GOD’S REVELATION TO THOSE WHO DEPEND UPON HIM

Sermon delivered on the 2nd Sunday after Trinity, the 3^rd July 2011 by Fr Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England, George Town, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: Zechariah 9: 9-12 Romans 7: 15-25a S. Matthew 11:16-end

Matt 11: 27 Jesus said, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

JOHANNINE ROCK

This verse of Jesus' teaching from the Gospel according to St. Matthew has been called the “Johannine thunderbolt”, and I have also read of it referred to as an “erratic block of Johannine rock”, as if it were a meteorite from outer space landing upon the earth. This is because the style of its teaching is like what we often encounter only in St. John's Gospel, and yet here it is found in St. Matthew. It probably provides corroboration that Jesus did indeed teach in the style that St. John's Gospel says He did, and it is not the only place in St. Matthew's Gospel in which the terms “the Father” and “the Son” are used in the absolute manner they are used here.

REVELATION TO BABES

“All things have been delivered to me by my Father”, says the Lord Jesus. You may remember that this statement was repeated by the resurrected Lord at the end of S. Matthew’s Gospel, where He affirms, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” The Father has complete authority as the “Lord of heaven and earth”, and He delegates that to the Son. The meaning of Christ's words and deeds is therefore key to the Father's revelation of Himself, and it is not the “wise and understanding” - or those who are such by human standards - that have the advantage over others in elucidating this revelation through Christ's words and deeds. In verse 25 Jesus says “I thank thee ... that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes.” “Babes – or in the ESV ‘little children’” means those who are spiritually dependent enough to be able to receive the words and deeds of Christ. This is one of the great mysteries of the manner in which the Christian faith is propagated to others and advanced in the individual soul. It happens not by cleverness or ingenuity or street-smartness, but by trust and dependence. In the Gospels Jesus demonstrated over and over again that those to whom He revealed the works of the Father were those who trusted, listened and discerned. “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” The sovereignty of the Father is shown by the “gracious will” with which He reveals to the spiritually dependent, truths that He does not reveal to the wise and understanding. The sovereignty of the Son is shown in the choices that He makes of whom to reveal the Father to.

THE HUMBLE MESSIAH

One of the greatest pictures of the divine sovereignty is what is provided by our first lesson today from the prophet Zechariah, the Palm Sunday picture that we are most familiar with from its use by our Lord in His final entry into Jerusalem. In Zechariah we read “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.” There are many inscriptions on ancient artefacts telling of what this or that ancient king did to his enemies when he was victorious, and the ideas of triumph and humility do not always go together by any stretch of the imagination: but here in prophetic scripture the overall picture of the triumphant messiah decidedly includes concepts such as humility and righteousness and graciousness to the poor and disadvantaged. If you add to these the prophecies of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah and bring those into the Messianic framework, the image of the person we have come to know as the Christ is compelling indeed. Finally we begin to understand that in fact there is no true sovereignty or triumph without suffering, humility, righteousness and graciousness, and all these are components of one character, and that character is that of God Himself, revealed fully in His Son.

RESOLVING THE DISCORDANT HUMAN CONDITION

In the second lesson today from Romans 7 St. Paul describes what we can regard as the basic discomfort of the sinful human condition, the deviation between what, on the one hand, we have an appetite for and what, on the other, our mind, conscience and will know to be right. There has been many a discussion on this passage along the lines of whether Paul was describing his life before or after his Damascus road experience. The key passage here is, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We have been looking at the other Scriptural passages in the light of divine sovereignty and human dependence, and it is helpful also to apply the same principle to this one. In his typically rather explosive fashion, St. Paul can be seen to be placing the discordant human condition, which he writes of himself as personifying and exemplifying, under the sovereignty of the Father and the Son. He has identified the cause of the discord as due to the tendency of the bodily appetites to seek satisfaction independently of and contrary to the law of God that in his inmost self he delights in, and he now comes out with an explosive expression of trust, that this contrary element in the human condition, which he characterises as “the body of this death”, has its hold over him or over humanity finally broken by the deliverance of God through Jesus Christ. And if the basic fault-line within all of humanity can be closed by this, so can the lesser fault-lines of our individual experiences be similarly healed.

THE EASY YOKE

Our faith that arises from Christ's redemptive work is of a sovereign Father and a sovereign Son, but of a sovereignty that is not in any way overbearing or in betrayal of human trust. Jesus said, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” The dark side of Church History is when the Church has projected a supposedly divine sovereignty that does not share the trustworthiness of the real thing. As we have seen, the true sovereignty of the Father and of the Son delights in the cooperation of human trust and dependence. That is why the character of the divine sovereignty differs from the “yoke of the law”, as the Rabbis referred to it. In contrast to that yoke, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Like St. Paul, with this yoke that marries human dependence to the divine sovereignty, we who are His babes or little children will ultimately have success in our undertakings.