. Our unity is centered on the cross and the saving work of Christ on our behalf. It is because we have been reconciled to God and he has made us new creations that we praise him. We are his people. Let us praise him for his wondrous work. Amen.
