To Whom Do You Belong?

[00:00:02] In the name of Jesus. Amen. [00:00:06] Of course, that's a hymn beloved by many. But I've recently it's come to my attention that this hymn is special to many of you, partly through the hymn survey and partly through conversations with some of you in recent weeks. [00:00:23] Here's a powerful hymn and it's got a powerful story behind it. [00:00:26] That's not going to be my sermon, but you could go find the story today in one way or another, I'm sure. [00:00:34] Essentially the hymn writer wrote it in the midst of great tragedy and sorrow and sadness. [00:00:43] Circumstances were far from peaceful for him. [00:00:48] He was out on a ship. Now I am telling the story, but only a little bit. He's out on a ship, has lost family members to shipwreck, and writes the hymn looking out over the waters where his family had died. [00:01:09] Waters are, in ancient times representative of death and chaos. [00:01:16] We think of Genesis 1, when God creates the heavens and the earth, but shapeless and void. [00:01:27] It's like undifferentiated matter, like stuff that's basically nothing. It's like a nothing, something with no shape or form. Picture water, just kind of shapeless. [00:01:38] Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. [00:01:44] And then God gives form and purpose to everything so that at the end of the day of creation or the week of creation, he can say, this is good. [00:01:59] Well, sometimes life feels less like ordered, purposeful stuff and more like disordered chaos. That's shapeless. [00:02:18] Do you ever end up in a situation like that where you're looking at a tragedy in your own life or suffering or long term difficulties that won't go away, whatever it is? Relationship issues, those things that nag at us that you end up thinking about at 3am and they feel shapeless, like you can't identify what's going on, what the purpose of these things are, which is why you're mulling it over, trying to figure it out? [00:02:56] Now that's just going to keep happening. [00:03:02] It's not just a phase? No. Sometimes. Sometimes you get through a difficulty and you come to the other side and now everything makes sense. [00:03:11] But there's going to be another thing. [00:03:15] Things are going to appear shapeless and purposeless and you're going to suffer again and again and again because that's the shape of life well after the fall into sin. [00:03:31] Now remember whose fault it is that everything's messed up. [00:03:39] In a sense it's our fault. [00:03:42] And this is important to remember that when we see the shapelessness of life around us, when we experience confusion and suffering and challenge, it should drive us to repentance because it was our sin back there, just after the beginning, that prompted God to say, now you're going to die and you're going to deal with thorns and thistles and you're going to have conflict. [00:04:15] It was because of our sin. [00:04:18] On the other side of things, though, we ought not to forget, and I think this is a difficult one. I'm not sure we think this way a lot. But we ought not to forget that it was God who said, now you're going to die. [00:04:32] Dust you are to dust you will return. [00:04:36] You used to be shapeless dust before I formed you out of the ground. And now you're going to lose your form again. [00:04:45] You're going to go back to nothing. Well, going to go back to dust. [00:04:52] It's God who said that you're going to deal with thorns and thistles. Now, it's not like this happened outside of God's power or control. [00:05:06] Suffering is not outside of God's power and control. He could make it go away with a snap of his fingers if he wanted to. [00:05:16] Is that hard to think about? [00:05:20] Like, Jesus came and he healed people and he raised them from the dead. [00:05:26] He could have just. [00:05:28] And everybody's got their problems fixed. [00:05:31] But since God didn't do that, we've got to do it with medical advancements and AI just pour our resources into fixing these problems. [00:05:44] But these problems are intractable. [00:05:47] We're not going to become immortal. Even if we did, it would be the wrong kind of life that we've made permanent. [00:05:57] God prescribed death. [00:06:00] He prescribed suffering like a good doctor who knows what his patient needs. [00:06:09] Adam and Eve fell because of pride. [00:06:14] You could say there are different ways that you can look at it properly. [00:06:19] Let's go with pride. [00:06:21] They thought, yeah, I think I do know better than God. [00:06:25] God knows that when you eat of it, you'll become like him. It's like, well, I don't know why he didn't give me that first, you know, Seemed like a good idea. [00:06:41] So it's like, okay, human beings, you think you're all that. [00:06:47] Well, now you're going to experience your limitations and remember from whom comes your life, the one you abandoned. [00:06:57] We were created through the word of God, with everything else. Right? God speaking, of course. Who's the word of God? Jesus is the Word through whom all things were made. He was in the beginning with God. He was God and he became flesh. [00:07:18] We received our life from God, and we have our life only in God. He is the source of everything good. He's the source of our life. And so God prescribed death to us, worldly speaking, so that looking to him, we would receive life by faith and not apart from faith, so that we couldn't hold on to our life and well being apart from faith. [00:07:50] Just like a child who has to be obedient or else he or she can't do whatever fun thing or have whatever good thing they want. If they're obedient, then comes the good thing. [00:08:06] But if they're disobedient, then comes suffering prescribed by parents like a good doctor, because they want the good of the child. [00:08:18] God wants our good just as much and we need discipline just as much as any child all our lives. [00:08:28] What does God want for us to remember Him. Because that's true life. [00:08:33] This is life. Jesus says to know God and the one he has sent. [00:08:39] God wants for us actual true life which comes from him and which means knowing Him. [00:08:49] In fact, God made us in his image and we were foolish to forget that. Being in his image requires relationship with him, requires looking to him, listening to His Word and letting His Word shape us. [00:09:12] You can't be in God's image, can't be made according to God's image. [00:09:18] Stiff arming God. [00:09:21] It doesn't make any sense. Like if God's going to make us like Himself by His grace, amazingly, if he's going to make us like Himself, make us in his own image, that's going to be something received from him constantly, continually. [00:09:41] And to turn away from him and to something else would be to be made in the image of something else. [00:09:50] What is sin except listening to the Father of lies? [00:09:55] So Jesus calls the devil. The devil is the father of lies. And yeah, listening to the devil, then our life becomes a lie and we become familiar and comfortable with falsehood and estranged from the truth. [00:10:13] Turning away from God, we became, well, we were made in the image of something else. [00:10:22] Well, I better get to the text sometime. Here. [00:10:30] The Pharisees go to Jesus with Herodians. All right, so these are like Herod's people. Herod was the king of Israel, but under the emperor. So he's like a regional ruler who's Jewish but appointed by Romans. [00:10:54] So the Jews see him as kind of a traitor, but he's king and also kind of allied with Rome. [00:11:03] Well, Rome for the Jews is the bad guy. Like for a lot of good reasons. [00:11:13] They've suffered a lot under Rome. People killed with impunity and they're under foreign rule, which was never the way it was supposed to be. [00:11:26] So for the backstory of this we've got to go back. [00:11:30] Before the Babylonians took over Jerusalem, destroyed it and took a bunch of the population off, God was warning Israel, you've lost your faith. [00:11:44] You're not looking to me, the source of your life, and you think you can do it apart from me. [00:11:49] And you're acting like you're trusting in me, doing the right sacrifices and things like that, but like I don't care about sacrifices. Your hearts aren't looking to me for every good thing. [00:12:02] You've made a God of your own abilities and the fulfillment of your desires, and you've forgotten about me. [00:12:11] Well, God doesn't like that because he wants true life for his people, which is to know him and to look to him and to be made in his image through faith, through hearing his word and letting it have its way with them and shape them. [00:12:28] It's not happening. So God prescribes suffering and death for them. [00:12:35] He says to them, babylon's going to come in and take over. [00:12:42] Well, through the prophet Jeremiah. [00:12:45] And they say to Jeremiah, no way. We're just going to watch them come in and take Jerusalem, the city of God. They're going to take Israel. They're going to. [00:13:00] We're going to be under foreign rule. [00:13:03] That wouldn't be right. [00:13:07] Because they have this idea. [00:13:09] Well, they're looking at appearances, right? If Israel is ruling itself, then things are going well. [00:13:20] Well, God prescribes humility, right? Or the means for humility. And Babylon comes in. Despite all Israel's attempts. Babylon comes in and destroys Babylon, takes a bunch of the population away. [00:13:37] And then years later, that's where the Old Testament reading comes in. God appoints Cyrus a Gentile who doesn't know him, Cyrus, a Persian. God gives him power and says that he's going to do all kinds of things through Cyrus, even though Cyrus doesn't know him. [00:14:00] Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped. [00:14:09] So everything Cyrus does, then you can see as God doing through him, through a Gentile who doesn't know him, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed. I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through bars of iron. And I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places that you may know that it is I, the Lord, for the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel, my chosen, he is working for their good. [00:14:45] I call you by your name I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord. There is no other besides me. There is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me. [00:14:56] That people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other God uses this Gentile ruler, why he says it that people may know everywhere that there is none besides me. [00:15:19] It's so that people would know God from whom their life comes. [00:15:24] That's why he works through a Persian king who doesn't even know him. So now fast forward. [00:15:33] There Jesus is and they test him, saying, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? [00:15:39] Now, paying taxes would be to say we have a king besides God. [00:15:46] On the one hand, this is one theory which would be the Pharisees bent would be to say, well, we shouldn't be under foreign rule. [00:15:58] We shouldn't be submitting to Rome. We should be submitting to God. [00:16:02] And on the other side of the Herodians, Herod is allied with, I mean, appointed by Rome. [00:16:09] So the Herodians are going to say, if Jesus says God is our king and not Caesar, then the Herodians are going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, this is treason and they're going to go get him in trouble. So Jesus is in a tight spot, they think. [00:16:30] But the thing is, Jesus doesn't pay attention to appearances. He's not fooled by appearances. [00:16:39] The Pharisees like Israel are thinking, surely what God wants is for us to thrive under our own leadership. [00:16:51] But Jesus. [00:16:53] Jesus recognizes that what God wants for his people isn't for them to thrive outwardly. For everything to look good and feel good and be comfortable for Israel to be winning all the time. [00:17:06] Outwardly. [00:17:09] Jesus knows that what God wants is. [00:17:14] Is for their heart to. [00:17:18] Well, to look to God in faith. [00:17:21] God wants inward faith. Then all these things will be added to you. Seek first the kingdom of God, then all these things will be added to you. [00:17:32] And so, well, maybe just like the Babylonian captivity was prescribed by God for the sake of humility and faith, maybe so is Roman rule. [00:17:44] And pretty soon maybe the destruction of Jerusalem at the hand of the Romans in 70 A.D. [00:17:55] maybe the suffering that you're experiencing right now or the weakness because God's power is made perfect weakness. And through suffering, he humbles us and reminds us where true life is found. [00:18:14] This is life to know God and the one he has sent. [00:18:21] Jesus answers them well, he says, look, whose image and whose inscription is this? And It's Caesar's image. [00:18:32] And he says, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, which may be familiar to you. So it's like, okay, it's okay to pay taxes. [00:18:43] Jesus said it. [00:18:45] You ever feel like, why am I giving money to the government if it's not going to be spent the way I want it to be? Or it's going to be put toward wrong uses or things like that. [00:18:57] Maybe you've thought that before. [00:19:00] Well, Jesus says, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God, what is God's. [00:19:10] Think about it. That image was. [00:19:13] I mean, that coin was made in Caesar's image. [00:19:18] It had Caesar's image stamped on it. [00:19:23] So if you take that second part and to God, what is God's? It's like instead of look at this coin, whose image is on it? [00:19:32] It's like, look at yourselves. [00:19:35] Whose image is on you? [00:19:38] In whose image are you made? [00:19:41] To whom do you belong? [00:19:44] And in doing so, he just cuts through the appearances, right? [00:19:50] Like, don't worry so much about who's in charge. God used Cyrus. [00:19:57] God uses our government. [00:20:00] Like, really, all of that's out of our control. Not saying voting isn't powerful, you know, you do have power, right? [00:20:09] One in hundreds of millions, but it's still your responsibility to vote. [00:20:17] But don't feel like, you know, if things aren't going your way or aren't the way that you think would be best, that this is not God's will or something like that. [00:20:31] Maybe it's God's will that we suffer and that too would have a purpose. [00:20:39] What's the purpose of suffering? [00:20:42] I was mostly taught at seminary to say, we can't know which maybe is true. Don't look at suffering and say, that's why God's doing it. [00:20:52] But you can every time say, this is why God does it. [00:20:56] This is why God. [00:21:00] This is important, makes well being and creates calamity. Creates calamity. [00:21:07] Why would he do that? [00:21:09] Because he has your good in mind. [00:21:13] And because there is no suffering or challenge in this life that can take away from you true life in Jesus, nothing could take it away from him. [00:21:29] He went through it all. [00:21:32] Scorn, humiliation, hatred, violence, death. [00:21:39] Experienced it all and came through. [00:21:44] And so if we look at the appearance, if we look at those outward things that happened to Jesus and we think, well, if that happens, I'm done, that then we're looking to something other than God for the source of our life. [00:22:01] Looking to Jesus, we can come through anything. [00:22:07] The purpose of suffering broadly is for your good. God Works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. [00:22:20] What a beautiful verse. [00:22:22] It means that in everything. Not that God's going to work it for your good. And your good is to recover from the sickness. [00:22:33] That's kind of a lesser good, right? What is your ultimate good? [00:22:38] To enter the kingdom of heaven. [00:22:41] That's what God wants for you. And that's what he's working all these things toward. Even. [00:22:48] Even your death becomes the entry to paradise in Jesus. He works all things for your good. [00:23:06] There was something else I was going to say. [00:23:16] Just a moment. [00:23:20] I'm stuck with appearances. See, I'm just looking at the surface and I'm thinking, what is below the surface? [00:23:26] But I think that has to do with what I wanted to say. [00:23:34] Jesus will end with this. [00:23:39] How do you dig below the surface of appearances and see the truth? [00:23:46] As outward things bombard you, overwhelm you. [00:23:53] How do you get below the surface? [00:23:57] And the answer is always to look to Jesus. [00:24:02] Jesus who? [00:24:04] It's like if you pick a circumstance that's overwhelming you, you could probably find it in the life and ministry of Jesus. [00:24:13] Just remember Jesus, who also was hated or whose friends abandoned him, or who also experienced pain and suffering and loss or death. [00:24:30] You look to him and. And you can see in him what is eternal. Ah, I got it back. This is what I was going to say. This is where I was going. [00:24:43] You can look to him and see what is eternal. [00:24:51] The prayer of the day. [00:24:53] Sometimes it's easy to see why it was written, and sometimes not. But today, listen to this. [00:25:00] O God, the protector of all, who trust in you, have mercy on us that with you as ruler and guide, our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal. [00:25:17] Go home and pray this again. [00:25:20] But it's like looking to Jesus and remembering these temporal things are not the end. [00:25:30] Then we receive eternal things through Jesus Christ in his name. Amen.