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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from Isaiah’s Old Testament reading. You may be seated. Whenever rain is received in Texas, like for lots of people yesterday, it’s almost a holy moment because you and I have seen the landscape change. When God withholds the rain, the landscape gets dry, crunchy, lifeless, limp, and just plain pathetic looking. But when God bestows rain upon the earth, especially around here in Texas, God’s rain changes the landscape, invigorates the plants and their stems, and brings about the growth of the grass.
And isn’t it interesting that no matter how much and how faithful you water your plants with your tap water, nothing like the rain that God brings, is it? Not at all. This is really a beautiful analogy of God’s Word in Isaiah’s prophecy. That His Word comes like rain or snow from God. And you and I have seen when men do not allow the Word to be preached in its truth and purity. Europe is a good example. You see what happens. And in America, you see what happens. God withholds and God gives. We also see in other parts of the world that had no faith or gospel, now people are coming to faith in an amazing way. Which is what God’s Word does. Like water, it does not and never will return to Him without accomplishing the purpose for which it was sent. This is how God has always proclaimed it.
The psalmist said it in another way. The psalmist said the grass withers, the flower fades. But the Word of the Lord endures forever. And since it is God’s Word, proclaimed or preached through sinful men, through sinful parents, to sinful children, the church has been likened to this term that Luther called it a mouth house. It’s a perfect description. The church is a mouth house. Her power is in the proclamation. What comes out of the lips of sinners. To whom? To other sinners. And it is the power that’s not in the sinner who proclaims it, nor in the sinner who receives it, but in the sinless word that’s given. There’s the power.
And the church is a mouth house, no different than when you think of the church when it was in Egypt in bondage. It was also called Israel, but that’s where the faith was at. The prophets were there. And God took the church out of Egypt and took it into the wilderness. And the wilderness was an inhospitable land, was it not? It was not like the lush and verdant Nile River Valley. It was very dry and harsh. And the only source of nourishment physically… And the only source of nourishment spiritually came from the God who led them in that wilderness.
You and I are a part of this mouth house that God is leading in a land that is inhospitable. In a land that says life does not begin at conception. Life begins when the mother wants the child or the father wants the child but not before. The mouth house is what preserves you in this inhospitable land, just as God’s word preserved the people of Israel in the wilderness.
We live in an inhospitable land that wishes to define for the world, along with Europe, that marriage is merely a human institution to be used, and not as God intended, between only a male and only a female. And God preserves you in this mouth house by sinners who hear sinners speak to them the word of God. And there are a whole host of other things that make this land in which we dwell and of which our flesh and Satan wish us to think that it is the cat’s meow or the bee’s knees, that it’s not. And there is no place on this planet that is. Just what God has revealed in his word.
And that’s it. Now he’s quite clear in this proclamation that the power of his word is all in his hands. Now you remember the people of Israel. They no more had seen themselves preserved and rescued from the Egyptians by the parting of the Red Sea and the closing that they began to grumble and complain. And it was the idea of one to say… And this was the intent. Go back and read it. The intent was to build this golden calf, not to worship a pagan idol. That was never the intent. You go back and read it. The intent was to worship the Lord through the calf that was made of gold. So it was man’s idea of how to worship God separate and apart from what God had already declared.
And that’s what the American church is struggling with. She who used to be so mighty and big and now is dwindling. We’ve got to figure out a way to stop this hemorrhaging. And it’s all for sincere purposes. But when we get outside of God’s Word, we’re heading into the golden calves, which makes sense because it’s going to gather the people. And did it gather the people? Oh my goodness, it gathered the people around that calf.
So it is. In this text, so it is in the seed and the sower. And the seed and the sower, it’s not the water, but the soil that’s the center. It’s not the seed that is the important thing. In Isaiah’s text, it’s not the seed or the soil. The only thing that brings growth and sprouts is the water, the Word. Now, it doesn’t answer the question. If people who know the Word of God so well teach their children that, why do their children walk away from the Word of God as they grow older? Because I can tell you there’s a lot of pastors and teachers, parochial teachers, who mourn that their children have left the church.
So it’s not just that that creates faith. Because there’s also a lot of people that you can meet if you’re willing to talk to people that their parents didn’t bring them to church and God still got them into church. Because the power is not in the parent nor in the person. It’s in the Word. And He uses all people to bring that word to bear fruit. Therefore, the power is not in the parent. And it’s not in the child. It’s not in the environment. It’s not in the genes or the DNA or anything else. The power, as God has made it clear in Isaiah, is in the word.
But here’s where struggle comes in for us. There’s got to be a way to soup it up. To jazz it up. To fix it up. Otherwise, why would these people be walking away from the church? That’s not what’s being done in these countries where Christians are growing by leaps and bounds. And that wasn’t what was done in American Christianity in the early years when she also grew by leaps and bounds. It was merely what God allowed at the time. And now we are the ones who have to bear the burden of when it’s not growing by leaps and bounds.
Somewhere else in the world gets that shining moment in the sun or in the rain of God’s Word for a time. It’s very clear. He says, “…it’s my purpose for which I send it. It’s my power, not yours. It’s my will. Look at this world through my eyes, the eyes of faith.” Do you know who said this so well? It wasn’t a Jewish prophet. It was a Gentile pagan who came to faith through the Jews. He was a soldier, a Roman centurion, who said to Jesus, “Jesus, just say the word and my servant will be healed. You don’t need to come and grace my house with your physical presence. You don’t need to touch my servant. You don’t need to do anything but say the word.”
There’s a man who trusted not in anything else but God’s word. Now we wish to see that immediate result as this Roman centurion went home and saw the immediate result. And that’s our struggle. We don’t get to see the immediate results many times. Paul makes it clear. One waters, one prunes, another harvests. All is done by whom? God. So when we see someone come to faith, someone else has done a lot more work that God used before we ever got to see the result or the harvest. And that’s your and my struggle.
It’s not just your and my struggle in general. It’s your and my struggle in specific. Because there are many people that you look around and you see they’re not here in church like they once were. People in your life that aren’t there in church like they once were. Satan wants us to beat ourselves up. Satan wants us to blame all kinds of other things. And Satan does not want us to see that the power still is in us. The Word. And God still uses the Word. And He brings about the growth when He chooses to bring about the growth and the harvest when He chooses to bring about the harvest. And He doesn’t consult us, nor does He say, “Hey, everybody, look what I’m going to do here.” Lots of times, it’s hidden from our eyes, isn’t it?
He says in the text, Isaiah, that we’re going to be led forth in peace and go out in joy. And the peace in which we’re going to go out and the joy in which we’re going to be led is not an emotional response. It’s an assurance of faith. In the midst of a declining church population, you can hold your head high and say… This is God’s church, not mine. And if He chooses to have us dwindle, and we’re doing what we can do, and we’re repenting as we need to repent, what else can we do?
And if some other church that hardly trips over itself and is completely inept, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds over in another country, like the hymnal that we just sang, oh, what of that? Oh, what of that? It’s not ours to determine. It’s His purpose, not ours. But as we go forth in joy in the midst of sadness and sorrow, and as we go forth in peace in the midst of uncertainty, do you know what He does with you?
He turns you into something in the midst of something else. You who are a thorn or a briar, He turns into a cypress. Now, if you’ve ever been along Town Lake or any of the rivers around here, some of these cypress can be 8 and 10 feet in circumference, hundreds of years old. That’s what he turns you into. And not in the midst of a bunch of other cypress, but in the midst of thorns. And never been to a state that has so many of these goofy trees, but they are one strong, tough tree, and that’s the crepe myrtle. And they’ve got them over in Iraq. Iraq. A hundred and twenty degrees in Iraq. And they’ve got them and they bloom. Crazy.
And he plants you as the myrtle in the midst of briars. So the briars and the thorns have to be the world. And you are a part of the church. So you are the cypress that God has planted in the midst of this world. And you are the myrtle that God has planted in the midst of the briars, right? For the purpose of benefiting and giving this word to others.
Now, one of the attributes of the myrtle, which can be pretty gross, they spit, don’t they? Come on, y’all. Oh, I got to park a car underneath it, and it looks horrible because of whatever comes off the tree. Now, some people say it’s insects; it doesn’t matter. Use the analogy. Just as that tree gives off moisture, so you give off God’s Word. And it does accomplish something. Even if it looks like it’s minuscule and a nuisance to the world, it accomplishes something. That’s how God works.
How did God create this world? By speaking it into being. How did God create Cain and Abel? He spoke them into ability to reproduce, to give them to Adam and Eve by saying this word, “be fruitful and multiply.” Had he not said that word, Adam and Eve could have been doing that all the day long and would have never come up with a child. By virtue of him speaking it, they became that capable of producing another child. The gift of life is God’s to give. All you’ve got to do is ask childless parents who are trying to have children, and you realize the power is not within them. It’s in God’s hands.
And sometimes God withholds it. And sometimes God gives it. How did the leper be cleansed except by God speaking it? How did Lazarus come forth from the tomb except by God speaking it? This is how God works in spite of how weak and weary the church may look and feel. This is your confidence. This is your pastor’s confidence, in the name of Jesus, who bestows such confidence. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.