Put your hope in the Rock of Life.

 

Sermon for Pentecost 8, July 23, 2023

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.  All who do his precepts have good understanding.  Amen.

Isaiah 44:6-11  ⁶This is what the Lord, the King of Israel, Israel’s Redeemer, the Lord of Armies, says: “I am the first, and I am the last.  Except for me there is no god.  ⁷For who is like me?  Let him declare it.  Let him recite for me in order the things that took place since the time I established an ancient people.  Or let them declare what is yet to come, and what is going to take place.  ⁸Do not tremble, and do not be frightened.  Did I not announce this to you, and declare it already long ago?  You are my witnesses.  Is there any god except me?  There is no other Rock.  I am not aware of any other.  ⁹All those who form an idol are good for nothing.  All the things which delight them provide no benefit.  As for their witnesses―they do not see.  They know nothing, so they will be ashamed.”  ¹⁰Who is this who forms a god or casts a metal image that can provide no profit?  ¹¹Look at him!  All his associates will be ashamed.  The craftsmen are merely men.  Let them all gather themselves and take a stand.  They will be terrified and ashamed together. (EHV)

Put your hope in the Rock of Life.

Dear friends made alive in Christ,

            Where does life come from?  Tribes and nations throughout history developed myths and stories to explain the existence of man in this world and to give some kind of order or reason to why things take place that we may or may not appreciate.  Modern man, likewise, has devised complicated scenarios that they pretend tell the story of how the world and everything in it came to be. 

Present day science needs to imagine that this universe is billions of years old in order to give their schemes enough time to have any chance of being acceptable to the skeptical mind.  At the end of the day, however, they are still stumped as to how life came to be.  Many of the most notable minds of our time have speculated on what could cause life to spring up from the lifeless.  In desperation, some deep thinkers resort to the idea that aliens somehow seeded life on earth.  In the end, though, all these wise and supposedly learned people must admit that they just don’t know why there is life. 

For the Christian believer, the question of where life comes from is easily answered.  The One we trust has told us how life came to be.  Life comes from Him who is eternal, without beginning or end, the One living God who made all things and gives life as He pleases.  Here, through Isaiah, the Lord God of heaven and earth tells all people to Put your hope in the Rock of Life.

For the last couple centuries, scientists, archeologists and others of that type have committed their time and energies into discovering the origin of the world by digging through the mud, rocks, and refuse of time’s slow decay.  Every part of this earth is wearing down, wearing out, and fading away.  It didn’t have to be that way.  God created the world to be a paradise for people, but sin ruined it. 

The great flood, that modern day scholars so often mock, caused total upheaval in the planet on which we reside.  Everything changed in the course of that year of judgment upon the earth.  Still, many people are convinced that they can decipher a different history by looking through the remnants.  We can well say that such imaginations have become gods unto themselves.  You can judge for yourselves how well they are doing by the fact that each decade of scholarship brings new imaginations into the public eye.  Even so, much of what they think they find remains darkness to the truth.

“This is what the Lord, the King of Israel, Israel’s Redeemer, the Lord of Armies, says: “I am the first, and I am the last.  Except for me there is no god.  For who is like me?  Let him declare it.  Let him recite for me in order the things that took place since the time I established an ancient people.”  If you want to know the truth, look to the only eyewitness who was there when the foundations of the earth were laid.  Before there was anything else in existence, God is there.  Before there was even a rebellious angel to tempt God’s people, God had to create everything in existence—then or now.  If you want to know the ins and outs of all that has happened in the history of man, there is no one better to ask than the One God who has been here all along.

Now, God hasn’t chosen to reveal in His Word every aspect of history.  Why?  Because you and I could never fathom the depths of that tome anyway.  What the Lord God has provided us, is the record of His work to bring the world into existence, the special place chosen for mankind in this world, the fall into sin, and the devastating results of that fall, and especially, the love God is showing to us by sending His Son to be the One who would re-establish the peace with God that man had at creation.

I am old enough now, to remember literally uncountable prognostications about the future that didn’t come close to coming true.  We hear them all the time.  “If we don’t fix this or that aspect of our surroundings, the world as we know it will end in just a few years,” the doomsayers proudly proclaim.  An ice age is coming that will make it impossible to grow corn in Minnesota.  Within twenty years the population will overcome the capacity of our world to produce food.  These, and lots of other silliness, have been shouted from the rooftops just in the last fifty years.  Yet, life goes on.

Now, I grant you, sometimes the doomsayers do move the population to do some beneficial things, but the point remains, none of them are actually predicting the future.  They take their fears and run with them much like the ancients did when they carved wooden statues, or metal figurines to worship as gods, hoping to assert some control over the unpredictability of life.  Our God tells us to pay no attention to such antics.  Those who cannot recite the history of the world as it actually came to be can hardly control time, the weather, or the political machinations of madmen and statesmen alike.  Nor can they offer any hope for a future beyond this life.

Our God challenges those who would predict the future without His input, “Let them declare what is yet to come, and what is going to take place.  Do not tremble, and do not be frightened.  Did I not announce this to you, and declare it already long ago?”  The greatest scientists and thinkers of our time have no answer to the question of what lies ahead at the end of life.  On the other hand, as soon as Adam and Eve fell into sin, our God announced exactly what would happen, and how He would turn the events of the future to our benefit. 

Though sin had caused our downfall and sentenced mankind to the cruel fate of death and separation from God, God took it upon Himself to intervene.  He promised a Savior, a Seed of the woman who would reverse Satan’s wicked rebellion.  You and I know the outcome of that promise for God’s own dear Son, Jesus, entered this world as a human infant who grew up to become the world’s only perfect Man.  Jesus lived for us in perfection we can’t even fully understand.  His trust in His Father’s will is unmatched by any other person in history.  And, to fully crush the rebellion that brought death, Jesus entered death’s portal after suffering the cruel punishment our sins had earned, and on the third day, Jesus blasted to oblivion the gates of death’s power as He rose alive from the grave triumphant over sin, death, and the devil—all for you and me.

The Lord said, “You are my witnesses.  Is there any god except me?  There is no other Rock.  I am not aware of any other.”  Name one other person in history willing to sacrifice His own glory, life, and blood, not for family and friends only, but for the worst sinners and most evil people to ever walk this earth.  You cannot name another, because there is no one else like Jesus.  Jesus alone came down from heaven to fulfill His Father’s desire to save mankind from sin.  Jesus alone resisted every temptation known to man so that we can be counted holy.  Jesus alone was perfect in God’s eyes and thus able to bear our sin and suffer our punishment, so that we could be declared righteous before God and free to live with Him and for Him.  Therefore, Put your hope in the Rock of Life. 

God said, “There is no other Rock.  I am not aware of any other.  All those who form an idol are good for nothing.  All the things which delight them provide no benefit.  As for their witnesses―they do not see.  They know nothing, so they will be ashamed.”  This is the story of man without God.  Without the Rock of our salvation, we can know or do nothing good.  Time and again the Bible refers to Jesus as our Rock.  He is the unmovable good who came to redeem us, to buy us back into His Father’s kingdom.  There is nothing in this world, or outside of it either, that could change Jesus or what He has done for us.  When Jesus declared from the cross, “It is finished!” everything needed to make us right with God was completed.  Our sins were paid for.  God’s wrath for the rebellion of the devil and mankind was satisfied.  The gates of heaven swung open to all who will believe in Jesus.

Jesus once asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?”  “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’  Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it.” (Matthew 16:16-18) 

Put your hope in the Rock of Life.  The world is full of people who seek their way and their future in something other than the words of the Living God.  Of them He says, “Who is this who forms a god or casts a metal image that can provide no profit?  Look at him!  All his associates will be ashamed.  The craftsmen are merely men.  Let them all gather themselves and take a stand.  They will be terrified and ashamed together.”  When the last judgment falls upon this earth as Jesus returns in glory with His angels to gather His people into heaven, all who did not believe in Him will tremble in terror and try to hide just as Adam did in the garden of Eden.  However, as for Adam, this time there will be no place to hide except in the blood of Jesus.

The one Man who loved you enough to suffer the pains of death, that you deserved, has washed away your guilt by the water and Word of Baptism.  He has worked faith in your hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit coming to you through the message of the Gospel, and He continues to feed that faith that gives life everlasting through the Supper He inaugurated on the night He was betrayed.  In this simple meal of bread and wine, Jesus gives you His own precious body and blood as living proof of the life He gave to make you free of sin and free to live and serve the God who created heaven and earth.  Taste and see that He is good.  Hear and believe the promises God has made to give you life everlasting.  Put your hope in the Rock of Life.  Amen.

Now to him, who is able, according to the power that is at work within us, to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen.