The Lord will not forget His people

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.