Growing in Grace

Growing in Grace

by:

Rev. Stan Moody

2 Peter 3:8-18

We can read with wonder the writings of the fisherman Peter, who was, as a disciple, somewhat of a flea on the hind end of progress. It was Peter who could be expected not to get the significance of what the Master had to say. It was Peter who wanted to be a general in charge of the New Kingdom.

It was Peter who always was comparing himself to the rest of the Apostles, making certain that he was getting fairly treated and not unfairly imposed upon. And it was Peter who became so self-absorbed that he found it necessary to deny his Lord 3 times at the trial rather than take the chance of suffering the same fate.

Despite Peter’s good heart and good intentions, he had to be brought up short when it came to Jewish customs. The sheets with animals on them that were lowered from heaven in a vision were intended to impress upon him that those dietary rules were no longer applicable – that Israel’s tent had been enlarged, and room had to be made for the Gentiles. “Peter,” the voice from heaven said. “Rise up and eat. Do not call anything unclean that God has called clean!”

When you read the epistles of Peter, you discover an entirely new person. This 3^rd chapter of 2 Peter is as forward-looking as it gets in the Bible. He is writing to the church at large – particularly to those Jewish Christians who have been driven out of Jerusalem and are scattered throughout Asia Minor. He is warning them to hold fast to the faith that they have learned from the Apostolic teaching in Jerusalem. It was critical that Jewish Christians not fall victim to false teachers who would swoop into the vacuum left by the about-to-be-martyred Apostles.

It is clear from Peter’s letter that if you were not growing in grace, you would likely be taken in by false teachers. Laziness in matters of faith and growth in Christ would lead to laziness of discretion. The defense against charlatan teachers, apparently, is to focus on Jesus and to increase our knowledge of Him.

You will remember that James defined pure and undefiled religion as visiting the fatherless and widows in their distress and keeping oneself from being polluted by the world. The path to that simple walk is nothing less than growing in the knowledge of Christ.

Imagine a world in which the Christian church followed that simple formula.

I heard a radio ad for the investment-banking house, Smith-Barney, a few weeks back. It’s slogan is this: “Smith Barney – Where Wealth Works.” The ad featured a whining young lady wringing her hands about Mom and Dad needing help and how she couldn’t believe that these same people who had traveled all over the world and were once so vital were now forgetting things and not rational. The young lady said, “Mom keeps asking me, ‘When are you going to come visit?’” “I can’t just get up and go there,” she says.

Smith Barney has the answer. They can help you prepare for your Mom and Dad’s exit without interrupting yours! Imagine being surprised at old age and its infirmities! Imagine being unprepared! Imagine, however, missing out on one of the most gratifying, rewarding experiences of your life. Smith Barney leads us to one more step away from growth as individuals, as a community and as a nation.

That is the very American Dream so worshipped by the Christian Right today – prosperity, power and success.

Peter desperately tries to persuade these Jewish Christians not to become so flabby in their relationship with Christ that they will begin to listen to Smith Barney and stop practicing religion that is pure and undefiled. In order to do that, they will need to stay engaged with Christ. Otherwise, they are fodder for any game in town. They will hire pastors to scratch their itching ears. The end result for which Peter is reaching is not theology or doctrine; it is love!

Peter reminds us that we have everything we need for life and godliness. He begins his letter with, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” The key to grace and peace is knowledge; the key to grace and peace in abundance is more knowledge.

Knowledge does not come through osmosis. It requires effort: “Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Peter seems to be talking here about a sort of chain reaction – a forward-motion that begins with saving faith and on through a whole bunch of disciplines, ending in love. That is the way to stay effective and productive as a Christian. The way to be ineffective and unproductive is to be undisciplined and flabby in working out our own salvation with fear and trembling – kicking back and hoping for the best. In 2 Peter 2:9, he tells us that once flabbiness sets in, we forget that we have been cleansed from our past sins and begin to focus on the sins of others. At that point, we hire pastors to us feel better rather than preach the Gospel.

What is wrong with the church today in America, if you go by Peter’s thinking, is not that pastors are leading people down the primrose path. It is that people want cheap grace and easy believism. They hire these false teachers because that is what they want. And they want it because they have not grown in grace. They have not grown in grace because they have not bothered to get to know Christ. So they set up other Christs to fill in the gaps.

It is not enough to consider yourself as called of God – one of the elect. It is not enough to be merely saved. I often say that out of the last century of altar calls, we have too many saved people and not enough disciples. Repeating the Sinner’s Prayer is not enough, Peter tells us in Chapter 1, v. 10: “Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. If you make this effort to grow in the knowledge of God and Christ, you will “never fail.” Furthermore, they will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Peter is preaching to our generation, is he not? He reminds us that we did not come to Christ because of cleverly invented schemes or stories. We have the written record! The Apostles were eyewitnesses to the majesty of Christ. They heard the voice of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” They know that this Jesus is the Messiah promised by the word of the prophets. They have been there; they have studied; they have increased their knowledge of this Christ, and they have therefore grown in grace. Peter wants the same for us – to make our election sure.

We talked last week about the HS as a wind that blows from where, we do not know, and where it is going, we do not know. We considered that the way to get the most out of this Christian life is to bob and weave with the Spirit – to hold our long-range planning loosely. Peter picks up this theme when he talks about paying attention to where we are going and how we are growing until “the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” The Sinner’s Prayer is not enough to make our election sure. There is a way and a point along that way when the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. It reminds me of that old saw, “Light dawns over Marblehead.”

False preachers and teachers will introduce destructive heresies, and we won’t know the difference because we have not cared to know the difference. “In their greed,” he tells us, “these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.”

Does that not hit us where we live today? We have given over our teaching to televangelists of every stripe. Because getting to know Christ takes work, we let these false teachers lead us into excitement, the most current of which is that we must prepare the Middle East for Armageddon. We must invade Iran so Jesus will come back.

That all comes from losing sight of our own salvation – our own deliverance from sin. We begin to look at the sin of others and devise ways of carrying out God’s plan in human history – anything but growing in the knowledge of Him. Sloppy discipleship is all about that – losing sight of our own deliverance from sin because it is so far back in our experience and, sadly, may be one of the only experiences we have had with Christ. We fail to make our calling and election sure.

In Chapter 3, Peter sees the Christian life as requiring stimulation into wholesome thinking. If things don’t seem to change much from generation to generation, it is not because the Lord is slow concerning His promises. It is because He is merciful and patient with us, not willing that any should perish, but that all His elect should come to repentance.

While there is a great deal of excitement in the various scenarios of Christ’s coming and the fate of the Jews in Jerusalem, the bottom line, Peter reminds us, is that nothing is going to happen until the last of God’s elect comes to repentance. We cannot, therefore, trigger the Second Coming of Christ. It is on a timetable that is known only to God because God alone knows the ones that He has chosen for life.

What we know for certain is that this old earth is bound for destruction. Maybe it will happen tomorrow; maybe 30,000 years from now. What kind of people must we be in the face of that kind of uncertainty? “You ought to lead holy and godly lives, as you look forward to the day of God and ‘hasten toward,’ the KJ tells us, “its coming.” There is a necessity of forward motion. Leading holy and godly lives requires discipline; hastening toward His coming requires movement toward tomorrow.

We then have Peter’s glorious sign-off at the end: “Be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position (as brothers and sisters in Christ). But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be glory both now and forever, Amen!”

The alternative, then, to falling from your secure position of being sure of your calling and election is to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. That’s the condition and the antidote to the condition. It’s that simple.

The way to stand is to grow! That way to be sure is to move forward! Once the heavenly motion stops, we begin to look for other ways to entertain ourselves within the church.

The love of God towards His people cannot be improved. God’s grace is not there in dribs and drabs. We become complete – perfect in Jesus Christ the moment we profess faith in Him.

But there is a vast difference between grace growing and our growing in grace. Amazing Grace is there for us; it is available to us 24/7. We cannot grow more of it. Neither age, not years spent following Christ, nor intelligence nor knowledge of the Bible can improve on grace. Neither can any of those things or all of them together help us grow in grace until we begin to take on the mission of advancing our knowledge of God and Christ. The words of the Bible are futile unless we hear the Word of the Bible.

As we get to know Christ, we grow in grace. It is that simple. That is the mission of our Christian life, and that ought to be the mission of the church – to help us grow in the grace that is already there by increasing our knowledge of Jesus.

If you want to break out into the morning sun of your faith, that is the only way to have that happen. Because we may feel holy and righteous from time to time has nothing to do with our growth. Our growth comes from getting to know Jesus – increasing in the knowledge of Christ. Conversely, because the feeling of joy may be gone from time to time does not mean we are not growing in grace, so long as we are increasing in our knowledge of Jesus.

I relayed to you last week about John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress. That classic book was written in prison because Bunyan refused to renounce his faith in Christ to the King of England. He spent 12 years in prison for that. Depressed? No doubt. But what better place to grow in the knowledge of Jesus then where and when you are incapable of filling your life with busyness? What a treasure came from that experience!

We are in Christ, not by feelings, but by faith. Feelings will get out of the equation the moment we decide that our mission in life is to know Christ and to know Him better. The test for faith and grace is not when things are going well, but when things are in the dumper. That’s when we discover that we do or do not really know Jesus.

I have a friend with whom I have been working for the past several months. He is a committed Christian, and I have enjoyed many long talks with him. But he also is on the brink of financial disaster. Barbara and I should like to help him and his family, but 5 years of Barbara being off the payroll and funding the ASAA have taken their toll, and we are not at the moment in a position to help much. Maybe that’s a good thing. He has witnessed to my spirit in believing that God is in charge even in these dark times for them.

He has a tune that is in his head all the time, and he will sometimes drive me crazy with his whistling. The tune is called, “I am sure that He loves even me," and it goes something like this:

When I think of my Savior’s great love,
In coming from Heaven above,
To die on a tree for a sinner like me,
I am sure that He loves even me.
I am sure the He loves even me!
I am sure that He loves even me!
For His love is so sweet,
Makes my joy so complete,
When I think how He loves even me.

“Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things (add to your faith goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love and possess them in increasing measure), you will never fail."

Are we ready for that kind of discipleship in our own lives and in the life of our church?

Going Where the Wind Blows

“Where the Wind Blows”

by:
Rev. Stan Moody

Isaiah 52:13-53:6
John 3:1-12

This morning, I intend to explore with you some of the mysteries of the Third Person of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit. I do that because, as you are well aware, I have the conviction that revival is about to come to America but not in the places assumed by the church. I believe that revival will come to the Church of Jesus Christ first, and then outward from the church to the world in which we live.

I believe these things because of my sense that the confessing church in America has lost sight of its first love – Jesus Christ. It has replaced the love of Jesus with love of country, love of the law, love of doctrine, love of power and love of money.

I am reminded of 15 years ago, when Pastor Wilson Hickham left his church, Calvary Temple in Waterville, and decided to go into the low power TV business. His rationale was that in order to reach more people for the Gospel, he needed to have more money and power than was available in the church. The way he expressed it was this: “The drug dealers and organized crime have all the money. God wants us to get ahold of that money so that we can spread the Gospel through television.”

The concept intrigued me so much that I stayed in contact with Wilson when he became so broke that he moved in with one of his kids in MA, and his wife was waiting on tables at Howard Johnson’s. I stayed in contact with him when he had his first heart attack. What I discovered about Wilson most recently came from an unexpected source – an interview by Michael Heath, Executive Director of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

God has blessed Wilson in unexpected ways, it seems – has turned his desire for accumulating money to one of spending money he doesn’t have to help others in need. In his case, he has developed a ministry to widows and orphans in Rwanda. As you are aware, some 10M people have been slaughtered there since 1994, and Wilson has created a bank to help the widows of those slaughtered to create small businesses so they can feed their families.

The wind bloweth where it will. As we believers scheme and dream, remaining open to the Spirit of God will cause us to find ourselves in places we never could have dreamed possible.

Last week, I received a telephone call from a reporter at the Press Herald. She was looking for some information to write another article bashing the Christian Civic League. After 45 minutes or so of talking with her, I told her that I hoped the CL would not die – that its mission was a good one and an important one, even though I firmly believe that they are wrong. My reasoning was that “iron sharpens iron” – that the CL has awakened the sleeping giant of faith, and that things are happening within evangelical circles that would never have happened had the Christian Right not departed from the core doctrines of the faith.

I sent to her that little essay that some of you received this week concerning the marriage bill that died in Committee in Augusta. The line that I liked the best was the line, “They are killing two gods with one prayer.” It is only when another Christian group departs from the faith that the Spirit moves on the hearts of others to examine what they really believe. There is nothing that has moved this ministry more than my search for truth in the face of my own sin and what I call the apostasy of the Christian Right.

An editorial writer for the Washington Post nailed the emerging evangelical rebellion against the Christian Right this past week. The piece was called, “Christians Who Won’t Toe the Line.” As you may know, James Dobson and others tried to muzzle the Association of Evangelicals from moving on to such incidentals as poverty and conservation because it would detract from key wedge issues of abortion and homosexuality. The Association told them, in essence, to get lost.

Calling on Evangelicals to return to being people who are known for our love and care for our fellow human beings, Rich Cizik, NAE’s VP for Governmental Affairs, said this: “If you put politics first and make it primary, I believe that is a tragic and fateful choice.”

I was pleased to see Cizik’s statement on ecology: “Tell the parents who have children who are mentally disabled from mercury poisoning – tell them that the environment is not a sanctity of life issue.”

For those of you who should like to read the editorial, you can find it on one of my blog sites, www.mcchurch.blogspot.com.

In the last week in April, I will be a speaker at a conference in Chicago put on by the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism, of which I am a member of the Board of Advisors. Bringing the Battle of Armageddon to the Mideast is the political agenda of a Christian Right that refuses to allow the Spirit of God to move where it will but insists on directing its movement – tired of waiting for God and taking matters into their own hands.

Evangelist John Hagee has become prominent in the Christian Zionist movement and is using his influence to push the Bush administration and a number of legislators to invade Iran because Iran is supposed to be one of the major players at Armageddon. He claims that he represents the beliefs of some 100M Evangelicals and sympathizers in America.

God will raise up from within His church voices all over America who will be willing to say, “Enough, already!” But that will only come when the Church of Jesus Christ is struck dumb by the HS of God. Revival is not for America; revival is for God’s church so that it may reach America for Christ. The result will be very painful. The Christian Right, which has displayed a willingness to kill and savage the reputation of others to advance their agenda, will not give up easily. Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and Hagee have empires and billions of dollars at stake. “Judgment, however, begins in the house of God.”

If the HS truly is like the wind that blows where it will, we can assume that, even though the Church of Jesus Christ may not be reaching America for Christ, the Spirit of God is reaching America for Christ – one soul at a time. The question comes down to whether or not the confessing church wants to be part of God’s unfolding plan of redemption.

If you read the 52^nd and 53^rd chapter of Isaiah carefully, you will realize that God stripped every argument that would suggest that Jesus came from money or privilege. He was not even tall and good-looking – there was nothing in His appearance or personality that would make Him a charismatic leader.

He was born into poverty, came from the despised region of Galilee, gathered around Himself the most common and unlikely of followers, was not educated in Judaism (although He created it), spent time talking with women and pagans, owned no property and condemned hypocrisy. No wonder the establishment was willing to take the chance to kill Him – there was nothing about Him that would persuade anyone of any messianic qualities. This total lack of any human credibility was done in order that God through the HS might have all the glory and not leave a thing to human marketing skills and ingenuity.

It was done this way, I would suggest, for such a time as ours, when fame and fortune have elevated church leadership to almost rock-star status. John the Baptist, you will remember, had this to say about Jesus: “I must decrease, and He must increase.” Today, evangelical leadership has decreased the person and work of Jesus Christ by insisting that Judaism is God’s preferred method of salvation. Jesus, then, is nothing more than a stopgap measure until the Jews get it right.

In His dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus likens being born again to a wind that blows where it will. You can’t control the wind; you don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going; likewise, you can’t dictate to or control the Spirit of God. The wind and the Spirit of God blow where they please – not where we please them to blow.

Nicodemus does not understand. Jesus chides him because as Israel’s teacher, he ought to understand these things He is trying to explain in earthly terms. Jesus is the living word of God. Nicodemus is too engrossed in the words to understand the word! Like many of today’s Christians, Nicodemus knows the Bible, but he doesn’t know the God of the Bible.

If we have said it once, we have said it 1,000 times from this pulpit: “The Bible is not a book of rules. The Bible is the revelation of God.” You can know the Bible and not know God. That’s how so many people get bound up with the political wedge issues instead of the full revelation of God. They are surprised by sin because it says right here that you should not sin. They have forgotten that God is not about condemning sinful creatures. If He were, none of us would escape. God is about redeeming sinful creatures.

There have been at least three major Great Awakenings in America – the first one in the early 18^th century. The Second Great Awakening was in the early 19^th century and the 3^rd was in the late 19^th century. You may be more familiar with the 3^rd Great Awakening that gave rise to such famous evangelists as Chares Finney, D. L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon in London and many others.

What was characteristic of these awakenings was that they were spontaneous and unexpected. God, you see, was the leader of these movements. They began with a desire on the part of God’s people to pray. We are told that in the City of Philadelphia, during the 3^rd Great Awakening, businessmen would break for prayer at noon every day of the week. Thousands could be seen in one place at noon on any day.

Prayer meetings were springing up everywhere. There are accounts of sinners attending and rising up to request prayer for their own souls. A church that was asleep suddenly came awake, and the outreach was incredible throughout the world.

This phenomenon is known as the outpouring of the HS. It doesn’t happen often, and that is a good thing, because we wouldn’t be able to take very much of it. To be confronted with our own sin and the depth of God’s grace toward us is too much for the Christian to bear for too long.

There is a method to the action of the HS. The first step in that method is awakening sinners and carnal or nominal Christians to the power that we already possess but can’t seem to exercise. The second is to awaken new powers of reason that we never before had. It is not the role of the HS to give us reason. We already have that. What the HS does is to set our reason on a higher plane so that we might be able to properly discern between good and evil in our own lives and in the life of the church.

You can have all the business or political instincts in the world, but your understanding about spiritual things can be dark. The role of the HS is to remodel the mind so that those instincts make eternal sense.

The HS also gives us new powers to discern what God has done with us and is doing with us. As all of us do from time to time, I was thinking about those times when I permitted myself to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. It takes a certain amount of sneakiness and craftiness to get what you want in the sin department, doesn’t it? I was putting myself back there in one situation after another and was quite surprised to discover that I didn’t know how I could move from knowing that sin was possible to actually engaging in it.

It isn’t that the sin is not tempting. It is. It is just that the ability to go from the temptation to the act is a much wider chasm than it used to be. I am not suggesting for a minute that I am sinless – far from it. What I am suggesting is that it becomes more difficult, as the HS reforms the mind, for the Christian to move from the thought to the act.

This could be anything – sex, money, pride, reaction, retribution, whatever. What the HS does for the believer is to make the jump from the thought to the act more difficult or more unlikely with time.

If this changing of our attitudes and our appetites did not happen, none of us would ever get into Heaven. That is what makes the agenda of the Christian Right so puzzling. They seem to have the attitudes and appetites of the very world that they condemn, which suggests that there is little going on inside that would keep the wheels in motion. I often ask myself how any could be in ministry for their entire lives and still be playing politics with God’s holy word.

It is the work of the HS within us to keep the wheels in motion toward another way of looking at things. He takes away the defilement of our natures that puts our machine out of order. This is necessary so that we do not nail down any dogma but remain in a position of being able to be surprised by the Spirit. Can you be surprised by the Spirit if you are protecting a billion $ evangelical ministry? How about even a $100,000 ministry? At what point does the running of a religious empire quench the power of the HS to open our hearts and minds to new vistas of God’s grace and love?

I have noticed something in our little church here. What I have noticed is that a particular sermon may be helpful for someone who manages not to be here on the Sunday it is delivered. I have noticed that when I think I have a winner of a sermon, that is when the attendance is way down. I have noticed that often when I think a sermon is a dud, that is when one of you will say to me, “That sermon really touched me this morning.”

What that tells me is that the HS is blowing like the wind in here as well, and that the best sermon in the world is useless unless the Spirit acts on the hearer. The pastor, or the Bible, or a particular hymn is the instrument. The HS, however, is the messenger. The moment we begin elevating the pastor, the Bible or a hymn as the messenger, we get off the track.

We began this message this morning with the thought that we may be headed for another Great Awakening. Because the church of Jesus Christ has drifted so far from the Gospel, I can see no possibility for the reign of truth unless we experience a new movement of the HS.

But we here at the NMMH Church do not have to wait for a Great Awakening. I remember a series of revival songs we used to sing when I was a kid. They began with this: “Lord send a revival; Lord send a revival; Lord send a revival, and let it begin in me…In my heart; in my heart, send a great revival. Teach me how to watch and pray, and to read my Bible.”

That same HS who blows into history from time to time with a Great Awakening stirs within each of God’s people, encouraging us to watch and pray and desiring to give us the power to stand clear of temptation. What it means to quench the Spirit of God is to stifle that urging within us.

Just think what could happen in the NMMH Church if the Spirit of God were free to move in our midst. Is that too much to ask or desire?

"Did I Get it Right?"

Isaiah 46
Matthew 11:25-30

The history of Israel as a nation centers on its first 3 kings – Saul, David and Solomon, the son of Bathsheba. The high water mark of the people of God was the Davidic kingdom, or the reign of King David.

The Bible devotes an enormous amount of ink to the history of these 3 kings, but the truth is that their entire reign covered a period of only about 3 generations – less than 100 years.

It is a touch of irony that Israel remained a theocracy under the sovereign rule of God for about 1,000 years and fell apart after less than 100 years under a monarchy, or a formal government.

What is even more ironic is that Joshua may have led the people of Israel into Canaan as late as 1240 BC. If that is so, that would allow for only 190 years from the time Israel entered the Promised Land until the reign of King Saul in 1050 BC.

You might compare that with the time between when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, in 1620, to the founding of our national government in 1796 – a period of 176 years.

As a theocracy, Israel was a failure; as a monarchy, it fared even worse.

As a theocracy, the faith of the Puritans died with the first generation and gave rise to such corruption as the Salem Witch Trials. It was a failure. As a nation, the United States, arguably the most powerful nation on earth, is a little over 200 years old and appears to be in decline. One could argue that the 50/50 political division in which we seem to be stuck at the moment is analogous to the divided kingdom of Israel.

The northern 10 tribes of Israel finally fell to the Assyrans in 724 BC, and its people were deported. You have heard of the “lost tribes of Israel.” Those are the 10 tribes that were dispersed to the extent that they lost their national identity. That was around 325 years after the establishment of the monarchy and 200 years after the death of King Solomon.

In 701 BC, 224 years after the death of Solomon, Assyria invaded the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Benjamin. They took 46 fortified cities, carrying off all of its people, leaving only Jerusalem. Jerusalem was surrounded. In 597 BC, Jerusalem fell to Babylon. The city was plundered and destroyed, and the people were carried off into captivity in ancient Iraq. God commissioned King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to carry off His people so that He could preserve a remnant for Himself through a period of exile and suffering.

From the time the remnant returned to the City of Jerusalem and began re-building the wall to the time of Christ was about 525 years. During that time, while Israel never again returned to idol worship, it was surrounded by world conquerors – the Babylonian, Persian and Greek empires. Antiochus Epiphanes, the King of Syria, attacked Jerusalem in 165 BC on the Sabbath when he knew the orthodox Jews would not fight. The city walls were destroyed, large numbers of people were slaughtered, and an edict was issued that Greek deities were to be worshipped by all.

A bearded likeness of Antiochus, purported to be Jupiter, was erected on the Temple altar. This is referred to as Daniel’s prophecy of the “abomination of desolation.” Around 130 BC, the Roman general Pompey took Jerusalem after a 3-mo siege. 12,000 Jews were slaughtered.

It was under Roman rule that the Messiah came to Israel around 4 BC.

The passage of Scripture from Isaiah 42 was a prophecy to a people in captivity. They had been in captivity for 70 years. Those who remained faithful were the remnant God set aside for His glory. Others in captivity caved in to the gods of Babylon. Israel was to return to its homeland under the good graces of Cyrus the Great, the conquering monarch of Persia, ancient Iran.

The Prophet Isaiah was born in Jerusalem about 760 BC. He was called of God to preach in 742 BC. The 42^nd Chapter that we read this morning is a prophecy concerning Cyrus, the Persian king from the east, liberating the Jews from Babylon – encouraging them to go back home. It also is a warning against idolatry.

I had the privilege recently of attending my uncle’s funeral in Bethel, ME. I say “privilege” because it is always a privilege to say “goodbye” to someone you know has loved and served the Lord all his life. I have to say that I was very impressed by the quality of the sermon preached by the pastor of the Bethel Alliance Church.

The pastor read from this very 46^th chapter of Isaiah in reference to the last days of my uncle’s life at the Veteran’s Home (he had Alzheimer’s disease). What Uncle Ralph kept asking in those last days was, “Did I do it right?” “Did I do it right?”

One of my cousins described those days as being a time of the memories “sloughing off,” leaving behind the real person. Uncle Ralph was a kind, quiet, courteous, helpful person all his life. That is the way he died – even when he failed to recognize members of his family.

“Did I get it right?” “Get what right?” we might ask. Well, at that stage there is little left but reflection. The answer is, “Yes, Ralph, you got it right, not because you did it right, but because you trusted Jesus as Lord.” Isaiah wants us to understand that.

God is using the idolatry of Babylon as an object lesson for His people. Their gods had become so cumbersome – so burdensome – that they were slowing them down in the same way our lavish lifestyles are slowing us down. They could not go into battle without their gods. They were defeated by the Persians; the captured people and their idols became spoils of war.

Bel was the chief deity of Babylon. He was a deified prince. Nebo was a deified prophet, and, guess what – the god of science and learning. I suppose our Nebo might be Darwin or John Dewey. Certainly, we seem to be bowed down by the weight of those two while we are carried off into captivity to humanism.

When Cyrus takes Babylon, down go those idols. Up go the Persian idols in their place (sort of like the Republican and Democratic regimes in our country, is it not?). Get rid of their gods and put up our own gods.

These idols were made of gold. The symbol is riveting. Here is an idolatrous nation, believing in the power of their gods, being led into exile in chains, while their impotent gods were trussed on the backs of mules – the same gods that accompanied them into battle.

God reminds His people that this is the exact opposite of His way.

Listen to me, O House of Jacob,
All you who remain in the house of Israel,
I have upheld you since you were conceived,
And have carried you since your birth.
Even in your old age and gray hairs,
I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will (future) carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Out of the womb of God’s grace, mercy and promise, the children of Israel had been carried by God. Getting it right, then, is about permitting God to carry you – trusting Him. Getting it wrong is about insisting on pulling your own weight – determining your own destiny, thank you very much. Going into the battle of life with nothing but you is a bad deal and is more than enough to weigh down the weary (v. 1).

In the beginning Israel was foolish and helpless. God carried them in His arms of love and bore them upon eagle’s wings. It is our testimony, as well, that God has been faithful to us – has borne us from the day we were born into the eternal Kingdom. Until this very day, we have been under the constant care of His divine providence.

Whatever is in us that was born of God has been borne up by Him; otherwise, we would have failed as citizens of His Kingdom. We did not have the power to get into the Kingdom, and we do not have the power to stay in. It is all God!

Getting it right, then, has nothing to do with how righteous is our behavior. It has to do with on whom or on what we depend. If we depend on our money to coast us through to the end, we will be taken captive, bowed down by our money. If we depend on our wife or husband or significant other to coast us through to the end, we will be taken captive, bowed down by our relationships.

But God will not fail us when our strength fails. When we grow unfit for business; when we become sick; when even our friends and relatives begin to get weary of us and want to stick us in one of those homes, God will not fail us.

“I will carry you!” “I will bear you up!” “I will bear with you to the end!”

God gives His people a challenge: “To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that I may be compared?” The challenge is to try and create the eternal God in their own images, just as the Babylonians had done in the long history with their gods.

Israel got a snoot full of idolatry by watching the Babylonians labor under the weight of their useless gods who were fashioned in their own images. It is an utter absurdity to take the infinite and eternal Spirit and craft Him into one of His creations – even that of a human being. The “abomination of desolation” was the erecting of a human image at the altar of the temple in Jerusalem. Even the golden calf was a more honest effort at idolatry than that because it was an outright rejection of the God of Israel rather than His human replacement.

Worshipping a human likeness is the sin of Adam. God is being replaced by one of us.

Isaiah hits us where we live, I am afraid. “Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it; they lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands.”

That is the picture of us carrying God, rather than God carrying us. That is the ultimate in getting it wrong. That is what brought down the angel Lucifer and what has brought down our ancestors.

I was given an example of that last week when I was pressed into attending the celebration of the Katahdin Lake land swap. If ever there were an example of worshipping the work of our own hands, it was that event. The usual cast of characters was there from the Governor on down, patting each other on the back, applauding and congratulating each other, as though to do so confirmed their value.

No wonder we have become weighed down by our constructions and weary in the battle of life! We are carrying too much baggage! We are carrying so much baggage that it is the 3^rd world countries that are able to take advantage of our technology. The US is now 23^rd in the world in the deployment of broadband Internet access.

The picture we have here is that no expense of time, energy or money is spared in crafting idols. This is often done at the expense of our families, where the pennies are pinched. While we serve our appetites with the best that we have, we give God the leftovers. Getting it right, you see, is about our priorities, however poorly we may go about them.

David, with all his sin, was called a man after God’s own heart. The reason for that is that he had his priorities straight – he knew that in the final analysis he could get nowhere without God carrying him there.

Nobody can come up with a suitable image for God, can they? Even America, as powerful and as wealthy as it is, is a poor image of God. The problem, you see, is that anything we can imagine can only be 2^nd generation at best – created by the created.

The proud and obstinate Babylonians said that they would never let the people of Israel go. They will never show mercy; they will never do justice; they would detain them forever. But God had a plan. His plan was a bird of prey from the east – Cyrus the Great of Persia, who would swoop down and take the Babylonians and their idols into captivity. They would turn the Babylonians into slaves and melt down their idols. And they would let God’s people go.

The deliverance promised in earlier times is still held out: “I am bringing my righteousness near; it is not far away. My salvation will not be delayed. I will grant my salvation to Zion; my splendor to Israel.”

The history of Jerusalem, although besieged and occupied from time to time, was that it became the international center for the One, true God. From the Zion of ancient Israel – Judaism – springs the Zion of the Gospel – the Kingdom of God from every nation, tribe and tongue. On it marches in victory over its enemies with nary a shot being fired or a weapon being dragged into battle.

The King has come. His Kingdom is from everlasting to everlasting. Swords have been beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Even those nations with the mighty power of nuclear weapons stand in a weary battlefield with their implements of war on beasts of burden, defeated before God’s righteous One in Zion.

This Deliver; this salvation promised to the Jews in captivity in Babylon, has this to say about the crushing weight of our idols:

‘Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

That’s the contrast with our burdensome idols that just stand wherever we put them. And that’s the formula for getting it right.