1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word this 11th
Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Isaiah 51:1-6, it’s entitled, “Stop, Look, & Listen,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
These days
skimming through the news is wearing down our spirits. The death of Robin
Williams, looting & violence in St. Louis, Islamic terrorists, civil war in
Ukraine, Nigerians girls still kidnapped, the ongoing conflict between Hamas
and Israel… Wave after wave of bad news, so much that we can’t ignore
it. What’s going on? It’s bad news
like this that gets us to want to: Stop,
Look, & Listen to what God is doing around us.
3.
So, as we stop,
look, & listen to what’s going on around us what is it that we see? We see original sin having a field day.
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5) Original sin
means that all human beings are born with sin, born with evil lusts and
inclinations, born without true faith or fear in God. Like a tree that
produces its own kind of fruit, sinners produce sin. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”
(John 3:6) Many people have a more positive view of human nature but look
at the evidence. After thousands of years, the world is still a terrible
mess: violence, war, &
bloodshed. The evidence is in and it supports original sin.
4.
So
how can we keep from becoming hopeless and full of despair in a world full of
this sin, full of bad news, and death? The
prophet Isaiah was writing to God’s people in the Old Testament in a time of
great difficulty. This is what he wrote,
““Listen to
Me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you
were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug.” (Isa.
51:1).
5.
One of the greatest temptations we as Christians face when they go
through hard times is to think that God
can’t or won’t save them, I’m sure that Christians facing persecution in Iraq
and across the globe may have feelings like this as well right now. The few true believers left
in Isaiah’s day certainly were reduced to this
kind of doubt. They had remained faithful to God through all their trials, and
yet they wondered whether He really could free them from their bondage.
6.
Isaiah prophesies
to a people who will be in exile. To them, it would be easy to look back upon
their history and see how their sin had destroyed God’s promises. A glorious
city, lively worship, God’s calling and blessing of them as his people, all now
are in ruins. But, Isaiah enters this
scene of devastation and lifts up his voice. He calls for people to close their
eyes, to stop, look, and listen as he tells them of God’s work in their history
(Isaiah 56:1). Isaiah says, “1“Listen to me, you who pursue
righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.”
Through Isaiah God calls the
people to look back to Abraham and Sarah, wandering and barren. Out of these
two strangers in a strange land, God brought about a nation. The voice reveals
the power of God to bring many out of one (Isaiah 56:2) and, ultimately, to
work all things to restore his creation (Isaiah 56:3). Again Isaiah says, “2Look 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. 3For
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.”
7.
Today we live in
a culture that speaks to us of what we want for the future and what we think is
possible to achieve. But, because of these voices, we can easily forget our
creation and calling by God. In a land of plenty, we can be exiled from God. Our
efforts to establish a comfortable life blind us to God’s vision and leave us
in sin. Isaiah’s call to listen comes to us as well.
8.
Isaiah tells us
that when Israel looked to the rock, they saw Abraham and the power of God to
make many from one. Today, we look to the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ. In our Gospel lesson today from Matthew 16
Peter makes the bold confession that’s the rock and foundation of the Christian
Church and the confession is this, “You are the Christ, the
Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon
Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who
is in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” In Jesus,
God has fulfilled his work begun in Abraham. From our Lord Jesus the one who
died on the cross for us and rose from the dead, God has forgiven us our sin
and raised us up. We are the Christian
church built on the rock and foundation of Jesus Christ our chief cornerstone. The community of the faithful that listens to
him.
9.
Maybe you can
remember the emptiness
and hopelessness you had before you became a believer in Jesus. But, God
brought you out of that and filled you with His Holy Spirit when you heard the Word of the Gospel of Jesus as
your Savior and were baptized into God’s family by water and the power of the
Word of God. He sanctified you and showed you His
abundant grace. Though we sometimes don’t realize it, we have come a long way
from those days when we had no hope. God did that for us, and though we might be facing hard times, God will continue to sustain us and give us the grace to live
according to His righteousness. We need only take our eyes off the
circumstances in which we find ourselves and put them on Jesus. He’s redeemed
us from the pit and has crowned us with love and compassion. Let us not toss
that aside when we run into a few bumps in the road. Let’s stop, look, &
listen to God’s work for us in the past and trust that He who began a good work
in us will bring it to completion.
10.
If you’re going through hard times
right now and doubt whether you can get through them, spend some time to stop,
look, & listen to God’s Word and remember the things he has done to save
your through His Son Jesus Christ. When
the media asks us to look at the world around us (the heavens and the earth of
v 6a), we see change and decay. Stories of natural disasters, sectarian
violence, and so on, raise fears about the future. But, Isaiah offers us a vision of hope. As we look to the heavens and the earth and
confess that because of our sin this world won’t last, Isaiah asks us to listen
to God. God speaks of his salvation, which will be forever (v 6b). The work that God has done in Christ, the
righteousness that he has given to you, will never fade or perish or be taken
away. Isaiah 51 begins with the people
seeking the Lord (v 1). But, by the end of Isaiah 51, the Lord is revealed.
Such is the power of God’s voice. Whatever burdens you carry this day take a
moment to stop, look, & listen to the voice of God from Isaiah. It opens
your eyes to see God’s salvation at work, in the past, in the present, and in
the future. Amen.
11.
Please pray with me: Lord, security exists only in You. I so readily trust in everything else and
take it for granted that my life is dependent on things I can put my hands
on. I like to trust in myself, thinking
I can get by with what I can do and what I have. And yet everything is dependent upon
You. I thank You for the new day You
have given me today. I thank you that my
body and brain work, that my heart beats, and for all the mysterious functions
of my body I can’t control or understand.
I know you are in command of all this.
But most of all, I thank you because You hold your hand over the whole
world and guide everything toward the goal you have set. It’s assuring to know that everything is in
Your hands, everything I can do nothing about.
It’s enough for me to know that You have a plan and purpose for my life
and my days. Your will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Amen.
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