A Church for All Nations

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 “A CHURCH FOR ALL NATIONS”

Grace, mercy, joy, and peace be multiplied unto you from God our Father and from our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for our meditation this morning is taken from the book of Isaiah, the 56th Chapter. The prophet records these words of the Lord God: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold fast to my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” The Sovereign Lord declares—he who gathers the exiles of israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.” This is the Word of the Lord.

How good are you with abbreviations? Some abbreviations you might be very familiar with, like USA, or FBI, or if you tend to do a lot of texting, you may be familiar with abbreviations like OMG or LOL. Some abbreviations you may not be as familiar with, but they are becoming more and more commonplace. In the sports world, for example, especially in the world of college sports, NIL is becoming an important concept: Name-Image-Likeness. College athletes feel that it is only right that they should get a share of the profits that colleges and universities have been reaping by using their names, likenesses, and images on everything from jerseys to bobbleheads. But there's another abbreviation I would like us to consider this morning...one that is in our national consciousness...one that both unifies and divides...and that is DEI. That abbreviation stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It is having an impact on virtually every business and corporation in America. Corporations have created corporate officers and departments devoted to DEI, and, as I mentioned a moment ago, it is a matter that both unifies and divides. On the one hand, diversity is a wonderful thing! Our nation is one that is made up of people who came from many different nations, and what a blessing that has been in our history. Equity is enshrined in our Constitution. It carries the idea of justice and equal application of the law to all people, regardless of skin color, gender, educational or socio-economic position. Inclusion carries the idea that everyone should be able to have a voice, a part, in the well-being, productivity, and success of an organization, a company, or the nation. Who couldn't get behind THAT idea of DEI? Where the problems and division so often arises is when these good concepts are used to justify or force acceptance of ideas and lifestyles that run contrary to God's revealed Word and will. And lest you are wondering if this sermon is about to devolve into a political commentary, let not your heart be troubled. I merely wanted to set the stage for this statement: DEI has always been in the heart and plan of God! He reveals that through His prophet Isaiah and throughout the entirety of Holy Scripture. Let's spend a few moments to see how.

Let's start with Equity, or to use the word in our text, justice. God calls His people, Israel, to maintain justice, but not just Israel...all people. Justice is based on an absolute standard, an absolute Law, and it is that Law that determines what is right, and therefore just. It is the standard that God placed in the heart of Adam and Eve, a standard that required them and their children and descendants who followed to love God with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength; and, their neighbor...their fellow human beings...as themselves. This would have been as natural as breathing to them had they not taken their eyes off of God and His Word and heeded another...the devil and his deceit and lies.

It is because of that lawlessness perpetrated by our first parents that humanity by nature is not just, not right, and either steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the absolute standard of God's Law or seeks to convert it into something that conforms and agrees with his or her own ideas as to what is good and right and just. Unfortunately, what they consider to be good and right and just is all too often anything but that; rather it is perverse, godless, and evil. When Isaiah wrote our text, he was speaking of a time when God's people would be returning back to their homeland after a 70 year exile in a land called Babylonia, an exile brought on by their own perverse sins against God and against each other. Now God calls them to maintain justice. How? By humbly walking with their God, acknowledging and repenting of their sin and forsaking it. But above all, trusting in the God who had made incredible promises to them, promises of deliverance, not just from political captivity, but deliverance from a more dreadful captivity...captivity to sin, death, and the power of Satan. God promises that deliverance is indeed at hand...that greater deliverance that would be accomplished by the perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection of the promised Messiah: Jesus Christ. In grateful response, God calls His people, and indeed all people, to follow His righteous Law...The Ten Commandments... to love Him above all things and their fellow human beings as themselves...not in order to be saved, but as a fruit of their salvation...and among those commandments to be gratefully obeyed was the one concerning the Sabbath, to keep it holy. What Luther says to New Testament Christians was certainly the spirit of the Law for Old Testament saints: We should fear and love God that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. And just as God had consigned all men to death and condemnation through sin (whether Jew or Non-Jew), so also He equally offers the fruit of Jesus' perfect life, all-atoning death, and victorious resurrection to Jew and Non-Jew alike. THAT is divine equity...divine justice!

The Scriptures declare that from one man, Adam, all the peoples and nations of the earth sprang forth. They are male and female. They come in all shapes, weight classes, hair and skin colors. Some speak in English, others in Spanish, or in one of any of the other six to seven thousand living languages used around the world. Some live on one of the seven continents. Others live on islands out in the vast expanse of earth's oceans. To say that human beings are a diverse lot is, in my opinion, an understatement. Some of that diversity, like different languages, is a by-product of man's sinfulness. We learn that from the story of the Tower of Babel. But even in that, God had a good and gracious purpose, to spread man out across the face of the earth. The psalmist declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, right down to individual, unique sets of fingerprints,

each with unique gifts and abilities. That's diversity...and it's a good thing...a good gift of God. In the history of salvation, recorded in Holy Scripture, we see God using a diverse group of individuals and nations to fulfill His ultimate purpose in bringing Christ into the world to accomplish His saving work. Some of the individuals: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, David, Esther, Cyrus, and Mary. Some of the nations: Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome...all of whom played a role in the history of the people of Israel, the people through whom God's will was to reveal Himself, ultimately in the Person of Jesus Christ. Diverse individuals, diverse nations, all part of God's plan. Sometimes...oftentimes... the people of Israel missed the purpose of their calling. Yes, they were to be a people set apart, but at the same time, by that set apart-ness, they were to be a magnet to the nations, to show the nations who the living God was. They mistook their being chosen by God as meaning that God wanted everyone else to go to hell! Perhaps they should have paid more attention to King Solomon when he prayed his prayer of dedication for the temple. In that prayer, he mentions that foreigners will hear about the God of Israel, and when that happens, they would offer prayers toward the temple in which God had chosen to have His name dwell. Solomon prayed that when that happened, that God would answer and grant the prayers of the foreigner. You see, God's intention was always that His house, His holy temple, be a house of prayer for all nations. His Church, Scripture declares, is comprised of people from every language, tribe, people, and tongue. His Church is diverse, and yet it is one, because through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, He has broken down the walls between Jew and Non-Jew; He has broken down the walls between people of different skin colors. He has made His Church one through the blood of Jesus Christ. He gives a diversity of people gifts in the Church: Apostles, prophets, Pastors and Teachers, Musicians and Evangelists, Deacons and Deaconesses. The Holy Spirit provides God's people with a diversity of gifts: Some are good administrators; some are good teachers; others are excellent at mercy ministries like visiting the sick in hospitals and the elderly in nursing homes; some have the gift of evangelism; some have been given a special gift of generosity. Diverse people...diverse gifts...yet all one in Jesus Christ!

Which brings us to Inclusion. Jesus said to His disciples that He had other sheep that were not part of this sheepfold, that is, not part of the sheepfold that consisted of Jewish believers in Jesus. He had to search for those sheep also and bring them in: Germans and Hispanics, Chinese and Pacific Islanders, and every other ethnicity on the face of the earth. The SELC is kind of a picture in miniature of what Jesus was talking about. The Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church was at one time one “flock.” The sheep were virtually all Slovak. But then, others were brought into the fold, so much so that the SELC changed its name to the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. And then, around 1970, the SELC became part of that fold known as The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Together, we continue to work to fulfill Christ's Great Commission to go into all the world, baptizing all nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that Christ has taught, and trusting that He is with us always, even to the close of the age.

On the Mount of Olives, right next to the Garden of Gethsemane, is a church. It's name: The Church of All Nations. How appropriate, for it was at Gethsemane that Christ asked for God's saving will to be accomplished. It was there, at Jerusalem, that perfect justice was satisfied as Jesus paid for the sin of every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth. It was there that sin, death, and devil were conquered so that none might be lost, but all be included in the Kingdom of Grace and, ultimately, in the Kingdom of Glory. To God be the glory, that because of Jesus life, death, and resurrection, we are part of The Church of All Nations, a Church with diversity, equity, and inclusion, just the way God planned it all along. Amen.