Isaiah 62:1-5
God’s Word Is Not Silent
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 17, 2015
I had a professor once at Seminary, an old crotchety sort of man, who was fond of saying, “Our God is a chatty God. He likes to talk.” In fact, if you haven’t noticed by now, speaking is pretty important to our God. He speaks, and God’s Word bestows what He says.
And what’s more, He tells in our Old Testament reading today that He just won’t shut His mouth. “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet.” For our sake, God speaks.
What word does He speak? What is so important that He can’t keep His mouth shut? A salvation that is to be proclaimed to the end of the world. A salvation that comes with His promised Messiah. A salvation that comes by being united with our God as a loved and faithful spouse.
The language that He uses here is that of a marriage. “As a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” God rejoices over you. He shouts out with joy so that all of creation can hear. So great is the love of Christ that He leaves His Father in heavenly splendor and takes on flesh. At the wedding of Cana, in the first of Jesus’ signs, He not only manifests His glory by showing Himself to be the Son of God and Creator, but just as significantly, the Son of Man shows Himself to be the Bridegroom of Israel. Only one chapter afterward, Jesus will plainly state that He will give Himself into death for His bride.
This world does all it can, with the help of the devil and our old sinful nature, to cultivate doubt in God’s promise of perfect, undeserved love and mercy. God’s remedy is simply to unveil, to announce, why in fact His love for us absolutely trustworthy: because His relationship with us is marriage! Before Him we acknowledge that we are sinners and we plead for forgiveness. And God who is faithful and just and forgives our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
His bride, the Church, has not always given Him reason to rejoice. We have grieved our Lord greatly. Back biting, infighting, greed, envy, lying, sexual immorality. Yes, we are guilty of all these things and more. Isaiah rightly proclaims our sin as the equivalent of marital unfaithfulness. Like an unfaithful wife, we deserve to be divorced, forsaken, by our Groom Jesus. If God had not taken pity on His fallen creatures, our fate would have been that of an unfaithful wife, abandoned by her husband to live out her days amid the ruins of a wretched life.
But He has redeemed us with His own blood. He does not treat us as we deserve, thank God, but He delights to make us His own holy people, made beautiful by His forgiveness. Through Baptism the Groom acquires His bride and purifies her for Himself. Holy Baptism is the touch of Christ Himself, so that through it there takes place the most intimate union with God’s Son in the flesh. By grace, the Lord looks at His Church and loves her. She is beautiful in His sight. A crown of beauty. A diadem in the hands of her husband.
In this marriage, our Lord gives His bride His name, taking us into His family. Zion Lutheran Church, we are named such after that ancient name for God’s people. Zion is Jerusalem, more specifically, the mount on which the temple stood, but it also referred to the people of Jerusalem, the people of God. And so we are, built upon the foundational mountain of Christ Himself. And Zion, we, become righteousness only by the mouth of the Lord.
No longer forsaken and desolate, are we are the delight of the Lord and married to Him. The only reason we can be called “My Delight” is because God made His Son in whom He delighted the Forsaken One. God placed all of our unspeakable and idolatrous and adulterous sins upon Jesus. God forsook Him. God turned His face away from Jesus so He could shine His face upon us and delight in us.
The only reason we can be called “Married” is because God made Jesus “Desolate.” Upon the cross Jesus suffered the very desolation of eternal hell we all deserved. What love that God would condemn His Son so He could rejoice over us! Now nothing separates us from that love. Nothing stands between us and God. We are married!
God speaks and His Word bestows what it says. And we listen with ears of faith. Faith that is born from what is heard from the mouth of the Lord acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Where His forgiveness is given, we freed and forgiven and married to Christ, acclaim Him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words He has uses to make Himself known to us.
Our righteousness and God’s glory is the reason why He will not keep silent. So that through our lives, through our actions, and our words the nations might see the righteousness of Christ and give glory to God. When you have really good news like this, you can’t keep silent. In Psalm 51:15, the opening verses for Matins and Vespers, we say, “O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise.” As the bride of Christ, we too cannot help but speak out the news of Christ, for the Lord has opened up our lips to proclaim the Word that does not lie, the truth that does not change, and the Word of the Lord that accomplishes what it promises. The Epiphany season is about making known this really good news. It’s about shining the brightness of this good news into a sin-darkened world and into sin-darkened lives.
When people sin and have hearts burdened with the darkness of guilt and regret, we have good news to shine upon them. We have the good news of a Savior who has taken our sin and taken our place on a cross because of that sin. We have the good news of a Savoir who not only restores, but restores completely. With such good news, how can we be silent? For He bespeaks us righteous and holy, delightful and married, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.