Isaiah 28:15-19 (NIV) 15 You boast, "We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place." 16 So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. 17 I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place. 18 Your covenant with death will be annulled; our agreement with the grave will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it. 19 As often as it comes it will carry you away; morning after morning, by day and by night, it will sweep through." The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror.
Certainly you and I need a sense of security and well being about our life. Without it, we could not get out of the bed in the morning to face the onslaught of responsibilities, conflicts, and challenges that each day brings. We might try to build up security in business, beauty, or friends. The biggest problem in trying to find security by building our own kingdom is in the foundation, for this whole plan rests on a foundation of our having to be in control.
Isaiah offers an alternative to building and controlling our own kingdom – the alternative of counting on and trusting in Jesus Christ. Isaiah promises that, in Jesus Christ, God offers us a more solid foundation on which to build our life than our own efforts. When we finally rest our life on Christ we can cease our frantic effort to build our own kingdom.
And yet we are not likely to change very easily. If we have built our own kingdom, we are not likely to give up without a fight, without a struggle. What does it take to knock the props from beneath our life so that we can count on God for the security we seek? Do we need to hear God’s judgment, wrath and anger against our folly and foolishness? Yes, but we need also to hear God's grace.
Jesus Christ is God’s perfect expression of His judgment and His grace at the same time. In the Cross, we see God’s fury and anger at our sin, and at the same time we see His grace in taking the punishment we deserved. In God’s judgment and in God’s grace we see the same truth that God is for us. This is the truth Jesus spoke, in even His harshest words. This is the truth He lived and this is the truth He accomplished for us by His death on the Cross and Resurrection from the dead.
God is for us, even to the point of dying for us. That is the simple, solid truth on which anyone can base their whole life and find real security. Have we been beating our brains out trying to build our own little kingdom, a kingdom that cannot possibly withstand the onslaught of life and death? If you have felt the foundations of your own little kingdom shake, I would challenge you to place your hope and confidence in Jesus Christ and to believe wholeheartedly that “God is for you.”
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 24, 1974
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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