St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church -- Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 14 -- September 2^nd and 5^th, 2004

Dear children of God who are eager to praise our merciful Savior. Amen

When we lived in Charlotte, NC, one of my sons best friends father was a weatherman for one of the local TV stations. My son always thought it was pretty neat to watch his best friend’s dad on TV as he told us the weather for the next day or so. As I watched him give the weather, I more than once thought to myself that it would be pretty nice to be the weatherman. Every day you would get up for work and your only job was to tell the people what the weather was going to be like. Thousands of people every day were watching you to see what you had to say. They would plan their trips around what forecasts you gave. They would dress their children for school by what you said. For the most part, your message would be a good message. That sounded good. But I remember the first time that we had a hurricane coming right in our direction. All of sudden that job of the weatherman didn’t look so nice. The lives of people were in your hands as you decided where the storm of was coming and you had to decide whether people would have to evacuate their homes or not. Then the message from the weatherman wasn’t so nice. It was a message that caused fear and terror.

As we live on this earth, God has given us a some work to do while we are on this earth. This work is much like the work of the weatherman. God wants us to tell others what is going to happen. And sometimes this message will bring fear and terror as we tell others that their sins will bring God’s judgment on them. And sometimes we have the privilege of proclaiming to others a message that is wonderful and beautiful as we proclaim the pure and precious Gospel message of the Lord and Savior forgiveness. Today I would like all of us to think about the work that God has given to each of us. The work of proclaiming God’s condemning Law and his saving Gospel as we use the theme:

The verses leading up to the words of our text are words that are full of God’s condemning Law. Isaiah is making sure that everyone is very clear about the fact that God is not happy with sin and sinful hearts. In Isaiah 66:15 the prophet Isaiah begins a short section announcing a judgment for those who had turned away from the Lord: "See the Lord is coming with fire." All those who abandon the Lord and follow their sinful ways will come to a terrible ending. The prophet makes sure that we know that this is true as he writes "declares the LORD" (v. 1). It will be as the prophet described because the Lord himself has said so.

In the opening verse of our text, Isaiah continues this announcement of judgment on those who have left him, "And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory." God has seen enough of the sins of Israel and he is going to bring judgment on them. They had adopted the wicked practices of the heathen nations around them. They have become idolaters. God, who knows their evil "actions and their imaginations," will gather them together with those of every nation who defy him, and he will reveal his glory through his terrible judgment upon them. What a sobering reminder to us as sinners. God’s glory is made known not only in the gracious way he deals with sinners but also through the crushing defeat of his enemies!

Though God has reason to judge the wicked of every nation, his judgment begins with the chosen people of Israel who rejected his grace. But our text does not refer to the final day of judgment but to God’s just decision to punish those that have ignored and abused his saving truth. Their punishment would be to lose the gospel and, with it, their only hope of salvation. Those of Israel who thought they were saved because the were from the line of Abraham would find themselves cast out of the true Israel of God forever.

This prophecy of judgment should also cause all of us to tremble in fear of God’s anger. How often we have tried God’s patience, chasing after the many gods worshipped by our unbelieving world? Time and time again we have abused God’s grace and ignored his precious truth. We have 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 are all guilty of the very sins that brought God’s wrath down upon the hypocrites in Israel.

That is why God also wants us to also proclaim his message of grace, "I will set a sign among them, and 1 will send some of those who survive to the nations—to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the LORD—On horses, in chariots and wagons, and on mules and camels," says the LORD. "They will bring them, as the Israelites bring their grain offerings, to the temple of the LORD in ceremonially clean vessels." Take heart, sinners! In the middle of God’s judgment there is a sign of God’s grace. In the God’s perfect love he shows us as undeserving sinners a sign, This sign or wonder that God will work among the people of Israel is the miracle of grace itself. Though all deserve to be destroyed, ! God will rescue some by working in their hearts the miracle of faith.

These survivors will be saved for a purpose. Those rescued by God are, in turn, to become rescuers whom God will send to the remote regions of the earth. This remnant of Israel will carry proclaim God’s grace and the good news of the promised Messiah, who will take away the sins of the world. Those who hear this good news will see God’s glory, because the gospel brings glory to God wherever it is proclaimed. These words of Isaiah reveal God’s mission plan for his New Testament church. As the Old Testament era draws to a close, God will preserve for himself a remnant of believers. This small group people of people will be different, because God’s gift of faith has changed their hearts and lives. They will serve as God’s missionaries into all the world. God will use these people to proclaim his message of grace to farthest regions of the world, and they would all come to the holy city of Jerusalem.

What a beautiful picture this is to describe what it means for people of all nations and cultures who hear the Word of God and are led to have faith in Jesus. They are all described as "clean vessels. We are all saved and made clean by the grace of God, which came to us in the form of Jesus our Savior. With this in mind, God is telling us that it is his gracious pleasure to accept as clean in his sight both the Gentiles and the Jews.

The words of our text serve as a wonderful reminder to us New Testament Christians that we have the best reason for sharing God’s Word with all nations, including the Jewish people living in our communities. Our thankfulness to God for all he has done to save us will be the compelling force behind all our mission work. In an undying spirit of thankfulness, we will seek to cross every cultural barrier with the good news that Jesus is the Savior of all! In these words of Isaiah, we have God’s assurance that our efforts to share the good news are pleasing and acceptable in his sight.

In the closing words of this text, Isaiah begins to point out that as children of God who have been saved by the grace of God, we are also heirs for an eternity as we look at the glory God has promised us in heaven Our text began with a word of judgment. In verse 22 God reveals the purpose of that judgment. It was never God’s desire to destroy Israel but to build an eternal Israel, made up of both Jews and Gentiles. Just as the kingdom they inherit (the new heavens and the new earth) will be everlasting, so they, the heirs of the kingdom, will endure forever, "As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the LORD, "so will your name and descendants endure.".

As children of God we will be eager to serve our God and to thank him in all we do. We will bow down before our Lord in everything, "all mankind will come and bow down before me," says the LORD." He is not just referring to our lives on Sunday morning in God’s house. He is referring to our every thought and our every action. Our worship as perfect citizens of God’s kingdom will be freely and joyfully given. Our worship is not for just one hour a week, but every minute of every day. We worship as we sit in our offices and go about our daily routine. We worship as we live in our neighborhoods. We worship God as we play with our friends or participate in community functions. God is looking for us to live for him with thanksgiving and joy all the time.

As we live on this earth, we need to realize that God has called each of us to be the one who proclaims or tells of God’s glory. We need to proclaim loud and clear that God will not tolerate any abuses of his saving Word. Those who do not regard that Word as their most prized possession will lose it. We first of all need to know this and we pray that those who hear our message will recognize their sins and God’s punishment for those sins.

But we need to also proclaim with all of its sweetness the gospel message, 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 his glory by completely destroying us as his sinful enemies, God brings to light the glory of his wondrous 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. It is this message of God’s grace that fills our hearts with the gospel motivation for outreach to all people. Isaiah’s words teach us that no one is to be overlooked as we carry out our Lord’s Great Commission. We will want to share the Savior’s good news with fellow Gentiles and Jews in hopes that we may bring converts from every nation as our thank offerings to God’s throne in heaven. What a wonderful privilege it is to be the tools that God uses. May we always be fil! led with joy and thanks as we look for every opportunity to share this wonderful message of salvation with all people. Amen