Sunday Feb 23rd All Saints sermon

by Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Isaiah 63:16-19 NIV

“But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. Why, Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance. For a little while your people possessed your holy place, but now our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary. We are yours from of old; but you have not ruled over them, they have not been called by your name.”

How many of you have skeletons in your family closet? A couple of honest people 😉 95% of people have skeletons in their family closet, and the rest are … liars, as Bishop Peter Klenner often comments about our mutual brokenness.

My Great-grandfather Tom Hird was a complicated individual. He was an Albertan beekeeper who sold his booze made from honey, called mead, to the RCMP.  I am not sure how that worked😉 All my Hird relatives are Albertans going back to my great grandfather Tom. Does anyone hear have any Alberta heritage? My mother was the BCer from Revelstoke whose great grandparents moved there from Regina and Toronto. My great-great grandfather Tom Allen was the senior Alderman of the City of Toronto for 18 years, which may explain some of my political interests. Albertans who often love cowboys hats, particularly during the Calgary Stampede, are sometimes seen as honorary Americans. When my wife and I go overseas, Janice is often seen as a Canadian (being more gentle), and for some reason, they often think than I am an American 😉. This is probably my Alberta heritage.

My Saskatchewan-born wife lived in Calgary for ten years. Does that make her an honorary Albertan? What do you think? Have you seen that rude cartoon saying that California should join Canada and Alberta should join the USA. I thought that it was particularly insensitive.  Let me tell you something potentially shocking: I love the three ‘A’s, 1) Albertans, 2) Americans, and 3) Australians, warts and all. Say hi online to Bishop Peter & Jenny who are vacationing in Perth Australia.

I am into that outdated biblical concept of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, even with tariff uncertainty. Canadians often pride ourselves on how good-tempered and kind and gracious we are. Some of that has been stretched recently with certain political uncertainties. It is too easy to curse those who make us feel uncomfortable. What if we bless those who may curse us, returning good for even potential harm? It saddens me that many perhaps drunken Canadians, egged on by our legacy media, are now becoming ruder than some of our southern neighbours, booing people at sports games. I don’t think that this is being a true Canadian.  What ever happened to Canadian politeness?

We thank God for Psalm 133 chiselled on the Peace Arch: “Brethren dwelling together in unity.” Since the inconclusive War of 1812, we had have the best relationship as  neighbouring countries with our southern and actually northern neighbours (including Alaska, because we are in the middle of the USA and they barely notice).  That is very unique. Countries often like to quarrel and be grumpy, sort of like families. In this fractious time, we pray for a Peace Arch in the Spirit. I like the name Peace Arch Alliance Church 😉  Jesus said ‘Blessed are those who win the trade disputes.’  Or did he say ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.’ We say no, as Kingdom people, to hatred and bitterness in times of uncertainty.

Who is on the Canadian five dollar bill? Wilfred Laurier.  Our seventh Canadian Prime Minister, who was our first francophone PM, brought the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Yukon into the Canadian Confederation, saying ‘Canada first, Canada last, Canada always.’ As one of our longest standing PMs, he was defeated after proposing the first free trade agreement with the USA. They falsely accused him of being unCanadian and advancing our annexation by the USA.  I agree with his general sentiment as an penultimate statement, but not as a ultimate statement. Penultimate means ‘almost ultimate.’  I love our nation. For Christians, our nation is important but must come second. We are Jesus and Kingdom first, last and forever. It is far too easy for nationalism to become idolatrous if it is our ultimate value.

Great-Grandpa Tom Hird, by the way, was also a Methodist lay evangelist who preached the hot gospel. How many people know what the hot gospel is? How many have ever heard a ‘turn or burn’ sermon? In my family, we associated ‘turn or burn’ with street corner placard-wearing fanatics, predicting the imminent end of the world: ‘It’s all going to burn, brother.’ Or as they say down south, ‘It’s all go to burn, baby.’ 😉

I won’t be preaching a ‘turn or burn’ sermon today. So you can relax. Instead, I will be preaching a ‘return or burn’ sermon.  Unless we return home to our Father, nothing will work right. Do I hear an amen?

Unless we return home to our Redeeming Father, we will burn with anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, and emptiness. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about because you have lived this.  I lived this out before I turned to Jesus. You see, Hell is not just for life after death. Hell is for right now when we refuse to return home to our Father. Sin and selfishness is hell on earth right. Do I hear an amen?  Eternal hell is just a continuation of our selfishness and alienation. Ultimately, God will let us have our own way, and if we ultimately say no to God, it is hell. It is alienation, it is darkness, it is brokenness. Whatever burning ultimately means, how literal it is, you don’t want to go there.

I used to be a sailing instructor for YMCA Camp Elphinstone with little Sabas and 25-foot sailboats.  Was anyone ever in YMCA and YWCA? Before they largely forgot the ‘C’ of YMCA, the YMCA and YWCA used to be strongly Christian, being founded by Sir George Williams, the Billy Graham of the 19^th Century.  Everything in sailing, by the way, is about turning and returning into the wind. Do we have any sailors here? If you just go in one direction and never tack with the wind, it will not go well. The Holy Spirit is often described as like the Wind. How are you with tacking with the wind of the Holy Spirit?

Yesterday, at our Coldest Night of the Year walkathon at the White Rock promenade, a very windy wet storm blew in, turning my golf umbrella inside out SEVERAL TIMES. Only when I turned my umbrella into the wind did things go well. It felt more like the Wettest NIGHT OF THE YEAR!  Thanks, by the way, for all those who supported our Peninsula People team with Kerry-Lynne Findlay who ended in the top ten fundraising teams.  It is not too late to still contribute online to this worthy cause as we raise money for the local Sources Food Bank.

All of life is about which direction we turn and return. Which direction however should we turn? I would like to do a thought experiment with you. How many are willing to humour me? Please will everyone close their eyes?  What does the front of the church look like in your mind?  Where is the back of the church? Where is the front entrance: is it at the front or the back of the church? Is the Sunday School room in the front or the back of the church building? Would you feel comfortable if I preached the rest of my sermon from the back of the church ;? Ultimately, which way should we turn: front or back? Where is God?

Because God is invisible, it is not obvious which direction we need to turn in returning to God. We don’t even realize sometimes that we’ve turned our back on God. Where is God? Because God is omnipresent, he’s everywhere, but he is also manifest in particular ways and locations as our returning Father.  When he returns, his presence is made present.  God sometimes turns his face away from us in our rebellion.  Historically, Christians have prayed Eastward because Jesus, in his second coming, is returning from the East. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray towards Mecca in Saudia Arabia.

Because God is invisible, it is complicated. You can turn your back on God and not even know it.  I did that for years as a distracted teenager who golfed and skied religiously. You can turn your back on your spouse or your family, and not realize it. You can be emotionally divorced for years before you ever leave your marriage.  You can be there and not there, because you’ve turned your face from your spouse emotionally.

For many people in Canada, it is unthinkable to go to church. Some feel like the sky would fall if they came into a church building. A lot of people peer through the front door glass, but would never walk in. Some walk in five or ten feet, but to come up near the altar table is ‘radioactive’ in their mind. 😉 It’s very interesting.

My Hird family has sometimes powerfully turned to God, and sometimes turned our backs on God. Does anyone else relate to this? I am so grateful that our grandchildren all go to Sunday School and church. Many Christian grandparents nowadays are forbidden by their adult children to even mention Jesus to their grandkids, but they can still be salt and light. It is not easy.

Our Hird family ultimately comes from the Yorkshire area in England. Hird either means Shepherd or in the Viking Danish version ‘bodyguard to the King’. There were many Vikings in Yorkshire. I am 6% Viking in my dna testing. Are there any Vikings or partial Vikings in our congregation?

I discovered, while writing a Light Magazine article on the famous Yorkshire man Smith Wigglesworth that Yorkshire people are known for their earthiness, gruffness, bluntness, people who say what they think without fear of the consequences. I thought ‘This is my Hird family 😉’.  They are honest, sincere, and avoid pretense. That Yorkshire tendency has sometimes got me in hot water in my almost 45 years so far of ordained ministry. Many pastors are pressured into being people-pleasers who pretend as a survival strategy.  Wigglesworth, through his bold healing ministry which he received through the Anglicans in All Saints Sunderland, led millions worldwide to turn back to God.

Turning and returning to God is a huge theme throughout the Bible.  In Joel 2:12-13, it says: “Yet even now, declares the LORD, return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion.” Many people are afraid to return to the heavenly Father because they mistakenly think that he is as bad-tempered as their own earthly father. My great-grandpa Tom had his moods. He did not have a good relationship with his son Vic.  You see, we are made for our Father.  God is our Father who doesn’t change despite the circumstances. He is our immutable Redeemer. As our kinsman-redeemer, He redeems us not only from sin, but also from selfishness, hatred, resentment, revenge, despair, hypocrisy, secrecy, and all sorts of disease. I think that we Canadians suffer from hypocrisy. We pretend to be nicer than we are.  And painful people, like a certain unnamed president, are bringing out some of our undealt-with emotions.  Some people say ‘I don’t like to fast because it makes me bad-tempered.’  But you know, fasting doesn’t make you bad-tempered. It reveals your bad temper 😉  As AA puts it, we are as sick as our secrets. Do you have any secrets that you need to return to our redeeming Father? What if we Canadians stopped pretending so much? In the AA Big Book, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, co-founder of AA with Bill W and Dr. Bob, said that if Christians would become even half as honest as AA people, we would see revival in God’s Church.  But so many people come

to church and pretend:

“How are you feeling? Oh great, I’ve got cancer. My wife left me. I was fired at work. My kids won’t speak to me. But I’m good.’ 

Returning to the Lord is even used to describe Tithing our first 10% in Malachi 3:8-10.  Have you ever imagined that returning to God might involve returning your pocket book to God? All things come of thee o Lord and of thine own have we given thee. I had never heard of tithing as an Anglican until I was walking in a Baptist church and saw a poster that said ‘10%’.  I said: ‘What’s that?’  They said: ‘It’s how much you should give to God.’  I said: ‘Great idea. When I become financially secure, I will one day.’  Was I tapping into my inner Scottish desire for financial stability?  Nine years later in 1981, when I lost my voice (spasmodic dysphonia) and income for eighteen months, It decided to put God to the test and give him my first 10%.  10% of nothing, I could afford.  The Lord met our needs for that year. I had a wife and first child. When God restored my throat through prayer and surgery, I started as an assistant priest at St. Matthew’s Abbotsford with a real salary. I thought that I can’t stop tithing now. So I never stopped.  How many might want to put God to the test today and see him open the floodgates of heaven? For some people, that is unthinkable. Those raised in state churches like Anglican, Catholic or Lutheran churches are notorious for not being super-generous in our giving, because the state looked after us.  It takes the wind of the Holy Spirit to turn us around to biblical generosity.

The good news is that turning and returning goes in two directions: us to God and God to us. Isaiah 63 teaches that God is a returning Father. As Arnold Ballantyne texted me this week, God the Father is our inheritance, even when people turn away, ultimately God is our Redeemer. God’s desire is for us to revere Him. God the Father wants us to inhabit his holy place and not let His enemies be victorious. We belong to God. He calls us by name.

Acts 7:39 tells us that “Our fathers refused to obey God. Instead they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.” All of life is about which direction we turn: either back to the slavery of Egypt or forward to freedom in God’s Promised Land. Even as Christians we can slip into going back to Egypt. Have you ever gone back to Egypt?  It doesn’t satisfy, does it? Has God ever said to you: “About Turn.”?  How did you respond? 

How many watched Godspell where they sang “Turn back o Man, forswear thy foolish ways.”? Our messianic Jewish friend Marty Shub who did our last two seder suppers, has the fascinating last name ‘Shub’ or Shuv, which is Hebrew for turning, repenting, and returning.  His ministry is called Return Ministries.  Returning for Jewish people is both physical and spiritual. Since 1948, 3.3 million Jews have physically returned to Israel in what is called Aliyah, going up to Jerusalem.  There have always been Jews in Israel, but most were sent into exile by the Romans, who renamed Israel as Palestine, in an effort to antisemitically obliterate their memory.

There are 381 occurrences in the bible of the word ‘turn’ and 499 occurrences of the word ‘return’, all of which we will be looking at for the next eight hours together. 😉  In Acts 3:19, Peter says, “Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” How many of you want times of refreshing? Does Canada need this?

2 Chronicles 7:14 says that if we turn from our wicked ways, God will heal our land.  I was converted in the Jesus revolution in which millions of young people turned back to Jesus. The word Revolution literally means to turn or roll full circle. How many today are willing to spiritually revolve back to Jesus? 

Lamentations 3:40 says: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”

Acts 7:42 tells us: “But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. (Astrology/ age of Aquarius)” Our Hird family dabbled in many new age practices, like horoscopes. The New Age is the way of idolatry and confusion. God turns away when we choose the identical twins of idolatry and idolatry, so prevalent in BC.

Jesus, in Matthew 18:3, said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change (KJV be converted, straphate, turn), and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” Only children can turn. Adults suffer from stiff necks until we get child-like necks.

In Acts 28:18, Paul recalls what God said in his turning/shuving/conversion: “I am sending you to the nations to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.”

Whatever you turn toward is what you turn into. Whatever you gaze on, you become. That is why pornography is so deadly.  You become what swallows you.  In the Christ child, you become more childlike and less childish. Only children can enter the Kingdom. Have you noticed how childish much of political discussion is becoming. What if we actually sat down and listened carefully to those with whom we may disagree? What if we stopped demonizing people with other political opinions?

God, in Zechariah 1:3, said “Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.” God the returning Father is calling us to return back home to Him. Where have you turned your back on God? Where do you need to seek his face? Are you willing to return back home? Are you willing to give up your idols? Are you willing to make Jesus your only hope?  Let’s close in singing ‘Turn your eyes on Jesus’.

Sermon: ‘Engraved on Jesus’ Hands (Isaiah 49:13-26)

By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, All Saints Community Church, Crescent Beach

How many of you have ever visited England? We have been there four times.  While initially visiting England, we noticed that their underground subways have a rather strange sign: Mind the Gap. They are warning people not to fall into the gap between the train and the platform. All of us have spiritual and emotional gaps in our lives.

Bishop Peter, in a recent sermon, talked about the eighteen inches between our head and our heart being the greatest gap in the universe. There is often a gap between what we cognitively believe and what we experience in our hearts. Bishop Peter works hard to help us be more self-aware of these gaps. Dr JI Packer said: ”True religion claims the affections as well as the head: It is heart-work.”

Steve Cuss said that some of us are honest about the gaps; some pretend that we have no gaps. But only a very few don’t experience a gap at all. In Steve Cuss’s new book Expectation Gaps, he helps us more intentionally mind the gaps in our spiritual lives.

Three common Expectation Gaps identified by Steve Cuss

1. I believe that God loves me but I don’t always feel it.
2. I believe that God is with me but I don’t always see it.
3. I believe that I would be further ahead in my Christian life by now.

In the poem Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sits round it, and pluck blackberries.” Seeing God is often about knowing how and where to look. There are so many signs of God’s beauty all around us that we easily miss in our small, self-absorbed lives. I will never forget when, shortly after my conversion in Grade 12, I noticed the light of God shining through our backyard tree. For five years, I never noticed that burning bush, that sacred tree, but my eyes had opened.

When has God felt closest to you? Would anyone like to share?

When have you seen God at work in your life? Would anyone like to share?

When have you seen God at work in creation? Would anyone like to share?

Have any of us ever felt that we should be further ahead in our Christian life by now?

Steve Cuss commented that sometimes he forgets that God is with him and instead he depends completely on himself. In those moments, he feels like everything is on his shoulders. Can anyone else relate? Do I hear an Amen? With provincial and federal elections coming up, I thank God that the government is on Jesus’ shoulders.

Isaiah 49:13 tells us: ”Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.”

How many of you have ever met a Methodist? They are almost an extinct species in Canada. All of my paternal ancestors were Methodists until 1925, when my father converted to the newly formed United Church at the age of one years old. Does any one else have any ancestors who were either Methodists or part of the United Church? Methodists back in those days were often known as Shouting Methodists. My complicated blacksmith great grandfather Tom, who bootlegged to the RCMP, was a Methodist lay preacher. He was remembered by relatives as preaching the hot gospel. Methodists loved to shout for joy and burst into song. Singing, thanks to Charles Wesley, was foundational in the Methodist experience.

After this overflowing of shouting and singing in vs. 13, vs. 14 starts with a but.  “But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.””

Have you ever been tempted to believe that God has forsaken and forgotten you? It is a deeply painful thing when we believe that we are all alone and forgotten.  CH Spurgeon said that God keeps his promise a thousand times, and yet the next trial makes us doubt Him.

What has helped you fight back against this lie from the devil that God has forgotten you? Does anyone want to share?

Sometimes when struggling with acute anxiety, depression or a dark night of the soul, it can feel very difficult to pray or read the Bible. This can leave good Christians with a lot of false guilt and shame. I have learned to let people in psychiatric facilities that it is normal and okay to find it difficult to pray or read the Bible. That doesn’t mean that they are bad Christians.

It is so easy to get stuck in our family’s default ways of coping. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. It is too easy in our Christian life to be stuck on the treadmill of false expectations, of would-ofs, should-ofs, could-ofs, if-only. Steve Cuss insightfully said: “Once I get off the treadmill, I can remember the Lord.” What if we got off the expectation gap treadmill and stopped beating ourselves up? What if we chose to be as kind to ourselves as we are to others? Part of healthy self awareness is to be aware that we are loved even in our brokenness. Do you show the love of neighbour to yourself, loving your neighbour as you love yourself? It really doesn’t work to try to love your neighbour as you hate yourself.

Many kind Christians secretly curse themselves as stupid, ugly, and useless. A lot of this comes from the broken tapes of our childhood and teenage wounds. How overreaching is your inner critic? If someone compliments you, can you receive it, or do you just reject it? One of Satan’s names in Revelation 12:10 is accuser of the brothers and sisters. He does it day and night. What if we stopped agreeing with the devil’s accusation? What if we started overcoming him by the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony, and because we loved our life not unto death.

In Isaiah 49:15, God says: ““Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”

Has anyone every forgotten their umbrella? Has anyone forgotten their wallet or purse?  How about your keys? Has anyone forgotten where they parked the car? Has anyone ever forgotten their children? 😉 How long did it take you to find them? I am reminded of how anxious Mother Mary and Joseph were when they lost Jesus at age 12 in Jerusalem. God however never forgets any one. Isaiah 43:25, Jeremiah 31:34, and Hebrews 8:13 teaches that God forgets your sins through the cross and can’t even remember them. He will never, however, forget your name. You are not just a SIN number to God. He called you by name while you were still in your mother’s womb. Psalm 139:14 tells us that each of us are fearfully and wonderfully made. As the poster says, God doesn’t make any junk.

What did Jesus quote from Psalm 22 while hanging on the cross? My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani! Jesus on the cross chose to be god-forsaken so that we might never be forsaken again. God will never forget you. Could your mother ever forget you? In one of our Winston Churchill High School 40th anniversary booklets, several men flippantly answered the question ‘Do you have any children’ by writing ‘None that I know of’. I have never heard a women say that. Mothers still remember all their children, including those who were miscarried, or aborted. Unlike doctors, surgical nurses in secular hospitals are forced to do abortions.

Some of my nurse friends felt no grief until they met Jesus. Their consciences came alive. One who wanted but couldn’t have children, switched to a catholic hospital to avoid doing more abortions. It is so wonderful that Jesus can bring healing and forgiveness to those who regret their abortions. While tragic, abortion is not the unforgivable sin. Our prayer teams can really help. I’ve even prayed once with a man who regretted his involvement in an abortion. That doesn’t happen often.

So can a woman forget her baby? It is possible but highly unusual if that happen. Moms, how many of you have forgotten about your children? How often do you think about them? Do you ever lose sleep over them?  What helps you surrender them to Jesus?  Even if they have rejected and cut you off for a season, you can’t forget them. Neither will God forget you. Psalm 27:10 powerfully reminds people that though our father and mother forsake us, the Lord will receive us. That is very good news.

His covenant with you cannot be broken. By night and by day, Jesus is always thinking of you. His eye is always upon you. God never ceases to remember you. He is not too busy for you. He does all things well. You are his beloved, the darling of His heart.

Jesus in Isaiah 49:16 says: See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” The New American Standard Version calls the verb ‘inscribed’. Have any one here ever cut yourself with a knife? Did you have to go to hospital? My grandfather master mechanic/blacksmith chopped off half of two fingers. You are not just tattooed on Jesus’ hands. You are carved there. That is why the resurrected Jesus’ wounds were never removed. You are included in his wounds, in the broken body of the Messiah.

As a young child in Sunday School, I loved the song ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands.’ I never realized as a child however that his hands still have holes in them. Even his mighty resurrection didn’t remove his wounds. Acts 11:21 said says that the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. God’s wounded hands are mighty to save. When the Bible says that Jesus sits on the right hand of the Father, this is the power of God in action to bring healing, salvation and deliverance. You may remember the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:10  ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your Hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from the evil, that I may not cause pain!’ How many wants God’s wounded hand to be with you?

John 10:29 gives us wonderfully good news that no one can pluck you from his scarred hands. With his wounded hands, he fights for you. No one can really love without being wounded. Have you noticed? When young men went to war, mothers would write the names of their sons on their hands, so they would always be thinking about you. In WWW1, mothers would keep a photo of their son always with them.

CH Spurgeon called vs 16 ‘this inestimably precious text’ ‘a precious drop of honey’.  He said ‘People speak about the seven wonders of the world. Being carved on the palm of his hands is a wonder in the seventh heavens.’ Revelation 13:8 mysteriously tells us that Jesus the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world.

The very nature of love is sacrificial giving. Loving mothers are radically sacrificial. I have seen that in my mother and also in my dear wife Janice. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. All the sacrifices in the Bible point to the ultimate sacrificial love of Jesus nailed to the cross. Dr John Stott memorably said that if it were not for the cross of Christ embracing our suffering, he would have become an atheist. Only the wounded hands of Jesus make sense of senseless suffering.

I will never forget the altar call in Uganda when dozens of couples came forward to get married. Getting married is not easy in Uganda as you have to pay for the bride’s dowry with a number of cows. One man with his partner and baby told me that while he wanted to get married, he didn’t know if he was ready for that much responsibility. He seemed pretty involved to me. 😉 Many men think that marriage will kill them. It actually statistically gives them a longer and more satisfying life. Many men also fear having children, that they can’t afford it. I did. Marriage and parenting are all about sacrificial love. So is grandparenting. Do I hear an amen? How many of you as grandparents have wounded hands with your grandchildren’s names carved on them?

In vs 17, God observes: “Your children hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you.”

One of the greatest moments in one’s life is family reconciliation particularly with one’s adult children. Another great moment is when toxic people depart from your world, so that you can feel safe again. Think of the yearning of many Israelis to have their hostage children freed from the Hamas tunnels after seven months of their being in captivity. Jesus has carved the names of those hostage children on his hands.

In vs 18, we are encouraged: “Lift up your eyes and look around; all your children gather and come to you. As surely as I live,” declares the Lord, “you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.”

As mentioned last Sunday, God wants all of our children, physically and spiritually, to come back home and be restored to the Holy Trinity. God is family. There is nothing sweeter than home sweet home, both spiritually and physically. God sees all of us, both married and single, as precious wedding ornaments. How many of us were raised with Susan Warner’s Sunday School hymn?:

Jesus bids me shine like a pure, clear light; like a little candle, shining in the light; in this world of darkness, so let us shine; you in your small corner and I in mine.”

Through Jesus’ wounded hands, light shines through into our small corners. Susan Warner asked her sister Anna to write the classic children’s hymn Jesus loves me. Their parents had lost most of their wealth in the 1847 financial crash when 40% of the New York banks collapsed. The two sisters never married and so had to survive by writing music. Their songs were so popular in their Bible studies with the West Point military cadets that the sisters were honoured after their deaths by being buried in the West Point Cemetery.

Isaiah 49:19-21 speaks of God replacing the bereavement and barrenness in our lives with his abundance:

““Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.’ Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?’ ””

Some anticipate that tens of millions will return to the land of Israel in coming days.  It may feel like the place is too small.  You can imagine how excited that Israelis are when new babies are born after the destruction of October 7th.

In a culture of death, of abortion, drugs and MAID, what a blessing it is when people choose life, family and home. All Saints, as mentioned by Janice Inch last week, is a place of safety, welcome and homecoming. All of us are welcomed home by the wounded hands of Jesus.

God in Isaiah 49:22-23 speaks of bringing his people home, saying: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their hips. Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.””

God will not disappoint his chosen people the Jewish people as he is calling them to do Aliyah and return home to their homeland of Israel. None of us who turn to Yeshua/Jesus the Jewish messiah will be disappointed. He is the hope for both Israel and the nations as they are grafted into the olive tree. He has both Israel and the nations in his wounded hands.

Isaiah 49:24-26 says that God will contend with those who contend with you. God fights for Israel and for us as we return home:

“Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce? But this is what the Lord says: “Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.””

        As God protects and restores Israel, this is a great witness to the nations that they too need to return to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, revealed in his son Jesus/Yeshua our messiah. God has carved Israel on the palm of his hand. By faith in Jesus the Messiah, we gentiles are also carved on the palm of his hand. He will never leave us. He will never forsake. He will never abandon us. 

Let us pray. Dear Jesus, thank you for what you did on the cross for us. Thank you for forgiveness. Thank you for healing. Thank you for including us. We are not forgotten. We are not abandoned, in your name. Amen.