Sunday Sermon

 

Victory from the Lord

Isaiah 54:17

So no weapon that is used against you will defeat you. You will show that those who speak against you are wrong. These are the good things my servants receive. Their victory comes from me, says the Lord.

In my younger days I worked with a church in Lancaster Pennsylvania on an evangelism mission in which we used a system called the Peace Treaty. The system we used stepped people through the process of explaining why we need Jesus to save us and what our response to the love of God was. I always thought the name of that system was a good name because it spoke to the very basic problem we as humans have. We humans are in rebellion against God and His authority and by definition that means we are at war with God. Most people don’t think about this but it is a hard truth that we need to consider carefully. There are two fundamental points that have to be taken seriously. First is that God is Truth. Those words have some very real effects on our lives and ignoring that only makes our lives harder. We need to also be clear it is not that God is true but that God is Truth in and of itself. This concept is much bigger then just some simple works but to make it work as a concept we can say that God is everything real and right and anything that is not God is false and wrong. Next we have to grasp that God is the source of life and so rejecting God means we reject life itself. Only one thing can happen when we are at war with the God who is life and that is death. So many people treat this rebellion against God like it is not big deal but God thinks it is the most important issue facing humans that God becomes human so He can save us from ourselves. We are at war with God and that means we are in trouble but our enemy wants us to believe that everything is okay but it is not. The urgency that God feels about this cannot be denied. And in fact we as humans feel that there is something wrong about life but we are not sure what it is or what is going on but in those quiet moments in our lives we know that there is something profoundly wrong about the world. Our problem as humans is that we don’t want to take the blame for what is wrong so we accuse God of being the trouble but all that does is just get us deeper into the mess we already have. The good news is that God hates that we are in rebellion and longs for us to come back to Him. I think this revels the nature of God more than any other thing about God. There is no need for God to save us from ourselves but God choose to do it because it is the right and loving thing to do. Instead of letting us be destroyed by our sin God calls to us to come to Him and make peace with God because when we do that we find that our lives are better. God hates that we have rejected Him and knows that because of that we only face pain and suffering and God wants to change that and make our lives what they were meant to be. It also means we have to submit to the authority of God and that is not an easy thing to do for us humans.

God thinks we take sin to lightly and if we have any questions about how terrible sin is we just need to look at the cross. To deal with sin God becomes human and takes our sin on Himself because other wise our sin would crush us. One of things that God does is He gives us grace which means unmerited favor. The idea is that if we were left on our own sin would wipe us out very quickly and so God gives us space and time to understand that we need God if we are going to live. What often happens though is because we have grace we don’t take sin as serious as we should. Over the years I have only really found one way to describe the effect of sin in our lives and that is to describe sin as a house fire. In short, our house is on fire and we often are just standing there saying everything is okay instead of getting our of the house and looking for someone to put the fire out. This is the point that God comes in. Because we have reject Him God should just let our houses burn but that is not how God works and so God calls out to us that our house is on fire and He even offers to run in and save us from the burning house. Think about this, we are at war with the God who gives life and is the ultimate truth and God instead of fighting back calls to us to come and make peace with Him. We have a God who loves us and knows how bad sin is and so wants to save us from ourselves. This the God I want to learn from and it is the God who I am glad loves me like He does.

So we have talked a lot about our sin problem and a little about how God responds to the fact that we are rebellion. I want us to understand the peace that God is offering to us. First God does not have to offer peace and that tells us about who God is and next God is deeply troubled by our rebellion. The peace God offers is such an amazing thing. God not only offers to give us the life we threw away but then offers to fix all the things that broke because we choose death instead of life. Over and over God pours out wisdom about how to live our lives and He gives us directions about what will give us the greatest joy and hope. Think about this, it would be simply enough that God dies to save us but then He gives us more. This is where our verse comes into effect. Through all of this God does not offer just peace He offers victory even though we don’t deserve anything. The words in this verse are wonderful and should fill us with a love for God but the best words are in the last phrase. It says that God is the source of victory in life which just astounds me. God is the only one who can give us victory in life and God seeks to do just that with real purpose and meaning. This is not some light weight victory but it is a complete and total victory because that is the kind of God that made the universe. The phrase before the last phrase is also a great line that has real meaning. “These are the good things my servants receive.” God wants to hand out good stuff to us and take care of us and all God ask is that we serve Him like we were designed to in the first place. And the service God call us to do is to tend his world and to help Him take care of the things in this world. If you have any questions about this just go and look at the garden. The idea of the garden is that God was close to us as we worked for His creation. The offer of peace is because God knows that our only hope of real life is to be near God and God likes us near Him. We have a God who offers victory to us and that is a God who we need to worship. We would be glad just for peace but that is not how God works and so God gives us good things not because we are worthy of them but because we need them and God is that kind of God. One day we will stand in the presence of God and we will sing of the victory of God so why not start today. Let us take the good things from God and live the victory God wants us to have. Our faith is based on the idea that we have a God who sets us free from sin and equips us to live lives that are filled with hope and joy. What a faith we have in a God who gives us victory.

The opening words of this verse speak of weapons and I like the idea that we are at war and we should be thinking about what war means and that had better make us serious about our faith. If we make peace with God and we get victory it will also mean we are now at war with the evil that holds the world hostage and we need to understand just what that means. Here Isaiah is speaking about Israel but Paul in his writings in the New Testament also speaks of us at war. The idea here is that when we were at war with God we were always going to suffer defeat but now that we have made peace with God we will be victorious even though we still have to fight battles during our life time. When we read those opening words I want us to grasp just how powerful our God is. We have chosen the winning side and God wants us to know it. Here is my question, do we act like it because the second line in this verse tells us to speak out about what is wrong in the world. The thinking that prevails in the world is destructive because it is not connected to God. We as believers are called to stand against what is wrong and to call it out. Jesus tells us to speak to the world about what is wrong and Jesus does it over and over. There is never a time Jesus does not confront sin but He does it with gentleness and love. One of the reasons we should speak out about sin is because God loves people and sin destroys people. God describes what is going on as warfare because we are fighting for the souls God loves. Our battle is not about the people who are being hurt by sin but the evil ideas that cause the pain and suffering the comes from sin. Let us take the victory God gives us and then tell the world about the God who seeks to set us free from the things that wreck our lives. This is the God who we find in the Bible and the God who calls to us to find hope and peace in the name of Jesus Christ.

God wants to give us victory in life which is such a wonderful thing to have. That victory lets us face everything that can happen in life with a certainty that we find no place else. Even death does not steal our victory but instead makes it final because we then stand at the throne of God and we celebrate the God who gives us victory. That we go from sinner condemned to death to victory and peace with God speaks about the God we worship. This victory is given to us by the God who loves us and wants us to know how to win at life. All we have to do is surrender to God and to serve the God we were created to serve in the first place. Our God pours out wisdom like water and teaches us all we need to know about life and what it means. If we are looking for hope in life bowing down and proclaiming the name of Jesus as the savior of our souls is a great way to live. Let God bring victory to our lives as we become the people God made us to be.