Isaiah 51:1-6 New Year’s Eve Service 12/31/2019 Theme: By God’s Grace, We Enter a New Year 1) By looking back 2) By looking to the Lord 3) By looking to the end

Many surprising headlines have come out this year. If you had to look for the most shocking religious headline of the year, you might not have to look hard. Of all the headlines that made you feel like you stepped through the looking glass in a Lewis Carroll novel, the headline that Kanye West released his debut Christian album, titled Jesus is King. Previously, Mr. West’s musical “themes” and choices of lyrics in his rap albums would have been the last thing that many people would grace the halls of any Christian church. This has lead people to write articles to ponder the question, if Kanye West’s conversion is authentic or only a business decision. However, some people have seen it as inspiration. If someone who wanted nothing to do with God, now all of sudden can sing the praises of God, then I can have hope to fulfill my goals of challenge, changes, and growth we like to call resolutions. As we turn the calendar on another year, we learn from the past, hopefully, to improve upon the future. Often we are wrapped up in what I want to accomplish this year. “I want to lose weight. I want to be a better person. I want to be a better dad, coworker, and pastor. I want to manage my time better. I want to finally get organized, and on and on and on.” But as a congregation, do we only focus on ourselves, or as we have learned from previous sermons, do we look at our relationship with God? Do we look at our church and see if we can learn from the past, as we look toward God and toward the future. So tonight, as we study Isaiah 51, we want to see how we as church enter a new year by God’s grace. When Isaiah is writing this section of his book, the intended audience does not even exist, yet. The intended audience was for the people who would be carried away into exile. Even though it had not happened yet, when Isaiah writes this, God has already prophesied that the time would come. The people of Israel would find themselves in a much different situation. They would be ripped out of their homeland and forced to live in a land far away from home. When it did happen, God wanted them to have a message for them. While we may not have had our world turned upside down this year, we have seen changes in our community around us. Fresh, new faces around our community have replaced the familiar faces. This can be jarring to people who have lived and grown here. In this unfamiliar world that the Israelites will dwell, God has three points of encouragement. First, look back. Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; 2 look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. He encourages them to look to how God dealt with their ancestors, specifically Abraham and Sarah. Sometimes we may not want to look back. The Israelites had this problem also. They forgot the blessings that God had given to Abraham and Sarah. They had forgotten the mistakes that they had made. They continued to make the same mistakes and take it further. Maybe we don’t want to look into our past. Or maybe we do. When we look at our past, we can’t go looking with rose color glasses. Not everything that our ancestors did was perfect. Not everything that we have done is glittering with gold. However, we should not try to forget about it. No, let’s learn from it. Maybe we haven’t always been so loving as a church. I heard this story about a man, not connected to our church, but maybe we can see how we may have made some missteps. This man went to a church. He had sung the hymns, participated in the worship, and listened intently to the sermon. When it came to praying, he was ready to go. Then, it happened. During the silent prayer, his phone rings. Everyone looks at him with a glance. They sneer at him. They even shake their heads. How could he not know? When he comes to church the next week. He sees the disgusted looks and the eyes that look at him awkwardly. Then, he goes to the bar. While he is having his drink, he knocks his full drink over. He gets upset, but the bar tender says, “Just a minute. I’ll be there.” He cleans it up, reassures that man that accidents happen. The owner comes out and says that it’s okay, he would get him a new drink on the house. His friends continue their conversation there. You could guess, where this man feels more at home. His bar friends want to help him out. They love him and support him. The church people just judge him. As we look to the past, we can see the mistakes that we have made as individuals or as a congregation that we have chased people out of the church, because of our side-glances or unloving expressions, or our judgmental temperaments. Maybe the way we have expressed the truth has driven people away from us and from God. Yet, God does not want us mope about the past failures. He wants us to repent of them. He wants us to bring them to him and see the joy that he has given us. God wanted his people not to just learn from the mistakes of the past, but to also see the promises that he had made to Abraham and Sarah. He promised them that they would have descendants who would live in the Promised Land. He promised them that they would have as many descendants as the stars in the sky. He promised them that all nations would be blessed through that couple. He wanted them to see how God not only had kept those promises, but he would fulfill all of them. As we look back, we see how God has blessed our church. We have his Word among us. We teach it in its truth and purity. Yet, we also teach it with the love that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has shown us. His truth fills us with joy and gladness. This is not just a forced feeling, but a Spirit-born truth that produces fruit. As we see what the Lord has done for us, as we see how the Lord has planted his Word in us and made it blossom despite of our sinful attitude, it leads us to praise him here and praise him to others. Yet, this was just one encouragement. He told us to look back to his blessings that he has done. He also tells us to look up. In verse one he says, “Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation.” The Lord has not forgotten us. Yet, how often we can forget the Lord. You could imagine that the exiles would have faced adversity. Sometimes we face adversity today. We face adversity when we preach the Word (that is what Isaiah talks about here, not just the Law, but Law and Gospel – i.e. the Word), when we spread God’s message and it seemingly has not effect. We see no fruit. It’s easy for us to look at the past to assume that people readily heard the Word of God, even though they had many other reasons to come to church. Sometimes the temptation is for us to give up altogether. Thankfully, God did not give up on us. Instead, he sent his righteousness and light to the nations and the islands. Hear the Word of the Lord. 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. God still sends his message of his righteousness and his justice to islands – distant nations that had not yet heard. That’s us today. We have now heard that message. We continue to look to the Lord to bless the preaching of that Word, whether it is to those who are islands among us – to those who have never heard the Word among us. That’s becoming a larger number today. So many who have grown up in homes, where the Sun of Righteousness has not pierced the curtains of darkness and despair. This year, let us find new and old ways that we can reach more and more people. Then, we put our hope in the Lord that he will bless those opportunities that we have. Finally, not only do we look to the past, look to up to the Lord, but we also look to the future. Here we are reminded what is the end goal of God’s plan. It keeps us grounded in reality of what will happen. Here God reminds his people, the Israelites back then and us today. 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. Yes, the physical blessings that God gives us will disappear. They will come to nothing. The home that we have. We may put a great deal of money to it, but eventually we must leave it behind. The farm or the company we help build will be left behind, when we retire or depart. Eventually, it will be destroyed on the Last Day. Yet, we have one place for refuge. The Lord will give us a safe haven under his righteousness and his salvation. His salvation is complete. Jesus has accomplished it. His righteousness is complete he has given it to us. They will be our safe haven through the breakers of life. For we know that just as God has kept his wonderful promises, he will fulfill all the other promises. He will bring people to know him and rejoice in his name. So as a church keep your eyes on the blessings that God will give you at the end of time. As we end this year, we see the past failures, but also the past blessings, we look up to the Lord to guide us and continue to work for our good. We look to the end, because we will know how God will end all things. Therefore, whatever blessings, challenges, heartaches, and joys this year may have, we know that we will enter it under the grace of God. Amen.