One year ago this past week our nation entered into war with Iraq, a bold move to strike down an evil ruler and defend our nation against terrorism.  One year ago this week we in Colorado endured the biggest snowstorm in 80 years, one that brought our normal life in our cities to a complete halt.  Both of these events seem so long ago now, but both of them should remind us of our dependence on the Lord and all He provides us for life.

          The words of Isaiah 12 are a song telling us God is our salvation, the One we can always trust.  He is our defender and provider.  Without Him we fail, but with Him, "We live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

          It's nice to sing some new songs in worship, songs not found in our hymnals.  There was a time when there was only one hymnal, the book of the Psalms.  The Psalms were sung for centuries, and 500 years after most of them were written, Isaiah wrote a new hymn for God's Chosen People.  It tells of what God has done, gives Him thanks, and praises His great deeds to the world.  Let's take a look at this short hymn from Isaiah 12 and see what it says.

          The first line: "I will give thanks to you, O Lord; for although you were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and you comfort me."  God has plenty reason to be angry at us today.  We all should give thanks that He hasn't burned us all up.  Now and then His anger still flares up at the world, but instead of destruction, He forgives us.

          Every year during lent, we remember how God's anger was turned on His Son.  St. Paul says Jesus became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).  Even though Christ was innocent, God treated Him as if He was the worst sinner of all.  He laid on Him the iniquities of the world, and the cross is proof of that.  After being scourged and forced to walk the way of sorrows, Jesus willingly crawled on to the cross to be crucified.  He wasn't crucified because He was forced to; He was crucified because He chose to.  No one took His life away; He willingly gave it for the sins of the world.

          And because He took our sins to the cross, God now declares us righteous.  He's no longer angry towards believers.  God's anger is reserved for unbelievers.  Believers are covered by the umbrella of His love.  If our personal sins convict us, we should repent.  We should stop sinning, make confession to God, and start doing what's right.  Calvary means God turned His anger away from us and toward Jesus.  On Calvary we are forgiven, and that's comforting for any sinner.

          The second line: "Behold, God is my salvation.  I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation."  We rejoice because the Savior "absorbed" God's anger for us.  These words were written long before the Savior was born, but Isaiah looked forward to that time.  The name "Jesus" means "God saves."  When the time had come, angel Gabriel told Joseph to name Mary's son Jesus because He would be the Savior.  Because we have a Savior, we can trust in God without fear.  St. Paul later wrote, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns?" (Romans 8:33)

          The implied answer is no one - nobody can condemn us because God already condemned His only Son in our place.  Christ took our place - He was our substitute on the cross.  So now we look to Jesus as our strength, our song, and our salvation.  He stands between us and God, and by His suffering and death, we are holy and blameless.

          The third line: "Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation."  In the wilderness the Israelites got their water from a rock.  Paul later said that rock was Jesus (1 Corinthians 10:4).  Jesus once said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." (John 7:37)   Jesus is the water of life, and we receive that water with joy.

          This morning we witnessed another miracle - God adopted a child into His family by Holy Baptism.  In the simple act of applying water with God's Word, we are washed clean from our Original Sin.  In worship when we hear the absolution, we believe our Actual Sin is washed away.  Jesus, the Water of Life, washes us and renews us - every day - so we live each day with joy.

          The fourth line: "And in that day you will say, 'Give thanks to the LORD, call on His Name.  Make known His deeds among the peoples; proclaim to them that His Name is exalted.'"  In His mercy God has blessed us with spiritual gifts - forgiveness, life and salvation.  But each one of us must receive those gifts by faith.  Parents can't believe for their kids, and kids can't believe for their parents.  Each of us is personally responsible to God.  God has no grandchildren.  He gives us salvation, and so we proclaim to the world what He has done.  When we get a gift, we want to show it off, so let's show off our best gift.  Like Peter said, "Always be ready to tell people what God has done for you." (1 Peter 3:5)

          God once told the Israelites, "If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then you will be treasured over all the nations." (Exodus 19:5)   Though Christ died for the whole world, only believers will get to heaven.  There are not many ways to heaven, but only one - through faith in Jesus Christ.  God says we are His chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.  He's taken us out of the darkness and brought us to the light.  Praise God for doing that!

          Isaiah 12 concludes: "Praise the LORD in song, for He has done glorious things; let this be known throughout the earth.  Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel."  We are citizens of heaven.  We have drunk from the living waters, and we have sung our shouts for joy.  We are His treasured possession and His Holy Spirit is in our midst.

          Isaiah 12 was a hymn sung by the Israelites as they came back home from exile in Babylon.  But these can also be also our words as we return home to the Church from our exile to sin.  Isaiah 12 is a hymn for God's people, who have been rescued by the blood of Jesus Christ.  In Christ, we are freed from sin.  He's won the victory for us!  Some day God's people will be taken to heaven.  We don't know when that day will be, so we always need to be prepared with faith.

          We must never give up believing in Jesus, like so many people are doing today.  In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Deliver us from Evil."  Martin Luther explained about those words, "We pray that God would guard and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us nor seduce us into disbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice, and that though we are assaulted by them, we will finally overcome them and obtain the victory." (Small Catechism, Seventh Petition)   That victory is ours right now in Christ, but we need to hang on to it.  We will always need Jesus - there will never be a time in life that we don't.  He's the One who nourishes us and keeps us going.

          A man wrote a letter to the editor of a small local newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday.  "I've gone for 30 years now," he wrote, "and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons.  But for the life of me I can't remember a single one of them.  So I think I'm wasting my time, and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all."

          This started a real controversy in the "Letters to the Editor" section.  Letters on the topic went back and forth for weeks until someone wrote this letter:  "I've been married for 30 years now.  In that time I figure my wife has cooked me some 32,000 meals.  But for the life of me, I cannot recall what the menu was for a single one of them.  But I do know this:  they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work.  If my wife had not given me those meals, I'd have starved to death.  We may not remember the exact Word, but we know what it does for us."

          The First Song of Isaiah is the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.  The choir's song this morning was excellent, but maybe some day someone will write those words into a new hymn, one we all can sing, a song for times of joy or sorrow, times of hope or despair.  May we sing of Jesus always, amen

Copyright © 2004 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.