Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: From Darkness to Dawn · Talk No. 6
God isn’t finished yet
Sunday, 23 October 2005
Isaiah 56 ESV or NIV
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A great place to finish
Chapter 55 of Isaiah, that Tim spoke about last week, would have been a great place to finish the book with its wonderful announcement of a fully satisfying salvation made available by God’s Servant! But the book continues; through the prophet Isaiah, God goes on to speak to his saved people about how they are to live. Chapters 56-66 speak to us who live in the interim between the salvation that came through Jesus Christ and the new creation that will usher in when he returns.
Isaiah has been called the Romans of the Old Testament with its clear statements about God's judgement and the plan of salvation through faith. And just as Romans then goes on to talk about how the person saved through faith in Christ should live, Isaiah goes on to talk in these last 10 or so chapters about how the person saved through faith should live.
One problem that often arises in churches that have an excellent record of bringing people to faith through clear exposition of the gospel of grace is that they are then left there. There is no movement to Christian maturity. My eldest son, Geoffrey, and his family once changed churches because as he put it “We’re converted every week. Wonderful gospel sermons challenging us to come to Christ and receive salvation. But no growth beyond that.”
So let’s look at what Isaiah has to say about how the recipients of God's saving grace should live.
Isaiah 56 vs 1-2
This is what the LORD says: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, the man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
It’s real easy isn’t it. maintain justice, do the right thing, keep the Sabbath and don’t do any evil. As we all well know, the problem we have isn’t knowing what the right thing is, it’s actually doing it.
Let’s make it a little easier to understand by looking first at what might seem to be the odd one out in the list of four things, that is keep the Sabbath.
Does this mean that we have to be all religious? When you look back in Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy there are great swags of material about how the Israelites were expected to keep the Sabbath. The simplest summary of it is found in Exodus 20 when God gives the 10 Commandments:
8“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
OK That’s not too hard. One day in seven, for that’s what Sabbath means, you knock off work, not just you but your family and servants as well and anyone visiting with you and get some rest and remember God.
When you read on into Leviticus which gives all the religious priestly bits we find:
“‘There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly.
So as well as resting we’re supposed to go to church.
Is this just religious ritualism or is there a further principal that we should be paying attention to? I believe there are 2 aspects to Sabbath observance. (a) To honour God (b) To seek the welfare of others
The Sabbath is about seeking the welfare of others, so that those who are dependent upon us might rest. Way back in Isaiah Ch 1 we are told that God was angry because of the injustice beimg shown by those who claimed to be his people. Now that they are saved, they are not to return to their old ways. Having been shown mercy by God they are to show mercy to others.
A theme that runs right through the Bible is that of entering into God’s rest. It shows up in the Sabbath as a once a week day of rest, there is also a one year in seven rest for the land in which no crops are sown on that bit to give the soil a chance to recuperate and there’s the promise of eternal rest with God in eternity. The issue, particularly once we move into in the New Testament is not so much keeping special days, as finding our rest in God.
So, honouring God and seeking the welfare of others are to be strongly in evidence among God’s people. Do you honour God with your time? Do you set aside special time for God weekly, yearly, daily? Do you honour God whatver you are doing? Or do you have areas of your life where you tune off from God?
So often it gets back to the idolatory I spoke about a few weeks ago. Our work, our homes, our families, our sport are all given precedence over God and over our consideration of other people.
In verses 3-8 we see that God desires more people to be saved
Firstly God is the God for all peoples not just Jews, not just Christians, but for all people. Eunuchs and foreigners get special mention but God’s plans for salvation were always far reaching. The Jews were chosen to take God's truth to the world. Unclean and damaged people can be made clean and brought into the presence of God.
In Isaiah’s time the temple had become a symbol of national pride – an exclusive clubhouse. So God sent the Babylonians who tore it down. By Jesus’ time, the temple had been rebuilt and again it had become exclusive. At Jesus’ death the temple curtain was torn apart symbolizing the end of temple ritual worship as the way to approach God. Within 40 years the Romans had torn the temple down again and the only bit left is what is now known as the Wailing Wall and ritualistic Jews still worship there. We know that in Christ the dividing walls that separate people are torn down. God was telling this to Israel in Isaiah , that they might welcome people in, and we Christians are in the business of sharing the gospel and welcoming in people from every tribe, nation, language and tongue. God has a missionary heart and he will reach out and bring people in. God’s purposes are that people from every background might unite around his throne, worshipping him.
Acts 8:26-39 which is the story of the Ethiopian Eunach is a wonderful case study of this. Let me read it to you
26Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. 29The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”
34The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” 38And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.
The Ethiopian fits both categories of these verses in Isaiah – he’s both a foreigner and eunuch – he was reading Isaiah 53. Perhaps he hadn’t even got as far as chapter 55, when through Philip, God opened his eyes to the gospel of Jesus. This is a major turning point in the book of Acts. It spells good news for foreigners like you and me!
Israel had to learn to welcome outsiders. It had to grow a missionary heart. And so do you and I. It’s easy to get so caught up with ourselves, to do our own little thing, to become an exclusive club that is unwelcoming to outsiders and strangers; to forget the plight of others. Or we can say to ourselves, “We’re a missionary church. We support CMS and BCA, we support the Grieves in South Africa and we’ve even got the Neals in Newman WA right now and there’s that young fellow Graham whatshisname in Ghana and Ben and Lorien were in Babgladesh just a couple of months ago. All very admirable but what about the stranger, the foreigner, the non-Christian who lives next door or works next to us or is in the same class at school.
It’s often easier to be missionary minded when the mission is on the other side of the world than it is when it’s on the other side of the street or the other side of the room.
Pray that God will transform our hearts so that we care for our neighbours, city, country, world. Pray that God will expand our hearts. For example, Lance Armstrong, the greatest ever Tour de France cyclist, has a bigger heart than normal through exercise. Pray that God will exercise and grow our hearts in loving others.
Just as God through Isaiah was telling the exiled Jews that they existed for the sake of the world. We too, as God’s new chosen people exist for the sake of the world. Do we recognise this? Let’s continue to support well our link missionaries, by praying, giving, and keeping in touch. Yet, it must run deeper still. Let’s make sure we don’t create a Christian ghetto here in Toongabbie Anglican Church. Foreigners and eunuchs and anyone else must be welcomed, made to feel wanted, at home, part of God's people. We must be committed to change too, so as to welcome all into fellowship with God and us.
Let us pray.
