Sermon

Print this Sermon

November 18, 2001
3rd Sunday of End Times
Isaiah 65:17-25
Pastor Robert Raasch

God Has Some Good News!

1. Spoken to People Living Under the Old Covenant
2. Promising Life for People under a New Covenant

Is it just me, or does it seem to you like our nation has had to endure more than it's share of bad news lately? It started on September 11 with the hijackings and the collapse of the World Trade Towers. It continued with the gruesome scene of rescue workers picking through the rubble, first looking for survivors, then looking for corpses. And then came the anthrax scare. And now it's this airliner that crashed on Long Island. It seems like it's just one piece of bad news after another. Closer to home, maybe it's something in your personal life, or in the life of someone you know, that has you wondering whether there is any good news around at all.

Well, as a matter of fact, there is. It's the very same good news that God once offered to another nation that had its share of bad news. About seven centuries before Christ, the nation of Israel was in the middle of a very difficult stretch of its history. Things were going from bad to worse. The nation's capital was about to be overrun by enemy forces; the nation's citizens were soon to be hauled off as prisoners of war. Day after day, month after month, the Children of Israel were confronted with what can only be characterized as bad news. And yet, against that dark backdrop of negative news in current events, the prophet Isaiah offers a message of hope. A message that still applies to our lives today. My friends, as we look to this section of Isaiah's prophecy, we will discover that, in contrast to all the bad news in our world today,

God has Some Good News

It's good news:

1. Spoken to People Living Under the Old Covenant
2. Promising Life for People under a New Covenant

First, God has some good news for people living under the Old Covenant. Logical question: Who are the people living under the Old Covenant? Well, to understand that, we need to recognize that in the Old Testament period, God established a number of covenants. You might call them as agreements or contracts, or testaments. One of the most well known covenants was called the Sinaitic Covenant. That's the covenant that God established with the nation of Israel when they were gathered around Mount Sinai. Thus the name Sinaitic Covenant, or as it is sometimes called, the Old Covenant.

What was the gist of the Old Covenant? Well, Moses summarizes it well in Deuteronomy 7:12, when he tells the Israelites, "If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land-your grain, new wine and oil." In other words, the Old Covenant was a two-way agreement that God established with the nation of Israel. It was a conditional agreement. God said in effect, "If you people obey my commandments, I will bless you. In fact, I will bless your nation in a very material way. You'll have good crops, you'll live long lives, you will win military battles against your enemies."

On the other hand, if the nation of Israel rejected the true God, if they abandoned his commands, then God promised to curse them-again, in a very material way, physical way. Moses describes some of those curses in Deut. 28: "If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law…then, the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illness. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other." (vv. 58-59, 39,41,64)

Well, if you know something about the history of Israel as a nation, you realize that God made good on his promises. When the children of Israel were faithful to him, God blessed them. He rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He gave them the land of Canaan. He gave them victory over their enemies. But over the course of time, the nation of Israel as a whole abandoned God, they devoted themselves to idol worship. The prophet Jeremiah describes the people of his day with the words, "Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit." (Jer. 5:27).

Well, in light of Israel's wholesale rejection of God, God in turn did exactly what he promised to do. He allowed foreign nations to overrun the land, carrying off the 10 Northern Tribes to Assyria and the Southern Tribes to Babylon. You see, that's what the Old Covenant demanded. "Toe the line...or else! Obey God's commands or suffer the consequences."

Now, you and I are no longer under the Old Covenant. God hasn't selected the United States as His Chosen Nation. He doesn't promise to win our battles if we obey him, or send us into captivity if we disobey him. And yet, that doesn't mean that we're not under something very similar to the Old Covenant. We're under God's Moral Law. And just like with the Old Covenant, the Law offers blessings for those who obey and curses for those who disobey. Think of the blessings God promises to those who obey him. In Ephesians 6, we read, "Honor your father and mother"-which is the first commandment with a promise-"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." On the other side of the coin, think of the curses God promises for those who disobey him. St. Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia, "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law." Or Romans 2:8-9, where God says, "For those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil."

Unfortunately, as we look at our lives, we realize that by our sinful behavior, we've earned far more curses from God than blessings. Because you and I are guilty of breaking the same commandments that Israel broke, we are worthy of the same punishments that God threatened against his Old Testament people, namely, sorrow in this life, and eternal condemnation in the next. That's the bad news. But fortunately, God message doesn't stop there. Against that backdrop of that bad news, for us and the Israelites, that God steps forward and offers some truly good news. News that II. Promises Life for People Living Under a New Covenant. Hmmm. What is this new covenant? Well, whereas the old covenant was a two sided agreement between God and the Nation of Israel, the New Covenant is a one sided agreement between God and sinners. In other words, with the Old Covenant, God said, "I'll do this for you, if you obey me." But with the New Covenant, God says, "I will do this for you, even if you don't obey me." In other words, in the New Covenant God promises are unconditional; they are not in any way tied to the behavior of Abraham, Moses or the nation of Israel. Under the New Covenant, God simply says, "Sinners, this is what I'm going to do for you, purely out of the goodness of my heart."

Think of the kind of one-sided promises God made to people down through the centuries. To Adam, God said, "I'm going to send someone to crush the Serpent's head." To Abraham, God said, "I'm going to give you a descendant who will be a blessing to all nations." To the Children of Israel, God said through Isaiah, "I'm going to send you someone who will 'be pierced for your transgressions, and crushed for your iniquities, and by his wounds you will be healed.'"

My friends, I think you know that all those promises find their fulfillment in God's Son, Jesus Christ. The Book of Hebrews calls Jesus the Mediator of a New Covenant. A covenant under which God no longer condemns sinners, but instead forgives them on account of Jesus' perfect life and innocent death. The Prophet Jeremiah speaks of that new covenant when he writes, "A time is coming," declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers," that is, a two sided covenant in which God promised to punish all sins. No, in this new covenant, God declares, "I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." (Jer. 31:31,34).

My friends, do you see why we say that the New Covenant is good news? Do you see how the message of the New Covenant could give God's Old Testament people a reason for hope, even as their nation was being carried off into captivity for failing to live up to the Old Covenant? Do you see how that same message gives us hope even as we're suffering the natural consequences of our sins? Even when life seems bad because we live as sinful people in a sinful world, still in Christ, and his covenant with us, God gives us the assurance that our sins are forgiven, we are at peace with God, and there is prepared for us a place in heaven.

Now, in light of that fact, I want you to look again at the words of Isaiah here in our text. I want you to realize that these words were written to people who had just heard some very bad news from Isaiah. Isaiah had already told them that the nation of Israel would be invaded. Their land would be ravaged. The people would be enslaved for their failure to live up to the Old Covenant. It is to that beaten down people that God now offers this beautiful promise of what the future holds for them through faith in the coming Messiah. God says, "Behold I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." God is here referring to what life will be like for all believers after Judgment Day, a time when we will no longer be burdened by our past offenses.

God goes on to speak about Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem that God refers to in the Book of Revelation, the Jerusalem we just sang about in the Hymn, "Jerusalem the Golden." God says, "I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more." Obviously, this must be a reference to heavenly Jerusalem, because tears will surely be shed in earthly Jerusalem until the day Jesus returns in glory. God is referring to the place where there will be no more "death or mourning or crying or pain." (Rev. 21).

From that point on, the Prophet goes on to speak about what else God has in store for people living under the New Covenant. And as the Old Testament prophets so often do, here Isaiah uses figurative language. He uses earthly images to describe a spiritual reality. Or to put it more specifically, Isaiah describes life under the New Covenant in terms of the life that Israel had dreamed about under the Old Covenant. Let me say that again. In this figurative language, Isaiah describes life under the New Covenant in terms of physical, productive life that the nation of Israel had looked forward to under the Old Covenant. Isaiah says, "They will build homes and live in them. They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune. They will be people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendents with them. Before they call, God will answer. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, the lion will eat straw like the ox."

My friends, these words are not describing some kind of earthly, millennial kingdom that God will establish for the physical nation of Israel someday. No, the nation of Israel broke that old covenant when they failed to live up to their end of the bargain. No, what God is here describing is the life that you and I now enjoy as Christians. A life which does not necessarily mean between nations or peace between animals, but true peace between God and man. It's a life which includes the kind of peace which the angels proclaimed on that first Christmas night when they said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." My friends, that's what you and I enjoy right now as people who by God's grace are living under the New Covenant. No matter how bad the news gets out there, you can always count on the good news that God offers right here (Bible) and here (Lord's Supper): God Almighty gives you full and free forgiveness for all your sins, on the basis of the one way covenant that he has established with you through the life and death of his Son, Christ Jesus. Believe it-and live like people who are grateful for it! Amen.