Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Is 28:14-18; I Peter 2:4-10

Theme: Live your identity

Doctrine: church built on Christ

Image: rock structure

Need: confidence and trust in God's work in the church

Message: live your identity

 

*Living Stones on a Firm Foundation*

Is 28:14-18

/Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem.

You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement.

When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”

So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.

I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place.

Your covenant with death will be annulled; your agreement with the grave will not stand.

When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it./

When I was in high school our gym class took some curling lessons.

This was incredibly fun for a bunch of dare devil 17 year old boys trying to outdo one another.

They gave us these little plastic things for the bottom of your shoes so that you will be able to slide better on the already incredibly slippery ice.

These were meant to help you slide along while you swept the rock for a team mate.

Well, we thought it would be cool to put one of those things on each foot and see who could stand the longest after running and jumping on the ice.

Well, when most of us ran and jumped onto the ice, our feet went flying out from under us and we landed with a heavy thump on the ice.

The trickiest thing for many of us was learning how to step onto the ice.

It proved to be extremely difficult to master this without looking like a fool flailing about for balance.

You had to step out onto the ice, committing your whole momentum to the movement and slide out on the foot you placed down.

If you had any hesitation, and placed the foot on the ice while trying to keep your other foot on the walkway, you were sure to fall flat on your rump.

There was no half way commitment, you either stepped out and trusted the ice, or you stayed on the walkway.

In the passage from Isaiah which we read this morning, we hear that God wants the Israelites to trust in him completely.

There is no half way commitment.

They could not trust his protection, and something else.

God accuses the rulers of Judah of creating a false hope.

“You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement.

When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”

(Is 28:15) Now, I am sure that the rulers were not using these exact words, who admits that they have made a lie their refuge, that they have put their hope in something that they know is false?

If you have doubts about the truth of something, or its trustworthiness, there is no way that you are going to put your faith in it.

The rulers of Judah, however, have allowed themselves to trust in a lie.

They have convinced themselves that they will be safe, even though this is not the case.

They have tried to have one foot in faith in God, and the other foot in their own ability.

This prophecy most likely refers to the fact that the people of Judah had decided to put their trust in the protection of Egypt against the treat of the Babylonians, as Israel had against the Assyrians.

The overwhelming scourge that sweeps by is the army of Babylon coming to invade the territory of Judah.

We read about the rebellion of Zedekiah, the king of Judah at this time, in the book of Ezekiel.

/“Then the word of the Lord came to me: “Say now to the rebellious house, Do you not know what these things mean?

Tell them, behold, the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, and took her king and her princes and brought them to him to Babylon.

And he took one of the royal offspring and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath (the chief men of the land he had taken away), that the kingdom might be humble and not lift itself up, and keep his covenant that it might stand.

But he rebelled against him by sending his ambassadors to Egypt, that they might give him horses and a large army.

Will he thrive?

Can one escape who does such things?

Can he break the covenant and yet escape?

“As I live, declares the Lord God, surely in the place where the king dwells who made him king, whose oath he despised, and whose covenant with him he broke, in Babylon he shall die.

Pharaoh with his mighty army and great company will not help him in war, when mounds are cast up and siege walls built to cut off many lives.

He despised the oath in breaking the covenant, and behold, he gave his hand and did all these things; he shall not escape.”/

(Ezekiel 17:11-18)

God had placed a judgement on Judah because of the evil that its fathers had done.

He took its nobles into exile and set up a subject king.

From this king, Zedekiah, he demanded tribute be paid regularly.

This judgement and lack of freedom was God's way to ensure that the people would again become dependant upon him.

This was his way of forcing the people to become humble and not raise themselves up.

The people of Judah had trusted in things other than God for their fulfilment for too long, so God was going to humble them through punishment.

Even after the initial shock of this punishment, they did not turn to God.

They did not learn the lesson of the land of Israel who had fallen to the empire of Assyria not long before.

Instead of learning from their mistakes, they chose to repeat them.

King Zedekiah of Judah turned to the Egyptians for help, just as King Hoshea of Israel had done.

God, however, does not allow this rebellion to continue, and he sends the Babylonian army to completely destroy Judah.

The destruction is recorded in 2 Kings 25:.

/“On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.

He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem.

Every important building he burned down.

The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem.

Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had gone over to the king of Babylon.

But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.”/

(2 Kg 25:8-12)

The people of Judah trusted in something that was not God, and they failed.

Their covenant with death, their plan which was doomed to destruction, was annuled.

The city of God was completely destroyed.

The people of God were removed from the promised land.

When the overwhelming scourge came, they did not prevail.

When we trust in things other than God, we will fail.

When we trust in our own ability to make great lives for ourselves and those we care about, we will never see true happiness.

In Will Smith's recent movie /The Pursuit of Happyness /we travel with a man who works with all his might to become rich.

One day as he is walking down wall street a man pulls up beside him in a Ferrari.

He asks the man what he does that he could afford a car like that, and the man says he is a stock broker.

This creates a relentless drive in Chris Gardner, the real life character in the film, to He overcomes all sorts of obstacles, including living on the street with his young son and being thrown into prison, to get a job as a stock broker, to excel at his job, and to become extremely rich.

The moral of this story seems to be that true happyness, meaning wealth and lots of things, is available in our lives if we have the guts and gumption to work hard enough for it.

This is the kind of lie that many of us buy into.

We place our hope for a better future, not in our faith in God, or in the community of believers of which we are a part, but in our bank accounts, or our retirement funds.

We hope that if we can work hard enough, and save enough money, and get good health insurance, then we will be happy when we get older.

We can retire from our work.

We can travel around and see the world.

We can live comfortably and finally enjoy our lives in relaxation and joy.

We look forward to, and long for the day when we can say to all commitments, including those of the church, I have put in my time.

I no longer need to help out there.

The problem is, when we look for happiness and satisfaction in these things, we are bound to be disappointed.

We will not be satisfied with these things, or relationships, or so called freedom because none of this will fill our longing for God.

All of it is tainted with sin.

Though it is sweet as candy and may satisfy for a while, it leaves us hungry for more.

The more we pursue these things, the worse we feel.

Our World Belongs to God stanza 17 says that; “All spheres of life—marriage and family, work and worship, school and state, our play and art—bear the wounds of our rebellion.

Sin is present everywhere—in pride of race, in arrogance of the nations, in abuse of the weak and helpless, in disregard for water, air, and soil, in destruction of living creatures, in slavery deceit, terror, and war, in worship of false gods, and frantic escape from reality.

We have become victims of our own sin.”

By placing our hope for fulfilment in things which ultimately will not satisfy, we doom ourselves to failure, we make a covenant with death and become victims of our own sin.

When Judah made a pact with Egypt, they became victims of their own sin.