Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 26

Isaiah 65:1-12

Once again, Isaiah’s prophecy is filled with wonderful news for some, and terrible news for others. Old Israel will fall because of their idolatry and impenitence. But New Israel will arise, including some from Old Israel and many from the rest of mankind. The time was not far off when the Lord would replace apostate Israel with genuine believers.

“I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ To a nation that was not called by My name.

This is wonderful news for the Gentiles! That’s who the Lord is talking about here. Prior to Jesus sending out His apostles into all the world, the Gentiles didn’t know the LORD, didn’t seek the LORD, didn’t serve the LORD. And yet the Lord promises to reach out to them. St. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 10 and explains how it’s being fulfilled in his time as he and the other apostles take the Gospel of Christ out to the nations. So, this is wonderful news for you and me and for the millions of people who have been called by the Gospel and brought into the people of God, not because we deserved it, not because we were better than Israel, but purely out of the mercy of God, He sought us out and made Himself known to us.

But what about Israel? God says, I have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious people. Imagine stretching out your hands for even a minute to someone whom you love, someone whom you care for, someone whom you just want to bring in for a hug and help them in their desperate need…and that person snubs you, just stands there watching you hold out your hands to him, folds him arms, and says, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” Would you stand there for a whole minute in the face of that reaction? What about ten minutes, stretching out your hands? An hour? But God wants Israel to picture Him standing there with outstretched arms “all day long,” and the whole time they remained stubborn and rebellious.

God lists some of their rebellious behavior. A people who walk in a way that is not good, According to their own thoughts; In other words, they don’t care about God’s commandments, They do what they want, what they think is right for them, without giving a thought to God. A people who provoke Me to anger continually to My face; Who sacrifice in gardens, And burn incense on altars of brick; Whereas God had commanded them to offer sacrifices only in the temple in Jerusalem. Who sit among the graves, And spend the night in the tombs; Communing with dead, not unlike the Mexican Day of the Dead practices. Who eat swine’s flesh, And the broth of abominable things is in their vessels; contrary to the dietary restrictions God had given Old Testament Israel in the Law of Moses. Who say, ‘Keep to yourself, Do not come near me, For I am holier than you! Did you know, this is where the phrase “Holier than thou” comes from? The people of Israel had turned their backs on their God and pretended to be holier than He is! “We’re holier than Thou, God!” Not unlike today, when some people are so brazen as to criticize how God runs the universe, who dare to blaspheme God and accuse Him of wrongdoing, as if they were holier than God.

These are smoke in My nostrils, A fire that burns all the day. A picture of the greatness of God’s wrath and anger against these people who had turned their backs on Him.

“Behold, it is written before Me: I will not keep silence, but will repay— Even repay into their bosom— Your iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together,” Says the Lord, “Who have burned incense on the mountains And blasphemed Me on the hills; Therefore I will measure their former work into their bosom.”

God stretched out His hands to Israel all day long, but He won’t do it forever. He will repay Israel for their blasphemy and idolatry and stubborn rebellion. And He isn’t only talking about the coming destruction by the Babylonians. He’s talking even more about the near-complete destruction of the Jewish nation after they rejected Jesus as the Christ, never to recover. Remember, the people who currently occupy the territory of Israel are not the continuation of Old Testament Israel. They don’t even try to live under the Old Testament, nor would it help them if they did, because the Old Testament is no longer in effect.

But alongside that terrible news for apostate Israel was a bit of wonderful news for a small number of them. Thus says the Lord: “As the new wine is found in the cluster, And one says, ‘Do not destroy it, For a blessing is in it,’ So will I do for My servants’ sake, That I may not destroy them all. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, And from Judah an heir of My mountains; My elect shall inherit it, And My servants shall dwell there. Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, And the Valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down, For My people who have sought Me. There would be a remnant of Jews who would repent and believe in the Lord and in His coming Christ. God wouldn’t forsake them. He wouldn’t destroy them along with their unbelieving neighbors. He would welcome them, together with the Gentiles, into His New Israel—an Israel that’s no longer named for their ancestry, but for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; whose territory is no longer a specific piece of land, but whose territory is the permanent inheritance of heaven.

“But you are those who forsake the Lord, Who forget My holy mountain, Who prepare a table for Gad, And who furnish a drink offering for Meni. (Gad and Meni are pagan gods of Fortune and Destiny.) Therefore I will number you for the sword, And you shall all bow down to the slaughter; Because, when I called, you did not answer; When I spoke, you did not hear, But did evil before My eyes, And chose that in which I do not delight.”

Scathing words from God to the rebellious people of Israel, words of utter destruction, both temporal and eternal. And their destruction is the worse because God called them to repent, to believe, and to obey—He held out His hands all day long to them—and they still refused.

Now, think about it. Who today hasn’t heard about the God of the Bible, the God of Israel who sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins and to bring us into the New Israel of His holy Church? Who hasn’t heard God’s call to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus? In Isaiah’s time, there were few outside of Israel who had heard the Word of God at all. What about today? Today, most of the world has heard God call, has heard God speak, and has still chosen to do as they please, to worship as they please, to believe as they please. God has stretched out His hands for nearly 2,000 years to the people of the world, and, in countless ways, the world has told God, “We are holier than Thou!”

God has terrible news for the world that continues to reject Him and His commandments. But for you and for all who will listen to God’s voice before it’s too late, God has wonderful news of salvation and eternal glory. He still stretches out His hands to you, to embrace you in His forgiveness and love. Don’t harden your hearts to Him! Don’t be rebellious or holier than Thou! Trust in the Lord’s promise of salvation, and then set your minds on keeping His commandments, with the aid of His Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 25

Isaiah 64:1-12

As we start into the last three chapters of the book of Isaiah this evening, we reach the grand climax of the book. We hear Isaiah pleading in chapter 64, pleading for God to come and save the miserable, pitiable people of Israel. And in the last two chapters, God will answer. And His answer, as usual, is one of comfort and everlasting victory for those who repent and believe in Him, and one of rejection and eternal condemnation for those who refuse to repent. Israel, in its Old Testament form, would cease to exist because of their impenitence. But the believing remnant of Israel, Israel in its New Testament form, will inherit the new heavens and the new earth. But, as Isaiah knows very well, the only way for anyone at all to be saved is for God to come down from heaven.

Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might shake at Your presence, as when the melting fire burns, as the fire causes the waters to boil, to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence!

Isaiah foresees Jerusalem already in ruins. He sees the people of Israel sitting in darkness, with no hope. No hope, except for this—if only God would come down from heaven! If only He would rend the heavens, tear the heavens open and come down to earth to save them. That’s the only possible way for sinners to be saved. God Himself has to do it. And He has to do it in person.

He had come down once before to rescue Israel. When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down; the mountains quaked at Your presence. Again Isaiah looks back to the redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt, when God had come down and performed wonders for His people, when He had guided them through the wilderness, when He had spoken to them from Mt. Sinai and made a covenant of peace with them, when He had fought for them against all their enemies. That’s the kind of thing Isaiah wants Him to do again!

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by ear, neither has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts for the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, those who remember You in Your ways. No other god comes in person to save. Even the stories of the ancient Greek or Roman gods who appeared to men from time to time are all stories of incest and adultery, stories of selfish, self-centered gods who were looking out for themselves. That’s the best kind of god mankind could invent. No other god came down from heaven out of mercy, to rescue His errant people, except for Yahweh, the true God, the God of Israel. He acts for the one who waits for Him. So wait for Him! He has promised to act on your behalf. He meets him who rejoices in doing righteousness. So rejoice in doing what is right in God’s sight, and remember your God in everything you do!

Indeed, You were angry, for we had sinned; in our sins we remained a long time, and shall we be saved? But we all are as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags; and we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs up himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities.

Isaiah places himself forward, at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction and the Babylonian captivity. By that time, the vast majority of godly Israelites would be gone. And even the godly had to admit that, according to the strict judgment of the Law, even their righteousness, even their good works were unclean, were polluted with sin. Not even the believers kept the Law so as to be saved by their good works. How much less the unbelieving in Israel who remained in their impenitence. They had sinned and remained in their sins for a long time. God’s anger toward them was justified, as were His plans to bring judgment upon them.

But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; and we all are the work of Your hand.

Here is the penitent cry of the believer. The penitent “sigh,” you might say. After all the anxiety about the sad state of the nation, the sad state of the Church, the believer casts all his anxiety on God, and says, “Here, Father! Take it. You’re in charge here. We know that. We are in Your hands. We know that you will do what is right.” With that in mind, Isaiah makes a final plea:

Do not be wrathful beyond measure, O LORD, nor remember iniquity forever; look upon us, we pray, we all are Your people. Your holy cities are a wilderness; Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised You is burned up with fire; and all our precious things are laid waste. Will You refrain Yourself from these things, O LORD? Will You hold Your peace and afflict us beyond measure?

In Isaiah’s time those things hadn’t happened yet. Jerusalem wasn’t a desolation, yet. Zion wasn’t a wilderness, yet. The temple wasn’t burned up with fire, yet. But Isaiah saw it as clearly as if he had been transported 120 years into the future. And as he looks out at the burning, desolate landscape of Judea and Jerusalem, he pleads with the Lord to not be angry forever, to remember His mercy and love. In other words, He pleads with the Lord to ordain an end date to Israel’s suffering, to set a day and an hour when He would rend the heavens and come down to save His people from their misery.

And that’s just what the Lord did. Not when Cyrus came along and finally released Israel from captivity in Babylon. No, the Lord didn’t come down from heaven for that, but reigned in heaven over world events to cause it to happen. But the Lord did finally come down from heaven, in person, about 700 years after Isaiah’s time. He came down as a little baby who was placed in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem. He dwelled among the very kind of sinners who had caused God’s wrath against Israel in the first place, not to destroy them, but to bring them to repentance, to call them back into His kingdom of grace. Yes, God, the Son of God, came down from heaven, in person, and made Himself the one atoning sacrifice that can turn away the righteous wrath of God, and now calls all men to be reconciled to God through Him.

The same Jesus, God, the Son of God, will come down from heaven just one more time. Jesus talked about it in the lesson you heard this evening from Luke’s Gospel. And what will the world be like leading up to His return? Just as in the days of Noah, leading up to the flood that destroyed the world. Just as in the days of Sodom, leading up to its destruction by fire and brimstone. So will the world be. And just as Israel was, leading up to its destruction, so will the Visible Church be. And, if you look at the state of the world and of the Church, you can’t help but notice that mankind is ripe for destruction once again. So let us pray to the Lord with Isaiah, in humility, in repentance, and, most of all, in hope, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down!” And you can be sure that He will, at just the right time. Amen.

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 23

Isaiah 63:11-19

Isaiah Chapter 63 began with the picture of the Lord as a Warrior, a Warrior who fought for His people against their enemies, but ended up fighting against His people Israel when they made themselves His enemies, when they turned against their Savior. In the rest of the chapter, His people look back at how good they had it, at how good the Lord had been to them in the beginning, prompting them to ask the desperate questions, Where is He now, that Savior of old? Where is the Savior of Israel? And why does He cause us to go astray? As we’ll see in these last three chapters of the book of Isaiah, the answers to those questions differ, depending on the heart of the one asking them.

Then His people remembered the days of old, of His servant Moses, saying: Where is He who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is He who put His Holy Spirit in their midst, who led them with His glorious arm by the right hand of Moses, dividing the water before them, to make Himself an everlasting name, who led them through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble? As the cattle which go down into the valley, the Spirit of the LORD caused them to rest, so You led Your people, to make Yourself a glorious name.

Accused, condemned, rejected by God, made desolate, captive in an enemy land, the people of Israel had learned what it was like to have the Lord God as their enemy. Because of their sins, because of their impenitence, because each one had turned to his own way and stopped caring about what God said or what God commanded, the people who bore the name of God were abandoned by their God. Where could they turn if God Himself was against them?

Some, most of Israel, turned back to God’s saving history, but in confusion. They turned back to recall that decisive moment in their history when they were without hope, enslaved by the powerful Egyptians. But God stepped in. God stepped in through His servant Moses. God stepped in through Moses and accomplished the impossible. With ten plagues against the Egyptians, with parted waters of the Red Sea, with divine intervention so that the Egyptians armies perished in those very same waters, God had come to Israel’s rescue. But Israel as it faced captivity in Babylon, Israel as it suffered in captivity in Babylon, and also Israel as it rejected the Christ when He came, could only look back in confusion and ask, “Where is God’s salvation now? We need His salvation again!” But those very same people who claimed to be searching for God’s salvation rejected His salvation when He sent the Christ to them. They didn’t want Him for a Savior. So all they can do is look back at His past salvation with confusion.

Some, a handful in Israel, turned back to God’s saving history in repentance and hope. They remembered the mercy, and the love, and the power of the God who had brought them out of Egypt and made a covenant with them in the desert. They repented of their sins and turned back to that Redeemer God and asked, “Where is He now?”, not in despair, not in confusion, but in hope, because the LORD, Yahweh, is a God of forgiveness and undeserved salvation. Where was He then? He was about to send His Christ to suffer and die for their sins. Where is He now? Still here in Word and Sacrament to forgive sins to all who believe in Him, still forming a new Israel out of all believers, and about to return to take His new Israel to our eternal Promised Land.

Look down from heaven and see, from Your holy and glorious habitation. Where are Your zeal and Your strength? The stirrings of Your heart and Your mercies toward me are restrained. For You are our Father, though Abraham is ignorant of us and Israel does not recognize us. You, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer; Your name is from everlasting.

A cry, a plea: “Where are Your zeal and strength?” Some, most in Israel, asked that question in despair, as Jesus’ disciples asked while He slept and their boat was sinking in the storm, “Lord, don’t You care that we are perishing?” You’re supposed to be our Father! Where is Your fatherly care? Here You are, letting us go into exile, stay in exile for 70 years. Here You are, sending Roman armies against Your people and destroying Jerusalem and removing Your covenant from us, as a nation, just because we didn’t want to be saved by this Jesus. It makes no sense!

Others, a handful in Israel, asked that question in hope. Where are Your zeal and strength? We look to You for salvation, and we gladly expect the Christ whom You will send! You sent Your Son, Jesus Christ, and to all who receive Him, to all who believe in His name, You have given the right to become children of God. So You are our Father. And on that basis, we plead with You to act on our behalf. Show Your zeal and strength in upholding Your children, in saving us from sin, from death, from the devil and all His demons! Show Your zeal and strength in guiding the affairs and governments of this world so that Your Gospel may be preached, and so that Your Church may be built and preserved until You come to rescue us at last from this wicked world.

O LORD, why have You made us to err from Your ways and hardened our heart from fearing You? Return for Your servants’ sake, the tribes of Your inheritance. Your holy people possessed Your sanctuary for a little while; our adversaries have trodden it down. We have become as those over whom You have never ruled, as those who were not called by Your name.

Not only “where?” but “why?” Why have You made us to err and hardened our heart? Most in Israel asked that question in accusation and arrogance. “You made us err, O Lord! You hardened our heart from fearing You! Why would You do that? If you had just left us alone, we would have gladly followed Your ways and feared You as we ought. But no. It’s Your fault that we turned away from You. How could You make us sin like that? Why would You deprive us of the land and of the temple we were promised?” Oh, the pride of man is great. Even when we’re forced to acknowledge our sins, we want to blame God for them, as Adam once blamed God in the Garden of Eden. This woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit, and I ate. Those who would blame God for their sins, and for the consequences of their sins, are delusional.

But some in Israel, and some still today, ask that question differently. We know that, if God does make us to err, it’s only in response to the erring we have already chosen. If He hardens our hearts from fearing Him, it’s only the righteous punishment we deserve for hardening our own hearts from fearing Him, as He did with Pharoah at the time of Moses, about whom it says that he first hardened his own heart toward the Word of God that Moses spoke. Only then did the Lord further harden it.

And so the penitent one answers his own question: Why have You made us to err and hardened our heart? Because we first chose to go astray. We first chose to be stubborn and hard-headed and stiff-necked, to follow our own dreams, our own path, our own desires. And so we deserve all the punishment we have received.

But our case is not hopeless. Not at all! Because the Gospel is still going out, calling out to all those who mourn over their sins, Take heart! Don’t be afraid! The Lord Jesus came to seek and to save the erring and wandering sheep. He came to soften the hearts that are hard, and, by His Spirit, to replace them with hearts that believe, as He promised through the prophet Ezekiel: Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.

Where is the Savior of Israel? It’s a question that can be asked in unbelief. But it’s also a question that can be asked in faith, and in eager expectation that the Savior of Israel—the Savior of the Holy Christian Church—will soon come to rescue His penitent people from all their troubles. So look back at all the saving acts God has already accomplished for His Church. Look at His present acts of salvation, including His providence of the holy ministry of His Word in our midst, including His guidance of the governments of the world that we’re witnessing even now, giving His children a little reprieve from the madness that we have been surrounded by. Where is the Savior of Israel? He is here with us even now. Trust in Him and hope in Him, and you will not be disappointed. Amen.