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September 20, 2005
Pentecost 18
Isaiah 55:6-9
Pastor Joel Zank

The LORD is Near!

(Isaiah 55:6-9) Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

In Christ Jesus, whose great love for us no one can fathom, dear fellow redeemed,

Employee discount pricing - those were the buzz words of the summer, weren't they? The big three auto makers were offering us the same discount their employees get when purchasing a car. Buy an automobile on or before August 31st and get a great deal. Buy the same vehicle in September and pay thousands of dollars more. Given the record car sales this summer, I would guess that many people decided that employee discount pricing was an offer too good to pass up. Today our Lord hopes we'll feel the same way about an offer he makes to us sinners, an offer of pardon. There's no glitzy advertising campaign, just a simple straight forward message. Here it is: The LORD is near! 1) for a limited time; 2) with unlimited grace.

Let's be sure to understand that unlike the big three auto makers, the Lord isn't selling anything. This isn't a sale's pitch; it's a "give away." Let's be sure to understand something else, the words of our text aren't meant to appeal to human reason. By these words the Lord is not suggesting that unbelievers can logically come to a decision to follow Jesus or accept him into their heart. They can't. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, "...no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit." Martin Luther would later express that same truth in words that you may have memorized as a child, "I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel..." That's what we have here - the gospel, packed with God's own power, power to create in sinners the faith it calls on them to have. In other words, the Lord is near only where his gospel is proclaimed.

The Lord has brought his gospel to you, and with it he has done something miraculous. You were once dead in your sins, but through the gospel's power the Lord has made you spiritually alive in Christ. In Christ! Have you ever seen someone in need of a blood transfusion, someone who looks more dead than alive? When that person finally receives the life-giving blood of another, it makes all the difference in the world. The person comes to life, he's awake and full of energy. That's what the gospel does for you and me. It's our life-line to Christ. Through the gospel, the precious blood of Christ fills us with new life, purifying us from all sin.

It's important to understand how the gospel does this. The gospel doesn't change us into perfect people who no longer sin. Rather the gospel declares us to be perfect in God's sight by giving us credit for the perfect life of Jesus Christ. So as long as Jesus remains near to us through the gospel, we remain covered in his holiness. If our gospel life-line to Jesus is severed, we die spiritually all over again. This about this as you listen again to the opening verses of our text: "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts" (Isaiah 55:6-7a).

We have a powerful enemy who spends every moment of his existence and every ounce of his energy trying to destroy our relationship with Jesus. The enemy is our Old Adam, our own sinful nature with it's wicked ways and selfish thoughts. This traitor knows that if he can get us to choose sin over Christ he'll have us dead to rights. So he stops at nothing, using even our knowledge of the gospel to lead us into sin. You know the kind of deception he deals in. You've had the thoughts; you've bought into the lies. How often we permit ourselves some sinful pleasure or entertain some hateful thought, telling ourselves it's ok, God understands, he knows I'm not perfect, and besides, when I'm done with this sin, I'll just ask for and have God's forgiveness. Just that casually, just that carelessly we use God's generous love as a license to sin.

But today God warns us that his love is not for us to abuse. God has saved us from our sins, not in our sins. By that I mean, God didn't save us with the intention of having us as children who still live to satisfy our sinful cravings. No, sinners who choose to cling to sin rather than to Jesus, push the Lord away till he is no longer near. Jesus won't live in the heart that has sold itself out to hate or lust or any other sin. The sinner who cons himself into thinking that he'll turn back to Jesus and his forgiveness later on today or tomorrow should know that later may never come. The Lord is near for a limited time. We have no guarantee from him that we can put off repentance for even an hour let alone a day.

That's a frightening thought. God intends it to be. For choosing to live in sin, growing comfortable with it and giving it a home in our lives is impenitence and impenitence, by its very nature, destroys saving faith even as it condemns us to hell.

Talk about frightening! Now my skin is really crawling because I how often I've been the one taking advantage of God's love, putting off repentance, choosing sin over forgiveness. Have you done the same? Might it be happening in your life right now? God wants us to see how foolish we've been, and how foolish we would be to cling to our sin even one moment longer. He's not looking for any excuses, only for hearts that acknowledge that he is near, hearts that turn to him in repentance, forsaking sinful ways and thoughts. He's looking for our hearts, not so that he may humiliate us, but so that he might free us from sin's power and sin's guilt. The Lord makes it all so easy. He calls to us today, not with a booming voice of anger, but in the sweetest tones of love. He says of the sinner, "Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon" (Isaiah 55:7b).

These words are nothing but gospel, good news of forgiveness that contain the power to do the very thing they invite-these are the words God's Spirit uses to turn stubborn, sinful hearts like ours to himself in faith. And yet, let's be honest, there is a part of us that doubts God's intentions here. We're born skeptics, and with good reason as human experience has taught us. If an offer seems too good to be true, it most likely is. You've heard all those fast-talking disclaimers, you've seen all that fine print that comes at the very end of an advertisement, like the message at the end of those new car commercials - employee discount pricing is offered only on select models - read: "gas guzzlers nobody wants." There's always a catch. So what's God up to? He must have some hidden agenda, some secret desire to pay us sinners back when we least expect it. He's just drawing us in so he can let us have it.

Doubt is a horrible thing isn't it. It robs us of the peace God wants for us. Who could blame God if he decided to leave us floundering in our own uncertainty. But he doesn't. He knows just what to say, to overcome our unbelief: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).

It's our sinful minds that put limits on God's grace. We tend to think that God is like us. But here's good news - God doesn't think like us sinners, nor does he act like us. The peace God offers us transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7). We'd never figure this out on our own. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10: "'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'-- 10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." The greatest minds on earth could never think up the gospel of Christ, and yet God has been pleased to reveal this great mystery to us - the mystery as to why he is not angry with us, why he's not punishing us as our sins deserve. Through the work of God's Spirit you know why - because God punished Jesus in your place. So now, God never thinks about you without first thinking of Jesus and what the Savior has done for you. That means that when God sees your anger, and your lust, and your bitterness, and even your abuse of his love, he sees these things for what they really are, sins that have already been paid for in hell two thousand years ago. But certainly by now we've used up all God's grace; we've committed the same sins too many times. But again, that's not how God thinks. So he told St. Paul to write in Romans 5:20 "...where sin increased, grace increased all the more..." You know what that means, the Lord is near with unlimited grace. No matter what you've done, no matter how many times you've done it, God forgives you always for the sake of your Substitute, Jesus.

"Oh, I want to believe that," we say "but some days it's so hard." The Lord is near to help us with this problem too. His invitation stands! Seek him in his Word. We think, "Why bother? His words are just letters on a page, just sounds piercing the air." But there we go again, thinking like humans. God has such a way with words! He can do so much more with them than we can. He can take a simple phrase like, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," connect these words to water and use them to grow saving faith even in the heart of an infant. By the power of his word he can take simple bread and wine and use them to place on our lips the very body and blood that Christ gave and shed to earn us the forgiveness of our sins. So believe it! Every time that same gospel strikes our eyes or enters our ears it never fails to carry directly to our soul the power of God to drive away our doubts and fortify our faith.

My friends, we never know what tomorrow will bring, so the best thing we can do is to take God up on his generous offer, living each day of grace as though it might be our last here on earth. And what better thing is there to do on our last day then to seek the Lord in his Word, trusting that there we will find the all the forgiveness we need, together with all the faith we must have to believe that God's pardon is ours, for Jesus' sake. Amen.