Remember the Main Thing

I. … Because We’re in Deep

II. … So You Can Tell

III. … So He Can Lift You Up and Carry You

IV. It’s How We Begin

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Word of God for our consideration this Sunday is found in Isaiah 63:7-9:

I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD,

the deeds for which he is to be praised,

according to all the LORD has done for us —

yes, the many good things he has done for the house of Israel,

according to his compassion and many kindnesses.

He said, “Surely they are my people, sons who will not be false to me”;

and so he became their Savior.

In all their distress he too was distressed,

and the angel of his presence saved them.

In his love and mercy he redeemed them;

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (NIV)

This is the Word of our Lord.

Dear Sons and Daughters of God:

Just about 110 years ago, in 1898, the explosion and sinking of the USS Maine, a US battleship in Havana’s harbor, led the patron of a New York City bar to raise his glass and say, “Gentlemen, remember the Maine”. A reporter was there to hear the line and picked it up, it was printed in papers all over, and “Remember the Maine” became a rallying cry for the nation in the build-up to, and then during, the Spanish-American War.

Is there any wartime rallying cry like “Remember the Maine” for the conflict in Iraq? For any of America’s wars and armed engagements of the last 50 years or so? I can’t think of any — at least nothing with quite the power or simplicity of that slogan, or of those from our earlier history, like “No Taxation without Representation”. Who knows? Maybe there’d be less disagreement about what’s been called the “War on Terror” if we had some good slogans — memorable phrases that could serve as both justifications for what we’re doing and rallying cries for the public. Perhaps even the Vietnam War would have had more support if it had had some phrase or motto, like “Make the World Safe for Democracy” or “Live Free or Die”, that would have resonated with the public and communicated important reasons for being there.

It is often said — and rightly so — that Christians are at war. Not in any physical or temporal sense, of course, but that doesn’t make our spiritual conflict any less real or less deadly. Satan and all his forces are arrayed against the people and kingdom of God and are always looking for new ways and places to bring the battle to us. Every believer ends up a Christian soldier on the front lines at times, and those who aren’t fighting the big battles want to give their support and encouragement to those who are. So what’s our rallying cry? What slogan can we use that both inspires those who are in the fight and communicates the reason for what we’re doing?

How about, “Remember the Main Thing”? It’s brief enough to fit on a bumper sticker, simple enough for an email signature line, and specific enough keep a believer focused — even in the face of the material and cultural distractions of an American Christmas. Remember the main thing.

Why? Because we’re in deep.

Deep trouble. Deep despair. Deep darkness. As low as you can go. At least, that’s where we start out. We begin our lives conceived of sinful men, born of sinful women, born under God’s law — and totally at odds with his will and hostile to our Lord and Creator. We follow the inclinations of impure hearts which can lead only to self-centered sin, never to God-pleasing righteousness. That’s what we are by nature.

Just look at the news this last week — Christmas week! — and you’ll see no end of evidence of our deep and unyielding problem of sin. We might not be too surprised by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and killing of scores of innocent people in a non-Christian nation like Pakistan, but then we read about Joseph McEnroe and Michele Anderson, back home in the US, in Washington state, who shot and killed three generations of her family on Christmas Eve — apparently she was “tired of everybody stepping on her.”

But it’s not just the grisly and horrific that shows our sin and selfishness: there was also the story out of Texas of a six-year-old girl who won a contest for four highly-sought-after tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with a heart-tugging essay that began, “My daddy died this year in Iraq”. Her mother told the sponsoring company that the girl’s father died April 17 in a roadside bombing. Only one problem: her gripping story wasn’t true. In any way. Not only had her father not been killed in Iraq — her father had never even been in Iraq. Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW, “We did the essay and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win.”

That’s a pretty good description of what sin leads us to do — whatever we can to win, to get what we want, regardless of — and often to spite — what God wants. But sin leads to death. That’s what God makes clear over and over in the pages of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation — “the soul who sins will die”. And after death, not heaven, but hell, because the Lord’s entry requirements demand perfection. The righteous will live forever; those who don’t measure up are damned to hell. And that described everybody. We’re in deep.

Except for One. Except for the Son God sent to be born of a woman like us and born under law like us so that he could redeem people like us. The baby born in Bethlehem that we celebrate this Christmas season is God’s glorious and gracious exception, and his perfection and innocence were given to make us righteous, and his life was given on the cross to take away our guilt. We were in bondage to sin, slaves to sin, held captive by sin, and in deep debt to God for all our disobediences. But he bought us back with his blood. He became our Savior; he redeemed us, he set us free.

Why would he do that? Because we were in deep. Deep in God’s heart. He loved us. Actually, if we want to get the full flavor of the Hebrew word for “compassion” in these verses from Isaiah, we could say that we were “deep in God’s gut”, because the seat of the emotions in Hebrew is not in the heart but lower. If you have ever fallen in love, or been deeply moved by someone’s misery, or even been disgusted by some injustice, you have an idea what that’s like — you feel it deeply, from the very center of your being.

And that’s where God’s kindness and mercy come from — the very center of his being. And that’s where you are for him — deep within. He loves you. He loved you and me and the whole world so much he sent a Savior — not just anyone, but his very own Son.

Isaiah talks all about this love in these verses but only uses the word once. Instead he talks about how it manifested itself to and for God’s people, Israel — the Lord’s “kindnesses”, the “deeds for which he is to be praised”, the “many good things” he has done for them; the way he called them his people and his sons, and called them to be faithful; and the promise he made to save and redeem them. And it all flowed from his love and mercy. It was never about God’s people deserving or earning his favor — the history of Israel’s regular rebellions against him makes that pretty obvious — it was all, always, his grace.

In the same way we, as God’s New Testament people, have no end of kindnesses to praise God for. And we can especially thank him for, and cling for comfort to, the way in which “in all our distress he too was distressed.” Since we bear Christ’s name and he is always with us, whatever we feel and go through, he feels and goes through with us — we are never alone. But even more than that, we remember how Jesus suffered our trials and our pain and our punishment as our Substitute on the cross — there is no greater example of God’s compassion and kindness than that great once-for-all act of redemption.

And there can be no greater reason than that to tell of those kindnesses, just as Isaiah does here in our text. An interesting thing about the Hebrew word translated “tell” here is that its root is the word “remember” — another way then of expressing this first phrase could be, “I will cause the kindnesses of the Lord to be remembered”.

That idea is helpful in expressing what Isaiah’s doing, and how we follow his example. We don’t just speak — we don’t just talk about it: in telling about God’s grace — remembering the main thing — we remind ourselves what’s most important. We focus our lives and our selves on Jesus instead of our jobs or our entertainments or our problems. We fix the eyes of our faith, at Christmas and all year long, on Christ and his cross instead of on our own works or supposed sincerity.

But our telling also means drawing forth memories in other people, or communicating for the first time, to be learned and embraced and remembered, the wonderful good news of God’s grace in Christ. Remember the main thing and you can witness to an unbelieving friend or relative — or perfect stranger — you can tell him what you know about sin and grace and tell her how God gave Jesus to be her Savior and Redeemer. Remember the main thing and you can instruct and encourage and help grow your brothers and sisters in faith, just as they do the same for you, as we study the Bible together, as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs together, as we join together, work together, and love together.

And all who remember and rely on God’s grace he will treat as he treated his faithful people “all the days of old”: he will lift them up and carry them.

In our pride we often don’t want to be carried — we want to prove to ourselves and to others we can manage just fine on our own. But if we humble ourselves, as we must in God’s presence and as we delight to do in appreciation for his kindness, we find that he will lift us up higher than we could ever imagine and carry us farther than we could ever dream of. His loving arms are a place of peace and blessing — though we may struggle like a tired toddler picked up by his parent, eventually we relax and find there is no place we would rather be than safe in his embrace and at the center of his will. The lift our Savior gives us takes us out of depression and disappointment and despair and out of the reach of both trouble and temptation. Look back on your life — like in that “Footprints” poem — and you will see the evidence. And if you don’t — ask around. There is no greater, better, more compassionate, more powerful, or more comforting love than God’s.

The rallying cry of the Spanish-American War, “Remember the Maine”, is sometimes seen as being instrumental in starting it — public opinion in the country was eventually so opposed to Spain that those who argued against going to war had a hard time being heard.

“Remember the Main Thing” is also how we begin. But it’s not just how we prepare for and start our spiritual battles — it’s how we begin everything.

Although the first verse of our text is in the middle of Isaiah 63, it begins a new section of the book. It’s the opening of a long prayer to the Lord — one that takes up the rest of chapter 63 and all of chapter 64. But you may notice how there’s nothing in these three verses that actually asks God for anything — it’s all praise and promises — the recounting of God’s many kindnesses and good things, the remembering of the main thing of God’s grace for sinful people.

That kind of beginning is a good example for us — and a reminder of how we, as believers, pray. We start with God’s grace and mercy — we remember the main thing — because that is not only something to thank and praise the Lord for, it is also the basis and foundation for our prayers. I mean, if God were not full of grace and compassion for us, what reason would he have to listen to, let alone answer, our prayers? But he invites us to come to him as his dear children and pray “Our Father in heaven”, and Jesus promises us that whatever we ask for in his name — meaning that we ask it trusting in the grace given us in the saving work of Christ — we will receive. Far too often our prayers — I know it’s true of mine — are just a litany of complaints masquerading as requests or a list of things we want God’s help with. That changes — and we actually end up putting more of our hearts into our praying — when we begin by remembering the main thing.

And it’s not just our prayers — that’s also how we begin our worship. Look at the liturgy and see where the focus of each service is. You’ll notice how it always starts with praise to God for Who he is and what he has done and still does and will do for his people. Even if we don’t include an opening hymn of praise and ust start with confession and absolution as we sometimes do that’s still beginning with the main thing, because it anchors everything that follows in the ultimate act of God’s grace and compassion: the forgiveness of our sins that Jesus won for us with his sacrifice on the cross.

And since we are encouraged, as Christians, to offer ourselves — to live our entire lives — as a spiritual act of worship, it follows that this is a good way to begin your day, everyday, too: Remember the main thing. At the start of every day, Martin Luther made the sign of the cross and said “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” to remind him of his baptism — to remind him of the grace and kindness of the Lord that washed him clean of his sins and sealed him as God’s own child. Not a bad idea — but you’re free, of course, to find your own ways to remember.

What’s true for us individually is also — and especially — true for us as a congregation. This is how we begin all our projects, how we do our tasks, and how we fight our battles. Whether it’s building a church, setting a budget, dealing with red tape, deciding on the color of chairs or paint, opening our wallets or opening our mouths to sing in the choir, we start — and keep going — by remembering it’s all about grace. It’s all about Jesus, all about your salvation, all about God’s many blessings, all about the Lord’s unlimited and unconditional love.

It’s how we begin. It’s how we live. It’s our rallying cry. Remember the main thing. Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.