I Will Carry and Deliver You

a family address by the Rev. Kenneth J. Alden

1.   “Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you.” (Isaiah 46:4)

2.   Do you remember when you were a little child, and you used to reach up your hands, so your mom or your dad would pick you up and carry you?

      A.   Maybe your legs were tired from too much walking, or maybe you were thirsty and hungry, or perhaps you just wanted to be held close.

      B.   It is nice to be carried when you can’t keep on by yourself, or when you are too tired or discouraged to go any farther.

3.   In our reading from Isaiah, the Lord says that He is the One who has carried us from the womb and all the way to old age.

      A.    That means that even before we were born, the Lord was carrying us.

      B.   Right now He is carrying you.

             1    And He will keep on carrying you.

4.   How could that be?

      A.   No one could see the Lord’s hand carrying your mother while you were in her womb.

             1    No one can see the Lord’s arms holding you up.

             2    Is it important to see and touch the Lord in that way, in order to know that He is carrying you?

5.   Some people might think that it is important to see God with their natural eyes.

      A.   They are the kind of people that the Lord was speaking to in our chapter from Isaiah when He asked, “To whom will you liken Me and make Me equal and compare Me that we should be alike?”

             1    He then described how people make gold and silver into a god to worship.

      B.   Such people have something they can see and touch.

             1    They can hold it and carry it.

             2    But can it hold and carry them?

                    a.   Of course not.

             3    So which would you rather have? A god which you can see, hold and carry but cannot do anything in return, or one you cannot see or touch with your natural eyes and hands, but who can see, hold and carry you?

6.   The idol that the Lord described in the book of Isaiah is one that was made out of gold and silver.

      A.   It was very costly because they used lots of gold out of their bag.

      B.   People bowed all the way down, flat on the ground, to worship it.

      C.   They carried it on their shoulders and set it up in its place.

      D.   It could seem nice to bow down to something so richly made.

             1    But once it was set there, it could not move.

             2    It could not answer someone who cries out to it or save them from their troubles.

      E.   Why would anyone want something like that for their god?

7.   How different is it to worship the Lord.

      A.   We didn’t make Him or make Him up.

      B.   He was God forever–long before we were ever born–and, in fact, He made us.

      C.   So He upheld us from birth and carried us from the womb even to old age, as he said.

             1    In what way is He carrying us?

             2    He is carrying us along the path of regeneration.

                    a.   He is delivering us from hell and lifting us up toward heaven.

                    b.   We have a difficult enough time trying to hold ourselves back from breaking the Ten Commandments.

                    c.   But when we refuse to steal, or to lie, or to hate, or to commit adultery because it is against the Lord’s commandments, the Lord lifts us up.

                          1)   In a later chapter from the prophet isaiah it says that the Lord “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” and that He would bear our iniquities. (See Isaiah 53:4, 11)

                                 A)   This He did when He was on earth and had, by birth of a human mother, inherited tendencies toward all sorts of evils.

                                        1.   These He fought against in temptations and overcame.

                                               a)   In this way He bore our iniquities, that is, underwent the temptations we face. (See Arcana Coelestia 1846:3)

                                        2.   Having conquered every evil, He has power over them all and can remove them from us when we keep His commandments and fight against similar evil tendencies in ourselves.

                                 B)   And as He removes our love of evil, He gradually gives us new and heavenly loves as He creates us anew.

                                        1.   In this way, He carries us, both delivering us from hell and lifting us up toward heaven.

                          2)   No idol could have tendencies to evils, or fight in temptation, let alone overcome in temptation.

                                 A)   No idol can take away our love of evil as we fight in tempation or give us new and heavenly loves.

                                 B)   But the Lord is a living God who creates us and creates us anew, and carries us from the womb and delivers us.

8.   Our lesson from Apocalypse Revealed said that in the spiritual sense of the Word, idols do not mean idols, for it is obvious that they do not hear or see or walk.

      A.   Idols in the Word represent true and good things from the Word that have been falsified and profaned.

      B.   The gold of which idols are made stands for falsities about Divine things, and silver, falsities about spiritual things.

             1    It is true, for example, that the Lord is all-powerful and is our only Savior.

                    a.   It is a falsified truth that He takes away all their sins and makes them good people when they simply confess they are sinners and say they believe that He takes away their sins.

             2    It is true that the Lord is Infinitely just, merciful, and loving and condemns no one to hell.

                    a.   It is a falsified truth that He eventually brings everyone into heaven so that there is no hell in which people live to eternity.

      C.   False teachings such as these are made up by human intelligence.

             1    They are idols made of gold and silver.

                    a.   They look good on the surface.

             2    There is no spiritual life in them. (See Apocalypse Revealed 460)

                    a.   They are idols that cannot move.

             3    They are teachings that we can show to our natural mind, carry about, and stand up so we can worship them.

                    a.   But they are not living teachings from the Lord that can remove our evils and carry us toward heaven as the Lord’s own teachings can.

9.   Real religion is living because it brings us to worship the living God.

      A.   When we follow the Word, we are following truths, not taking them and making them into idols of falsity.

             1    When we follow the truth, the truth carries us away from evil and toward heaven.

                    a.   We are regenerated and made new by it.

                    b.   Where it says in Isaiah that the Lord makes and carries and bears us, it means that He keeps us in a state of good and truth so that it comes forth, subsists, and comes forth perpetually. (See Arcana Coelestia 9737)

10. It is useful to notice that the Old Testament talks a lot about worshiping idols and other gods, but the New Testament hardly mentions it.

      A.   The New Testament, on the other hand, talks a lot about who Jesus is–that He is Divine even in His Human form.

             1    In our second lesson, for example, Jesus asked who people said He was, and Peter answered that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus said that He would build His church on that rock. (See Matthew 16:13-18)

      B.   If you think about people worshiping Jesus but not believing that He is Divine, that is the same as worshiping an idol.

             1    They have a god that they carry about but has no life in it.

      C.   The Word, however, teaches that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is Divine, and that He glorified His Human even to complete oneness with His Divine soul.

             1    When we worship Him as the Word teaches, we worship the Living God, the One who bore our iniquities, the One who created us and who creates us anew.

             2    We worship the One who carries us on the path to heaven at every stage of our lives from birth to old age.

                    a.   There is no stage of our life in which anyone else or any other teaching can do more for us than the Lord can.

11. Whom shall we worship?

      A.   A god that we carry about, or a God who carries us?

      B.   Do we admire a doctrine that we control, or one that leads us and to which we yield control of our lives?

      C.   There is no religion, no doctrine, no set of truths taken from the Word and falsified that can deliver us from our evils and carry us the way the truth taught by the Lord in His Word can.

      D.   As the Lord says, “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by Me from birth, who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you.” (Isaiah 46:4)

      E.   Amen.

Lessons: Isaiah 46:1-13; Matthew 16:13-23; AR 417, 457, 459, 460, parts.

Apocalypse Revealed 417. And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not adore demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood; which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: [Revelation 9:20]

457....[2] By "the works of men's hands," in the Word, in its natural sense, are meant graven images, molten images, and idols; but in the spiritual sense, by them are signified evils and falsities of every kind, which are man's own things;...

459. ...By ..."adoring idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood," is signified worship from falsities of all kinds, and, taken collectively, worship from mere falsities. Moreover, the material of which idols were made, their forms, and their garments, among the ancients, represented the falsities of religion, from which was their worship: "idols of gold" signified falsities concerning Divine things; "idols of silver," falsities concerning spiritual things; "idols of brass," falsities concerning charity; "idols of stone," falsities concerning faith; and "idols of wood," falsities concerning good works. All these falsities exist in those who do not do the work of repentance, that is, shun evils as sins against God....

460. ...Idolaters believe that their idols see and hear, for they make them gods; but still this is not what is meant by these words; but, that in the falsities of worship there is nothing of spiritual nor truly rational life, for by "seeing" and "hearing" is signified to understand and perceive (n. 7, 25, 87); and by "walking" is signified to live (n. 167); therefore by these three things is signified spiritual and truly rational life; this is signified, because by "idols" are signified the falsities of worship, in which there is nothing of spiritual and rational life. That idols do not see, hear, and walk, is a thing too obvious to be here mentioned, were there not some inward signification involved within it. ...By ..."idols" are signified the falsities of worship, and in falsities of worship there is nothing of life which is really life.

Through The Week

Recall the Lessons

✦ The idols of Babylon could not carry nor deliver their worshipers, but were instead a burden even to the beasts that carried them.

✦ The Lord carried the remnant of Israel from birth and even to old age, delivering them.

✦ Would they compare the Lord to an idol made of gold that people carry but which cannot move, answer, or save?

✦ Jesus said Peter was blessed for recognizing that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Reflect on the Message

✦ Idols, or false doctrines, cannot carry you and have no life in them from which to deliver us from evil.

✦ The Lord bore our iniquities by fighting in temptation against evils like those to which we incline, and by conquering the hells thereby.

✦ When we turn from evil because it is to sin against the Lord, and ask His help, He carries us away from hell and toward heaven as He regenerates us, giving heavenly love in place of infernal love.

✦ The Lord carries us at every stage of life, and there is no other god or doctrine that we ever need to turn to at any time.

Take Action

✦ Picture yourself as a child reaching up to be carried by the Lord as you pray to Him and read His Word this week.

✦ Reflect on how following the truth has let it carry you to a different state of mind than if you had not followed it.

✦ Identify some “idols” of falsity about Divine things (gold) and falsity about spiritual things (silver).

✦ Compare the living truths the Lord teaches with man-made doctrines that may have appealed to you in the past.