Sermons 2024

Video

Text: Isaiah 40:21-31
Theme: God cares for you!

Outline:
1.    Seems as though no one cares about you
2.    God cares for the stars, former generations, cares for you as well. How? JC! Daily Life!

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Old Testament lesson of Isaiah chapter forty, verses twenty-one through thirty-one.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are dong well today. Have you ever felt like no one loves you? Like everything that can go wrong does go wrong? We have all had moments, days, or years like that. Times when we do not feel the love people have for you. You know that your moms and dads, grandparents, and many more love you but sometimes our feelings lie to us. That is how the people of Israel felt. They felt like they were not loved by God. That He no longer cared about them. What does God tell them? How does God care for us today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
 

1.    Seems as though no one cares about you

Have you ever felt like no one cared about you? You could die tomorrow and no one would mourn? No one would bat an eye in sorrow. Many times, our sinful nature and Satan tempt us to feel that God is so far distant from us that He cannot care about us. We feel as though we are nothing but grasshoppers and ants, too small for Him to care about. If He is far away from us, then we need to make a god in our own image. One that is closer to us, thus we fall into idolatry.

The human mind has been so darkened by sin that it cannot imagine God as he is. Isaiah pictures God as the Creator and Ruler of the world. God sits high above the created world. He stretched out the heavens as easily as one would pitch a tent. God is not created but uncreated and eternal, without beginning and without end. He is separate and different from the world he created. He is holy, infinite, perfect, and changeless. Humans are like so many grasshoppers. Because of sin, they are nothing like God. They are finite, temporal, imperfect, subject to changes of all kinds, and mortal. What arrogance for finite creatures to fashion God! If we want to know about God, we must humbly listen to what he tells us.  

2.    God cares for the stars, former generations, cares for you as well. How? JC! Daily Life!

What does God tell you? God tells you that He created all the host of heaven. Just look up at the night time sky sometime and you will see His wonderous work in creating the sun, moon, stars, and other planets. A work that humbles us and reminds us how small we truly are. God created all the stars, put them in their places. He knows each of them by name. God controls the motion of the stars of heaven. Astronomy studies the movements of the stars in the vast expanse of the universe, but God determines the movement. We talk of galaxies and planets; God controls them all. He controls the movement of the stars as a general would control his army. But God does not control them with impersonal detachment. He knows each heavenly body by name. What a contrast to those who think that the stars control their destinies and who consult their horoscopes to discover what life will bring them. God controls the stars and us; the orbits of the planets and stars do not control us.  

IF God’s wondrous care of creation is not enough, just look at everything God has done in your life. All we need to prove that God cares for us is to look at what He has done in the past. He shows His great love for you in daily providing for you everything you need in this body and life. As we confess in the first article of the Creed, He gives us all good things purely out of Fatherly divine goodness and mercy. He gives us daily life. Every breath that we take is a gift given to us by Him. He gave you daily life yesterday, this morning, last week, otherwise you would not be here. Our loving God is not an aloof and distant God. Rather, He care for you as an individual by providing for your earthly life.

He also provides everything you need for the life to come. Look at what He has done for you in Jesus Christ! In love for you, the Father sends the Son for your salvation. He does what you could never do. Jesus bears the punishment of every single one of your sins. By dying and rising again from the dead, Jesus destroys death, crucifies your sinful self with Himself, and gives you newness of life. This great love He shows you in, and through, His Son. He has ultimate authority and deigns to use it to love and care for you.

No matter what happens in your life, God is in control and loves you. We are God’s people by faith in Jesus Christ, but we are no less prone to complain when things go badly. God loves us not just when all goes well, but also when everything is going wrong. He loves us always. He has his own reason for allowing trouble, pain, and tears into our lives. Remember that he is almighty and all knowing. We are not. We can trust him to do the best for us. He loves us too much to do anything less.  When your feelings betray you, when Satan tempts you that God is too far off. When your sinful flesh says that God cannot have created everything.  God says, “My Child, look up. See the stars, I place them. I order them. I am here for you, see my great love for you in My Son.”  

Depending upon His strength, we not only are strengthened but we are renewed in our strength. We are compared to eagles soaring in the sky. God promises to be our strength, to be the wind beneath our wings. Continue, beloved in the Lord, to depend upon the Lord and His great love for you shown in Jesus Christ and His wonderous care for you.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.