Pentecost 17
October 8, 2000 Pentecost 17
Isaiah 50:4-10
One Word Sustains Us
One day this week, I was at the hospital trying to comfort someone in pain. I did what I always do in that situation. I pointed her to Jesus. I reminded her of his love. I talked about God’s promise that all of this will be for her good and for the good of her family, no matter how difficult it is to go through. That’s what I always do. And I firmly believe that it’s what God wants me to do. But I’ll be honest. It isn’t always easy to do. Because I’m a sinner just like you are, there’s a part of me that wonders, “Am I helping you? Am I comforting you?” There’s a part of me that wants to do more. Because there really isn’t any more I can do, I often feel frustrated and inadequate. Do you ever feel like you need to say something really profound or comforting or something that will set everything right, and you just don’t have the words to do all that? Today, God tells us what we’re supposed to say in those situations. And it turns out, it’s exactly what they taught us at the seminary. Whether we can fully overcome our own feelings of inadequacy or not, what God’s people need to hear when they are in trouble is the gospel. That’s true, because there’s nothing like the message about Jesus to pick us up and strengthen us. One word sustains the weary: Jesus.
I.
When I come to comfort you in the hospital, there is only one message that can help you, only one person that can make a difference. Jesus, prepared to serve us, sustains the weary. This morning, we want to look at Jesus through Old Testament eyes. If you’ll open you service folder, we will explore the mystery that God revealed seven hundred years before Jesus came. A mystery the Christian Church is still contemplating 2,000 years later. Isaiah begins talking about it like this:
The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.
Jesus is speaking here. He’s talking about the greatest mysteries that human minds and hearts will ever wrestle with: the way that God deals with himself. God entered the womb of the Virgin Mary and the child that came out was totally God and at the same totally human. I won’t even try to explain how that can be. What Isaiah sees here is how God the Father and dealt with his human and divine Son. On Friday, my wife was watching a video of our children right after Benjamin was born. This little blond toddler was saying the alphabet while her tiny brother sat propped up on the couch and looked around. Jesus was like that baby once. He was like that toddler. He had to learn and grow and develop because he was a real human being. At the same time, he was really God. He knew everything. He could do anything. Throughout his life, God taught Jesus to know and love him, because he was a man. At the same time, because he was God, Jesus knew and loved his Father perfectly. That’s why the boy Jesus in the temple amazed the teachers of the law -- he was God and he knew everything. Yet, the account goes on to say that he grew in wisdom and in stature. Today, Isaiah hears Jesus telling him how the Father carefully prepared his Son to be the Savior.
Just three years before Jesus died, God gave him the greatest preparation for ministry. The Father sent the Holy Spirit to anoint him when John the Baptist baptized him. From that day forward, Jesus moved and taught and comforted his people by proclaiming that the time had finally come. Messiah was here. God the Father gave his Son the word that sustains the weary -- the word he already knew. And how many times don’t we see Jesus doing that? From the moment he called his first disciples and told them they would see heaven opened until the last hours of his life when he looked down and asked his closest friend to care for his mother. And during the years in between, when Jesus comforted the weary, healed the sick, and changed people’s lives by telling them that the kingdom of God had finally arrived. He told them he was their Savior. And he tells us the exact same thing. When God instructed his Son in the hardships of being human and sent his Spirit to prepare him to preach and teach and heal and comfort, he wasn’t just looking at the people who lived at that time and in that corner of the world. Untold millions of people have heard the word that sustains the weary. 95 or so of those people are here today to hear the message that day after day, God the Father taught Jesus Christ, his Son and Mary’s son. What do we need when the wind goes out of our sails? What do we need our pastor to share with us in pain and anguish and distress? We need Jesus. We need his love. We need his message.
II.
There’s more to the story though than just that Jesus cares about us. To really get the comfort that comes from Jesus’ love, we need to hear what he did for us. Jesus, unstoppable in suffering, sustains the weary. Let’s read the next few verses of Isaiah’s prophecy.
The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears,
and I have not been rebellious;
I have not drawn back.
I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign LORD helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.
When I was a kid, we had a refrigerator that had some kind of electrical problem. If you touched the handle and any other piece of metal at the same time, you’d get a shock. My older brother was always trying to get me to touch it just right. Naturally, I got to be a little suspicious. If he wanted me to touch something, my first instinct was to pull my hand back. God the Father didn’t trick Jesus into anything. He called him to serve in a way that no one else ever could or would. Jesus accepted that call. He laid his own body on the line for us. Isaiah saw it all centuries before it happened. Jesus told him about beating and spitting and mocking. He mentions one thing that maybe you don’t recognize: he talks about his beard being pulled out. If that literally happened, the gospels simply don’t tell us. They don’t give us every detail they could. But it’s also possibly that this expression is symbolic. Once, when a foreign king wanted to insult King David, he shaved pff half the beards of his messengers. Jesus’ point here may simply be that he let himself be humiliated and abused. That night he passed with the temple guards and the morning he spent with the Roman soldiers was brutal. Human Rights Watch/Palestine would have written it up, if there had been any such organization then. But it was only the beginning. Every punch, every scourge, every footstep under the weight of the crossbar, every nail piercing his flesh called to Jesus to just stop befoe it got any worse. To just give up and go home, like a 90 pound weakling on the first day of summer football practice. He could have stopped it all at any moment because he was still 100 percent God. But he kept going because he trusted his Father perfectly. Jesus set his face like flint. Flint is harder than steel. Nothing, not even death, not even hell could keep Jesus from finishing the work he came to do.
That face, set like flint, is the most beautiful face a suffering Christian can ever see, because that face is God’s answer to all our pain. All pain, all suffering, all weakness and meanness and sorrow come from sin. When God made this world, there was no pain. There was no conflict. There was no suffering of any kind. But once Adam and Eve disobeyed God, our lives turned into one disaster after another. Have you ever been sick? Have you ever been disappointed by someone you love? Have you ever said something you regretted or did something that hurt someone? If you have, then you’re a sinner. That’s why you’ll die. That’s why you deserve hell and every bad thing that could possibly go wrong in your life here. But when Jesus set his face like flint and pushed forward through hell and death for us, he suffered everything we have coming. He took it all out of our lives. Today, what you suffer isn’t punishment any more. It’s God working to make you the Christian he wants you to be. Today, it’s God’s love molding and shaping you. What changes your pain from punishment to love is Jesus taking your place on the cross and in hell. That’s why he’s our greatest comfort whenever we suffer anything. Because he came to put an end to punishment and even to our pain.
III.
How will he do that? By giving us what he already has. Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. That’s what’s in store for us. Jesus, vindicated by his Father, sustains the weary. Isaiah says:
He who vindicates me is near.
Who then will bring charges against me?
Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign LORD who helps me.
Who is he that will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
the moths will eat them up.
When you’ve been accused of something, you want everybody to know you did nothing wrong. Jesus wanted the same thing. His enemies accused him of everything they could think of. Then they nailed him to a cross. At that time and place, that was saying, “This man is the worst kind of criminal. He doesn’t even deserve a quick and decent death.” The cross was the deepest depth of Jesus’ humiliation. He reached all the way down to hell while he was there. But when it was done, it was only fitting that the person who really sent him there should vindicate him. That was God the Father. He declared Jesus was his holy and perfect Son and our only Savior when Jesus rose. That’s why most of the time the Bible says that the Father raised him from the dead.
In Isaiah, Christ takes all his enemies, all those who have ever hated him, to God’s court on Judgment Day. On that day, all those who have mocked and abused our Lord, all those who have persecuted his people, all those who have done everything they could to discredit and stamp out the gospel will face the most relentless prosecutor imaginable. That face set like flint on the way to the cross will not stop until all those who hate him have been condemned to hell. In America, having a good lawyer makes a difference. Say what you want about the courts, the truth is, most people who are on death row didn’t have good lawyers. Most people accused of murder who don’t get the chair had better ones. On Judgment Day, none of God’s enemies will have a good lawyer. They won’t have any lawyer at all. All they will have is a mountain of evidence they can’t refute and a judge that will send them to hell. The only thing that keeps you and me out of that same situation is Jesus’ resurrection. It says that God has forgiven us. It says that Jesus did all God asked him to. It says that our faith has trusted in God made man to forgive us. When Jesus stands in God’s court and demands that his enemies prove that he is not our Savior, we are the ones who are win. Because his resurrection proves he is.
IV.
Jesus’ resurrection and his promise that we will have eternal life breathes hope into God’s people at the moment of sadness and weakness. Jesus, giving light in the midst of darkness, sustains the weary. Isaiah knew that almost three thousand years ago. He said,
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.
Over the last two years, I’ve sat with quite of few of you while you waited for surgery. They come and prep you and stick you and make you wear one of those silly gowns that hangs open in the back. Then they go away, sometimes for hours, while you sit there and sweat. I’m always willing to sit there with you for a while, no matter what else may be happening at church. As long as we’re sitting there, we’re going to ask God for strength. And we’re going to talk about his love because there’s only one cure to the nervousness that you feel then. There’s only way to lift the darkness that falls on your heart when the doctor comes back with the news you need sugery: Jesus. He died for you. He rose for you. He will give you eternal life, even if you die on the operating table. That’s what we most need to talk about while we wait.
Most of you know my feelings about camping. One of the reasons I dislike it so much is that I really dislike having to stumble through the woods in the dark at 3 am looking for the bathrooms. But if you are looking for those bathrooms -- and wondering what little creatures you might encounter along the way -- a flashlight is a very handy little tool. Night fell on this earth 6,000 years ago when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s one command and made us all sinners. That night is full of the horrors of death and illness and loneliness and pain. That night will last until Christ returns and takes our sin away. But he has given us a flashlight. It’s the gospel. It’s his promise that we will live forever with him. If I do come to visit you in the hospital or in an even worse situation and if, for whatever reason, I’m babbling on about something else, don’t let me leave without giving you that flashlight. Don’t let me leave without sharing Christ with you again.
There is only one word that sustains us when we’re weary and suffering. That word is Jesus. That’s what you called me here to share with you in every situation and in every place. By God’s grace, I hope that I will always share that word with you. By God’s grace, no matter how bumbling I am, no matter how long it takes me to get the words out, no matter how many times I repeat myself, no matter how much I think I ought to be saying something else to you, that message about Jesus is going to give you the comfort God wants you to have. Because it’s his message. Long for it. Hear it. Trust it. Amen.