1 Rev. William J. Shields St. Mark Lutheran Church, Lindenhurst, Illinois The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost October 21, 2012 The Book of Isaiah Part 37 What Does A Christian Look Like? First Lesson Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; 62:1-4, 6-7 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. For Zion s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 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 be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 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; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.
2 Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. I heard a story once about a guy who was a lifelong football fan. He especially loved pro football. Well, one day this guy died and he went up to Heaven. And just like Uncle Ole last week, on his first day in Heaven, St. Peter gave him the grand tour. As they were walking along, they came upon this nice, comfortable ranch-style home, that was all decked out in silver and blue, with a big Dallas Cowboys star on the front door. The guy asked St. Peter, Whose house is that? Peter said, That house belongs to Cowboys Hall of Fame head coach Tom Landry. The guy said, Oh, that s really cool. They walked a little farther, and they came upon another nice home, about the same size as the last one. But this one was all decked out in green and gold, and there was a big Green Bay Packers logo on the front door. The guy asked St. Peter, Whose house is that? Peter said, That house belongs to Packers Hall of Fame head coach Vince Lombardi. Again the guy said, Oh, that s really cool. Well, they walked a little farther, and suddenly they came to this big hill. A road wound up the hill, and on the very top there was a huge mansion, bigger than anything the man had ever seen on earth. And what was most incredible was that the mansion was all decked out in navy blue and orange, the colors of the Chicago Bears. And there were giant flag poles with Bears flags flying. And on the front door was a huge Bears logo. The guy said to Peter, Wow, Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi only got regularsized houses, down in the valley. How come Bears Hall of Fame head coach George Halas gets a big mansion on the top of the hill? Peter said, Oh no, that s not George Halas house. That s God s house. Now, of course, I don t believe that God is a Bears fan. If he was, we would have more than one Super Bowl win. But the point is that, if someone is a real fan of a sports team, you can tell! They ll wear the shirt or the hat. They ll fly the banner. They ll watch their team on TV and even go to the games in person. And they ll talk about their team all the time. That s what a committed sports fan looks like! But my question for today, and the title of my sermon this morning, is What Does A Christian Look Like? If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, can people tell that about you by watching your life? Can they hear it in your words? Can they see it in your actions? Martin Lloyd-Jones says, As we face the modern world with all of its trouble and turmoil nothing is more important than that we who call ourselves Christian should be representing our faith in such a way before others as to give them the impression that here is the solution, and here is the answer We should be standing out as men and women apart, people characterized by a fundamental joy and certainty in spite of conditions, in spite of adversity. In other words, if you are a Christian, then people should see the difference that Jesus Christ has made in your life. And that is exactly what Isaiah is talking about in
3 our text for today. In these verses from chapters 61 and 62, Isaiah is once again talking about the Messiah. He is describing the ministry of Jesus some 700 years before Jesus was born. How do we know this? Because In Luke chapter 4, when Jesus stood up to teach in the synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth, he opened the scroll of Isaiah and read these exact words from the beginning of chapter 61. Then he closed the scroll and, in Luke 4:21 said, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. He was saying to the people, This text describes what my ministry is going to be. And the ministry of Jesus is the model for the Christian life. What Jesus came to do is what we are now called to do. So I want to take a look at these verses, where Isaiah describes the ministry of Jesus, and I want to talk about what they mean for us. What do these verses say that will help us to understand what a Christian should look like? I ve divided the text up into five parts. Part one tells us that I. A Christian Proclaims Good News Isaiah 61:1-3 says, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. These three verses are one long sentence, describing the greatest anointing of the Holy Spirit in the history of the human race. It was the anointing of Jesus Christ for his mission in the world. In John 1:17 Jesus said, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Jesus came to those who were in trouble, those who were in bondage, those whose hearts were broken. In other words, he came to all of us. And he came with a message of love and forgiveness and hope. There are people here today who are struggling under the weight of a sin or an addiction. There are people who have lost jobs and are wondering how they re going to pay the bills. There are people who are feeling the pain of an illness or an injury. There are people who are under great stress because someone very close to them is in trouble. There are people who are grieving the loss of a loved one, maybe even a loved one who has been gone for many years. We have all been there at some point in our lives. And some of you have been there longer and deeper than most of us. And in those moments, our emotions tell us that God is against us, that we have exhausted all of our possibilities, that life is a wasteland that we just have to muddle through. Or as Thomas Hobbes said in his book Leviathan, we feel as if life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But the good news of the Gospel is that, on the Cross, Jesus Christ has won the victory over everything that is against us in this world. The instant that you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your sins are forgiven and you have the promise
4 of eternal life. And then, as you submit more and more and more of your life to Christ, he begins to deliver you from your fear and your sorrow and your despair. People, I don t show up here on Sunday morning just because it s my job. There are dozens of jobs that I could do out there in the world. But I show up here on Sunday morning because I really believe that Jesus Christ can make a difference in your life. I really believe, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be transformed into the image of Christ, from one degree of glory to another. And when that transformation takes place, then everything about us our thoughts, our words, our actions begins to proclaim the good news of the gospel to those around us. We don t have to thump people with our Bibles. People will notice the difference, and they will want to know what has changed in us. And we have to be ready to tell them. 1 Peter 3:15 says, Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. The first mark of a Christian is that, in every aspect of his life mind, body, spirit A Christian Proclaims The Good News. That leads us, then, to the second characteristic of a Christian. Isaiah says that II. A Christian Rebuilds What Is Broken Isaiah 61:4 says, They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. I m sure that many of you have heard the story of the young man who was on the beach early one morning, picking up starfish and throwing them into the sea. An older man came walking by and asked him what he was doing. The young man said, The tide is going back out, and it s leaving these starfish on the beach. And if I don t throw them back into the water, they re going to die. The older man looked at the thousands of starfish scattered along the shore, and he said, But how can you really hope to make a difference? The young man picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, and then he said, I made a difference for that one. People, the world is far too big for us to worry about how we re going to solve every problem or save every soul. But we can make a difference in the lives of those people whom God puts in front of us. When Bob Yarbrough and I were in Sudan back in March, we were talking about how we just kind of slide into the country, under the radar, and carry out this subversive little Christian mission in the heart of Khartoum. And Bob said, Yeah, this conference is so small that the government doesn t really worry about it. Then he said, But when you see the difference that it has made in the lives of these people, especially in the lives of the Friends, you know that it s all worth it. You know that these people are worth it. That s what we are called to do, people. We are called to make a difference. This world, broken by sin, is falling down around us. But we have been called to put it back together, brick by brick, in the name of Jesus Christ. We feed those hungry people that we can feed. We house those homeless people that we can house. We comfort those grieving people that we can comfort. And we save those lost souls that we can save. The second mark of a Christian is that, every day, in whatever ways possible, A Christian Rebuilds What Is Broken.
5 That brings us, then, to the third characteristic of a Christian that Isaiah talks about in this text. Isaiah says that III. A Christian Keeps His Promises Isaiah 61:8-9 says, For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed. Isaiah reminds us, as he talks about the Messiah, that God keeps his promises to us. Way back in Genesis 3 God promised that he would send a Savior. He told Abraham that the Savior would be one of his descendants, and that all the nations of the world would be blessed by him. He promised David that the kingdom of the Messiah would be an everlasting kingdom. And he kept those promises when Jesus died on the Cross to save us from our sins, and then rose from the dead so that we could live forever in the kingdom of Heaven. Now God wants us to respond to what he has done for us, by making commitments to each other to live in peace and justice and righteousness here and now. Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord s Prayer, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Ray Ortlund says, God loves to see his kingdom coming and his will being done on earth as it is in Heaven. He hates the robbery and wrong as it is in the world today. Christians should be known in the world for their honesty and integrity. At school we should be known as the students who never cheat. On the job, we should give our employers an honest day s work. In our homes we should be faithful in our marriages, and loving and respectful in all of our relationships with each other. We should do these things not because we think that we are better than anyone else, or because we think that by doing these things we can earn brownie points with God. We should simply do these things, and live in these ways, out of thankfulness to God for the promises that he has made to us, the promises that he has kept. A man that I know well, who is an executive in a large company, once told me about a very attractive woman who worked in one of his departments, who made it known to him that she was willing to do anything to move up in the company. And she stressed the word anything. His body and his emotions reacted the way that any man s would react to a proposition like that. And he knew that many of the other executives were probably having affairs. But, he said to me, The one thing that gave me the strength to say no to her offer was that I loved my wife and I had made a promise to be faithful to her. And I had made a promise to God that I would keep my promise to my wife. The third mark of a Christian is that, out of thankfulness for the promises that God has made to us, A Christian Keeps His Promises. Which brings us, then, to the fourth characteristic of a Christian which Isaiah talks about in this text. Isaiah says that
6 IV. A Christian Enjoys His Relationship With God We can divide this section of the text into two different parts. The first part tells us that 1. Jesus Enjoys Saving Us Isaiah 61:10-11 says, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. These words are spoken by the Messiah himself Jesus Christ. In the internal relationship of the Holy Trinity, the Father put the garment of salvation on the Son. He gave Jesus the role of Savior. And now Jesus is rejoicing, because the Father has given him the opportunity to save mankind. What an amazing thought! Jesus did not just come to this earth to save us out of some sense of duty or obligation. No, Jesus accepted the mission because he loved us, and because it gave him great joy to save us. I m not saying that he enjoyed the Cross. Good Friday was a horrible day of suffering, both physically and spiritually. But now that he has accomplished his mission on the Cross, he takes great joy in knowing that what he did there makes the second part of this section possible. He knows that 2. We Now Have The Opportunity To Be In A Relationship With God Isaiah 62:1-4 says, For Zion s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 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 be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 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; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. God invites us to be in a relationship with him that is so intimate, so close, that the only image he can really use to describe it is the image of marriage. The gospel message announces that, if you are a believer in Christ, then God delights in you, just as a new husband delights in his bride. Those of you who are married think back to those early, exciting days of your marriage, those days when you wanted to spend all of your time together, and when you couldn t stand to be apart from each other. In human relationships, those early feelings tend to fade with time. We have a phrase for it. We say, The honeymoon is over. And one of the keys to a healthy marriage is that you have to find ways to re-stoke those fires from time to time, recalling again the passion that you had for each other in the very beginning. But the Bible tells us that God s passion for us never fades. In Hebrews 13:5, God says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And Isaiah says that our response
7 to the faithful and passionate love of God should be an incredible, almost inexpressible joy, that we take out into the world. In our words, and in our demeanor, we should declare like Isaiah does, For Zion s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem s sake I will not be quiet. The fourth mark of a Christian is that A Christian Enjoys His Relationship With God. And that brings us to the fifth and final characteristic of a Christian that Isaiah talks about in our lesson for today. He says that V. A Christian Prays With Hopeful Expectation Isaiah 62:6-7 says, On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. In the most trying of human circumstances, Christians are called to be like the watchmen standing on the walls of a city that is under siege. With the enemies of sin and evil and brokenness and disease and death all around us, we are always on the lookout for the awesome and incredible things that God is doing in the world today. And most importantly, we are always praying fervently for the revival of the Christian Church. In fact, Isaiah says something very bold in these verses. He says that we should give God no rest until lifts up his Church and astonishes the world. Sometimes it can look like Evil is winning in this world. It can look like the Christian faith is in decline and the Church is on the defensive. But those who are close to God know that the darkness of this world cannot overcome the power and glory of God. Kristian Hallesby, a Norwegian pastor who was arrested by the Nazis during World War II and was sent to a concentration camp, once compared the act of prayer to the act of mining. He said that prayer is like boring deep holes into the rock of human sin. It is the hard work that God asks us to do. It tries our patience, because we usually don t see immediate results. We wonder if our prayers are having any effect at all. But then, in God s own perfect timing, he puts the dynamite into the holes, and he lights the fuse, and he blows the devil s work to smithereens. Hallesby refers to these verses in Isaiah when he says, God has called us to give him no rest until he makes a revived Church the praise of the earth. The fifth mark of a Christian is that A Christian Prays With Hopeful Expectation. So those are the five marks or characteristics of a Christian that we learn about from these verses in Isaiah. In response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, A Christian Proclaims The Good News A Christian Rebuilds What Is Broken A Christian Keeps His Promises A Christian Enjoys His Relationship With God
8 A Christian Prays With Hopeful Expectation If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, people should be able to look at you and see some, if not all, of these five things. And they should immediately know what team you are rooting for. It isn t the Cowboys, it isn t the Packers, and it isn t even the Bears. Your banner is the banner of Jesus Christ, and your team is his communion of saints his His Holy Christian Church on earth. May you be an outspoken, hardworking, loyal, excited, and hopeful member of that team, until the day that you take your final breath in this world, and meet your head coach your Savior face to face. Amen.