Gather the Nations

In this morning’s text we will, once again, encounter the theme of the purification of the people of God. Last week we looked at how Jesus makes a distinction within His Church between those that are faithful and those that are not. So, we looked at being humbled and contrite, and trembling at God’s word. This week we pick up the thread after the distinction is made. Now that the faithful have been identified and separated out, what are they to do? The text deals with one aspect of our calling as the Church: the spread of the Gospel, the gathering of the nations to Jesus. We’re going to look at this text to consider what it has to say about why we are to do this and how. It’s my hope that this will help us as we pursue this part of our calling as the Church.

Listen as I read Isaiah 66.15-24.

I’m pretty sure that you noticed Jesus’ response to the faithless among His people. I’m pretty sure that you noticed words like anger, rebuke, fire and sword. It is sobering to read, ‘… and those slain by the LORD shall be many…’ We’ve looked at this theme before so I won’t say much here, except to remind you of this. We are the Church, and there is great comfort in that. The presence of God, the promises of God, the power of God – these, and much more, are all ours. I hope that you enjoy these blessings to the full. But being the Church should never be an excuse to coast, to assume that everything is fine just because we’re the Church. Jesus’ words of anger and destruction were spoken to the Church of Isaiah’s day. I hope that you will never forget that He can say the same words to you. Follow Jesus, guard your heart and remember that you live on a battlefield.

Let’s work our way through the rest of the text by looking at some of the key words and phrases. First, there’s this: ‘And from them I will send survivors to the nations…’ At various times in the history of the Church, Jesus has acted to purify His Bride. That’s what Noah’s flood was about. That’s a theme in the Psalms. It’s a clearly stated in the prophets. And it’s part of Jesus’ ministry when He was here. Do you remember how John the Baptist described what Jesus came to do? ‘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.’ Our text is about Jesus purifying His Church. Out of that comes the wheat, or what our text calls the survivors. And it is to these that Jesus gives a mission. ‘I will send survivors to the nations.’

That way makes clear what our text is pointing to. Throughout the Old Testament the focus had been on the children of Abraham. There have been exceptions. Some Gentiles were included in the people of God. But the clear stress has been on Jesus’ relationship with the people of Israel. But that all changed, didn’t it? And our text is explaining that change. Our text looks forward to Pentecost. It’s talking about the big change that occurred to the Church when Jesus sent the Spirit. The focus is no longer just on the children of Abraham. Now, it’s, ‘Gather the nations’. The Gospel now goes to the Gentiles also. And that makes perfect sense when you remember Jesus’ command. ‘Make disciples of the nations.’ Our text is about what happened at Pentecost and the changes that occurred then.

Seeing this is important because it helps us understand who we are. The Church in the Old Testament was defined by events at places like Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion. The prime focus for them was looking up, dealing with God, and looking in, dealing with the others within Israel. But the Church today is different. It is defined by events like Pentecost. Now, we not only look up and look in. We also look out. We look to the nations. Today, the Gospel goes to the nations. Since Pentecost, the people of God have been busy gathering the nations. This does not explain everything about us, but it is a very significant aspect of who we are. We dare not miss it.

Here, I want to be careful. There have been too many Christians who have been manipulated by false guilt when it comes to this topic of the spread of the Gospel. I don’t want to do that. But the text is about one crucial aspect of who we are as Jesus’ Church. Getting the word out so that the nations will be gathered to Jesus is one of our priorities. This text helps us to come to grips with that.

Let’s move on. Our text points to one of the key goals of gathering the nations. ‘From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD.’ According to this text, the goal of gathering the nations is the worship of the living God. Understanding this is critical because it answers the question, ‘Why?’ Why should we work at this? We spread the Gospel so that our God, and not some other, will receive the worship of the nations. To be sure, worship is not the only goal in this. It is not the only motivation. Compassion is also part of what drives us. It is good and right to feel compassion for people who are wandering about, dealing with life in so many wrong ways, trying to find in family, job and pleasures what can only be found in Jesus. It’s good to want to see people freed from all of that. Read the Gospels, and you will find Jesus responding in compassion to the people around Him. Compassion is an important motivator in the spread of the Gospel. But our text points to a different motivation. The goal here is worship. So, according to what we have here, the Church’s concern is the honor of Jesus. He deserves everyone’s worship. He created them. He sustains their every second of existence. He is Lord over all. Jesus deserves everyone’s worship.

Imagine a situation where a teenage son mouths off to his mother. What does the father do in response? He takes his son aside and in no uncertain terms he lets his son know that he is to respect his mother. She deserves that just because she is his mother. She has done things for that boy that no one else has done or could have done, starting with carrying him for nine months and then giving birth to him. What motivates that father is the simple truth that his wife deserves to be honored and respected. Because he is convinced of this, he will make sure that his son is likewise convinced. If the father does not do this he has failed not just as a father but also as a husband.

There are many today who refuse to give to Jesus the honor that He deserves. He has done things for them that no one else has done or could have done. Refusing to worship Him is just wrong. That needs to be changed. And it will be changed by the spread of the Gospel. The desire for the worship of Jesus by all people motivates the Church in the gathering of the nations.

Seeing the worship of Jesus as a motivator reveals something else. That father would never have responded to his son’s disrespect in the way that he did unless he was devoted to his wife. We will never yearn for the nations to worship Jesus in the way that they should unless we are devoted to him. Growth in pursuing our call to gather the nations is tied to growth in our devotion to Jesus. So, it makes sense to invest in growing as disciples. That will lead to a growing zeal for the spread of the Gospel. And that will result in more and more people giving to Jesus the worship He deserves.

There’s something else that I want you to see from this idea about the worship of Jesus as the goal. In last week’s sermon I talked a bit about the nature of worship. I told you that worship isn’t what we do on Sundays. Worship is how you live each moment of every day. Worship is about following Jesus. So, the goal of gathering the nations is not to get people to show up on Sundays. The goal is for them to devote their entire lives to Jesus. The goal is to make these people into disciples. Isn’t that what Jesus called for? ‘For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.’ The goal in gathering the nations to Jesus is that they would worship Him with their whole lives.

That was the goal, the why. Now let’s look at method, the how. So, what is the Church to do to gather these nations? What does our text say? ‘And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations.’ Here’s the method: declare Jesus’ glory. And why do we do that? What does the text say? Because they have not heard of His fame. Now, as I’ve told you before, ‘glory’ is a church word that needs to be translated. But ‘fame’ isn’t. Actually, it’s a good synonym for glory. There are many who may have heard of Jesus, even read the Bible, who have no clue about His fame. They don’t see what makes Him who He is. What they need to hear is an answer to this question: ‘What’s so great about Jesus?’ That is a fair question for any unbeliever to ask. And it’s one that fits with the point of our text. We are to declare His glory. That is, we are to spread His fame. And we do that by answering that question. We tell people what’s so great about Jesus.

Imagine a true sports fanatic. As soon as you enter his house, and even before you enter his house, you know what team he roots for. The place is filled with jerseys, hats, mugs, decals and lots more, all proclaiming his team and declaring his loyalty to that team. Now, imagine that his team has a big game coming up, the championship, and you ask him about their chances of winning. And off he goes. He will explain, position by position, what he expects to happen. And then, he will tell you, with some excitement, that his team is going to win. Of that he is sure. In fact, he may get so wrapped up in this that he may not let you go. Now, what did he do? He told you some facts, reasons why his team is that good. But that’s not all he did. He also gave you a taste of his passion. He loves his team. He is devoted to it. No one will ever doubt that. And part of what conveys how devoted he is, is his passion. Now, should it be any different when it comes to answering that question, ‘What’s so great about Jesus?’ There are objective facts, truths of the Bible, that anyone asking that question needs to hear and understand. But if those truths are offered to him without any passion, if it’s just a list of facts, how do you think any listener will respond? I think it would be reasonable for him to think, ‘If it isn’t that important to you, why should it be important to me?’ The point here is not that someone explaining what is so great about Jesus needs to yell and scream. The point is simply that his emotions are engaged in such a way that anyone listening to him can tell. It is clear that Jesus is important to him.

And that becomes more obvious when you understand that we never just give objective facts. We offer those objective facts of the Gospel in the context of our subjective experience of them. To offer Gospel facts without including what they mean to us is to miss the point entirely. How can Jesus dying for your sins be just some objective fact? Spreading Jesus’ fame among the nations is something that engages our passions and it does that because He is not just some objective fact to us. Passion will show differently in different people. But however it shows in your life, it needs to show.

Now the last part of the text that we’re going to look at. ‘… and I will set a sign among them.’ This word ‘sign’ can refer to several things in the Old Testament. One use is in the phrase ‘signs and wonders’. Clearly, that’s about miracles. But it refers to other things also. So, in Deuteronomy 6, when Moses writes about the words of the Law of God, he includes this, ‘Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead.’ This is not about miracles. It’s about remembering that the Law applies to what you do – the hand – and how you think – the forehead. It’s a reminder. This word ‘sign’ is also used in Numbers when God instructs Moses about how the various tribes are to encamp around the tent of meeting. ‘Every one of the Israelites must camp under his standard with the emblems of his family…’ Here, the ‘sign’ is an ‘emblem’ of the family, a symbol representing the family. In our text, the sign functions both as a reminder and as an emblem, because the sign that is set among us is the Cross. You see a Cross on the wall behind me. It isn’t there because it’s great decoration. It’s there as a reminder and as an emblem. It reminds us who we are. We are people who, if left to ourselves, would become increasingly evil and ugly. That’s what it means to be a sinner. Evil and ugly. But we have not been left to ourselves. We have a Savior who has come to rescue us from ourselves. Jesus has come to rescue us and to make us beautiful. Jesus has come to make us His own, His Bride. To do that, He had to suffer on a Cross. The Cross is a reminder of who we are and whose we are. It’s also an emblem, a symbol representing us. We follow a crucified Lord who calls us to likewise be crucified. ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ We may never feel nails pierce our flesh on their way to a bit of wood for us to hang from as we die. But we are to be crucified to the distractions of this world so that we might follow Jesus wholeheartedly. ‘… and I will set a sign among them.’ Having the Cross among us as a reminder and an emblem defines who we are and how we gather the nations to Jesus.

One last thought: the nations are not just those people that live overseas. The nations also live here in Erie. You work with them in your shop or office. You see them at Wal-Mart and Giant Eagle. They are your neighbors. We have been called to gather them to Jesus. My goal has not been to lay out some plan how we are to do that. The Spirit will lead us in that, and I think that He has already begun to do that. My goal has been to give Him something more to work with as He leads us as individuals, as families and as a church.