Trinity 12
Isa
29:17-24
9/3/17
If you go to northern Lebanon today,
you can visit the Cedars of God. At this
site in the mountains of Lebanon there is a preserved cedar forest. This forest is almost all that remains of the
cedar trees that used to cover Lebanon.
For a several millennia cedar
forests of Lebanon were used by the peoples of the Near Eastern world as a
source of lumber. The Phoenicians, the
Israelites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the
Romans, the Turks and during World War I even the British all used the cedars
of Lebanon as a source of wood for construction in an area of the world that
has very little lumber suitable for that purpose. With good reason Lebanon’s flag has a cedar
tree on it.
However, several thousand years of
use have stripped most of the cedar trees from Lebanon. The Cedars of God is
one of the last places where you can see what Lebanon looked like in the time
of Isaiah during the eighth century B.C.
In Isaiah’s day Lebanon was covered with cedar trees. The forests of Lebanon were considered to be
mighty and impressive.
That situation is what Isaiah is
talking about in our Old Testament lesson today when he says, “Is it not yet a very little while
until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field
shall be regarded as a forest?” Isaiah
describes a great reversal. He says that
Lebanon will be turned into farmland. In
Isaiah’s day, the amount of work that would take was unimaginable. And at the same time, Isaiah says that
farmland will be regarded as a forest. This too was a change that was difficult
to fathom.
This great
change – this great reversal – was something that was going to happen. But first Jerusalem and Judah were going to
be punished. In this chapter, Isaiah
explains part of the reason. He says, “Because
this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while
their hearts are far from me.”
The nation was going through the
motions of worship at the temple.
Sacrifices were being offered. But
their hearts were far from God. They
were worshipping other gods as well. They were not living according to the
Torah that God had given to the nation through Moses, as they oppressed the
poor and vulnerable.
Beyond that, the people thought they
had it all figured out. In the verse just before our text Yahweh said through
the prophet, “You
turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the
thing made should say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the
thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?
You are
here at the Divine Service this morning – and that is great. But it doesn’t mean you have escaped Isaiah’s
words. Sure you draw near with your mouth and
honor him with your lips, but is your heart are far from him? When you leave this building does your faith
show through in your life? Do you live
in ways that show God has saved you and made you his child?
And are you buying into what the
world is selling? Are you embracing a
world view that says there is no ordering to the world – that there is only
what we decide it will be? Because of
course the world looks at God’s revelation and says, “He has no
understanding.” Are you accepting the
idea that marriage is whatever we want it to be – two men; two woman; more than
two people, whatever? Are you accepting
the idea that God’s gift of sexuality can be used in any way we want – sex as
part of dating; couples living together outside of marriage? Are you allowing your children’s behavior to
erode your adherence to God’s will as you accept their sin?
At the beginning of the chapter
Yahweh addressed Jerusalem. He said punishment for their sin was coming. He told them, “And I will encamp against you all
around, and will besiege you with towers and I will raise siegeworks against
you.” Sure enough in 701 BC the Assyrian
army conquered the northern kingdom of Israel.
And then it kept rolling south into Judah as it took on fortified
position after another. Finally, it laid siege to Jerusalem. The Assyrian leaders stood outside the
besieged city and mocked Yahweh the God of Israel. None of the gods of all the other peoples
they had conquered had stopped the Assyrians, and Yahweh would be no different.
Yet earlier
in this chapter, Yahweh had said, “And in an instant, suddenly, you will be
visited by the LORD of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise,
with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire. And the
multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, all that fight against
her and her stronghold and distress her, shall be like a dream, a vision of the
night.”
God
promised to act and make the enemy disappear – like something that turns out to
be only a dream when a person wakes up. This is the great reversal he describes
in our text – Lebanon turned into farmland, and farmland considered to be a
forest. Or as Isaiah goes on to say, “In
that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and
darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in
the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel. For
the ruthless shall come to nothing and the scoffer cease, and all who watch to
do evil shall be cut off.”
And God did
it. He sent forth the angel of the Lord
who killed 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers in one night. The Assyrian army had
to withdraw and Jerusalem was delivered.
It was something the people continued to remember.
This
dramatic saving action is described in poetic language in our text – hyperbole to
be sure. We are told, “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and
out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see.” But this saving action by God for his people pointed
forward to something even greater.
God acted in
an unexpected way to save Jerusalem from a besieging army. He sent the angel of the Lord to rescue
them. But in order to rescue us when we
were besieged by sin, death and the devil he did not send an angel. Instead, he sent his own Son.
In the
incarnation, the Son of God – the second person of the Trinity – entered our world
and became flesh as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin
Mary. He began his ministry by saying,
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe
in the Gospel.”
Jesus
Christ announced that in his person the kingdom of God – the reign of God – had
broken into this fallen world in order to reclaim it for God. He had come to free people from all of the
ways that sin had besieged lives. In his
case it was not hyperbole. He actually
healed people. He gave hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind. In so doing he demonstrated that the end time
salvation of God was present.
And then in
order to free us forever from sin, he took our sin upon himself and died on the
cross. He received God’s judgment against our sin in order to allow us to be
judged by God as righteous. He suffered death, so that by passing through death
and out of the tomb on Easter morning he could free us from death’s grasp. Because Jesus rose from the dead, your body
may be placed in a grave. But death cannot separate you from the risen Lord.
And that grave will be just a temporary resting place for your body. For on the
Last Day the ascended Christ will return and will give you and your body a
share in his resurrection. His
resurrection is the first fruits – the first part of the final victory that
will be yours.
In our text
Isaiah says, “Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale.
For when he sees his children, the work of my hands, in his midst, they will sanctify
my name; they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of the
God of Israel.” We look upon what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and stand
in awe of God. We stand in awe as the
incarnate Lord Jesus continues to be bodily present with us in the Sacrament of
the Altar to give us forgiveness and strengthen our faith.
And because
God has done this for us in Christ we now sanctify his name. This is the very
thing Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Hallowed be thy
name.” God’s name is holy in itself, but
as those who bear his name – as those baptized into the triune name of God – we
seek to keep his name holy among us also.
We do this as the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity and we,
as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it.
In word and
deed we seek to hallow God’s name because he has already made us holy. In baptism we have been clothed with
Christ. God sees not our sin but instead
Jesus. As those in Christ we are holy in
God’s eyes. We are saints. And now by
the work of the Spirit who sanctified us by giving us faith in Jesus Christ, we
seek to sanctify his name – to hallow it in what we say and do. We seek to live in faith toward God and love
toward our neighbor.
This is
only possible because of him who caused the deaf to hear the words of a book
and rescued the eyes of the blind out of gloom and darkness by giving them
sight. It is only possible because the
One who was crucified burst out of the gloom and darkness of the tomb. Because of Jesus Christ the risen Lord we are
holy in God’s eyes and through the work of the Spirit we now seek to sanctify
his name.
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