My Dad's Last Sermon Part 6: I will uphold thee

Even that isn’t all!  He goes on to say, “I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”.  We come to that place where we are not as steady as we once were.  We have to resort to walking sticks, walking aids, all sorts of things to make sure we don’t fall – something to hold us up.

We need that physically but, you see, spiritually we will not fall if our trust is in our God. He is able to keep us from falling.  “I will uphold thee,” he says, “with the right hand of my righteousness”.  We remember that Old Testament story about Moses.  Strong as he was he found he needed to be upheld.  When the Amalekites attacked the Children of Israel (we read the account in Exodus chapter 17) we read how Moses lifted up his hands.  When he lifted up his hands Israel prevailed.  When he dropped his hands then the Amalekites prevailed. So something had to be done.  We read in verse 12 that they took a stone and sat Moses on a stone.  Then Aaron and Hur came and held up his hands to ensure that the Amalekites were defeated and Israel triumphed.

But there’s someone greater than Aaron and Hur in this verse.  It’s the almighty God with his all-powerful hand and he says, “I will uphold thee”.  What a blessed thing it is, as we step out into 2013, that the almighty God, the creator of the ends of the earth, he says to us, “There’s no need to be fearful.  If you think you’re going to stumble, if you feel perhaps the pressure spiritually, you know that I won’t forsake you.  I will be with you and I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.”

William Williams, that well-known Welsh hymn writer, in our closing hymn that we are about to sing, wrote,

I am weak but Thou art mighty;

Hold me with Thy powerful hand.

I know if we can make that our prayer as we enter 2013 then we shan’t go far wrong.  We shall know that, by God’s grace, we shall be upheld.  So may the Lord hold us with his all-powerful hand.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 5: I will help thee

So then, we rejoice in the fact that though we endure weakness like anyone else, yet we have an inner source of strength that the world knows nothing about when our trust is in our God, in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But that’s not the end of it all, is it?  The power that God promises here is not just to strengthen.  He goes on to say, “Yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

The commentator Alex Motyer, as he expounds this verse, writes, 'The Lord promises a mounting tide of assistance.'  Not only does God say, “I will strengthen thee”,  he says, “Yea I will help thee, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

“I will help thee”.  There’s a contrast here between the people of God and the heathen people in the nations of the world.  If we look back to those earlier verses when we saw that the isles saw it and feared (verse 5) we go on to read, ‘They helped each one his neighbour and every one his brother saying, “Be of good courage”. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.”  Now this is almost a kind of sarcastic move on the part of the prophet.  You see these heathen nations, when they saw the enemy armies advancing they were panicking and saying, “What shall we do?”  “Oh,” they said, “we’d better make some more gods, better make some more idols and they will protect us.”  And so they were busy helping one another to make more idols and thinking that somehow or another that would put off the enemy.  What folly that was!

The Lord is saying to his people, “You need not join these other nations in panicking and trying to make gods to protect you.  You have a God you will already help you: I will help thee”.  How thankful we are for our helpers where we live but we have an almighty helper, an almighty carer, one who cares for us in all our distresses.

Those of you who are familiar with The Pilgrim’s Progress will remember that very early on in his journey Christian, after he left the City of Destruction and was bound for the Heavenly City he fell into the Slough of Despond.  He’d suddenly become very despondent and very depressed.  We read a very beautiful thing about that when Christian appeared to be sinking in that Slough of Despond.  Someone called Help came along and pulled him out.

“I will help thee”, says the Lord.

He knows all about our proneness to be despondent, to be depressed.  When such feelings come, he is there at hand.  He is ready to come alongside us.  He’s ready to say, “I will help thee” So we need not fear that when we are physically strong enough we get despondent in our minds.  Our God is there.  He not only says, “I will strengthen thee”.  He says, “I will help thee”.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 4: I will strengthen thee

But we thank God that his presence is not a passive presence.  It’s an active presence.  And in addition to promising his presence he now promises his power.  He says, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.  Be not dismayed for I am thy God.  I will strengthen thee”.  He promises them power, power to strengthen them.

Now remember that the people to whom this prophecy was aimed were people that had been in captivity.  Obviously 70 years of captivity had considerably weakened them.  They didn’t feel like a fighting force at all.  But that didn’t matter because the Lord was able to strengthen them in their weakness.  You remember the words we read at the end of Chapter 40, in verse 29, concerning our God; ‘He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.’

You see, there is no shortage of strength on God’s part.  He is the everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth.  He fainteth not, neither is weary.  Therefore he is able to give power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

Now it goes without saying that for many of us here we do not have the strength that we had just a few years ago.  We recognise that our physical strength has been declining.  Well, if we’re honest, we wonder what we shall be like in December 2013, in a year’s time.  We feel weaker now than a year ago, what will we feel like after another year?  Perhaps that fills us with just a little bit of dread and wonder.  Well, it need not do because although we may decline in our physical strength and feel our increasing physical weakness, we can hear our God saying he gives power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

The apostle Paul experienced this personally, didn’t he?  Remember the verses we read in the beginning of our worship.  Paul had been suffering with a thorn in the flesh.  We don’t quite know what that was but it was evidently some kind of spiritual weakness and Paul was so distressed by this that he besought the Lord to remove it.  Three times he prayed that the Lord would take it away, but the Lord didn’t.  Instead he answered Paul with those words, “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore Paul was able to rejoice and go on to say, “When I am weak, then am I strong”.  He knew that though he was weak outwardly, he could be strong inwardly, filled with might by God’s Spirit in the inner man.

That can be our experience, dear friends, in 2013.  We may, and will probably, feel our increasing physical weaknesses but we need not become spiritually weak.  As we keep close to the Lord, as we trust in him and believe his Word, he will empower us by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we shall be empowered inwardly though we are weakened physically and outwardly.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 3 Be not dismayed

But he goes on to say something else:  “Be not dismayed for I am thy God”.  I understand that word dismayed really means panicking, looking this way and that, being desperate, not knowing which way to turn.  In the earlier verses we find that was the attitude of the pagan nations in the face of the advancing armies of Persia.  They were panicking and not knowing which way to turn.  But for the Lord’s people he said, “There’s no need to do that.  Be not dismayed for I am thy God.”  He reminded them of his covenant with them through Abraham and we have an even greater covenant through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  The apostle Paul says in Galatians, “if we are Christ’s then are we Abraham’s seed.”  In other words, those promises made to Abraham about God being with his people hold good for us as much as for any Jew descended from Abraham.

So, we thank God that we do not need to be dismayed.  Those words would have had a familiar ring to many Jews who were familiar with their history because they’re very similar to the words that God spoke to Joshua when Joshua led God’s people into the Promised Land.  In Joshua chapter 1, verse 9 we find that God said to Joshua, “Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed for I, the Lord thy God, am with thee withersoever thou goest.” 

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 2: I am with thee

We notice the antidote to fear.

That is, the promise of God’s presence.  He says, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.” He promises, then, his presence.  Now down through the ages Israel had received assurances of God’s presence with them.  They had received an assurance back in the wilderness when Moses, under the direction of God, had erected the tabernacle.  In Exodus 40, verse 34 we read how that tabernacle was filled with the glory of the Lord, with the cloud, so that Moses himself could not go into the tabernacle such was the presence of the Lord there among them.  He made it evident that we was present with them.

A similar thing happened at the erection of the temple by King Solomon.  In II Chronicles we read that once the temple was completed the temple was so filled with the cloud that the priests and the Levites could not enter. The presence of the Lord was very evident.

But we can understand some of the people of Israel saying, “That was all in the past.  There’s no tabernacle now; there’s no temple now.”  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had destroyed it 70 years earlier.  Yet the promise of God is still the same! “Fear thou not for I am with thee”.  His presence didn’t depend on there being a tabernacle or a temple.  He promised to be present with his people who trusted in him.

That message is carried over into the New Testament.  We remember that Stephen, speaking to the Jews of his day said, “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”  Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in Matthew 18, verse 20 said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst.”  What an encouragement that is to the Church of Jesus Christ.  Sometimes we feel sad when we see decline in the Church; churches that were once full of people now greatly reduced in their congregations.  Even here we’ve had to admit that our services are not as well attended as they were.  There has been decline and we greatly regret that.  But however great the decline we do not need to fear that our Lord will forsake us.  He has said, “Fear thou not for I am with thee.”  So as we move into 2013 we have the promise of his presence.

This promise of course holds good not just for the church – it hold good for individual believers.  We think of those who’ve had a loved one and they’ve been together many long years.  My wife and I were celebrating our 56^th wedding anniversary yesterday and that’s a long time.  But we recognise the time will come when the Lord will call and there will not be two but one.  Whenever that comes, or if it has come to any of us, we can praise God that he is with us.  If a loved one has been taken away we can say, “I am not alone for God has said, Fear thou not for I am with thee.””  That promise holds good no matter how much we may miss someone who has been with us over the years.  So the Lord promises his presence.

My Dad's Last Sermon Part 1: Fear Not

On the last Sunday of last year, in a state of growing weakness, my Dad laid down the ministry role he had been taking for a number of years in his local fellowship.  He could not have known for sure that this would have been his last sermon but he would have strongly suspected it might be.

It will almost certainly be the only one of his sermons to find its way into the ocean of preached stuff on the web.  It is a Biblical and prophetic testimony to the way a Christian approaches a year in which he expects to suffer limitations in this world or possibly leave it altogether.  It has blessed me and others and I hope it blesses you.

 

 

We turn to perhaps one of the best known verses in the Bible, Isaiah chapter 41 and verse 10.  I could think of no other verse of Scripture more appropriate as we step out from an old year into a new year.

Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea I will help the, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

These word, ‘Fear not’, seem to be favourite words of the Lord which the prophet Isaiah uses. We find them at least three times in this chapter: here in verse 10, again in verse 13 and again in verse 14.

All of us tend to have a fear of the unknown.  We cannot really possibly know what the future will hold.  We cannot possibly know with our own human intellect what 2013 will be for us because we cannot see the way ahead that far.  Indeed, we don’t always know what a day will bring forth.  But the words here are spoken by a God who knows the whole future.  He knows not just the year ahead, he knows centuries ahead.  Indeed, he knows the whole of history because he is the Lord of all.  And therefore he is able to still our fears about the future.

In the context of this chapter these words have a special significance because it was a time of tension in the Middle East.  There’s constantly been tension in that part of the world, hasn’t there? There still is today.  And at this particular time that the prophet was prophesying he was prophesying at a period of great tension when the mighty empire of Medo-Persia was ravaging the nations and destroying kingdoms.  This was causing great fear and panic.  We notice in verse 5 the isles saw it and feared. They saw the advancing Persian armies and wondered what the outcome of it was going to be and so they were in great terror and fear.

 Well, the prophet stills the fears of the Lord’s people in our text.  He says, “The nations may be panicking, the nations may be afraid but for you, the Lord’s people, the word is – Fear not.”

The period that Isaiah was prophesying about was the reign of Cyrus, King of Persia.  He says in verse 2, “Who raised up the righteous man from the East”.  We might say, “Who was the righteous man from the East?”  Well, if were to read on to the beginning of chapter 45 we would see that that man is named and it is Cyrus the King of Persia.  That in itself is a most remarkable prophecy because Cyrus wasn’t born when Isaiah was prophesying, there was at least a century and a half to go before Cyrus appeared on the scene.  Yet inspired by the Holy Spirit he was able to predict the man who would come.  It shows that our God, he knows the whole future.  There’s nothing hid from Him.

The reason why he was able to give the people of Israel this assurance was that, although Cyrus was ruthless in his treatment of the nations (he destroyed that wicked nation Babylon and other nations beside), yet he showed great compassion toward the people of Israel.  If you were to turn over to the opening verses of the Book of Ezra you would find that this King Cyrus gave a decree that the people of Israel who had been held captive in Babylon would now be free to return to their own country and to rebuild the temple of God. The king that was striking fear into the heathen nations was going to bring liberty to the people of God. That was why God was able to say through Isaiah, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee”.

How thankful we are that we have a God who knows the future.  Everything is clear and plain to him and if we trust his word we know that we needn’t be afraid about the future.  The future is all in his hands.