Sexagesima Sermon

Have you ever had one of those weeks when life dances around you at an alarming speed and no matter how hard and fast you dance you remain two steps behind? I had one of those weeks. I could not catch up to life's dance, my feet were moving too slow and out of beat. It all came to a crashing halt on Friday night. I was trying to write this sermon and my fingers were dancing to one rhythm, my mind dancing too another, and the truth to another still. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how late I said up, no matter how much research I did, I could not say anything intelligible and truthful. In God's providential irony, the verse I had been think about all week, the verse I was struggling to write a sermon about was this verse from our first lesson, "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have se ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment." There are few verses of the Bible that condemn the human sin of self-sufficiency so clearly and here I was dancing with all my self-sufficient might trying to write a sermon about the grave errors of self-sufficiency.

I do not think I am the only one who as struggled with the hypocrisy of believing human self-sufficiency to be a grave error and simultaneously trying to be self-sufficient. I think we all probably know how dependent we are upon other people. Very few of us milk a cow to get milk for our cereal, very few of us grow the grains to make our cereal or chop the wood to heat our house. For most of our daily needs, we depend upon other people. Furthermore, and more seriously, I think we all know how dependent we are upon God. He supplies us with all our daily needs. He has given us a creation to inhabit, a house to live in, food to eat and family to love. It is He who has ransomed us from sin and death, given us grace, and promised to be ever with us, to always guide us and constantly protect us. We all know how dependent we are upon God, yet we all still struggle with self-sufficiency.

In a way, our constant struggle with self-sufficiency reminds me of one particular Fourth of July. Emily and I were sitting on our porch in Florida watching an impressive display of fireworks. We oooohed and ahhhed at the brilliant colors and changing shapes of these fireworks. We marveled at the brilliance of men, who with wisdom and talent, placed combustible materials in a tube that would explode in a harmony of colors and shapes. We marveled that is until we looked up and in the distance saw towering miles into the sky a massive thunderhead that stretched across the horizon as far as the eye could see from the east to the west. Flashes of lightening ripped through this massive cloud at an alarming rate, giving the heavens an eerie incandescent glow. Instantly, the man made fireworks became impotent, puny sparks in the sky compared the power and robust lightening. It was almost as if God was saying, "Oh yeah, you think fireworks are cool, eh, well take a look at this!" As I watched the lightening flash from the east to west, splitting, twisting, and popping with a power unknown to man, I felt like a man who spent his life watching nature shows on television but never ventured outdoors.

The works of man are nothing compared to the works of the Lord. Yet, we wallow in admiration and worship in the things our hands can do. We admire our brilliance when we combining combustible materials in a tube that shoots off pretty lights. We readily submit to manmade rules about firework safety, "touch this," "don't touch this," and "never point this at a living creature." Yet, we despise the God who combines positively and negatively charges ions in a thunderhead that produces lightening which travels at 60,000 meters a second and reaches temperatures of 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit. We refuse to submit our lives to the man-maker and acknowledge our complete and absolute dependence upon him.

Why do we struggle to be divine-dependent? Why do we continue to live in a state of misguided self-sufficiency when we know it is wrong? I suppose that each one of us has a different reason or excuse, but I think one of the most common reasons is fear, fear of what a life of divine dependence will bring. Few passages in Scripture speak of the characteristics of a life of divine dependence like our First Lesson from Isaiah 50 and our Epistle lesson from II Corinthians 11.

Isaiah 50 is the third of four Suffering Servant songs. These four songs¹ accurately shaped and predicted the life of God's true suffering servant Jesus Christ, who lived a life of godward dependency. In Isaiah 50, the servant expresses unwavering confidence in God and this confidence is based on the servant's divine dependency. The servant acknowledges his utter dependency upon God almost every facet of his life. He says, "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue," "He wakens me morning by morning," "The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears," "The Sovereign Lord helps me," "He who vindicates me is near." The servant acknowledged his dependency upon God in his speech, in his daily life, in his understanding of the truth, and in his justification and salvation. Yet, because of his life of divine dependency, the servant's contemporaries hate him. They beat his back, pull out his beard, mock him, spit upon him, shame him, disgrace him, and accuse him. A life of divine dependence will be a life of worldly persecution.

Let us now look at our Epistle reading. In this section of II Corinthians, St. Paul was trying to prove to the Corinthians that he was indeed an apostle. In our lesson, St. Paul boasts of his apostolic ministry, a ministry that proves how dependent he was upon our Lord. Most ministers would boast of their divine dependency by speaking of how God has blessed them with a large congregation, a beautiful building, a huge Sunday school, and new converts, but these boast are often covert boastings of their pride and self-sufficiency. St. Paul's boast, however, is that he has frequently been thrown in prison, flogged, exposed to death numerous times, received thirty-nine lashes five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned, shipwrecked three times, and has been deprived of sleep, food and drink. St. Paul proves his divine dependency by boasting in his persecutions!

I am afraid to live a life of divine dependence; I am scared of being burned by the world's manmade fireworks. Here is where I, and hopefully you, will find comfort, encouragement. No matter what the world throws at us, God will defend us. Listen to the Suffering Servant, "Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced." No matter what the world accuses us of, God will defend us. Listen to the words of the Suffering Servant, "It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me. Who is he that will condemn me? They will all were out like a garment; the moths will eat them up." Lastly, these passages give us eternal hope because they remind us how far God went to secure our vindication. He sent his Son to be the Suffering Servant, who offered his back to the whip, he cheeks for men to pull out his beard and he hide not his face from mockery and spit and he did this all for our benefit. Therefore, let us not be afraid to live a life of divine dependence for when the world beats us, persecutes us, and maliciously maligns us our lives resemble the life of our Saviour.