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Sermons preached at Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington, Indiana.
Good evening. Nice to see you folks. Glad you came. Tonight, I am preaching on Isaiah chapter 12 and I picked this chapter for two reasons. First, it's a short chapter on thankfulness.
Lucas Weeks:So there you go. This is the Thanksgiving Eve sermon. And, second, I was struck by the way that it's connected to the chapters that came before it. Christmas is just around the corner, and so we are starting to think about giving and receiving gifts for Christmas time. And, what are the absolute best kinds of gifts to receive?
Lucas Weeks:They're the kinds of gifts that are totally unexpected and beyond our imagining. Right? You can imagine giving a gift to somebody and they said, you got me what? You know, they just blow your mind. Well, this is what Isaiah chapter 12 is like.
Lucas Weeks:But first, we have to back up a little bit and do a little review. In Isaiah chapter 9, the prophet writes that everyone is godless and an evil doer, and every mouth speaks folly. He compares wickedness to a fire. For wickedness, he says here, for wickedness burns like a fire, it consumes briars and thorns, it kindles the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke. Chapter 9 ends with this horrific imagery of fire devouring the land and all the people in it, And even of the people devouring each other and even themselves in their arrogance and their wickedness.
Lucas Weeks:Isaiah is not bashful about pointing out the people's wickedness. Chapter 10 does not relent even a little bit. It begins by condemning those who oppress the poor. Terrible words. Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain.
Lucas Weeks:For all this, his anger, God's anger has not turned away and his hand is stretched out still. God is visiting his just anger on his people who have rebelled against him. Chapter goes on Chapter 10 goes on to describe how God will use the arrogant, wicked Assyrian people to punish the people of Israel for their rebellion and wickedness. Now, all of this is the context for Isaiah chapter 11, which is filled with these amazing glorious promises that we often remember at Christmas time. Promises about Jesus and the coming messiah.
Lucas Weeks:Verses 1 and 2 of chapter 11 say this, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. These glorious promises, and we cannot even begin to taste the sweetness of these promises without understanding the hatred that God has for our sin. And so, like I said, chapter 12 is this eruption of gratitude and praise that comes from the sweet relief of God's anger being turned away. So let's read it now.
Lucas Weeks:Isaiah, chapter 12. You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord. For though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.
Lucas Weeks:With joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation, and you will say in that day, give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously.
Lucas Weeks:Let this be made known in all the Earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the holy one of Israel. Now, what is your typical response when somebody gets angry with you? When somebody gets in your face and begins to make accusations against you? The typical response when someone is angry with us is fight or flight.
Lucas Weeks:Right? You've heard of this before, fight or flight. When we fight, we get angry and we fight fire with fire. We have our rights, we explain all the ways that we have been violated, we list all the unjust and unfair ways that we have been treated, and then we go on the offensive, and we try to destroy someone else before they can destroy us. At least, that's the plan.
Lucas Weeks:The other response typically when somebody is angry with us is to fly, to run away from conflict, to avoid, and to ignore. We can go to great lengths to pull this off. We can be quite ingenious about ways of avoiding people and situations that we don't wanna get tangled up in. We know what it's like to walk on eggshells and we've become quite good at it. We haven't broken an egg in a long, long time.
Lucas Weeks:Now, does any of this sound familiar? Do you think maybe it's valuable to talk about these things on the night before Thanksgiving? When we are sitting around the dinner table? Are you going to be attempting either of these things tomorrow? We do this all the time in our interpersonal relationships, don't we?
Lucas Weeks:Fight, flight. We do it all the time. But we do this also with God. Now, you and I are not alone in this universe, and we all know this. We were made by God, we will return to him, our lives are lived before him and in relation to him every second of every day.
Lucas Weeks:It's part of what it means to be human. We live before the face of God. So, what is your relationship with God like right now? Are you putting up a good fight? Are you running and avoiding?
Lucas Weeks:What is your relationship with God this evening? This is important because our entire passage hinges on how we choose to respond to God. In particular, it hinges This passage in particular hinges on how we respond to God in his anger, to God's anger. Now, in our modern therapeutic, style of Christianity, any talk of God's anger toward us is off limits, not allowed. God may have been angry at some point in the past, but he's definitely not angry now.
Lucas Weeks:Never, never would we allow that God might, maybe, sometimes be angry with us today. As parents, we are told that our children should never be allowed to even consider the possibility that God may be angry with them. We are a people, a nation filled with anger all over the place, everywhere you look in our country you see anger, right? At every level. From the classroom and the home, all the way up to our politics, you know, everywhere.
Lucas Weeks:We see anger everywhere, but we still would never allow that God that any of it or anything that happens to us would be evidence of God's anger for us or toward us. But this is to misunderstand Jesus completely. Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Jesus came to show us that what God demands of us is to be holy on the inside and on the outside. To be humble and loving in the way that Jesus was, yes, but also just and righteous and true in the way that he was.
Lucas Weeks:Jesus is not at odds with the prophet Isaiah. So why would God be angry with us? Because of our sin. This is not complicated. He was angry with the people of Israel because of their sin and rebellion, and God is angry when his people rebel against him.
Lucas Weeks:We have been wicked. If the Israelites were biting and devouring one another 1000 of years ago, how about us today? How different are we today? How about us as a nation? As a church?
Lucas Weeks:You know, what sins do we commit against each other in this church? What about in our families? As we sit around the table about to enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner, are there any sins that we need to confess to each other? God is angry when we sin. This is part of his character, but look at this first verse of chapter 12.
Lucas Weeks:I will give thanks to you, oh, Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Now, the response to God's anger here in this verse is very different than our typical fight or flight response. How so? Well, in either one of those responses, you at some point, you stop listening to the actual, accusations. You stop listening to the actual words that are coming at you and instead, your whole attention focuses on on the person delivering the message and you either fight or you fly.
Lucas Weeks:In your in the flight response, you stop listening to what is being said and your whole goal is to get away from that person. Get away from me. I don't want to have anything to do with you. In the fight response, you stop listening and you you try to destroy the person. Right?
Lucas Weeks:You try to destroy them, but that's not what happens here. What happens here The end result of what happens here is closeness to God, is nearness to God. How is that possible? How does that work? Well, there is a third option.
Lucas Weeks:You know, fight or flight is not the only two options. It's a it's a false dichotomy. The third option is to listen carefully to what is being expressed and to acknowledge what is true. It is to have the courage and the humility to receive it without running away or without punching back. Now, in our lives together, there are many people who can get angry with us on any given day.
Lucas Weeks:You know, the guy driving and maybe he flicks us off, our boss at work, maybe our husband or our wife, our teenage son, or our 9th grade English teacher. You know, lots of people. We interact with a lot of people and we give them plenty of opportunity to get angry with us. Right? Are we able to hear what is true in what they say to us?
Lucas Weeks:Are we able to acknowledge what is true regardless of how that truth is served up to us? Sometimes it's served well, sometimes not so well. But are we able to hear it regardless of how it's served up to us? Now, of course, I can't guarantee that what other angry people say to you will have any truth in it whatsoever, you know. Maybe the guy who flicked you off into the traffic was completely wrong, Maybe that's the one instance in your day when you were completely justified in whatever you it was you did.
Lucas Weeks:But the truth is, especially if it's someone close to you, there's usually some truth in what they're saying to you. Right? There's usually some truth in what they're saying to you. Usually, if someone is angry with you and they care about you, usually there's some truth in it, and you should listen. How much more when God is speaking to us?
Lucas Weeks:Is there truth when God is angry? How did God promise to demonstrate his anger to the people of Israel in Isaiah chapter 10? He promised to show the people of Israel his anger by using an arrogant, wicked empire, who had come to conquer them. He promised to make his anger known through other sinful men and women. And how does God make his anger known to us?
Lucas Weeks:The same way. Through other sinful men and women. Are you willing to have the humility to acknowledge that God's discipline comes to you through sinful men and women. The prophet Isaiah does, and this is the good part. It's amazing.
Lucas Weeks:Something amazing happens. It's mind blowing, earth shattering, life changing. Again, I'm just gonna read the first verse in chapter 12 again. Speaking of the people of Israel, it says, You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you are angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. What I find incredible here is that the people of Israel become willing to receive comfort from the very one who was angry with them.
Lucas Weeks:Now, is that common? When somebody has been angry with you, are you typically willing to receive comfort from them? Not usually. Right? Usually our response is fight or flight.
Lucas Weeks:But to receive the comfort of God, you must be willing to acknowledge the righteousness of his anger, the goodness of it. Who needs Who is the one who needs to be comforted? Is it the one who is on the attack? Who is trying to figure out the next, best way to to to go on the attack? No.
Lucas Weeks:An attacker isn't looking to be comforted. If you're in fight mode, you're not looking to be comforted. What about the one who is running away? Again, no. The person running away from you doesn't think that you're safe.
Lucas Weeks:He thinks you're dangerous. He thinks you're out to destroy him. Why would he be comforted by you? How could he be? No.
Lucas Weeks:Two things are true of the one who is able to receive comfort from God. 1st, you can receive comfort when you accept that what God is saying about you is true. It's true. And, there's this quote in The Great Divorce that this passage made me think of. It's this, it's I don't even remember exactly the scene, but it's this, Don't you remember on earth, there were things too hot to touch with your finger, but you could drink them alright?
Lucas Weeks:Shame is like that. If you will attempt it, if you will drink the cup to the bottom, you will find it very nourishing. You will find it very nourishing. But try to do anything else with it, and it scolds. You can receive comfort when you accept that what God is saying about you is true.
Lucas Weeks:That the shame you feel is actually right. And you get to the point that you say, thank you. Somebody needed to tell me the truth. 2nd, you can receive comfort when you trust that God is for you, that God is for you, that he does not want to destroy you, but to give you life and to give it to you abundantly. Look at verse 2.
Lucas Weeks:Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Fear and anger are so much of what the fight flight response is about, but here in verse 2 it says, I will trust and will not be afraid. And my question to you tonight is, are you still running and fighting? Are you still defending yourself and your sin?
Lucas Weeks:Or have you put down your weapons long enough to receive the comfort of God? Is he your strength and your song? We've been in John chapter 4 the last couple Sundays where Jesus has an encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. And one of the things he he talks about, he says there is that he says, the water that I will give you will become like a spring of water welling up to eternal life. How can you not think of that when it says in verse 3, with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation?
Lucas Weeks:What an amazing phrase. What an amazing part of this passage. Is that your attitude when we come into the Christmas season this year? If someone were to peel open your heart and peer inside there, what do they find? What would we find if we opened you up and looked inside your heart, at the bottom?
Lucas Weeks:Would we find bitterness and self pity? Sadness and depression because of unmet expectations and dashed hopes? Or or would we find springs of salvation? Is today, today the day you can say, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted, Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the Earth.
Lucas Weeks:Shout and sing for joy, oh inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the holy one of Israel. Church, we have a lot to be thankful for. We have a lot to be thankful for. Let's put away our vain attempt to fight with God or to fly away from Him, and let's give thanks to him. Let's pray.
Lucas Weeks:Father in Heaven, we do thank you this night. We thank you for your great and precious promises, for the way that you lift us up out of the muck and the mire, for the way that you clean us and cleanse us, Father. As it says at the beginning of Isaiah, you have been merciful to cleanse us, to purify us, to make us white as wool, pure as snow. Father, thank you. This is a glory, and it is your glory, father, and we and we give you praise.
Lucas Weeks:We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.