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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Old Testament reading, the prophet Isaiah’s proclamation. You may be seated.
It’s always been the temptation of mankind to remove themselves from others who don’t share their point of view and not to intermingle. And this is a great temptation because when we have to live with others who have a different point of view than ours, we’ve got to bear their sins. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a city where everybody sees basically the same things the same way? Things would be different, wouldn’t they? We would think. Or would they?
To remove believers from the midst of unbelievers removes something else from those unbelievers. Removing believers from the midst of unbelievers removes the proclamation of salvation in Jesus Christ from those unbelievers. Therefore, God has always willed that believers be near and even of the same community as unbelievers. Paul said it in a different way: We are to be in the world but not of the world.
Now the positive aspect of believers being intermingled with unbelievers in a community is that the message of the gospel is always going to be in and amongst the unbelievers. Always. The negative aspect of believers living in a community of unbelievers is that believers have to bear with the sins, which are usually much more bold and egregious. But we have to bear the sins of the unbelievers.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to surf the internet and not have to come up with porn? Wouldn’t it be nice for our children to be able to be let loose on the internet, to look up things and not have to worry that they could be seeing porn? And yet that’s something we live with, being believers in a society that condones that.
Wouldn’t it be great not to have to drive down 35 or 290 on the south side or even North Lamar and explain what that building is all about? Why men go there. Why women do things there. And yet we live in a society that condones it. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have drug abuse and alcoholism? We see it on the streets as they beg for money for it.
There’s always a negative aspect of believers living among unbelievers, and that’s part of it: bearing the sins that they do. This is nothing new. God has always done this. He took the people of Israel and led them from where they were, which were nobody, Abraham, put them all over into the promised land, and they stayed pretty close-knit. But He put them in the midst of a pagan world. Then He put them in Egypt for a while.
And then Isaiah writes to them when they’ve been put into another country known as Babylon, which is present-day Iraq. The challenge is that they have to live and remain faithful among people who do not see things the way they do. And yet the blessing is that there are people in Babylon who came to faith because of them. One of them probably was Nebuchadnezzar.
We know that the faith took root in Babylon or in Persia because, 800 years later, after Isaiah’s prophecy roughly, wise men from that region travel all the way to see the baby Jesus, who is not just a baby, it’s God, to see God in the flesh of a baby. And they worship him and they take that back with them.
But for the people of Israel when they lived in Egypt and when they lived in Babylon and even when they lived in the promised land, they were always and continually being tempted away from truth. And they always and continually had to endure the sins of the unbelievers around them. And they got weary. And you and I get weary. We get tired of the nonsense, of the unbelievers and their sins and not seeing things the way Scripture reveals it. And we grow weary too.
Yes, both sides we know, but we grow weary. And we ask at times, when we see such sin, we ask, God, have you hidden your face from all of this? Do you not see this? And you know what? He has hidden His face from you. He’s not hidden His face from your heart of faith. He has hidden His face from your reason and senses.
You and I will never find God evidenced in a utopian society. We will only find God where He reveals Himself here. He shows Himself in that Word as being loving and gracious and patient with you. He shows Himself in the proclamation and in the sacrament as being merciful and patient and loving.
His countenance is before you as revealed. But out in the world, according to your reason and senses, away from faith, He will never reveal Himself to you. And yet we yearn for it at times because we want to see it. That’s what Isaiah wrote: Come down, rend the heavens, reveal yourself like you’ve done before.
But you know where the problem is? Just like Isaiah’s proclamation and the people’s problem and your and my problems, we forget. Let’s go back to the people of Israel when they were in Egypt. God rescued them, and the only prayer that the people prayed in Egypt is, Lord, come rescue us.
Oh, He rescued them. But did He do more than just rescue them? Holy cow. In rescuing the people of Israel from Egypt, He sacked the whole country because remember, He got the Egyptians to give all their gold to the Israelites? The second thing, not only did He rescue them through the Red Sea that was parted for them, but He, in one fell swoop, decimated the best standing army of the world at that time, the Egyptian army and all of their powerful figures known as chariots, all destroyed in the Red Sea in one fell swoop. So He not only delivered the people of Israel, but took a country that could not have been defeated by Israel and totally decimated Egypt from a world power to a know-nothing. More than they could have imagined. And then they complained while they were on the wilderness journeying, didn’t they? Forgetting what God had done.
Then there’s the Babylonians, which is what Isaiah is talking about. They’re going to be rescued from the Babylonians. But God’s not going to just rescue them from the Babylonians. God’s going to decimate the Babylonian culture. It will no longer exist because He’s going to raise up another culture known as the Persians. Cyrus and the Persians are going to come and completely control the Babylonians, putting them down, and God’s going to give Cyrus the desire to let them go back to Israel and let them rebuild in the promised land, the temple. More than they ever could have asked or imagined.
So the problem with the people, as it is with you and me, when we are overwhelmed, do you know what we typically do? We under-pray. When we are overwhelmed, we under-pray. Because of the weariness and enduring of the things that we have to endure, we see the deliverance in a very narrow band. And God, His will is so far beyond our myopic understanding. Self-centered point of view that He wishes to do more things than you and I can ask or imagine as He did in these people’s lives of Israel.
They only saw themselves as being put upon by God to have to go to Babylon. And God kept wanting them to see how He was bringing salvation to the Babylonian people and to another people known as the Persians. It’s easy for us to think that we’re enduring this trash in this country or in this world, and we wish for a better day of yore. There never has been a better day. There’s never been a better era in the United States. It happened in the dark and behind closets before. It’s just a little more in your face today.
It’s always been done. It happened in families that belonged to the church hundreds of years ago in this country, and it still happens in families who belong to the church today. God needs the light of the world in the midst of this darkness because God has a bigger plan—far more than ever we could ask or imagine.
When we are overwhelmed, we under-pray, and we think it’s only about us and not the bigger picture. Lord, teach us to pray. Even when the people were in bondage in Egypt, and even when the people were in bondage in Babylon, and even when you and I are enduring this, guess what? They and we are completely and utterly free in the midst of it.
We may be completely surrounded by wickedness prospering and by goodness floundering, but we are free, which is more than what we can say of those who go about their daily lives and need this light that you and I have. That’s why Isaiah prayed, “Lord, come down,” and do you know what? God showed what it’s like.
If you want to know what it looks like for a believer to stand in the midst of unbelief and what happens to them, look at Jesus. God, who is sinless and pure, enters into the cesspool of sin, humanity, and look what happens to Him. So that you can believe. So that you have a light. So that you are enlightened—ears that hear and eyes that see. But it cost Him dearly.
But had He not entered this realm as the light of the world, darkness would have reigned and we would still be in darkness and in hell. That’s what it looks like. This is the amazing thing. Paul said it in another way.
Paul said, “To Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be the glory forever and ever in the church in Christ Jesus.” Amen.
When we are overwhelmed, we definitely under-pray. And God has given us words to pray because He has come among us. He brings this revelation to Isaiah, because Isaiah is also the one that said, “The virgin shall conceive and bear forth a son.” Isaiah is the one who says that the one who shall come shall bring light to the nations, and so on and so on and so on.
But in the midst of this, we get weary. And overwhelmed, we typically underpray. And God reminds us of the promises He’s made. Isaiah says it clearly: “You are our Father.” In this day and age of broken marriages and broken families, to have a Father who will not walk away from His children, that’s a gift. And God will never walk away from you, no matter how stinky you and I get.
He goes on. Isaiah says, “We are the clay, you are the potter.” If He’s the Creator, He will never disavow His work because He only makes clay—things good and pleasing. He made you. Yes, you’re full of sin as am I. But He made you to redeem you. And He’s the potter. We are all the work of His hands.
The hands that showed themselves to the apostles in their fear in the upper room and said, “Peace be with you.” We are all your people, Isaiah says. He owns us. He claims us. He will not forsake us, and He did not forsake us. He only forsook whom? Jesus, so that you would never be forsaken, so that you would always be His shining light in this world.
Yes, O Lord, we thank You for rending the heavens and coming down. And we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, come,” at any moment so that You would free us from this world. But until then, He’s got other plans for you and for me—as lights in this world of darkness, for we are all the work of His hand. We are all His people.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.
