In a Day of Salvation

A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 49:8-13, Matthew 6:31-34

February 27, 2011

Rev. Stephen A. Herring

So, how many of us have had a terrible, no good, totally rotten day recently? 

The problem with having a really bad day is that nothing happens the way we hoped and planned that it would.  We wake up in the morning with a pretty good idea of how we will spend the day and what we will be doing.  Unfortunately, God sometimes has other plans for us.  Something goes wrong.  Something happens.  Then, that little crisis somehow causes a chain reaction of problems to pile up on one another in such a way that the day we thought would be OK has turned into a total, complete catastrophe.  The plans we had made are not the reality we are living out. 

Most of us hold a lot of expectations.  We look forward to getting certain tasks accomplished.  We plan on solving certain problems and on making things a certain way so that the conditions of our lives will be improved.  Most of us work hard to make things better each day.  This future orientation is a good thing because it motivates us to clean things up and to keep things moving smoothly.  It can be a bad thing though because it causes us to worry and to be anxious about the future.  We set goals and objectives so we can improve, but we worry that we might not be successful.  We plan to do well, but we worry that we might not do so well.  We plan for our day to go a certain way, but we are terrified that we might have another one of those total disaster days. 

We all know that life flows and history also flows through highs and through lows.  Life consists of good days and bad days.  Sometimes things go pretty well and we are doing OK.  Other times things do not go so well for us and we are in a long dark valley of hardship.  When we are in a hard time we look forward to things getting better and we plan for a better time.  If that better time does not arrive when we think it should, we feel disappointed.  We wonder when things will improve, or if things will ever improve. 

This is where Isaiah comes from when he says that God listens to us in a time of favor and helps us in a day of salvation.  (Isaiah 49:8)  Remember that Isaiah is speaking to the Hebrews during a terrible time after Jerusalem has fallen to the Babylonians.  He is speaking to them in a time of utter and absolute despair. 

Now those words really stood out to me.  “I have helped you in a day of salvation.”  In Hebrew it says; “B’ Yom Yeshuah Azaretikah” 

B’ Yom = In the Day

Yeshuah = Salvation = JESUS

Azaretikah = simple past tense, “I have helped you.” 

It is interesting to me that we look at hardship and trouble from a future perspective.  Our perspective is “How will I fix this?”  “How will this ever work out?”  “When will this mess get better?”  We strive for the future and so we see salvation as a future event.  In this text though, the verb is in the past tense.  “I have helped you.”  We may be in trouble but God has already helped us.  We may look for deliverance tomorrow, but God has already helped us. 

God has helped us “in a day of salvation.”  What is a day of salvation? 

Salvation happens in the moment we realize that we are not lost.  Salvation happens when we understand that our fears and worries, our hopelessness, our anger, frustration, or despair no longer have any power over our lives.  We are saved when we know that there is nothing to be afraid of anymore.  We are saved when we know that there is ultimately nothing we need to worry about.  We have hope.  We are saved when anger no longer has any power over us.  We do not need to be angry because full justice will prevail in the end.  We do not need to be frustrated because the Lord’s will is being done, and our own will simply does not matter in comparison to God’s will.  We have power over any force that could hurt or divide us.  All these feelings describe what happens when we are saved. 

Accepting salvation requires us to make a decision to personalize all this abstract reassurance.  Personalizing it means we accept the possibility that God loves us so much that God sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  This means Jesus IS Salvation.  He embodies the whole Hebrew concept of Yeshuah.  He IS the assurance, the hope, the faith, the forgiveness, the letting go, and the total submission to God’s will.  He IS eternal life.  He IS the light of life.  He IS the kingdom and the righteousness we strive for.  He IS the LOGOS, the Word, the deeper meaning our lives require.  He is the sum, source, and substance of our eternal future.  In his person all these things find their reality.  These concepts become real when he becomes real.  This is why we say so much about accepting salvation by accepting the ultimate reality of the identity of Jesus.  This is why we speak of needing a personal relationship with Jesus. 

The point of this scripture is found in II Corinthians 6:2 where Paul quotes Isaiah 49:8 and then says; “Behold, Now is the acceptable time.  Now is the day of salvation.”  We do not need to wait for anything else to be done because Jesus has already done it all by his death on the cross.  He has done it all by his resurrection to eternal life.  All we need to do is to accept the gift of salvation by grace through faith. 

This attitude brings us a fantastic blessing because we no longer need to struggle for the right balance of things in our lives.  We no longer need to be worried or afraid that this or that detail will not pan out for us.  We can face the present and deal with it because we do not need to worry about the future.  We do not need to worry about what will happen next.  We do not need to worry about what we will eat or what we will drink or what we will wear.  We do not need to be anxious.  All we need to do is to seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.  (see Matthew 6:33)

The Kingdom of God is that state of affairs where the will of God is being done on earth as it is in heaven.  The kingdom of God is the reign of perfect justice, peace, and harmony upon the earth.  The righteousness of God is the condition of being in a proper relationship with God.  God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness come to fulfillment when we see ourselves as living in sync, in harmony, in connection, in relationship with God’s activity on earth. 

In order to find these things we need to submit ourselves totally to God’s will.  Not our will, but God’s will must be done.  We need to lay aside all our demands and expectations and conditions, and simply humble ourselves before the amazing will of God.  Then and only then will we receive the amazing blessing of seeing everything else fall into place. 

So Paul tells us that this is the day of salvation.  This means Jesus Christ has already won the battle of deliverance for us.  If our first priority is to seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, everything else will be provided to us.  Bad days may yet come, but we can be at peace and we can face the hardship because our salvation is assured.  Amen.