On Sunday 16th November, the Anglia
Youth Chorus led the worship at Wisbech Corps. Below are the sermon notes I
used.
In that day you will sing:
“I will praise you, O Lord!
You were angry with me, but not any more.
Now you comfort me.
See, God has come to save me.
I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.”
With joy you will drink deeply
from the fountain of salvation!
In that wonderful day you will sing:
“Thank the Lord! Praise his name!
Tell the nations what he has done.
Let them know how mighty he is!
Sing to the Lord, for he has done wonderful things.
Make known his praise around the world.
Let all the people of Jerusalem[a] shout his praise with joy!
For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you.”
(Isaiah 12, NLT)
Every year in America, on the fourth Thursday in
November, families and friends gather to celebrate thanksgiving with one
another; a day to give thanks for all that has happened in the preceding year
and the harvest that has been gathered in. It’s a time to share the joys and
celebrate God’s goodness. People from all backgrounds and religions spend the
day thinking about what they have to be thankful for, whether they are the
wealthiest or the poorest, whether there is lots to be thankful for or little,
whether they’re giving thanks for food, shelter, good things that have
happened, or just the fact they’re still living.
While today we think of thanksgiving as a very American
concept, throughout church history there have been ‘Days of Thanksgiving’
celebrated whenever there was a reason for national celebration. In fact, we’ve
just recently celebrated one of them – Guy Fawkes Day began as a ‘Day of
Thanksgiving’ for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot – giving thanks for the
salvation of the King’s life and of parliament. And while we may not think of
it as such, Remembrance Day is also a day of thanksgiving as well as
remembrance; we’re giving thanks to those who gave their lives so we could be
free.
Being thankful is still a major part of today’s
culture. I’m sure we all know of the Roses advert, ‘Thank you very much for…’,
and recently on social media there was a ‘thankfulness challenge’. People would
have to share for five days 3 things they were grateful for on that day, and
then challenge a number of friends to take part. While the movement began
mainly amongst Christian people, it was not limited to them. Many people of
other faiths and no faith also took part in the challenge. The challenge was
supposed to reveal to people that there are many things to be thankful for;
trying to create a thanksgiving mind set within themselves that would last
beyond those five days.
Thanksgiving
But with everyone being thankful for things, who
are we thanking? Being thankful suggests there is a person or reason giving us
these things. If things come our way by chance, our thankfulness is hollow; it
is more of an appreciation for what we have received than being thankful; we
are happy to have it, but no one is receiving our thanks. When non-Christians
are thankful for the things they experience in life, they are more focussed on
the fact these things have been received by them and how good it makes them
feel.
As Christians, our thankfulness is different,
because we believe God has given us all these things. Our thanksgiving is part
of our worship; he receives it as an act of worship from us. We should have a
thanksgiving mind set towards him at all times, most importantly because there
is one thing we have received from him that should cause us to be more thankful
than anything else we receive.
What is it?
It’s forgiveness for our sins and salvation through
his son, Jesus. By his death and resurrection, thereby paying the price for our
sin, we are saved and can enter into a relationship with God.
From our reading, we can see that before we came to
Jesus, God was angry, because of our sin.
Experiencing God’s Anger
Our passage from Isaiah 12 is a song of
thanksgiving for salvation. At the time of writing, the people of Israel were
experiencing trouble for their sins. They had not turned from their wicked
ways, and so could not experience salvation. Just two chapters earlier, in
Isaiah 10, the Lord is expressing his anger at the way the Israelites have
behaved, but this is not the only time God gets angry with the sinful. He has
always been angry with those who do not follow his laws as Paul writes in
Romans 1:18 – 21:
“God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who
suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because
he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people
have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see
his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no
excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him
as God or even give him thanks.” (NLT)
And Paul warns that we too experience God’s anger
in Romans 2:3:
“Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can
avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things?” (NLT)
When we sin, we experience God’s anger. His anger
brings death, and is painful to experience. In Isaiah, God was going to send
the Assyrians to punish them for their wicked ways. But for us, we experience
God’s anger as a broken relationship. We can never truly have a relationship
with God while his anger burns against us.
But Isaiah 12 is not focussed on God’s anger. By
the end of verse 1, God has come to bring comfort. But what has changed? What
changes this anger into comfort? And how?
Experiencing God’s Power & Comfort
Verse 2 says ‘God has come to save me’. It’s Jesus.
While God is angry about our sin, he loves us enough to get involved in the mess
of our lives to come and rescue us himself through the death of his son Jesus.
In Isaiah 40:9-11, we read that God is coming in
power to rule with a powerful arm, but he will feed his flock and hold them
close. Isaiah was prophesying the coming of Jesus. When Jesus came, he came
with the power to forgive sins so that we could be comforted. Our comfort
cannot come before the punishment, but Jesus took that for us on the cross so
that he could then be the one to offer us comfort, knowing he was the one who
saves us.
Experiencing Joy
We are dependent on this grace; this gift of
salvation we haven’t earned. This salvation and forgiveness are just some of
the gifts we have undeservedly received from God. And in return for these
things, we should live in recognition that they belong to God. When we do, we
experience joy – because we know we owe God EVERYTHING.
When we experience the joy of salvation, we want to
thank the Lord because we know we don’t deserve the rescue, but we also want to
tell of his great name to those who haven’t experienced God’s salvation, and tell
them what he has done. When someone becomes a Christian for the first time,
they’re so joyful and thankful; they can’t help but spread the news, which is
what we see described in Isaiah 12:4-6.
Testimony of God’s presence
Isaiah knew what it was to receive forgiveness and
salvation from God. He had known the salvation in his life in chapter 6; God
made him clean to be his messenger. And since then, he shared God’s message
with the nation. He wanted them to turn from their sin so they too could
experience the joy he had found.
Those who regularly spend time with God and receive
his forgiveness know what they have been saved from, the mess they make of
their live; the cost of their forgiveness, the death of Jesus; and that the
news must be shared with others, because it is just too good to keep to
themselves. They are joyful, because they are rooted in the relationship with
God that is the result of salvation.
But we can too easily loose this sense of joy and
thanksgiving. When we’ve been saved a while, we can forget what it was like to
be in the mess. We can forget what we have been saved from. And without
recalling that experience, we forget the joy it brought into our hearts. If we don’t
experience the salvation in our lives, how can we tell of it to others?
When did you last experience the power of salvation
in your life? When did you last drink from the fountain of salvation? Have you
ever even tasted the waters?
We need to keep coming back to the fountain. A
fountain at the time Isaiah wrote would not be a fountain as we picture one,
but what we may call a spring – the source of a river. A spring appears to come
from nowhere, but keeps flowing. That is what salvation is like. It appears
from nowhere but keeps coming. There will always be enough if you are truly
sorry for your sin and want to be saved.
Jesus died so we could be saved. It is his death we
should give thanks for.
