Sermon on Isaiah 22; Matthew 16:18-19; and Revelation 3:7-13. Delivered on 8 March 2015 at Pequea Evangelical Congregational Church. The twelfth installment of a sermon series on the Book of Isaiah; see also sermons on Isaiah 1; Isaiah 2; Isaiah 3-4; Isaiah 5; Isaiah 6; Isaiah 7-8a; Isaiah 8b-9; Isaiah 10-12; Isaiah 13-14, 21; Isaiah 15-18; and Isaiah 19-20.
Isaiah's warnings have
come against so many other nations, so many places: Assyria, Babylon,
Moab, Edom, Damascus, Ephraim, back to Babylon again – but now he
hits home. Now Isaiah isn't taking aim at a big pagan power. This
is not a prophecy to make the hometown crowd give a standing ovation.
Isaiah's got Jerusalem in the crosshairs.
Jerusalem was founded in
the best place: atop Mount Zion. A mountain like that would give
them a commanding view of the surrounding countryside, and that
should have symbolized their spiritual vision and outward focus. But
here Isaiah mocks them as living in a “valley of vision” (Isaiah 22:1) – for
all their squandering of Mount Zion's virtues, they only look
downward into their own petty pleasures and ignore God's message for
them: a warning of “a day
of tumult and trampling and confusion in the valley of vision”
(Isaiah 22:5). Today, the physical city of Jerusalem isn't pivotal to our
faith, but that's because we have a new city, a new society: the
church. Jesus didn't come to save an aggregate of independent souls;
he came to build a community, a church, so that our spiritual
maturity is affected by the way we grow or decline together.
We know and believe and
confess that Jesus Christ is “fully God and fully man”, and so
when it comes to the body whose head he is, it's no surprise that
there's so much heaven and so much earth in us. And that's why the
Reformers often talked about “the invisible church” and “the
visible church”. The invisible church is made up of all who are
truly transformed by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The visible
church is just what it sounds like: all those who look like they hold
membership in a local church body. Some people can belong to the
invisible church without being part of the visible church, like
isolated believers in distant lands; and, far more commonly, people
can belong to the visible church without having anything to do with
the invisible church. The tares grow in the field of wheat, so the
true crop is 'invisible' – until the harvest (Matthew 13:24-30).
We can rejoice, from the
heavenly side, in the church's foundation. When Simon confessed the
truth about Jesus being the Messiah, Jesus celebrated and nicknamed
him “Peter”, or “Rocky”, and said that on the rock of this
true confession, Jesus would build his church; and we have the
promise that the very gates of hell would not conquer it (Matthew 16:18). We have full assurance that the church, viewed from this
perspective, will always endure. Plenty of false religious movements
say that the real Christian church died out within a couple hundred
years, and so it's up to them to restore it. That is 100% the
opposite of what Jesus promised: the church would never die out,
would never abandon the faith in full apostasy. But from the earthly
side, we know that sections of the visible church can lose their way,
and sections of the visible church can go extinct. The global
church, the invisible church – those will never die. The local
church, the visible church, is called to vigilance and purity.
Isaiah's basic complaint
against Jerusalem is a warning against pride. There was a phase that
the people went through where they came to believe that Jerusalem was
invincible, not because they actively put their faith in God, not
because they actively lived holy lives, but because God just liked
them anyway. They felt they had God over a barrel. They figured,
“Hey, God chose Jerusalem as his
city, and he put his
temple here. God is a native Jerusalemite now. What God chooses, he
can't unchoose; that'd be going back on his word, right? Didn't
he promise to reside in Jerusalem forever (1 Chronicles 23:25)? So if God
chose Jerusalem, then it doesn't really matter what we do. In the
big picture, we're safe!” That's how they thought. Isaiah's
talking to them right after they were left mostly untouched by a big
disaster – the enemy army turned back – and they're all feeling
pretty good about themselves.
But
God didn't see things that way. Yes, he chose Jerusalem. He chose
it to be a Faithful City (Isaiah 1:21, 26; Zechariah 8:3). Sure, God
would work out his purposes there, but that didn't make it
impregnable. What mattered to him wasn't the physical buildings of
Jerusalem, because God isn't bound to those, not even to the temple
they built for him. God looks upon the heart. And Isaiah warns that
God is not impressed with what he's seeing.
There
are segments of the visible church today that have this same old
pride. They divorce God's endorsement from God's will. God calls us
to be faithful to the gospel, which is a gospel of both
holiness and
love.
As a visible local church, if we aren't faithful to the gospel of
holiness, then it doesn't matter that we're called a “church”, it
doesn't matter what our building's square footage is, it doesn't
matter who made the stained glass windows or when, it doesn't matter
what real estate we occupy, it doesn't matter which prestigious
divinity school the pastor went to, it doesn't matter how trendy or
hip or 'emerging' we are, it doesn't matter what policy proposals we
sign off on or how our people vote or how much more sophisticated we
are than the so-called fundamentalists down the street. If we don't
call people to God's vision of practical holiness as the Bible sets
forward for us, then God does not promise the visible church's
survival!
But
the same is true if we aren't faithful to the gospel of love. If we
don't have love, then until the cows come home we can speak in
tongues and prophesy and unfold mysteries and teach accurate theology
and give to charity and support social justice or God-and-country
politics or whatever all we want, but if we don't have love, then the
whole thing nets us zilch (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Remember, the
people of Jerusalem were focused inward. They were supposed to look
out, but they looked in. How many churches are there whose finances,
energy, and attention are almost totally tied up with what goes on
between the stained glass windows? How many churches are stuck in
survival mode, when Jesus says that the greatest love is to lay down
one's life for others (John 15:13)? Is a loveless church somehow
better than an unholy church? Or is an unholy church without the
gospel really a big improvement on a loveless church? Aren't both at
risk of God's warning: “He has taken away the covering of Judah”
(Isaiah 22:8)?
But in spite of it all,
the people of Jerusalem in Isaiah's day had put all their focus, not
into seeking the Lord, but into building up their defenses – walls
and pools and tunnels, all designed to withstand a siege from enemy
armies and keep the people safe. Their trust was in their fancy
workmanship (Isaiah 22:9-10). Isaiah sees a problem here: all this
construction, all this care, all this meticulous planning, “but you
didn't look to the One who did it, or have regard for the One who
planned it long ago” (Isaiah 22:11). Churches can build and build
to their heart's content, but what's it all about? How many churches
in this country with their old Gothic stonework can't fill more than
a couple of their dozens upon dozens of pews on a Sunday morning?
How many newer churches define themselves by how much they resemble a
mall or an airport terminal? How many churches think their capital
campaign will be their salvation? Building can be good, building can
be fine, but what kind of building is most important: adding new
facilities, or raising high a spiritual temple on the Church's One
Foundation?
Here at Pequea, we've
been doing plenty of 'building' ourselves lately. We've had a lot of
focus over the past few months on strengthening our infrastructures.
With careful changes to the church bylaws, we've cleared the way for
streamlined educational ministries. We've built a church newsletter,
going out month by month to keep us on the same page. We've built a
church website and social media accounts to extend our church into
cyberspace. I'm convinced that all of these are very good secondary
things that we're right to have done. But they are secondary, and if
we lose sight of that, then we've gutted them of meaning. Do we put
first things first? We invest in infrastructure, but do we invest in
discipleship? Are people deepening their spiritual maturity from one
month to the next because this church is here? Do we have regard for
the One who planned the church long ago? Are our eyes fixed on Jesus
above all else – not an idea, but the living person who beckons us
deeper into the mysteries of the faith and the mission of God? If
the answer to any of these questions is no, then why are we here? If
the answer is no, what word does God have for us other than, “Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2)?
But back to Jerusalem.
The people were in a sorry state. They should have taken their
situation seriously. They were in a crisis. And they were in
denial. Instead of disciplining themselves, instead of committing
themselves to God, they threw a party! We know the motto: “Let us
eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13). They threw a
party, but this was no time for a party. It was a time for “weeping
and mourning … and putting on sackcloth” (Isaiah 22:12), a time
to be humbled before God and admit that we're ash cycling back to ash
and that only he can save us, “for suddenly the destroyer will come
upon us” (Jeremiah 6:26). They thought it was Mardi Gras. But
their lives depended on Lent.
I imagine you can tell a
lot about a person depending on how they react to the news that they
only have a month or a week to live. Do they talk about making the
most of what they have left, and enjoying the pleasures of life? Do
they say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”? Or do
they devote themselves to prayer and fasting, to being spiritually
ready to stand before God and to leaving a healthy legacy behind on
earth? And you can tell a lot about a church by how they use their
time. In many segments of the church today, the focus is not on the
gospel. The focus is not on the spiritual needs of the people in the
church. The focus is not on being Jesus to the community. The focus
is on feeling nice, getting a quick emotional high to last through
the week. The focus is on being entertained and amused.
This is a serious
sickness in the American church. It's poison. Lent reminds us that
it really isn't about our entertainment. It doesn't matter if we're
entertained. It doesn't matter if we're amused. It doesn't matter
if we 'feel' like worshipping God. It isn't about our fleeting
emotional states; it's about the abiding truth of the abiding God who
wants us to abide in him. It isn't about us. It's about Jesus
grafting sinners into his body, making them a holy people, and
training them up as a royal priesthood for the salvation of the
world.
Back to Jerusalem. You
know it's serious when Isaiah has to start naming names! God singles
out a man named Shebna, the “steward” or “palace administrator”
(Isaiah 22:15). Whoever was the steward controlled access to the
king. Shebna was basically second-in-command of Judah. That kind of
power comes with plenty of responsibilities. Shebna should have been
living as an example of wisdom, planning carefully to help Judah
ration supplies and stay on the spiritual straight-and-narrow. But
Shebna did nothing of the sort. Instead, he lavished resources on
building a magnificent tomb for himself (Isaiah 22:16)!
It's painful to say, but
there are a lot of church leaders who are a lot like Shebna. We're
called with a wonderfully high calling, handed immense
responsibilities to lovingly lead the people of God to greater
holiness and maturity. But there are church leaders who abuse their
position for selfish gain. There are church leaders who lord their
status over others. Some of you are here to find healing after being
wounded by the Shebnas of the modern church.
Like Shebna, many of
these modern church leaders have turned away from their mission and
are only building tombs. They may be using their position in the
church to exalt the modern culture of death that fights against the
value and respect to be accorded to all
human life. They may be using their position to advocate for
death-dealing false doctrines. They may glory in the “dead works”
from which the Bible tells us to repent and be purified (Hebrews 6:1;
9:14). Or they may simply be dealing in dead spirituality instead of
a living relationship with the living God. Like the scribes and
Pharisees, their souls and ministries can be “like unto whited
sepulchers, which … are within full of dead men's bones” (Matthew 23:27). I'm no Isaiah to be naming names, but there are entire
denominations whose leadership is dominated by Shebna lookalikes and
whose ministries have little to nothing in common with the gospel.
But all of these are just construction projects for tombs.
But praise God, we have a
Savior who knows his way out of tombs! Amen? Isaiah confronts
Shebna with stern warnings of judgment (Isaiah 22:17-19),
and we know that he was demoted to just being Hezekiah's royal scribe
(Isaiah 36:3; 37:2). In
1871, an inscription at a cave outside Jerusalem was found: it marked
“the tomb of Shebna, the royal steward”. In Shebna's place comes
a replacement, Eliakim, a more responsible and honorable man (Isaiah 22:20-21). And to Eliakim was entrusted the stewardship of the
palace and the “key of the house of David; he shall open, and no
one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open” (Isaiah 22:22). That's a lot of responsibility (Isaiah 22:23)! But even
Eliakim couldn't bear the weight of the full load (Isaiah 22:24-25).
Our
hopes do not hinge on Shebna, and they do not hinge on the many
modern Shebnas. Our hopes do not hinge on Eliakim, nor any of the
modern Eliakims – faithful church leaders committed to the gospel.
A prominent Baptist pastor named Thom Rainer once tried an experiment
and asked the deacons of his church to calculate the minimum time he
should devote to some pastoral tasks each week. When he tallied all
these minimum expectations up, they came to 114 hours. When
everything hangs on any mortal peg, even a faithful one, the burden
will fall. No mortal Shebna or mortal Eliakim is our hope and trust.
But
there is a greater Eliakim who is our hope – and his name is Lord
Jesus. He is “the Holy One, the True One, who has the key of
David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens”
(Revelation 3:7). Jesus has the true authority committed to his
hand, for all authority in heaven and earth belongs to him (Matthew28:18); and Jesus truly shall be “a father to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem and to the house of Judah” (Isaiah 22:21). He's opened
the door for us to press onward to seeing our salvation made perfect
(Revelation 3:8), and he shared with his apostles his authority to
declare what behaviors and attitudes are 'open' for the people of God
and which ones are 'shut' (Matthew 16:19).
There
are plenty of churches, sad to say, that try so hard to open what
Jesus has shut. These churches may pride themselves in being
“affirming”, “inclusive”, “open” – but Jesus and his
teachings define the contours of Christian love, not our own whims
and desires and agendas. The gospel is for all people, but it calls
us all to the same hard road and the same narrow gate (Matthew 7:14).
There are many behaviors and attitudes that the Bible – properly
understood and properly applied – shuts out. Don't be tempted by
“the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life” (1 John 2:16)
But
there are also many churches that try very hard to shut what Jesus
has opened. These churches may pride themselves on being
exceptionally holy. Paul tells of us people who insisted on making
Christianity out to be rules on top of rules on top of rules: “They
forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created
to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe” (1 Timothy 4:3). There are a lot of things that the Bible – again, properly
understood and properly applied – leaves wide open for believers.
There are issues God has declined to settle for us; we can worship
with different music, speak in different languages, look different.
Holiness is not looking like an extra from Leave
It to Beaver;
holiness is reflecting Jesus in the Spirit.
The mark of a Christian isn't having the right style of hair or
unpierced ears or unmarked skin. “By this
everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for
one another” (John 13:35).
This is Lent, a time for
reflecting on the state of our faith and our Christian lives. Better
than literal sackcloth and ashes, it's a time to “loose the bonds
of injustice”, to “let the oppressed go free”, to “share your
bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house”
(Isaiah 58:6-7). Jesus has most definitely left that open. Against
“the fruit of the Spirit … there is no law, and those who belong
to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and
desires” (Galatians 5:22-24). Lent is a time to ask ourselves
whether we're putting any obstacles in the way of the Spirit's
ongoing work in us. Those obstacles need to be nailed to his cross
and left there.
Lent is also a time to
examine our church. Do we have the spirit of Shebna or the Spirit of
the living God? Do we look more like Jerusalem as the “Valley of
Vision”, or do we look more like “the New Jerusalem that comes
down from my God out of heaven” (Revelation 3:12)? Jesus calls us
to keep his word of patient endurance (Revelation 3:10) and to “hold
fast to what [we] have” been given: the gospel of holy love, kept
complete – no more, no less – so that “no one may seize your
crown” (Revelation 3:11). We can overcome through faith and
self-discipline in following Jesus; that's what Lent is all about.
If we have the heart of Jesus, and if we stand firm upon the Rock,
then we don't have to sink into the “valley of vision”. We can
have real vision, looking to our God and out at the people who need
the life we've found in Jesus. We can stay the course and live out
our mission, and we have this hope from our Lord himself: “If you
overcome, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will
never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God … and
my own new name. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit
is saying to the churches” (Revelation 3:12-13).
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