Be a Part of Something Bigger: God’s Agents of Reconciliation
Isaiah 58:1-12
Last week, I took the entire message to remind you that our Christian faith always begins with God’s love for you – not with your love for him. “We love because he first loved us (1 Jn 4:19).” Your walk with God always begins with an experience of you responding in faith to God’s grace, mercy and love shown to you in Jesus. This is the reason why, before the Apostle Paul ever called anyone to love God and love people in letters like Romans and Ephesians, he prayed fervently that we would have the power to grasp and to know “how wide and long and high and deep” the love of Christ is for us (Eph 3:17-19).
Today, you will see that, when you have truly experienced the love of God for you, that experience always flows out into a life of love for God, a love that must be shown toward those who bear God’s image. So, Jesus’ great command is, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it (or, is a necessary corollary of it): ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 22:37).”
What Jesus was saying was that, since our human neighbors all bear the image of the God we love, we must love them too. No one could put this more starkly that the Apostle John did in his first letter: “We love because he first loved us. So, whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love his brother and sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And God has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love his brother and sister (1 Jn 4:19-21).”
In the days of the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament, there were people who claimed to love and worship God but were not loving people. You can read about that in places like the book of James or Ephesians or 1 John. Today, we’ll see God address the matter through the prophet Isaiah in Is 58. I’m praying that we will hear the clarity with which God speaks about this – and then respond to it.
The Problem: People thought they were worshiping. God said they were rebelling (58:1-5).
Declare to my people their rebellion… Day after day they seek me out. They seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a people who do what is right. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it?’”
At first, it looks like there is a contradiction between v. 1 and what follows. In v. 2, God says he’s speaking to people who “seek him out”. That phrase was a Hebrew idiom for the entire worship life of people. For the people in Isaiah’s day, it included things like going to worship at the Temple, saying prayers, hearing Scripture, and engaging in spiritual disciplines like fasting. So, with that phrase, God is speaking to those we would now call faithful church people – and, not unfaithful church people. Notice that God says in v. 2 that the ones he wants to speak to are engaged in their religious activities “day after day”.
But, the shock is that these apparently “faithful people” are the very people God says are sinning and rebelling in v.1! It’s so serious – and the people are so callous to it – that God tells his preacher Isaiah to blow trumpets and preach loud because their sin is serious! So, we must ask: Why isn’t God criticizing the people out in the world who did not show up to worship all the strangers who were pouring into Israel’s borders? (That was happening in Isaiah’s day.) Why doesn’t God tell Isaiah to preach to those who are ignoring him? Why is he using such strong words for people who seem to be worshiping him?
But, notice also that these church-type people are upset with God too! Interestingly, they think God is the one being unjust in v. 2. Why do they think this? It’s because they keep showing up at worship and even trying to be moral people but God is not giving them what they want! See v. 3: “Why, God, are we doing all this good worship for you and you don’t pay any attention?”
But God says there is something that is central to true worship – but was missing in what they were doing. Yes, they were singing the songs, listening to the sermons and even taking days to fast. But, what God says is that their lives are showing that all their “religion” is not real. What God says is that when we know him personally, we will see the world the way he sees it – we will see people the way he sees people. We will love people as God loves people. And the people in the Temple were not! So, they acted like they loved God but did not love people made in the image of God.
The Essential Truth: Love for God must flow into loving ministries of reconciliation (58:5-7,9b-10a).
“Loose the chains of injustice. Untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free… Share your food with the hungry and provide the poor wanderer with shelter. When you see the naked, clothe them…”
In our Guiding Statement, we say that we are praying that, more and more, we will be a “Reconciling Community” and then we define that in this way: “Pursuing God’s justice, mercy and compassion, we are involved in his ministries of reconciliation.”
This brings us back to the first message I did in this series. Let me remind you of part of it: By “justice”, we mean God’s promise to make all things in his creation right with him again. All evil will be judged and dealt with. Al the affects of sin will restored and healed. God will make right all that has become wrong in this world he made and loves – and we get to be involved in his great mission of righting all wrongs. By “reconciliation”, we mean all the processes and ministries that lead to peace being restored and brokenness being made whole. On one side, we call people to be made right with God through faith Jesus as savior. That’s what Pastor Jeff Liou and I spoke about a few weeks ago when I said we will be an “evangelistic community. And this week, we participate in the larger reconciling work of God in a world ravaged in countess ways by sin by going out with the love of Christ in our hearts and engaging in all sorts of reconciling ministries.
It’s the demonstration of the love of God in practical ways in the midst of the many kinds of pain that sin has brought into our world that the people in Isaiah were not doing. God told Isaiah to call out the kinds of ministries of reconciliation that they should have been doing in their society. Look at his list in vv.6-7:
- Helping set people free when they are shackled – “Loose the bonds of wickedness (v.6)” – from prisons or addictions or trafficking. I think we have lots of those “bonds of wickedness” in our neighborhood too. I want us to seek to set the oppressed free and break every yoke as God called them to do so long ago.
- Sharing food with hungry people – “Share your bread with the hungry (v.7a)” – It’s clear that some people made in God’s image had no food in Isaiah’s day had no food while many who were worshiping had plenty. God said, “Open your eyes to this and learn to share.” I think he almost certainly says the same to us.
- Getting people out of homelessness – “Provide the poor wanderer with shelter (v.7b)” -- This was especially true of the immigrant in Israel – as it sometimes is in our neighborhood. The family was Israel’s social system – and immigrants, orphans and widows were the three groups that had no family. They often were not Israelites but they were people – people made in God’s image whom God is saying that his people were to love and help. When we think of things that are wrong in our world, it is not good for people, especially for children, to be homeless and alone.
- Providing clothing for those with none – “When you see the naked, clothe them
- Care for your family’s needs – “Do not turn away from your own flesh and blood (Anyone who does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I imagine that’s convicting for some who are here today.
I imagine that the list God would give to us now at LAC would be similar to the one he gave Israel. He may add things like “mentor the children who have no support at home,” provide support and community for those who are being released from prison, shelter those who are being abused from the womb to the grave…” I’m sure the list could go on and on – but I’m also sure you see what God’s Word is saying to us with regard to the way God calls us to show his care and love to our world in the name of Christ.
In summary, Isaiah 58 (and Jesus in places like Matthew 25) teaches: If we do not love the poor, the hurting, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the alienated, then we do not really love the God whose image they bear. That kind of love-less worship is religion of the deadest kind. Bottom line: The way we deal with people in distress is an accurate measure of our relationship with God. When we have truly experienced his grace and love personally, we will show it by passing it on to others.
Our Privilege and Calling – When God reconciles us to himself out of love, he sends us to be his ambassadors of reconciliation (58:9b-12) -- You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls; Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
As I say to you often: When God’s reconciling work is complete, i.e., when all things are reconciled to God (cf., Col 1:19-22), then all things will be made right. When God created the world, it was a beautifully connected fabric of healthy relationships. Our relationship to God is the central thing. That relationship affects our relationship to ourselves and to other people. And then, those relationships affect how we relate to the rest of the created world – to our environment. Like a carefully knit fabric, our world is only beautiful and useful if the fabric holds together. God’s creation was once a connected and interdependent fabric with each part affecting the whole.
When the people rebelled against God, the fabric of this created world began to unravel. We feel the affects of sin every day of our lives. No part of this world is all it should be. But God has promised he will make things right. This is the “something bigger” that God is doing.
Out of love for us, Jesus came into this world to make us right with God. Now, we who follow Jesus are called to do what Jesus did, i.e., look for places where the fabric of our world is broken and use whatever God gives us to repair the damage.
To use God’s language in Is 58:12, we are to use whatever God has given us to “repair broken walls” and to “restore” what has become marred by sin. We cannot do everything but we look for opportunities of furthering God’s kingdom in the place God has located us. We are to live each day with God’s perspective on the world. The love of Christ that is wide and long and high and deep we experience personally is a love that must flow through us to others. We who know God’s love are sent by God to engage in ministries of compassion and reconciliation until God’s justice reigns.
And let me tell you: When the love you experience from God flows out through you and you bring help and hope to others, it’s good. It’s really good! You will sense deep down inside: “This is how God wants me to live. This is how God made us to live. I don’t live when I live for myself.” How did Paul put it? “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live – but not I. Christ lives in me! The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20).”
I think God says something similar. He says that when we live with the love of God flowing through us:
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear.
You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail...
You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Isaiah 58:7, 11a-12