Our Declaration of Dependence

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

On or around July 4th, 1776, a group of men gathered to sign a document declaring their independence from a tyrannical king. Today, we’re gathered to do just the opposite and declare our dependence on the King of Kings. And as we do so, we remember that our help is in the name of the Lord. May it help the earth. The scripture reading for our call to worship this morning comes from Psalm 62, 1 through 8. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?

They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse, Silla. For God alone, all my soul wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. On God rest my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times. O people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Selah.” Let’s pray. Father, we praise you this morning, for you are the rock of our salvation and are a refuge from all our enemies. The nations rage and declare their independence from you.

They do not comprehend the peril that they are in. The troubles of the righteous are only for a season, but those who do not yield to you will be completely shattered in the day of judgment. The fool thinks he’s his own master. He does not understand that he is a slave to sin. We too were once enslaved in our unrighteousness, but have now become slaves of righteousness through Jesus Christ. We praise you for having set us free from the penalty of sin and the work that you’re doing by your spirit to set us free from its power and ultimately its presence.

As we gather this morning for a time of corporate worship, we declare our absolute dependence on you and ask you to continue changing us from glory to glory until we come to the true image of your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. If you ask a fellow believer how their prayer life is, you’ll almost always get a response acknowledging that it could be better. Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is the chink in many a Christian’s armor. Martin Luther is supposed to have said, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer. Now we hear that quote and we can’t imagine spending that much time in our prayer closet. We often have a hard time finding 10 minutes a day to pray.

The point of this exhortation is not to set a legalistic standard on the number of minutes that we spend in prayer, but rather to consider the kind of dependence on God or independence from Him that determines those minutes. The Christian who professes to depend on God, but rarely prays, is like the man who tells his wife he loves her on their wedding day and then never mentions it again. All Christians should be growing into greater dependence on God for everything which necessarily requires extended time in the word and in prayer. Often God uses trials to bring us to a place of greater dependence on him. Those hard providences are gifts and are intended to bring us into closer communion with him. C.S. Lewis put it this way, quote, the thing is to rely on God.

The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small price to pay for having been brought to that dependence. Meanwhile, the trouble is that relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing has been done yet. End of quote. Did you catch that? Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had been done. In other words, professing reliance on God is not a one and done profession. The person who only occasionally confesses or gives evidence of dependence on God doesn’t truly depend on him if that’s a rare occasion.

Isaiah 29 13 describes the kind of religion that God despises in it that people are described as those who quote drawn near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. It’s quite easy to fall into the trap of performing religious duties without having a heart that hungers and thirsts after God. This is the kind of lukewarmness that Jesus says in Revelation 3 16 that he will vomit us out of his mouth. A friend of mine had someone mock his faith once and said that God was his crutch in life and my friend disagreed and said that God was his stretcher. I like how that pictures the kind of dependence that we should have on him. If you are guilty of relying on God like a crutch and not like a stretcher or if there’s any other sin that you need to confess, now is the time to confess those sins and seek his forgiveness. So if you’re able to do so you’re invited at this time to go ahead and kneel in humble confession. So let’s go ahead and take that moment right now. Father, we confess that too often our

hearts are not in alignment with our external religious expressions. The cares of this world crowd in and demand undue amounts of time and affection, leaving you with the leftovers. We ask that you forgive us for letting our hearts be ruled by these cares rather than casting them on you in prayerful dependence. Jesus told his disciples that you array the lilies in the field and take notice of every sparrow that falls from the sky, therefore how much more are you aware of our needs? We boast in our strengths and we lament our weaknesses as if these counted for anything on the scale of our worth to you. We make our plans without regard for your will, forgetting that we are about amiss with no tomorrow guaranteed.

Help us to seek the blessedness that comes from a walk of faith that is bathed in prayer rather than rushing forward according to our own volition. Thank you for the inexhaustible supply of forgiveness available to us by the death of Jesus on the cross. May we not cheapen it by wantonly returning to the same old sins over and over, but gradually put off the old man as we put on the new. We pray this in the name of our Lord, another one who has saved us from our sin, Jesus Christ. You’re invited to stand. The scripture reading that reminds us of the forgiveness that we have when we confess our sins is found in Psalm 103, verses 8-12.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgression from us.” And let’s go ahead and sing then like people who’ve been forgiven our sins. Today’s scripture reading is Second Chronicles 16, one through 10, Second Chronicles 16, one through 10.

In the 36th year of the reign of Asa, Basha, king of Israel, went up against Judah and built Ramah, and he went that he might permit no one to go out or come into Asa king of Judah. Then Asa took silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king’s house and sent them to Ben Hadadad, king of Assyria, who lived in Damascus saying, there is a covenant between me and you as there was between my father and your father. Behold I am sending to you silver and gold. Go break your covenant with Be’eshah king of Israel that he may withdraw from me. And Ben had listened to King Esa and sent the commanders of his armies against the cities of Israel.

And they conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel, Me, Man, and all the store cities of Nephthali. And when Bea’sah heard of it, he stopped building Ramah and let his work cease. Then King Esa took all Judah and they carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber with which Bea’sah had been building. and with them he built Geba and Misfah. At that time Hananiah and the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, because you relied on the king of Syria and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Assyria has escaped you. Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen, yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand.

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless towards him. You have done foolishly in this for from now on you will have wars. Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in stocks in prison for he was in a rage with him because of this and Asa inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the same time. Father we stand here with heads bowed recognizing that you are the promise making, the promise keeping God. And we stand here as the children of promise. And from the days of Abraham when he believed your promise and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So too Father we believe in your promises we cling to them our hope rests in them.

And Father, we thank you that as we study your word, we see again and again and again that you do keep your promises and you will keep your promises. And so would you continue to work in our hearts to make us the kind of people who believe that, who lean wholly on you, Father, as on the stretcher, trusting in you, depending on you, for our very breath. Open up our minds and our hearts, our eyes, our ears, whatever needs to be opened so that we can see what your word has for us this morning. And may we walk out of here, people with even greater faith. We ask in your Son Jesus’ name, amen. This coming Tuesday marks the 247th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

We’re told in the writings of some of the people who were present that day that the mood was pretty somber. At one point, Benjamin Harris, a representative from Virginia, who was a rather heavyset man, said to the much smaller Elbridge Jerry from Massachusetts, quote, I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Jerry, when we are all hunting for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body, I shall die in a few minutes and be with the angels. But from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” So how’s that for encouragement? The signers knew that they were putting their welfare and even their lives on the line.

The last line of the declaration reads, and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and sacred honor. This Declaration of Independence was not made in haste. It was only after many appeals to the King of England were rebuffed that these men felt compelled to act. Enlisting their grievances, they wrote, in every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

The signers acknowledged that the decision to throw off a government should not be made quickly. They wrote, Prudence indeed will dictate that government’s long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience have shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Now, the King of England did not take kindly to the Declaration and the ensuing war for independence cost many lives. The impulse towards independence has been at the core of American culture for most of its existence.

It’s only been in recent history with the push towards socialism that this rugged individualism has been waning. There is a kind of independence that is good, like overthrowing tyrants, and a kind of dependence that is bad. It’s good that children learn to walk independently and not need to be carried around from a certain age. I was talking to my daughter-in-law, Maggie, she’s here from Germany for five months, and she’s got a little Toby on her hip, and she said the doctor says, oh, you have mama’s hip, you know, from mama’s, you know, that lane you get when you’re carrying that baby on that hip all the time. So it’s good that Toby learns independence from mama at some point.

It’s not good when able-bodied persons depend on others to pay their bills. Of course, the desire for independence has been at the root of the sin since the fall. Eve’s desire to be like a god rather than to be content in humble dependence led her to take that fateful bite of the apple. Sometimes the urge for independence reaches absurd levels, as in the case where how one feels about their identity trumps creational reality. Being independent from God is never a good thing. And in fact, it really isn’t even possible. Men only think that they’re independent. God numbers our days, Job 14.5. Our life is like a vapor, James 4.14.

We cannot resist his will, Romans 9.19. He determines the outcomes of our plans, Proverbs 16.9. He controls world events, Daniel 2.21. We could go on listing all the ways in which man is not independent from God. Now I realize when I say that we are completely dependent on God, I’m preaching to the choir. I doubt anyone here would disagree with that assertion. That said, I do question if we miss a lot of God’s blessings because we do not rely on Him as fully as we should. Could it be that there are blessings we are leaving on the table, so to speak, because we just don’t have the appetite to receive them? Do we have a growing hunger and thirst to receive all that God has to give?

Have we satiated ourselves with the good and better such that we don’t desire the best? We know that his supply of goodness is infinite, as is his generosity, so are we feasting on that goodness like we could be. Do we turn our backs on his table laid in with bounty because we’d rather sit at our own meager spread? The scripture has many references to God’s call to come and receive from His fullness, but He isn’t going to force-feed us. We must long for it as evidenced by living in utter dependence on Him. If God is our plan B when plan A fails, rather than being our only plan, we should not expect Him to be eager to shower His blessings on us.

In short, God’s blessings flow when we depend on Him. Now I need to inject something into this discussion. We cannot say that when we live a life of total dependence on God, that we will experience only pleasing things. Paul lived a life dependent on God, and yet he lived with a thorn in his flesh sent by God. Hard providences are a part of the normal Christian experience, but even those serve God’s purposes to bless us. All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose, Romans 8.28. Another way to think of what I’m scratching at is to have what I call a godly discontentment.

It’s different than worldly discontentment. Worldly discontentment finds its satisfaction selfishly feeding its lusts, Proverbs 30-15. It is non-relational. It seeks its own. Godly discontentment finds its satisfaction in knowing God’s pleasure as it thankfully receives and then gives glory to him. It’s highly relational. The more we receive from God, the more he is glorified as thanksgiving is made to him.

And then kids if you need your fill in the blanks for your point There’s only one point to today’s message and that point is that blessing comes from depending on God I Asked Ryan to read from Second Chronicles because chapter 16 verse 9 is one of my favorite verses The ESV reads for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless towards him. I just love the imagery. The Lord is scanning to and fro. Who can I strongly support? I mean, once you kind of like God, you get God’s attention and he said, hey, I want to strongly support that person. The word blameless used in the ESV sounds like God is searching for sinless people to strongly support. Obviously, if sinless was required to receive God’s support then none of us would qualify for his support. Confessing our sin regularly is necessary to receive God’s support but the idea in this verse goes beyond that. A few other Bible versions help scratch at the fuller meaning of the verse. The New American Standard and the Holman

Christian Standard Bible both say those whose heart is completely his. The idea that God is scanning the earth with his eyes for believers who live lives of such dependence on him that he wants to give them his fullest support. So I’m going to spend the rest of our time in the Word this morning examining three times that sitting kings of Judah faced impossible odds. In two of those three cases the king depended solely on God and he reaped major blessings as a as a result, but in the third case he did not and it cost him dearly. In the reading this morning we saw God’s displeasure with Asa, King of Judah, because he did not fully rely on God. And if you want you can get into Second Chronicles and probably around chapter 13 I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna back up a little bit from what Ryan read and we’re gonna see these three kings and these three situations. But at this point in time in this section of Chronicles were really only a few kings into Israel’s history as a divided nation.

You recall after Solomon’s death that his son Rehoboam became king over all of Israel. And so here he is reigning and then Jeroboam, who was the foreman at the time over the forced labor and some of those workers, came to Rehoboam with some legitimate grievances over their work conditions. But instead of following the advice given by his father’s trusted counselors. Instead he listened to his circle of young friends and followed their advice who advised him to crack down even harder on the workers, make life even more miserable. This hard stance led Jeroboam and the people then to reject Rehoboam as their king and to establish a separate kingdom with Jeroboam as their new king.

so ten tribes departed from underneath Rehoboam and said we’re gonna make Jeroboam our king and that’s how the divided kingdom came into be. Well for where we’re at today fast forward 18 years into Jeroboam’s reign over the ten rebellious tribes and Rehoboam now dies leaving his son Abidjah king over Judah. Abidjah is about 39 years old when he became king but he actually only rained for about three years. And from what we read he appears to have been serious about serving God with a whole heart. At this time tensions were pretty high between the two divided nations and there was constant war going on and so that continued on into the time of Abidja and Jeroboam. They were continuing to have wars back and forth. And then in chapter 13 we find Abidja again leader of Judah, preparing for another battle as he calls out the ten tribes of Israel for their rebellion and rebukes them for establishing their own religious leaders and practices in opposition to God’s instructions. Remember God had said this is the way you’re gonna worship, this is the place

you’re gonna worship, this is the time you’re gonna worship, and anything else was a serious sin. But that’s exactly what to Jeroboam and his followers did. They set up their own system. Their sins included replacing the legitimate libidical priests with their own and erecting two golden calves as the object of their worship. Did you ever hear that one before? They also established sacrifices in Samaria in disobedience to God’s law. Well, as this war is beginning to brew and Abidjaz calling them out for their sin, he starts to marshal his forces.

But Abidjaz’s army was outnumbered by Jeroboam two to one, and yet he tells Jeroboam, don’t trust in your superior military. In 1310 he says, Second Chronicles 1310, he says, but as for us the Lord is our God and we have not forsaken him. And then in verse 13 the battle begins with Jeroboam’s 800,000 man army positioned in front of and behind Abidjah’s 400,000 troops. These Abidjah’s totally surrounded two to one. But because Abidjah trusted in God, we read in verse 16, God defeated Jeroboam and all Israel before Abidjah and Judah.

Abidjah’s army ended up killing over 60% of Jeroboam’s army or 500,000 soldiers. That’s almost as many U.S. fighters killed in World Wars I, II, and the Vietnam War combined. In 1318 we read, thus the men of Israel were subdued at that time and the men of Judah prevailed because they relied on the Lord the God of their fathers. This chapter then, this brings us then up to chapter 14 where the kingship now passes from Abidjah onto his son Asa, so now Asa, king of Judah. Asa starts off his rule well like his father. We’re told starting in verse 2, and Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He took away the foreign altars and the high places and broke down the pillars and cut the ashram and commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers and to keep the law and the commandment. He also took out all of the cities of Judah, the high places and the incense altars, and the kingdom had rest under him. He built fortified cities in Judah for the land had rest.

He had no war in those years for the Lord gave him peace.” These were good years for Judah and they prospered greatly. Verse 7 and 8 says, so they built and prospered and Asa had an army of 300,000 from Judah armed with large shields and spears and 280,000 men from Benjamin that carried shields and drew bows. All these were mighty men of valor. But as life usually goes nothing stays perfect forever. Starting in verse 9 we read about an Ethiopian leader named Zera who came out against Judah with a million man army and 300 chariots. So there’s Asa with his 580,000 soldiers. All of a sudden here comes the guy from Ethiopia with a million men and his 300 chariots. But just like in the days of his father, Asa is outnumbered about two to one, but once again God rots the Ethiopians and gives Asa a great victory. We are told that none of the Ethiopian army survived and Judah gathered up all the spoil.

Moving on to chapter 15 we read about the Spirit of God coming upon a man named Azariah who then comes to King Asa and says, the Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him he will be found by you, but if you forsake him he will forsake you. Azariah reminds Asa of the earlier times, as you continue to read, he reminds Asa of the earlier times in Israel’s history when the people were without a teaching priest or the law. Probably going back to the days, I’m not sure when they were at, but they had lost track of the word of God and there was no priest. And all the chaos had ensued from that. But now that they were following God, they could expect continued blessing. He concludes his speech saying in verse 7, but you take courage, do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded. And then the rest of chapter 15 just describes all the religious reforms that Asa put in place to further strengthen Judah’s reliance on God. He purged all of the idols that still existed in the

land of Judah and Benjamin. He rebuilt an altar that was in disrepair. He called the people to a great gathering where they sacrificed 700 oxen and 7,000 sheep to the Lord. The people who attended this great sacrifice included a whole lot of people from the ten tribes of the rebellious tribes who had been looking over the fence saying, hmm, life looks a whole lot better in Judah these days. I think I’ll go back there. And so they came and were part of that sacrifice. Just try to imagine the amazing blessing Judah was experiencing as they turned their whole heart to God. They were so ardent in their desire to serve God that they made a covenant with him. Starting in 1512 we read the purpose of this covenant was quote, to seek the Lord the God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul but that whoever would not seek the Lord the God of Israel should be put to death whether young or old man or woman. They swore an oath to the Lord with a loud voice and with a shouting and with trumpets and with horns, and all Judah rejoiced over the

oath. For they had sworn with all their heart and had sought him with their whole desire, and he was found by them, and the Lord gave them rest all around.”

Asa was so determined to purge the land of evil that he even removed his own mother from being Queen Mother because she had made a detestable image to the fertility goddess Asherah. Now his reforms weren’t totally complete but verse 17 says quote, nevertheless the heart of Asa was wholly true all his days. Because of his faithfulness God gave Judah rest more until the 36th year of his reign. So a real high spot going on in the life of Judah because of their faithfulness the center dependence on God. Then we come to his 36th year as king and Asa’s resolve to wholly lean on God was tested when Beshah, king of Israel, made war against Judah. So here come the ten tribes again. They just never learned their lesson. They’re coming after Judah again. Beshah, if you know his history, he was a usurper who had made himself keen by first murdering Jeroboam, Jeroboam’s son, Nadab. So he had Jeroboam, remember he was the foreman, he had been the king, people made him king, he had a son Nadab, and then here comes this guy Beshah and he takes out Nadab and he goes on

and he takes out all of Nadab’s and all of Jeroboam’s family which was actually fulfilling a prophecy that had been made against Cherubim during his reign for setting up those golden cabs. God had sent a prophet to say, because you did this great wickedness, I’m taking you and your entire family out. And so here’s God using Beishah, a usurper, to execute that prophecy. And so now all of a sudden we have Beishah, who’s the king, over the ten tribes, and he’s now taken out the legitimate line of kingship in Judah or in the ten tribes. So as Beshah went after Judah, he built a fortress in a location known as Rehma within the territory of Benjamin. It was situated about five miles north of Jerusalem and the whole purpose of the fortress was to try to prevent people from coming into two are leaving Judah, basically a siege was starting. But unlike the time Asa’s father Abidjah fought Jerub on superior army or the time Asa himself went against the Ethiopian army and relied solely on Gad, this time he turned not to

God, but to Ben Haddad, king of Syria, for help. Go figure. Beshah had made an alliance, Beshah again over the ten tribes, had made an alliance with Ben Haddad, which then gave Beshah the courage to say, oh I can go after Judah now. I got my rear flank protected. And so Esau, he turns to Ben Haddad from Syria, he says, hey, if I give you some silver and gold, which I’m taking out of the Lord’s Treasury, can I get you to back off and stop supporting the ten tribes? They’re giving me trouble. And so the, Ben Haddad agrees and he takes the money and then Ben Haddad starts sending raiding groups into the ten tribe territory and starts harassing them, which then forces Beshah to pull back from his attack on Judah and deal with problems back at home. But because Asa did not turn to the Lord in his situation, God sent the prophet Hanani to rebuke Asa with these words. Because you relied on the king of Syria and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you. Were

not the Ethiopians, which we just read about, and the Libyans, a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen, yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward you him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars. Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in stocks in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And Asa inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at at that same time. It’s surprising, given Asos’ history of seeking the Lord with a whole heart, that he would in these later years resort to human wisdom to deal with his problems.

It’s even more disconcerting that he would respond to God’s rebuke with anger towards the messenger and even punish the people. But this is how sin usually progresses. Once we are on the slippery slope of relying partially on God and partially on ourselves, all bets are off, and it does not end well. This example from the life of Asa is a classic example of what happens when a person’s heart is completely devoted to the Lord and when it is not. There are many examples in scripture where this is played out. Solomon’s own life is an example. In his early days when he first became king, he prayed to God, confessing that he was like a little child that he did not know how to go out or how to come in.

He’s saying, God, I need help. This humble, reliant posture before God caused God to bless him with wisdom and wealth unlike any ruler ever before or since. But sadly, in his later years, we read that he turned his heart away from God. First Kings 11, 1-8 records this demise. Starting in verse 9, we read God’s rebuke to Solomon. He says, And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the the God of Israel who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods but he did not keep what the Lord commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son.”

And that’s basically telling them about Jeroboam, what’s going to happen. But, I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of David, my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen. Sadly, it became a habit of Judah to turn to pagan nations for help. In his commentary on Isaiah, Matthew Henry observes how often Israel committed the same sin of calling to the neighboring nations for salvation rather than God. And try to follow this if you can, because it’s really kind of humorous who they keep turning to. The short version is we’re going to turn to Syria for help, later Syria becomes a problem, so we’re going to turn to the Assyrians for help, then the Assyrians become a problem, so we’re going to turn to Egypt for help.

And you’re going to see that develop here. So the people that are asking for help, they eventually say, oh, you’re the bad guy now. Go get somebody else and they don’t turn to the Lord. So we just saw in Chronicles how Asa depended on the Syrians for protection from Bayshah. Fast forward now, nine kings to Ahaz, king of Judah. During his reign, the Syrians who Asa had said, would you please help, joined up forces with the ten tribes of Israel and they came after Judah instead of turning to the Lord. Ahaz then hired Tiglath Piliser of Assyria and his army. And we read in the Second King 16, 7 through 8, so Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath Piliser, or the police, I’m not quite sure, the king of Assyria and saying, I am your servant and your son. I said, whoa, here he’s going to a pagan king. I am your servant and your son.

Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Assyria and from the hand of the king of Israel who are attacking me. And Ahaz took silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasure of the king’s house and sent a present to the king of Assyria. Does that sound familiar? The Assyrians take the money, they attack the Syrians and knock them out of the equation. Imagine the jealousy that Ahaz provoked in God when he told Tiglath Piliser that he was his servant and son. It was bad enough that Ahaz turned to the Assyrians for help and not the Lord, but he doubled down on his sin by ordering Uriah the priest to go over to the Assyrians and say, hey while I was visiting the king, begging him, I saw an awesome altar. Go make a copy of that altar and come on back here to Jerusalem and would you take the old dirty altar we have and would you replace it and build one just like Tiglath Piliser has?

And in matter of fact, when you’re done with that, would you start performing the sacrifices on this altar modeled after a pagan altar? Do you think God was a little annoyed? If you’re keeping score, we have Asa asking the Syrians for help against Israel. Later, we have Ahaz asking the Assyrians for help against the Syrians who are teaming up with Israel. And then skip ahead just one king to Hezekiah. And this time we have Judah and Israel appealing to Egypt for help against the Assyrians. The Assyrians conquer the city of Samaria and they end up taking away the Israelites into exile. That’s the big event in history where then the ten tribes go poof and off into exile.

After warning from Isaiah not to rely on the Egyptians, Hezekiah thankfully turns back to the Lord and then we read in that account, I won’t go through it, how God then supernaturally conquered the Assyrian army. All the people had to do was just go out and start picking up all the spoil. Throughout the build up to the Assyrian siege, Isaiah is prophesying and warning the people to repent of their sins and trust in God. He repeatedly calls them to dependents in God who will deliver them.

In Isaiah 30 15 he says, for thus said the Lord God the Holy One of Israel, in returning and in returning and rest you shall be saved in quietness and in trust shall be your strength and in Isaiah 30 18 a few verses later therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you for the Lord is a God of justice blessed are all those who wait for him he shares with the people a vision of what God intends for them in Isaiah 30 19 through 26 he’s trying to describe do what I’m saying this is what God has in store for a people shall dwell in Zion in Jerusalem you shall weep no more he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry as soon as he hears it he answers you and though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction yet your teacher will not hide himself self anymore, but your eyes shall see your teacher and your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it, when you turn to the right or when you turn to

the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, be gone, and he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground and bread the produce of the ground and he will be rich and plenteous. In that day your life-struck will graze in your large pastures and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder which has been winnowed with shovel and fork and on every lofty mountain every high hill there will be brooks running with water in the day of the great slaughter when the tower falls.

Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun will be sevenfold as the light of seven days in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow. So whatever your eschatology is, whenever you think that’s going to happen, has very earthy terms and it certainly communicates a heart of God who is wanting to bless his people. These words of Isaiah show us how greatly God lawns to be the one to whom Judah relies on. Reading these accounts is like watching a movie and yelling at the person on the screen who’s about to make a bad move. Don’t do it. You ever find yourself doing that and screaming at the TV?

Idiot? Don’t open that door. You know, we know it’s there. There is a discernible pattern we see repeated in the life of Israel. It starts with a gradual disregard for God’s love and law, followed by decreasing dependence on him, which is often marked then by increasing sin. Next comes discipline from the Lord, which if met with repentance restores rightful dependence, and if not brings destruction. The whole cycle could be avoided if they would just begin and end with dependence on God. It’s easy to shake our heads in disbelief at Israel’s folly, but are we much better? We who have the fullness of the gospel, we have far more reason to trust the Father since we no longer live only with shadows and types. In some ways it is more grievous when we pursue independence because of the advantage that we have over Israel. Sadly the fall has left its indelible mark on all of us. Human pride insists on exalting itself. When we fail, our angry or irritated response shows that our confidence is in ourselves and not Christ. The same is

true when we boast in our successes. Our anxious thoughts belie our claim that our help is in the name of the Lord. Our slowness to do what he has called us to do shows that our flesh is yet to be mortified. We say we are nothing apart from Christ, but raise are hackles in defense when our sin is found out. In these and marries of other ways, we show that dependence on God alone has yet to be achieved. In the preamble section of the United States Declaration of Independence, the Founders wrote, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, in the pursuit of happiness.

These rights were asserted while claiming independence from a tyrannical king. Now, whether or not they actually are rights, they are some of the blessings that God wants ultimately for his people. Unfortunately, many today skip over that part instead it says that they’re endowed by our creator and then claim them while also seeking independence from the creator. All of human history, including Israel’s, teaches us what happens when men try to live independently. Do we want more of God’s blessing? Do we believe he has more to offer and wants to bestow it? Then we should heed the words from a sermon Jonathan Edwards gave, titled, God Glorified in Man’s Dependence.

In there, he said these words, let us endeavor to obtain and increase a sensibleness of our great dependence on God, to have our eye to Him alone, to mortify a self-dependent and self-righteous disposition. Man is naturally exceedingly prone to exalt himself and depend upon his own power or goodness, as though from Him he must expect happiness.” End of quote. Let’s pray. Well, Father, we should walk away from a message like this, bit-chass ties, because all of us can admit that there are times far too often where we really do not walk in full dependence on you. So much of our life repeats day after day, same old, same.

We become confident. We just believe tomorrow’s going to be the same as it was today. And then when the crisis hits, we’re often initially flustered and irritated. Father, we do ask you to really work on our hearts that we would become a people that really does truly, wholly lean upon you. We want your eyes, when they’re scanning over the earth, to stop on us and say, ah, there’s somebody whose hearts completely stayed up on me. And so make us those kind of people, Father, so that we might receive from your goodness your bounty, all that you have for us. We don’t ask Father just to be greedy or to be selfish, but we know that in receiving, you are receiving glory.

You find pleasure in giving gifts to your people. And so may we have the capacity to receive them, but that has to begin with us being broken and dependent on you. And so I just pray, Father, that you’d work that out in all of us in this combined body together. Let’s pray that in your son, Jesus’ name, amen. Growing up in a Catholic home, I was taught the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is a 50-cent word, just to say that the bread and the wine become the literal body and blood of Christ. When you eat the bread and the wine, you are literally eating Christ’s flesh and blood.

I remember in third grade being prepared by the nuns for my first Holy Communion, hey, when the priest puts that host on your tongue, you put it in and you swallow it. You don’t play with it. You don’t chew on it. You don’t mess around with it. You swallow it. That’s the body of Jesus. Later, when I was an altar boy and during the Communion service, if a host should fall on the ground, you know, it got dropped by a clumsy priest or something, then the priest would pull out a special little holy hanky and lay it right over that host on the ground and people walk around it because that was Jesus underneath that hanky. And then after the church service we would all come out, the altar boys and the priests, and we’d have about a 10 minute ceremony sprinkling it with holy water and saying some prayers over it. So that was my experience growing up. Catholic theologians point to scriptures like John 6 where Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in me.

They point to the many disciples who parted ways when Jesus said those things. And they said, see, even they knew that Jesus was saying something outrageous. So they use that as one of their proof texts. One of the many theological problems with transubstantiation is that it requires Jesus’ body to be unnatural or non-human. The only way a Roman Catholic communion can be practiced worldwide is if Jesus’ physical body is omnipresent and can never be fully consumed. But these qualities are not true of a human body.

If Jesus is not completely human like us except without sin, then that means his death on the cross was not suitable, was not a suitable atonement for our sins because he’s not fully man in addition to being fully God. Later when I came to a full faith in Christ I was taught the communion was simply a time of remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross, but the more I consider the Lord’s Supper that understanding seems to come up short as well. At the moment I lean towards the camp of those who say the Lord’s Supper contains a mystery we don’t fully understand. How’s that for clarity? John Calvin argued that there is a very real spiritual feeding taking place. He believed that our souls are nourished by Christ’s flesh and blood in a spiritual transaction carried out by the Holy Spirit while the bread and the wine remain just bread and wine, but they serve as a symbol of a spiritual reality.

It’s beyond our ability to understand this fully. But Calvin would suggest that skipping the Lord’s supper is to our soul what skipping eating physical food is to our body. And again, the elders haven’t all sat down and had our own communion wars. That was the number one point of war throughout church history.

We haven’t had our own wars yet, but I think we all would say there’s something more going on than just remembrance and it’s certainly not transubstantiation. What exactly it is we can’t put our finger on. And talking about this in these terms actually makes a lot of people nervous because it sounds like some kind of mystical nature and and there certainly are ditches that we want to avoid as we wrestle with a proper understanding of communion. But if Calvin is right his understanding of the Lord’s Supper only serves to strengthen the bond of dependency that we have on the Lord. So you’re invited to go ahead and stand at this time. If and however the Lord’s Supper feeds our souls, what remains certain is that the communion table demonstrates our dependence on Christ. He is the head, we’re the body. Jesus told us disciples in John 15 15, you can do nothing apart from me. In addition to dependent on him, there is a mutual dependence on each other as members of the body. If you haven’t noticed the theme today is dependence, have you picked

up on that theme yet? Ephesians 4, 15 through 16 says, speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. As you come to the table this morning, be thankful that you are joined to Christ’s body, the Church, in the bond of love. The benediction this morning comes from Romans 15, 5-7. In it, Paul prays for God to grant us harmony. definition of harmony calls it a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts. If we add in the Ephesians 4.16 that I read earlier, the fuller definition becomes harmony is a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped. For harmony to exist, independent parts must come together in in an orderly, dependent way.

In so doing, we find greater strength and encouragement, and God is the most glorified. And so for our blessing today, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with the Christ Jesus that together you may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.