Come, Let us Reason Together Isaiah 1:1-20 (text: vs. 18) by Rev. Keith Davis on a.m. Trinity PH Songs:

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1 Come, Let us Reason Together Isaiah 1:1-20 (text: vs. 18) by Rev. Keith Davis on a.m. Trinity PH Songs: Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, of all the illustrations and expressions which the Bible uses to convey to us what it means that our sins are forgiven, that we have been made holy and clean, few are as vivid, as clear, and as powerful as this: Though you sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool. Down through the ages, this verse has been a source of untold comfort and consolation to fallen sinners to people just like you and me who stand before our holy God with bloodstained hearts and hands, who have no excuse for our sins, and are fully deserving of God s judgment. Yet God graciously extends to us this promise again and again to cleanse us; to wash away all our sins. Such is the power and the glory of the gospel and of the Christ of the gospel! Today in God s Word, as well as in the sacrament, we get to glory in God s cleansing power. Here in Isaiah 1:18 The Lord Calls His Sin-stained People to Repentance. Notice with me that the Lord call us to: 1) Come to Him 2) Reason with Him 3) Be Washed by Him 1. To Come to Him First, the Lord says to his people: Come. This word is a command, an imperative, which is to say, it s a direct order. Come! Yet this command is presented in a very kind, loving and gentle manner. Calvin notes that it could be translated Come, I pray thee or I beseech thee! Here God is actually pleading with His people. Now, we don t often think of our God that way do we? If anything, we think of ourselves as sinful and needy people who cry out and plead to God. And we think of God as One who sits in heaven and hears the pleadings of His people. But what an amazing thought this is! What an incredible revelation of who God is!

2 And what a remarkable difference between this God -- our God, the true and living God -- and the heathen gods of the nations. This past week I was reading 1 Kings about the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel how the 450 prophets of Baal shouted and cried for hours, how they danced around and cut themselves with stones -- all in an effort to get their god s attention; all so that Baal would hear them and send fire to consume the sacrifice. But Baal never heard them, because Baal is a false god. He s a god of wood and stone made by human hands. Whereas Elijah s God, our God, He not only heard when Elijah prayed, but he sent down fire to consume the sacrifice. Yet, what Isaiah says here is even more than that! He says that our God pleads with us! That it is He who calls us to come to Him! To listen and draw near! (What a contrast when compared to the prophets of Baal pleading for their god to hear them). And looking at the context of Isaiah 1, we see that this is also a very gracious call and command. For who is it that the Lord is calling to come before Him? Look back at verse 4. Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. The Lord is summoning a people who are moving in the exact opposite direction in which he has commanded them to go. They re going backwards. We d say they re back-sliding; they are turning away from the God of their salvation! Yet in His grace God calls out to them saying: Come back to me. Come, and walk with me in faith and obedience. God pleads to them like a loving father pleads to his wayward son to return. Listen to what Isaiah 42:3 says A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice. You see it is not only God s power that makes Him an awesome God but it is also his gentleness; God stoops down to help us, recognizing our weaknesses and woes. God s gentleness and grace is magnified in this passage. And it reminds us also of God s gentleness as personified in Jesus 2

3 Christ, as God stooped down to save us by sending His only begotton Son to die on the cross for our sins to die for us while we were yet sinners! And what a timely and powerful reminder this is for us as we come to the Table of the Lord today. Here at this Table the Lord calls us to Come! To eat and drink! But who are we? We re sinners unworthy sinners. Yet we come because we find our worth, we find our merit not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ and His righteousness. Even though we at times find ourselves going in the exact opposite direction God has called us to go; even though we often stumble about in sin, and even though we have trouble staying on the right path, still we come because in Christ there is forgiveness; and in Christ and by His Holy Spirit, we find the grace and strength to turn from sinful ways and to return to God. I encourage you with the words of Jude verses It says that God is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! So let us hear God s pleading and come. 2) To Reason with Him Next, God calls His people to reason with Him. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Now what does this mean? Think of it this way: think of two people in the midst of a conflict; they agree to sit down together to talk about it; to look sensibly and honestly at the situation before them and come to a mutual understanding of how to resolve the conflict. We expect nations to reason together. Instead of starting a war every time there is a disagreement a war that will destroy people s lives and property and will solve nothing but only make matters worse we expect nations who disagree to come and reason together; to do their best to resolve their problems peacefully and diplomatically. We also expect Christians to do this. When we have a disagreement, or when a brother or sister sins against us, as Matthew 18 says, we are to go to them in love and reason with them to find a 3

4 way to resolve that disagreement, to address that sin, so that there can be confession, forgiveness, repentance and a restoration of peace and fellowship once again. And this is what s going on here in Isaiah 1. The Lord is saying to His people: Come, let s look together at your situation; let me show you the sinful things you have done as well as the things you should have done, but failed to do. Let me show you and see if it is not so. The Lord s case against his people is provided in verse 3 and following: the Lord says: The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. The Lord is saying that even a lowly beast of burden, even livestock know their place; even they know to whom they belong. Even they obey and listen to their master. But not Israel. Not God s people. God s people are more stubborn than a stubborn mule, more senseless that a dumb ox. The Lord says: I redeemed you from Egypt; I fed you in the wilderness; I blessed you with safety and protection from your enemies; I gave you a bountiful land to live in and blessed you with children and prosperity. Yet, you do not know me. You do not understand; you do not obey; you do not come to me or return to me when I call you. In the remaining verses the Lord describes Israel s spiritual condition using physical sickness and disease as a metaphor. He says, you are afflicted from head to toe with wounds and welts and open sores; there s no wellness in you; you re full of sickness and disease and rot. The Lord describes a wound that is not only open but it s infected; it s neither bandaged or cleansed. Wounds like that stink like death, basically it s decomposing flesh. If makes you sick and squeamish to see it and smell it. And as gross as that might be, the Lord uses this graphic imagery to try to impress upon them the severity of their spiritual sickness and depravity. In addition, the Lord shows them the consequences of their sin. Look at verse 7 and following. He says, see what your sin has done to your country, to your cities, to your fields? They lie burning; they re destroyed! Jerusalem, the pride of God s people, the holy city of Zion, she is 4

5 laid waste. In fact, if it weren t for the mercy of the Lord, Jerusalem would have been destroyed just as Sodom and Gomorrah (vs 9). Their sin has also effected their worship. Vv : The multitude of your sacrifices what are they to me? says the LORD. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Essentially, sin destroys fellowship with God. Unconfessed sin, ongoing, habitual sin ruins private and public worship. It makes worship impossible. How can we draw near to God in worship, in prayer, in song, when we don t walk with God on a daily basis? When our hearts are far from him; when we show by our sinful actions that we really don t love God? And so God s people are in real spiritual peril/danger here, aren t they? And God wants them to know that He sees their sin. The cannot hide their sin. And yet, I want us all to understand what God is going here. I want us to see why God is telling them this. It isn t just to shame them. It isn t just to tell threaten them with judgment. If that s all we see here, then we miss the whole point of the passage. Then we miss the Gospel of grace. See, God is reasoning with them in this way so that ultimately he might restore fellowship with His people. That s what God wants. He doesn t want to punish sinners. God wants them to repent (Ezekiel 18:23 Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?). Again, that s what I want to impress upon you this morning what a glorious and gracious God we serve! God pleads with us with lowly sinners to turn from our sinful ways so that we would not be destroyed; so that we might be saved and have our fellowship with Him restored. 5

6 And just as God reasoned with Israel of old, so He now comes to reason with us. By His Word and Spirit God patiently shows us our sins and failings. He lays bare our pride and arrogance; he exposes our willful sins the sins that we commit against God fully knowing that what we are doing is wrong and sinful and yet we do it anyway because we don t love God enough not to do it. (See verse 16b: take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong; learn to do right!) God also exposes our sins of omission the sins of negligence; of failing to do all that God calls us to do. Look at verse 17: Israel failed to seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow! We re not just called to avoid sin and unrighteousness, but we re called to walk with God in righteousness, actively seeking ways that we can be instruments of righteousness as Paul says in Romans 6:13. And the beauty and blessing of coming to the Lord s Table is that as we (by faith), eat this bread and drink this cup, the Lord promises to strengthen our weak faith; and renew us and restore us more and more after the image of Jesus Christ. And that is also why every child of God should want to participate in the Table of the Lord; because to do so is to eat and drink Christ. It is to eat of Him who is the Living Bread and to drink of Him who is the Fountain of Life, the Living Water. Here is where the Lord has chosen to fill us and refresh us with Himself; and to refuse to come, or to simpy neglect to come, is to refuse and to neglect Christ Himself. 3) To be washed by Him The Lord calls us Come to Him so that we may be washed by Him. The last half of verse 18 says: Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Those colors are very deep and vivid the deepest red imaginable. Those colors represent sin the deep, dark stains upon God s people. Scarlet and crimson might as well be black as coal the complete opposite of white and clean. The hands and hearts of God s people are stained with the blackness of their vile deeds -- with violence, hatred, injustice and false worship. Yet 6

7 despite this blackness, despite those deep, dark crimson stains--the Lord in His love says I will wash you. I will cleanse you. I will remove your stains! How is that possible?think of what 2 Chronicles 7: 14 says -- if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. It s as easy as that. If we come before the Lord with a broken spirit and contrite heart -- in other words in sorrow for our sins and humility and brokenness confessing our sins and acknowledging that we need what only God can offer: forgiviness and grace and cleansing then God will hear us and wash away all our sins! That is the call of the Gospel to sinners to sinners like you and me who know the Lord, who woship the Lord every week and who walk with God during the week. But the call of the Gospel also goes out to any and all who don t yet know the Lord as Savior; who have not yet repented of their sins and asked God for forgiveness. If that describes any here today, the call of the Gosel to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ comes to you as it comes to us all! Hear that call today; believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, trust that He died to save you from your sins, and all your sins will be washed away by his precious bood and you shall be saved this very day! That s what 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and purify us (cleanse us) from all unrighteousness! And that s what God s signs and seals to us in his Supper this moring. So let us come before God with contrite hearts, but also with hearts filled with joy with the joy and assurance that comes from being at peace with God, knowing that God in Christ has forgiven us of all our sins. Amen. 7