1/10/21 Isaiah 43:1-7 “Not Politically Correct; Godly Correct”

08 Jan 1/10/21 Isaiah 43:1-7 “Not Politically Correct; Godly Correct”

1/10/21  Isaiah 43:1-7        “Not Politically Correct; Godly Correct”

This is a time of year that many people dread.  We have had all the excitement of Christmas.  We have celebrated bringing in the New Year.  Some of us have seen friends and relatives and had lots of good fellowship.  A few of us have even had birthdays.  We have witnessed wonderful Christmas television and ate some great meals.  But now all of that is over.  Not only are the festivities over, but we have to put up with the coldest month of the year.  For some folks in the southern climates, this isn’t really a big deal but in this country it really gets cold.  And soon the bills will start to come to our mailbox and we have to figure out how to pay them.  I’m sure that you can think of a few other reasons as to why January is not your favorite month.  I mean, what could be more exciting than beginning to think about paying your taxes?  Sometimes we just need a little encouragement when we hit times like this.  Today’s reading from Isaiah is one of the many places in the Bible where we can find encouragement.

Throughout my lifetime, I have been an observer of people.  Of course, I have done even more of this since I have become a pastor.  One of the obvious things that I see is that we like to plan our lives out.  It starts out young.  Kids want to be firemen, or nurses or astronauts.  Things change a little as we get older as they want to be CPAs or computer experts or farmers.  Then we get so that we want to be married and have some children.  Then we want to have a higher paying job.  At some point we want to retire and then when we get old enough to retire, we don’t want to retire.  There is nothing wrong with any of this planning and it is probably part of our human nature.  After all, if you never dream, then your dreams can never come true.

But there is something else that happens to us.  I am going to go out on a limb here a little as I say that things almost never turn out just quite like we expect or plan.  It seems that no matter what we do or plan for, things always turn out a little different than expected.  We might not have enough money to get enough schooling to be a doctor.  There might be a death that changes all of our plans.  We might get hurt so that we can no longer take part in our favorite athletic games.  Lots of things happen and this is all a part of life.  I don’t want anyone to quit planning or dreaming but please be aware that these types of changes happen to everyone.

And this is what we find in our reading.  We really have to go back and take a look at what has happened before this.  Isaiah was the first prophet writer of his kind.  He was a rather well to do man of Judah whose job it was to tell Judah what was coming.  And what was coming was the Babylonians conquering Judah.  The book of Isaiah up to this point was telling them and us what will happen if they continue to fall away from God.  They will lose their country.

Around chapter 40 Isaiah changes tactics a little and tells them that all will not be lost when they are taken captive.  In other words, God has been telling them that they have to quit worshipping other gods.  He is telling them that they have to quit cheating each other.  He is telling them that they have to be moral by His standards.  He has been telling them that unless they quit this bad behavior, Babylonia will wipe them out.

This is one of the places in the Old Testament where many people tell us that a loving God would not punish us like this.  But if you look at this closely, you will find that God’s only punishment to us has been that He has withdrawn.  He will let the Jewish people be on their own because they have been so disobedient.  This is God’s punishment.  All the havoc, all the troubles are caused when we try to do things on our own.

There is another thing that I would like to bring up here.  As gruesome as the Bible is in some places, it doesn’t totally capture what really happened.  When people were conquered in those days, there would be massive bloodshed.  Many, many people were killed in terrible ways.  It would not be unlike what has happened today in some countries in Africa or in Southeast Asia or in Germany in WWII.  So, when the Babylonians put a siege on Jerusalem, it was terrible.  Families would have been starved, torn apart and killed.  There would be many orphans and widows.  These are the things that Isaiah is telling the people of Judah.  He is warning them that these things will happen.  And also, because He was telling them of such a dire future, he was not very well liked.

Before we move onto the actual passage, I would like to ask a couple of questions.  How is our country doing today in regard to following the ways of God?  I don’t think that the answer is all that hard.  We live in a world where ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ are gods.  We live in a world where we say awoman instead of amen.  We live in a world where anything goes as long as it feels good.  We live in a world governed by sin.  Our world is no different than the ancient world.  I just shake my head when I begin to think of all the things that we do and say that are repulsive to God, but we have been doing them for so long that we think nothing of it.  The degenerate people surrounding Noah before he built the ark were probably just like us.

So, if we are walking away from God, why do we think that God will respond to us just because He is this loving God?  We sometimes forget that He is also a just God.  I don’t think that God is going to put up with this stuff much longer.  We were founded as a Christian nation and we have been blessed as a Christian nation for years.  But we have changed so much in the last 70 years or so that our ancestors wouldn’t even recognize us as we are so blackened with sin.  God is going to withdraw His blessings from us just as sure as He withdrew from the ancient Jews.

I throw this out there so that the next time you think you are doing great just because the stock market is up, you will reflect a little on your life.  Is the stock market really that important?  The next time your crops are great or your business is booming or your life just couldn’t get any better because of something that you did or this world did, think about this.  This life you live is not about you.  Your life is not about you!  It never has been and it never will be.  It is about God and the love of God.

But even if we are in big trouble as a nation or as a world, the Good News is that God will not leave us.  God had a plan for the Israelites even if the country was going to cease to exist.  One of the first things that God tells them is that he has summoned them by name.  You are mine; he says.  God knew everyone and He knew everyone’s name.  All was not lost and the situation was not hopeless.  It is not hopeless now.

He is telling us that it doesn’t matter if we have been burned by the fires of life.  It doesn’t matter if we have taken a wrong turn and ended up in a wrong relationship or a wrong lifestyle.  It doesn’t matter if we have tried to get rich quick and it didn’t work.  It doesn’t matter if we have turned away from Jesus or maybe that we have never even known Jesus.  It doesn’t matter.  Jesus will be there anyway.  The fires of life will not set us ablaze.  We can stop and accept Jesus at any time.

And the waters of life will not wash us away.  If you get caught up in a movement that is totally against God, He will wait for you.  If you think that being a democrat or a republican will solve all problems, He will wait for you.  If you think that hating other religions or even hating Christianity is the way to happiness, Jesus will wait for you.

Now I want you to know that these things that we do like this are not ok by God, they are not ok, but they will not drive God away from us.  What I mean by this is that none of these things are right.  God does not care if we are politically correct or not.  His interest is in us being Godly correct.  You can let your pride control your life or you can let greed rule everything that you do or you can jump on the band wagon supporting some alternate, disgusting lifestyle and you will probably be politically correct and you may think that you are on top of the world because you are so smart.  These things are all wrong and they are not Godly correct.

But God does not go away.  Let’s say that we do some of these things and we do them for our whole life.  If we decide that we want to turn back to Jesus in our last week of life, He will accept us.  He will accept us if we come back to Him on our last day of life or even our last minute.  Jesus knows your name and you are His.  There is always hope.  Unfortunately, we don’t know when that last minute will be.  You need to be ready.  If you have never done this, then ask Jesus to live in your life as your Lord and Savior.  You will never regret this.

One of the things I hear the most about why people don’t want to accept this great gift of eternal life where streets are made of gold and the gates are made of pearls is that they have done too many things wrong.  They are too bad to be accepted by God.  This is the farthest thing from the truth.  Jesus will accept you no matter what.  The only condition on all of this is that you have to ask Him.  People who think like this aren’t too bad for God, they are too proud to ask God.  And if you keep on this path and never ask God, well then you have condemned yourself to an eternity in hell.  There are consequences to our behaviors and our actions.  We can be totally politically correct in this world but that is not going to get us anywhere in the next.

So, no matter what happens to us in this world we find that Jesus is always there for us for the asking.  Now why does God even bother with us?  After all we are a bunch of proud people who think that our ways are always the right ways.  Many times, our political correctness is just a way of getting around the things that God wants us to do.  So why does God even bother with us?  The answer comes in verse 4 where He says, “You are precious and honored in my sight.  I love you.”  Last week I talked about when Paul was telling us that we are dearly loved and holy.  Well, here God is again telling us the same thing only hundreds of years earlier.

This is the love that He pours out on you.  This is the love that will never stop coming to you.  This is the love that will help you to pay your bills after Christmas.  This is the love that will help us get through the tough times of death, divorce and any other calamity.  This is the love that directs you through life.  So, when you find out that you cannot be an astronaut or jet pilot or major league ball player, Jesus will help you to find what He wants you to be doing.  Please don’t give up on life just because something happens that changes your plans.  I know that it is hard to think like this, but you are not in charge.  Let God work in you so that you can work in Him.

He also loves us because you were made for His glory.  You were made by God, and not by some evolutionary process.  This God of ours loves you and will always be by you.  He will guide you and protect you.  He will be with you all the time.  He knows everything about you and He knows your past and your future.  He made you to be holy and dearly loved.

These are the very things that the world does not know or understand.  I was watching a well-known commentator on TV one night and he had a rather interesting question.  It is a question that I have wondered about many times and I have no answer.  Our lives are about peace, love and doing good things according to the will of God.  The things that we try to do as Christians are good things, although sometimes we fail.  But for the most part this is what we do.  This is how God has made us.  We are made to do good things.  If we are doing all of these good things for the world, then why do the people who don’t know God hate us?  It is really mind boggling.  Why do the Muslims hate us?  Why do the atheists hate us?  If we are doing good, then this shouldn’t be.  But it is and God will stand by us all the way if we are faithful to Him.

It is kind of like the story told by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson of a man who bought an old organ which had been magnificent in its day.  But now it was dilapidated, banged up and hardly played anymore.  Now this guy had some money to burn so he called in the experts from all over the world, hoping that they could restore it.

When they finished the organ looked like new.  There were angels on it that were now clean and shiny.  There were ornamental carvings on it that had been restored and were beautiful.  The old botchy varnish was removed and fresh varnish applied.  The outside was done.

The problem was that the insides were sitting in boxes on the floor.  The owner continued to advertise for experts to come and restore his organ but no one could do it.  It was just too worn out and too old.  Then one day a little half blind old man knocked on the door.  The man’s butler laughed at him and said, “What makes you think that you can fix it?  We have had experts from all over the world come and try and fail.”

But the owner overheard this discussion and told the man that he may as well give it a shot as it couldn’t hurt.  So, this old stranger set to work on the organ.  He worked for several days and finally he had the organ operating and sounding like new.  The man had to ask him how in the world was he able to fix this.  The old fellow replied, “Because I made it.”

This is what we need to remember in our lives.  No matter what goes wrong or what happens in our lives, God can fix it.  He can fix it because He made you.  You are holy and dearly loved.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.