GOD’S SALVATION WILL LAST FOREVER
12/31/02 – NEW YEAR’S EVE
Isaiah 51:4-8
. 4 "Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. 5 My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm. 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
It’s always hard to believe when we turn the page of the calendar from month to month. Sometimes it’s even harder to believe when we switch the entire calendar itself. Yet you and I stand on the threshold of another new year where the future stands before us enticing us with the excitement that is yet to come. We have to ask ourselves are we excited about what is yet to come? Are we excited at what the Lord might show us tomorrow or next month or next year? You and I do not know what that is, but we do know that the Lord always has our best interest in mind day after day, year after year and even for a lifetime. Sometimes, because we’re so bound to this earth, and our feet are so firmly fastened to the ground, we do not always look at each New Year as something exciting. We are easily tempted to think it is just another year that has quickly gone by.
Tonight the Lord would have us concentrate on the fact that there is excitement every year, every day that God gives us His grace to live. He reminds us in Matthew when He spoke to His disciples (and they thought too, what is there left in life?) He reminded them to store up treasures in heaven. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”(MATTHEW 6:20,21) As we march along with the calendar pages and the calendar year by year, the Lord says, we too are to store up treasures in heaven. We can picture ourselves with chests of treasures, God’s righteousness, peace and joy that we store up in the future for us to enjoy.
That’s what Isaiah says in our text tonight. As he looks ahead and we look ahead, he says:
GOD’S SALVATION WILL LAST FOREVER
I. Everything keeps on changing
II. God’s righteousness is constant
Our text begins by Isaiah saying, (he wants them to pay attention), “Listen to me my people, hear me my nation.” He wanted to remind them that that word of the Lord, would sometimes not seem to do too much, was going to be effective and powerful. Just like today, we don’t see the word of the Lord knocking down buildings; we don’t see the word of the Lord coming and destroying nations for their evil and wickedness. Some would say, ‘Well, it’s not too powerful.’ So it was in the time of the children of Israel.
Isaiah goes on to say: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. He said the law of the Lord would go out and that people would pay attention; not just the believers, not just the children of Israel, but nations all around. As we look back, we realize that when the law was first given it was written in the hearts of men. Long before it got to the time of Isaiah, mankind’s heart had become so clouded and so full of sin that they covered up God’s perfect law written there. What happened? God had to give the law a second time and then a third time. Thus God wrote it down on tablets of stone so men were without excuse. Those Ten Commandments, which were written on tablets of stone, in reality, became the foundation for many empires—their laws, rules and regulations. Isaiah says the law would go out. Even today, even though our nation would say we aren’t based on the Ten Commandments, our laws are, aren’t they? Don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t commit adultery are some of the things the Ten Commandments say. God’s Word would have a powerful effect.
He says even more than that. 5 My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. He says all these things will happen. They may not admit that it’s the Lord’s doing, but it is. Now he’s got the people’s attention in saying that the Word of God is so important to them and it would be important to the world. Now he wants to remind them, ‘Look around. Pay attention. What you see around you is only temporary.’ 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath. He says look up, look below. What is going to happen? The heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment. Of course this is speaking of the last day. Speaking of the current days, how many generations have come and gone with mankind not knowing much about them. They’re buried in the sands of time. Great civilizations that once were are long gone and sometimes even forgotten. He says the earth is not kind as time passes by its inhabitants. Its inhabitants will also die. In the original translations it says they will die like flies. We think of the insignificance of a fly. The Lord is saying we’re not that insignificant but that time marches on and everything changes, doesn’t it?
As we gather here tonight, we can’t help but think of the year that has gone by in the past and things that have changed; things that you and I would not have imagined in the year before. We’ve lost family members or relatives or friends, not even imagining they wouldn’t be here this year or the next. Things are always changing. In the midst of that change, the Lord says He does not change. He says there is a constant change, we can be sure of that. 1 Corinthians 13(known as the mercy chapter in the KJV and as the love chapter in the NIV) verse 8 says: ‘Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.’(1 CORINTHIANS 13:8). Everything that mankind holds so important today—knowledge, wisdom, and power—will all be gone. Love will always endure. He refers to God’s love.
You and I as inhabitants cannot live forever here on earth. There is no one in this life, no one for generation after generation who has ever escaped death. Dying is just a part of life. 1 Peter quoted a Psalm…Psalm 103:15 says: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” Again, the frailty of grass…here and gone, season after season; the frailty of mankind, of you and me and everyone. We change with the advancement of age. We change as the days go by and the years go by but, as we’re told, God’s salvation lasts forever. He does not change.
If you remember, in the world, some people really struggle with the change that takes place. Some people really struggle with the fact that they’re getting older and sometimes not any better. They forget what God has done for them. They forget that God has provided them with everything. It may happen to us with our sinful nature. We just might shake our fist at God sometime and wonder why or why not. Yet we agree with Job. “Job said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. I came with nothing and I leave with nothing. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; (referring to the fact that Job lost his flocks, herds, buildings and all of his children) may the name of the LORD be praised.’”(JOB1:21) In the midst of change the Lord is constant. His name is always to be praised even in the midst of loss.
The Lord tells us that His salvation will last forever. Everything is always changing but
II. God’s righteousness is constant
It is the same day after day. God does not change, He cannot. Listen to how Isaiah puts it. Remember he gave that prediction that said ‘Look up—the heavens are going to be gone; look below, the earth is going to be gone, the inhabitants are going to die. No one is going to remember them after a certain amount of time like the grass. 5 My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm. When we read ‘islands’ in the scriptures, it sounds strange because they were landlocked. The ‘islands’ refer to the outermost reaches. The ends of the earth will look for His arm, for His salvation, (His arm being His strength.)
God’s righteousness is constant. In the midst of change, people want something to grasp and to hold onto. That would be God’s righteousness. You may remember the Apostle Paul at the end of his life had to spend time in Rome waiting and waiting. They kept him around because they wanted to hear what he had to say. They thought he might do a miracle but instead, Paul preached to them God’s word. Festus, Agrippa and Herod all got to hear what God had to say to them whether they wanted to or not. They, too, along with nations far away could see the salvation of God.
In the last verse of our text, Isaiah tells us: But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail. This was a blessed assurance for the children of Israel. Isaiah, the prophet, Jeremiah, the prophet, came to pronounce God’s judgement upon them. They had to tell them time and again that things were going to change. They were not going to spend all their life in the Promised Land, but their enemies were going to come, defeat them, cart them off and scatter them throughout the world. Isaiah tells them, ‘God’s righteousness will never fail. His salvation will last forever.’ That was God’s promise to His people.
You and I, as God’s people today, look back on all the promises God made and realize that He keeps all the promises He makes. God is not a man (as scripture says) that He should lie, but He keeps everything He said from the very first promise to Adam and Eve of a Savior. The Savior was born. He makes another promise to His disciples that He will return again on the last day. Moses says, because of that, because the Lord keeps all of His promises, he says, “Praise be to the LORD, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses.”(1KINGS 8:56). Not a word. They saw many promises. You and I have seen many more promises since those thousands of years ago. We realize that not a word has failed. God’s righteousness is constant. It is our anchor. It is the foundation of our faith…Christ, the cornerstone.
What a joy that is for us! Sometimes this world changes faster than we can comprehend or understand, doesn’t it? Things happen that we cannot imagine or never thought would happen. Then something else happens and we don’t really understand it until years later when looking back in history. The Lord is constant. When you and I are changing because of our sinfulness, the Lord is constant in His righteousness with His forgiveness. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper tonight where the Lord very visibly, with the bread and wine, and His body and blood, remind us of the sacrifice He made so that you and I could live in a changing world knowing that His forgiveness is the same year after year. From the gospel of John we read: “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’”(JOHN 6.35) Physically, we get thirsty and hungry, but spiritually He satisfies our thirst and hunger. His righteousness never fails us.
God makes us another promise. He says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”(MARK 13:31) That’s what you and I cling to year after year, day after day. God’s word is our sure foundation. It does not change, cannot change and will not change. It will always be there until the very end of time. Whether we’re here when the Lord returns or whether we aren’t, who knows? Who knows that this might be the year that He will come back? God’s word will be with us until we see Him face to face.
Isaiah says, God’s salvation will last forever, even though everything all around us keeps on changing. We even change from year to year, different things happen. The Lord’s righteousness is constant; His forgiveness is assured to each and every one of us. Turning back to the word in Ecclesiastes which happens to be the verse after our reading tonight, it says, ‘All those times to do everything.’ If you listen closely and take that home and look at it tonight, there’s an opposite…time to be born, a time to die; a time for war, a time for peace. Then he says to be satisfied in your labors and enjoy life. This is God’s gift. Then he states in the next verse, “I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.”(ECCLESIASTES 3:14). Even though there are all those changing times in our life, what God does endures forever. His love for us endures forever. His righteousness never fails. God’s salvation lasts forever. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
