TOO BUSY TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING
How many of you have ever had a day where you had so much to do, that you just couldn’t get anything done? As soon as you’d start a task, something else – just as essential – would grab your attention, and then just as you got the ball rolling, a third thing would pop up out of nowhere. Sometimes our day can be a little like spinning plates or like that perennial carnival favorite – whack-a-mole. Anyone else ever play that arcade game where little mechanical moles pop up out of holes in the board and you hit them with a big rubber mallet, as they get faster and faster and faster? That used to be my jam when I was a kid at Chuck-E-Cheese. It definitely helps if you have a buddy, but some days, there are just too many moles. And if you string enough of those days together, that becomes your life.
It can make each day daunting, can’t it? To the point that you wake up, realize you have a ton to do, so you just procrastinate because the task seems too impossible to tackle. Has anyone ever been there? But that doesn’t help, does it? We get so worried about all the things that need to get done, maybe even important things, that we forget to focus on, to feed and refresh ourselves, with the one thing that truly matters.
A SOOTHING WORD TO AN ANXIOUS PEOPLE
Our passage this morning concerns itself with a people full of anxieties, full of distractions. It forms part of a thematic collection, made up of chs. 56-66 in the book of Isaiah, that scholars often call Third Isaiah. And it’s meant to give hope to a people – a future people, from the prophet Isaiah’s own perspective – who have been through a lot: invasion and exile and the almost annihilation of everything they held dear. And their God, our God, always promised to bring them home. But that prospect brought with it a whole host of new worries. What would happen when God would finally call them back home, to their own land? How would they defend themselves? How would they feed their children? How would they rebuild what had been destroyed? And in such a brutal, violent world, what if they had no future at all?
It’s to these anxious people God speaks through Isaiah, when he opens with these words in v. 1, “Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.”
Now at first glance, this can almost sound like God is telling the people they need to be worthy of receiving His salvation, His deliverance, doesn’t it? But as Scripture makes plain all over its pages, we do not “maintain justice, and do what is right” to earn any standing with God. Instead, we do these things as an expression of expectant hope, and of trust, that our Salvation has been revealed in Christ our deliverer, and will be revealed again.
Indeed, the presence of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus has sent us to help us is evident most in our lives when we allow Christ’s grace, communicated by that same Spirit, to shape us, heal us, and restore His image within us; an image characterized by the very justice and righteousness described by the prophets’ words in our passage this morning. Holiness on the part of God’s people – marked by obedience and the pursuit of right living in relation to God, one another, and even creation itself – isn’t the cause of grace, it’s the result.
This is why God continues in v. 2 with these words,
“Happy is the mortal who does this,
the one who holds it fast,
who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it,
and refrains from doing any evil.”
When our lives are invigorated by grace, we find our rest in the One who created us to enjoy Him. He is our Sabbath. This is why we celebrate each week on the Day He rose from the dead, bringing new life to what was once dead and without hope. The Lord proclaims that when we rest in Him and draw from His strength to do what is right, to treat others justly, to welcome the foreigner and the outcast, we begin to learn the true meaning of worship.
DISTRACTED FROM WHAT REALLY MATTERS
This isn’t easy, is it? If it were something we were already inclined to do, God wouldn’t have to remind us of this truth again and again, would He? Most of our energies each day are spent focused on our own needs and wants – food, shelter, water, comfort, belonging, and distraction. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these. Although, if a significant amount of our time is spent on distraction, we may need to ask ourselves: What is it about ourselves and our world we are trying to escape? What truth about our lives confronts us that we are trying to avoid?
This [hold up phone] is a great example. Technology – and the screens we use to interact with it – can be a great blessing. We can organize our lives more efficiently and get so much more done. But who are we getting it all done for? When did we start believing the lie that our worth is measured in efficiency? In productivity? How often do I use this to help others? To be an agent of restoration in the world? Or, how often do I just use this to distract myself from the beauty that surrounds me, and from the blessed burden of the call God has placed upon me? Upon each of us?
How often do devices like this, or the media consumed through them (or any means of distraction, really) turn my focus inward on myself, on my own needs, and fears, and anxieties, and wants? And by doing so, how have my senses been dulled? After all, our senses were created to orient our attention outward, away from ourselves; trusting that when our needs are met by God’s grace lived out in community, we do not need to worry and we can begin to care about what He cares about, to see what He sees. This is true not only of our biological senses, but of the Spiritual sense awakened by the Holy Spirit, given to us to dwell within us and among us.
THE CALL TO WORSHIP
It is this same Holy Spirit which reminds us that the gracious community we are called into, whose needs we are created to devote our energies toward as an act of worship for the One who made us, is meant to include all who God loves, even those the world considers worthless. And by giving us this reminder, which is meant to encourage as much as it is to admonish, the Holy Spirit begins to reorient our senses away from all the things our culture feeds us to keep us perpetually worried, back on to what really matters.
The Lord proclaims in vv. 3-5,
“3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;
and do not let the eunuch say,
‘I am just a dry tree.’
4 For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.”
In ancient Israel, Salvation was understood as coming through the Covenant made with God’s people. A covenant they were born into. And the foreigner, not born into that covenantal relationship was seen as the epitome of “outsider.” Just like how, to a culture that considered children the ultimate sign of God’s blessing and favor, the eunuch was the living embodiment of an “unproductive,” literally cut off from God’s promise with no future generations to carry on their name. And not only did a eunuch’s mutilated body prevent them from having children, it also meant they – according to the Law of Moses – were prevented from ever serving as a priest before God’s altar.
And yet, it was always God’s plan to draw all nations to Himself, to call the least likely, the most underestimated, and the all too often ignored to “minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants” as He tells us in v. 6, and continues to through the remainder of vv. 6-8, where we read,
“6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
8 Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.”
GOD'S PROMISE
This promise hinted at something marvelous that was still to come in Israel’s future. After all, how could foreigners offer sacrifices on God’s holy mountain, and bring joyful praises to His house of prayer, if God’s covenant was only for those born into it through their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
Here we see Isaiah hinting at the Messiah – the Christ – who, by offering Himself as an atoning sacrifice for all, brings the foreigner, the eunuch, the outcast, and the worthless into God’s household, establishing a covenant with them, by faith rather than by birth; so that He may be worshiped among all nations and cultures and people in Spirit and in truth.
This is why Jesus quotes v. 7 as well as Jer. 7:11 when he prophetically and symbolically cleanses the Temple in Jerusalem toward the end of His ministry, in an act that would finally bring the full wrath of the religious leaders and the Roman Empire on His head. If you have your bibles with you, turn with me for a moment to Mar. 11:15-19,
“15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16 and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
18 And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19 And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.”
The religious establishment had turned a gift from God meant to facilitate worship into a racket, a means of turning a buck at the expense of the poor and if they poor couldn’t pay, then they couldn’t worship. They effectively became gatekeepers, barring the poor from resting in God’s presence, and so they profaned the Sabbath themselves in contravention of Isaiah’s words. Jesus sure set ‘em straight, didn’t he? But what I think is often missed is the fact that not only is Jesus challenging the sin of the religious establishment, He’s doing this for the benefit of the very money changers whose tables He overturns, as much as He is for anyone else. They were distracted by greed and the busy task of trade with those who needed to buy doves or exchange money to give the right offering in the Temple; and because of this, they had forgotten that God was calling them to bring their offering of prayer and praise to Him as well. So Jesus removed the distraction by forcibly putting their focus back on God, and incarnationally on God in their midst in Jesus Himself.
God literally stood in their midst, slammed His fist on the table, and yelled, “Hey!” That’s enough to get anyone’s attention, isn’t it? And I have no doubt that this is exactly what some of us need today. God’s gracious call to come, bring a joyful sacrifice of praise in His house, is open to everyone. In Christ, no one is worthless, no one is unwelcome, no one is truly a foreigner or “the other” because we are all called to find our home in Him.
GOD'S INVITATION
But this invitation, while freely offered, comes with a condition, an expectation that if we are going to answer the call, we must do so with an undivided heart. We must be willing to let the Holy Spirit overturn and throw aside any distractions, any hidden sins, anything that attempts to keep us from the life of holiness which maintains justice and does what is right, and so offers the kind of worship and prayer the Temple was created for and that we – as building blocks in the Church – were created for.
So that’s my challenge to you all this morning. What is really keeping you from worshiping God the way He has intended? Is there any way this week that you haven’t acted justly or rightly toward another? Is there any way you have failed to care for the most vulnerable? Is there anything in your life keeping you from being a Spirit-filled agent of restoration? If so, give it up to God right now. Before you walk out that door, because you might not get another chance. If you need to take the time to pray, now’s the time. Do not wait another moment to take hold of the promise found in Christ’s abundant grace.
Let’s pray…
