Hold Fast My Covenant

We’re back to Isaiah. And this week we start a new section in his prophecy. The first section of this book dealt with life in Israel during Isaiah’s days, and it was not pretty. Most of these first 39 chapters was on some aspect of Jesus’ anger at His people for their refusal to repent of their sins. Then, there was the second section, from chapters 40 to 55. Isaiah wrote this with the future exiles in mind. Appropriately, this section was filled with words of encouragement. That leaves this last section, chapters 56 to 66. This is a mixed bad. There are, again, some hard words about Israel’s unbelief. But there are also some very encouraging words as well. Today’s text is intended to encourage.

Listen as I read Isaiah 56.1-8.

The basic thought of our text is contained in the opening words. ‘Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness”’. Isaiah uses these two key words together in other places in his prophecy. They are a call to covenant faithfulness. And that makes sense when you remember that the primary work of a prophet was to call Israel back to the covenant they made with God back in Moses’ day. The prophet’s work was not so much about predicting the future. It was about telling the people to keep their promises. So, Isaiah is doing what all the prophets did. He’s telling Israel to remember the covenant promises they made to God.

Isaiah could have stopped right here. He said enough to make his point. ‘You need to work at covenant faithfulness.’ But this is intended to be an encouragement. The God of Israel understood their weakness. So, He does not just yell at them to get it right. He gently calls His people to faithfulness and then gives them reasons that will encourage them to do that. So, listen to more of what God says through His prophet. ‘Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.”’ The God of Israel encourages His people by making a promise.

The basic concept of the Bible is not complicated. This is God’s world. He owns it. He runs it. If anyone would be wise, he will live God’s way in God’s world. And that is wise because there are consequences to the choices that every person makes. Here, Isaiah is reminding Israel of those consequences. One day, the God who runs this place, the God with whom Israel made that covenant, that God is going to show up. And when He does, there will be an evaluation. To be sure, there will be those who will not pass the test. They will be evaluated and found wanting. And the key to their problem will be that they refused to repent. They heard Isaiah as he pointed out their sin, but they chose to ignore him. Though that is true, it is important to see that their God puts a very positive spin on this coming evaluation. He speaks of it in terms of ‘salvation’ and ‘deliverance’. He has in mind those Israelites who are working at keeping justice and doing righteousness. He has in mind those who are working at covenant faithfulness. Pursuing that goal is hard. So, He reminds them that the day will come when He will show up. The day will come when He will rescue them from all the difficulties of trying to be faithful in a fallen world. So, for them, Isaiah’s words, God’s words, are a great encouragement. ‘Your struggle is not in vain. Salvation is coming.’

God, then, gets specific. It’s no good telling someone, ‘Do a good job’, if you don’t tell them something of what that means. So, He gets specific about what covenant faithfulness looks like. This is what keeping justice and doing righteousness includes: ‘Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.’ And what do we have? Keeping the Sabbath and avoiding evil. A good question to ask at this point is, ‘Why these two? Of all the different things that God could have said, why did He choose these two?’ There are lots of possibilities. It’s good to remember that God’s spokesman, Isaiah, was a preacher and that he had a specific audience he was preaching to, his fellow Israelites. So, there may well be something about these two that would have hit home with that audience. I don’t know what that might be, and I’m not sure anyone today could know.

Let me offer something that might answer our question, ‘Why these two?’ Clearly, evil is what they were not to do. But don’t think of evil in terms of a list of acts, things that people do. It’s more helpful if you think of it as an attitude of the heart. It makes a practical difference when you see it this way. So, avoiding evil does not mean that they were just look at their behavior, that they were to check for activities that are to be avoided. No, instead, they were to check their hearts. They were to look for attitudes. So, the question that an Israelite was to ask himself was this: ‘How is my heart doing at keeping away from evil?’ There is much that needs to be said about answering that question. But let me just say this. The only way that a person’s heart is going to keep away from doing evil is by working hard to do what is right. It’s not just a matter of saying, ‘No’. That alone actually won’t work. It’s important to also say, ‘Yes’. So, it’s, ‘I don’t want to do this. And I do want to do that.’ It’s both ‘No’ and ‘Yes’.

And that’s where the other half of this duo comes in. Isaiah points to one specific of covenant faithfulness, one specific area to say, ‘Yes’ to: keeping the Sabbath. Isaiah is calling the people to keep their covenant promises. If this is going to make sense you need to bear in mind that the Ten Commandments are not a list of ten activities. They are a list of ten categories. Each one deals with an area of life and gives both the ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’. So, the second commandment says, ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…’ This commandment covers the whole area of worship. And what is not to be done is obvious. That’s the ‘No’. But you also need to see the flip side, the ‘Yes’ side. The people of God are to worship God only in the way that He prescribes. And that includes more than the question of whether there should be a statue where you worship. Each of the commandments functions in the same way. Each of the commandments covers a category, dealing with the ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’.

So, the commandment about the Sabbath says this. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.’ So, on the one hand, the Sabbath is to be a day of rest, and that for individuals, families and societies. That’s the ‘No’ side. No work on the Sabbath. But on the other hand, the remainder of the week is for work, diligent and earnest work. That’s the ‘Yes’ side.

So, what is God doing? He is calling the people of Israel to avoid evil by pursuing what is good. And by pointing to one of the commandments, He is actually reminding them of all ten. There is a fancy term for doing this, when someone points to a part but means the whole. That’s what we have in our text. And since there have always been issues about keeping the Sabbath, I’m pretty sure that it made sense to single out this one. But here’s the point. God is telling the people what keeping justice and doing righteousness looks like. This is covenant faithfulness.

Let’s look at one more section of our text and then we’ll look at why this is important for you.

From our text, ‘Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.”’ What is this about? This is about God’s blessings. I think that it’s safe to say that for most folk in our day, a blessing is this vague thing that floats about but never really lands. It’s religious talk that doesn’t make a real difference. But that is so far from the truth. Isaiah has been writing about covenant faithfulness and how, when God’s salvation comes, there will be so much good. That is to say, there will be so much blessing. And the blessing will be real.

So, consider the foreigner who has joined himself to the God of Israel, the foreigner who has pursued covenant faithfulness even though he is not a native Israelite. How might he be blessed? The God of the faithful foreigner picks out what might be a concern for him: the fear of being left out, of being considered second class. They are not, after all, Israelites by birth. To these, God promises a fitting blessing. ‘… these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ They will by no means be excluded. They will be brought near to God. No second class people.

And then there is the eunuch, a man who cannot have children. What might he be concerned about? Remember that children were considered a reward from God, the more the merrier. And one reason for that is that children provide a name that will be remembered down through the ages. Here, think of those ‘genealogies’. So, what is a fitting blessing for eunuchs who work at covenant faithfulness? ‘I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.’ Remembered forever. This is a blessing that is tailor made.

The point I’d like you to take away from this is that blessings are concrete. They are not vague and floating but are real. They make a difference. And those who hold fast God’s covenant will receive these blessings, blessings that satisfy deep desires, when His salvation comes.

And that leads to a question. When does this salvation come? God promised that it would come. When is that? The obvious answer is that it came in Jesus. He is the promised salvation and the deliverance that was to be revealed. Isaiah is writing about Him. And what happened when Jesus finally arrived? Listen to the testimony of John the Baptist. ‘His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ Evaluation. Read the Gospels and you will see how Jesus gathered in His wheat and left the chaff to burn. The difference between the wheat and the chaff lay in how they responded to Jesus’ basic message. ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’ Those who refused to repent were excluded. Those who pursued covenant faithfulness, by repentance and faith, were blessed.

And that, of course, gets us to the final question. How does this text relate to you? Is there some part that you need to consider? Is there anything here for you? Actually, the whole thing is for you. And that is clear when you think about the promise and its fulfillment. What was the promise? ‘… for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed.’ To be sure, Jesus’ first advent was a fulfillment of this promise. But it is not the ultimate fulfillment. The ultimate fulfillment is yet future. Isaiah wrote about Jesus’ second coming. Isaiah wrote all of this for you.

So, what do we have? This is a call from Jesus to you. It’s a call for covenant faithfulness. It’s a call to keep justice and to do righteousness. Doing that is a matter of the heart. The call includes the ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’, and that down to the specifics. And to encourage you in this Jesus also includes what will happen when He returns. There will be great blessings, tangible blessings, tailor made blessings. It’s the blessings of the future that make covenant faithfulness in the present worth it.

Pursuing covenant faithfulness is a lifelong battle. Fortunately, it is not a battle you fight on your own. Jesus has given you His Spirit. But it is a battle that you are to fight. Let me encourage you to work at heeding Jesus’ call. It’s what following Jesus is all about.