(sermon only this week)
Sermon for Midweek of Advent 3
Isaiah 66:14-24
We’ve come to the end of our meditation on Isaiah’s prophecy. We’ve spent just over a year on it. I hope you’ve noticed over the past year that certain basic themes keep repeating throughout these 27 chapters, usually in contrasting pairs: Law and Gospel, judgment and salvation, threats and promises, comfort for the distressed, and distress for those who live in godless comfort, restoration and destruction, eternal life and eternal death, the end of Old Testament Israel and the beginning of the New Israel, the first advent of Christ in humility and the second one in glory. Back and forth Isaiah goes to those themes, repeating them over and over. We have them all before us in tonight’s reading as well. We also have a perfect example of the difficulty Old Testament readers must have had in recognizing the two separate advents of Christ, because Isaiah goes back and forth between them, foreseeing them both, as if they were just two sides of the same portrait, telling what he sees on one side, then on the other, back and forth. And just as there are two advents of Christ, so there are two messages and two outcomes for two very different groups of people, one for the faithful, the other for the faithless.
You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bones shall flourish like the grass; and the hand of the LORD shall be known to his servants. Here Isaiah is describing the second Advent of Christ, speaking to believers, about believers. And with Christ’s arrival at the end of the age comes heartfelt joy, and prosperity, and, finally, revelation! Revelation of what God has been doing all along, behind the scenes, how He has been guiding the world and the Church and our own lives to get to that moment of eternal victory. The hand of the LORD shall be known to his servants.
Still viewing Christ’s second Advent, Isaiah then speaks about unbelievers on that day: And the LORD shall show his indignation against his enemies. “For behold, the LORD will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to render his anger in fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the LORD enter into judgment, and by his sword, with all flesh; and those slain by the LORD shall be many. “Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following one in the midst, eating pig’s flesh and the abomination and mice, shall come to an end together, declares the LORD. “For I know their works and their thoughts. God is speaking here in the language of Old Testament Israel, including among their forms of rebellion how they thumbed their noses at God’s commands in the Law of Moses against eating pig’s flesh or mice or other unclean foods. Part of the idolatrous practices of Israel was intentionally breaking some of those laws, eating things that were forbidden. But since this is talking about the last day, it doesn’t only include Israel’s rebellion. It includes the rebellion of “all flesh,” as all men have thumbed their noses at God’s Word and God’s commandments, often making up their own invented forms of worship and expecting God to accept them. Those whom God finds still living in rebellion against Him on the Last Day will not escape the fire of God’s wrath and the sword of His condemnation. He will “slay” them all, which, as we’ll see shortly, doesn’t mean just putting them to death, but something much, much worse.
Now Isaiah turns his head to gaze at Christ’s first Advent. and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. There’s a subtle reference here to Jesus’ birth, when God first began to gather the nations to see His glory by bringing the wise men from the East to worship His newborn Son. The star was one of those “signs” that God set among them. But the cross was another one of those signs, as Jesus Himself said about His death on the cross, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will gather all peoples to Myself.”
Still looking at Christ’s first Advent, Isaiah goes on: And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. He’s talking about Jesus’ command to His apostles to Go and make disciples of all nations, to Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. He’s talking about Pentecost, when the nations first gathered in Jerusalem to hear about the fame and glory of the God who had given His Son into death so that all men might take refuge in Him and be incorporated into God’s holy family.
Now gazing at the time between Christ’s first and second Advent, Isaiah foresees the New Testament era: And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the LORD, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the LORD.
This is the success of the Gospel among the Gentiles, the building of the Christian Church over the centuries. The “holy mountain Jerusalem” is no longer the literal mountain on which the literal city of Jerusalem is built, but the spiritual mountain of the Church throughout the world, the spiritual Jerusalem, in which you and I are also citizens, as St. Paul said to the Ephesians: For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
The Lord even foretells the inclusion of the Gentiles in the New Testament ministry: And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the LORD. Now, you can’t literally make a Levite out of anyone. A Levite is literally a descendant of Jacob’s son Levi. But this is a figurative way of saying that God will take, not all New Testament Christians, but “some” of them to be called and ordained ministers, sent out, just as the original apostles were, to preach the glory of Christ among the nations.
Now Isaiah’s gaze turns one last time to Christ’s second Advent and the eternal glory of the Church after He comes again: “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the LORD, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD. Earlier, Isaiah saw the Lord slaying “all flesh” at Christ’s second Advent. Now, He sees “all flesh” coming to worship before the true God. The “all flesh” that was slain were the unbelievers. The “all flesh” that comes to worship are the believers, the sheep at the King’s right hand, from the parable of the sheep and the goats, the ones who are invited by the King to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world, where we will worship our God forever and ever.
The Lord closes out Isaiah’s book of prophecy with a final word about the eternal destiny of those who are found in unbelief on the Last Day: “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” Imagine putting these verses on a Christmas card! Does it seem strange that Isaiah would end on such a sour note, describing the eternal suffering of “the dead” in hell? Well, it’s no different from Jesus’ own preaching, who always preached comfort and joy to believers, judgment and anguish to unbelievers. A wide open invitation to the penitent to come into His kingdom, while the doors to the kingdom are closed shut to those who refuse God’s gracious invitation. Forgiveness and joy and the adoption as sons is what God wants for all men. That’s why He was born in Bethlehem. That’s why we’ll celebrate His birth next week. Because God wants all men to find their Savior in that manger. But make no mistake. Mankind has already earned his own condemnation. And for those who won’t seek God’s salvation from that condemnation in the manger, and on the cross, in the Son of God named Jesus, there will be a day of reckoning and an eternity of suffering.
But even this bad news is preached as a gift from God. This age of Christ’s first Advent is the time of grace, the time to repent, the time to enter Christ’s Church before He comes again. This age of Christ’s first Advent, including its warnings about eternal condemnation, is meant to bring all men to repentance, that all may escape the judgment, through faith in Christ Jesus, that all may be prepared to enter with Him, when He comes, into endless, glorious joy. Amen.
