The Word That We Value
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300 Sermon Illustrations from Charles Spurgeon Childlike Trust (John 1:12; 1 John 3:1–2, 10)
See how your child trusts you. He comes to you and cries, “Please, father, I have a thorn in my finger,” or, “Please, father, I have lost my pocket handkerchief.” No matter what his trials are, the child brings them all to father or mother. You turn from your business, and attend to him. You say, “My dear, I will see to you immediately.” You love your little boy, and therefore his little concerns are not too little for you.
And God, who gave us to be called the sons of God, teaches us to cry, “and we are”; and leads us in that confidence to go to him with each day’s burden and care, and prove for ourselves that we are the objects of the Father’s love.
Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
We have been touched by the current medical crisis. We had a brother and sister in the St. John’s congregation catch the COVID-19 virus, a virus that seeks out an opening of weakness in our bodies and exploits it. It shares another deadly characteristic with sin, in that it can be present in you without showing any signs while it works to take over more and more of you. It is frightening because we don’t understand much about it. Nevertheless, because we cannot see it at work, we are inclined, well, some of us, anyway, to dismiss it as a threat.
Meanwhile, the people who have the credentials to speak professionally about this threat have told us that certain things must be done, some things which call for drastic changes in the way that we go about our lives. We have to change our minds about what is the right way to live. We have to conduct ourselves in particular ways in order to avoid becoming a victim, or worse, a threat to others.
Generally speaking, we are listening to the experts and leaders regarding this medical threat because we fear the risks. We also tend to regard physical death with a seriousness that far exceeds that of our concerns regarding spiritual death.
In order to survive, we would work hard to obtain enough money to make sure that we can afford regular filling, and hopefully nutritious meals. Most of us would not try to feed infants and children garbage or poison. We take much better care of our bodies than we do our souls.
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
We care about what other people say about us - we don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, or the wrong side of cultural issues. That’s with regard to people who have a lifespan of 70-80 years or so. Do we worry about what God says about us?
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
We have shuttered ourselves in our homes out of the fear of COVID-19. What of the threat of not believing the Word of Christ? How seriously do we take the words that He spoke concerning sin and the medicine that He offers for its cure?
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
I take the word of the medical doctors seriously; I wish that most people around me had the same regard for the message of the Gospel. The message that, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Creator of the universe stepped out of eternity into time, the omnipotent and omnipresent One took on the conditions of fleshly human existence, including its physical weaknesses and spacial limitations, and tasted death in order to deliver His creation from the power and effects of sin -and then rose victorious over sin and death - will save your soul and will, in the Resurrection, give you a better body than this current mortal one that we fight so hard to preserve.
People treat this message as if it were the most unimportant piece of information around. They treat the Church as if it were, at best, a harmless diversion and at worst, an archaic obstacle to the improvement of society, and those who claim membership in it are to be tolerated and pitied or shunned.
God sees things so differently. The Gospel is not a form of entertainment; it’s a message of life and death. The church is not just another social institution; it is the fruit of His work to save souls.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
There is no price of admission to hear the Gospel, because unlike those motivational speakers and medical practitioners who can only offer you help in this life, the Gospel was proclaimed as the free gift of your Creator to you, purchased with the blood of His own Son. That’s a message that gets despised and rejected, as was the One who first declared it, in the same way as humans have consistently rejected the Word of God since the Fall in the Garden of Eden. The words of Stephen, the first church martyr, are just as applicable today as they were almost 2000 years ago
in 35 AD in Jerusalem:
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
This is the reality of how much of the world responds to the pure Gospel, even in a place like Gary with its thousand or so church groups. Things look so bleak that some have counseled that we need to change our message to fit the times. We need to change the mission to embrace what the world says instead of what God says. We look at the numbers, both in terms of people and finances, and wonder whether we have enough resources to resist the sweet song of paganism.
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
Jesus Christ is the answer to the one problem that neither politicians nor medical professionals can solve. He offers the only cure for sin, the only antidote to death, because He is the Prince of Life, the Son of God. He is the reason why the Church exists, for He is the author and finisher, the source and completer, of our faith. What He said to Phillip on the night in which He was betrayed, He says to us today:
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Jesus did not leave us alone, Church. He sent the Holy Spirit, another Comforter, to empower us and equip us to proclaim His message, to live out His Kingdom, and to prepare for His return in glory. This is the reason why we sing. This is the message “from Him Who is and Who was and Who is to come, and from the Seven Spirits who are before His throne
and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
So let the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.