Word of Salvation – Vol. 14 No.43 – October 1968

 

The Promised Child

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf, B.D. on Genesis 21:1-14

ADVENT, AND PREPARATORY SERMON FOR THE LORD'S SUPPER.

SCRIPTURE READING: Galatians 4:22 – 5:1

PSALTER HYMNAL: 331; 195:1,3; 10:1,3 (after Law);
                                    195:2,4; 268; 383:1,2,3,4; 383:5

 

Brothers and sisters in Jesus -

The Freemasons have a way of calling God "The Great Architect of the Universe".

Now the trouble with the Freemasons is that that Architect – according to them – is NOT the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He may just as well be Buddha or Allah or Baal.

But what is NOT wrong is that, surely, the LORD is an architect, who planned His world with beauty and consistency, so that it is enormously varied.... and, at the same time, there is a marvellous unity about it.

The same Architect, the same Master Artist planned the Bible, planned His work of Redemption.  And there too we see how certain elements come back again and again.

We see how in the Old Testament the great happenings of the New are foreshadowed, sometimes even down to fine details.

We see today, on this (first) Advent Sunday, how the master-Architect, the great Artist, gives us a miniature of Christmas, of the coming of His Son into the world...·complete with our sinful reaction to it..... and with His protecting power, by which He made His salvation over-rule all resistance against it.  We see in our text how the Promised Child is

            1.  Born:

            2.  Despised:

            3.  Vindicated.

"And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken", and Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age...!

After all those years..... at last..... it happened.  Everything seemed against it, but no-one could stop God's Word from becoming true!  "My Word shall never return unto Me void," He had said; "it shall do whereto I sent it...!”

These two people had to wait... and wait... and believe.. till it all looked pretty dim and impossible.  THEN God's time – “the fullness of time" – came.  When, HUMANLY SPEAKING, the thing was impossible, then the Lord came and showed them: "what is impossible with men is possible with God".

That is always a hard lesson to learn, in Abraham's time as well as in this 20th century.  But that's God's way of working.  That is His way of making people laugh in wonder, when at last His time comes!

Yes, He made them laugh all right!  Both of them!  ABRAHAM laughed when he called his little boy LAUGHTER...  And Sarah – the text says – laughed with him.  No longer the sneering smirk of unbelief and scepticism, but the laughter of wonder and joyful well-being: "Lord, how great is Thy salvation...!"

Mind you, we know something of that laughter whenever children are born to us.  What a miracle, time and time again.  When they come into the world healthy and normal, full of promises, sometimes full of beans, too.....!  They can make you laugh... in spite of all the problems they give.  They show us again that life is good..... that GOD is good....!

But we have made it so – in our world – that this laughter dies, at a certain moment.  We have made this place "a vale of tears".  Thousands of people are living in the world today, who do not know what to do with their lives – life has become a burden, a weary load.  All because of our rebellion against the Lord.  Whether you go to the heathen nations living in constant fear of evil spirits.... or to the modern metropolis where God is declared dead, and gadgets and money take His place..... life loses its beauty, and empty faces stare at you.

What laughter do we hear in such a world?  The raucous cry around a dirty joke.... the empty mask of a polite smile that isn't meant, the sort of grin one switches on or off.  But the Lord in heaven has made up His mind to teach us to laugh again!

Some people think that this isn't Christian.  That the Christian is the serious fellow with the straight face, always dutifully depressed with the woes of the world....!  But the LORD says: "I'll teach you something, my children; yes, even when you prepare for the Lord's Supper.... I'll teach you something which the world needs badly: I'll teach you to laugh the laughter of God.

And then, after waiting for thousands of years, The Child is born, The Son is given, and, when shepherds fear, the angel says, "Come on, cheer up!  GREAT JOY I come to bring you: for, as in Abraham and Sarah's tent, IT HAS HAPPENED AT LAST!  You may laugh again – the promised child is there!

Listen to Sarah: "Everyone who hears this will laugh with me...!”  They will say, "Have you ever heard such a thing?  That Sarah would feed a baby?"  Yes we hear how God's children may play with what father gives them: may play before His face: "Look what I get..... look at it; did you ever think it possible?"  Certainly God saves us from OUR SINS.... but what's more important?  Is it our sins, or His salvation?  Indeed, He makes us laugh through our tears.  But what is the real thing: Our tears... or the laughter of God?

In a world that writes articles on suicide and that knows only empty fun or grim determination, where people get "high" on LSD... or become drunk with too much wine... where the reality is hard and an escape is sought... we must not make Christianity a problem, but we must rejoice, as the angels told the shepherds to do.

We surely must not make CHRISTIANITY into a problem, or the Sabbath into a troubled case.  Let's celebrate it, let's play before God's face!  The wonder child WAS born – after all the ages of waiting – and He rose from the dead after defeating the devil.

LIVIN

What more do you want?  Put down your slavery, and lay down your work; sit back and rejoice and laugh with the Lord, whose surprises are such that you haven't seen the end of it for a long, long time!  Relax!  And take time to praise Him... take time to let others laugh with you, too!

You have a wonderful story to tell... You have a wonderful salvation to show.... In our age of doubt and problems, when professors and liberal (?) ministers make a problem out of everything, God's church is asked to laugh, for the Great Isaac was born, the great Laughter of God - Who Himself, for our sake, had to become the Man of Sorrows that we might learn to sing the Psalm of Joy again.

THE CHILD OF PROMISE..... born

Yes – but our text tells us also that he was despised.   Ishmael, a lad of thirteen, hates the fuss made about this new baby.  He hates the idea that he isn't first in Abraham's tent any more.  He does not see the miracle in the child.  He only sees the competition involved.  And he despises the wonder-child of God.  Despises and teases him.

Brothers and sisters do you see, here too, the design of the heavenly Architect?  It is as if we see the Christmas story before us, and King Herod's jealous reaction, who only saw COMPETITION in the wonder-child of God; who wanted to hang onto FIRST PLACE, and so persecuted the King of heaven; yes, persecuted Him to the point of bloodshed.

But isn't it time, now, to come down from the grand-stand?  For it was not only Herod who sought to kill the Christ-child; Ishmael, who wants to be the Big One Himself, isn't dead!  He lives in those who cried "away with Him, away with Him!  Crucify!" – and he lives in everybody today who thinks the Gospel foolishness and God's wonder-way of free salvation a stumbling block.  A world that does NOT want to live by God's miracle of mercy is again mocking the wonder-child of God.  A world that does NOT want to accept the fact that, for OUR salvation, Jesus had to DIE and RISE AGAIN; that IT ALL had to be done by HIM, for we could do NOTHING ourselves – that is again doing what big Ishmael did.  And a church, a church member that wants to make it by being good and strong; that wants to get there by doing the law; that seeks to "arrive" by being so nice and orthodox, is doing the same.

Not for nothing does Paul re-tell this story in Galatians: how Ishmael (and his mother Hagar) are the proud people of Israel who wanted no dying saviour, but sought their way to heaven by careful observance of the Law.  Today, Israel is still like that; hard-working, clean-living, striving upward..... but there's no laughter for the mercy of God!  There's no wonder, no amazement because of the Free Gift of the almighty to those who are lost in sin!

How about you, now, Reformed Church member?  Oh, you disagree with the liberals, and you have confessed the Gospel.  Yet: do you LIVE BY the Gospel as YOUR ONLY HOPE AND YOUR FULL salvation... ALL YOU NEED...?  (Next week it is The Lord's Supper again... and) in a few weeks it will be Christmas.... WHAT DO YOU DO WITH JESUS?  What place has he in your heart?  If He only lives somewhere on the border-line, while you expect your REAL happiness from YOUR work, YOUR money, YOUR position, also in the church, then how can you still laugh in wonder at the great mercy of God that YOU ARE ALREADY His child?  That Jesus did it all for you?

Is He your all?  Is HE your joy? ...the sunshine in your days?  He does NOT share with any other thing.  That is made clear by the last part of our text, when Sarah says to Abraham: "This Ishmael must go!' He shall NOT inherit with Isaac, He may not share with the wonder-child from God!

And when Abraham wonders about that for he loves Ishmael, too God, the great Architect, shows here, too, that attention to detail which is still true today in His Great Plan of salvation.  "Sarah is right"; send him away, the boy and his mother, for my miracle of grace can NOT be shared by anyone else.  My child of heavenly laughter must have not only first place, but He must have the ONLY place.  Only UNDER HIM and THROUGH HIM may other things have a place in your tent.

It cannot be Jesus AND my own works (as Rome says).  It cannot be Jesus AND the world (as my heart often tries to convince me).  Jesus doesn't want to be just a member of parliament to rule my heart, or my church, or His world TOGETHER WITH OTHERS.  He doesn't just want to have a vote.  If He is to be in at all, He is to lead, to be the only one, to be my FULL joy, God's FULL provision for all I need.

By grace are ye saved through faith; it's all the gift of God.  And so it isn't easy, after all, to REALLY have the Feast of the wonder-child of God next month.  For oh...
            to surrender ourselves;
            to surrender our ways in the church;
            to surrender our ambitions in the world;
            to surrender our worries, too, our proud carrying of our own load,
            to surrender being a big boy, a big girl...
and to bow before a Baby, to kneel by a humble cross, and to give it all away into the pierced hands of Him Who does NOT share with anyone but claims ALL our heart, soul, mind....!

Even this we cannot do....!  Even for this we must ask Him.  Let us do that right now.

Amen.