Getting Ready for Sunday: Isaiah 56 Old Testament Reading for August 20th

Welcome to Getting ready for Sunday, a podcast of first Lutheran Church. Each week I introduced the readings for the upcoming Sunday with some notes and explanation so you can be ready for worship when you arrive. I look at the Old Testament, Psalm epistle and Gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday and offer a few notes and explanation. The reading for Sunday, August 20, comes from Isaiah chapter 56, verse one, and verses six through eight. I'm actually going to read the whole thing verses one through eight because I think it's very interesting. So here we go. Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness will be revealed. Bless it is the man who does this and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath not profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil. But not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from his people. And let not the UNIQ say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath's who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name shall that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and hold fast my covenant. These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered, Here ends the reading. This passage is all about gathering together outcasts. And I read part of it that is not part of the lectionary reading, that's verses three through five. But I think they're an important piece of what Isaiah is trying to say. So it begins with these words, Thus says the Lord keep justice and do righteousness. For soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness will be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil. So Isaiah begins by talking about keeping justice and doing righteousness. When the kings were being judged in the Book of Kings, their job was always justice, and righteousness. And I've always looked at them as saying justice is the work of law enforcement that a king is supposed to do, not favoring the poor or the rich and making sure justice is happening. And righteousness was the Kings job of making sure everybody worshipped the true God at the temple. Now, Isaiah then is saying, our job is to keep justice and do righteousness. And it's connected in verse two, to following the worship of the true God, that is, keep the Sabbath, not profaning it and keeping your hands from doing any evil, that is doing the things that Mark God's people as being separate. Well, we no longer do the Sabbath, the way the ancient Israel did it by resting, we still gather together for rest in God's word, and to receive his sacraments. Now, the next part, verses three through five is all about the eunuch and the foreigner. What this is doing is it's talking about people who would normally not be allowed in the temple. And so Unix, someone who's a male who's been castrated, wasn't allowed to actually go into temple worship. They simply were considered unclean. Generally, the same would be said for a foreigner. And so God is saying through Isaiah, I am going to gather together the most outcast, not just the foreigner, but also the unic who is will not have children who ends up being a dry tree, he is gathered into my fold. So it says, To the Unix who keep my Sabbath su choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant. I will give in my house and with my within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. Now our scheduled reading begins with verse six then it says, And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, and to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants. Everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast to my covenant. These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for My house shall be called called a house of prayer for all peoples, the Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered. This is really an interesting thing, because it says that the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord will be allowed to enter into the temple and offer acceptable sacrifices, which is really not the way it's supposed to be. Old Testament sacrifices you had to be take up the covenant by circumcision, to be able to go into the temple and offer a sacrifice. If you were a foreigner or an outcast, a Gentile, you simply wouldn't be allowed to do that. What that what we see then is that something is going to change. And that change is Jesus Christ is that Jesus will be the true Israel that the Gentiles join into. And that because his acceptable sacrifice is offered, the Gentiles now are gathered into God's people. This is something that Isaiah couldn't have been understood at that time. And so he puts it out as, as Gentiles, the foreigners, being allowed to offer acceptable sacrifices. An interesting thing about verse seven is that it says, For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. This is something that Jesus quotes when he goes and he clears out the temple. He does the money changers with the whip and all of that and casts out all the animals. And he says, My house is to be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And so one of the the thinking behind this is that they set up this marketplace in the place where foreigners Gentiles could come where they could come and offer prayer at the temple. And what these these money changers were doing was disrupting this place as a house of prayer for all nations. Whatever that thinking is, is this this definitely points us to what Jesus was saying when he cleared out the temple. That's it for Isaiah chapter 56. Hopefully, we'll see you on Sunday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai