‘You are not in control’ (Isaiah 44:24-45:7)

‘You are not in control’ (Isaiah 44:24-45:7)

You are not in control of your life.  You have no power over world events.  You can do nothing about the weather.  You don’t even know if you will be alive this time tomorrow.  It is actually quite terrifying if you think about it!  But what if the God who is in control of everything was on your side and that He would move heaven and earth to bless you?  Wouldn’t that fact help you sleep at night?

When I was in my twenties I got to go on a placement to Sri Lanka.  I knew that I was going to encounter poverty there in a way that I had so experienced before, so I asked a friend if he knew any good books about suffering.  He recommended, ‘How Long, O Lord?’ by Don Carson.  That book changed my life.  It didn’t give easy answers.  It didn’t always give answers I would have wanted.  But it reasoned from the Bible with a clarity that I had not seen before.  It made me realize that God is greater than I had imagined. 

‘I form the light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things’ (45:7).  While God is never dirtied by it, evil and chaos our not outside His control.   

1.      God knows the future (44:24-27)

This section begins with the verse containing the words, ‘I am the LORD who made all things’ (44:24) and ends at ‘I am the LORD who does these things’ (45:7).  I don’t know much Hebrew, but in the Hebrew original these are the exact same words and form bookends of a little section.  God is telling Isaiah that He is in control!

He is the God who has made us.  He is infinitely personal seeing ‘my unformed body’ and knowing ‘all the days ordained for me … written in your book before one of them came to be’ (Psalm 139:16).  Yet while infinitely personal He is also unimaginably majestic—He stretches out the heavens.

He knows the future.  While ‘fools of diviners’ try to tell what is to come (44:25) the truth is these false prophets haven’t a clue.  Yet God can confirm the word of His servant and fulfil the counsel of His messengers (44:26).  God tells them what is going to happen and what He says comes to be.

Isaiah was speaking around 740 B.C., during a period when the Old Testament people of God was divided into two kingdoms.  Isaiah spoke to the southern kingdom of Judah whose capital was Jerusalem.  He warned them about their corrupt religion.  He told them that if they did not repent God would punish them.  The people did not listen, and eventually the Babylonians crushed them and took them into exile around 586 B.C. 

From chapter 40 Isaiah is speaking prophetically ahead of his time to those who were in exile in Babylon.  What were God’s first thoughts for those wicked people?  ‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God, ‘Speak tenderly to her …’ (Isaiah 40:1-2a).  ‘God’s deepest intention towards His people is comfort’ (Ortland).  Now we are introduced to somebody else—King Cyrus.  Cyrus was the Persian king.  The Persians were the superpower after the Babylonians.  In the first year of his reign, Cyrus issues an edict that says that all the exiles in Babylon can go home to Judah and Jerusalem.  That was 539 B.C.  Isaiah is talking about things that take place one hundred and fifty years after his time. 

Can you see the problem for Bible scholars who do not believe that Isaiah could know the future?  The Assyrians were the super-power of his day.  How could Isaiah know that they could be overwhelmed by the Babylonians?  How could Isaiah know that the Babylonians would take the people of Judah into exile?  How could Isaiah know that the Babylonians know that Babylonians would be replaced by the Persians?  How could Isaiah know that the Persian leader would be called Cyrus?  These things all took place after Isaiah died!  Many Bible scholars conclude that someone later than Isaiah must have written these words.  But we know that Isaiah was told these things by the God who knows the future!   

2.      God will bring you home (44:28-45:7)

God calls Cyrus ‘my shepherd’ (44:28) and refers to him as ‘His anointed’ (45:1).  The word for ‘anointed’ is the word for ‘messiah’ (Hebrew) or ‘christ’ (Greek).  God is going to use this evil man to issue a decree that will pave the way for His people to return home.  God is in control even over the mightiest ruler of that time.  ‘Many are plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails’ (Proverbs 19:21).  ‘In the LORD’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him’ (Proverbs 21:1).

Through this ‘anointed one’ God will remove every obstacle that threatens to get in the way of His purposes for His people.  Though Cyrus does not know God (45:4) our God says, ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.  I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me; so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know that there is none besides me.  I am the LORD and there is no other’ (45:5-6).  God has plans that aim to display His glory to the whole world!

So, God uses an evil man to bring blessing for His people.  This is control.  This is what happens at the cross.  Jesus was the anointed one/messiah/christ who was not a tyrant like Cyrus but is gentle and lowly.  He was the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep.  At the cross evil men who did what they wanted to do, and yet they accomplished God’s greatest and most loving plan for the return of His people.  The cross enables us to return home, not from exile in Babylon, but as forgiven people welcomed into the loving embrace of the Father.

3.      God is in control (45:7)

‘I form the light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things’ (45:7).        

There was a deacon in a church who was talking to a group of people about the issue of suffering.  She said that she liked the idea of what she called a ‘weak god’.  She comforted herself with the thought that God would like to help us in our troubles but that He simply is not able to.  Such reasoning might let God off the hook when it comes to why He allows evil, but it is not really comforting.  It would mean that ultimately chaos reigns.  Speaking about their struggle with depression someone said, that while God’s control over our suffering leaves me with many hard questions, I would rather put my trust in the God who is all-powerful, and who has revealed himself in the beautiful person of Jesus Christ, than think that my life is going to be blown around in the whims of chaos.

Paul Tripp, ‘I don’t know if you have ever thought about it before, but God’s promises are only as good as the extent of his sovereignty.  He can deliver what you need only in the places where he rules.  If his rule is not firm and unchanging his promises are not either.’

Conclusion

Just a few things to be clear about before we finish.

The most important thing to realise is what the good is that God wants in your life.  When I say that the God who is in control will move heaven and earth to bless you, that does not mean that He promises a life of health and wealth and comfort and ease.  God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and the good of those who love Him is that we would be conformed into the image of His Son.  One of the main ways that happens is that we learn to trust Him in the pain of this life.

This is not determinism.  Determinism would suggest that because God is in total control what we do does not matter.  Our actions have real consequences.  Take the issue of prayer - James writes, 'you do not have because you do not ask'.  Certain things happen because we pray that would not happen when we don't pray.

The Bible does not teach dualism.  Dualism teaches that there are two opposite forces at way with each other.  When bad things happen that is because the devil got His way, when good things happen that is because God got His way.  The Bible teaches that the devil can do nothing outside of the ultimate rule of God.  A friend of mine acted like a duelist,  Her mother was ill, and the prayed for healing.  She died and they assumed that they must have slipped up in their prayers.  That their was a weakness in their prayer cover and the devil got in and got his way.  That is dualism.

There is mystery.  One of the mistakes we make is assuming that God owes us an explanation for everything that happens in life.  The Bible teaches that God reveals everything we need to walk in obedience, but not everything to satisfy our curiosity (Duet. 29:29).  I don't know why He allows you to go through all that you have to go through.  But keep clinging to Him in the mystery!

A young man was honest enough to admit that he was angry at God.  He could not understand why God was letting Him experience so much pain.  I assured Him that God is big enough and caring enough to deal with our questions. 

Read the Psalms and you will see a raw honesty that can be shocking.  ‘How long, O LORD, will you forget me forever?  How long must I wrestle with my thoughts all day long?’ (Ps. 13:1-2). 

But then we must also remember the words that come after our reading in Isaiah.  ‘Woe to those who quarrel with their maker’, like a pot saying to its maker, ‘what are you making?’ or ‘your work has no handles on it’ (45:8-9).  We can be honest in our questions to our loving heavenly Father, but we must not accuse Him of making a mess of our lives or not knowing what He is doing.  

The Marks of a True Church

 

One Sunday after the service a small group of young adults gather together and start complaining about their church.

‘Gosh, the music is very old-fashioned here.’  ‘That sermon was dull.’  ‘These people are so unexciting.’

Then Tom comes up with a suggestion.  ‘Let’s start our own church.’  ‘Let’s “do church” in a way that our friends will want to attend.’  ‘Let’s “do church” our way.’

So, they got together a praise band, one of them agreed to preach, they even appointed a couple of elders and deacons, and they met together the next Sunday.  That Sunday they shared the Lord’s Supper, and over time even baptised one of their friends when he came to put his trust in Jesus.

Have those young people created a true church?

I have wondered about this for years.  When a group of Christians set up a community and start meeting together what makes them a church?

This is a big question for us in LBC because we have committed ourselves to church-planting.  We need to know what are the ingredients of a true church?  We need to remember that what we are seeking to do is something that actually depends on divine favour.

1.        The historic marks of a true church

These were big questions around the time of the Reformation.  Afterall the Reformation saw a large number of groups of people breaking away from an institution that claimed to be the one true church.  They knew that the church is the body of Christ, and that to be a Christian involves being connected with that body.  How did these break-away groups know that they really were churches of God?

Various groups all came up with three similar marks of a true church, and these marks can be seen in the various historical confessions of faith.  They claimed that a true church—taught the Bible faithfully, shared the sacraments/ordinances (which they limited to baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and practiced church discipline.

In those days those new churches were quick to write each other off on the first mark—teaching the Bible faithfully.  The Reformation was after all a battle for truth.  Churches in those days often split on what we might think as secondary issues of doctrine.  But if that was the weakness of their time, the weakness of our time is that we tend to ignore the Bible’s call to lovingly hold our members to account.  You should not join a church that won’t challenge you about what you think and how you live.

A couple of things about this discipline.

Church discipline does not expect church members to be perfect.  John wrote saying that if we say we are without sin we are liars and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).  Christians struggle, and often fail, in our aim to live a holy God-honouring life.  Church discipline is for those who are persistently opposing the truth, stubbornly refusing to address issues of serious sin in their lives or are constantly causing division.

Church discipline is only for those who are claiming to be followers of Jesus.  People who don’t know Jesus are welcome to come to our meetings and see what we do.  Our job is not to judge their lifestyles.  That is between them and God.  But if they submit to Jesus’ loving rule, and so join a local church, that local church is to hold them accountable in their Christian walk.  That is the advantage of having a formal system of membership.  It can be hard to know who on a Sunday understands the gospel and has committed to following Jesus.  In going through a membership process these things are clarified.  Becoming a member involves agreeing to come under the discipline of the church.

It is not the pastor or elders alone who practice church discipline, it is the role of the whole church.

Discipling might begin with a serious chat.  It might then be suggested to a person that it is dangerous for them to participate in the Lord’s Supper.  Finally, their membership might be withdrawn and there could be the withdrawal of convivial discourse.

What do I mean by the withdrawal of convivial discourse?  I mean that we don’t pretend that all is well.  They might come along to church, and it is good to see them there because they need to be challenged by the gospel.  But after the service they would prefer to talk about Munster’s latest rugby triumph, or the book they are reading, rather than address what is going on in their life.  Withdrawing convivial discourse means that we are not going to be rude, but neither are we going to be trivial.  We might reply, ‘I know you want to talk about the Munster rugby team, but I can’t pretend all is well in your life.  I love you too much to pretend that you are not in grave spiritual danger.  I only want to talk about how things are between you and God.  We can sit down and see what the Bible says about these things.  But do not have me pretend everything is okay.’ 

This sort of thing interaction, or lack of interaction, goes on until the person concludes that they never understood what it meant to follow Jesus, and aren’t born again, or, show that they are born again by repenting.

The aim of church discipline is both to protect the purity and witness and the church (we want the world to see that we don’t agree with certain behaviours) and the loving restoration of failing people.

2.        The divine marker of the true church

I don’t see these three marks of a true church as simply ingredients that you put together and then say, ‘hey presto here is a church.’  I think they are also like fruit that show that God is creating a true church.  We must remember that a local church is a divinely constructed entity, and not just a humanly constructed one.  When the Holy Spirit is moving among a group of believers who are claiming to be a church, if it is a real work of God, you will see a strong emphasis on submitting and being shaped by the Bible, a reverence and rejoicing in the ordinances that demonstrate the gospel, and a loving concern for purity of the church and its people.

One of the passages in the Bible that reminds us that the local church is something that God establishes is the first chapter of Revelation.  There we see Jesus walking amongst the lampstands, which are the churches.  I am not sure whether these lampstands refer to the churches across a city or to individual churches.  The point I want to make is simply that only God can create such a lampstand.  A true church is something that God establishes and maintains.

I also think that there are at least two other fruit of a true church: love for other churches and perseverance. 

In John’s first letter, the beloved apostle points out that you can not claim to love God, who you have not seen, if you do not love your Christian brothers and sisters, who you have seen (1 John 4:20).  There is a real problem when a Christian is so exclusive that they cannot find a church that they are willing to join.  There is a real problem when we are overly critical of every other church.  There can also be a real problem when a church is so focused on itself that they have no delight in what God might be doing through other groups.

With regards perseverance, I think of a conversation that happened when the Jewish Sanhedrin were debating the early Christian church.  A leading Pharisee, called Gamaliel, suggested that if this movement was of God it would last (Acts 5:38-39).  Luke records these as wise words coming from the mouth of an unbeliever.  I think something similar can be said of a true church.  While a church might reach the end of a faithful ministry due to movements of population or the passing on of believers, things that God creates tend to last.  I would even go so far as to say that some groups that decided to set up as a church for reasons that might be less than ideal over time have come to show themselves to end up as true works of God.

3.       Every Christian needs to be a member of a true church

Different churches have different ways of recognising who is a member of the body.  If you are a Christian you need to be committed to a true church.  Is it possible to be truly born again and not be connected to the body of Christ?  Maybe there are certain exceptional circumstances where this can be, but it is not normal.  One of the evidences that we are born again is that we love and belong to a local church.

Sometimes a person will refuse to join a church because they cannot find one that agrees with them on every issue—be careful, it may be that you are letting a doctrine of secondary importance cause you to disobey a primary issue of behaviour.  The writer to the Hebrews warns us not to give up meeting together (Hebrews 10:25).  Sometimes people struggle to settle into a church because the church doesn’t do things the way we want or they are not all our sort of people.  No one said that membership of a church is not easy. 

By the way, I don’t like church-shopping.  Churches are not a product and you are not a customer.  Don’t simply look for a church with the nicest people, the best music and the most dynamic speakers.  Pray about it.  Join an imperfect community that displays the marks of a true church.  Then fully commit yourselves to serving and encouraging.  Remember the words of the writer to the Hebrews: ‘let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other—all the more as you see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:24-35).

Remember that to be a spiritual member of a church is compared to being a member of a body, and that body is the body of Christ.  There are times when it is right to leave a church and join another one.  But remember that if you do this badly it will cause hurt—just like tearing a finger off a hand.

Conclusion

Remember how we began this talk.  A group of young adults decide to “do church” their way.  They appoint leadership, the commit themselves to teaching the Bible and the gospel ordinances, and they are evening willing to hold each other to account.  Have they created a true church?  I am not sure!  Their motives don’t seem to have been particularly God-honouring, loving or humble.  Who knows?  God is gracious.  Perhaps over time they will show themselves to be the real thing.

Aren’t we at such an exciting time in LBC.  We are asking God to use us to plant a true church.  That is why we need to be so clear about what a true church is.  God may choose to use us in creating something that is ultimately God-built.  We can be involved in God creating a body of Christ in this area.  We can be involved in something that God might choose to keep glowing for generations.  We can be there at the start—at a truly historical moment.

I want to finish by explaining the gospel in turns of church.  When our first parents rebelled against the loving rule of God people were alienated from Him and from each other.  God has always sought to restore to Himself a people.  In fact, in His great love God promises to put the lonely into a family (Psalm 68:6).  The church is a family belonging to God and we are brothers in sisters in Christ.  But God brought us into this family at a great cost to Himself.  As His Son took the punishment for our guilt He felt forsaken by His own Father.  Now when we are brought to Jesus, we are called to be a part of His body—a local church.  This is both our privilege and our opportunity.  Those who are born again are to love and serve the church remembering how precious it is to God.  Jesus is the groom and the church is His bride!  It is precious to Him, and it must be special to us.

Adopted by God

What does it mean to be adopted by God?

Russ Moore writes of the occasion when he and his wife adopted two boys from an orphanage in Russia.

“When Maria and I first walked into the orphanage, where we were led to the boys the Russian courts had picked out for us to adopt, we almost vomited in reaction to the stench and squalor of the place.  The boys were in cribs in the dark lying in their own waste.  Leaving them at the end of the day was painful, but leaving them the final day before going home to wait for the paperwork to go through was the hardest thing either of us had ever done.  Walking out of the room, to prepare for the plane ride home, Maria and I could hear Maxim calling out for us and falling down and convulsing in tears.

“When Maria and I, at long last, received the call that the legal process was over, and we returned to Russia to pick up our new sons, we found that their transition from orphanage to family was more difficult than we had supposed.  We dressed the boys in outfits our parents had brought for them.  My mother-in-law gathered some wild flowers growing between cracks in the pavement outside the orphanage.  We nodded our thanks to the orphanage personnel, and walked out into the sunlight, to the terror of the two boys.  They had never seen the sun.  They had never felt the wind.  They had never heard the sound of a car door shutting, or the sensation of being carried along at one hundred miles-an-hour down a Russian road.

“I noticed that they were shaking and reaching back to the orphanage in the distance.  I whispered to Sergei, ‘… that place is a pit.  If only you knew what is waiting for you:  home with mummy and a daddy who love you, grandparents and great-grandparents and cousins and playmates, and McDonalds’ Happy Meals.  But all they knew was the orphanage they had come from, and it was squalid.  They had no other reference point.

“We knew the boys had acclimatised to our home—that they trusted us—when they stopped hiding food in their high chairs.  They knew there would be another meal coming.  They wouldn’t have to fight over scraps.  This was the new norm …

But I still remember those little hands reaching for the orphanage, and I see myself there.”

Adoption is a beautiful thing.  At its best it originates in the in the heart of people who simply want to pour out love.  It transforms the lives of the broken and vulnerable.  It is a reality that is offered to each of us.  For God is an adopting God.  This idea of adoption gives us the deepest insight into the nature of God’s love.

Don’t just think of the orphanage, but think of the prison

The Bible presents a very bleak picture of what our lives were before God rescued us.  We were lost but Jesus found us.  We were slaves to sin and Christ has set us free.  We were without hope in the world and now we have a future.  We were condemned but our Saviour took our punishment upon his shoulders.  We were morally-bankrupt and our debt has been paid.  We were in the dark and the Son of God has brought us into the sunshine.  We were blinded by the devil but now we can see the beauty of the gospel.  We were children of wrath but now we are the beloved of our heavenly Father.

 

Don’t just think of Jesus coming to rescue us from the orphanage.  Think of him coming out into the wilderness, bursting into the courtroom, barging into the prison, paying our debt and placing his light giving-hands over our cloudy eyes.  Think of God sending his Son from his home in heaven to experience the rejection, mocking, torture and agony of the cross in order that we could become a part of his Father’s family.

Don’t just think of the lovely child but of the hostile rebel

When our friend Jenny Miller was talking about adopting her daughter, Nisha, she spoke of how there was an immediate bond between them.  She said that it seemed as if Nisha had chosen them as much as they had chosen Nisha.  They loved Nisha because she is so lovely and she responded with delight to their love.

However, the book of Romans tells us that when Christ came for us, we were hostile towards him (Romans 8:7).  John’s gospel tells us that when Jesus entered the world people refused to come into the light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19).  We did not seek him, we did not deserve him, and we did not want him (Romans 3:11-18).  But God would not leave us be. 

‘I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.  To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, “Here I am, here I am”’ (65:1).  Love initially travelled only one way.  Then the Holy Spirit broke our resistance.  God gave us a new heart with new affections.  We love him because he first loved us (1 John (1 John 4:19).  His kindness melted our hatred (Romans 2:4).  The great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, once said, ‘we moved not towards the Lord, but the Lord towards us … The offended God himself, in infinite compassion broke the silence and came forth to bless his enemies.’ 

Don’t just think of being free from guilt but think of being loved by the Father

God could have simply cancelled our debt and freed us from the prison of our guilt.  That would have been abundant mercy and marvellous grace.  He could have said, ‘I have done all this for you, now go on your way.’  But he wanted more.  The father didn’t want the prodigal to return as a hired man.  He wanted to have a son.  ‘God sent his Son … so that we might receive adoption as sons’ (Galatians 4:4-5).  J. I. Packer writes, ‘In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship—he establishes us as his children and heirs.  Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship.  To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater’.

Galatians tells us that in Christ there is neither male nor female because we are one in Christ (3:28).  So why does the Bible keep saying son rather than son or daughter?  In the ancient world the son was the privileged one.  It doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man for all the privileges of a son are yours.  Indeed, you are an heir with Christ (Galatians 4:7).   

This fact that we are an heir with Christ reveals a wonderful truth about our adoption.  In the ancient world the inheritance always passed to a male child.  If there was no son then a son was adapted so that inheritance could be passed on.  But take note of the fact that the Father did not need to adopt us, for he already has a Son.  He did not need to adopt anyone.  He did not need to adopt rebels like us.  He was not lonely.  His life was not empty.  This adoption speaks volumes about his gracious heart.

Conclusion

‘Unless you’re assured that God loves you, it’s pretty hard to do anything in the Christian life’ (John Miller).  Think of the security that comes when we realise that God is our adopting Father.  ‘For if while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life’ (Romans 5:10).  In other words, having gone to the effort of adopting us, he is determined that he will never let us go.  As J. I. Packer writes, ‘for only bad fathers throw their children out of the family, even under provocation; and God is not a bad father, but a good one’ (Packer).  Your security with him is rooted in his loving commitment to you.  In him, you have nothing to fear.  In him, you are secure.  ‘For I am convinced that neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

How to be right with God (Justification)

I am not very good at sharing my faith.  I often miss the opportunity to tell people what I believe.  I keep quiet for fear of offending people, which is not good.  But one day I was talking to a friend, and the topic of death came up.  So, I asked him, ‘what do you think happens when we die?’  He replied that he kind of likes the idea of reincarnation.

‘Really?’, I exclaimed.  ‘I don’t!  You see I fail my own standards of goodness, yet alone the standards of a holy God.  If the quality of my next life is determined on the basis of my goodness in this life, then I am coming back as a frog rather than a prince.’

What is your standard of goodness?  How good do you think you need to be to be good enough for God?  One politician said that if he found himself standing before God at the end of his life he would say, ‘Here I am.  I did my best.  Let me in.’  But is your best good enough?  Does anyone really do their best?  Can anyone actually say, ‘I never have done or thought anything I knew was wrong’?

What if God’s standard is perfection?  What if God had commanded us to love the him with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves?  What if God refuses to be indifferent about our sin?  What if he cannot turn a blind eye towards our personal wickedness?  The Apostle Paul declares, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23).  Solomon claimed, ‘there is no one who does not sin’ (1 Kings 8:46).  The Proverbs ask, ‘who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?’ (Proverbs 20:9).  We all have a big problem on our hands.

Thankfully Jesus is the solution to that problem.  Justification by grace through faith is an essential Christian doctrine that answers one of the most basic religious questions: ‘How can men and women be made right with God?’  The answer is that men and women can’t make themselves right with God, but God can make them right with himself.  

Is Justification Just? 

Justification is a courtroom verdict or legal declaration, but it means more than simply being declared not guilty.  It actually means that we are declared totally right before God.  But how can God treat guilty people as if they are not guilty?  Isn’t it corrupt to justify the wicked (Proverbs 17:15)?   The answer to these questions is that a ‘Great Exchange’ takes place.  God transfers (or imputes) my guilt onto Christ on the cross and transfers (or imputes) Christ’s life of love and obedience to me.  As one of my favourite verses puts it: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Corinthians 5:21).  

God does not turn a blind-eye to human wickedness.  He does not lower his demand for perfect obedience.  Instead his Son lives an incomparable life and receives an unimaginable punishment so that we can be right with him.  God is both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).  Through justification God can be perfectly holy and treat our sin with the revulsion that it deserves, yet lovingly draw people to himself without ever compromising that holiness.

Justification is a gift

The apostle Paul is very clear that justification is a gift (Romans 4:4).  That is why we talk about justification by grace.  The New Testament uses the term grace to refer to God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour.  Justification is God’s work not ours.  If justification was the result of anything that we do, then it wouldn’t truly be free.  It would be something that we—at least in part—earn or deserve.  That is why we must be clear that religious rituals like baptism or confirmation don’t justify us.  In the same way, we must never think that God accepts people on the basis of their being good or nice.

Remember my friend who said that he liked the idea of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is based on the idea of karma.  Karma is the opposite of grace.  Karma is getting what we deserve.  Grace involves Jesus taking what our sin deserves and us receiving the blessings his obedience deserves.  U2 wrote a song called ‘Grace’ in which the said, ‘Grace … takes the blame … covers the shame, removes the stain … It’s the name for a girl.  It’s also a though that changed the world.  She travels outside of karma.’

Justification is received through faith

If we are not justified through how we live or by a religious ritual like baptism, then how do we receive this gift?  The answer is that we are justified by grace through faith (Romans 5:1).  Faith is the means through which we receive grace.  But what is faith?  Faith simply means that we come to God admitting that we are morally bankrupt and stretching out a beggar’s hand for the gift of righteousness that Jesus has earned for us.  As one old hymn puts it: ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.’  Indeed, even this faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8), for it is God who wakes us up to our desperate need of mercy and shows the way that to Jesus.

Becoming a Christian should result in people being both humble and confident.  Those who have been justified have nothing to boast about (Ephesians 2:9).  ‘You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary’ (Jonathan Edwards).  Yet we are confident because if it is God who has justified us then who can condemn us (Romans 8:33-34)?  It would be unjust of God to punish Jesus for your sins and then punish you.  It would be unfair of God to give you Christ’s righteousness and yet treat you as a moral failure.  The person who has received the gift of justification cannot be condemned.  God does not want those he has justified to live lives that are characterised by a sense of regret, guilt or shame.

Conclusion: but what about obedience?

You might be reading this thinking, ‘if being made right with God has nothing to do with any good works or religious rituals on my part, then surely it doesn’t matter how I live?’  That’s a really good question.  That question actually shows that you are beginning to grasp how radical the Christian gospel is.  I want to finish by briefly explaining the relationship between justification and obedience to God.

Obedience to God is not the root of justification.  Obedience to God contributes nothing to your being accepted by God.  But, obedience to God is the fruit of justification.  In other words, experiencing God’s acceptance inevitable changes how we live.  When we experience this love it turns our world upside-down.  ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19).  We realise that Jesus commands are for his glory and our good. We are free to love him and so we desire to obey him (John 14:15).  When we fall, we seek his strength to get up and keep going.  When we fail him, we are grieved that we have let him down but thankful that he goes on forgiving us.  We live with the security that nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:39).

Justification by grace through faith has been called the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls.  It is the most remarkable and beautiful of truths.  ‘Justification is away beyond anything that a human court of justice ever realises.  It is putting the sinner in the condition before God as if he had never sinned at all.  It is giving him a standing in the merit of Jesus Christ of absolute innocency before God’ (A. C. Dixon).     

      

Loved by God (isaiah 53)

In Charles Dickens’ novel, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, two men love the same woman.  Charles gets her, and Sydney misses out.  But this story is set during the French Revolution, and Charles happens to be arrested.  It is the night before his execution, and Sydney happens to make his way to Charles’ cell. The two men look alike, and so Sydney has a plan.  ‘You have a family and children, so let me die in your place.’  Charles won’t have any of it.  No way.  So, Sydney knocks him out and has some men take him away.  He then dresses to look like Charles.

As it happens, a young woman who knew Charles was also in prison awaiting execution.  She seeks out Charles (who is now Sydney) and starts to reminisce with him.  She realises this is not Charles!  ‘Are you going to die for him?’  Sydney replies in a hushed tone, ‘Yes.  And for his family and children.’  The woman looks at him and asks, ‘Can I hold your hand, because if someone as brave and loving as you will hold my hand, I think I will be okay?’

Dicken’s has picked up on a gospel theme.  Love that is willing to die for another.  The amazing thing is that none other than the Son of God died that people might be brought into relationship with God.  Theologians call the ‘substitutionary atonement’.  To atone is to make up for a wrong, and it is substitutionary because Jesus does this in our place.  This is what is pictured in the passage before us.

The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is among the most remarkable words ever written.  These words were given to the prophet more than seven hundred years before Jesus’ death, yet anyone who reads the gospels can see that they are describing the crucifixion.  They are words that have offended some and comforted others.  They tell us that Jesus’ death was violent, voluntary and vicarious.

Jesus’ death was violent

These words are about a man referred to as God’s servant.  He is an ordinary man who ‘had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him’ (53:2).  His life was no bed of roses.  ‘He was despised and rejected by people, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ (53:3a).  He was a good man who ‘had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth’ (53:9b).  Yet this man was subjected to the most brutal death imaginable!

He was pierced and crushed.  He was ‘disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness’ (52:14).  Read the gospels and you will see Jesus being lashed with a whip that would have had bones or metal inserted into its tip.  His flesh would have been torn off his back.  He was so weakened by this ordeal that he could not carry the beam of his cross to the place of his execution.  Recently, I watched a friend recoil at the sight of blood after a teenager had been hit in the face by a ball; well Jesus became ‘as one from whom people hid their faces’ (53:3b).

The gospels inform us that the physical suffering was not the worst thing that Jesus had to endure.  God the Son, who had enjoyed eternal intimacy with the Father cried out, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’  (Mark 15:34).  It is no wonder that those who saw him considered ‘smitten by God and afflicted’ (53:4).

The was a voluntary death

In the same month that Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’ was released, Newsweek magazine filled its front cover with a close-up of actor Jim Caviezel as the bloodied and battered Christ, with the blaring headline below asking, 'Who really killed Jesus?'  Isaiah tells us that God did!  It was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief (53:10a).

People have objected to this.  They have thought it cruel, and unworthy of God.  But you must see how the servant co-operates.  ‘Like a lamb that is lead to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth’ (53:7b).  The servant goes to his death willingly and uncomplaining.  Read the gospels and you will see Jesus standing silent before the Jewish ruling council in fulfilment of these words (Mark 14:61).  Jesus could even say, ‘no-one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord’ (John 10:18).

The death was vicarious

But why would the Father crush his Son?  The answer lies in the fact that this was a vicarious death.  The word ‘vicarious’ refers to something that is done for another.  Jesus died for us!  He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities (53:5a). 

None of this makes sense if you think of yourself as essentially being a good person.  ‘Why would Jesus need to for my guilt?’, you might ask.  ‘My guilt is no big deal!’, you protest.  The Bible has a more sobering verdict.  ‘We all like sheep have gone astray.  Each one turned to his own way’ (53:6a).  We have rebelled against our creator.  We have thrown off his loving rule.  We offend his perfect holiness.  We have been unthankful and profane.  We deserve to be separated from him forever.  Justice demands that we be punished for our sin.

But God has always reached out to sinful people.  In the Old Testament there was a series of animal sacrifices.  These sacrifices taught the people that our sin deserves death, and that God was willing to have a substitute die in our place.  These sacrifices pointed ahead to the servant, who is our guilt offering (53:10).  ‘The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (53:6b).  Jesus dies for my guilt so that I, the guilty one, can be made right with Holy God.

This little series of talks is entitled ‘who am I?’  If you are trusting your life to Jesus, the answer is that you are someone the Father loved so much that he gave his Son for you.  ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).  ‘The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).  Scottish theologian, Sinclair Ferguson, writes, 'When we think of Christ dying on the cross, we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to Himself.  We should almost think that God loved us more than He loves His son.  We cannot measure His love by any other standard. He is saying to us, “I love you this much.” …  God has done something on the cross which we could never do for ourselves.  But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross.  He persuades us that He loves us.'

This portion of Scripture actually ends with a note of victory.  Death is not the servants end.  His days are prolonged (53:10).  Knowledge of him makes people righteous (53:11).  He is lifted up and exalted (52:13).  The dying Christ was raised from the dead, ascended to heaven, is seated by the right hand of the Father, intercedes for his people, and will return in glory!  

Conclusion

A number of years ago, a famous preacher by the name of Billy Graham was being interviewed on Australian radio.  He was asked, ‘Mister Graham, how confident are you of going to heaven?’  There was absolutely no hesitation in his answer.  ‘I have absolutely no doubts.  I am completely confident that I have a place waiting for me in heaven.’

The telephone switchboard started to light up as people rang in to give out.  Caller after caller expressed outrage at the arrogance of a man who could be so sure that he was right with God.  But those who knew Billy Graham would tell you that he was not an arrogant man.  Billy Graham did not believe that he was going to heaven because he was good enough for God.  He believed he was going to heaven because his best friend, Jesus Christ, had paid the price for him to go.

What does the idea of substitutionary atonement do for you?

Are you like playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who once was listening to a talk about Jesus dying people’s sins and angerly interrupted, ‘I’ll pay for my own sins.’  Those who reject God’s offer of forgiveness and life will one day pay for their own sins.  They will have their way when Jesus comes back as their judge!

Or are you like Billy Graham, humbled, thankful and confident?  Humbled by the fact that my sin is so serious that nothing short of the death of Jesus can make me right with God.  Thankful that this is exactly what God has done for me in love.  Confident because Christ’s death is of an infinitely value that can make the most wretch of us right with God!

Prayer:

Father, these words confront me with an uncomfortable truth.  I am not okay without you.  Without you I am lost and condemned.  But you offer me the death of your Son.  In Him I can be counted righteous and free.  Humble me to see my need.  Give me the faith to trust in you.  Fill me with gratitude for you limitless love.  Amen.

What does it mean to be born again? (John 3:1-21)

Two questions.  First question: ‘are you sure that you have eternal life?’  Second question: ‘if you died, and God said to you, “why should I let you into my heaven?”, what would you say?’  Take a moment and think how you would answer each of these.

In this sermon we are looking at the question of what it means to be born again.  It does not matter whether you call yourself a ‘born again’ Christian or not, but it does matter that you have been born again.  You aren’t a Christian if you are not born again.

Becoming a Christian involves being born again (1-3)

The Pharisees were a religious movement that looked at the religion of their day and believed that it was weak.  They would not only seek to obey the rules, they would add to the rules.

The Pharisees are generally portrayed in a negative light in the gospels.  They try to trick Jesus.  Despite Jesus’ obvious goodness, they accuse him of evil.  Ultimately, they seek to have Jesus killed.

But Nicodemus comes across as a different kind of Pharisee.  He calls Jesus ‘rabbi’ (‘teacher’), although Jesus had not undergone formal training.  He is insightful, recognising that Jesus comes from God.  He is sincere.  He is respected, being called ‘Israel’s teacher’, and is a member of the Jewish ruling council.  He would have been a man of prayer.  He would have regularly been at meetings of worship.  Yet Jesus tells him, ’truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’     

What does it mean to see the kingdom of God?  Well, the Jews were waiting for God’s promised king.  Jesus is that king.  To see his kingdom involves being one of his people.  We might say that is what it really means to be a Christian.  What Jesus says is shocking!  A religious Jew would have expected to be one of the king’s people.  Jesus say only those who are born again are.

Can you see that your background, your baptism, your first communion, your reputation, your prayers or your church attendance don’t make you right with God?  Nicodemus was religious and devote.  Yet Jesus says, ‘truly, truly I say to you, unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God’ (3).

Being born again is a work of God (4-8)

It is the most important thing in the world to know what it means to be born again.  Nicodemus doesn’t have a clue what it means.  He thinks that Jesus is speaking about physical birth.  ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  Surely, he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born?’ (4).  

Jesus explains, ‘truly, truly I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit’ (5).  These words might seem confusing to us, but Nicodemus should have known what they mean.  You see Nicodemus was an expert on what we call the Old Testament.

In the book of Ezekiel God declares that a time is coming when, ‘I will sprinkle clean water and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws’ (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

Water is a picture of cleansing.  God promises to wash away all your sin.  When you are born again the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in your heart.  The Holy Spirit changes you from the inside out.  He causes you to desire to follow God and he enables you to live a life pleasing to God.  Being born again involves knowing God’s forgiveness and transformation.

A business man went to his pastor and said, ‘my wife is glad I have become a Christian.  My kids are glad.’  They saw the change that Jesus made in his life and they were impressed.  Forgiveness and change are the results of being born again.

A girl was always in trouble at school.  Her name was always being brought up at staff meetings.  But over the holidays she attended a Christian camp, where she was a handful for the leaders.  Yet she heard the good news about Jesus and it impacted her.  When she returned to school her name came up in the staff meeting.  However, this time the principle exclaimed, ‘what has happened to that girl?’  Forgiveness and transformation!        

Before we move on to see the role of the cross in all this, I want you to see the words the Spirit gives birth to spirit (6).  It is saying that just as we contributed nothing towards our physical birth, neither did we contribute to our spiritual birth.  We didn’t make our mother pregnant.  We didn’t produce our own food in the womb.  We didn’t do all the pushing and shoving of labour.  We were born by the efforts of another.  Similarly, it is the Holy Spirit who shows people that they are dead in rebellion and sin, who tells them that Jesus has taken the punishment for their sin, and who raises us from spiritual death.  If you are born again then you should be among the most grateful people in the world.

Being born again is a result of what Jesus did on the cross (9-15)

Nicodemus still doesn’t understand. ‘How can this be?’ (9). 

‘You’re Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand these things’ (10).  ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life’ (14).  This is a reference to our Old Testament reading (Numbers 21:4-9).

In the reading from Numbers, the people were dying as judgement for their rebellion against God.  Yet God graciously gave Moses a rescue plan.  All the people needed to do was look at the bronze snake that Moses lifted up and they would be healed.  That bronze snake pictured Jesus being lifted up on the cross.  We are dying in our sins but look to the Saviour.  Put your trust in him.  He died for people’s guilt.  He is the rescue plan we need.  He is the only way to we can have eternal life.

So why not choose life? (16-21)

Then comes what one of the most famous verses in the Bible.  ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (16).   The amazing thing about this verse is that in John’s writings the term ‘world’ doesn’t mean the planet or even people in general.  For John ‘the world’ specifically refers to society in rebellion against God.  God sent his Son for rebellious people like us who had done nothing to deserve his favour.  

‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God’ (18).  You are presented with a stark choice!  Jesus spoke plainly about the righteous and eternal judgement of hell.  You are invited to come to Jesus for life or you will spend eternity apart from him and all that is good.

So why aren’t people flocking to Jesus to experience forgiveness and transformation?  ‘This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed’ (19-20).  By nature, we are rebels who don’t want to face the reality of our guilt.  We need to be asking God to change people’s hearts.  We should be thankful for the grace that ‘taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved’ (John Newton, ‘Amazing Grace’).   ‘But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be seen clearly that his works have been carried out in God’ (21).

Conclusion

I began by asking you two questions.  Let’s take them in turn.

‘Are you sure that you have eternal life?’  You can be sure!  ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.’  Later in this gospel, Jesus will promise that he will not turn away anyone who comes to him (6:37)..  There is nothing in your life that he is not willing to forgive if you will bring your life to him.

‘If you died and God said to you, “why should I let you into my heaven?”  What would you say?’  Can you see that any answer that depends on you is the wrong answer?  ‘God, you should accept me because I am a nice person, because I pray, because I was baptised, because I go to church, because I have never been in trouble with the law.’  All the wrong answers!  Nicodemus was a nice, respected, religious, man and Jesus said, ‘you must be born again.’

If you are not sure that you are right with God, why don’t you pray with me?

‘Lord God, I offer no excuse for all the wrong that I have done.  I realise that there is a problem with my heart.  But I now see that you are a God who delights to forgive and want people to experience your mercy.  Please forgive me for trying to justify myself.  Please make me sincere as I ask you to take my past, present and future sin.  Please give me a heart that longs to follow you.  Please let me not be ashamed to tell people that I am born again.  Thank you. Amen.’