God is Still Drawing People to Himself

is the final chapter in the prophecy of Isaiah, and what is contained in it is part of God’s response to Isaiah’s prayer, which is recorded in chapter 63:15-64:12.

Isaiah sees the great apostasy and faithlessness of his people and he prays to God. He says, in part,

Isaiah 64 ESV

1 Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence— 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. 5 You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? 6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. 8 But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. 10 Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. 11 Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. 12 Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?

“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence–as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil–to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!

“When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.

“You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?

“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.

“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

“Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?”

Isaiah prays that God would rend, rip apart, the heavens and come down to earth. He may be thinking of when God came down on Mt. Sinai in thunder and fire and smoke and a loud trumpet blast that shook the camp of Israel at the base of the mountain.

He thinks that if God would just come down in visible demonstration of his power and majesty and might that those who were rebelling against him would be jolted out of their rebellion and would properly fear and trust in the Lord again.

I don’t know if you have ever thought the same as Isaiah. Perhaps you have thought that if God would just give some visible demonstration of his power and might, people would stop rebelling against him and fear him and trust in him.

In chapters 65 and 66, God answers Isaiah. He basically says that he was ready to be found by the people, but they refused. In false piety they said, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.” They thought they were holy, even while they violated the commands that God had given them and worshipped idols and ate the flesh of pigs, which was forbidden them.

And so because of this, God would bring judgment upon them. But God would not abandoned his people altogether. He would preserve for himself a remnant, a people for himself. God would indeed rend the heavens and come down, but not in the way Isaiah expected.

Our text for today is the last part of God’s answer to Isaiah. Before we get there, we need to know a little bit more of what comes right before our text.

In Isaiah’s prayer, he prayed that God would turn his gaze toward his people and not hide his face from them. In chapter 66, God answers Isaiah’s prayer and tells him that he will not look to the one who thinks he is holy in himself, who in their arrogance thinks they have no need to repent.

But the one to whom he will turn his gracious gaze and attention is the one who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at his Word.

So often we think that God will pay attention to the super-spiritual, super-pious person. We think that God will pay attention to the one who has lots of money and fame and wealth. We think he will pay attention to those who have huge church buildings and tons of people in the pews.

We are told that God will pay attention to us if we just have enough faith to demand that God bless us or that if we have the audacity to claim outrageous things in God’s name, he will give attention to us and bless us.

But so often those who peddle such a “gospel” do not give regard to the Word of God. Indeed, they do not tremble at his Word, they simply use it for their own purposes and twist it to promote their lies.

The one to whom God promises to look are those who are humble, not arrogant; who are contrite in spirit, not confident in their own piety and works; who tremble at his Word–that is, who have proper respect and reverence for God’s Word and receive it in faith–, not using and twisting God’s Word for their own ends and lies.

To be contrite in spirit is to understand that you have no righteousness of your own that would avail before God. It is to recognize the impoverished position you are in because of your sin, such that you make no pretense of offering any righteous work to God as if he would then be inclined to be gracious to you.

You understand that you are in need of the mercy and grace of God in Christ and that you cannot save or sanctify yourself. The contrite in spirit are those that God describes as the “dimly burning wicks” and “bruised reeds.” These he will not quench nor break. But he will look to them in grace and kindness and heal them with his forgiveness and grace.

And so we recognize that here God is speaking of his Church–of those who trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, making no pretense of having their own righteousness.

God Rent the Heavens and Came Down in Jesus Christ

God did come down, but not in the way Isaiah prayed for

God did indeed rend the heavens and come down as Isaiah prayed, but not in the way that Isaiah expected. There was no thunder or lightning, no earthquake, no trumpet sound.

Instead, in the quietness of a peasant home in Bethlehem, God came down to earth in Jesus Christ through the Virgin Mary.

Through the Incarnate Son of God, who looked no different than any other Middle Eastern man, who walked the way of suffering and rejection by his own people, who went the way of the cross, bleeding and dying for the sins of the world, God brought healing and reconciliation to sinners who deserved nothing but his righteous wrath.

And what looked like to all the world as defeat was the greatest victory there ever has been. Through his death, Jesus conquered death and the devil. By his blood we are washed clean of our sins and in the waters of Holy Baptism we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

Through his death and resurrection the Church of God was born. As Eve was created by God out of the side of Adam, so God created the Church out of the side of Christ as blood and water flowed from his wounds.

The water and the blood from the side of Christ speak to us of Holy Baptism and being born of water and Spirit, and of Holy Communion, in which Christ gives to us his very body and blood that hung on the cross and poured out of his wounds for the forgiveness of our sins.

So what does this have to do with , you might ask? In chapter 66, God describes the creation of the Church and how God will preserve the Church until the end.

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In these sets of verses, God speaks of the end of both the righteous and the wicked

Getting to our text, God speaks of the work that he is doing through the Church, and he speaks of what will come at the End.

In verses 15-17 and 22-24 God speaks of the Day of Judgment. He tells Isaiah that the wicked will be put to shame and the faithful will be exalted to life eternal. More on that to come, but we turn now to the verses in between.

God speaks of the work that he is doing through his church

Isaiah 66:18–21 ESV

18 “For I know their works and their thoughts, and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, 19 and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. 20 And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord. 21 And some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord.

In verses 18-21, God describes what has been going on and continues to go on between the first advent of Christ, in which he came to make atonement for sins, and this final Day of Judgment.

In these verses God speaks of the time coming when he will gather all nations and tongues and bring them to his holy mountain Jerusalem. And from there he will send his faithful out to the nations that have not heard of him and there they will declare his glory among the nations.

Through this sending out to the nations God will draw back in to himself people from every tribe and tongue and make for himself a people.

So, how do we understand this and what does it mean for us?

There are different layers or levels of meaning in God’s words to Isaiah in this chapter.

First, the judgment that God promised to bring upon Jerusalem and Israel for their wickedness and abandonment of him came to pass with the destruction of Jerusalem under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 B.C.

One of the results of this was that Israel was scattered throughout the nations, and they brought the knowledge of God and his saving work with them.

Later, in 538 B.C., God began to bring a remnant of his people back to Jerusalem. And there they remained for about 400 or so years.

Jesus comes onto the scene around this time and, interestingly enough, he encounters the same situation that Isaiah did. In fact, Jesus quotes Isaiah concerning his own ministry.

In explaining to the disciples why he spoke in parables, Jesus quotes from Isaiah saying,

Matthew 13:14–15 ESV

14 Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “ ‘ “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” 15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’

Matthew 13:

“‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.’ For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.”

This is exactly what God told Isaiah when he commissioned him to go and preach and prophecy to Israel. In the same chapter as Isaiah receives his commission to be a prophet of the Lord God says to him,

Isaiah 6:9–10 ESV

9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

“Go, and say to this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

This was God’s judgment upon Israel in Isaiah’s day because the people of Israel stopped believing the Word of God and turned to idols and so through their persistent wickedness and unbelief provoked the Lord to anger.

And Isaiah was told to proclaim this to the people until the people are removed far away–a reference to the exile–and until all that is left of his people is a stump as when a tree is felled and its stump remains.

As in Isaiah’s day, so in Jesus’ day. The people of Israel had again grown dull to the Word of the Lord and pursued their own way instead of God’s way. And God came down to them, as Isaiah had prayed for, in Christ and Jesus proclaimed his Word among his people, but they did not listen because their hearts were hard and their eyes blinded by unbelief.

And so Jesus pronounced the same judgment upon them that he did through Isaiah in Isaiah’s day.

And, interestingly enough, God judged the people of Israel in much the same way. This time, however, it was the Romans who came and destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the people from Jerusalem into all the world.

And so it remains today.

God also speaks in our passage in Isaiah of gathering all nations and tongues in Jerusalem and that he would set a sign among them and they would see his glory.

What is he talking about? God is speaking here of Christ and his work of redemption for sinners.

Jesus is the sign that God has set among the nations and the glory of God is seen most clearly in Jesus Christ and his suffering and death for sinners and his subsequent resurrection from the dead.

Indeed Simeon, speaking as a prophet to Mary in the temple at the presentation of Christ said about Jesus,

Luke 2:34–35 ESV

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

Luke 2:34 ESV

34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed

Luke 2

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

God then tells Isaiah that he will send forth survivors to the nations, to the coastlands far away that have not heard of him or what he has done. And among those nations those sent by the Lord will declare his glory among the nations.

The glory they will proclaim is the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ that has secured the redemption, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation for sinners. This is God’s glory and his fame and this is what he has caused to be preached among the nations.

We see this happen when Christ commissions his apostles to go forth to every nation under heaven and proclaim the Gospel. They were to make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them all that Christ had commanded them. And Christ would go with them to the end of the age.

At Pentecost, the 120 received the Holy Spirit and began to preach to the nations. And the Spirit continued to be poured out, even on the Gentiles, and they were recognized as partakers also in the salvation and redemption that Christ accomplished on the cross.

From there God has sent out his Church into all the world to preach the Gospel of Christ crucified for sinners.

And so it continues today. God is still fulfilling what he promised to Isaiah so long ago.

But sometimes it doesn’t appear to our human eyes and understanding that God is very successful in his work of saving sinners.

The wicked seem to prosper while the righteous suffer. Evil is held up as good and good is regarded as evil. Sometimes it seems as though the devil has actually won the battle. And so sometimes we are tempted to despair and everything seems bleak to our eyes.

The End of the Wicked

They will suffer the eternal wrath of God in hell

In order that we may be encouraged and not lose heart, God has given us a description both of the end of the wicked and the end of the righteous.

You see, God will once again rend the heavens and come down in Jesus Christ. At his second advent Christ will come, not as a humble baby, but as the King of kings and the Righteous Judge of all the earth. He will come with the trumpet blast and all will see him. And he comes with his righteous judgment.

In graphic terms God describes the end of the wicked. He says that “their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched.”

We can think of how worms eat the flesh of a corpse. Only in the second death the worm will not die. This devouring is never-ending. It speaks of conscious torment forever and ever. And God also says that the fire will never be quenched.

There are those who teach that the punishment of the wicked will not last forever, that they will eventually cease to exist.

But God does not speak this way. He speaks of eternal punishment. Jesus also speaks this way. He picks up on the description of never-ending fire.

One of the terms that Jesus uses that is translated into English as “hell” is the word “gehenna.” Perhaps you have heard that word.

Gehenna is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew “ge hinnom,” the “valley of hinnom.” This valley was just outside of Jerusalem and in Jesus’ day it was a trash heap that was constantly burning. This is the picture Jesus uses to teach about the nature of hell.

And so for Jesus, hell is eternal. And he should know, since he created hell for the devil and his angels.

This is the end of the wicked. And God also says that the wicked who suffer God’s eternal wrath do so in the sight of those whom God raises to eternal life.

He says in verse 24 that “they [the righteous] shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who rebelled against me.”

Jesus affirms this in his account of the Rich Man and Lazarus in . Both Lazarus and the rich man die. Lazarus goes to Abraham in Paradise, while the rich man goes to hades and is in eternal fire and torment.

The rich man can see Lazarus and Abraham, and they can see him. But there is an impassable chasm between them so that neither can cross over to the other.

St. John in Revelation speaks of this as well. He says,

Revelation 14:9–11 ESV

9 And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

“And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.’”

Again, eternal torment and this in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

This is the end of the wicked. And it can be a difficult thing for us to think about. I would be worried if it wasn’t. We certainly would not wish this upon any person.

This serves to give urgency to the proclaiming of the Gospel to all people, for today is the day of salvation. Every day that our Lord does not return is another day that sinners may escape the wrath to come through faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.

The End of the Righteous

Eternal life with God in the new heavens and new earth

God also gives to us the end of the righteous, those who by faith in Christ have received the forgiveness of their sins and the righteousness of Christ.

These will find themselves in the new heavens and new earth, in the eternal city of God.

God says in verses 22-23,

Isaiah 66:22–23 ESV

22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. 23 From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord.

“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord.”

The end of the righteous is to dwell forever with God and his Christ in the new heavens and the new earth.

This is the hope and the comfort of those who trust in Christ.

Conclusion

And so, saints of God, this is your comfort and your hope. Though you suffer this side of the resurrection, though you endure the mockery and scorn of those who in unbelief reject Christ and his Word, though you die this side of the resurrection, Jesus promises you, even though you die, yet shall you live.

And if you should live until the day Jesus returns, you will never die.

And this because God has so loved you that he sent his Son to live for you, to suffer, bleed, die, and suffer the wrath of God for you that you may be forgiven of all of your sins by the holy and precious blood of Christ.

And you are indeed forgiven.

On that day when God rends the heavens again and Christ returns, your redemption has come. You can look forward to that Day with hope and with joy, knowing that your Lord has returned to gather you and all believers of all times and places to himself and you will dwell with him forever.

And so, though things may look bleak, and you may suffer for the name and Word of Christ, and though you may and do suffer the effects of sin upon your body and this world, be of good cheer, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Peace be with you.

Amen.

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