Sunday, March 11, 2018

"Sins of the Holy City" Sermon: Isaiah 1:21-31



“Sins of the Holy City”
[Isaiah 1:21-31]
March 11, 2018, Second Reformed Church
            We now come to the third of the three groups that God condemns through the prophet, Isaiah. 
We remember that Isaiah has a lengthy career as a prophet, spanning the reign of four kings of Judah, primarily during the eighth century B. C.
            We read that God gives Israel and Judah His Law and adopts them as His sons and daughters, but they rebel against God.  However, God preserves a remnant who survive His discipline.
.           We read that God tells Israel and Judah how He is to be worshipped, but they choose to worship the way they want to, and they come before God unrepentant of their sins.  Still, God says He will wash some of them clean.
            Finally, God condemns the sins of the Holy City – Jerusalem.
            First, God demands holiness of His people.
            “How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them.”
            God laments what has happened to the Holy City.  God expresses grief that the Holy City has turned away from Him and plunged themselves into all kinds of sin.
            God chose Jerusalem to be His home on earth – the place of the Temple of the Lord.  It was to be the place where His people came in holiness to worship Him.  It was to be a true city of holiness that the entire world would wonder about.  But she chose sin over holiness.
            The city had been faithful to God, as a bride to her husband, but now she became impure, she became a whore to anyone who would have her.  She had been a city of justice and righteousness for all people, but now she was a city of murderers.
            These two crimes represent the whole Law of God:  becoming unfaithful represents the whole first table of the Ten Commandments – those requirements regarding the love of God.  Being murderers represents the whole second table of the Ten Commandments – those requirements regarding the love of neighbor.
            That is not to say that those living in the Holy City did not actually commit these sins – they did.  They were certainly unfaithful – the primary accusation against Israel and Judah from God is that of idolatry.  And we can include actual adultery here as well.  And, as we saw last week, God condemns murderers coming into worship with their hands lifted up to pray, unrepentant and full of blood, and we said that there is disagreement about whether that text referred to literally murderers or not.  Our text here supports the idea that at least some of those coming into worship were, indeed, actual murderers who were unrepentant, but sought God’s favor.
            God uses another example:  they had been like sterling silver, but now they were filled with impurities.  They had been like top shelf wine, but now they had water mixed in and their character and value and beauty had been corrupted.
            And again, their princes, who were to be examples of holiness and justice and righteousness to the people had rebelled against God and His Law and become buddies with thieves.  They accepted bribes and gifts to throw their votes one way or another.  They ignored their duty to the orphan and the widow.
            We will remember, last week we saw that God has a special concern for the most vulnerable in society, and the most vulnerable in their society were the widow and orphans, because there was no adult male to provide for them in accordance with the thought of the day.
            And it is often true that corruption is top down.  When our President is corrupt, so will be our senators and congresspersons, and our governors, and our mayors, and our storeowners, and then, those who shop in them, and evenour families.  If those in power are corrupt, it should be no surprise that everyone follows suit.
            This is unacceptable, as God says, “and said to the judges, ‘Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the LORD. He is with you in giving judgment. Now then, let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the LORD our God, or partiality or taking bribes” (2 Chronicles 19:6-7, ESV).
            Remember what God says to Israel, “For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45, ESV).
            And God says to all believers – the Church, “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16, ESV).
            We are to be holy, just and righteous – doing all those things that God has commanded and not doing all those things God has forbidden.  How hard do we fight – how hard do we strive to be holy?  God has given us God the Holy Spirit so we are able to be holy, and God has provided a way for our escape so we never have to sin again.
            And so, the Holy City is impure.  Think of this church being a place where it was known that we have sexual relations with anyone we want to and we don’t care.  We ignore or even hurt our neighbors and we don’t care.  And I come into worship, soaked through with blood, making sure we will have a quiet worship service through murder, and you are all fine with it, and I believe God will hear my prayer.
            Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
            “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16, ESV).
            God demands holiness of His people, and we ought to be ever striving for holiness and justice, and righteousness, in our lives and in each other’s lives, as we are the Church.
            In the second part of our text, God proclaims the objective restoration of His people, and then the subjective restoration of His people.
            Second, God will discipline His people and restore them.
            “Therefore the Lord declares, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: ‘Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes. I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.’”
            The objective restoration of God’s people is what God is going to do to restore His people.
            Here we see the wrath and the mercy of God.
            God tells Judah that their sin is a burden to Him and He wants relief.  The failure of Jerusalem – the Holy City – is a weight on God’s back, and for His Sake, He will remove the burden – and in doing so, He will remove the burden from – He will restore – His people.
            God tells Judah that they are His enemies and His foes, and He is going to discipline them for their sin:  God is going to smelt away their dross as with lye and remove all their alloy.
            God symbolically describes how He will purify His people.  Just as silver can be filled with impurities, so they’re filled with impurities – rebellious sins.  And God explains that He will cleanse them like silver is cleansed.
            Silver is cleansed by at least two methods:  first, silver is heated to the point that it melts and the impurities can been seen in the molten silver and fished out, and/or lye is poured into the silver which gathers the impurities together like a scum on the top of the molten silver, and then it is scooped off.  If silver could speak, it would say that this is a very painful process.
            After this painful cleansing of their sin, their judges and their counselors will be restored and Jerusalem will again truly be known as the Holy City.
            But is that enough?  Is even God’s discipline enough to make a person holy?  Is it possible to be saved by keeping all of the Sacrificial Law of the Old Testament?  No.  Never.  Jerusalem would soon fall again.
            No, the final hope of discipline and cleansing and restoration can only be found in One Who is both God and human, Who can truly live a sinless and holy life, take on the sins of all those who will ever believe in Him as Savior, die, and rise in victory.
            Isaiah prophesies this in the text of the fifty-third chapter (ESV):
            “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
            “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
            “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
            “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
            God objectively disciplines and purifies and restores His people ultimately and only completely and eternally, through Jesus Christ, the Only Savior.  And we who believe live through this process of progressing in holiness until Jesus returns and He completes us in Him.
            God will discipline His people and restore them.
            Third, God will redeem all those who repent and obey.
            “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness. But rebels and sinners shall be broken together, and those who forsake the LORD shall be consumed.  For they shall be ashamed of the oaks that you desired; and you shall blush for the gardens that you have chosen. For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water. And the strong shall become tinder, and his work a spark, and both of them shall burn together, with none to quench them.”
            God explains that Zion – will suffer in discipline and in being restored – in being purified.  Justice will be received on behalf of all because God is the God of justice – He does not wink at sin – every sin of every person will be paid for.  However, those who repent will be declared righteous because of the debt that God has paid for their sin on their behalf through the Savior. 
            In order for God to be just, the debt owed for every sin that you and I have committed must be – and will be – paid to God.  However, if we repent of our sin in true faith – believing in the Savior that God has sent – God will have that debt paid through Jesus – as we saw in Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter fifty-three.  There’s just one more thing:  repentance means turning around one hundred and eighty degrees, but it does not mean turning around and sitting on our butts.
            As James, the brother of our Lord, explains, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25, ESV).
And again, he writes, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14-17, ESV).
What James is telling us is that if we say we have faith, but don’t do good works, it is a counterfeit faith.  As Jesus explains when He says that He is the vine and we are the branches, true faith must be followed by good works.  Good works are the fruit of a true and living faith.  If we say we believe in Jesus Alone as our Savior, and we are striving after holiness, then God has redeemed us – we have responded to God’s cleansing with a true repentance that turns around and then moves forward in the right way – in a God-pleasing way.
If we don’t repent – or if we say we have repented, but then we never do anything that proves our repentance, those rebels and sinners who forsake the Lord will be consumed. They will be ashamed of their worship on the high places among the oaks and in the gardens of the fertility gods, and their leaves will dry up and fall off and gather around them, and their false works will spark a fire of the leaves, and they with their sin will be continually burned together in a fire that will never be quenched.
This is a three-fold warning to us:
God redeems a people for Himself, but we must respond ourselves (subjectively), in obedience – in good works.
Until Jesus returns, the Church will be mixed – with people who truly repent of their sin and strive to obey God, and those who live a lie.
And, we can’t wait for someone else to tell our friend or family member the Gospel, eternity hangs in the balance, and we do not know when God will end our days.
God will redeem those who repent and obey.
And so we see that being part of the Holy City – the Church – is not enough.  It is not enough to know the right words.  We must be pursuing holiness both in word and in action – in our deeds.  May God be pleased to continue to change us into the Image of His Son.
Let us pray:
           Almighty God, we have failed You in every way, both purposefully and in ignorance, we have sinned against You.  But You are the God of Justice and Mercy, and You have chosen to save a people for Yourself through Your Son, and You have called each one of those persons to repent of their sin, to turn around, to not sin any more, to continue to repent of sin, and to strive by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit to live in holiness – indeed to be holy as You have commanded us to be holy.  Change us and grow us and be merciful to us.  For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, Amen.

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