Jerusalem’s curse will be reversed when the Lord comes

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 20

Isaiah 62:1-12

If you read toward the end of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, Moses pronounces a series of blessings and curses upon Israel, blessings for obedience to the covenant of Mt. Sinai, curses for turning away from it. There Moses prophesies how God will come against this people of Israel with every form of punishment and affliction and trouble, until they’re utterly wiped out, if they stubbornly turn away from God and His covenant. Well, by Isaiah’s time, they had definitively turned away. And that curse was about to fall upon them at the hands of the Babylonians. But, as we’ve seen throughout Isaiah’s prophecy, a remnant would be saved, long enough for the Messiah to come to Israel and begin to build a new Israel, a new Jerusalem. And in the new Israel that God will create, growing out of that remnant, the curse upon Israel would be reversed and replaced with tremendous blessing. That’s what we hear about tonight in Isaiah 62.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.

In Scripture, God’s silence is always a bad thing. Because when God is silent, when God sits back and says nothing and does nothing, it means He’s letting sinners self-destruct (as we always do, when left to ourselves) or be destroyed by other sinners. It means He’s punishing the wicked by withholding His Word from them, because they’ve despised it for so long. But His Word is the only thing that can turn destructive and self-destructive people around. And after the suffering of Babylon had done its work, God promised to keep silent no longer, but to speak and to act on Zion’s behalf, not only to get her back to her homeland, but to turn her into a righteous people, a bright and shiny people, a people that is safe from every enemy. This is God’s promise to keep sending His Word to His Church until He’s finished remaking it into the glorious Church it will be when Christ comes again.

The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. The new Israel that grew out of the remnant of Old Testament Israel was founded by Christ Himself, and the nations did come to the light of that New Testament Church. God has already given this Church a “new name,” a different name than the Old Testament Church of “Israel.” But another new name awaits Christ’s second coming, as John writes in the Book of Revelation, He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.

Isaiah continues, You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

Israel was forsaken. Israel had become desolate and empty and abandoned, just as Moses had prophesied that it would. But here God promises the reversal of the curse. Beauty. Royalty. Not the home of God’s disapproval any longer, but the ones in whom God delights, the Church that will become the Bride of Christ, of whom He is not ashamed, but in whom He rejoices, because she wears that wedding garment of Christ’s righteousness.

This is the Church that is created and sustained through the preaching of the Gospel, through Baptism, through the Supper of the Lord. It’s the Church that’s built through God’s promise to forgive us our sins and to accept us through faith in Christ Jesus. It isn’t our own goodness that makes us beautiful in this Church, but the grace and goodness of Jesus Christ, with which we’re clothed by faith in Him.

On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.

These watchmen would be the ministers whom God sends to take care of the souls of His people, to preach and teach His Word, to administer His Sacraments, to keep watch over God’s people, and to keep watch for all the enemies who would come against them—the devil and the false teachers whom he sends to ravage the Church. This is God’s promise to keep providing ministers to His Church until the end of time, to keep preaching, administering the Sacraments, guiding, correcting, warning, and comforting God’s people until the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven.

The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored; but those who garner it shall eat it and praise the LORD, and those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”

Again, this is the reversal of the curse. The curse of Deuteronomy told of foreigners eating the crops and enjoying the vineyards that the Israelites had planted and worked for. But God swears that that won’t be the case in the new Israel, in the Messiah’s Church that will be perfected at His second coming. The Church, even in this New Testament era, is trampled by unbelievers on the outside and often by unbelievers on the inside. But that won’t go on forever. The Lord has sworn that the curse will be completely reversed when Christ comes again.

Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal (a banner!) over the peoples.

This is a paraphrase of what God had said earlier in Isaiah’s book, referring to the work of John the Baptist ahead of the public appearance of Christ at His first coming. God wants the world, and especially His Church, to know that salvation is almost here, so He calls for everything that would hinder it to be taken out of the way.

Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.”

That message was essentially proclaimed by the angels at birth of Christ, by John the Baptist at the public appearance of Christ, by the prophet Zechariah, speaking of Christ’s Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem, when He brought salvation to His Church through His preaching of the Gospel and through His suffering, death, and resurrection. Now it remains the message of God’s preachers, comforting His people and pointing them to Christ’s second advent: “Behold, your salvation comes!”

And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.

How pleasant those words must have sounded to the people of Israel as they sat in their unholiness, in their captivity, in their desolation, and in their forsaken state in Babylon. How pleasant they sound to every sinner still today, when the sinner recognizes that this is God’s promise to forgive, to rescue, to restore, and to dwell among His people—all those who seek His forgiveness and acceptance in Christ Jesus. It’s a promise to end all the captivity of God’s people, whether that captivity is to sin, or to death, or to the devil, to reverse the curse upon Israel, to reverse the curse upon mankind, and to establish an eternal and glorious home for all who persevere in His Holy Christian Church. Rejoice in the reversal of the curse! The full reversal of it is still coming, but for all who belong to Christ Jesus, who are now counted among the children of the new Israel, the reversal has already begun, for Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us…that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Amen.