Sexagesima

Jesse Jacobsen

Time-stamp: <Thu Feb 3 12:19:39 2005>,
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"He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true.

God is True

You shall have no other gods. We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. What if we don't? Then we have begun to have another god. It may be a person, or it may be something else. There are two names for such a thing: an idol, and a false god.

Idols are not necessarily statues placed on a blood-stained pedestal in the center of a courtyard where tattooed people bow down chanting in a strange language. That may be the picture in your mind when you hear the word ``idol,'' but that is only one kind of idol. An idol is anything we fear, or love, or trust above all things --- anything but God Himself.

There is one God, but there are any number of idols. Which is our Maker? God, of course. False gods do not make anything, instead they are made by human beings. Which one is our Provider? God. Idols can't provide anything. Which is our Judge? God. Which is our Savior? God.

You probably know all of this already. But have you ever considered what it implies that idols are called false gods? It means that they are not real, but it implies that the real God is true: the true God. Here is the difference: real or imaginary, actual or empty, mighty or powerless, true or false.

What does it mean that God is true? In our text today, it means that everything He says is simply true. He cannot tell a lie. And when He says that something will happen, He is bound to make it come to pass, no matter how unlikely it may seem. God is true, so that He stands behind His Word. God is true, so that We will stand upon His Word.

Isaiah 55:10--13

``For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out with joy,
And be led out with peace;
The mountains and the hills
Shall break forth into singing before you,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree,
And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree;
And it shall be to the LORD for a name,
For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.''

So that He stands behind His Word

Our first main point today is this: God is true so that He stands behind His Word. Jesus said ``Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.'' God is true, and the Word He sends out, by which we know Him, is the fruit of His true nature. His Word must always be true, because He is true. If we are sure that something is His Word, then it must be true, every time.

God is connected to His Word, because it's His. What He says, is. That's how everything was created. Creation continues working and existing by the power of the same Word that God spoke in the beginning. His Word is the reason that rain and snow do their work, and their work is not in vain. As Isaiah wrote, ``the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud.'' Take away the Word, and you take away God. Then all Creation falls to pieces. But God spoke at the beginning, and what He created will last until He says otherwise. He stands behind His Word.

In fact, God even promises to stand behind His Word. He has bound Himself to exercise His power and do everything that He has promised. Isaiah's example compares two miracles, two acts of God. The first one is in Creation, that rain and snow from heaven do exactly what God wants them to do. They do not fail. Neither does God's Word from heaven fail. It does exactly what God sends it to. ``It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please.'' We have His Word on it.

One of the checkout clerks at Woodman's yesterday asked me who in the Bible said, ``Your sins are forgiven,'' and where the authority to forgive sins comes from. I'd like to talk to him some more. But I wonder: can you think of anyone who said that in the Bible? Certainly, Jesus said it. In fact, He forgave sins to make people realize that He is God, because only God can forgive sins. But the prophet Nathan forgave the sins of King David. And the apostles both preached and baptized to give the forgiveness of sins. Where did their authority come from? Not from themselves. They had no more authority over sins than you or me. What they did have was the Word of God: both a command and a promise. Jesus sent His apostles to forgive sins, just as God sent Nathan to forgive sins. He said, ``If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.''

So when you come to your fellow Christian and lay your burden of guilt before God, and your fellow Christian says to you, ``Your sins are forgiven,'' are they truly forgiven before God so easily? Yes. You see, those words, ``Your sins are forgiven,'' are God's Words. That makes them true. He has promised it. But these words are true only when they are spoken according to His command. We are to forgive the sins of penitent sinners --- only those who are sorry for their sins. Those who are impenitent --- not sorry --- don't really want God's forgiveness, so they won't receive it. God's Word is not a lying Word, it is true. So anyone who does not believe it does not receive what God promises, though the Word remains true and the forgiveness remains real.

You can think of God's promises as a kind of promissory note, or even like a personal check. Many businesses won't take starter checks --- the ones you get when you open an account, to hold you over until the real checks arrive. I guess starter checks are too easy to forge. When you get a check, how do you know if it's any good? Is it enough not to accept starter checks? No, because anyone can write a bad check. Anyone of us, that is. God can't write a bad check or make a bad promise, because when He speaks, He binds Himself to His Word. He stands behind it, because He is true. But let's say I give you a real check, a good one, for a hundred thousand dollars. The money is then yours, truly yours. But you might not accept the check. You might throw it away, thinking that it must be false. In that case, you won't receive the money, but not because the check is false. Those who don't believe God's promise are throwing away His true gift of eternal life. But God remains true. No matter what we do with His Word, He stands behind what He has said. So if we don't want to rob ourselves of eternal life, we'd better not forget or reject God's promise.

So that we will stand upon His Word

Our second main point today is this: God is true so that we will stand upon His Word. If you read your Bible at home, or have regular devotions to grow in your faith, you may have wondered about what it was like to be an Israelite. Jesus had not lived yet. He had not died or risen. We know that merely hearing the Word of God doesn't do us any good unless we believe what it says. So we believe that Jesus is our Savior. But in the Old Testament, Jesus had not been born yet. What did they have faith in?

The answer means a lot to us today. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah spoke for God, predicting wonderful things for God's people. ``For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace.'' There are meaningful words. They predict salvation. But if you consider what he wrote next, you'll see that this salvation is not only spiritual. Creation itself will be renewed, and we will rejoice in it. ``The mountains and the hills Shall break forth into singing before you, And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.'' This is poetic language, but it still means something. Have you ever heard the mountains sing? Have you seen the trees clap their hands? Not in so many words, but if you stand under those mountains or in the shade of those trees in a time when you are filled with God's Word, then you will know what Isaiah meant. But the final fulfillment of these words will be in the new Creation, coming on the Last Day.

Through Isaiah, God was promising His people the same heaven that we look forward to, and they could possess it already on earth. But there's more. Remember how Adam's sin resulted in a curse upon the ground itself? God had told him in Genesis 3: ``Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field.'' I've seen some of those thistles in the grass from time to time. You don't want to step on them with bare feet, or grab them without heavy gloves. But God's Word promised something better: ``Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree.''

Now, Adam's sin brought more than thorns and thistles. These things represent death. But do you know what cypress and myrtle are? The word for cyprus is also translated juniper, an evergreen. Myrtle is also an evergreen. Instead of thorns and briers --- and death, God was promising life. In fact, ``evergreen life,'' lasting forever.

All of this God promised to His people in Old Testament times. So what exactly did they place their faith in? Why, in the same thing we do: God's promise, based upon the Messiah, His only-begotten Son. Their faith was the same as ours. They heard His Word and believed it, because they knew as we do that God is true. Messiah would come, just as God had promised, and God would fulfill the words of Isaiah His prophet. The Old Testament believers stood upon the same solid rock that we have: God's Word.

I said that God has bound Himself to His Word. It means that His almighty power will accomplish everything He has spoken. But He has also bound us to His Word. That's why we have these verses in Isaiah, to encourage us to trust our lives to what He says. It cannot fail, because God stands behind it. Therefore we will stand upon that Word alone as our guarantee of God's favor and forgiveness.

Can we find other things that seem trustworthy? From time to time, yes we can. Maybe you have had a dream that you are sure came from God. Some people see visions or hear voices that they think come from God. If they are convinced, and if those things don't contradict the Bible: fine. Good for them. But the rest of us dare not trust anything but the sure words of God in holy scripture. Other things may be doubtful, but this is not. God wrote it for us in the Bible through the hands of His prophets and apostles, and He preaches it weekly through the mouth of His ministers. God has joined that saving Word to water with a special promise and command in the sacrament of baptism. He joined His saving Word to bread and wine with another promise and command in the sacrament of the altar. But it's always the same Word. His Word remains.

Our experiences change. Our friends change. Even we change. But ``Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.'' So I will gladly be bound to God's Word for all my comfort and the forgiveness of all my sins. Just think of what a treasure this is! If the whole world could be truly convinced that this Word is eternal life, as Jesus said it is, then every Bible would be snatched up within a day. There would be standing room only in here every Sunday. But so many prefer to trust the shifting sands of faulty reason, or some personal experience without God's Word.

So you see why we can't join in with the ecumenical movement afoot today in many churches. It's quite popular to pick and choose what you like best in the Bible and compromise on the rest for the sake of unity with other Christians. But God has bound us to His Word, so that whatever He has said, we simply listen and believe. It is neither right nor safe to compromise on anything where God has spoken. Our eternal safety lies in exactly one person: Jesus. If we compromise on His Word, we compromise on Him, and we compromise on our certainty of eternal life. But if we remain in His Word, we will never be disappointed by it.

Jesus said, ``Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.'' And again, ``If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.'' You see? We have His Word on it. So take comfort in this simple fact: God is true, therefore we will stand upon His Word. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!

This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.