Today I want to share a word about the church as an optimistic creation as I comment on Isaiah 25:1-9.
We have been looking at “Kingdom Qualities for God’s Church”. The last time we were together, we saw that as God’s people, we must be in fellowship one with another. In this episode we want to explore our attitude towards life. Are we optimistic or pessimistic? Is our glass half-full or half-empty? I once heard a story about a father who tried to look on the sunny side of life:
One thing that parents guard jealously for their children are their prospects for the future. This is particularly true in the case of their future spouse; classically a father would quiz a suitor for his daughter to make sure that the boyfriend had good prospects for the future. A favorite humorous story centers on this type of concern for a daughter's prospects.
A father invited his future son-in-law to dinner to quiz him about how he was going to care for his daughter and future grandchildren. He asked the young man how he was going to provide financially for his daughter, and he replied, “God will provide.” The man asked the groom how he was going to pay for a house, and he replied, “God will provide.” Finally, the man inquired about plans for paying for his grandchildren's education and the man replied, yet again, “God will provide.”
Later, the man’s wife asked about how things went with the future son-in-law and he replied, “Well, he doesn’t have a clue about how the world works, but at least he thinks that I’m god!”
Let’s see what the Bible says our attitude toward serving Him should be. Let’s read Isaiah 25:1-9:
Yahweh, You are my God; I will exalt You. I will praise Your name, for You have accomplished wonders, plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness. For You have turned the city into a pile of rocks, a fortified city, into ruins; the fortress of barbarians is no longer a city; it will never be rebuilt. Therefore, a strong people will honor You. The cities of violent nations will fear You. For You have been a stronghold for the poor, a stronghold for the needy person in his distress, a refuge from the rain, a shade from the heat. When the breath of the violent is like rain against a wall, like heat in a dry land, You subdue the uproar of barbarians. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat of the day, so He silences the song of the violent. The Lord of Hosts will prepare a feast for all the peoples on this mountain—a feast of aged wine, choice meat, finely aged wine. On this mountain He will destroy the burial shroud, the shroud over all the peoples, the sheet covering all the nations; He will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face and remove His people’s disgrace from the whole earth, for the Lord has spoken. On that day it will be said, “Look, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He has saved us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him. Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”
We can be optimistic because this passage shows us that in God, our prospects are great!
First, We See a Vision of Praise:
One fact that we cannot forget is that people were made to praise God. Verse 1 reminds us that we were made to fellowship with Him and love Him. We were made to worship Him and exalt Him. He should be the true object of all of our bragging. After all, this is what we will be doing in Heaven! Those who don’t enjoy worship here on Earth might find themselves in an unfamiliar situation when they get there!
To be real, and to be honest, we know that sometimes our circumstances don’t favor worship. As we can see simply by reading, all through the Bible God’s people have had hard times. One thing that is common to all people is trouble. Sometimes it is our fault, sometimes it is not. Some Biblical examples of this might include:
- Abraham and Sarah were not able to have a child.
- Job lost all his family, and all his property, and all his health.
- David mourned the death of his baby son.
- Isaiah proclaimed judgment on Israel.
- Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross as a criminal.
- Paul and Silas were cast into prison in Philippi.
- Paul was imprisoned in Rome.
The truth is that our circumstances should not hinder our worship, because God is the object of worship and He deserves it! Their circumstances did not prevent any of these above from worshipping God. Each of these and others, too, were justly proud of God and they loved Him.
Even though Isaiah was troubled by Israel’s sin, and he was sent to warn Israel because of it, Isaiah found he was able to worship God. Why? Why can we worship God despite trouble? How? How can we worship God despite loss and grief? Isaiah tells us as we continue to investigate our prospects.
Next, We See a Vision of Power:
Verses 2-5 tell us that the first reason we can worship God is His power. God is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and ever present. These factors mean that His power is active in our lives.
Isaiah reminds us that His power is greater than any stronghold. Fortified cities were virtually impervious to attack in ancient Israel. Israel had no artillery, siege engines, or airplanes but this was no problem for God, however as He demonstrated by the fall of Jericho.
The city referred to in this passage probably wasn’t Jericho because the city that Isaiah referred to would be so destroyed it would never be rebuilt. The power Isaiah was speaking of was more in the line of the conversion of the pagan Roman Empire. Christ overcame a culture that had defeated all who had challenged it in the past. In the same way there is no stronghold in our lives that God can’t defeat.
It is also vital to see that God’s power is not only for battle, but also for building. Armored vehicles and tanks are great for battle, but not for reconstruction. Likewise, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines can control the sea, but they can’t carry the goods that build an economy and a way of life. God, however, can do more than defeat our enemies.
God can bring to us peace and refuge. Modern Israel has never lost a war, but it also has never been at peace, either. God, in contrast, completes His tasks in a way that brings everlasting peace. As John 14:27 says,
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
War is hideously expensive, and it destroys prosperity, but peace is fertile soil for it.
We also See a Vision of Prosperity:
We live in the richest country on earth, and, in truth, we are getting richer by the day! But as hard as we try, we can’t take our wealth with us when we die. The one who dies with the most toys is still dead, and regardless of how many toys we have, they will not last! That’s why we have yard sales and flea markets!
God, however, wants to give us good things that last! In His spiritual economy we will live on the mountain top, not in the “Valley of the Shadow of Death”. We will feast at His table burdened with food. We will drink of His cup, not of punishment like Jesus, but of blessing! As we used to say in the south, “We’ll be living in high cotton!” Jesus put it this way in John 10:10,
A thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
God can also take away the threats to our prosperity that possessions cannot. Possessions can’t comfort us in our loss. They can’t remove the grief or depression that settles on us like a blanket after we lose a loved one. Possessions can’t remove the sting of defeat, neither can they remove the regret over our sin and mistakes either. God can remove that pall, however. When He does, He will dry our eyes and give us the peace we need.
This is how Psalm 23 expresses this hope that we have:
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. He lets me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He renews my life; He leads me along the right paths for His name’s sake. Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live.
To me, Verse 5 is especially powerful. Troops expecting to go into the attack or expecting to repel an attack, have no time and no appetite for food. But God’s Army can, because God is the one who does the fighting for us! Therefore, instead of having dry mouths and lumps in our throats, we can enjoy His abundance1
Finally, We See a Vision of Peace:
Power and prosperity are good, but what we really want is peace!
- We want to have peace with God.
- We want to have peace with people.
- We want to have peace with creation.
- We want to have peace with ourselves.
We are just not able to achieve any of this in our own power. We can’t please God on our own because of our sin. If we appease others, we hurt ourselves. If we appease ourselves, we irritate our neighbors. Finding peace is so hard that we often just adopt the philosophy of the song lyrics that say: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
However, nothing is impossible with God. He has given us the power to be at peace. He has given us the prosperity to be at peace. And, because we are at peace, we can focus on God instead of these other things and we can praise and worship Him!
Conclusion:
As one who was alive during the social upheaval that took place in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s I certainly have never encountered any period of time like 2020, and I pray that I never do again. That being said, I would like to put current events into a different perspective.
What we must realize is that the church has lived through turbulent times before, and indeed it was born both during a turbulent time and during a violent situation. Just hours after Jesus had celebrated Passover and instituted the Lord’s Supper, something He and no doubt the Disciples had looked forward to with great anticipation, Jesus was arrested, beaten, scourged, and hung on a cross between two common thieves. The crowd in Jerusalem had chosen to free a radical terrorist murderer over the One whom the Disciples considered their Lord and Teacher. Less than a day after their intimate and richly meaningful celebration, Jesus had died on that cross and had been buried in a borrowed tomb. Besides all of this, they had personally abandoned and betrayed their Lord. With all the pain, suffering, and turmoil of current events, nothing we have yet seen could be as soul-shattering and disillusioning as what the Disciples experienced that first Easter weekend. Their entire world and everything they had believed in was turned upside-down.
Had that been the end of the story it would have been overwhelmingly sad, but, as we know, it wasn’t the end of the story. Not by a long shot! Jesus rose from the dead, sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and God has used His church since that time to minister hope in His Name. We who are alive today and who are members of His Kingdom are living proof of the power of God to overcome all obstacles and all the efforts of evil to defeat Him and His ministry of grace, mercy, peace, and reconciliation.
The church not only began in a time of turmoil, but it has grown during all manner of difficulties, almost like these are the fertilizer which makes it grow and flourish. Not for nothing did Tertullian say, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” While the recent years have been a challenge to us, we certainly have not had the experience of martyrdom, and so we need to adjust our mindset some.
In truth, our disobedience is the only thing that can hold back the ministry of God’s church. I am more and more convinced that discipleship is far more a matter of commitment than it is knowledge. Peter and Paul had vastly different levels of education, but both were completely committed to the Lord and the Gospel ministry. So, let us dig a little deeper into our lives and find our first love again for Our Lord and Savior. The future is approaching, one with its own challenges and with its own blessings, but if the Lord tarries, it will provide us new opportunities to minister the Gospel in His Name. Let us not waste a minute more fretting over the past, or even the present, but instead, as Paul urged the Ephesians,
Everything exposed by the light is made clear, for what makes everything clear is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and the Messiah will shine on you. Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— making the most of the time,[e] because the days are evil. So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Our best ministry is yet to come!
