Scripture text: Isaiah 40:21-31
When I am reading the Scriptures, either for study or for prayer, I am often on the lookout for what I somewhat jokingly call “summary passages.” These are texts that summarize the whole message of the Bible down to a handful of verses. There are a number of these throughout the Bible, many of them you know: John 3:16, Romans 6, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 13, etc. Most of them are from the New Testament however, which often leads us to a frequent mistake. We can forget that Gospel, that good news, can be found in the Old Testament.
In some ways, it’s easy to see why we make that mistake. After all, the OT contains significant portions of historical material and history which, as a general rule, is often bloody and violent. God’s law as articulated in the books of Moses seems harsh and cruel to modern ears (although, in comparison to more contemporary legal codes, it’s quite lenient.) And the vast majority of the prophets are called forth to address some manner of misbehavior, some way in which the Chosen people have again strayed from their appointed tasks and need to be brought back into line with often vivid descriptions of the consequences of their actions. There’s a lot of negativity in the OT. There is.
That’s not always a bad thing. After all, life can be a bit bloody and ugly. Life can be negative. Life can be unpleasant and harsh. And I like the fact that our Holy Scriptures do not shy away from the ugliness. The people of our book live in the real world, just like we do.
But life also has joy and it has peace. It has happiness and laughter. It has triumph. And the Old Testament has these things too. And we often find them in those handful of “summary passages” found not just in the words of Jesus or Paul or some other disciple, but in the words of someone who only lived in the hope of a Messiah yet unborn.
And that brings us to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s something of an outlier. First off, I should make a point of clarification. There is not one prophet Isaiah. There are three and not all three of them may be named Isaiah. But their time of prophecy spanned a roughly 150 years from before the Babylonian invasions of Judah to the fall of that empire and beyond. Way too much history for a single human lifespan.
But what binds this prophetic book together is not an individual, but rather a theme. Here in Isaiah, we find the hopeful prophet. Only occasionally does Isaiah slip into the usual fire-and-brimstone routine of his peers. What we find instead is a timeless message of hope and trust in God, a commentary in many ways on the Old Covenant itself.
It’s as if these three men over the course of these decades are telling the people, “Yeah, the world is chaos right now, but remember what God said to Abraham? Remember the promises he made? Let me tell you what that will look like.” The whole book is exposition on God’s vision for the world. And if you want OT summary passages, texts that tell the whole Gospel in just a handful of verses, Isaiah has them in abundance.
Isaiah 40 is a classic example. This is the beginning of the prophecy of our second Isaiah and what a wondrous stuff this is. The chapter begins with a text we often hear in Advent. “Comfort, O comfort my people, so says our God.” And it moves from that beautiful prophecy of the Christ into the passage we have today.
Isaiah pleads with his audience to remember what they already know. You’ve heard this stuff before, he reminds them. Remember what God said to you in ancient days. Remember the promises. God is an everlasting god. He will give you strength. He will lift you up. He will empower you and you will rise up as on the wings of eagles.
This is one of those texts where I sometimes wonder why I even bother with a sermon. It preaches itself. I’ve told you many of the things in this sermon so far for your own education. Your inspiration comes far better from the words of Isaiah unfiltered than does from anything I could say from this pulpit.
I guess I’m admitting this isn’t much of a sermon. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe what I need to do is what Isaiah does here. Remember! Remember the things God has told you. Remember the hope that it gives. Remember the salvation that has been promised to you.
Life is what it is, and it is often that chaotic turmoil from light to dark, happy to sad, easy to difficult. As we get tossed about, it can be easy to forget that our lives are in God’s hands. We see the menace of threats, both real and exaggerated, and we forget that God is greater than these. We feel small and insignificant in the grand scheme of the world and we forget that it is the meek and the powerless that God lifts up. We forget so much.
The prophet calls us to remember. Remember who we are and whose we are. To remember that God calls us by name. That God will not let one be missing. That God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. That God will lift us up as on wings of eagles. This is a promise that he made to a sheep-herder in ancient Chaldea, a covenant that said that from that one simple man would come a blessing that would shared among all the peoples of the world. That blessing is Christ and we are his. Remember that. Amen.
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