Series: Growing Together in God's Grace
December 2, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
I know for a fact that not one of
us here today ever had the pleasure of meeting George Washington. Though it was only a little more than 200
years ago when George Washington lived, we have been completely separated from
ever having the pleasure of knowing him personally by those 200 years. And yet, even though none of us has ever met
him, we do know quite a lot about him because of all of the things that have
been revealed to us through books, encyclopedias, magazines, television shows,
movies, and yes through all the information posted today on the internet. Even though we have never met him personally
we can still know who he was and what he was like. Well, the same thing can be said about the
Lord our God. Even though we have never
met the Lord face to face, like we meet each other every day, we can still know
exactly who the Lord our God really is.
We can know exactly who the Lord our God really is from the ways in
which he has revealed himself to us. For
example, in the Bible, in Psalm 19 we learn, “The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth
speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or
language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the
earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1–4a, NIV84)
Now this is truly an amazing
thing! The Lord our God reveals himself
to us as the master creator by revealing himself through the very things he
created! For in the same way that we can
look at things like: the Pyramids in Egypt, Skyscrapers throughout the world,
even the International Space Station, and know that these things had to be
conceived, planned, and built by someone, so also, when we look at the beauties
of our God’s creation, we come to realize that there must have been someone who
made all that we see around us. There
must have been someone who had great power and might to create such a beautiful
place for us to live. In fact, as we
scan the pages of God’s book of creation, we begin to recognize that this great
and powerful someone who created all these things must, at the very least be
filled with divine powers, because there is no human being on earth who could
make anything like the world we see around us.
This divine being must be at the very least, long lived, if not eternal,
because in order for him to create the universe and everything in it, he would
have had to have been around long before creation took place. In fact, in the book of Romans, Paul reminds
us, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal
power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has
been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:20, NIV)
In such a simple way, Paul
reminds us of our Lord’s amazing wisdom in revealing himself as he does! For in the same way the wisdom of the
builders is clear from the ways they built the Pyramids, Skyscrapers and the
International Space Station, so also our God reveals his wisdom, his strength,
his eternal power and his divine nature through the very things he has created
for us!
Yet, these are not the only
things that the Lord has revealed about himself, nor is this the only way the
Lord our God reveals himself to us so that we can know him. For the truth is, the Lord has also revealed
himself by writing his will, his law upon our very hearts, which is something
that Paul also reminds us of in chapter two of his letter to the Romans. “There is no favoritism with God. 12 All
those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all
those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For the hearers of
the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared
righteous. 14 So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what
the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the
law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their
consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse or excuse
them 16 on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to
my gospel through Christ Jesus." (Romans 2:11–16, HCSB)
In short, Paul is telling us what
we already know. It doesn’t matter if
we’ve been taught the Law of God or not.
The Lord our God has revealed himself to each and every person, by
writing, branding if you will, his Law upon our hearts. He has given each and every one of us a
conscience—a conscience, which gives us a moral compass; a moral compass that
helps us to know the difference between right and wrong. For in the same way that the gauges in the
cockpit of an airplane monitor the status of the flight and alert the pilot of
something has gone wrong, so also our conscience monitors or watches over our
conduct and alerts us when something is wrong.
It’s that little voice inside of us that condemns us for our sinful
actions. It’s that little voice that
accuses us of doing wrong when we do not follow or live up to God’s
commands. It’s that feeling of shame
that floods over us when we know we haven’t acted honorably. It is that knowledge that just as our parents
punished us when we were naughty, so also our righteous God will punish us for
breaking his Law.
Yet, even as our conscience
reveals our God to be a righteous God who punishes sins, it also assures us and
comforts us when we do the right thing.
It is also that little voice of congratulations when we follow the will
of our God. It is that feeling of pride
when we know we did the right thing. The
problem, however, is that even our conscience can become clouded and
confused. They can be taught to believe
that innocent things like card playing and dancing are absolutely sinful. (How many of your parents or even
grand-parents were conscience bound by ideas like this?) Not only that, but our consciences can even
come to terms with sinful actions, accepting them as good things, and even
going so far as to approve of and encourage those who practice the same things,
if we continue to ignore our conscience or fill them with the idea that what
we’re doing isn’t all that bad anyway.
This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he writes in another
place in his letter to the Romans, “Although they know God’s righteous decree
that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these
very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:32,
NIV84)
These are but two of the ways
that the Lord our God has revealed himself to us so that we might know who he
is. But if truth be told, if these two
ways, through nature and through our conscience, if these two revelations had
been all that we knew about the Lord our God, then we would be very miserable
indeed! Even though we would know about
his eternal power, his divine nature, and his glorious wisdom from the very
things he had created; from the Law that the Lord had written on our hearts, we
would also know that we did not measure up to his standards. Even though we might be able to cloud our
consciences and sooth them into believing that our sinful actions were actually
God pleasing, deep down we would still know that we deserved nothing but God’s
punishment. We would never be able to
know if we had done enough to please him or if he even loved us, or if he even
remotely cared about us. If all we knew
about our God came to us from his creation and our consciences, then the guilt
we felt over all the things we had done wrong would continue to fester and
bubble in our hearts until it finally boiled over and filled our hearts and our
lives with despair. Despair from which
there could be no escape except for us to completely turn away from the Lord
and seek salvation from ourselves and from the world around us. For in the same way that a dashboard light
can only tell you that something is wrong with your car and not how to fix it,
so also our conscience can only tell us that something is wrong with us. Neither our knowledge of creation nor the
pangs of our conscience can ever tell us how we can fix it.
But thanks be to God that he has
not only revealed himself through the dashboard lights of creation and
conscience, but he has also revealed himself to us through the instruction
manual of his Word. For in the same way
that instruction manuals help mechanics find and fix the problem when a
dashboard light comes on, so also it is through the instruction manual of his
Word that our God has reveals himself to us and shows us exactly how he fixes
our problems with sin. Just as we sang
this morning, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
(John 20:31, NIV84)
Though we can truly learn a great
deal about our God from the things he reveals to us through his creation and
our conscience, neither of these can ever teach us about Jesus Christ our
Savior. For it is only through the work
the Holy Spirit accomplishes in our hearts Holy Scriptures, that we come to
faith in Jesus. It is only through the
Holy Scriptures, which many of us have known since we were infants that we have
been made wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior! (see 2
Timothy 3:15) It is only through the
Holy Scriptures that we know how the Lord our God revealed his plan to save the
human race already back in creation when he promised Adam and Eve, “And I will
put enmity (hostility) between you and the woman, and between your offspring
and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis
3:15, NIV84) It is only through the
Scriptures that God revealed how and where the Savior would be born when he
promised, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will
call him Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14, NIV84)
and “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans
of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose
origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2, NIV84)
It is only in the pages of the
Scriptures that we have the account of Jesus’ birth, announced in Luke 1 and
completely revealed in Luke 2. It is
only in the pages of the Scriptures where we have the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John telling us all about Jesus, how he was born and how he lived a
perfect and holy life, how he preached and taught the message of salvation
wherever he went, and how he willingly gave up his life in our place and rose
again from the dead, just as the Prophets of old that foretold. It is in the Bible where we have the records
of the Apostles going out and preaching and teaching the saving truth of salvation
to all people. We have the records of
those who taught the word to assure us that when Jesus went to his death he
went in our place. When Jesus went to
the cross he took every one of our sins with him and paid the price that God
demanded. Now, because of what the Lord
our God has revealed to us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures, we have the
assurance that through faith in Jesus all our sins and wrongdoings have been
forgiven. We have the assurance that eternal
life is waiting for us in heaven. In
short, it is through the Bible that the Lord our God completely reveals himself
to us through his Son, our Savior, in whom we believe because the Holy Spirit
has worked through that word and created faith in our hearts; faith which knows
exactly who the Lord our God truly is.
Now, because of this, we know who
our God truly is. We know that he is the
all powerful Lord who created all that exists by his eternal power and divine
nature. We know that he is our glorious
Savior because “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came
from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, NIV84) We know that
we are in a right relationship with him because through faith in his Son our
Savior, we now know the Lord who “blots out our transgressions for his own sake
and remembers our sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25, NIV84)
We know all these things about
the Lord our God, and even more than that, because these are the things that
the Lord our God has revealed about himself in the pages of the
Scriptures. He has revealed them to us
so that we might know him, even as he knows us and loves us. Though we have not yet met the Lord our God
face to face, we know him just as well as we know each other, if not better
than that, because through faith in Jesus—faith created in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit—we have a personal relationship with the Lord our God. We have a personal relationship with the Lord
our God, and we know exactly who our God is because he has completely revealed
himself to us so that we can know him.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
