All Saints Crescent Beach Nov 24th 2024 sermon

Vs. 1  Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!

I will never forget at age 17 going to the Led Zeppelin concert in Dec 1971 with my Jewish friends from India. My original favorite rock band was the Animals, followed by my next favorite band Led Zeppelin. I was hoping that the heavens would open, so to speak, at this concert, and I would have this amazing experience. Instead it was just ordinary. The disappointing ordinariness of this concert tempted me to almost dropping acid in search of this ultimate experience. Fortunately, my Scottish side protected me from my foolishness. There was no way I was going to be overcharged $4 for LSD.  A month later, God ripped open the heavens and gave me the ultimate experience that changed my life for ever. I had a Damascus Road conversion to Jesus Christ that brought inner healing and significance to a very lost soul. I was born again, and never have recovered from this.

The term ‘Oh’, as in Oh that you would rend the heavens, is used 207 times in the bible to express a range of emotions including surprise, anger, disappointment, or joy.  Just think of the song ‘Oh Susannah’ or the expressions ‘Oh Boy!’ or ‘Oh no!’  Sometimes we become dead to this phrase, or use it without meaning such as OMG. 

The word ‘rend’, by the way, can be translated ‘break down the door and come and rescue us.’ Do you ever wish that God would appear on earth, just show up, break down the door, so to speak, and make things right?  There are many rending of the heavens in the Old Testament like the burning bush with Moses in the desert, the fire coming down on Mount Carmel with Elijah and the receiving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai with Moses. The ultimate rending of the heavens was with Jesus being born at Bethlehem and the Holy Spirit poured out on Jesus at his baptism. For us his Church, we were birthed with a great rending of the heavens on the Day of Pentecost. Times of revival and renewal are wonderful times of the rending of the heavens. Each Sunday in the liturgy, we often say Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again, the final rending of the heavens. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.

Does God ever feel abstract or meaningless to you?  How many have ever read or seen HG Wells’ book The Invisible Man? Sometimes God feels like the invisible man. Are you willing to forgive God for being invisible most of the time?  God’s invisibility easily tempts us to seek idols, because idols are visible. Jesus is God’s solution to the problem of invisibility.  

Isaiah was longing for God’s presence. Are you longing right now for the things of God? What is your passion, your longing? Do you have a passion to know Jesus better? James 4:8 says, if you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.

The Christian Ashram retreat was founded by E. Stanley Jones in 1930, 94 years ago. In this retreat, which I lead in BC, we always start with the time of the open heart. In the early days, the Open-Heart time could last for up to four hours of people sharing about three questions: Why did I come? What do I want? What do I need? Just for a brief moment, not for the next four hours, I am inviting you to share why you came to All Saints today.  Secondly, what do you want from God at this healing service?  Thirdly, what do you actually need today?

Vs. 2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!

Vs. 2 talks about God coming like fire, a powerful symbol of the Holy Spirit. How many of you have ever had a fireplace? How many currently have a fireplace? Santa in the old days used to deliver presents through the fireplace.  It has been a lot more challenging more him for so many homes lacking chimneys and fireplaces. You may or may not be aware that Janice and I are currently working on a book on E. Stanley Jones:  Fire in God’s Fireplace. There is a lot of counterfeit wildfire out there that just burns people up, and leaves communities burnt out and burnt over. Revival and renewal can easily be imitated and manufactured in the flesh. All Saint’s is a wonderful fireplace. All Saints is so healthy, such an amazing gift in a time of great confusion and distraction. To be healthy, it really helps to be in a healthy Christian community. Being a Spirit-filled healthy community, as Bishop Peter often reminds us, is about surrendering our will.  As the Lord’s Prayer puts it, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. The church is God’s family. Healthy children need healthy families.

Vs. 3  For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

Vs. 3 talks about trembling.  Paul, who was deeply immersed in the book of Isaiah, alludes simultaneously in 1 Corinthians 2:9 to Isaiah 64:4, Isaiah 52:15, and Isaiah 65:17.

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him.”

 Can you imagine how will one day change when it begins to tremble at God’s presence? In Isaiah 66:2, it speaks of the humble and contrite in heart trembling at God’s Word.  Have you ever trembled at God ‘s Word or at his presence?  We as Canadians need to recover a holy fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom. Healing comes through our recovering a sense of God’s awesomeness.  Even more than a beautiful Crescent Beach sunset, God’s presence can be very healing and calming.

Vs 4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

Vs. 4 says that waiting is key to healing. One of my favorite bible verses in Isaiah 41:31 “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.“ Waiting is never easy, particularly when you are a child waiting for Christmas.  I will never forget when my grandmother showed us where my parents were hiding all our presents. 

I served at age 5 as a shepherd in our Kindergarten Christmas Pageant.  Sadly I got lost and waited to be found. But they never did find me.  I secretly think that because of my lost shepherd incident, that I missed my potential career as a famous Hollywood actor.  There might have been a Hollywood agent waiting in the kindergarten audience to discover their next child Hollywood actor. Speaking of child actors, I had the privilege of interviewing 12-year old Ollie Herdman for the Light Magazine.  The Herdmans (or to be politically correct, the Herdpersons) were the worst family ever in the entire world, yet they wanted to be part of what became the Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever.  We laughed and cried at that movie with three of our grandkids. How many of you have seen this amazing Christmas movie yet?

 It is remarkable how God acts and heals those who actively wait for Him. The Bible again and again challenges us, as in Psalm 27:14, Psalm 40:1, and Psalm 130:5-6, to wait for the Lord Healing is a waiting game. Our refusal to wait is often a refusal to heal. One of my greatest weakness is when in my impatient impetuosity, I refuse to wait. I am not willing. I want my healing right now.  True love waits. Waiting heals and transforms us. How many of us are grateful for how God miraculously gave us this building in Crescent Beach?  So am I, but I in my Hird impatience didn’t like how long it took to receive the recent Crescent Beach miracle.  How many are believing that God will come through in enabling up to get the repairs done on the building?  What if this latest miracle takes longer than I impatiently want it to? Are you ever tempted to use fear and guilt to get your own way, rather than wait patiently on the Lord? Never say yes to people who try to manipulate you through shame and telling you that the sky will fall.

God acts for those who wait.  You may have heard the phrase ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ Do you need healing today? Is healing worth waiting for?  Have you ever received a healing that took time?  Have you ever received a partial healing that developed into a fuller healing later, like the blind man Jesus prayed for who initially saw people looking like trees.  Jesus’ second touch gave him the full healing. Do any of you today need a second touch from Jesus?

God’s delays are not always God saying ‘no’.  Sometimes God says ‘slow’ or ‘grow’ before he says ‘go’.  I hate being on waiting lists.  I really don’t look forward going to emergency wards nowadays, like at Surrey Memorial with its 20-hour wait. But waiting can be deeply healing as we surrender to the Healing Father.  Don’t be afraid of healing tears as you wait.  Which direction are you facing as you wait for things to happen?  Grumpy waiting can look like picking up your marbles and leaving. Turning itself is deeply healing depending on the direction that we are turning. Many atheists nowadays are obsessed with the god that they don’t believe in.  They have turned their face away from not only God but also painful situations that they don’t want to deal with.  What is it that we can’t face in our lives? Biblical waiting is all about turning and returning to the healing Father.  What if we turned our face openly to the Potter of our souls?

Roberto Escamilla in his book Prisoners of Hope said: “One of the most beautiful stories E. Stanley Jones told (repeatedly) was about the little girl who came to church with a broken doll in her hands… She was crying because her doll was broken. She asked the pastor perhaps the most meaningful question anyone could ever ask: ‘Is this the place where they heal broken hearts? Roberto said: “If I only had one sermon to preach, it would be about broken hearts.  If I had only one song to sing, it would be ‘There is a balm in Gilead’ to make the wounded whole.  If I had but one story to tell, it would be about the little girl and the broken doll.  And if I had only one thing to say and one sermon to preach, I would preach about the One who has the power to heal broken hearts. Because that is a universal need.  Somewhere along the way, your heart is bound to be broken.  Psalm 147:3-4 ‘He heals the broken-hearted…He determines the number of stars.’…

As Roberto put it, one of the church’s primary responsibilities is to heal broken hearts, broken lives, and broken bodies; to heal and repair brokenness, all kinds of brokenness.  The church is the hospital for sinners with spiritual needs, for all kinds of brokenness…The church is the place where we must always answer categorically, ‘Yes, this is the place where we specialize in healing brokenness -all kinds of brokenness!’  Is there a way, said Roberto, to help men and women with broken lives, broken health, broken homes, broken dreams, and broken hopes?  Is there One who can heal brokenness when everything is broken?  Is there One who can help us put it together again – help us get it all together?  It is our mission as Christians to reach out and offer sustaining love to all persons with broken hearts. 

Vs. 5  You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways; But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?

In vs. 5, Isaiah asks a very good question: How can we be saved? Many people in BC have become so secularized and emotionally cut off that they don’t even think that they need saving.  If we don’t understand the human condition, we will not get our need for a saviour. As Bishop Peter often says, 95% of people are broken. The rest are liars. Broken people need a saviour, need a potter who can mend the broken parts.   In BC and Canada, we need far more than just political salvation. Even a needed change in government is not enough to fix BC and Canada. We need Jesus. His Hebrew and Greek name Yeshua/Jesus means salvation. Vs. 5 teaches that a key to God turning up is our remembering God’s ways. Many of us suffer from spiritual amnesia.

Vs. 6  All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Vs 6 is  the Romans 3:23 of the Old Testament: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Sin is just another word for our selfishness and rebellion. At the middle of the word ‘sin’ is the letter ‘I’.  Our self-centeredness has the ability to destroy the best things in our lives.  I can make us sick. The most selfish are often the most self-righteous. Our self righteousness is a huge block to self-surrender and healing. We are reluctant to acknowledge humanity is fundamentally flawed and sinful from birth. I used to believe that education would solve all problems. Many still believe that science and technology will solve all problems. A few naive people still believe that more government will solve all life’s problems.

Vs. 7 No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins.

Vs. 7 talks about our unwillingness to listen to advice, even from God.  One of my scariest moments as a teenager was when my mother was so frustrated with me that she would say: “Go ahead, do whatever you want.”  I knew then that I was really in trouble when my mother was ready to give me up to my selfishness.  The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. If you really want the kosher cure, you have to understand the Jeremiah 17:9 reality. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can understand them?

One of the areas where I have deceived myself is sometimes confusing my impatient impulsiveness with being led by the Holy Spirit.  When I let impatience lead me, it is more likely in the flesh than in the Spirit. Proverbs 14:29 says that whoever is patient has great understanding.  My family default coming from a long line of blacksmiths and master mechanics is to get the job done. As someone who has been ordained for 44 years, God and people have tested my patience many times.  What have I regretted since I was ordained in 1980?  Those times when I impatiently rushed in where angels feared to tred.  I have a pioneering anointing. It is deep in those who formed the Anglican Mission.

Business entrepreneurs like my late father are vulnerable to this temptation of impatiently doing things in the flesh, in their own wilfulness, of not surrendering their will to the healing Father. My dad so much disliked waiting for elevators that he moved from the second floor to the first floor at the Peninsula senior’s residence. My mother, who really heard from God, often held my dad back from his impatience. She would say ‘Ted, Ted’ in short staccato, and my dad would often calm down and think before acting impatiently. Sometimes Mom would say ‘Oh Ted’ to redirect his impatience. 😉

I was reminded this week that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, ….patience.   True love is willing to wait patiently. True joy is willing to wait joyfully. True peace is willing to wait peacefully. I discover this week that I still need to keep growing in this area.  My belt buckle symbolizes the testing of my patient waiting this week.  While about to doorknock in Langley, my belt buckle disconnected.  I grabbed some red ducktape to temporarily hold my belt together.  There were no belt buckle clothing shops open at 9am near our campaign office on Fraser Highway.  Someone said that there was a Walmart somewhere in Langley.  But I didn’t have time or a real sense of direction. My GPS sent me three miles away from the correct doorknocking destination.  My patience was really being tested. Guess where GPS sent me to:  Walmart where I grabbed a new belt. Thank God for GPS being led by the Holy Spirit, and helping me grow in patient waiting.

Dr Gary Chapman in his book Five Languages of Apology said that the first language is ‘I’m sorry’ which taps into regret.  In my family, we never said that we were sorry until I came to meet Jesus. Self-righteous people very rarely sincerely say that they are sorry. They hardly ever admit that they are wrong.  Is it easy to admit that our righteous acts are like filthy rags?

My impatience at times have caused my relationships to shrivel up like a leaf and like the wind carry me away.  Have you ever noticed that you can’t really control other people? They don’t like it and it doesn’t work. When I impatiently try to fix and control other people, say like my wife, she doesn’t always appreciate it. 😉

Vs. 8  Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

Vs. 8 talks about God being a potter. in High School, I took a ceramics course, even creating my own toilet bowl ceramic. Have you ever thought of God as a ceramics coach?  God loves healing cracked pots.  We have a professional Crescent Beach potter in our walking group who sells his pottery every summer in Newfoundland. Were any of your dads into making pottery?  The Fatherhood of God revealed in the Old Testament, and magnified by Jesus in the New Testament, is such good news in the midst of our sinfulness and brokenness. Cracked pots bring the best light.

Vs 9  Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray,  for we are all your people.

Vs. 9 ask God to have amnesia about our sins. How many of you would like God to forget your sins?  In Isaiah 43:25, God says “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”  In Jeremiah 31:34, and quoted in Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17, God says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” As Corrie Ten Boom put it, God casts our sins into the ocean and then puts up a fishing sign.  That is what the cross accomplishes. Without the cross, there is no lasting forgiveness.  Forgiveness brings healing.

10  Your sacred cities have become a wasteland; even Zion is a wasteland, Jerusalem a desolation. 11  Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.

Vs. 10 and 11 speaks about the plight of Jerusalem on Mount Zion. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, the Jews were devastated. Everything that they trusted in had been destroyed. Sometimes life can feel like everything is ruined.  Many of us feel that we no longer recognize the Canada that we grew up in.  Everything seems broken. Much of Canada feels like a emotional wasteland with inflation, violent crime and rampant drug usage.  In such difficult times, what do we trust in?  Might Jesus bring healing to our broken land of Canada? As 2 Chronicles 7:14 puts it, If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land.  Does Canada need healing?

12  After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?

Vs. 12 cries out to God to fix us crackpots.  God is worth waiting for. His forgiveness is deeply healing. Can anyone tell us about the health benefits of sin and selfishness? It’s just not good for us in either body, mind or spirit. Turning and returning to our healing Father is always the healthiest thing that we can do

God knows you by name. That is deeply healing.  Jesus remembers you. Jesus will never forget you. You are unforgettable. You are beloved.  He gave everything for you on the cross. He held back nothing for you.  Your healing is in his shed blood on the cross.  He loves you with an everlasting love. He will never change his mind.  Let our hearts come alive together. It is impossible to underestimate the hardness of our hearts, but Jesus can give us hearts of flesh. Do you want a soft heart today? Would you like Jesus to heal your heart?  Let us pray…