Sermon text: Isaiah 61:10–62:5
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday is Isaiah 61:1–5. And in these five short verses, we have the three major motifs or themes of the Epiphany season. The gospel complements this by the reading of the wedding of Cana, which adds to the bridegroom and bride metaphor that Isaiah 62 introduces, particularly in verses four and five.
The first theme of our assigned Old Testament reading begins by contrasting the silence of God with the revelation of God, which is found most exclusively in the person and the work of His Son, where righteousness and salvation is given. The silence of God has always been a problem for the church, for the people of God. It was as well for the Israelites and the people of Judah, the southern kingdom. For the Israelites, that silence came when God paused His speaking and didn’t employ the use of prophets to speak His word of law and gospel. For the Israelites of the north, it also came about as a result of the fact that the Israelites and the people in Jerusalem actually lost the written word of God. They had misplaced for decades the written word of the LORD God. Those scrolls weren’t found until the temple was rebuilt under King Josiah, then they found the scrolls.
But when Isaiah was writing, the people of Israel, the northern kingdom, had thought they had been long forgotten, forsaken by God the Father, and that He spoke to them no more. It left them wondering if they were even still children. Is God with us? They wondered out loud. Was He angry, or was He pleased? Was He indifferent to them?
Isaiah 62 addresses itself to the time when Israel would finally be taken off into captivity in Babylon. They had become a slave nation in fear of their lives and in the very existence of the people. And God’s seeming silence made everything worse. Their dire circumstance caused them, however, to seek the LORD God, to return to Him, to plead for help, and to repent of their great and grievous sins.
Thus the pericopes, the readings this morning, began with a great proclamation from the LORD God Himself to His children Israel. He said, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet.” In Isaiah 62:1, God breaks His silence and speaks directly through the prophet Isaiah to His children Israel. He assured them that He had not abandoned or forsaken them as they thought. He was still their Father, and they were still His children. And that was the first theme in this morning’s reading.
The second motif, which is related to the first, is one of separation and of reunion. The fall into sin in Genesis chapter 3 was the original separation. But since that time, Israel had grown to be a nation and had been engaged in one war and battle after another, and the exiles became another symbol, another metaphor for being separated from God and His promises and His words.
Now in Isaiah 62, the very beginning — this is the very beginning of the great reversal. For most of the book of Isaiah, God’s words were one of judgment and condemnation, of foreboding and the telling of the day when they would be invaded by another country, Babylon, and would be hauled off into slavery. But in the great reversal — since chapter 61, chapter 62 — God promises to reunite His people to Himself and to reunite them with the promised land, their home territory, in the city of Jerusalem. And He promises them in verse three: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
The Old Testament couldn’t be more full of joy and adoration, of descriptions of beauty and steadfast love. The scene is anticipatory. It anticipates the great eschaton — if you want to know what that word means, ask her; she’s an expert now. Okay, eschaton: the last time. It is describing what the second coming of Christ to return for His bride, the church, will look like in the eyes of the LORD God, our heavenly Father.
Then comes that moment you see in every wedding, when the bride begins to come down the aisle in procession, getting closer and closer to her beloved husband. That’s what Isaiah 61–62 is calling upon the children of Israel to do: to become like a bride coming to the bridegroom. Then comes that moment when the husband and wife speak their vows, recommit one to the other for life. And hearing that name rung out: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my great privilege to present to you, present to you, Mr. and Mrs. Pilling.” Right?
But our Old Testament lesson is not depicting an ordinary wedding scene. This is God’s wedding: God’s wedding to the inhabitants of Zion — that is, to Israel, His church, to His people, both in Judah and in Israel. They are His visible church, and they are His hidden church. This is God doting over His bride with joy and steadfast love, as He is captivated by the radiant beauty that He Himself has given to His bride. And that fact alone is shocking.
Because if you know anything about God’s bride — the visible church, Judah and Israel — if you know anything at all about it, it’s just from the book of Isaiah alone, let alone throughout the history of the world: the bride of Judah and the bride of Israel is anything but beautiful. Throughout the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah graphically depicts Israel as ugly as sin itself. She pridefully clothed herself and arrogantly walked around in filthy rags of idolatry. She shamelessly and without thought burned some of her own children on the altar of idolatry and the altars of Molech and Chemosh, believing that child sacrifice would provide the family with financial security. Many Israelites entered into the cult of temple prostitution and places of worship for Baal and for Asherah, believing that that would result in rain that would make their crops grow and be abundant. If the Israelites believed doing something would make them more prosperous and beautiful to the world, they did it.
But to the LORD God, Israel and Judah became ugly to the point of repulsion. So in Isaiah 1, Isaiah wrote that Zion would become a murderer, a rebel, and a companion of thieves. This is the company that they kept, and these were the things that they did. In Isaiah 3, God said the daughters of Zion are haughty, and they walk about with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet.
She becomes a lady of the night. Israel and Judah: Israel had become a stench, the Bible says, in the nostrils of her husband. And because her bride stubbornly continued to clothe herself in idolatry, God stripped her of all her so-called beauty through the Babylonian war and exile, so that Israel would come to finally see her rightful appearance and repent.
Instead of perfume, she stunk of rot, the scripture says. Instead of a belt, she used a rope — a sign of the poor and desolate. Instead of well-set hair, baldness became her appearance. Instead of an illustrious wedding garment, a skirt of sackcloth. Israel is described in the ugliest of terms. And when the nations saw her, they called her forsaken by their God and desolate.
Throughout the book of Isaiah, Israel is depicted as ugly. And sadly, God’s bride throughout the history often has had great periods of ugliness. Including in the day of Isaiah: on the banks of the Red Sea, after God had freed them from 400 years of Egyptian slavery. God led them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, on the way to Mount Sinai. Though they grumbled against both God and Moses — not once, not twice, but three times in just a little over four weeks’ time — they issued rebellions against Moses and God. At Mount Sinai, the faithless Israelites made a golden calf and offered sacrifices to it, because the god that had freed them from slavery, they thought, had abandoned them in the wilderness.
In the centuries since the LORD God gave them their freedom from Egypt, God’s bride didn’t fare any better. The people continued to put on and walk around in filthy rags. In fact, the book of Isaiah begins with Isaiah confessing that all of his works are but filthy rags in Thy sight, O LORD, he says. And then he lives among a people with unclean lips, and he himself is a man of unclean lips.
Pretty much what we see in this visible church today. We too chase after material possessions. And we praise — and the praise of the ungodly — it’s important for us, isn’t it, to be liked by people? So we hold our tongues and don’t speak against evil. We pretend as if we are a part of a group, knowing all the time we’re alien to it. It’s a problem. The visible church today is as woke as woke can be. I don’t know if you saw the march in Peoria Heights last night, but there was a march in Peoria Heights last night. Let’s just say there wasn’t anything godly about it.
With a second thought — without a second thought — people neglect church attendance. They no longer study the word of God as they used to. They’re busy chasing after the things that they believe will make them secure and happy, and chief among them: sleep on Sunday morning. You name it in the modern church, and we chase after it, believing that it will make our life more prosperous, more enjoyable, and that we ourselves will become more attractive to the world and to our worldly friends.
But both past and present, God’s bride is anything but beautiful, as the church in our day follows worldly philosophies and bankrupt moralities. The church on earth continues to dwindle away. The only thing beautiful about Israel’s past and the church’s present is the commitment of the husband, which has remained steadfast throughout the centuries. He is faithful to His bride. He has promised to make her holy and blameless in God’s sight, and so He does.
Despite her — and our — unfaithfulness, God has always remained faithful to His unfaithful bride. He promises in verse two: “The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land married — that is, joined together with the Lord God himself. For the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
He issues a promise: a promise to be fulfilled at the eschaton, on the last day, when He comes to judge both the quick and the dead. He fought for His people. After the Red Sea, 13 times, 13 nations came against the children of God, and 13 victories the LORD delivered into their hands. And what did they do in return? They worshiped again the gods of Baal. In exile, God sustained them and promised to free them, and did so through the Persian king Cyrus II.
God is so committed to His bride that He didn’t fall silent, though they had nothing to do with His word whatsoever. As we heard last week, there in the waters of the River Jordan, He sent His Son, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, to be baptized into our sin, and we into His holiness, righteousness, and innocence. He clothed Himself with our filthy rags, that we would be clothed in the very righteousness that is Jesus Christ. For He who knew no sin became sin for us, that in Him we would become the righteousness of God.
Jesus, your bridegroom, was faithful to you unto death on the cross. He loved you with an everlasting love, giving Himself up for you, in order to sanctify you and cleanse you from all your sins. In Jesus: as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As risen from the dead, the bridegroom Jesus comes to bestow His beauty upon His bride, the invisible church. In the waters of baptism, Jesus clothes us with the dazzling robe of righteousness that covers all of our sins — Revelation 7:14. In the words of absolution: “In the stand, and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins.” Our sins, which were like scarlet, are washed clean, and we are now in God’s sight whiter than snow. In Christ, you are without spot and blemish, wrinkle or stain, or any such thing — Ephesians 5:27. You are a beautiful bride, prepared and adored for your wedding day: the last day and the resurrection of the dead.
On the last day, the wedding day, the day of resurrection, when we are raised up in glory and so thoroughly transformed by Jesus’s righteousness, salvation, and glory — our sin is forever removed, never to return again — and we shall shine with the radiance of the bridegroom Himself. On that day, when the husband takes his wife by the hand: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” Behold, the husband says, “I will make all things new.” And on that day, He will marry you to Himself, inseparable for all eternity. You will be fully bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, the very image of Christ Jesus Himself. And you will forever and only be called by your real name: Christian — Christlike, in Christ — for you were taken from Christ.
This is God’s promise to you. He has spoken. He will not be silent. Because of their idolatry, Israel had been called a lot of ugly names throughout all of the book of Isaiah and most of the Old Testament. But the most familiar in Isaiah’s time was “Forsaken.” The worst thing that could happen in the ancient world is that your God forsook you or left you a desolate place. But in the eschaton, the glorious new status and name will be bestowed upon you by God’s very own mouth. You shall be called a delight. The nations will see your righteousness, and the kings will see your glory. Your filthy rags will be exchanged for the glorious righteousness of Jesus Christ, for your sins are forgiven and they will be no more. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.