Mission Festival – October 16, 2016

Prepare To Receive God’s Blessings

Isaiah 54:1-3a “Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the Lord. 2 “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left;

“What you see is not always what you get.” That seems to be the opposite of what we generally believe, doesn’t it? Usually we say, “What you see is what you get.” We tend to accept as true only the things we can see. We don’t realize that sometimes our eyes deceive us. Our eyes don’t always give us all the facts to determine what is true and what is not.

Take, for example, those seeds you planted last Spring. They seemed pretty dead. They were dry, maybe even shriveled up. Yet you put the seeds into the ground, provide them with water, warmth, and sunshine and now you have a harvest. Or how often haven’t we heard stories about someone who appeared to be poor, but when they died it was discovered that he or she had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away in various bank accounts. What you see is not always what you get.

Today the prophet Isaiah has another unlikely scenario for us – a childless woman who becomes the happy mother of a family that is constantly increasing. Who would have thought it possible? Who would have thought that a childless woman could give birth – not once, but repeatedly? The Lord wants to remind us that we don’t always know what he has in store for us. The Lord does not provide us with a crystal ball that shows us all the details of what the future will bring. But the Lord has given us something better, his promises. These promises will come true in spite of what we seem to see. Isaiah urges us to prepare ourselves for what we cannot fully see at this time. Brothers and sisters, “Prepare to Receive God’s Blessings.” How do we do that? It’s simple. The Lord himself tells us to: 1) Lengthen the cords and 2) Strengthen the stakes.

I.

In Isaiah 54 God encourages his people to sing and to shout for joy because of the wonderful things that he was about to do. The first reason the people have for their joy is the return of the Jewish people from captivity in Babylon. Now that would have been puzzling for Isaiah’s original readers because Judah had not even been carried off into captivity yet. The Lord, however, was not only looking ahead to the people being deported to Babylon, he was promising that they would return. But even that wasn’t looking ahead far enough. The ultimate reference is to freedom that comes with the forgiveness won by Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53 the Lord speaks of Jesus as the suffering servant who would give his life for the sins of all people. It is not surprising then that Isaiah 54 is a chapter of great rejoicing. Christ died for our sins; therefore we can rejoice and become spiritually productive. The Lord is speaking to his church, his believers of all times and all places, when he says, “Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”

Seven hundred years before the Savior was born, the Lord had important news for his church. God’s people were to get ready. They were to prepare to receive God’s blessings. In Isaiah’s day it seemed that God’s blessings were in short supply – not because God was stingy with his blessings but because God’s people were ignoring their God. The people refused to listen to the Lord and the Lord allowed them to be carried off as captives. Selfishly God’s people had kept the Lord’s promise of a Savior to themselves. These Old Testament believers had the notion that salvation belonged only to them. As a result the church, the gathering of all believers, became barren. The church was not growing. But now, the Lord says, the time is coming when the church will expand. Large numbers will become part of God’s family. To help his people prepare to receive these blessings, the Lord says, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords.”

The Lord uses the picture of a tent. Tents were familiar to the people to whom Isaiah was writing. When it was necessary to house more people, they simply made the tent bigger. God tells his church not to hold back. They do not have to fear that they are doing too much enlarging. No matter how far they stretch the side curtains and lengthen the cords which hold up the tent, it would never be too large for the numbers that the Lord was about to bring in.

On May 31, 1792 a young preacher by the name of William Carey addressed a group of ministers in a small town outside London, England. He used these same words to encourage them to expand beyond their local parishes. Carey wanted his church to reach out to a world that at the time was only partial explored. Carey understood that the Lord sent his Son to die for ALL that ALL might be saved. What followed in the 1800s was the “mission century” when the gospel was carried far and wide.

So here we are in 2016. The question facing us is, “Has all the work been done?” Or are the Lord’s words still applicable to us? Brothers and sisters, you know the answer. Until the Lord returns in glory, until the trumpet of the final Judgment sounds, we are to continue to proclaim the saving message of Jesus and to reach out to those who don’t yet know him as their Savior from sin. As members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod we continue to go into the entire world with the good news, and at the same time the world is coming to us. It’s a sad fact that many people here in America don’t know who Jesus really is. We have reason to rejoice and sing that the Lord permits us to invite them into God’s family. The fastest growing segments of the American population are people with whom we aren’t always familiar. They may look a bit different from us. They may speak a different language. Yet they are souls for whom Jesus died.

“Stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back. Lengthen your cords.” As God’s people expect to grow. And plan to grow. That means gathering the necessary resources to do this work, both human resources and financial resources. This morning the Lord encourages you to get involved. Encourage young people and maybe even some not so young to consider serving the Lord full-time as pastors, teachers, and missionaries. To lengthen the cords also means providing financial resources to send these messengers out to spread the good news of the forgiveness Christ has won for us. That’s true here in America and in countries far away. This is not simply the responsibility of the church or the Synod. This is the Lord’s command to each and every one of us. Stretch yourself to proclaim Christ. Do not hold back because it seems that nothing is happening. What you see is not always what you get. God promises to bless our efforts to share the gospel. Prepare to receive God’s blessings by looking for the opportunities he provides to share the gospel with others and to bring them under God’s-loving care.

II.

The Lord, however, knows all too well our weaknesses and so as we prepare to receive God’s blessings, the Lord also encourages us to strengthen the stakes. “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left.”

The Lord is preparing to bring more souls into his kingdom. How are we to prepare? We are to get stronger. If you are setting up a bigger tent, but haven’t used bigger tent stakes and driven those tent stakes deeper into the ground, there is going to be a problem. The increased pressure on those stakes will pull them up and the tent will collapse. If we are going to reach out, if we are going to lengthen our cords and stretch the tent curtain wide to bring in more people, then we have to be stronger ourselves.

It’s easy to say, “Well, I’m not all that important. Let someone else do the job.” The fact is that the church is only as strong as the individual members who make it up. Oh, certainly there is a need to prepare people for full-time service in God’s kingdom. We need to continue to train pastors, teachers, and staff ministers to work with us and our behalf. That’s why we together provide a worker training system, so that we have the full-time workers we need. But these workers are not meant to take our place, but rather to help us, to work with us so that more work can be done.

It’s not a question of letting George or Jane do the work for us. When the Lord says “strengthen the stakes,” he is referring to us all. As members of God’s family it is impossible for us to stay in the same place spiritually. Have you ever thought about that? If we are not growing in the Word, if we are not becoming stronger, then we are shrinking and becoming weaker. Many people have the notion that their spiritual growth ended in Sunday School and confirmation class. Satan would love you to believe that your training in the Word came to an end when you turned fourteen. But the truth is, we are to keep on growing. If we are not becoming stronger, then we are getting weaker.

So compare where you are at today in your relationship with God to a year ago. Are you more involved in his Word? Have you taken advantage of the opportunities the Lord provides to make this growth possible? Have you been regular in your worship attendance where you have the opportunity to hear the Word through which the Spirit makes you stronger? Have you regularly attended the Lord’s Supper to receive the assurance that what Jesus did was given and shed for you? Have you read the Bible, made use of devotional material, attended Bible class?

If a person refuses to eat and gets weaker, we would say that person is foolish. Such a person is putting his or her health in danger. Is it any different with our spiritual health? The Lord is preparing to bless us. He has promised that he will do so. It’s a done deal as far as God is concerned. Remember what we see is not always what God is going to give. Will we be strong enough to receive those blessings when they come? Today consider how the Lord has blessed you. Consider the countless souls that need to hear that they have a Savior. The Lord calls upon you and me, individually and together, to be involved in this work. What a privilege! And what a responsibility! Don’t neglect the exercise program that the Lord has prepared – the regular use of Word and Sacrament – through which he strengthens us. In a materialistic world that wants us to believe that we have to have more, don’t fail to see that God has already given us so much. Driven deeper into the Word, the Lord makes us strong to reach out. Prepare to receive God’s blessings. For when the Lord speaks, it happens. Amen.

Faith Lutheran Church

Black River Falls and Cataract, WI

James F. Korthals

Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary