We are acknowledging that when we lose the things we have depended on and which have acted as props under our feet, we then truly discover that God alone is our true and only security –one that is sure and certain; this is why we trust in Him. Apart from Him all other securities have upon them the stamp of failure, death and decay. If we do not learn this all important lesson, and learn it soon with all the dependence and trust that it requires, then life will be filled with many dampening disappointments and discouragements, making it seem as if life is not worth living whereas life is one of the greatest gift God Almighty has given to man. Some time ago when the world’s news headline carried reports of an oil crisis. I turned to my Bible to see what God had to say to me. I came across some words that have become exceedingly precious to me over the past few years. Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful … “28 Let us therefore, receiving a kingdom that is firm and stable and cannot be shaken, offer to God pleasing service and acceptable worship, with modesty and pious care and godly fear and awe;” (Heb. 12:28). The message seemed so personal, so appropriate and so to the point, giving us the great hope and divine expectation. All around us at the moment in this current universe there is a great shaking of earthly values and earthly kingdoms and when you imagine the degree of the current earth’s shakable nature, one wonders if the earth is really worth living in, but thanks to our Lord God Almighty Who gave us a firm promise of hope for a New Earth. This is the time, I believe, that God wants us the true Christians to look up and see that He is still Adonai –the Lord of the universe and Master of every situation and the Great changer of things. He is allowing kingdoms to be shaken so that men and women might discover the one Kingdom that is unshakable –the kingdom of God and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The kingdom of materialism is shakable. To survive it has to be held together by force. Relax the force and, as we have seen, it goes to pieces. The kingdom of finances is shakable. The kingdom of health is shakable. The doctor announces, ‘You’ve got an incurable illness.’ Shakable! Extremely shakable. But in a world of flux and change, be assured of this; God is an unchanging Person and dwells in an unshakable kingdom, this is why He gave us a modality in Christ on how to live our life in this shakable earth so as to be qualified to live or dwell with Him in His unshakable kingdom.

Now let us read Isaiah 12:1-6; And in that day you will say, I will give thanks to You, O Lord; for though You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You comfort me. 2 Behold, God, my salvation! I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and song; yes, He has become my salvation. 3 Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation. 4 And in that day you will say, Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name and by means of His name [in solemn entreaty]; declare and make known His deeds among the peoples of the earth, proclaim that His name is exalted! 5 Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done excellent things [gloriously]; let this be made known to all the earth. 6 Cry aloud and shout joyfully, you women and inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

A sermon based on Isaiah 12:1-6 would focus on the theme of exuberant praise and thanksgiving to God for His deliverance and salvation, emphasizing the joy of trusting in God as our strength and song, and the call to openly proclaim His glory to the world, drawing imagery from the "wells of salvation" as a source of unending joy and renewal. The last few weeks I’ve been playing a new video game called Elden Ring. It’s a big world with a lot of bizarre things in it. And it’s very, very difficult. I’m also very bad at it, but that’s beside the point. When an enemy creature starts hunting you in the game it’s tense, especially if the enemy is much more powerful than you are. Often times, the best thing to do is just run. And for as realistic of a game as it may feel in places, it is still a video game, which means it still has some programming logic that doesn’t mesh with real-world logic. For instance if an enemy is chasing you, and you get outside whatever zone the game makers put them in, the enemy will just turn around and go back to where they started, even if you’re technically still visible to them. This is not realistic in real life, because in real life, so long as you are still visible to the enemy, he keeps coming for you! It often doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t tell you how relieving it is to have this big, powerful enemy chasing after you and then suddenly turn around and leave you alone. The danger is gone and past. You can breathe for a moment and regroup. In our Reading this day from Isaiah, we have the entirety of chapter 12 before us. A short, but very famous chapter in the book of Isaiah’s prophecy. Those of you who have been working through the early part of Isaiah in Bible Class know that his book doesn’t always have the happiest tone. Isaiah is constantly addressing unfaithfulness and idolatry in the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah; which is currently the disease infesting people on earth. There’s talk of chastisement for the people’s unfaithfulness, up to and including the arrival of Assyria to take the Northern Kingdom into captivity and to cause a long list of problems for the Southern Kingdom just as people today are being constantly warned of the impending judgment but nobody seem to care! God is truly serious about sin. He doesn’t just laugh any committed sin off as if we are silly children who don’t know any better, No! As far as sin is concern God treats us on the basis of ‘ignorance is no excuse’ because for countless times, God sent guidance and chastisement to man through His prophets and He eventually came Himself in the Person of our Lord to teach man how to live a sinless life, so man has no excuse! God demands perfection and He sticks to that since He has given numerous teachings to man on the issue of Sin. And for those who haven’t been perfect, which would be you, me, and everyone else, that means that God’s anger burns against us; how about that! God punishes sin not with temporary, earthly trials but with eternal death in hell, which is more or less permanent. That’s where God’s burning anger for sin leads; that’s the end of the story for sinners like us. This is why the Word of God as compiled in the Bible is given to man for chastisement and ultimate guidance so that God’s anger will be turned away from us as sinners when we repent and turn from our ungodly ways of life. And as we listen to Isaiah’s poetic words: In that day you will say: I will give thanks to You, O Lord; for though You were angry with me, Your anger has turned away, and You comfort me. God’s justified anger that burned against sin and thus against us was very real, but now it has turned away through mercy and grace. In a way that makes even less sense than an enemy just stopping the pursuit of a player in a video game, that anger no longer is coming towards us. What happened? In trying to know what happened, first of all… Let’s establish what didn’t happen. God didn’t change His mind about sin; this about-face is not God saying that sin doesn’t matter, No! We didn’t suddenly become free from sin. We’ve been sinning since conception and that has not stopped. So God didn’t change and we didn’t change, but something obviously happened. And that great thing that happened is God Sacrificing Himself in other to impute it for man’s righteousness, is exactly what turned God’s anger away! Do you now understand why we should say: Surely God is my salvation. I will trust Him and will not be afraid, because Yah, the Lord, is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation. God is not only the source of righteous, justified anger over sin, but Isaiah said he has also become our salvation. And Isaiah uses the personal names for the true God, Yah and the Lord, or Yah and Yahweh, to point to that. That personal name for God is derived from the name we heard God give to Moses in one of our Reading from Exodus 3, “I am who I am.” This is God’s name by which He wants to be known. And Yah, or Yahweh, or the all-capital-letters-Lord all communicate the same thing. This is the God who always has been, always is, and always will be. He is eternal and unchangeable. This means that God did not change from the loving God who created us into the vengeful God who punishes us. No, God has always been who He is. He’s always been perfectly consistent. He’s always been the loving God who wants what’s best for us. He’s never wanted to punish people for sin, but sin and His justice made that unavoidable. Do you understand! But God’s love doesn’t sit idly by while we burn in our sin. No, God the Punisher is at one-in-the-same-time God the Savior. And so God makes clear His anger over sin and His love for us in the body of His Son, Lord Jesus Christ. He’s serious about sin, that it must be eternally punished, because sin is punished with hell; He’s serious about His love for us because Lord Jesus endures hell in our place, so that you and I will never see it or experience it, despite deserving it for our sins against God. Is it any wonder then that Isaiah says that he will trust in God and not be afraid? Is it any wonder that he says that he will direct his fellow Israelites to rejoice in what God has done for them eternally? Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name and by means of His name [in solemn entreaty]; declare and make known His deeds among the peoples of the earth, proclaim that His name is exalted! 5 Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done excellent things [gloriously]; let this be made known to all the earth. 6 Cry aloud and shout joyfully, you women and inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. This should be our response as well. Now, it’s probably good for us to take a step back and see what Isaiah isn’t saying. He’s not saying that we should always feel great, always be doing backflips because God loves us and saves us eternally. The reality is, for a variety of reasons, we will not always feel upbeat and jazzy. Feeling downcast or sullen is not sin, especially when difficulties in this life feel like a vice around you. But what Isaiah is directing us towards is always valuing and prioritizing God’s forgiveness. Our joy in God may, at times, be a somber joy. When we lose a loved one in Christ, through tears we cling to Christ’s promise of forgiveness and resurrection reunions. In family difficulties, we do our best to attend to our God-given responsibilities and work to improve the problems while at the same time trusting God’s promises to work all things out for our eternal good. When nothing is going right and we grieve the decisions we’ve made or the actions we have taken, or the words we’ve spoken, we hold God’s forgiveness fast to our heart and His assurance that He will turn our weeping into rejoicing, and that the present troubles we endure have no comparison to the glory that will be given to us in eternal life. In all of those cases, the people involved don’t lose track of the big picture. God’s anger has turned away; God is our salvation. May God prevent us from ever taking that for granted or not valuing what He has done for us. May God enable us to share that truth with others, to encourage them in times of guilt and despair, sorrow and grief. If we revisit Lord Jesus’ parable from the Gospel for just a moment, we see two sons who did what was wrong. One son left and wasted his wealth on sinful living; the other burned with self-righteousness and resentment. Both sons can describe us at various times and in various ways. Sometimes we are doing things to bring God’s anger on us, other times we are taking God’s salvation for granted, not valuing the reality of His mercy, or not seeing our need for it. But the constant in Lord Jesus’ parable is the Father: always patient, always loving, always forgiving. That is our God, and all that we need depends on Him, not on you and not on me. God turned His anger away so you will not be punished for your sin. God is your salvation so you will live with Him forever. Whether you’ve spent a great deal of time away abusing His goodness or have let apathy set in, or anything else in between, God continues to be there, ready to embrace, ready to forgive, because that’s what Lord Jesus gained and has given to us. We are forgiven. We are in our heavenly Father’s arms now will be forever in heaven. Amen.