The different between “My servants” and “you”

Sermon for Thanksgiving Eve

Isaiah 65:13-16

We only have four verses before us from Isaiah’s prophecy this evening, and it won’t be too hard to find some applications to our theme of giving thanks to the Lord. As Isaiah’s prophecy draws closer to the end, the contrast becomes clearer and clearer between the righteous and the wicked, and between the very different ends and rewards that each group will have from the LORD, beginning in the New Testament era, and experienced fully after the resurrection. In these four verses, the contrast is made between “My servants” and “you.” So the most important thing we need to understand is, who is who?

In these verses, the Lord Yahweh says only good things, wonderful things, about “My servants.” Who are they? They are the ones who truly serve the true God, who truly worship the true God, who truly fear Him, who truly trust in Him, who truly love Him and are devoted to Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. And who are they? Well, they’re no one, by nature. No one is born with a heart that truly fears God or loves God or trusts in God. God has no servants among mankind, by nature.

But, as we learned over the past year in Isaiah’s prophecy, THE Servant of the LORD would come, the Lord Jesus Christ, and would serve the Lord perfectly, who would bear the sins of the world and suffer and die for them. And His Gospel would go out, showing mankind how no one has served the LORD by nature, but then inviting all men, both Jews and Gentiles, to repent and believe in THE Servant of the LORD, to be forgiven, to be saved, to be made into children of God—into servants of the Lord Yahweh, children of God who serve our Father and seek to do His will, not as slaves, but as sons, who love our Father because He first loved us and gave His only Son for us. Christians—penitent, baptized believers in Christ Jesus—are “His servants.”

The “you” in these verses is directed at Old Testament, unbelieving, impenitent Israel (and, by extension, it applies to all unbelievers). “You” refers to the sinners who refused to repent, who held onto their sins, who insisted on believing whatever they wanted, living however they wanted, ultimately serving themselves and not the Lord God.

What will be the outcome for each group? Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, My servants shall eat, But you shall be hungry; Behold, My servants shall drink, But you shall be thirsty; Behold, My servants shall rejoice, But you shall be ashamed; Behold, My servants shall sing for joy of heart, But you shall cry for sorrow of heart, And wail for grief of spirit.

The two outcomes will be vastly different for “My servants” and for “you.” The differences are portrayed here in earthly terms. “My servants” get to eat and drink and rejoice and sing with gladness of heart, while “you” go hungry and thirsty, and suffer shame, and sorrow and grief. Now, in this life, it’s hard to see a distinction between believers and unbelievers, but it’s not entirely impossible. Believers and unbelievers alike suffer illness, and scarcity, and tragedy, and death. In fact, sometimes the wicked seem to prosper far more than the righteous. But if you look closely, you can, usually, see a difference even now, mainly in the fact that the believer knows gratitude and contentment. St. Paul writes, I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. The believer knows how to give thanks to God, in every situation. Not that our sinful flesh is ever content or eager to give thanks. But the New Man inside of you, the real you, who knows that we have a gracious Father for Jesus’ sake, the real you knows that God is always good, and that it is always good and right to give thanks to Him for every morsel of food, for every gift, for every breath. Meanwhile, the unbeliever is always missing something, even in the midst of plenty. Because he has God for an enemy, not for a friend, and part of the unbeliever knows that there will be a reckoning, but he doesn’t want to flee in faith to Christ to escape condemnation.

But the difference between believers and unbelievers will be made plainly obvious to everyone at the resurrection, when Christ comes again. We’ve seen that distinction very clearly the last two Sundays as they showed us glimpses of the Last Day, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, and in the different outcomes for the wise and the foolish virgins. It’s the same thing Isaiah pictures for us this evening, with pure comfort and joy for “My servants,” and pure torment and sorrow for “you,” that is, for the unbelievers.

What else does God have to say to “you,” that is, to those who are not “His servants”? You shall leave your name as a curse to My chosen; For the Lord GOD will slay you, And call His servants by another name; So that he who blesses himself in the earth Shall bless himself in the God of truth; And he who swears in the earth Shall swear by the God of truth.

Speaking to Old Testament, impenitent, apostate Israel, the unbelieving Jews, God says, “you shall leave your name as a curse to My chosen.” In other words, because of your unbelief, you will give up the name of “Israel” and the name of the “Jews” and hand it over to those who truly worship God, who believe in His Christ. This is just what St. Paul talks about in the New Testament, that Christians are the true Israel. But we don’t usually go by that name, do we? Because the name of Israel is so closely associated with those who rejected and still reject Jesus as the Christ, with those whom God permanently cursed with destruction already in the first century AD. And so the name “Israel” has now, in a sense, become a curse for us. But God promises here to call His servants by “another name.” Now, instead of “Israel,” God’s people, His true worshipers, are known as Christians. And at the resurrection, Jesus promises to give His people an even more glorious name, as He says in Rev. 3: 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 concludes, Because the former troubles are forgotten, And because they are hidden from My eyes. The glory that awaits God’s servants is so great that neither we nor even God Himself will give a thought to all the troubles that came before. As Paul says to the Romans, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. This is the glory that God’s servants, God’s saints, have to look forward to.

So as you turn your thoughts at Thanksgiving time, with gratitude in your hearts, to all the earthly blessings God has given you, be sure to give thanks to Him most of all for revealing His beloved Son to you, for inviting you to enter His service by faith, for giving you other servants of God to walk through this life with you in His holy Church, and for the promise that He will come again soon to bring His servants into that eternal inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. Amen.