Old Sandals

After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the LORD’s Temple and spread it out before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the LORD: “O LORD, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. Bend down, O LORD, and listen! Open your eyes, O LORD, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God.”

Hezekiah calls upon God to enter into his present situation.  It is as if Hezekiah says, “Here it is Lord.  Here is the letter. See, I lay it out before you.  O LORD God Almighty, you can read it for yourself and see. Deliver us, O God our Savior!”

God is in our present situation.  He is an “ever present help in trouble”, as the psalmist wrote. Because He is an infinte God, He has to condescend to us or we could not hope to have a relationship with Him.  And because He is a personal, loving God, He wants to.

“Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time.   He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses.   So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. He revolted against  the king of Assyria and refused to pay him tribute.”

Hezekiah was exemplary.  He followed the LORD with all his heart.  He smashed all the pagan shrines and sacred pillars.  He cut down the Asherah poles.  He even destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had lifted up in the wilderness, because the people had made it an idol, offering sacrifices to it.

But the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors who had refused to believe in the Lord their God.  They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves.

Someone has rightly said that we become what we worship.

King Ahaz then went to Damascus to meet with King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria. While he was there, he took special note of the altar. Then he sent a model of the altar to Uriah the priest, along with its design in full detail.  Uriah followed the king’s instructions and built an altar just like it, and it was ready before the king returned from Damascus.

When the king returned, he inspected the altar and made offerings on it.  He presented a burnt offering and a grain offering, he poured out a liquid offering, and he sprinkled the blood of peace offerings on the altar. Then King Ahaz removed the old bronze altar from its place in front of the Lord’s Temple…He told Uriah the priest, “Use the new altar for the morning sacrifices of burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king’s burnt offering and grain offering, and the burnt offerings of all the people, as well as their grain offerings and liquid offerings.”

This is an unthinkable blasphemy.  It is a wonder that the LORD did not consume the whole thing.  The wonder of His mercy.

“Jotham did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight. He did everything his father, Uzziah, had done. But he did not destroy the pagan shrines, and the people still offered sacrifices and burned incense there.”

King Jotham was a good man, like his father King Uzziah had been.  And yet he failed to do all he could have done.  The pagan shrines were left standing.

O Holy Spirit, we have not done all we could have done.  Give us grace.  Kindle within us a fire—a fire to serve you wholeheartedly.

“For I will give the command and will shake Israel along with the other nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, yet not one true kernel will be lost.”

The LORD knows each of us intimately.  He knows a true kernel when He sees one.  If we turn to Him and ask for His mercy, He will not (indeed, cannot) turn away.

“The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

This is a very chilling verse.  Our physical needs are very real, but are spiritual needs more so.  We were made for the LORD.  We are not really human without Him.

I would like to center our thoughts together this morning around a verse from Paul’s epistle to the Romans.  It’s from Romans 8. Our New Testament reading this morning was from this same chapter.  I want us now to look at verse 32.  This verse just happens to be my favorite verse in the Bible. I’ll call it a life verse.  Do you have a life verse?  A favorite verse? Your favorites often reveal something about you, you know.  For example, my favorite ice cream is vanilla.  We’ll go to Baskin-Robbins or a place like that where you are free to choose any exotic flavor you want, and I always go with vanilla.  That tells my wife that I’m a pretty dull guy.  But perhaps she should have realized that when she married an accountant! And yet, she loves me anyway!

But, back to the Bible, and the verse at hand.  Hear the word of God. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall He not also with him freely give us all things?” This verse, obviously, asks a question.  In fact, I believe it asks us several probing questions. You cannot sit down and honestly read the Bible for very long without it asking you all kinds of probing questions.  This is true not because the  Bible is one of those timeless books that was put together in a clever way, but because it is, as we Presbyterians confess, “the very Word of God written”.

I want us to consider then, these three questions: 1. What does this verse say about God? 2. What does this verse say about us? 3. What difference does it all make, anyway?

What does this verse say about God? “He that spared not His own Son…”  How do we describe someone who plans a big event, and spares no expense? Extravagant? Lavish? This is God we’re talking about.  The Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And the big event involves us, you and me. This is extravagant love, is it not? The Apostle Paul writes in another of his epistles—to the Ephesians—these words:

“In him [that is, Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”  Someone has aptly said that the word GRACE is an acronym, which stands for God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense. And who was Jesus Christ? If he were Only a Jewish carpenter, or a good teacher, or a even a good role model, we wouldn’t be gathered here today. We’d have better things to do. After all, history has given us lots of good teachers.  But only one God-man. And it was this God-man, this second person of the Holy Trinity, this One, the Bible says, “Who was before all things and by Whom all things consist”, He is the One who was delivered up for us all. For us, all.

This leads us to the second question. What does this verse say about us? Who are we, anyway? As humans, we can express both heart-felt compassion and cold-hearted selfishness. We can create life, and we know well how to destroy it. We know that life is more than making money and possessions, yet these things all too often consume us.  Why is this? What accounts for this paradox? The only satisfactory explanation is found in the pages of this Book, where we read that man was first created in the very image of God; to have a vital, personal relationship with God in a beautiful paradise that would never end. But something terrible happened and, consequently, things are not now as they were originally meant to be. Nature is still in many ways beautiful, but the thorns, and the weeds, and the tornadoes and the earthquakes remind us that it is far from a paradise. Life still has a lot of vitality, but it is short-lived, cut-off all too soon in death.  We still maintain our God-imageness—we create, we choose—yet it is natural for us to ignore God altogether, to live as if He didn’t exist and to act in ways that are hateful and selfish, instead of ways that are loving and giving. There is a tragic irony to life that is the result of sin. Sin is a turning away from God. Our first parents turned away from God in that paradise we just talked about.  At our core, we are no different. We have turned away, too. Isaiah, the prophet, said, “All we like sheep have gone astray.  We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” This is why the Son of God came into the world.  This is why he was delivered up.  It was a rescue mission. “He was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised to life to make us right with God.” Romans 4:25.

What does this verse say about God? He is a great Savior. He will stop at nothing to save us. What does this verse say about us? We are fallen, sinful, lost. We need saving. What difference does it all make, anyway?

What difference indeed.  That is the 64,000 dollar question. If, as the Bible says, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made”, yet He laid aside His glory, taking on our flesh that He might die for us—on a cross no less—to take away our sins and make us right with God, does anything else really matter? Isn’t that really the thrust of of third probing question that is asked of us, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, HOW WILL HE NOT also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” As reassuring as this verse is, there is almost a rebuking tone to it: “Don’t you get it, sinner? I love you, and I gave my life for you to prove it!” What a welcome rebuke it is. It reminds me of the words spoken by the angel, seated gloriously on the stone that had been rolled away from the empty tomb, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? O mortal, why on earth would you think to do that? He is not here. He is risen!”

This verse should really put things in perspective for us. “How will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” All things. “And my God shall supply all your needs”, Paul writes, “according to His riches in Christ Jesus.” What things, Paul? What needs? Surely the Apostle is talking about more than food, clothing and shelter here. The riches of Christ’s death and resurrection provide us with so much more than that.

“He that spared not his own Son…” What does this verse say about God? What does it say about us? We have answered these first two questions together.  “What difference does it all make?”  This last probing question is one that we cannot answer together.  Each of us must answer it for ourselves, from our own hearts. Our salvation has been purchased at a great price, yet it is offered to us as a gift.  But gifts can be returned.  This divine gift can be refused, but with eternal consequences. If you are here this morning, and the truth of the gospel has not resonated with you (OR EVEN IF IT HAS) take stock. Turn from your sins, the Lord is merciful.  Make Him the Lord and center of your life. Ask Him to give you the understanding, the perspective of those saints we read about in the book of Revelation, who, upon receiving golden crowns to wear—a symbol of the treasures in Heaven that are there for us who believe—look at the crowns and each other as if to say, “What is all this? We don’t deserve anything like this!” And they cast their crowns at the feet of Him who sits on the throne, the Immortal One, our Savior, forever. To God alone be the glory. Amen.

You know life is full of questions, and this Book is full of answers.  Some of our questions are answered in this life, some may not be fully answered until the next.  And perhaps there is one question that will never be answered. It is a question raised by a hymnwriter many years ago when he wrote, “And yet, to think Thou lovest me, amazed I cry, How can it be? How can it be? How can it be? That God should love a soul like me, O how can it be!”

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

But Amos replied, “I’m not a professional prophet, and I was never trained to be one. I’m just a shepherd, and I take care of sycamore-fig trees.  But the Lord called me away from my flock and told me, ‘Go and prophesy to my people in Israel.’”

The LORD does not not need (and does not use) professional prophets.  He uses people whose hearts are right with Him to speak for Him.  In ways He chooses.  To His glory.

The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his own name, and this is what he, the Lord God of Hosts says:  “I despise the arrogance of Israel, and I hate their fortresses. I will give this city and everything in it to their enemies.”

Don’t misunderstand the great love of God as weakness.  God’s love is like a consuming fire.  It burns up all the dross and purifies what is left.