The Lord rebukes those who are Israelites in name only

Sermon for Midweek of Holy Trinity

Isaiah 48:1-11

We continue this evening with our walk through the last 27 chapters of the book of Isaiah. Surely you’ve noticed by now that, at times, the Lord speaks very tenderly to the believing remnant of Israel in these chapters, and, at other times, in scathing rebuke toward the unbelieving majority. We can’t just listen to the pleasant words; we must also listen to the harsh. And the first half of chapter 48 is one of those harsh, scathing rebukes of Israel. Oh, the Lord God would still rescue them from their captivity in Babylon. But He wants them to understand that He’s doing it for His own name’s sake, in faithfulness to His own promises and for the sake of His own plans and designs for the good of those who will believe, not for the sake of those who stubbornly remain in impenitence and unbelief. Because the people of Israel, as a whole, even back then, were Israelites in name only.

“Hear this, O house of Jacob, Who are called by the name of Israel, And have come forth from the wellsprings of Judah; Who swear by the name of the LORD, And make mention of the God of Israel, But not in truth or in righteousness; For they call themselves after the holy city, And lean on the God of Israel; The LORD of hosts is His name:

As we said on Sunday morning, it’s not enough to believe in “a” god. In order to escape death and spend eternity in the presence of the true God, you have to know and believe in the true God,  in the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In these verses before us, we see that saving faith in the true God involves calling on His name “in truth” and “in righteousness,” lest you be an Israelite—or a Christian!—in name only. In other words, you can’t just be a member of a church, or go to church, or call yourself a Christian. You have to have a penitent and believing heart that actually turns away from sin in disgust, and that relies on the true God and seeks mercy and forgiveness from Him, for the sake of Christ. That’s what it means to be a Christian “in truth and in righteousness,” as Isaiah puts it here.

But that wasn’t the case with most in Israel, especially before they went into captivity in Babylon. They still practiced circumcision and went through with most of the temple rites and rituals that God had commanded. Like the Jews in Jesus’ day (and in ours!), they made much of being Abraham’s descendants and of being the people of God’s covenant, and of Jerusalem being the chosen city. But, as Isaiah had said earlier in his book and as Jesus once said of the Jews in His day, “These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.” At that time the Visible, outward Church of Israel was mostly made up of hypocrites, of non-believers in the true God and in the promised Christ. It was because of them that all Israel had to go into captivity in the first place. Take the warning that God gives you here and watch out of this kind of hypocrisy. Because it’s all too easy to be a Christian in name only, too.

“I have declared the former things from the beginning; They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it…Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you, Lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, And my carved image and my molded image Have commanded them.’

God reminds the people of Israel that He had foretold many parts of their history, including their rebellion and the coming exile. He told Abraham ahead of time about their four hundred years in slavery in Egypt, and about His promise to rescue them from it. He told the Israelites at Moses’ time about how things would go for them in the conquest of Canaan. He told them ahead of time what it would be like when kings would finally rule over them. He told them about the coming of the Assyrians to wipe out the northern kingdom. And He told them long ago, through Moses, and again through Solomon, and now very specifically through Isaiah, about the eventual exile of Jerusalem and Judea.

And why did He tell them, knowing that most wouldn’t heed the warning? For the sake of those who would! And also, as God says here through Isaiah, so that they could never come back and say, “It was my idol who has done all these things.” Because He knew how twisted they were—just as twisted as the people today who look at the universe and say, “God didn’t do this. Chance did it! Evolution did it! Some other god did it! My science will tell me who did it!” Even though God told us long ago in the Holy Scriptures the things that He has done, the things that He would do, and the things that He will do. He even told the world ahead of time many of the details surrounding the first coming of Christ. And now He has told us that Christ is coming again soon for judgment. Who will take it to heart?

“You have heard; See all this. And will you not declare it? I have made you hear new things from this time, Even hidden things…And before this day you have not heard them, Lest you should say, ‘Of course I knew them.’ …For I knew that you would deal very treacherously, And were called a transgressor from the womb.

Now, through Isaiah, God is offering new information. Not just a coming destruction of Jerusalem, but the identity of the destroyers, namely, the Babylonians. And He’s also giving them new information, not just the fact of a coming exile, but the length of it—70 years, as Jeremiah would specify—and also who would bring an end to that exile, namely, Cyrus, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and her temple. He’s also about to give them specific information about the coming Christ—about His suffering, death, and resurrection. Again, God will not allow His glory to go to an idol, nor will He leave any room for the Jews to take the glory to themselves for all this. No, God alone deserved the glory.

“For My name’s sake I will defer My anger, And for My praise I will restrain it from you, So that I do not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it; For how should My name be profaned? And I will not give My glory to another.

“For My name’s sake,” God says, I will defer My anger. Israel deserved to be completely wiped out for all their rebellions against God. But He had made some promises to them, promises that had to be kept, a plan that had to be carried out. He still had to bring His Son into the world, through Israel, through David’s descendants. Jerusalem still had to exist. And, at about the same time Isaiah wrote his prophecy, the prophet Micah was announcing the birthplace of the Christ in Bethlehem. So, no, God couldn’t wipe out Israel yet. For His own name’s sake, He would preserve them long enough for the Christ to come, so that He could be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.

God says here that He will not give His glory to another. He won’t share it with idols. He won’t share it with Israel. But He will share it with Jesus! Jesus said, the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. And He once prayed, And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. Those words of Jesus, combined with God’s words here in Isaiah 48, are some of the strongest testimonies in the whole Bible that Jesus is Jehovah God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

So even in this harsh rebuke of the unfaithful in Israel, we see God’s grace revealed to the faithful remnant, and we also see God’s own determination to bring His Son into the world, even through these rogues in Israel who bore the name of Israel, but bore it in name only.

Today, the nation of Israel doesn’t even call itself by God’s name anymore. Because, since the coming of Christ, the name of God necessarily includes the blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a name which the nation of Israel utterly rejects. Today, it’s the Christian Church that bears the name of Christ, and those who call themselves Christians are, outwardly, the people of God. So I call upon all of you Christians, who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Make sure that you bear the name of the triune God in truth and in righteousness, in daily contrition and repentance, with genuine faith in the Lord Jesus, and with righteous lives that truly reflect the righteousness that is yours by faith. The Lord rebukes those who are Israelites—or Christians—in name only. May you not be found among them, but among those who bear God’s name in truth and in righteousness. Amen.