Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Preaching
Preaching And Reading The Old Testament Lessons
With an Eye to the New
A portion of this passage, namely verses 16--21, is also treated on the Fifth Sunday in Lent in Cycle C. Here we will take a different approach.
Verses 18 through 25 are part of the longer poem by Second Isaiah that is found in 43:14-44:15. It is therefore incumbent on the preacher that they be treated within their context. They form part of the message that Second Isaiah delivered to his compatriots in Babylonian exile, sometime after 550 B.C.
We moderns sometimes have a strange view of our relationship with God. For the most part, it is a static view. God is an object "out there," whom we worshipers are bidden to seek and to find. And when we find him and feel his presence with us, any change in the relationship is due, not to a change in God, but to our growth or backsliding in understanding and faith. God remains constant, static, there, while our attitude toward him wavers, changes, grows, depending on the depth of our faith at any one time. Thus, any movement forward in the divine--human relationship is largely our doing and not God's.
Such an understanding of our relationship with the Lord is drastically altered, however, if we study the Bible. For God's relation with his people Israel, and indeed with the New Testament church, is not a case of human beings seeking and finding, but of God and his people going along a way together. God is constantly acting, according to the Bible. He speaks words and does deeds and brings about events, moving steadily forward as he invades the stream of history. His are the principal actions. And Israel's life, and that of the church, are made up of their reactions and responses to those deeds of God. Thus, there is recorded throughout the Bible a great historical dialogue between the Lord and the inhabitants of his world - a way, a walking, a movement forward toward God's goal for all nature and history.
In our text for the morning, we are allowed to see into one such momentous interaction between God and his people Israel. As always, God's speaking and action come first. "Thus says the Lord," announces the prophet (43:14; 44:2), and then God utters a promise. He will send to Babylon and release his exiled chosen people from their captivity, by means of Cyrus of Persia's defeat of the Babylonian Empire, as we know from other passages in Second Isaiah's preaching (44:28; 45:1). But the guarantees of that promise are the actions that God has performed for Israel in the past - actions that are encapsulated in the titles that are given to the Lord.
God is Israel's "Redeemer" (43:14; 44:14) and God's past action of redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt is recalled, in verses 16--21. A "redeemer" in the scriptures is one who buys back a family member out of slavery (Leviticus 25:47--49), and so the Lord has redeemed Israel.
It was by his act of redeeming Israel that God made Israel a people, and so he is also "the Creator of Israel" (43:15), the one who "formed" Israel for himself, that she might praise him (43:21; 44:2). And in that act of creating Israel and delivering her from the house of bondage in Egypt, God also showed himself to be Israel's "King" (43:15; cf. Exodus 15:18), ruling over the waters of the Reed Sea and over the empire of Egypt. All the past mighty acts of God in the exodus are recalled as guarantee of Israel's deliverance in the future.
Those past mighty acts of the Lord are the source of our titles for God too, are they not? The Lord is our "Redeemer," the one who delivered us from our slavery to sin and death by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our Creator, not only because he has made each one of us, but also because he has created us a church by his redemption of us. And certainly he is our King, whom the powers of this world could not conquer and who now reigns as Lord of lords and King of kings over your life and mine.
In the light of all of that, verse 18 of our text comes like a thunderbolt from the mouth of God. "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old." All of our faith depends on remembering those mighty acts that God has done in the past for our redemption and justification. And certainly if we forget the redemption in Jesus Christ, if the sacrifice of his Son on the cross and his victory on Easter morn drop out of our memory, then we cease to be a church, with no foundation in God's acts and no assurance for the future. "Remember not the former things!" Lord, you cannot be serious!
But you see, we are not a church that lives simply from the past. And Israel was not a people that had only God's deliverance in olden times to remember. No. God is on the move. God presses forward by his deeds in human history. God goes on his sacred way. And so he announces to his astonished people and to us, "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (v. 19). Yes. God did all of those wondrous deeds in our past history. But he's not through acting. Now he's going to do a new act of deliverance for all of his beloved people.
The new act that the Lord announces to the exiles in Babylonia is not only their release from captivity, but also a new wandering through the wilderness toward the promised land (43:20; 44:3), with the dry and terrible wilderness transformed into a place of abundant water and peace.
When we hear that, we must realize that the "wilderness" in Second Isaiah refers not only to actual desert, but that it is also a symbol for the wasteland that is our life without God - unproductive, dry, threatening, barren. And it is that life - that barren life of our everyday, that life that someone has called "one damn thing after another" - that is the life that God is going to transform into fertile promise.
Our text is very clear that neither Isaiah nor we deserve God's further grace to us. Israel has not even prayed to God in her exile (v. 22), much less sacrificed to him, just as so many of us have not remembered to pray from the depths of our separation from the Lord. Instead, we and Israel have simply burdened God with our sins, until he is weary from seeing and hearing them all. That has been the case throughout all of Israel's history (v. 27), as it has been the case throughout ours.
And yet - and yet - this loving, gracious Creator and Redeemer, this incomprehensible King and Lord of our lives, will forgive us once more, and pour out his Spirit upon us, so that not only we but all around us will come to worship him for his love (44:1--5).
Yes, good Christians, the God whom we have known from the past, who gave his Son for our sakes, who redeemed us from sin and death and made us his special people called the church - that Almighty God moves along the way of life with us, pouring out his grace upon us, creating his new mercies toward us every morning, until we all together come into his kingdom of love and joy and good.
Verses 18 through 25 are part of the longer poem by Second Isaiah that is found in 43:14-44:15. It is therefore incumbent on the preacher that they be treated within their context. They form part of the message that Second Isaiah delivered to his compatriots in Babylonian exile, sometime after 550 B.C.
We moderns sometimes have a strange view of our relationship with God. For the most part, it is a static view. God is an object "out there," whom we worshipers are bidden to seek and to find. And when we find him and feel his presence with us, any change in the relationship is due, not to a change in God, but to our growth or backsliding in understanding and faith. God remains constant, static, there, while our attitude toward him wavers, changes, grows, depending on the depth of our faith at any one time. Thus, any movement forward in the divine--human relationship is largely our doing and not God's.
Such an understanding of our relationship with the Lord is drastically altered, however, if we study the Bible. For God's relation with his people Israel, and indeed with the New Testament church, is not a case of human beings seeking and finding, but of God and his people going along a way together. God is constantly acting, according to the Bible. He speaks words and does deeds and brings about events, moving steadily forward as he invades the stream of history. His are the principal actions. And Israel's life, and that of the church, are made up of their reactions and responses to those deeds of God. Thus, there is recorded throughout the Bible a great historical dialogue between the Lord and the inhabitants of his world - a way, a walking, a movement forward toward God's goal for all nature and history.
In our text for the morning, we are allowed to see into one such momentous interaction between God and his people Israel. As always, God's speaking and action come first. "Thus says the Lord," announces the prophet (43:14; 44:2), and then God utters a promise. He will send to Babylon and release his exiled chosen people from their captivity, by means of Cyrus of Persia's defeat of the Babylonian Empire, as we know from other passages in Second Isaiah's preaching (44:28; 45:1). But the guarantees of that promise are the actions that God has performed for Israel in the past - actions that are encapsulated in the titles that are given to the Lord.
God is Israel's "Redeemer" (43:14; 44:14) and God's past action of redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt is recalled, in verses 16--21. A "redeemer" in the scriptures is one who buys back a family member out of slavery (Leviticus 25:47--49), and so the Lord has redeemed Israel.
It was by his act of redeeming Israel that God made Israel a people, and so he is also "the Creator of Israel" (43:15), the one who "formed" Israel for himself, that she might praise him (43:21; 44:2). And in that act of creating Israel and delivering her from the house of bondage in Egypt, God also showed himself to be Israel's "King" (43:15; cf. Exodus 15:18), ruling over the waters of the Reed Sea and over the empire of Egypt. All the past mighty acts of God in the exodus are recalled as guarantee of Israel's deliverance in the future.
Those past mighty acts of the Lord are the source of our titles for God too, are they not? The Lord is our "Redeemer," the one who delivered us from our slavery to sin and death by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is our Creator, not only because he has made each one of us, but also because he has created us a church by his redemption of us. And certainly he is our King, whom the powers of this world could not conquer and who now reigns as Lord of lords and King of kings over your life and mine.
In the light of all of that, verse 18 of our text comes like a thunderbolt from the mouth of God. "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old." All of our faith depends on remembering those mighty acts that God has done in the past for our redemption and justification. And certainly if we forget the redemption in Jesus Christ, if the sacrifice of his Son on the cross and his victory on Easter morn drop out of our memory, then we cease to be a church, with no foundation in God's acts and no assurance for the future. "Remember not the former things!" Lord, you cannot be serious!
But you see, we are not a church that lives simply from the past. And Israel was not a people that had only God's deliverance in olden times to remember. No. God is on the move. God presses forward by his deeds in human history. God goes on his sacred way. And so he announces to his astonished people and to us, "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (v. 19). Yes. God did all of those wondrous deeds in our past history. But he's not through acting. Now he's going to do a new act of deliverance for all of his beloved people.
The new act that the Lord announces to the exiles in Babylonia is not only their release from captivity, but also a new wandering through the wilderness toward the promised land (43:20; 44:3), with the dry and terrible wilderness transformed into a place of abundant water and peace.
When we hear that, we must realize that the "wilderness" in Second Isaiah refers not only to actual desert, but that it is also a symbol for the wasteland that is our life without God - unproductive, dry, threatening, barren. And it is that life - that barren life of our everyday, that life that someone has called "one damn thing after another" - that is the life that God is going to transform into fertile promise.
Our text is very clear that neither Isaiah nor we deserve God's further grace to us. Israel has not even prayed to God in her exile (v. 22), much less sacrificed to him, just as so many of us have not remembered to pray from the depths of our separation from the Lord. Instead, we and Israel have simply burdened God with our sins, until he is weary from seeing and hearing them all. That has been the case throughout all of Israel's history (v. 27), as it has been the case throughout ours.
And yet - and yet - this loving, gracious Creator and Redeemer, this incomprehensible King and Lord of our lives, will forgive us once more, and pour out his Spirit upon us, so that not only we but all around us will come to worship him for his love (44:1--5).
Yes, good Christians, the God whom we have known from the past, who gave his Son for our sakes, who redeemed us from sin and death and made us his special people called the church - that Almighty God moves along the way of life with us, pouring out his grace upon us, creating his new mercies toward us every morning, until we all together come into his kingdom of love and joy and good.
