Our text for this morning gives us a pause in the season of Pentecost. We have a pause to look back and see where we have been and to look forward and see what awaits us. At this point we are a little over half way through the non-festival portion of our church year and in particular the Pentecost Season. The non-festival portion of our church year is that part which does not have any big celebrations, like Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Ascension. Our text is one of proleptic prophecy, that is, it is a text that points not only to the first coming of the Messiah, but also to His second coming.
Our text begins with the promise of the coming of the Lord. We begin at verse four, “Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘“Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you’”(v. 4).
Just over eight months ago we celebrated Jesus’ first coming. We celebrated the coming of the baby in Bethlehem. We celebrated the birth of God in human flesh, the birth of the Messiah. In a little less than four months we will celebrate Jesus’ birth again. Why do we celebrate each year? Is it because we do not get it right each time and we have to do it until we get it right? No! Do we celebrate each year because we are creatures of habit? Yes, we are creatures of habit, but that is not the reason we celebrate each year. Do we celebrate because we like to get presents? Yes, we do like to get presents, but that is not the reason we celebrate each year. We celebrate each year because we need the constant reminder, lest we forget, that Jesus is true God, born as a true man to give His life for ours. You might imagine that we celebrate each year because we are very much like the children of Israel, we too constantly forget our Lord, all that He has done, all that He continues to do and all that He has promised to do for us. We tend to forget the good gifts and blessings He gives and very often that leads to neglecting His means of grace, the ways in which He gives us His good gifts and blessings. Yes, we celebrate each year, we have the church year calender, we go through the life and times of Jesus continually lest we forget.
Just about five months ago we celebrated, and yes I will use the word celebrate, we celebrated Jesus’ death on the cross. We celebrated that the judgement of sin, the price for sin, which is death, which was our judgement, fell on Jesus. We celebrated that Jesus died the eternal death penalty for us in our place. But, even more so, we rejoiced and celebrated three days later when He rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and the power of the devil. We will again celebrate His death and resurrection in the coming year for the same reasons we celebrate His birth, because we need the constant reminder of the fact that it was our sins that put Him on the cross and it was for our sins that He died. And because He died, we now have forgiveness. Let me pause here for a moment. I hope you have been noticing, as I tell you all the time, we get it right when we point, not to ourselves, but to Jesus, just Jesus. Have you noticed how our church year cycle points us away from ourselves, except the part about the fact that it was and is because of us and our sin that Jesus was born, lived, suffered, died and rose for us, that the church year cycle points us to Jesus. It points us to celebrate Jesus’ birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit for us.
We are a little over half way through the Pentecost season. In November we will get to the third, second, and last Sunday’s of this current church year. These Sundays have Scripture readings that especially focus on Jesus’ second coming and Judgement Day. Judgement day is the day that Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Those who have faith in Him He will judge to eternal life in heaven and those who are unbelievers will be judge to eternal life in hell.
For the believer, for us Christians, we will be given heaven. Actually, heaven is our now, it is just that we will not move in until that time. For the unbeliever, the judgement of eternal spiritual death will fall on them, because they have refused the Lord’s gift of Jesus’ life for theirs. And notice, Jesus died for all people, of all places of all times. Forgiveness is already there. It is those who refuse and reject Jesus and His forgiveness that inherit eternal spiritual death.
Our text continues with the works the Lord will do. We pick up at verse five, “5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.” (v. 5-7a).
Isaiah uses similar imagery to what Jesus uses in the New Testament. Isaiah tells us that there will be spiritual healing for those who are spiritually blind, spiritually dead and enemies of God. This spiritual healing comes by God’s grace through faith in Jesus and is ours beginning at our baptism. This spiritual healing begins with the forgiveness of sins, which is our greatest need.
There will also be physical healing. We know that Jesus came healing and doing miracles. He came doing signs and wonders as proof of His Divinity, that is that He is truly God. He came for those who are blind and deaf and handicapped. Yes, miracles do still happen in our world today. They do not necessarily happen in a spectacular way, but that does not mean that God could not do it that way. Today our Lord works mainly through means. Through the means of doctors and medicines the Lord does healing. I hate to tell you, but not every spectacular healing you see on TV is real. We do continue to believe in miracles today as there are times that the only explanation for a person being healed is a miracle.
At His second coming Jesus will bring spiritual healing, the greatest spiritual healing, complete spiritual healing. He will bring a new heaven and a new earth. The old heaven and earth, full of sin and unbelief will be destroyed and we will be given a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
This spiritual healing will bring physical healing. Paul reminds us that even the earth is waiting for the coming of the Lord. The earth is groaning as it too has been suffering since the fall. The new earth will not have thorns and thistles, weeds and worts. The new earth will not have tornadoes and earthquakes, hurricanes and landslides. The new earth will be a place of complete perfection, joy and happiness, something none of us ever has nor ever will experience while living in this world today. Indeed, this new heaven and earth, this spiritual healing is something we look forward to and even encourage and embrace as we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” and “come Lord Jesus, come quickly.”
As I said earlier, today is a day to look at where we have been. We have been to Bethlehem. We have seen Jesus’ birth. We have been to the fields of Bethlehem and witnessed the angels telling the good news to the shepherds. We have been to the house with the magi to see the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh given to the baby Jesus, the One who was born to be our prophet, priest and King.
We have seen Jesus’ life, His perfect life. We saw Him at the age of twelve talking with the teachers in His Father’s house, the temple. We heard the Words of God the Father at His baptism when He said, “this is my beloved Son.” We witnessed His defeat of the devil as with His Word He refused to succumb to the temptations of the devil in the wilderness. We were with Him as He chose His disciples and as He appointed the twelve to be Apostles. We were with Him as He struggled in the garden praying, not His will, but the Father’s will be done. We were with Him before Pilate and Herod. We were with Him as He was whipped by the soldiers, as they hit Him, mocked Him, and spit on Him.
And we have been to the cross and seen Jesus’ death. We witnessed the darkness cover the land. We witnessed Him breath His last. We witnessed the curtain in the temple tear in two from top to bottom. We witnessed the centurion confess, “truly this was the Son of God.” We witnessed His burial and we witnessed His rising from the dead on Easter morning.
Now, where we are going? We are looking forward. We are looking forward to see Jesus come again. We are eagerly preparing ourselves as we await His second coming. We prepare ourselves by making use of His means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments. We prepare ourselves by our own personal reading of God’s Word, by having private and family devotions, by being in Divine Service and in Bible study, and by remembering our Baptism, by confessing our sins and hearing His words of Absolution, that our sins are forgiven, and by partaking of His body and blood in His Holy Supper.
We eagerly await and look forward to the time when we will see Jesus come to rightly judge the world. We look forward in anticipation because we know that by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus, faith He has given to us, we are already judged to eternal life with Him in heaven.
Thus we eagerly await Jesus’ second coming when He will come to take us to live with Himself forever in heaven. We eagerly await the time when Jesus will take us to dine with Him at the eternal banqueting table where we will eat eternal manna and drink of the river of pleasure forever.
Today is a good day for review. Do we review to see how smart we are? No! Do we review because God will gives us a test? No! We review because we know how comforting it is to hear the words of the Lord, “your sins are forgiven, go in peace, and sin no more.” Yet, we know that those words did come at a cost. Those words came at the cost of the life of His Son, Jesus on the cross. We review as a reminder of all that our Lord has done, does and continues to do for us. And what is more, He continually stirs in us through the power of the Holy Spirit to respond to all that He does for us and so that we might say, to God be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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