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Archives For Bible – Isaiah

A Feast for the Hungry

March 31, 2013 — Leave a comment

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” (Is. 55:1)

Isaiah promised the restoration of Israel and said that the sign of that restoration would be a lavish feast spread for the hungry without cost. This is that feast. There is no cost to eat here. But there is a requirement. The requirement is that you must be thirsty. The requirement is that you must have no money. You must want to be here.

The great ongoing challenge of the church is proclaiming this grace, this open-armed grace. On the one hand, what could be more easy? Have you sinned? Just come, there’s forgiveness for you. Have you messed up with your kids, with your spouse, just come. There’s mercy, there’s grace. Have you been bruised, hurt, abused? Come, Jesus’ blood is strong. Jesus’ blood can make the foulest clean, can heal every broken heart. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Church Calendar, Eucharistic Meditations, Grace, TRC

Broken for the Broken

March 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

This table is for sinners. This meal is not for good people. This bread is not for people who have their act together. This wine is not for people who have never made enormous mistakes. No, this bread is broken because Jesus was broken for the broken. This wine is His blood because Jesus bled for the guilty. We do not gather here at this table as the top of the class, as the winners, the success stories, the clean, the innocent, the popular, the good looking. No, we are here as the failures, the losers, the guilty, the outcasts, the rejected, the ugly.

There are any number of ways we could get the idea of a new building wrong. As we prepare for this new stage in our story as TRC, we should be thinking and praying about the ways we will be tempted. One danger is the temptation that we will think we have arrived, that we are now a respectable church, full of good, squeaky clean people. Yes, we are a forgiven people. Yes, by the grace of God, we are healed and healing people. Yes, we have been given many blessings. But if we understand who we are in the light of God’s grace, we have to constantly remember where we have come from and how far we have to go. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Eucharistic Meditations, Evangelism, Justice & Mercy, Lent

The Exodus of Jesus

March 19, 2013 — Leave a comment

Our sermon text is about a new Exodus that God promises through Isaiah, an Exodus out of exile into freedom, into glory. In the gospels, the turning point in Jesus’ ministry, when He turns His face toward Jerusalem, is the transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, and He shines with the glory of His coming victory. And Luke’s gospel says explicitly that what they talked about was the Exodus that He was about to perform in Jerusalem (Lk. 9:31). In other words, the great Exodus that Isaiah foretold began when the exiles returned under Cyrus, but that only prefigured the Great Exodus of Jesus. And like the first Exodus, Jesus began with a meal, shared with His disciples, and He told them to keep celebrating it until He comes again in glory. Isaiah commands a number of things for keeping the Passover Feast which we should keep in mind: Wake up, get dressed, be on the look out, rejoice, get ready to leave, and the sign of their departure will be God’s servant, a new Moses, who will be greatly exalted, but He will be surprising because His appearance will be marred. Week after week, we come to this same table, to celebrate this same Exodus, and so the commands are still for us: Continue Reading…

In Bible - Exodus, Bible - Isaiah, Bible - Luke, Eucharistic Meditations, Theology - Sacraments

The Public Gospel

March 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

One of the hallmarks of Peter Leithart’s work has been the public nature of the Christian faith. To say that Jesus is King is to make a highly charged political claim. Worship is a political act. The sacraments are public, objective realities that proclaim cosmic truth to power regardless of and often despite the intentions of the people involved in them. Baptism means that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. The Supper proclaims the victorious and vicarious death of Jesus to the world until He comes. And this is all because the Word of God is living and powerful and thunders from heaven and demands obedience, allegiance, loyalty. God’s truth trumps all pretenders.

The last couple of weeks Pastor Leithart has continued his series through the book of Isaiah, and he has reminded us particularly that the prophet Isaiah was not foretelling a future for Israel that could exist only in their hearts. The prophet’s burden is not something that might remain safely within the confines of the minds of certain exiled Jews. Isaiah was not trying to calm everyone down, giving them a religious pacifier to suck on while the uncircumcised rejoice over the destruction of Jerusalem. No, if anything, Isaiah is trying to get the people worked up, excited, rambunctious. Yes, he promises peace and comfort, but this is the peace and comfort of victory, the peace and comfort of deliverance from their enemies, the peace and comfort of coming home. In other words, the salvation Isaiah foretold can’t leave Israel in exile, can’t leave Jerusalem in ruins, and therefore cannot be a merely private experience. God’s justice is public. God’s righteousness is always for everyone to see. It stops the mouths of kings, and it does so because they read about it in the morning paper.

What follows is my own ruminations on this fact: Over the last two hundred years (at least) the Church has been in retreat in America. We have sown the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind politically, culturally, economically, etc. If you do the math that means that probably right around the founding of America, the retreat was already beginning. Some of the faithful old guard could see it coming and put up the best fight they knew how, but plenty were already hedging their bets, compromising, and still others were already in apostasy and full blown naturalism was on the rise. And the net result over time has been for many professing Christians to hunker down in the bunkers of a private, personal, and overly spiritualized version of the faith Jesus bled and died for. This happened in some quarters under the guise of highly emotional experiences of revival and spiritual renewal which did not (for the most part) translate into much momentum publicly. Others hunkered down with fat books and systematic theologies, and while they may have said many true things, all the pointy edges were sandpapered with the proper scholarly apparatus, footnotes, and Greek word studies. Nobody but their closest friends and relatives read them (and mostly to be polite). Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Bible - Isaiah, Culture, Federal Vision, Manalive, TRC

Everlasting Joy

March 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” (Is. 51:11)

One of my earliest memories in church as a child is singing a song based almost word for word on this verse. John Frame, one of the greatest theologians of our time, was our Music Minister at my family’s church in California, and I specifically remember him stopping us in the middle of singing this song one time, in order to teach us to properly clap on beat to the song. I thought about trying to teach it to you this morning, but maybe another time.

Every week, we celebrate our return from the exile of sin and death. Every week we come with singing unto Zion with an everlasting joy upon our heads. This world is still full of sorrow and mourning, but we gather here because Jesus has come back from the dead. Jesus has taken away our sins. And now even sickness and failure and shame and death cannot and will not have the last word. And because Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath and gave His body broken on a tree, we have this bread that will never fail and this cup of everlasting joy. And as we share it together, we lift it up to God and remind Him of His promises to us in Jesus to put all things right, and we remind one another that sorrow and mourning will not have the last word. They shall flee away. So come and rejoice.

In Bible - Isaiah, Eucharistic Meditations, Justice & Mercy, Theology - Sacraments, TRC

We Will Not Lie

February 13, 2013 — 10 Comments

For as long as I can remember, in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, one of my daughters always tells us every year that she doesn’t want the ashes on her forehead. And whenever we ask her why, the answer is always the same. She says, “I don’t want to die.” And while we’ve always asked her to go up with the rest of the family, and she’s always been compliant, she’s also been known to have wiped them off her forehead almost by the time she’s made it back to her seat. At some point, we realized that she also thought dying always meant literally being crucified, dying on a cross. Now, she still talks about not wanting to die, though she still occasionally reminds us that she might not die on an actual cross, and she often remembers to mention that after she dies Jesus will raise her from the dead. But she still doesn’t particularly like Ash Wednesday. She still doesn’t want to die.

I’m convinced that my daughter actually understands this service far better than most people do. Next to Christmas and Easter, I sometimes wonder if Ash Wednesday is the third most attended service in the Christian Calendar. I couldn’t find statistics to confirm or deny that, though among Protestants it appears that Mother’s Day has the third highest attendance. So maybe I’m wrong. But there’s still a strange sort of enthusiasm surrounding Ash Wednesday that seems all wrong. It’s understandable that Christmas and Easter would be popular celebrations even among unbelievers or nominal Christians. But as a culture, we don’t really know what to do with death. We are a nursing home culture. We are a distraction culture. We are a drug and alcohol culture. We pay to be numbed, to be distracted, to be lied to, to avoid the harsh realities of suffering and death.

But come Ash Wednesday, if you live in a big city you’ll see people on the street with crosses on their foreheads. Joe Biden will no doubt make an appearance on national television with a cross on his forehead. And then, if you drove down Main Street today here in Moscow, you saw a woman on the corner of Sixth Street with a big white sign that read “Ashes To Go.” Which pretty much sums it up for me. We want death like we want most things: fast, easy, painless, and could I get fries with that? She might as well have been smearing a Nike swoosh on people’s foreheads. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Acts, Bible - Isaiah, Church Calendar, Culture, Grace, Lent, Sermon Outlines, TRC, Wisdom, Worship

God Never Saved A Friend

October 15, 2012 — Leave a comment

“I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides Me.”

Here, in our sermon text for today, God is speaking of Cyrus in particular. God is raising up Cyrus, a foreign, gentile king to perform His salvation for Israel. But Cyrus is a type of every true believer, every Christian. God reveals Himself, God reveals that He is unique and there is none besides Him by saving strangers. God never saved a friend. God never saved someone because they had done their part. God never saved by giving a helping hand. God saves sinners. God saves His enemies. God rescues those who don’t know Him and don’t know they need Him. And He does that by sending Jesus to die for us, in our place. Some men and gods might die for good men, but our God died for bad men, our God died for enemies and strangers and traitors. God clothes strangers and enemies with His glory, so that the world may know that they have never seen a love like this. They have never met a God like this. They have never known grace like this. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Bible - Romans, Exhortations, Grace, Theology - Soteriology, TRC

No Other Savior

September 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

Our sermon text today demands that we, like Israel of old, reckon with the question: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? That is the fundamental question, the most important question in your day to day life. When the kids are screaming and disobeying, the question is: is there any other god? When temptation hits in the form of pornography or peer pressure or loneliness, the question is: is there any other god? When your wife is critical of you, your boss at work, or no one has had a nice thing to say in days, the question is: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? When storms hit: cancer, job loss, broken relationships, when you are hurt, abused, sinned against, in your confusion, despair, fear, the question is the same: is there any other god? Is there any other Savior? And the answer to that question determines how you will respond every time. If there is another god, if there is another Savior you may despair, you may sin, you may give in to temptation, you may snap, you may blow up, you may be bitter, you may nurse your grudge. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Exhortations, Pastoral Theology, Prayer

The Food Means You’re Safe

May 21, 2012 — 1 Comment

When Sennacherib has taunted the people of God in Jerusalem and proclaimed that their doom is sure, God gives Hezekiah a sign of their safety and deliverance. That sign is a continuing harvest. God says that they will eat the harvest this year and next year and the third year. God tells them to plant their vineyards, and eat the fruit. The food means they will be safe.

God prepares this table for you in the presence of your enemies. And this table is God’s sign and promise to you that no weapon formed against you shall prosper. Here you are assured that you are safe beneath the shadow of His wings. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Isaiah, Eucharistic Meditations, Food, Theology - Sacraments

How Regeneration Makes Orphans & Eunuchs

May 21, 2012 — 2 Comments

In Isaiah 56, the Lord says that foreigners and eunuchs who keep Sabbath and hold fast God’s covenant will be given a place in the Lord’s house and a name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. He says that He will bring them to His holy mountain and make them joyful in His house of prayer. In the Old Covenant, the house of God was fiercely guarded. The ugliness of sin was underlined by the fact that anyone with a defect, blindness, physical marring, missing limbs, hunchback, or eunuchs were prohibited from going near the presence of God. But baptism is the sign of the New Covenant that Isaiah foretold. It is the gracious promise of God to all nations, all people, all outcasts, all the broken, blind, lame, eunuchs, that by the blood of Christ and His life-giving Holy Spirit all may enter the house of God.

We might wonder: exactly what has changed? Sin is still sin; God is still holy; and all those defects are still real. There are still people in this world born broken. There are still barren women, blind men, disease ridden bodies. Why is it that they can now draw near? The Ascension of Jesus means that we all have a man in glory. We have an older brother at the right of the Father who is completely whole, who has no defect, whom death could not hold, who ever intercedes for us. He is our ticket, our passport, our guarantee of entrance. But God doesn’t leave us untouched. Isaiah says that eunuchs will be welcomed into God’s house and given a name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall never be cut off, and He will make them joyful in His house of prayer. This is only possible if people really can be born again. This is only possible if the Holy Spirit regenerates and heals the fundamental problem of sin and guilt and death in us, in our bodies. Continue Reading…

In Baptismal Meditation, Bible - Isaiah, Federal Vision, Theology - Sacraments, Theology - Soteriology, TRC