Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2006 : July 2, 2006

Theme: Christ Gives Hope in the Midst of Despair

Church year occasion: Pentecost 4

Have you ever pictured God wearing glasses? We know from Scripture that God is a spirit, so he doesn't have a body, so he doesn't have the bridge of a nose to put glasses on. But even though he doesn't physically wear glasses, it might help us to describe our God better. That is brought out in the following illustration. Apparently, a man and his wife, who were on a long vacation, stopped at a full-service gas station and waited while the gas station attendant washed the windshield for them. After the attendant finished washing the windshield, the man in the car said, "It's still dirty. Wash it again." So the attendant washed the windshield again. But again the man said, this time angrily, "It's still dirty. Wash it again, and get it right this time." Just then the man's wife reached over, removed her husband's glasses from his face, cleaned them off with a tissue, and put them back on his face. Then, behold -- the windshield was clean!

Jesus has, in a sense, given his heavenly Father a pair of eyeglasses so that, when God looks at believers, all he sees is Jesus' perfection covering us. Otherwise, no matter how hard we would try, we could never live up to how clean and perfect God wants our lives to be. If Jesus hadn't given his Father those glasses, just think of the despair that we would be in. Trying to live up to God's perfection and knowing full well that we have all fallen far short each and every day of our lives would be a horrible existence.

Today we'll see how Christ Gives Hope in the Midst of Despair. Not only is that hope given to unlikable sinners but it also comes from an unlikely source.

In order to understand our text better, we have to put ourselves back in time in the history of God's Old Testament people. God had always wanted his people to remain true to him after all the blessings and grace he had showered on them. He especially warned them about worshipping the false gods of the Canaanites whose land God would give to them. Every prophet warned them that they would not only lose their promised land of Canaan, but they would lose their faith in the true God. Yet they repeatedly failed to heed God's warning.

Just one chapter before our text, God describes very graphically how bad it had become. He compared Israel to an infant that was just born, still covered with blood from the birth, abandoned in a field for no one to love or care for. But God did. He described how he took this nation of Israel and raised her like his own daughter until she grew up into a beautiful woman. Then he described how he made her his people by making a covenant with her. All of this was God's doing for something that had been ugly and despised, but now someone that God had made beautiful. God had even covered her with gold and precious jewels as his bride. But now listen to God's description of his people:

"But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.... And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough?" (Ezekiel 16:15-20)

For all God had done for her, this is how Israel treated him -- with contempt, as if he were nothing and didn't matter at all. Have we been any different? I've heard of an instance that will just make you gasp. This is a true story. A man and woman were recently married, and the man woke up one day ready for breakfast. His wife was trying to please her husband, so she cooked him some eggs. When the man sat down to eat the eggs, he noticed that they were hard -- much harder than what his mother had made for him growing up. So what do you think he did? Did he throw them away? Yes, but first he took the eggs and threw them against the wall just to make sure his wife got the point that he didn't like his eggs made that way. Can you imagine? Needless to say, that was the last time he got any eggs from his wife. But just think of the insult that would be after the wife was just trying to be a good wife and be nice.

God compared his relationship to his people to that of a husband and a wife. Just think for a moment of all the blessings God has lavished on you. A beautiful house, a car or two in the driveway, plenty of clothes and money, food -- and that just for starters on the physical blessings. He also gave us his own Son, faith, eternal life, hope instead of despair, forgiveness, his Word, prayer. We could go on for hours. And how have we treated God many times? Like garbage, like that husband treated that wife. As if he didn't matter. But it's worse than throwing eggs against a wall and not appreciating him. God compares Israel and us to a wife who has the most amazing husband who has done everything for her, but then she goes and prostitutes herself. Look at your own sins. They might not be as brazen as prostitution and adultery, but they are just as horrible and damning. Isn't that how we each have treated God? For that we deserve his wrath.

Our sins are so great, and we have no way out; our despair is complete. There is no hope. And yet, there is hope. Only God himself could love us as ugly with sin as we were and are. It makes you think of someone described as a child that only a mother could love. God loved us and gave us hope in his Son, the Christ. Christ gives hope in the midst of despair. That is what our text brings out. "This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain." And here's the result: It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. The cedar described here is a magnificent tree. Lebanon was famous for them. The cedar is a picture of the coming Savior. He would do everything that Old Testament and New Testament Israel could never do -- live up to God's standards. Yes, God would still punish sin with his terrible wrath, but that wrath would be directed against another -- it would be focused on his Son who would die in our place our hell, so that heaven would be ours. No strings attached. God's forgiveness is free. Surely I have to do something! No. Nothing. Your sins are forgiven in Christ, the only hope of sinners. Simply believe it and you have eternal life. And even believing it is something that the Holy Spirit works in you.

In the midst of our despair Christ is our hope, in spite of the fact that we have nothing to offer him that he should treat with such love -- we are unlikable sinners. But not only was God's salvation given to unlikable sinners, it was also from an unlikely source.

This cedar tree represents the family tree of King David, and a shoot will come from that line to bring hope to the sinful world. Isaiah said the same thing: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." (Isaiah 11:1) Even when God's Old Testament people were at their lowest point and in despair -- Jerusalem and the temple were only years away from being destroyed -- God gave them hope. "On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant [that tender shoot of a Cedar]." And not only was that salvation from God, the unlikeliest source because of our sins against him, but it came about in the most unlikely way. It would be from David's line, a line that had once been great and under God's hand had made Israel a world power under David and Solomon, but a line which had since fallen into disgrace and ridicule. It was a dead stump. But God gave his people hope, and we have seen that hope realized when he sent his Son who suffered and died for our sins, and paid them in full.

There is another thing we need to see in this text: that this message is meant for all -- young, old, poor and rich, male and female -- God's grace is meant for all. Ezekiel says, "Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches." The Holy Spirit would start the New Testament Church with Christ at its head and bring you and all believers together under Christ. He would bring people from every nation, from the whole world, to see his mighty acts. Jesus used these same thoughts in our gospel reading this morning. The Church, like a mustard seed, may have had humble beginnings and doesn't seem to be much even now, but that Church of God has spread to the four corners of the globe, and has given the only hope of salvation to millions. Then, "All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish."

From the unlikeliest source to unlikable sinners, Christ gives hope in the midst of despair. Can we dare to trust such a promise that there is full and free forgiveness for all our sins through faith in Christ? The final verse lays any doubts to rest: "I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it." When Jesus died on the cross, we now see that God was, as always, true to his promises. God has made you, unlikable sinner, his own dear child through faith. But just as God used Jesus who humbled himself for us even to point of death, even death on a cross, so he also uses you now to tell others about that wonderful message of salvation.

Have you ever pictured God with glasses? Jesus has taken all the dirt from God's glasses that we put there and has cleaned them and us with his precious blood, so that God only sees Jesus' perfection when he looks at us. Tell others that through faith God can look on them in the same way. Christ gives hope in the midst of despair. Amen.