(Isaiah 61:7-11) By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

“Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours. “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.” I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.”

Isaiah 61:7-11 NIV

Today is my last of four Lenten Sundays of ‘holding the fort’ so that Bishop Peter and Jenny Klenner could actually have a refreshing holiday in Australia.  Let’s all say hi to Peter and Jenny as they will be watching online.  He phoned me this week from Singapore to say how much he is enjoying our All Saints online services. The phrase ‘holding the fort’ goes back to the wild west where securing a frontier fort was often the line between thriving or not surviving.  Why did those 30,000 American miners from San Francisco, who came for the Gold Rush in BC, voted to join Canada in 1871? It was because Governor James Douglas and Judge Matthew Begbie protected the miners with the rule of law. In the wild west of the States, miners were always being robbed by bandits.  Would you like to hear about any bandits that I had to deal with in the past four weeks?  Satan, the worst of all bandits, robs people of the Word of God by making them too busy to experience the blessing of reading their bible or even attend church. Satan is a master at making people too busy. I know many people in previous churches who made it to the church parking lot but had a huge struggle to make it in the front door.  The devil hates people going to church.  He loves to tell us that we can just do ‘me & Jesus’ at the beach, the golf course, or out in nature. He hates our taking part in Christian community.

How many of you remember the six key disciplines, really the six blessings of Lent? 1) prayer 2) self-examination 3) fasting 4) repentance 5) bible reading 6) generosity especially to those in need.

This morning, we will be particularly focusing on the covenantal blessing of bible reading, not only at Lent but especially at Lent. The Bible has two covenantal sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Testament is another word for Covenant. 

I will never forget when my first congregation St. Philip’s Dunbar did an unheard-of thing of holding six bible study groups during Lent. They loved it so much that they wanted to continue, but St. Philip’s had so many committee meetings that the bible studies collapsed.  We had a neighbouring Anglican Church with thirty-five different committees. God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee. He sent his only son. 

Our St. Philip’s Youth Group read the bible once a year out of duty, so of like swallowing castor oil because it is good for you. Some people view reading the bible like going to the dentist to have a root canal. How many of you enjoy getting a root canal?  After the youth had me lead the obligatory one-time event, they enjoyed it so much that they decided to read the bible twice a year. Unknown to me, the youth then signed a petition asking for me to lead a weekly youth bible study. When I approached the rector about this, he said no to my leading this. He told me that the young people are already too busy, and I have all these committees to attend.  But he softened and agreed when I said that I would only attend every other week, and I would train up youth to lead on alternate weeks. 

AW Tozer, AB Simpson’s successor, said that Satan’s greatest weapon is our ignorance of the Word of God. I am firmly convinced that we in BC need a revival of reading God’s Word. We have become an increasingly illiterate culture.  Only one in five Canadians read between one to five books a year. Many Canadians are no longer reading anything.  Only 11% of Canadians read the bible once a week or more. While 54% of Canadians have a bible in their home, only 39% of Canadians have actually read it to some degree. Some of our Canadian politicians might have more wisdom if they regularly listened to the wisdom of the scriptures. Do I hear an amen?

The first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool JC Ryle said in his book Practical Religion: “Happy are those who possess a Bible.”

Ed: How many bibles do you own? When did you receive your first Bible?

Bishop Ryle went on to add: “Happier still are those who read the bible and obeys it.”

In our home church, we did a Living Bible skit where I dressed up as a 5’ 10 ½” cardboard Living Bible. The local Anglican priest in the skit visited an Anglican family and asked them if he could look at their bible.  They went to their dusty book shelf, and frantically looked for the family bible.  It was nowhere to be found. They desperately looked everywhere, all around town, until finally they discovered the Living Bible who had run away to the local Baptist Church. When asked why he ran away, he said that he felt lonely and ignored. When the Anglican family promised to pay him more attention, the Living Bible agreed to return back home.

I never saw another teenager or member of my family ever read a Bible until the Jesus movement in 1972. In our High School, you never saw a bible. You never thought that it existed.  Did you ever observe a member of your family actually reading your bible? Who was that?  The Bible, for me, was some obscure book read by clergy in a church building. The Anglican clergy from my youth never preached from the Bible. They seemed to give rather forgettable moral lessons on being a more moral person. Let me show you some bibles that have changed my life, beginning with my original Good News for Modern Man in Grade 12. I had to tape it together with duct tape. A worn-out bible is a potential sign of spiritual vitality. My second bible was the paraphrase Living Bible. My third Bible was the more academic New American Standard Version. My fourth Bible was the more readable while still accurate New International Version. Since then, I have been studying and preaching from the NIV interlinear Hebrew and Greek. What Bible translations have you read over the years?

The Bible radically changed my life in 1972. I could not get enough of it, and carried my bible everywhere, something that was scandalous in our Winston Churchill High School. When I lived in Montreal during Grade 6 & 7, I took part in a pre-confirmation class where I read a summarized version of the Old Testament, which I loved for the history and the battles.  Returning to Vancouver, our ex-diocese did not focus on the bible, so I never got to read the New Testament, and was never given a bible for my confirmation.  The only bible that I knew about in our household was my older sister’s white leather KJV bible with a gold chain which she had been given when confirmed in Montreal. I would sometimes sneak in her room to read her bible as a teenager. None of it made any sense, though I liked the pictures. Our Anglican youth group in Vancouver had no biblical or Christian content in it, no bible study, no singing, and no prayer. Only after a Jesus movement revival broke out at our local Anglican church did young people openly read their bible, pray, sing about Jesus, and even share their faith. We were tasting the everlasting covenantal joy that Isaiah 61 kept talking about.

During Lent, I have read five books by one of my heroes AB Simpson, including this one The Christ of the Forty Days. He memorably said that when the presence of Jesus is revealed to us, the Bible becomes a new book, a book for our hearts, a book full of our living Saviour. When I became born-again, the bible switched from being a closed book to being an open book.

How many of you feel that you need to cut back on bible reading during the remaining week of Lent?  It is very difficult to say yes to more bible reading until we prune our busy schedules.  We live in such a frantically busy culture. What might you need to say no to so that you could say yes to a double portion of bible reading this final Lenten week? You may want to think about it.

Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Easter blooming requires Lenten pruning.  As Isaiah 61:11 says, “For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.” Where might God need to prune you so that seeds would sprout and grow with righteousness and praise among the nations? I believe that Jesus wants covenantal seeds of blessing to sprout and grow in your life. How many of you want that?

Now, Isaiah 61:7 says “Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so, you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.” This is a very powerful verse.

Six times in the Bible, specific reference is made to a “double portion.” When someone receives a double portion, he gets a gift twice as much as that given to others.

Now you might want to consider this a double-or-nothing sermon. It is amazing how deep the doubling concept is in our English language: 1) double-decker 2) Double-edged 3) Double-barreled 4) Double-header 5) Double helix 6) double vision 7) Double-dealing 8) double-dipping 9) double-crossing 10) double-standard 11) Double entendre 12) Double feature 13) double-take, and my wife’s favorite: 14) Double jeopardy. Are there any other Jeopardy fans here today?? Quite a few 😉

I remember having double and triple portions on New Year’s Eve at Frank Baker’s Restaurant in West Vancouver.  Has anyone else here had a double portion blessing at Frank Baker’s amazing all-you-can-eat smorgasbord?  They had endless Tiffany lamps and a James Bond Aston Martin car with all the gadgets.  Their trumpeter Lance Harrison had us do the Congo line singing O When the Saints Come Marching in. I had no idea that I was singing about Jesus’ second coming.

I want to ask you: Is it wrong to expect more from God? Some Christians unconsciously view God as a bad-tempered miser like the one who was outraged when Oliver Twist said ‘more gruel, sir’.  So we may think that God might get angry at us if we ask for more. An inner voice may tell us, “Why don’t you just get used to life as it is”? Jesus, in contrast, wants to give us life abundant. He wants our cup to run over with blessings. Since the Spirit of Jesus in Ephesians 5:18 is actually our double portion, we don’t have to worry about hangovers. You know the whole drinking and drugging culture. What is one of the greatest downsides of getting drunk or on drugs?  The effect wears off. You always need more, and the morning after can be very unpleasant.  You will be very pleased to know (I checked with Bishop Peter on this 😉) that God’s double portion is sugar-free, calorie-free, and very low in cholesterol. Isn’t that good to know?

The concept of the double portion is first found in Deuteronomy 21:17: “But he shall acknowledge the firstborn . . . by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. In the Old Testament, the right of the firstborn was that a firstborn son received twice the inheritance of that of a father’s other sons.  So the Isaiah 61:7 emphasis on double portion, which is now for all of us as believers, is actually a covenantal focus on inheritance and sonship as God’s beloved children. Ephesian 1:14 says that the Holy Spirit seals our covenantal inheritance.  In Ephesians 1:17-18, we are told that God opens the eyes of our heart so that we may see the riches of his glorious inheritance.  Many of us as Christians don’t realize what an amazing inheritance we have been given in Christ.  Galatians 4:7 tells us that because we are God’s children and no longer slaves, we are guaranteed a godly inheritance. 1 Peter 1:4 says that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. You know, the children of billionaires, how long does their inheritance often last?  It goes pretty quickly. Often sports stars, their multi-millions fade away very quickly. Studies show that their wealth is often soon gone. Again and again, the bible affirms our covenantal inheritance in Matthew 5:5, Acts 20:32, Colossians 1:12, Hebrews 9:15, and Titus 3:7.  The double portion is not something that we earn by trying harder, but rather receive by faith as our Kingdom inheritance. 

Because Hannah could not have children, her husband tried to comfort her with an extra blessing. In 1 Samuel 1:5, we are told: “But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her.”

Near the end of Elijah’s time on earth, he offered his assistant Elisha a gift, saying: “What can I do for you before I am taken from you?” Elisha answered in 2 Kings 2:9, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.” The doubling of miracles through Elisha confirmed that he had indeed been granted a double portion. We dealt with that a lot in our new book the Elisha Code which just came out in hardcover.

In Job 42:10, God restored to Job twice as much as he originally had before his time of testing. It could be said that Job also received a “double portion.”

The promise of a double portion in Isaiah 61:7 followed a period of double shame and double disgrace. Look at the history of the Jewish people, how often they have been sent into exile, how often they have been persecuted and shamed. Many people have been raised in a culture of shame, dishonour, and loss of face.  The devil loves to give people a double portion of shame, guilt, fear, self-hatred, and hopelessness. The devil wants to say to us ‘shame on you’ while Jesus wants to say ‘shame off you.’  The devil wants to cripple us, to make us  feel unworthy to receive God’s double portion. He will whisper to you: “You’ve made too many mistakes for God to still love you. God might love other people, maybe Bishop Peter and Jenny because they are worthy, but not you.  You’re a sinner. You’ve blown it. It’s amazing that they even let you attend All Saints.”  That’s what the devil will whisper.  But, you see, God the Father loves you just as much as he loves Jesus his Only Son.  Our covenantal God loves being generous to you. Double trouble often precedes and potentially prepares us for double blessings.

My wife wanted me to tell you about an Afro-American woman who runs a Christian fitness company in California. She was mega-successful, but she would always crash and burn. She lost everything, including her business, ending up divorced from overworking. Her breakthrough happened when she finally accepted at the core of her being that she was not unworthy to receive God’s double portion. I want to tell you today: you are not disqualified. Don’t listen to the devil when he tells you that God doesn’t love you.

Did you know that each of us as believers has a covenantal inheritance of both fruit and gifts?  The Holy Spirit wants to give us a double portion of gifts and fruit, a double portion of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. A double portion blessing is a double blessing of the fruit of everlasting joy. As Isaiah 61:10 puts it, I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. If you are not rejoicing, you need a double blessing. Now you might be thinking, “I’ve got too much trouble in my life.” Well, if you have double trouble, you’re exactly whom God wants to give the double blessing.

1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 describe the double portion of various spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit wants to pour out upon us.  The Spirit of the Father breaks the power of shame off of our lives, turning us from saving face to saving grace. 

You see, double blessings is like a magnificent rose among many thorns. Brent Rue, a Vineyard Megachurch pastor, told us that many pastors want a mega church. He went on to say that with mega churches come mega-problems. So there is the rose in the middle of many mega-thorns.

Isaiah 61:8 tells us that our covenantal God loves justice and hates robbery and wrongdoing. When we are going through the worst of times, God will never give upon on us.  Do I hear an Amen? 

He is covenantally faithful to us even we break his everlasting covenant. God has never given up on the chosen people of Israel even when he has disciplined them and sent them into exile. There is always the miracle of return and restoration, both for the Jewish people, but also for those of us who have been grafted in from the nations. We have a godly covenantal inheritance. Those of us who are grafted into the olive tree can trust in the faithfulness of God to all his covenants, including Jeremiah’s new covenant.

Isaiah 61:10 compares this double portion blessing to our covenantal wedding robes. Have you ever dressed us for a wedding in some function? Why do people do that?  It is covenantal.  It says: “For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Our covenantal wedding clothes are actually ‘military’ in nature 😉.  Part of the double portion blessing is daily embracing the Ephesians 6:10-20 clothing of the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the Gospel shoes of peace, and praying in the Spirit at all times. Whenever I door-knock both evangelistically and politically, I find myself often putting on the covenantal spiritual armour. How of you ever put on your spiritual armour? How many do it on a daily basis? It can be a deep blessing, even a double blessing.

Isaiah 61:9 tells us that part of the double portion blessing is not just for ourselves but also for our children and grandchildren, both physically and spiritually. How many of you love your children? Covenant promises are for me and my household. Our descendants, says vs 9, will be known among the nations. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed. 1 John 1:4 says I have no greater joy that knowing that my children are walking in the truth. If you don’t have physical children, you can have spiritual children. So digesting a double portion of the Bible really helps us walk in the truth.

In conclusion, I love how Bishop Peter and Jenny invest week in and week out so deeply in us as their spiritual family to help us love God’s Word and walk in the truth. Do I hear an amen? Do people appreciate us?

God has doubly blessed us at All Saints. That’s why we’ve never had any troubles here 😉 Double troubles and double blessings go together.  Because Canada is the most international nation on earth, we right here are blessing the nations in Canada both locally and indirectly through their international family networks.  So many people in Canada are connected all around the world.  Right here in Crescent Beach, through the Double portion of God’s Holy Spirit, we are impacting the world with the great Commission and the Great Commandment.

I believe that God wants to doubly bless you today to be a double blessing to others.  This is your covenantal inheritance.  I want to ask you: who this Lent would like to receive a double portion, a double blessing for yourself, your family, and for the nations? Let us pray.  Dear Lord, you are so radically generous. Help us not to disqualify ourselves. Help us not to listen to that voice that says that we will never be good enough.  Lord, help us to open and receive all that you have for us of your double portion, your double blessing, in Jesus’ name. Amen.