Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
40 years ago yesterday the president of the United States was assassinated.
Many of you in this room remember where you were and what you were doing on that cold, winter-like day in November, 1963.
You may remember the next 3 or 4 days as they churned out in front of you on TV, for the most part, in ghostly black and white images.
· The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald,
· That, followed by his assassination on live TV by Jack Ruby,
· The body of the slain president lying in state in the Rotunda of the Capital in Washington, D.C.,
· The funeral procession with a cadence of drums that still echo in my mind,
· The saluting of the young boy known as John-John as his father’s flag draped coffin moved slowly by
· The eulogy given by a brother who would 5 short years later himself be the victim of an assassins bullet,
· The eternal flame which still flickers at Arlington National Cemetery.
Many of you remember it and many of you have been watching the countless memorials and TV specials that have been commemorating that day.
Forty years have gone by. More than one congressional committee has investigated what happened on that day.
Movies have been made; conspiracy theories have been advanced and debunked.
Scores of books and tens of thousands of words have been written, mostly trying to answer the unanswerable questions of who, and how, and most importantly, why.
But still, we don’t know all the answers and we probably never will.
I can remember in confirmation class, the pastor telling us that when we got to heaven all of our questions would be answered.
At a young age, I determined that the questions surrounding that day in November 1963, would be one of the first things that I would ask God to explain to me when I met Him face to face.
I was angry with God for allowing that to happen and I wanted some answers.
That was 40 years ago.
A lot has happened to me and to our world during those passing 40 years.
I’ve added a lot more questions to my list, but I’ve also come to the realization that when I enter into heaven, I won’t really care about those things anymore.
What seems so important now, will be replaced by a new reality; a reality of being in the presence of God.
I would like to focus this morning on our OT lesson from the Book written by the prophet Isaiah, but, like last week, and the week before, we can’t just look at the text set before us, we need to look at what surrounds it.
Chapter 51 of Isaiah’s writings follows on the heels of the third of what are known as “the Servant songs” of Isaiah. In chapter 50, we heard the servant speak of the suffering, pain, humiliation and death he would suffer in order to bring light to the world.
Now, right at the beginning of chapter 51 we hear an exhortation from God.
I invite you to listen to the first 3 verses:
"Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many. The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”
My friends, this is a call to the faithful remnant of Abraham’s descendents.
This is a message of hope, of joy, of redemption, of salvation to the Jews.
I said this began with an exhortation. Sometimes, an exhortation can be thought of as urging, or prompting, or perhaps even goading.
In this case though, when Yahweh cries out, “Listen to me…”, I think you can almost hear it as a plea.
God is calling on His chosen people, not to look at their present day situation and give in to despair, but to remember the promise that He made to their forefather Abraham.
Look where you came from, who you came from.
I promised to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation. I blessed him, and from one, he became many.
I promised him land and I delivered him, and then again his descendants, to a land they could call their own.
I promised him a renewed relationship with God and I delivered that to him and his wife and his children and his children’s children. I said that I would be their God and they would be my people.
Remember, “Listen to me…”, because regardless of your current circumstances, you, as my chosen people will be lifted up. You will be restored.
You will receive the comfort that can only come from Yahweh.
From desolation you will be returned to Eden and there will be the sounds of singing and thanksgiving and praise.
Isaiah wasn’t just writing about a return to the promised land from captivity or even to the holy city of Jerusalem. No, he was writing of what was yet to come.
This was the promise of eternal salvation being reiterated to God’s people.
But, and this is where it gets really good for us, in today’s text, God reveals that this promise isn’t just for His chosen people…this promise is for everyone…this promise is for us.
This servant, this suffering servant, will go forth from God. His law and His justice will be brought to all nations.
Now, I think this bears some explanation, because when we read “the Law, and my justice,” our minds have a tendency to go in only one direction.
When we think of Law, our minds quickly race to LAW…like 10 Commandments and the Levitical laws about how far you can walk on the Sabbath, what you can eat and what you can’t, purification rites, etc.
The Hebrew word for law is Torah. This is why I wanted you to hear the first three verses of Chapter 51 and what Yahweh was exhorting the Israelites to remember.
The Torah is the story, the history, of God’s people. The Torah is not only about LAW, it is about grace.
· It is about God’s promise to restore the relationship with His people.
· It’s about a God that leads them and guides them and never gives up on them.
· It’s about a God who chooses them and promises that He will be with them forever.
So when we hear the word law, and when we hear the word justice, let us not confuse them with wrath and judgment, but understand them as grace and justification.
When the servant came into this world, he came to be a light to the gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel.
He came to fulfill the law and by doing so, justify or exonerate us in the eyes of God.
He came to exemplify the grace of God to all people.
My friends, as we go through the next 40 or 50 or 100 years of our lives, there will be events that will boggle our minds.
There will catastrophes and unpleasantness.
There will be times when we get angry with God.
I would like to share with you something a little personal this morning.
November 22, brings back a lot of memories for me. Sure, I still think about John Kennedy, but 22 years after his assassination, on November 22, 1985, my father died.
You talk about being angry with God!
I was 350 miles from home. I had to drive across a desolate moonlit desert from Alamogordo NM, to Tucson, AZ.
I spent a great deal of that time shouting at God while tears streamed down my cheeks.
I certainly didn’t understand why.
Why then, why me, why my dad, why death?
It’s been 40 years since JFK and 18 since my dad died and I still don’t, can’t, won’t pretend to understand why.
There are certain things that we will never know this side of heaven.
But, I take great comfort in knowing that on that last day, the true Day of Fulfillment, there will be one heck of a reunion in heaven.
And I know that because my God has promised me as much.
He has said in His holy Word that "he who believes and is baptized shall be saved."
And in Romans, Paul tells us that "if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
And the Lord says in the last lines of our text: But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.
We are blessed to have been chosen by God; to be counted among His people.
Ours is not a blood decadency from Abraham, but ours is a blood decadency from God’s own Son.
Through His blood shed on the cross of Calvary, we have been washed and made pure in the eyes of God.
We can look to the Rock from which we were cut and know that the promises of God and an inheritance in His Kingdom are ours.
We close our Church year today, not dwelling on things past or on earthly things to come, but focused on the promises of God.
We can say with all confidence, He is our God and we are His people, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.
