“God Always Planned to Save Us!” Isaiah 66.18–23 Pentecost 14C, Aug. ‘13

1.   Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word this 14^th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Isaiah 66:18-23.  Here in this last chapter of Isaiah we notice that, “God has always planned to save us” from our sins, from death, and the power of the devil.  We see that He’s planned to save us from certain destruction through His miraculous love, and for thankful service to Him and His Kingdom.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.  Ever since man’s fall into sin in Genesis chapter 3 God has been at work in His gracious plan of salvation.  In the Bible we can trace the course of the gospel message in our Lord Jesus, the promised seed of Abraham, as it made its way from God’s Old Testament people to the members of his New Testament church. We watch God’s mission plan unfold as the Gospel message was passed from Jews to Gentiles and back to Jews again.  Here in Isaiah 66 we see a warning that God won’t tolerate the abuse of His saving Word. Those who don’t regard that Word as their most prized possession will lose it. But as the psalmist says, “[God] does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” (Ps 103:10). Instead of showing forth His glory by completely destroying us God brings to light the glory of His love for us in Christ Jesus. According to this grace, He not only saves us, but He makes us thankful priests in His service and heirs of His eternal kingdom.

3.  God has always planned to save us from certain destruction!  Isaiah 66:18 & 21 says, “For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory…21And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the LORD.”  If we were to flip on our TVs right now, we would see the most sophisticated communications technology in the history of man declaring the glory of diet plans and new improved bathroom cleansers and low-rate credit cards. These are the trivializing works and thoughts of man, our stupid self-salvations. Thank God, the time is coming when all nations and tongues will see God’s glory! And right now God is sending missionaries, pastors, and laypeople to the ends of the earth to spread the good news about true and worthwhile salvation in Christ.

4.  Though God has reason to judge the wicked of every nation, his judgment begins with the chosen of Israel who rejected his grace. Those of Israel who thought themselves “the church” for no other reason than they were Abraham’s physical descendants would find themselves cast out of the true Israel of God forever.  This prophecy of judgment in Isaiah 66 causes all of us to tremble in fear of God’s anger. How often we’ve tried God’s patience, chasing after the many gods worshiped by our unbelieving world. Time and again we have abused God’s grace and ignored his precious truth. We’ve grown careless in our worship, fooling ourselves into thinking that our church membership, and nothing more, will be the “magic key” that unlocks the doors of heaven. We’re all guilty of the very sins that brought God’s wrath down upon the hypocrites in Israel.

5.  Isaiah 66:24 says, ²⁴“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.”  This is a chilling way for a great book to conclude. Isaiah’s vision closes with the final destiny of all who rebel against God’s purpose of grace. Their destiny is Hell.  And what is Hell? It’s hearing the voice of Jesus say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Hell was not prepared for you but for the devil. Heaven was prepared for you.  Jesus says in John 14:2, 3, “²In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

7.  All you have to do to go to Hell forever is stay on your present course of self-salvation. The outcome of your rejection of God will be God’s eternal rejection of you, because rejecting his free salvation is the sin of all sins. It’s rejecting Heaven. And how can people who reject Heaven end up there? God knows when he’s not welcome, and he knows what to do about it. “Hell says not merely a temporary no but an eternal no to sin.… Hell is especially for those who think they are too good to be helped by God.… Hell receives those who imagine themselves good; Jesus receives those who know themselves sinners.”  Those who continue to stay away from the lifesaving message of God’s Word, from Christian worship, and the Sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and the Word of Absolution given by the pastor in worship are putting themselves in danger of the fires of hell.

8.  Does Isaiah’s final warning about Hell embarrass you? It didn’t embarrass Jesus. In Mark 9:48 he quotes Isaiah 66:24 to describe Hell. Not only is he straightforward about human suffering in this world, he’s honest about human suffering in the next world. There are only two final destinies for each one of us eternal life or eternal death.  That’s why God has planned to save us from hell through His Son Jesus Christ so that we may enter through the narrow door that leads to eternal life through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead for us.

9.  Throughout his book, the prophet Isaiah presents us with alternatives: Trust the Lord and live, or rebel against the Lord and die. He explains the grace and mercy of God and offered His forgiveness. He’s also explained the holiness and wrath of God and warned of His judgment. He’s promised glory for those who will believe in Jesus as their Savior and judgment for those who scoff. He explains the foolishness of trusting man’s wisdom and the world’s resources.

10.  Isaiah calls us back to spiritual reality. He warns against hypocrisy and empty worship. He pleads for faith, obedience, a heart that delights in God, and a life that glorifies God.  “ ‘There is no peace,’ saith the Lord, ‘unto the wicked’ ” (Isa. 48:22; 57:21); for in order to have peace, you must have righteousness (32:17). The only way to have righteousness is through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:19–31).  And where does this saving faith come from?  Romans 10:17 says, “¹⁷So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”  Isaiah’s message has been, “Be comforted by the Lord!” (Isaiah 12:1; 40:1–2; 49:13; 51:3, 19; 52:9; 54:11; 57:18; 61:2; 66:13). But God can’t comfort rebels! If you are sinning against God and are comfortable about it, something is terribly wrong. That false comfort will lead to false confidence, and that will lead to the chastening hand of God.  Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.”  Isaiah 1:18 says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”  And Isaiah 12:1 says, “O Lord, I will praise You; though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.”

11.  God himself came down into this world and suffered Hell out of love for us, to save us from our folly. It’s time for us to humble ourselves. It’s time to change the subject in our minds from blaming God for ruining the world to owning our real moral guilt before him, so that we can receive his saving love in Christ.  It was on a Friday morning when they took me from the cell and I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well. You can blame it on Pilate, you can blame it on the Jews, you can blame it on the devil. It is God that I accuse. It’s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me, I said to the carpenter hanging on the tree. Now Barabbas was a killer, and they let Barabbas go. But you are being crucified for nothing here below, and God is up in heaven and he doesn’t do a thing with a million angels watching and they never move a wing. It’s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me, I said to the carpenter hanging on the tree.

12.  Don’t you see by now? Christ crucified saves sinners. Don’t you see in Jesus’ sufferings the measure of how much he loves sinners like us?  That He was willing to die for you. Don’t you see that it’s time to stop raging at him and to start worshiping him? It’s time. And for every one of us, time is rapidly coming to an end.  Thanks be to God then that He planned to save us through His Son Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

“There’s No Comparison!” Jeremiah 23.16-29, Pentecost 13C

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 13^th Sunday after Pentecost comes to us from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah 23:16-29.  Here in Jeremiah we see that there’s no comparison between the message of the false prophets and the message of the Lord.  The words of the false prophets are lies, but the Word of the Lord is truth.  The message is entitled, “There’s No Comparison!”  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                  False prophets not only get their information from false sources, but they also preach a false message. First, they deny the sinfulness of sin. They don’t turn God’s people “from their evil ways and from their evil deeds” (23:22b). Instead, they tell people whatever they want to hear (cf. 2 Timothy 4:3).  This is often the problem with false theology. It teaches something less than total depravity, that we are all conceived and born into sin and are unable to save ourselves. It condones immorality instead of condemning it. It doesn’t take sin as seriously as God takes it. In other words, it does not take sin seriously enough! The proof that our own culture does not take sin seriously is the way that sin has been redefined. Moral failings are treated as bad habits or honest mistakes or diseases or psychological disorders—anything except what they actually are: sins.  The false prophets of Jeremiah’s day were soft on one sin in particular:  Jeremiah 23:14 says, “Among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen something horrible: They commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his wickedness. They are all like Sodom to me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”  Jeremiah was probably referring to adultery, both in the spiritual sense of worshiping other gods, and in the physical sense of sexual sin. The prophets were repeating one of Satan’s lies, the lie that there is no harm in sex outside of marriage.

3.                  Jeremiah’s reference to Sodom and Gomorrah suggests that part of the problem in Jerusalem was homosexual sin. The men of Sodom and Gomorrah wanted to have sex whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted, and with whomever they wanted. When angels came to visit Lot in Sodom, the neighbors surrounded his house and demanded, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them” (Genesis 19:5). The Sodomites reveled in all kinds of sexual sin.

4.                  This is a warning to any follower of Christ who continues to give into homosexual sin, or with any other sexual sin for that matter. To think that it’s safe to dabble in lust, pornography, or adultery is to listen to a false message. The lie of pro-gay theology is that a homosexual lifestyle has the blessing of God. That is a false message. The Bible teaches that all sexual fantasies and actions outside of Biblical marriage are sin. Of course, there is forgiveness for every sin in Christ. But the full extent of God’s grace cannot be learned by minimizing the sinfulness of sexual sin. A sin must be called a sin so that grace can be grace all the way through the Christian’s sexuality.

5.                  Not only were the false prophets soft on sin, but they were also silent about God’s wrath. Once they denied the sinfulness of sin, it made perfect sense to deny the justice of judgment. One false message leads to the other. Along with “easy views of sin go rosy views of judgment.”  “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes.…They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ ” (Jeremiah 23:16a, 17)  Literally, the false prophets held out “vain hopes,” like the “vanities” of Ecclesiastes. They told people that Jerusalem would not be destroyed and that God would not punish their sins.

6.                  The false prophets in the postmodern church say the same thing. They teach that God is not angry with sinners, just disappointed. H. Richard Niebuhr put it best when he described the old liberal theology as that system of doctrine in which “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” If there is no wrath, no sin, and no judgment, then who needs a cross?

7.                  Jeremiah 23:23-24 says, “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.”  You can almost imagine God shaking his head. How can everyone forget so easily? God is omnipresent and omniscient. He knew what was going on. He knew of Judah’s growing idolatry and immorality. He knew what the false prophets were thinking and saying. Did they think they could get away with it? Did they think he would not object to the negative influence they were having on his people? Did they think he wouldn’t do anything about it?

8.      Jeremiah 23:26 says, “How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?”  False prophets still exist today. Whenever someone preaches or teaches contrary to the Word and will of God, they identify themselves as false. Look at some of the fastest growing churches today. They are the ones that tell people what they want to hear. No one likes to be called to repentance. People don’t like to be told that they are sinners in need of Jesus who died on the cross for their sins.  That that they can’t contribute to their own salvation, that they need a Savior from sin. Since people don’t like to hear those things, they are drawn to those churches, preachers, and teachers that say “what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Ti 4:3). All people want to hear that they are basically good. Our sinful human nature wants us to believe that we can contribute to our own salvation. Our sinful society wants us to believe that what God calls a sin isn’t necessarily a sin. Wherever one finds an improper distinction between law and gospel, false prophets abound.

9.      Jeremiah 23:28-29 says, “Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”   God’s warning rings out. Don’t be fooled. There is no comparison between the words of men and the Word of God. Let the prophets say what they want to say, but then compare their words There is no comparison between the words of false prophets and God’s Word. Neither is there any comparison between straw and grain. Only grain provides nourishment. In the same way, only God’s Word provides spiritual nourishment.  God’s Word is not like the hollow words of men. Like fire, it purifies. And like a hammer, God’s Word is powerful. It is strong enough to destroy any opposition.

10.  Through the old familiar means of grace, the proclamation of God’s Holy Word, and through the Sacraments, God draws near to us even when we’ve strayed far away from Him and He promises to give us His Son Jesus through His Word and Sacraments….  God still calls out to us in his familiar, comforting Word (vv 28–29).  He would still speak to them in their distant exile through his faithful prophets.  He is always calling out to us, despite our wandering after false words, with his saving Word of truth, the familiar message of Christ’s cross and resurrection.   And that familiar, comforting Word with the Sacraments does bring us near to our God again (vv 23–24).  God would bring Judah home to a new temple after 70 years.  God gathers us to himself around Christ’s Word and Sacrament now and forever in heaven.   Truly, our God is a loving God who wishes to draw us to himself. He does that in his grace and mercy through the familiar proclamation of his Word here in this holy place and through the familiar administration of the Sacraments here in this holy place. We who have been afar off have been brought close by these familiar, self-declared means of salvation so that we would be comforted and consoled with that which they bring and offer.  Amen.