TEXT: Psalm 8:1 - 9; Matthew 10:26 - 33 & Romans 8:18 - 39 [ESV]
TITLE: “What Is My Only Comfort?”
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Psalm 8:1 - 9
1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
You have set Your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
You have established strength because of Your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which You have set in place,
4 what is man that You are mindful of him,
and the Son of Man that You care for Him?
5 Yet You have made Him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned Him with glory and honor.
6 You have given Him dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under His feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name in all the earth!
Matthew 10:26 - 33
26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father Who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father Who is in heaven.
Romans 8:18 - 39
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him Who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And He Who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, Who was raised — Who is at the right hand of God, Who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Heidelberg Catechism Questions & Answers:
Lord's Day 1
Q1] What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A1] That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Q2] What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?
A2] Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.
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Sermon:
Our sermon title for this morning comes from Question and Answer 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, a German Reformational teaching tool written in the 1560s, and a part of the Presbyterian Church [USA]’s own Book of Confessions. That first question asks, “What is my only comfort in life and in death?”
The answer to the question is, by our contemporary standards, quite long, but also quite good. It is one that goes along with the rediscovery, or re-emphasis, made during the Reformation by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer and others; that rediscovery was of the Doctrine of Grace. The answer to the question, then is, “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. . . .” The answer then goes on to either cite, or allude, to parts of virtually every one of our passages for this morning, plus a great many others. Had I used all of these passages this morning, I’d still be only half-way through the Scripture readings; so, I settled for the three I chose as being among the most representative.
The central message for this morning, though, is one that we can never forget or lay aside because it is nothing less than the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We are not our own! We are bought for a price — and a high price, at that. We belong body and soul, in life and in death not to ourselves, but, in fact, to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.
And, as we think about that, we must recognize and realize that this is essential.
It is so significant, in fact, that I not only picked the question as my title, but you’ll see on the title-art for the sermon slide on the worship screen that I chose the classic Christian symbol, the fish — filled in with Greek letters and topped with an “Alpha”, “Omega” and a crown. The main symbol, called the Ichthus, which is Greek for “fish”. Who here this morning has not seen this symbol done in chrome on the trunk lip or back bumper of many cars? In fact, many of us probably own one.
Now, we need to break down those Greek letters inside the fish:
∙ Iota = the first Greek Letter in Ieseus, the Greek for JESUS.
∙ Chi = This is the first letter in Christos, the Greek for Christ.
∙ Theta = This is the first letter in Theos, or God.
∙ Upsilon = This is the first letter in Whious, or Son.
∙ Sigma = This is the first letter in Soterios, or Savior.
∙ When put all together, what you have is “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” in the of a Greek acronym that spells out “fish”.
Both Church history and legend tell us that this was a code symbol used by early Christians to identify themselves to each other in the earliest days of Roman persecution — the days when Emperor Nero liked to use Christians as lawn torches at his garden parties. If a believer met someone on the road, for instance, whom he suspected might also be a believer, then he would scrawl an arc in the dust with his toe or with a stick. If the other “believer” actually was a believer, then he would draw an intersecting arc to form the fish’s body.
Now, on top of the fish, you’ll see the “Alpha” and “Omega” that represent the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — that the Resurrected and Ascended Jesus uses to identify Himself to John at the beginning of Revelation, when he says, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last.”
Finally, between the “Alpha” and the “Omega”, you’ll see a crown which signifies that Jesus is the “King of kings and Lord of lords” from Isaiah 9.
Moreover, this is a message that Jesus, Himself, took quite seriously as He basically tells His listeners in Matthew 10, “Don’t worry, God has you in the palm of His hand because He cares for and loves you. He worries about you and takes time with you. If He takes care of the birds in the sky, and you are worth many times more to Him than the birds, then He’ll take care of you as well.”
And we have those glorious words from Psalm 8 that we looked at this past summer: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! . . ,” and going through this great litany, asking the question, “What is man that what is man that You are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that You care for Him? Yet You have made Him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned Him with glory and honor,” referring to us humans with respect to our Savior — God’s own Son, Who was Himself fully human. And because of that, we have a kinship with God. We’re not just creations. We are not merely clay pots made to be molded and then broken upon the rocks. We are not merely paper upon which doodles are written, and which are then wadded and crumpled up and thrown into the waste bin or burned in the fire.
No. We are God’s own creation. And He does care! And He does ransom us from the very body of death and then leads us through our sufferings!
And I like the way Paul phrases this in Romans 8:18 - 39: “For I consider that these present sufferings are nothing to be compared against the glory that will be revealed to us” — and some translations render this as “the glory to be revealed in us.” Now, stop to consider just how magnificent that is.
And this is so very significant because there’s a frank, flat acknowledgment that suffering will, and does happen; but this suffering does not have to be definitive. How many of us have met people who seemingly can’t get beyond one particular trauma in their lives? We all have those traumas in our lives that are deadly serious and difficult to deal with — the death of a loved one, or some particularly severe reverse that we’ve suffered, crippling pain or a chronic malady we’ve endured (there could be any one of dozens to consider here). But we slog through. Not always well. Frequently with great discomfort — but we slog through, nonetheless. There’s a frank acknowledgment here that we can.
Paul’s looking at a situation in which he’s only a couple of years removed — literally as well figuratively, since Nero decided to remove Paul’s head from his shoulders, if church tradition and history are to be believed — from severe persecution of the Church. He sees people persecuted on a daily basis, some of them even killed. He sees them being crucified. He sees them being fed to the lions and used as Tiki torches on Nero’s front lawn. And in the face of all of it, he can still say, “That’s NOT all there is.”
There are days when I’m just having a grumpy day — a fit of the “sweltering grumpies”! I “got up on the wrong side of the bed”, and it’s not getting any better, and I want to declare the day a total disaster about 40 seconds after my feet hit the floor. And yet, Paul, looking at the very real possibility of a short, brutal and ugly life and death, and in the face of that, and can still say, “I consider these present sufferings as nothing to be compared against the glory to be revealed in us.”
That’s amazing!
It means that there is something there that fundamentally changes us and then holds us up and supports us in our gravest extreme. I found it interesting that this passage is one selected for Carolyn Hundertmark’s funeral down in Bakerstown. And these were words from which Carolyn derived enormous comfort and hope because she could look at what she was enduring with her ultimately terminal cancer — and she knew that all of you were praying for her, and she’d gotten all of your cards and letters — and she knew that even more than your presence, she had God’s abiding presence with her every day. He had neither left nor forsaken her. What she was enduring had a purpose, if it if was not one she could discern; she was satisfied that those answers would come.
In all of this, and far, far worse, these are abiding words of hope. They are words that tell us that we are not stuck on some eternal “hamster wheel” doomed eternally to chase our own tails to no purpose. That is so incredibly important!
It is important because, if we do not see this order, purpose and hope engendered by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, then we are highly susceptible to the notion that, somehow, God’s grace and mercy are quantities to be bought, earned or merited. When we do that, we lose sight of what it is that God has given to us. We act, at that point, as though somehow we are giving something to God. We come to act as though somehow He depends on our generosity rather than we relying on His incalculable grace and mercy. But when we understand afresh that it is God Who has already called us out, Who opens our eyes by the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we can come to faith in the One Who transforms us by faith in His Son’s death, Resurrection and Ascension. It is He Who makes us new people and transforms us at a core level so that we are able to do those things that we could not do before.
How many of you have seen that “sock-puppet” commercial for the “Debt Monkey”? Sin is like that Debt Monkey: it hangs on; it clings on; it grabs you around the neck and tries to put you in a choke-hold — constantly trying to convince you that you are not good enough and will never be good enough — and that everything you ever try to do or accomplish will be sub-standard, and that you will never be acceptable. So you might as well just give up.
But this is the “great deception”. It is the deception that seeks to keep our eyes from the truth. It is the deception that seeks to keep our eyes from the slave’s chains that bind us while simultaneously trying to convince us that we are free when, in fact, we are already chained. But, in fact, we receive our true freedom when we acknowledge that we are owned by Christ — “body and soul, in life and in death.” He brings us the freedom we have because He brings us into the family.
God the Father adopts us as His children in order that His Son “might be the firstborn among many brethren”. Because of this we share a kinship with God Almighty and are very much His beloved children.
Again, this was another theme that shone so powerfully, like a beacon for Carolyn Hundertmark. Every time she heard those words, that we are adopted so that He might be the firstborn among many brethren, she cried in joy. We’ve all met her two young granddaughters, Grace and Hope, both adopted from China, both very much loved, both very much within and members of that family, and never regarded as anything other than firmly rooted in that family, and Carolyn knew that she, too, was regarded as being a member of God’s household by adoption through Christ Jesus.
We, too, are members of God’s household. And as members of that household, we are family members, not servants, not cleaning staff, not cooks or butlers or back-stairs staff.
“What is man that He is mindful of us, or the Son of Man that He cares for Him?” We are the brothers and sisters of the King, and the Father has high regard for us because of Him. And this is “our only comfort in life and in death”, that He has — and this is a promise in which I always place great stock — “even the hairs of our heads numbered,” (for some of us, that’s easier than for others!). He has the days of our lives marked out and measured out; He knows them from beginning to end. He knows our trials, temptations, tribulations and walks through those difficulties with us, never letting go of our hands.
The whole of Scripture, from beginning to end, is an prefigurative enactment of that eternal Gospel:
It’s a change at our very core.
Grace is free, but it costs us everything we have and are because we belong, fundamentally, to God. And yet, it IS free, and it’s extended to us because of God’s great bounty, and mercy, and His love and His grace. Grace upon grace, stacked up, packed together, shaken together and overflowing. Let us cling to that with all that we have and all that we are.
Truly this Gospel is “our only comfort in life and in death! Amen.
The answer to the question is, by our contemporary standards, quite long, but also quite good. It is one that goes along with the rediscovery, or re-emphasis, made during the Reformation by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer and others; that rediscovery was of the Doctrine of Grace. The answer to the question, then is, “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. . . .” The answer then goes on to either cite, or allude, to parts of virtually every one of our passages for this morning, plus a great many others. Had I used all of these passages this morning, I’d still be only half-way through the Scripture readings; so, I settled for the three I chose as being among the most representative.
The central message for this morning, though, is one that we can never forget or lay aside because it is nothing less than the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We are not our own! We are bought for a price — and a high price, at that. We belong body and soul, in life and in death not to ourselves, but, in fact, to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.
And, as we think about that, we must recognize and realize that this is essential.
It is so significant, in fact, that I not only picked the question as my title, but you’ll see on the title-art for the sermon slide on the worship screen that I chose the classic Christian symbol, the fish — filled in with Greek letters and topped with an “Alpha”, “Omega” and a crown. The main symbol, called the Ichthus, which is Greek for “fish”. Who here this morning has not seen this symbol done in chrome on the trunk lip or back bumper of many cars? In fact, many of us probably own one.
Now, we need to break down those Greek letters inside the fish:
∙ Iota = the first Greek Letter in Ieseus, the Greek for JESUS.
∙ Chi = This is the first letter in Christos, the Greek for Christ.
∙ Theta = This is the first letter in Theos, or God.
∙ Upsilon = This is the first letter in Whious, or Son.
∙ Sigma = This is the first letter in Soterios, or Savior.
∙ When put all together, what you have is “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” in the of a Greek acronym that spells out “fish”.
Both Church history and legend tell us that this was a code symbol used by early Christians to identify themselves to each other in the earliest days of Roman persecution — the days when Emperor Nero liked to use Christians as lawn torches at his garden parties. If a believer met someone on the road, for instance, whom he suspected might also be a believer, then he would scrawl an arc in the dust with his toe or with a stick. If the other “believer” actually was a believer, then he would draw an intersecting arc to form the fish’s body.
Now, on top of the fish, you’ll see the “Alpha” and “Omega” that represent the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — that the Resurrected and Ascended Jesus uses to identify Himself to John at the beginning of Revelation, when he says, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last.”
Finally, between the “Alpha” and the “Omega”, you’ll see a crown which signifies that Jesus is the “King of kings and Lord of lords” from Isaiah 9.
Moreover, this is a message that Jesus, Himself, took quite seriously as He basically tells His listeners in Matthew 10, “Don’t worry, God has you in the palm of His hand because He cares for and loves you. He worries about you and takes time with you. If He takes care of the birds in the sky, and you are worth many times more to Him than the birds, then He’ll take care of you as well.”
And we have those glorious words from Psalm 8 that we looked at this past summer: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! . . ,” and going through this great litany, asking the question, “What is man that what is man that You are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that You care for Him? Yet You have made Him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned Him with glory and honor,” referring to us humans with respect to our Savior — God’s own Son, Who was Himself fully human. And because of that, we have a kinship with God. We’re not just creations. We are not merely clay pots made to be molded and then broken upon the rocks. We are not merely paper upon which doodles are written, and which are then wadded and crumpled up and thrown into the waste bin or burned in the fire.
No. We are God’s own creation. And He does care! And He does ransom us from the very body of death and then leads us through our sufferings!
And I like the way Paul phrases this in Romans 8:18 - 39: “For I consider that these present sufferings are nothing to be compared against the glory that will be revealed to us” — and some translations render this as “the glory to be revealed in us.” Now, stop to consider just how magnificent that is.
And this is so very significant because there’s a frank, flat acknowledgment that suffering will, and does happen; but this suffering does not have to be definitive. How many of us have met people who seemingly can’t get beyond one particular trauma in their lives? We all have those traumas in our lives that are deadly serious and difficult to deal with — the death of a loved one, or some particularly severe reverse that we’ve suffered, crippling pain or a chronic malady we’ve endured (there could be any one of dozens to consider here). But we slog through. Not always well. Frequently with great discomfort — but we slog through, nonetheless. There’s a frank acknowledgment here that we can.
Paul’s looking at a situation in which he’s only a couple of years removed — literally as well figuratively, since Nero decided to remove Paul’s head from his shoulders, if church tradition and history are to be believed — from severe persecution of the Church. He sees people persecuted on a daily basis, some of them even killed. He sees them being crucified. He sees them being fed to the lions and used as Tiki torches on Nero’s front lawn. And in the face of all of it, he can still say, “That’s NOT all there is.”
There are days when I’m just having a grumpy day — a fit of the “sweltering grumpies”! I “got up on the wrong side of the bed”, and it’s not getting any better, and I want to declare the day a total disaster about 40 seconds after my feet hit the floor. And yet, Paul, looking at the very real possibility of a short, brutal and ugly life and death, and in the face of that, and can still say, “I consider these present sufferings as nothing to be compared against the glory to be revealed in us.”
That’s amazing!
It means that there is something there that fundamentally changes us and then holds us up and supports us in our gravest extreme. I found it interesting that this passage is one selected for Carolyn Hundertmark’s funeral down in Bakerstown. And these were words from which Carolyn derived enormous comfort and hope because she could look at what she was enduring with her ultimately terminal cancer — and she knew that all of you were praying for her, and she’d gotten all of your cards and letters — and she knew that even more than your presence, she had God’s abiding presence with her every day. He had neither left nor forsaken her. What she was enduring had a purpose, if it if was not one she could discern; she was satisfied that those answers would come.
In all of this, and far, far worse, these are abiding words of hope. They are words that tell us that we are not stuck on some eternal “hamster wheel” doomed eternally to chase our own tails to no purpose. That is so incredibly important!
It is important because, if we do not see this order, purpose and hope engendered by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, then we are highly susceptible to the notion that, somehow, God’s grace and mercy are quantities to be bought, earned or merited. When we do that, we lose sight of what it is that God has given to us. We act, at that point, as though somehow we are giving something to God. We come to act as though somehow He depends on our generosity rather than we relying on His incalculable grace and mercy. But when we understand afresh that it is God Who has already called us out, Who opens our eyes by the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we can come to faith in the One Who transforms us by faith in His Son’s death, Resurrection and Ascension. It is He Who makes us new people and transforms us at a core level so that we are able to do those things that we could not do before.
How many of you have seen that “sock-puppet” commercial for the “Debt Monkey”? Sin is like that Debt Monkey: it hangs on; it clings on; it grabs you around the neck and tries to put you in a choke-hold — constantly trying to convince you that you are not good enough and will never be good enough — and that everything you ever try to do or accomplish will be sub-standard, and that you will never be acceptable. So you might as well just give up.
But this is the “great deception”. It is the deception that seeks to keep our eyes from the truth. It is the deception that seeks to keep our eyes from the slave’s chains that bind us while simultaneously trying to convince us that we are free when, in fact, we are already chained. But, in fact, we receive our true freedom when we acknowledge that we are owned by Christ — “body and soul, in life and in death.” He brings us the freedom we have because He brings us into the family.
God the Father adopts us as His children in order that His Son “might be the firstborn among many brethren”. Because of this we share a kinship with God Almighty and are very much His beloved children.
Again, this was another theme that shone so powerfully, like a beacon for Carolyn Hundertmark. Every time she heard those words, that we are adopted so that He might be the firstborn among many brethren, she cried in joy. We’ve all met her two young granddaughters, Grace and Hope, both adopted from China, both very much loved, both very much within and members of that family, and never regarded as anything other than firmly rooted in that family, and Carolyn knew that she, too, was regarded as being a member of God’s household by adoption through Christ Jesus.
We, too, are members of God’s household. And as members of that household, we are family members, not servants, not cleaning staff, not cooks or butlers or back-stairs staff.
“What is man that He is mindful of us, or the Son of Man that He cares for Him?” We are the brothers and sisters of the King, and the Father has high regard for us because of Him. And this is “our only comfort in life and in death”, that He has — and this is a promise in which I always place great stock — “even the hairs of our heads numbered,” (for some of us, that’s easier than for others!). He has the days of our lives marked out and measured out; He knows them from beginning to end. He knows our trials, temptations, tribulations and walks through those difficulties with us, never letting go of our hands.
The whole of Scripture, from beginning to end, is an prefigurative enactment of that eternal Gospel:
- Whether it’s Noah and his family — the eight of them on that ark: God leads them onto the ark. Does He take them out of the midst of the flood? No. He protects them in the midst of it and walks them through it, and then guides them through to the other side.
- Moses and the Israelites: They didn’t levitate across the Red Sea. They had to go through the Sea (granted, they went through it dry. But, they went through it, nonetheless) and a “sea of troubles” to their deliverance on the far side. Israel had to go into captivity for 430 years. And when they are delivered from that captivity, it’s for another 40 years of learning hard lessons. Yet, it is always with God’s direct presence literally in their midst as He “tabernacled” among them.
- The Babylonian Captivity: Israel had to go into another 70 years of captivity in Babylon to be broken — to remember Who God is and their relationship with and allegiance to Him.
It’s a change at our very core.
Grace is free, but it costs us everything we have and are because we belong, fundamentally, to God. And yet, it IS free, and it’s extended to us because of God’s great bounty, and mercy, and His love and His grace. Grace upon grace, stacked up, packed together, shaken together and overflowing. Let us cling to that with all that we have and all that we are.
Truly this Gospel is “our only comfort in life and in death! Amen.
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