This Love
Notes
Transcript
This is a night for signs and wonders, for visions and for love. I mean to make clear with the Spirit’s help that this is a night for a very special and eternal love.
Let us pray… Amen.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
In our first lesson, God offers King Ahaz, the twelfth king of Judah, the opportunity of having a divine sign, something to confirm that Yahweh would care for the country. After all, Ahaz need not depend upon Assyria, or any other national alliances in order to have a strong Judah and a successful reign. God was on his side. So, God says, “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God.” Imagine; now we’re not talking about getting simple reassurance from another king, or even a prophet, let alone one of your advisors. They’ll tell you anything you want to hear. This would be the assurance of God, and with it a sign to back it up.
God isn’t skimpy on his offers either. Remember, Ahaz’ multiple-great-great grandfather, Solomon, who only asked of God wisdom to rule the people. God was not content to give him wisdom alone but bestowed many other kingly gifts as well. So, what did Ahaz ask of God? Nothing; he kept silent because, in his lack of faith, all he really hoped for was Assyria’s aid. He didn’t dare say that, and thereby betray himself to the prophet, let alone God. As if they didn’t know.
But, as I said, God isn’t skimpy. Even though Ahaz asked for no sign, God would give him the greatest sign of all. He would extend to Ahaz, and to all of us, something far beyond the elaborate gifts he gave to Solomon. When he told him what the sign, this reassurance of God’s care, would be, the king and the prophet both must have thought, What kind of sign is that?
This is the sign. And I paraphrase. Check it out: a virgin is going to get pregnant and have a baby boy. And his name will be I AM With You.
We would have thought the same thing as Ahaz. What’s God going on about? This makes no sense. Maybe an alliance with Assyria isn’t such a bad idea after all.
But God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts and ideas are high above ours, higher than the earth—heavenly.[1] When God speaks, we may not understand him but, because he is a loving Father, we should trust him. More than that, we should fear and love him. He has the best in mind for us—better than what we could imagine. Better than Assyria. Better than anything we could come up with because he knows what we need. We only think we know what we need. In fact, what we think we need is usually little better than what we want—not what we need at all.
So, knowing what Ahaz, and Judah, and the whole world—right down to you and me—need more than anything else, God offers the reluctant king—and you and me—a sign: a virgin will conceive and bear a son. Now, you know Ahaz was thinking, I don’t need this. I’ve got a country to run while you’re going on about knocked up virgins. Ah, our thoughts are not God’s thoughts; and our ways are not his.
Now we think we are somewhat superior to Ahaz because we have hindsight. We know what’s going on here. After all, we know this Immanuel fellow is Jesus. We know all about this Christmas stuff. We have our decorated houses and our church Christmas pageants and live nativities and luminaries and poinsettias. We get it. Nonetheless, even with hindsight, our thoughts are not like God’s thoughts. Because way back when, some 2,700 years ago, when God was giving a sign to a king of Judah, he was thinking about you. When he was talking about a pregnant virgin, he was thinking of you. When he was foretelling the birth of her son, this Immanuel, God was thinking about what you would need, and of course, what the whole world of humanity throughout time would need. And he was thinking about you and me, about everyone not even born yet, because of love. Because of a very special kind of love.
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”[2] That’s the sign God was talking about when he directed Isaiah to tell Ahaz about a virgin and a baby boy. What Ahaz, the prophet, and even you and I, could not and cannot imagine is that God has such great love for us that he would come among is, Immanuel, God With Us, just as we need him. He would come as a Savior, a Deliverer, as the sinless God-Man who would take upon himself the sins of a world of witless Ahaz’s. We are just like Ahaz, sinners who depend upon Assyria—or presidents, or political parties, or ideologies, or simply our religious works and morality.
God offers us a sign but we too are silent to the real facts—or should be. Maybe we’re not even as smart as Ahaz who did keep his peace. At least Ahaz seemed to understand the conflict. I’m not sure we do. We too have our hopes and dreams—and it should startle us how little, like Ahaz’, those hopes and dreams have to do with God. Yes. God’s ways are not our ways. He is still working to give us a sign, an assurance of a loving Father who has our very best interest in mind, and will accomplish it in spite of us. So, again, even in a year like 2020, he sends his Son, born of a virgin, God among us to be the propitiation, the satisfaction or appeasement, for God, who should be angry about our sins.
But God is love and that is why there is a virgin with child. That is why there is a baby born, swaddled, and laid in a crude manger. God is on a mission, a mission of love, but a very special kind of love. It’s not that kind of anything-goes, so-called love that overlooks sin, or won’t even call sin “sin.” It’s the kind of love that produces an answer to a serious, age-old problem. Here’s the problem, as Edward Johnson put it in an historic American sermon preached on July 8, 1741. We are “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”
I know; I know that’s not what you want to hear about at Christmas. But you must hear it in order to appreciate the Christmas story read a few minutes ago. That baby wasn’t born in a rough stable so you could have a pretty holiday with your family and friends. We are not given Immanuel so that we get some extra time off work.
God is who he is—God is love[3]—for us. God is love, but not the kind of love Ahaz might imagine or that you and I and other sinners might invent. He is love for us, love that demands sacrifice and so, provides himself as the necessary scapegoat. He is love because he bears our sins, sins that should damn us to a fiery hell.
So, I would not say that we are “sinners in the hands of an angry God” but rather, sinners in the hands of a loving and just God. Therefore, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”[4] He is faithful to forgive because he loves us. He is just in forgiving us because he redeemed us from our sins. We are his to do with as he will. And what he wills is to keep on loving us with the love of a Father, the love of a Savior, the love of God with us and within us. This is the love that is God.
While visions of sugar plums may be dancing in some heads, what God is thinking about tonight is precisely what he was thinking 2,700 years ago, and on that silent night seven centuries later. His thoughts tonight are not our thoughts, and for that, we are forever blessed, and should be forever thankful.
[1] Isaiah 55:8-9
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 4:10.
[3] 1 John 4:8
[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 1:9.