The purpose of this sermon is to introduce a theme for us over the next 12 months of sermons. We plan our sermons a year in advance, from September through August of the next year, deciding which books of the Bible we will explore together as we rotate through a three-fold cycle based on Jesus’s claim in John 14:6, that he is way, the truth, and the life.

This next year we are on the “truth” cycle. And as I prayed about this earlier in the summer, I kept thinking about how important it is for us to know the Bible and how it is put together and how it is to be understood. While the Bible comes to us with many literary forms, underneath them all there is a “storyline, beginning in creation and moving to the new creation, which unfolds God’s plan.”[1]

Yes, the Bible is a story, a coherent story, a saving story, a beautiful story. And it is our responsibility to know it, and to know it well.

Failure to do this plagues the Christian church and our witness in our day. To believe in the Christian gospel, and to rightly proclaim it, we must see how Jesus has brought the entire biblical story to its liberating climax. We've got to be soaked in the scriptures, to learn to live by its story, and to be saved by its beauty.

To kick us off, let’s take a look at this passage from the prophet Isaiah, which speaks about this saving beauty of the biblical story. There is beauty in the name of the story’s central character, beauty in the news of what he has accomplished, and beauty in the people—a nation of people—who are saved by this news.

The Beautiful Name

First, since the Bible is a story, its beauty depends on the beautiful name of its protagonist.

A Reason to Rejoice

We're going to begin with verses 3-6, coming back to verses 1-2 later, but of course we need at least to have verses 1-2 in mind as we get started. What can we see quickly in the first two verses? We see good news announced to Israel, to Israel who would hear this good news in the midst of very bad circumstances. Isaiah is addressing an audience who would literally be living in exile, living in a foreign land, not as refugees seeking amnesty but as captured slaves. Such an oppressive circumstance is hardly understood by us, but it was a real threat, an ever-present reality for many ancient peoples.

And, of course, this passage is speaking about an historical reality, too. You can read about such ancient history in various extra-biblical sources. The forced deportation of the ancient Israelites to Assyria and to Babylon—that is the real historical setting in which the words of hope in verses 3-6 are set.

In these four verses, Yahweh, the God of Israel promises that he will rescue his people, end their exile, and do so in a definitive, yet mysterious, way.

“You shall be redeemed,” Yahweh declares through the prophet in verse 3. And then, in verse 6, “my people shall know my name,” and, “they shall know that it is I who speak.” However this end-of-exile will come about, when it does, it will be a definitive act of God, causing God’s people to know God in a way they couldn’t comprehend before.

The Arrival of the Decisive Moment

Now, here's the question that we should be asking: has such a decisive moment happened yet or not?

Alec Motyer observes that verses 3-6 come as a bit of a surprise in light of verses 1-2. We would expect to find in verses 3-6 an exposition of something that has happened which gives grounds for the encouragement to celebrate in verses 1-2. Instead, we see in verses 3-6 future tenses: “you shall be redeemed” and “my people shall know my name.”[2] To the original audience, it is clear that such a definitive moment, such a celebratory event, lay still in the future. Perhaps they could find at times reasons to hope and to be happy, but they had to wait and wait and wait for this promise to become a reality.

Not so now. Christians ought to read these verses with an understanding that the decisive moment has come. The God of Israel has indeed acted on behalf of his people in a decisive moment that has fulfilled this ancient promise. This is one of the most important things Christians need to understand, how it is that Jesus has fulfilled all of ancient Israel’s hopes. This is the burden of the New Testament, to show how the Old Testament has been fulfilled in Christ.[3]

God Made Known

Follow along here. “You were sold for nothing” (v. 3). We would hardly call a priceless transaction a sale. Either God's people are described as being stolen or as being given away. Given the context of one ancient kingdom deporting the people from another kingdom, which is it? Was Israel stolen from God in these deportations, or did he give them away? What do you say? Could both be true?

Whatever the case, the seller has had no profit which is why he says he will pay no price to get his people back. But how, then, will he get them back? It had to be a mystery, leaving the reader in suspense. Wouldn't some kind of price, some kind of payment be necessary? What could it be? How would it be done?

Verses 4-5 keep before us the very real historical situation. Ancient Israel was no stranger to living, quite literally, in oppressive exile. The first such occurrence was in Egypt; at the time Isaiah was prophesying, Assyria was the present threat. This hopeful prophecy has set us up to expect that however the God of Israel acts to redeem and rescue his people now, it will have some echo to how he did so in the greatest example of rescue Israel had ever been through, the exodus from Egypt, that great story rehearsed every year in the observance of Passover. It was in that decisive event that Israel came to know God as Yahweh, his covenant name. And when a similar event takes place, the people of God will once more know his name. Not that they forgot the name, not that God's name is changed, but something will happen which will “confirm and reinforce all that the name means.”[4] God's name will not just be known, not only revered, not only feared. God's name will be settled, experienced, felt deep down in their bones.

Verse 5 has us see the situation from God's perspective. When his people are oppressed and living in slavery, in exile, they are tempted to wonder if God cares. Does their situation matter to him? You better believe it does! When Israel was oppressed in Egypt, we are told that “their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God” who “heard their groaning” and “remembered his covenant” with them. “God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (Exod 2:23-25). This is still the case in that particular moment. And God will once again act to assure his people that his people and his name—his reputation as Israel's God who deeply, deeply loves his people, unconditionally and irrevocably—these are his primary motivations.[5]

And so, a great day of deliverance will come, which will be even greater than the exodus from Egypt, a deliverance that will drill deep into his people's psyche who God is, what he is like. As verse 6 says, that he is there, that he is with them, that he will never, never abandon them. “Here I am.” Or as Jesus has promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20). To know Jesus is to know God. What a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus.

The Beautiful News

It is our mission to do all we can to proclaim the beautiful name and to persuade people to believe in the beautiful name of Jesus. But we've also got a lot of work to do to believe it ourselves. The problem that plagues so much of Christianity today is that we've lost our grip on the saving beauty of the biblical story. We hear the gospel, we say, “Amen,” to it, and then say, “What else you got?”

The gospel story has lost its beauty, not because there's better news to capture our attention but because we've lost our focus on just what it is the God of Israel has promised and how it is that he has delivered on his promise. We know the beautiful name. Do we know, do we remember, the beautiful news?

Sermon Plan

The gospel must be reclaimed and rediscovered in every generation. Forgetting is a constant foe. Remembering is our continual responsibility.

Our God gives us ways to remember. The Lord's Prayer, prayed by the faithful day by day; the weekly worship gathering in which, among other things, we receive the body and blood in remembrance of him; the gospel community in which we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, dwelling in every single one of God's people, to remain devoted to the things that will keep us anchored to the truth—yes, God has given us what we need to remember.

This next year of sermons that we plan to preach and receive together will have the same aim. Our theme is “The Saving Beauty of the Biblical Story,” and our hope is that we will come to see the beautiful story much more clearly. Most of our attention will be on the book of Genesis which we started already. We'll spend half the year studying the rest of this book, breaking it up in three more parts, starting next week.

We'll spend the Advent season taking in the Story through the eyes of Mary, the mother of Jesus. For much of the Lenten season we will try to see how the death and resurrection of Jesus is cast as the climax to this great Story. Before we hit the summer, we'll do a short series on a couple of important doctrinal topics and terms that come to us in this story.

Isaiah’s Beautiful News

Today, just have a look at how Isaiah tells us the beautiful news. That what we see in this passage is the gospel story in Isaiah's telling is confirmed by the New Testament's appropriation of this passage, and so many other Old Testament texts. You can’t tell the gospel without telling Israel’s story, because “the gospel is the fulfillment, not the negation, of God’s word to Israel.”[6]

The gospel, the “good news,” is mentioned here quite explicitly in verse 7. The feet of the one who brings this good news are called beautiful because the news carried by the ancient runner with glad tidings instills hope and provides the power to persevere knowing that the decisive moment has arrived. What is this beautiful news? We need to hear it again.

First, “Your God reigns.” That's what the messenger proclaims. That's the beautiful news he brings. For so much of Israel's story in the scriptures, this is a reality which could only be grasped by faith. But Isaiah says the day will come when it will be an objective reality, when God's people will know with absolute certainty that God—their God—is in charge. For real. No doubt about it. The New Testament claim is that that moment has come. And make no mistake, this is a political declaration. “Jesus is Lord” means Caesar is not. Christians, this is really, really good news.

Second, “Your God returns.” In verse 8, Isaiah sees the ancient city watchmen, catching a glimpse of the victorious king returning to the capital city, and “together they sing for joy.” If this victorious king is Israel's God, then his return to Zion means his dwelling in his temple. When Paul, an ex-Pharisee, describes the individual Christian and indeed the entire church as the temple in which God, by his Spirit, dwells, he can only be understood as saying that the gospel has brought about the anticipated rebuilding of the temple with “the indwelling of the spirit constituted [as] the long-awaited return of YHWH to Zion.”[7]

Third, “Your God redeems.” The beautiful news, according to verse 8, is that God has comforted and redeemed his people. Verse 5 is a verse that plays a central role in Paul's telling of the gospel; he cites it in Romans 2:24. When God acts to redeem his people, bringing them out of bondage where God's people are ridiculed and mocked and God's name is belittled and despised, they will become, finally, what God had always said they would be, a holy nation, a royal priesthood.

And then, in verse 10, the beautiful news is “Your God restores.” The fact that our God reigns means not just blessing to us but blessing to everyone, to all creation.” All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God.” And church, we have quite a critical role to play in seeing that reality come to pass.

Saved from Death

We have to see the beautiful news, the whole gospel story, to bring it to all the nations of the earth. Let us not presume that we have no need to keep looking at this story and taking in its beauty.

The fact that so many can tell the gospel story with no reference to what it is God promised to Israel is telling of how inadequate our grasp of the story truly is. The fact that so many think the good news is about how we can go to heaven when we die rather than how the Creator God, at long last, has come to live with us here on earth means we need to have another look at the story. Yes, the story is about Jesus who saves us from our sins, but this is not a message about where you go when you die. It is definitively about resurrection, about embodied life on earth. That gets us much more to the heart of Old Testament theology and expectation. And it also makes Christianity much more practical to the realities of everyday life than many have come to realize.

The Beautiful Nation

So, we return to the first two verses of our passage, as well as the last 2. The first two begin with the double command, “Awake, awake.” The last two begin with the double command, “Depart, depart.” The summons in both is to the people of God to respond appropriately to the beautiful news when it comes, when it is heard, when it is announced. The people of God are to put on its beauty, adorn themselves with it.

Wake Up! Dress Up!

They are to be a beautiful nation, clothed in the beauty of the beautiful news. When the good news is heard, it is time to wake up, time to put on the beautiful garments, time to get up out of the dust, to “loose the bonds from your neck.” The promise is of a time in which the people of God will finally be the royal priesthood God always said they would be, complete with the priestly apparel to indicate the reality.

The command to get dressed up means, “be what you really are.”[8] When the good news comes, why go on living like you never heard it? The imperatives of verses 1-2 can hardly feel like a command, can they? How hard is it to obey the command, “Eat,” when you are starving and sitting at a banquet table full of food?

The End of Exile

And yet, the people of God today need to be told this, because we tend to act as if the good news has yet to be heard, as though we are still in exile, still not sure if or how or when God will deliver us. Have we forgotten the beautiful news? Do we believe it?

To Isaiah’s original audience, these first two verses sound like some glorious time in which there will be no more political threat, no more invading armies going against Jerusalem, no more deportation to live in exile in a strange land. When that day comes, one could imagine possessing a confidence of knowing that everything is secure once more.

Christians are told that we are to live in the reality of the prophecy’s fulfillment. When Paul speaks of our being raised with Christ, who is himself now “seated at the right hand of God,” he then moves on to make the same point Isaiah has made: “put off the old self,” he says, “and “put on the new” one, “which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col 3:1-10). It’s time to wake up and to get dressed.

And this is no move to allegorizing or spiritualizing Isaiah’s message either. The reign of Christ, who is risen from the dead, means that we who are his people must let him and his peace rule over our hearts (Col 3:15). If we believe the beautiful news that our God reigns, why do we live so insecure and anxious lives and willingly subject ourselves to being coopted by some human power, by some political party or cause?

It is time for the church to stop merely saying, “God is sovereign,” or “Jesus is king,” or “the Lord reigns” and live as if we truly did believe it.

Separate and Surrounded

What might that look like?

In a word, we must look different than everyone else. We must be separate, and “touch no unclean thing.” What Isaiah is talking about in verse 11 makes perfect sense within Israel’s story of ritual purity and holiness, though Christians get confused on just how this should apply to us. It clearly does apply to us, as Paul cites it in 2 Corinthians 6:17. Since “we are the temple of the living God,” God has made his dwelling right here among us. Why need we any other alliances? God is the Savior of his people, and no one else. We don’t need anyone else to save us. No one else can.

That’s true for us as a collective, but it’s also true for us as individuals. “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:2. He can only say such things if he is fully convinced that what Isaiah had prophesied in Isaiah 52 had now been fulfilled in Jesus and in the Holy Spirit.[9]

The imagery of verse 12 recalls the exodus from Egypt, in which God surrounded his people “in a pillar of cloud” by day or in the “pillar of fire” by night (Exod 13:21-22). So also now, in the deliverance Isaiah predicted and that Jesus has brought about, we are surrounded by our Lord. We do not “go out” into the world in fear of being defiled by them. We “go out” in freedom, for the sake of the world. We have good news to share with them, but we need not be anxious or in a hurry, as Israel was at their exodus from Egypt. The saving beauty of the biblical story is the peace it brings, no longer in the panic of a sinner under condemnation nor seeking escape from a brutal taskmaster who might change his mind.[10]

We are the people of God, a holy nation, a beautiful nation. If only we would learn to live like it were so.

What good news would the world hear from us then? Perhaps it would be more beautiful than they see it now. Perhaps it would then be able to save them, too.

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[1] Peter John Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 117.

[2] J. A. Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 417, note 44.

[3] Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 112.

[4]  Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 418.

[5]  Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 418.

[6] Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 34.

[7] N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 712, emphasis original.

[8] Motyer, Prophecy of Isaiah, 416.

[9] Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 713.

[10] Motyer, Prophecy of Isaiah, 422.