Isaiah 61:10-62:3
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to sprout up before all the nations.
For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet,
until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
and her salvation as a burning torch.
The nations shall see your righteousness,
and all the kings your glory,
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Merry Christmas. Every year we tell the story of Jesus birth. And then we get to see the stories of the times unfolding after that. I love the story of Simeon and Anna, and seeing the history of the people who get to get to see Jesus for the first time and recognize him. And their amazement at the salvation that God brings when he brings his son to the temple through Mary and Joseph. I love the stories of all of the things that we hear in the church. And the traditions that we carry on in every congregation, every place has a different way of celebrating Christmas of the different decorations, schemes, the different traditions that they hold. These things go on and on. And they tell the story of who a congregation is and what a people is. And one of the things that we in the church need to remind ourselves of it sometimes is our history, and the amazing ways that God has worked through the church over the years, and how he brings his grace forth, in times of difficulty, and in times of joy throughout the history of God's people. And one of the reasons we look back at the book of Isaiah, looking at chapter 61, and 62, is to see the pattern of God's grace at work over and over and over again through history. We look back at what God did with his people. And we can see examples of what he does for us in that as well. What I'd like to do is take a look at what God says. In this passage. He says, For as the Earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up. So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. It continues for Zion sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem sake, I will not be quiet until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nation's cells shall see your righteousness and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will give you shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. What this says is that God is going to do something amazing for his people. God is going to bring about a change in their fortunes, that they would not have expected. To understand that of course, we have to remember that Isaiah is looking at a time of challenge for Israel. Israel is about to face Babylonian invasion, destruct destruction, horrible tragedy, perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of Israel's time up until when Rome comes in, and destroys Jerusalem again. They will come they will tear down the city, tear down the walls, and worst of all, destroy the temple and carry off all of the instruments of God from the sanctuary. Everything except for Well, we think the Ark of the Covenant, which has been lost ever since. Can you imagine the tragedy the thing that is the symbol of the presence of God, where God says it was his footstool, or maybe his throne. All of it is now gone. The city that was the sign of God's presence and love destroyed and people sent into exile last forever. Now, you could look at that. And you could say, Ah, yes, we see. God's people have been defeated. They've been destroyed. God was not strong enough to save them. And the Babylonians were too powerful for him. That's certainly what ancient people would have seen. Looking at a story like that. God wasn't strong enough. His promises weren't powerful enough. The gods of the Babylonians when but that's not what happened. What's amazing about what God did in the Old Testament story He is that he used tragedy and sadness, to bring about even greater righteousness amongst his people. They were hauled off out of Babylon, into Babylon. And there they rediscovered God's promises. They realized where they had gone wrong. And we get to see some amazing examples of God's showing his mind and his power, even in Babylon. We know the stories of Daniel. Now he's protected from lions, how he shows up the advisors of the people around him. We know the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace and how God shows His power protecting them from that it's disaster. God led his people through this terrible time. And when the new King Cyrus of Persia comes in, he brings the people back. And they return from exile, dedicated to God. And for the next 300 years, the people of Israel are studying his promises. They are rebuilding the temple, bringing back the sacrifices, and they become the dedicated people of God that would produce Pharisees, as the leaders of God's religious people. But the people who hold strictest to the law are the ones that are high in the esteem of the nation. A total reversal of what had happened before that God used this tragedy, the Babylonian exile, to turn his people back to his promises. And the faithfulness of Israel grew out of that. And it was into that the gods sent His Son Jesus Christ. So that there would be people in a temple who would rejoice when the child came in, who would be looking for the promise, so that when John the Baptist went out into the wilderness, people knew what he was talking about, and we're excited and ready. When Jesus went preaching from town to town, they would know that a Savior was on his way. And they'd be able to see through His miracles and His sermons and his workings, that this was it. But then, tragedy struck again. That same Savior, who had come to free them, was arrested. He was killed, and laid in a tomb. But of course, this tragedy, it didn't stop God, either. He used this tragedy, the killing of the Son of God to save the world. In fact, this was his plan the whole time. To send the eternal Son in the form of a human being, to live and die for us. So that by His resurrection, he would bring out righteousness for the whole world, that it would sprout up out of this tragedy. And the message of this righteousness went out, all throughout the Roman Empire, out to the east and the west, into Africa and Persia, and everywhere else. And it began to spread. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ could have looked like a defeat to just about anybody. But God turned it into salvation for the world. This wasn't the only historical tragedy that God has used to bring righteousness to the world. We can look at the Roman Empire. The persecution under Diocletian, was a terrible and horrible persecution of the church. This was one of the biggest programmatic persecutions in the Roman Empire. Now, we often think about this history as the whole time, there was just like the emperor was out trying to kill Christians everywhere. But most of the time, that wasn't the case. Most of the time, Christianity was persecuted in pockets. Every once in a while some guy would get it in his head that he needed to impress the Caesar, and he would do something to the Christians in that place. It wasn't until Diocletian that we got that systematic programmatic persecution of all Christians in the empire. And what they would do is they would go to these churches, and they would go after the pastors, the bishops, the priests I tried to take their Bibles.
And the idea was you turn over your Bibles, you offer up a little sacrifice to the Caesar and for the good of Rome, and you are set free. And if you didn't, sometimes they would throw you to the lions. Sometimes they would do terrible things or crucify you or whatever. But the standard one was to hamstring the church, the bishops, what they would do is they would take on one leg, slice through the hamstring on the other leg through the Achilles tendon. pretty terrible, right? What a horrible thing. And now, when you're sitting around as a pagan, under Diocletian, you would look at this persecution, the destruction of churches and Bibles, and you would see, look at this, we're winning. That's not how it worked out, right. The persecution under Diocletian, actually became the the beginning of the growth of the church in the Roman Empire. You've heard it before that the blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the church. It was the dedication and faithfulness of God's people through this difficult time. That led to the explosion of Christianity through the Roman Empire. God took a tragedy, by the power of His grace, and turned it into righteousness and glory for the church. The people suffering under this horrible persecution. It led to expansion and growth and the message of the Gospel going forth into the whole world. Is it an amazing how God does that? We see tragedies happening like that, all the time. One of the great tragedies that happened after that was when the the Christian Center of of gospel and study Africa and the Middle East, fell to conquerors. We don't think of the places today as centers of Christian power and study places like Egypt, Arabia, Africa. That was where Christianity was strongest, where the great minds of the church were produced all the way up until they were conquered and forced to convert. Now, you might say, What a terrible tragedy. What a horrible thing God had had allowed this to happen. And people would look at that and say, Oh, what a defeat, Christianity must have lost in this region of the world forever. You know, it took a while. But that's not true. If you look at the places where we think that there aren't any Christians, places that are centers of Islam, where it's the only legal religion, these are the places where Christianity is growing fastest, where God's people meeting in secret, and underground are sharing the gospel, where the word of God is growing, and righteousness is springing forth out of the ground in amazing ways, and people are fleeing these places, and converting in droves, in Europe, in America, all over the world. It only took about 1000 years. But God is doing something amazing, isn't it? We see the growth and the power of Christianity and God's grace springing forth amongst the nations. What God does, very simply, as he uses the same things, the means of grace, His word and Sacraments, to spread the gospel and righteousness, to cause righteousness and praise to sprout up almost out of the ground before the nations you can see that in story after story in place, after place. You can see that in the United States. Now we have a story of America as being a place that was always extremely Christian. All right, way back in the day, we called ourselves a Christian nation. Some of that comes from the early settlers, who came specifically to establish a Christian utopia. You know, the pilgrims, they wanted to come here and everybody was gonna be amazing Christians, they're all gonna believe all be perfectly faithful. And it worked great for like 20 years. And their kids were not. As the colonies expanded, Christianity was actually pretty rare. I bet you don't know this, scholars estimate that in 1776, when we became a nation, only 17% of Americans belonged to a church. I bet you thought it was a lot more 6070 80% 17%. Kind of crazy. The greatest growth and expansion in the Christian church in America happened just prior to 1850 in this timeframe, where 35% of Americans were members of a Christian church, it doubled all the way up to 35%. This was what we call the Second Great Awakening. This is camp meetings out in the wilderness. This is hundreds of people gathering together, converting and joining the church and still only 35%. What an interesting thing as we look back at our history compared to what it would have been like, in the 50s and 60s, the great Christian America, that was the 1850s is nothing, right? So we are sitting around here with about 46% of Americans are members of a church or synagogue, according to Pew Research, which means that we are doing far better than any time in our history. And yet, compared to when many of you were young. It's horrible. A terrible tragedy. In fact, in the last, I don't know, 20 years, we've dropped 10 15%. In the United States. We can see that and say What a tragedy. Our churches are shrinking. The United States is becoming more and more secular, and people are getting crazier and crazier because of it. And you can say, Wow, maybe the church is losing. Maybe this tragedy shows that the power of the gospel just doesn't work the way it used to. The God's people have moved on. All we have to do is hunker down and hide and hope that something changes. But God has always caused his righteousness to spring up before the nation. He has used difficult times and tragedies, year after year after year, century after century to cause amazing things to happen. All you have to do is look at the history of the church. Look at places all around the globe, where God's people looked defeated, where they looked destroyed, where the power and promise of the gospel seemed not to do anything. And then a switch flips. Something happened. And out of nowhere, God causes righteousness to spring up almost as if it came out of the ground.
We can trust in this promise. We can look back at the history of the church and take a bigger picture, a picture bigger than our own youth or the history of first Lutheran Church. We can take a look at the way that God has always functioned. He has always delivered His grace and His promises through congregations going up and down in times of history. And he has always used times of decline and persecution for the good of his church. And as we consider our lives now we can say God doing something again? Is he taking this time in the United States of America, to prepare the church for something new? Are we taking a time of examining ourselves, dedicating ourselves to faithfulness, hearing the gospel and understanding who God is to prepare for another explosion? Maybe it might not be in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years who knows, could be tomorrow. God has always used these times, to prepare his church for more, to prepare the gospel to go out into the world and be heard and received by 1000s. Millions. We can trust that same promise that it will always be at work. That's what he did in Babylon. He brought about a rebirth of the people of Israel dedicated to the promises. What he did under Diocletian, when the new emperor Constantine came in, and Christianity became legal, it's spread across the whole empire. What he did under Islam, as he's doing it now. And I think it's what will happen with us. The grace and mercy of the gospel can go out into a world that so desperately needs. And people are aching for I can see it. I think God is doing something amazing. And that's the promise we have is that God's grace and his mercy is always at work through the power of His Word. This promise will always go out, sometimes to deaf ears and persecution. But sometimes, God is getting ready to produce amazing things. It's just our job, to wait for him to be faithful and have God come through on his promises. In his name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai