Rev. Terry Breum St. Mark Lutheran Church, Lindenhurst, Illinois The 2nd Sunday after Epiphany January 15, 2012 "Owned By God" Isaiah 1:2-9 (ESV) [2] Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. [3] The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." [4] Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. [5] Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. [6] From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil. [7] Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. [8] And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. [9] If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen. God is Holy. He lives in infinite glory. God is so powerful that he has to hide himself from us. One look at God and we would be instantly consumed. Our bodies cannot see God and live. The Bible says our God is a consuming fire. The Bible says God lives in unapproachable light. God is utterly pure and God is light. Our finite bodies cannot look upon the holy this side of heaven. The Bible says we see dimly but one day we will see him face to face when we have our brand new bodies, the glorified body that is promised every believer in Jesus Christ. Then we will see God and live eternally. The Bible says this about Jesus when he comes again. 1 John 3:2, Beloved, we are God s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. One look at God and we will never be the same. For holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God almighty. 1
I will never forget being a junior in high school. I was at a prayer meeting with several of my teachers and varsity basketball players. We were praying to be touched powerfully by the Holy Spirit. And God answered those prayers. Several people in that room were deeply touched, powerfully infilled, one might even use the term baptized in the Holy Spirit. No one spoke in tongues but everyone who received that special touch was instantly on his or her knees and some prostrated themselves flat on their faces before the Lord God. The term prostrate means to be stretched out face on the ground in adoration or submission. It means lying flat and being completely overcome. It is a privilege to be overcome with the Holy Spirit. You become so aware of God s holiness. You are immersed in his holy love. You also become aware of your utter sinfulness and your heart is filled with gratitude for all that God has done to save you especially sending Jesus to die for you on the cross. As a matter of fact you do not know at all what a sinner you are until you experience and come to understand how holy God is. And it is the saints who walk closest with Jesus in this life who realize the most their dirty rotten sinfulness. The closer you grow to the Lord the clearer your sins become and the more ugly they appear to you. And the more you realize your utter sinfulness you understand all the more how much you need Jesus and his forgiveness. The more you realize what a sinner you are the more you appreciate what Jesus did for you on the cross. The holy one became sin for you so you too can share in his holiness and live eternally with him. I am glad I know what a rotten sinner I am because I see to what depth God went to save me. I am glad I know what a rotten sinner I am because even in my depth of sin God s love is still there even deeper. When we know what sinners we really are there is no room for self-righteousness at all. When we have been forgiven much that helps us to love much, to love one another even as Jesus loves us. When we know the depth of our sin we see how utterly helpless we are to save ourselves and we are completely dependent on God s grace for everything. This is the deep work of God indeed. 2
I believe the most important hour of any and every week is the time we spend together in worship. As Christians the most important spiritual activity we do in the name of Jesus is worship our holy God. This is God s time. We are not here for ourselves. We are here for God s sake. God s call goes out. God calls us here. God collects us so to speak. God gather s us. When I was a child one of my favorite jobs was to go out and get the cows for my uncle at milking time. We would walk a long distance, stick in hand and speak out loud for the cows to come. If a cow would not move you would tap the cow with the stick. This was a fun job but you had to be careful where you stepped. Cows are not dumb. Sometimes from a great distance they would see my uncle, their owner, begin walking out from the barn. As he began his walk down the lane the cows would begin to move toward him. He didn t even have to say a word. Just seeing him the cows knew it was milking time. When I went out there by myself they didn t know who I was so I had to work harder to get them to come. The cows knew their rightful owner and did they ever respond to him. Our rightful owner is God. He sends the Holy Spirit to gather us so we can come together and experience the Presence of God and be filled and satisfied. Isaiah hears God s call for worship. Do you hear what Isaiah hears? Our God is holy and worthy of our worship. For so many of us God s holiness is like a magnet that draws us here. We hunger to encounter our holy God. The world and all it offers does not even begin to fill one s soul. Your soul was made to be filled with God, God s holy Presence, and he gathers you here to feed on His Holy Presence as it comes to us in the Word, the written Word, the Word preached, the Word sung, and Word litergized, the Word in the Sacraments, and to give one s offering to God including your very life. 3
Isaiah is preaching to a people who were in all out rebellion against God, their rightful owner. God was going out to them to gather them to bring them to Himself. But the people turned a deaf ear to God and did not listen. They preferred to engage in their own sin and were repelled by God s holiness. God had much to feed them. He had exactly what they needed but they turned to their own way. Friends, God had given to them prosperity but in their riches they ignored God. Now God was sending them warnings but they would not listen to Isaiah. Reading out of the NLT, Isaiah 1:2-3(NLT) Hear, O heavens! Listen O earth! This is what the LORD says: The children I raised and cared for have rebelled against me. Even an ox knows its owner, and a donkey recognizes its master s care but Israel doesn t know its master. My people don t recognize my care for them. No matter what I do for them, they still do not understand. Some of you raised your children bringing them to Sunday school, VBS, confirmation, and youth group. You sent them to Quake or other spiritual retreats and after all these years your children have strayed away from the Lord, His Word and the church and it breaks your heart. Parents ask me, What did I do wrong? What should I have done different? And there is so much pain in the eyes of the parents when this is asked. Isaiah is speaking out of this same pain. God has laid these rebellious people on his heart. He senses God s heart aching over those who have strayed away. I have learned that the best thing we can do for those who have strayed and are in direct rebellion against the Lord is to be as faithful as we can be to Jesus. The obvious is to pray for them and that you are already doing. You can pray for God to soften their hearts toward God. You can pray for the Holy Spirit to convict them of their sin so that they will return to God. You can pray so many things and this is good. But so often is takes something big to turn their lives around and often what is big is quite painful. My uncle could open the barn door and the cows 4
would start coming home. They knew their owner. God s door is open wide for all of us come home to him and worship him. Sometimes cows are smarter than we are and that is Isaiah s point only he uses donkeys and oxen. God sends the Holy Spirit after them. The Holy Spirit will not give up on your children. God will hound that child of yours day and night until they finally do what God wants them to do. The Holy Spirit will let your child go his or her own way for a time. There will be gentle nudgings to turn back. But after a while the soul of a wayward child will grow absolutely miserable. God allows the child to hit rock bottom so to speak to get so low that now the only place to turn is to God. They have gone after other gods and all those other gods proved to be false gods and brought great ruin into their lives. God is holy and He is the only true God. The Rightful Owner, God, is standing waiting for you to come into his home and God s arms are open wide waiting to receive you back into Kingdom. Now it is time worship. Today we suffer from self-esteem. We do not think to lowly of ourselves. We think to highly of ourselves. We esteem ourselves more then we esteem the Lord Jesus. We think Jesus is here to serve us, to meet our needs, to give us what we want, to make sure we are happy and have friends. Jesus is a real powerful butler who should do whatever we ask. A rebellious heart lowers God to serve us and elevates self above God. The truth is we are here to serve and not be served. The truth is we are here for the sake of God. We are here to please God. We are here to enjoy God and glorify Him forever. God is not here to please us. We get it backwards. I know of people that unless they stop drinking they will not have long for this world. Their sin is killing them. False gods kill. God the Holy Spirit gives life. Quoting Dr Ortland, What is conviction of sin? It is not an oppressive spirit of uncertainty or paralyzing guilt feelings. Conviction of sin is the lance of the divine Surgeon piercing the infected soul, releasing the pressure, letting the infection pour out. Conviction of sin is a health giving injury. 5
Conviction of sin is the Holy Spirit being kind to us by confronting us with the light we don t want to see and the truth we re afraid to admit and the guilt we prefer to ignore. Conviction of sin is the severe love of God overruling our compulsive dishonesty, our willful blindness, our favorite excuses. Conviction of sin is the merciful God declaring war on the false peace we settle for. Conviction of sin is our escape from malaise to joy, from attending church to worship, from faking it to authenticity. Conviction of sin, with the forgiveness of Jesus pouring over our wounds, is life (25-26). There is no greater tragedy in the universe than God s children rebelling against him wounding the heart of God. The prophet says this weeping,(4) Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity. They are evil and corrupt children who have turned away from the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel, cutting themselves off from his help. To despise the Lord is to pay God lip service but one s heart is far from God. In verses 5,6 Isaiah preaches, Your head is injured and your heart is sick. You are sick from head to foot, covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds, without any ointments or bandages. This man has been so clobbered, there is not a square inch on his body not sore and bleeding (pg29). But he doesn t feel it. He keeps going back for more punishment by turning to his false gods and not seeing his heart of rebellion. At the time of Isaiah God s people were in sad shape indeed. They had forsaken the covenant and if they refused God s grace that convicted them of their sins they would lose the land. My friends, please know that God is gracious to convict us so that we will get on our knees and repent of our sinful ways and be forgiven. God exposes us, God cuts us, God wounds us, He convicts us of our sin so that we will turn away from our sin and turn to Him and be healed. God is He is waiting for you at the door right now arms open wide. He wants us close to Him. Amen and Amen. 6