Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 9

Isaiah 51:1-11

Isaiah’s prophecy in the first 11 verses of chapter 51 is a broad, all-encompassing promise of deliverance and righteousness and justice. It applies to all three future events that Isaiah has been prophesying since the beginning of his book: the deliverance of Israel from Babylon, the deliverance of all believers from sin through the Messiah at His first coming, and the deliverance of all believers from every evil of this world  through the Messiah at His second coming.

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD:

The Lord Yahweh calls out! But He doesn’t call out to everyone in the world. He calls out to those who pursue righteousness, who seek the LORD. If you want to go on living in sin, if you want to seek some other god, these comforting words aren’t for you. But if what you want is to pursue what is right, to be counted righteous by God and to live righteously before your God, if you are among those who repent of their sins and are determined to have the Lord as your God, then listen! He has great comfort for you.

Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.

These words apply equally to physical Israel and to spiritual Israel. Abraham and Sarah were the physical parents of all the Old Testament people of Israel. And they are the spiritual parents of all believers in Christ Jesus. You remember Abrahan’s condition when the Lord called him out of the land of Babylon (that is, Ur of Chaldeans). He and Sarah were childless. They remained childless for another 25 years after God called him. But it was on purpose that God called Abraham when he was childless and let him remain childless for so long, so that it might be unmistakably clear that it was God who would bless him and multiply his descendants, both physical and spiritual, so that, the earth—so that heaven itself! — might be filled with children of Abraham by the Lord’s own working.

For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

Zion, the Old Testament people of Israel had been reduced to almost nothing during their captivity. But the Lord would restore them and make them prosper again and rejoice again after their time of punishment was complete. Spiritually, Israel also appeared to be practically dead. But then the Lord would send the Messiah, and His Holy Spirit, to breathe new life into them, and into all who would believe. The same goes for the New Testament Christian Church. The Church looks like a wasteland in these latter days, like a wilderness that used to be inhabited but that is now almost barren. The Lord also promises to deliver His Church and to restore joy and gladness, thanksgiving and the voice of song when Christ comes again to deliver us.

“Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait.

Again, God speaks to His people. He wants our attention. He promises that “a law will go out” from Him, and that He will “set His justice for a light to the peoples.” This is the same language that’s used later on in reference to the day of Pentecost, when the “law,” that is, the teaching of the Gospel started to go out from Jerusalem to all nations. God literally brought His righteousness near in the person of Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, and He brings His righteousness near every time sinners are brought to faith in Christ and covered in His righteousness as with a garment. His salvation goes out every time the Gospel is preached. His arm, His saving arm, judges the peoples, judges between righteous and wicked, believer and unbeliever, and the coastlands, the most distant reaches of the earth, hope for Christ and for His salvation.

That’s all the more true as we witness our world going down the toilet. So many lies, so much mockery of God, so much depravity and wickedness fills the world. The world that, to a large degree, welcomed the preaching of the Gospel when it first went out, is now rejecting it more loudly, more angrily than ever before. But Isaiah’s prophecy includes the final judgment and the final salvation that God will bring to His Church. And the Lord wants us to take comfort in it.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.

Look all around you! Everything you see, in this room, out the window, across the valley, and into the heavens—all of it will come to an end. Nothing you own will last. Your body won’t last. None of your enemies and those who oppose God will last, either. But here God promises His people an eternal salvation that will last after this world wears out, an everlasting home and a place at His own table.

“Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”

Again, the Lord calls out to believers, who have the law of God written in our hearts, who truly believe the Gospel and seek to live according to God’s commandments. He says, fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. Now that is some important advice which we do well to pay attention to. So often Christians fail to do the right thing or to say the right thing, not because we don’t know what the right thing is, but because we’re afraid of how people are going to react. We’re afraid they’re going to make fun of us or get angry with us. We allow ourselves to be crushed by the thought of people’s disapproval or disagreement. But, when it comes to right vs. wrong, true vs. false, we have the Lord God on our side, who holds our future in His hands. We have no reason in the universe to fear the scorn of men.

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Here Isaiah joyfully calls on the Lord to carry out this promised deliverance. He speaks directly to “the arm of the LORD” and says, “Awake! Awake!” Then he recalls that other monumental deliverance that the LORD had carried out in the past when He delivered the captive people of Israel from bondage in Egypt, when He cut “Rahab” in pieces (earlier in his book Isaiah had identified Egypt with this name “Rahab) and caused the Red Sea to dry up so that His people could pass over to safety. The deliverance that the Lord will carry out in the future is even greater than that deliverance once. The ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Isaiah pictures it all: The arm of the Lord sweeping away the Babylonians and gently shepherding His people back toward Jerusalem. The arm of the Lord smashing Satan and all his demons and shepherding His people safely into the kingdom of His Church. The arm of the Lord defending His people from every earthly enemy and from all the wickedness here, and shepherding us safely into His heavenly kingdom. And so we pray with Isaiah, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD!” Or to put it another way, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Amen.

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 8

Isaiah 50:1-11

The Messiah makes another appearance in the 50^th chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah presents the Messiah again as God’s special Servant. In the previous chapter, he hinted at the Servant’s suffering, saying simply that He would be despised by the nation, that is, by the people of Israel. In this chapter he adds to that some forms of physical abuse that the Servant would suffer, all leading up to chapter 53, where he would record the Servant’s death. Through all of it, the Messiah is pictured as the One who willingly obeys the voice of the Lord, so that Israel may be saved through His perfect obedience.

First, the Lord speaks to the people of Israel in their future captivity: Thus says the LORD: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.

The Lord pictures Himself, first, as having been married to the mother of the children of Israel. Zion, the mountain on which Jerusalem was built, is often pictured in the Scriptures as a woman, who stands for the Church. God compares Himself to a husband, and the Church He compares to a wife. When He chose Israel to be His people and committed to being their God, it was like a marriage. But when God sent the people of Israel away from Jerusalem into captivity, it was like a husband sending away or divorcing his wife. And God wants the people of Israel to remember that 100% of the blame for the failure of this marriage belonged to them, because of their iniquities and transgressions.

Why, when I came, was there no man; why, when I called, was there no one to answer?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Why was there no man who could hear and answer God’s call to save Israel from their sins? Because no man can do it. As the Psalm says, Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit. No mere man could save Israel or anyone. If there is to be a Deliverer from sin and condemnation and eternal death, God Himself will have to provide one, which is exactly what He promises in the next verses to do.

Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering.”

To these questions, the answer is obviously, No! No, God’s hand is not too short. No, He does not lack the power to deliver. In fact, God alone can deliver. God’s hand alone is long enough to reach all the way down to earth, all the way down to the dregs of society, all the way down to where Israel, and you and I, found ourselves, wallowing in the filth of sin. In the next verses, we see how the hand of the Lord would reach down to Israel in the form of His Servant, the Messiah, who speaks the following words:

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

These are the words of the Servant, of the Messiah. He always listens to the voice of His Father. He is the very Word of His Father. No one has seen God at any time. But the only-begotten of the Father comes from the bosom of the Father to reveal Him to us. So He always has exactly the right words to sustain with a word him who is weary, such as, Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest!

The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.

When the Father told His Servant to go down to the world, to become a man, to be born under the Law, to redeem us who were under the law, the Servant listened. The Servant obeyed. And then, when the Father handed the cup of suffering to His beloved Son, the Son didn’t refuse to drink it. Isaiah prophesies some of the things that the Christ would have to suffer: the strikes on the back with the scourging He would receive, the slaps on the face and the spitting He would receive from the guards and the soldiers, and the disgrace He would receive from the Jewish leaders. I did not hide My face from it, says the Servant. He was obedient to His Father in suffering it all willingly, even to the point of death on a cross.

But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced. That is, the Servant would not end up in disgrace. After suffering the disgrace of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the Father would help Him by raising Him from the dead.

Therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. Luke seems to refer to this verse in his Gospel when he writes this about Jesus, When the time had come for Him to be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.

He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.

This is what enabled Jesus to go through with all the suffering, all the shame, all the injustice, and death itself, because He knew that, in the end, His Father wouldn’t abandon Him. In the end, no one could stand against Him or be victorious over him or hold Him in the grave, because the Lord was on His side and would help Him, while all His enemies would, eventually, pass away.

Now the application to you and me: Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.

Do you fear the LORD? Do you revere Him and worship Him as your God? Do you obey the voice of His Servant Jesus? And do you sometimes walk in darkness, not seeing the path ahead of you clearly, having to pass through times of suffering and affliction? Then do as Isaiah says: Let him trust in the name of the LORD and rely on His God. Because, just as the Lord God brought Christ, His Servant, through all His afflictions and through the times of darkness, so will He do for you who trust in His Servant. Because that’s why the Servant came, to suffer those things for you, to atone for your sins and to open the kingdom of heaven to you, who couldn’t have done a thing to deliver yourselves. And so God sent Christ the Deliverer to Israel, and now, to you in the Gospel. The words of St. Paul to the Romans echo the words of Isaiah: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

Finally, the Lord, through Isaiah, sends out a strong warning to those who would try to deliver themselves, to provide their own light, their own religion, their own spirituality, their own salvation: Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.

You can’t find your own way through the darkness of sin, or through the valley of the shadow of death. Don’t even try! Instead, rely on the Lord God and on Christ, the Lord’s Servant, who came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. Hope to be saved through His service, and you will never be disappointed. Amen.

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 7

Isaiah 49:14-26

This evening we restart our walk through Isaiah’s prophecy. Remember, we’re in that middle section, chapters 49-57, that focuses primarily on the deliverance God will provide through the coming Messiah. We pick it up tonight in the second half of chapter 49. In the first half, we saw a very clear prophecy about the Messiah, who is called Israel, but who will be sent to save Israel, and the Gentiles, too.

In this part of the chapter, Isaiah portrays Israel as being skeptical about all these promises of deliverance. It all sounds too good to be true. Isaiah foresees them sitting in captivity in Babylon after several decades have gone by. And they’ve almost given in to despair.

But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”

I’m sure it felt that way to them. I mean, how long do you have to suffer before you begin to wonder if the Lord has forsaken you? If God is even real at all? Hopefully you’ve never gotten to that point. But if you had been kidnapped and forced to live in a foreign country for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, with no rescue in sight? You might feel abandoned, forsaken. Even the Lord Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

In times like that, the only thing strong enough, sturdy enough to hold onto is a promise of God. It’s what sustained Jesus on the cross, the promise of His eventual deliverance and resurrection from the dead. It’s also what sustained the faithful in Israel through that long captivity, a promise like the one God had been speaking to them through the prophet Isaiah, a promise like the one the follows in our text:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.

What a beautiful promise, and one that has sustained, not only Old Testament Israel, but Christians throughout the ages! Some of God’s Old Testament promises apply mainly to Old Testament Israel. But when God describes Himself, His own qualities, His own characteristics, those things never change. And the “you” in these sentences, while it applies directly to Israel, also applies directly to all those to whom God has committed Himself, whom God has adopted as His children, whom He has brought into His house and into His covenant. Under the Old Testament, that was Israel. Now that Christ has come, it’s all the baptized, all who believe in Christ Jesus and have been brought into His Holy Christian Church.

The Lord wants Israel to think about the love and care of a mother for her nursing child. That devotion is practically the highest form of devotion we know, as human beings. But God says here that His devotion to His people goes beyond that devotion of a mother to her little child. Even a mother may forget her little child. But God won’t forget His people, or the promises He has made to them. He wants us to picture Him with our names engraved on the palms of His hands.

Your builders make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you. Lift up your eyes around and see; they all gather, they come to you. As I live, declares the LORD, you shall put them all on as an ornament; you shall bind them on as a bride does.

Your builders are coming, God promises, those who will rebuild your ruined homes, your cities, your streets, your temple that lies in ruin. You will go back to your homeland, O captive Israel, and you will remain there. Forever and ever, no matter what? No, but at least until the coming of the Christ. And after that, earthly property and country and society—what do these really matter anymore? After the Christ comes, your relationship to this world changes. It’s no longer about preserving your earthly things, your earthly home, or even your earthly life. It’s about serving Him in His kingdom and preparing for His return.

“Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land— surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children of your bereavement will yet say in your ears: ‘The place is too narrow for me; make room for me to dwell in.’

Here the Lord begins to broaden the scope of the promise. Yes, the city of Jerusalem would be rebuilt. Yes, the Jews would live in their homes again, back in the land of Israel. But here Isaiah pictures other residents, living side by side with the Jews. He pictures non-Jews streaming into the territory of Israel, filling it up so much that there’s no room for all the people. The borders of the land of Israel are too narrow. It’s too crowded there for all the people who will come in.

Then you will say in your heart: ‘Who has borne me these? I was bereaved and barren, exiled and put away, but who has brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; from where have these come?’ ” Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.”

It’s the Gentiles, streaming into Israel, streaming, that is, into the people of Israel, into the New Testament people of God. This is what the Christ would accomplish. By shedding His blood on the cross, He would redeem all people and offer His salvation to all people. No longer would the Church of God be restricted to one nation on earth. Now it would permeate every nation on earth, and Israel would stop being a geographic location. It would turn into a worldwide fellowship of Christians.

“Kings shall be your foster fathers,” Isaiah writes. In other words, the new people of Israel, made up of both Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus, will grow up in many nations, under many kings. The king, or president, doesn’t matter anymore. Because our true citizenship, as people of God, is in heaven. And earthly rulers are simply here to provide us with some measure of safety, so that we can hear the Gospel and come into the kingdom of God. The Lutherans of the 16^th and 17^th centuries applied that verse specifically to their Christian rulers, trying to convince them that they had a divine responsibility to take care of the Church, based on this verse. But Isaiah isn’t talking to the foreign kings here or giving them instructions. He’s simply giving Israel the good news that the New Israel founded by Christ would be multinational and far bigger than they could imagine.

Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued? For thus says the LORD: “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant be rescued, for I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine. Then all flesh shall know that I am the LORD your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

Israel had been prey for the Babylonians—easy prey, at that. Their armies were worthless. Their rulers were worthless. The Babylonians had conquered them easily and hadn’t lost any of their strength over the decades. They were the mighty, the tyrants. And yet here the Lord promises that He Himself would fight against the enemies of His people and would see to it that they were rescued, and that their enemies were punished.

That’s exactly what the Lord did when He worked out history to bring in the Medes and Persians at just the right time to defeat the Babylonians. And then He worked among those rulers to release the captive Israelites and allow them to return to their land. The strong men of Babylon were no match for the Stronger One in heaven.

And hopefully that reminds you of what Jesus once said about the strong man and the Stronger Man. Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued? Or as Jesus put it, When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils. You and I were easy prey for the devil, sinners, like the rest of men. But just as God, who is mightier than the mighty men of Babylon, stepped in to rescue His captive people, so Jesus, who is stronger that the devil in all his strength, stepped in to rescue us and to bring us out of the devil’s kingdom to the safety of His kingdom. And so the rescue of Israel from Babylon pointed ahead to our rescue from the devil. Although we still live in the devil’s territory here on earth, we are no longer members of His kingdom, through faith in Christ Jesus.

Could God now forsake us, the baptized members of His Church, while we still live in the devil’s territory? Could He forget about us here and fail to provide the help and the strength we need to make it to the end? Of course not! Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Amen.