Serving Our City in the Name of Christ: Isaiah 58

This morning I'm gonna preach on the text that serving our city in the name of Christ.

Those of you that were with us last September know that we started a new theme every year in September.

Our theme this year is serving our city in our world in the name of Christ.

Today I'm serving on serving our city.

Next Lord's Day, Reverend Paul Ford, who goes to our church, who has spent the last 30 years of his life doing ministry, equipping the body of Christ to serve.

He's gonna preach on serving our world in the name of Christ.

And we're preaching from the same text.

And this morning I'm just gonna dive in.

Isaiah 58.

Cry aloud, do not hold back.

Lift up your voice like a trumpet.

Declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God.

They ask of me righteous judgments.

They delight to draw near to God.

Why have we fasted and you see it not?

Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it?

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and fight and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard in high?

Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast?

A day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast I choose, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked to cover him, and to not hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily.

Your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer.

You shall cry, and he will say, Here I am.

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and make your bones strong.

And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruin shall be rebuilt, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight in the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.

I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

This is the word of God.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you.

You knew exactly what the people of your day of Isaiah needed to hear.

You know exactly what we need to hear this morning.

Speak, O Lord.

Speak that your people will hear this morning, that we will respond with prompt obedience, with the light to do your will.

Lord, we cannot do this apart from the work of your spirit.

So we pray that you would please move in our hearts and our minds, even now.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Some of you may be familiar with these words from hearing them from politicians.

Politicians love to come to verse 12, which is great truth.

But today we're going to talk about it in context.

What does Isaiah have to say to us?

What did he have to say to them?

What would he say through his word today to us?

Isaiah lived a long time.

He had a very fruitful ministry, but he had good times and bad times.

He saw Israel flourish and he saw the destruction of Israel.

What he's doing here is he's prophesying to the day after the northern tribes fell.

And he's writing prophetically, he sees the day when God will touch the hearts of his people and draw them back to himself.

And when they come back, they're going to rebuild Jerusalem.

They're going to put things in place that were absent for centuries.

So it's a powerful message, but we have to see it again in the context.

He's addressing his contemporaries who were very religious, yet their religion was external.

Their hearts were far from God.

You get it, right?

You heard that.

The sarcasm.

He's calling them out.

He's saying, God has had enough of all of your religious activity.

You're wondering why doesn't he pay attention to us?

Why doesn't he listen to us?

Why isn't he treating us better?

All the things that we saw in our prayer of confession through Hosea.

We find it happening throughout the Bible.

Seems to be a common problem.

Isaiah is connecting personal piety with social flourishing, serving our city in the name of Christ.

He does a masterful job of it.

If you were with us in the fall, you might remember one sermon I preached from Proverbs chapter 10, verse 11.

Proverbs 10:11

When it goes well with the righteous, when the righteous flourish, what does the city do?

The city rejoices.

When things go well with the righteous, when the righteous at Alexandria Presbyterian Church and the righteous and other gospel churches in our city, when the righteous flourish, the city notices.

The city takes note.

The city benefits.

And that's a great thing.

That's what God wants from every church.

We said last fall, if cities are important beyond the fact that they are a collection of individuals, then our ministry in cities must be both public and private, personal and corporate.

In other words, what we do in here on Sunday mornings really ought to show up in the neighborhoods of Alexandria and Washington and beyond.

That's the premise of this message.

When the righteous live righteously, not living for personal comfort, and boy, has that ever been a greater temptation.

Has there ever been a generation of Christians that has more affluence, that has more means living for comfort?

Nor are we to live in a bunker mentality, a fortress mentality.

And so many Christians are doing that, I believe, wrongfully.

Where the idea seems to be, you know, this is a big bad world.

There's a lot of evil out there.

Let's just pull back from all of it as much as we can.

Let's keep everybody sheltered.

Let's keep everybody safe.

That's not in the Bible.

That's not in the Bible.

God says, I want you to be the salt of the earth.

I want you to be the light of the world.

I want you to take the transformation work that I'm doing in your hearts, and I want you to go into the marketplace.

I want you to go into the world.

I want you to go into your neighborhoods, and I want you to be Christ to those people.

You can do it through the empowering of the Spirit.

That's what he's talking about.

That's what we need to think about today.

As we said last fall, the whole church, not just staff, not just clergy, the whole church.

Everyone who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, everyone who's been gifted by the Spirit, we all do this.

We all pull on the rope together.

That's what it looks like in a healthy church.

The whole gospel.

We talked about that last fall.

The whole city.

We looked at examples of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

Gospel teams.

Do you remember Esther's ministry?

It was really a legislative ministry.

It was like living in Washington, D.C.

and working on the hill.

Or the executive branch.

Or the judicial.

You remember what happened with Esther?

You can't go back into that whole story now.

But she had the opportunity to influence people in high positions for good, for the sanctity of life.

One of the lessons we learned then, and this is for us Washingtonians, those of us that have position and access to power, you gotta learn how to go into the palace, but not be seduced by the palace.

Use your power wisely, but don't be seduced by it.

How many people have come to Christianity?

How many Christians have come to Washington and been seduced by the power?

God only knows.

It happens.

Not for you.

How about Nehemiah's ministry?

He was like the city planner, the city controller.

He was the guy, the infrastructure.

Literally, he went back to Jerusalem.

They had to rebuild the walls.

Some of you have Ezra ministries, Nehemiah ministries.

Some of you have Ezra ministries, clergy, but it's not just clergy.

Remember, we talked about that last fall.

Every one of you who has access to the Word of God, every one of you who has a position of influence, you're called to an Ezra ministry.

You're called to take in the Word of God, to meditate on the Word of God, to teach the Word of God.

Right?

What we see beautifully throughout the Bible is how they all work together.

Esther ministries, Ezra ministries, Nehemiah ministries.

It takes all of us, using all of our gifts, to serve our city in a way that makes the city rejoice.

We're going to dig into two specific points that we come from the text.

The first point is personal piety.

There wasn't much of it in the Israelites.

There was a lot of outward, external performance, but their hearts were really dead.

Look at verse 1.

This is pretty sharp.

Cry aloud, don't hold back, lift up your voice like a trumpet.

Declare to my people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.

You see what he's saying.

The people of God don't notice how out of touch they are with God.

They're so busy doing all their religious duties, their prayers, they're going to the temple.

I mean, they're so busy serving God that they had really no communion with God.

They had no real fellowship with God.

And as a result, they weren't able to really help much in their city.

If you need to blow the trumpet, blow the trumpet to get the people's attention.

My people do not see where their hearts really are.

They lack self-awareness.

Look at verse 2.

Yet they seek me daily.

Well, how could that be?

I mean, daily they're having their prayer time.

Weekly they're going to, you know, temple.

They're serving in the church.

But they're missing it.

Because their hearts were far from God.

They don't know how to delight in me.

Look at those two little words.

As if.

As if they were a nation that was righteous.

Oh, friends, let us not be self-deceived.

Let us ask God to show us our hearts.

Let us ask God to kindle within our hearts a love for God.

A love for the people that God created to serve our city.

We can't do it apart from that.

What we do will be meager in our efforts without that.

Look at verse 3.

They're saying, why have we fasted and you don't pay attention, God?

It's pitiful what they're doing.

Why have we humbled ourselves?

They didn't humble themselves.

They were so proud of themselves.

They were so proud of looking at what they were doing for God, they had no humility to really listen to God.

And that's still a problem today.

Why have we humbled ourselves and you don't notice?

Their question why is not so much a question seeking information as much as it is a lament.

As Hosea says, wailing on their beds.

Interesting phrase.

We don't have time to unpack that.

Wailing on our beds.

God, you're not treating me fairly.

God, you're not giving me what I really need.

Aren't you paying attention?

Well, actually, you know, he is.

I mean, he's so much attuned that he says, I'm not going to bless you.

I can't bless that.

I can't bless that until your hearts get right with this God.

The lack of personal piety.

They thought God was being unfair.

Behind their outward acts of piety, there was anger and restlessness smoldering beneath the surface.

That's why we need the Holy Spirit, otherwise we don't see.

We don't see what's smoldering underneath the surface.

We won't see the self-pity.

We won't see the discontent.

We'll feel it.

It feels pretty ugly, right?

You won't be happy.

You won't be joyful.

You'll be restless.

Maybe angry.

And you won't know what's really going on unless the Spirit.

Unless the Spirit does his work.

This is how it works.

They were spiritually blind to what was really going on in their own hearts.

So they couldn't truly serve other people.

They couldn't serve their city.

They were too busy trying to serve themselves.

Consequently, they were not at peace with God themselves or others.

You see the two spiritual disciplines that Isaiah highlights in this chapter.

The first part it's fasting.

But if you look at the end, what is it?

Sabbath keeping.

In between, he sandwiches this beautiful truth that we're going to finish, we're going to finish on.

This beautiful truth.

But he wants us to see how easily entrapped we are with our religious activity.

He talks about the Sabbath.

Verse 13 if you turn back from your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure, even with all their religious activity on the Sabbath, because their hearts were not right with God, their spiritual impact in the city had little impact.

They were doing more harm than good.

The Sabbath.

Alec Motare, the Hebrew scholar, had this to say about his commentary and the application on this chapter.

Talking about the Sabbath.

You know, there is still a place for the Sabbath.

I find a lot of Christians don't understand this.

A lot of Christians think that anything that has to do with Sabbath is just legalistic.

Last time I checked, it's still the Ten Commandments, right?

Has the fourth commandment been removed?

What does it mean to really honor the Sabbath?

To see the Sabbath as a blessing, emotionally, physically, spiritually.

Well, this is not a sermon about the Sabbath.

I'm just noting it.

The Sabbath is still necessary for your well-being.

Your well-being, my well-being.

Alec Motera says this.

Sunday is not an extra Saturday.

Think about that.

Sunday is not an extra Saturday.

Sunday is not the day to get ready for Monday.

What if the Sabbath became a real Sabbath in your life, in your family?

What if it wasn't a day of being so caught up with so many other activities that you're just as tired Monday morning as you were Friday afternoon, maybe?

Oh, this is what Isaiah is pointing out.

He's saying you're using the Sabbath for your own selfish interest.

You're not going to be useful.

If you're not learning how to find rest on Sunday, you're not going to be as effective Monday through Friday.

Did you know that?

If you're not learning how to find rest in the gospel on Sunday, it's going to show up.

It's going to show up Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.

I remember going to a Christian college that I I just had been taught this and I didn't study on Sunday.

I didn't study on Sunday.

When I went to class on Monday, I was rested.

Study was my work as a student.

I just remember, I still remember how refreshing it was.

No, it's not an extra Saturday.

Sandwiched between these two rebukes, we find our mission to serving our city.

Personal piety, what's really going on in the heart, but secondly, public blessings.

You might say flourishing.

We see this in verses 6 to 12.

You know, this week I was just reading through a lot of scripture, finding other companion texts.

And Psalm 51 popped up in my mind.

I went back and I reread Psalm 51.

That's familiar to us, right?

David's Psalm of Confession.

Lord, I've sinned against you, you only.

Well, he'd committed a lot of sin.

Murder, adultery, a lot of sin.

Until God finally showed him and convicted him.

It took him a long time to get there, but he did get there.

And he said this at the end, the connection with Psalm Isaiah 58.

He said, verse 18, Psalm 51, and your good pleasure make Zion prosper.

You know what's so interesting about that?

For a long time, all he was concerned about was himself.

For a long time, he was a very self-centered man.

But then when he confessed his sin, then when he received God's forgiveness and grace, it took him out of his own private little world.

And now he's concerned for Zion.

And now he's concerned for transgressors, and now he wants to help other people.

You see how that works?

That's the way it works.

Until God first deals with our hearts, we're not going to be terribly effective or helpful to our city.

To our family, for that matter.

I mentioned earlier Charles Wesley, the song that he wrote.

We sang.

Let me talk a little bit more about the Holy Club.

Back in England, before John and Charles Wesley were Christians, they were in the Holy Club and it was all about trying to be holy.

It was all about how much Bible are you reading?

How long do you pray?

How much scripture are you memorizing?

You know, would you like to be in that holy club?

No, thank you.

It was just all about building a religious life.

The Wesleys came over to America, to Georgia, especially South Carolina, but they came to Georgia and they were wanted to be missionaries, and they just ran into brick walls after brick walls.

God wasn't blessing their ministry.

They tried to work with children, orphans, they tried to work with other people that were in need.

They were so discouraged, they wrote back to their friend George Whitfield, who had also been a part of the holy club earlier.

They said, don't bother coming.

The soil is barren in Georgia.

Whitfield, in the meanwhile, was converted.

After being very religious for many years, he actually received the new birth.

He became a Christian.

He had a new heart, he had a new power.

He ignored the telegram and came over.

God bless his ministry.

He established an orphanage that just blossomed.

The people loved him.

Many people gave their hearts to Christ.

Many people were converted under his preaching and his teaching.

I've read several biographies on George Whitfield.

One of them I read many years ago was written by a Princeton scholar.

And I'm not sure if the author was a believer or not.

It was hard to discern.

But he said, I came to this conclusion after studying the life of George Whitfield.

Something happened where he had a spiritual experience where his life was transformed.

He was no longer just religious.

And this was the quote.

He said, I've come to this conclusion.

I believe that it takes a free soul to be a bold lover.

I remember that 25 years later.

That motivates me.

Your soul has to be freed from self.

Your soul needs to be freed from anxiety, worry, performance.

The approval of others.

It's going to be really hard for you to have a spiritual impact on this world if you're spinning around with approval, sell the need for approval.

Performance.

When God gives you a new heart, when you become a Christian and God gives you a new heart, it's a new heart.

It's soft, it's tender.

It's not hard.

It's not stony.

The Bible says this all over the place.

George Whitfield got a new heart.

And he had a great impact.

Not only in England, but in America as he traveled throughout the colonies.

Interesting in verse 9, he says, then your healing shall spring up speedily.

Oh, we could take all day just on that.

What he's saying is, sometimes it seems like never think your life isn't really changing.

You're dealing with the same problems over and over and over.

It seems like you're just stuck in cement.

It just seems like you're not getting anywhere spiritually.

It feels like kind of this is spiritual malaise.

You know what this is saying?

When we get our hearts right with God, healing comes, he says, speedily.

He doesn't say completely, he doesn't say perfectly.

But the more our hearts are tuned to the gospel, the more freed we are to love God and to love others boldly.

That's a beautiful thing.

That's what God wants for us.

He wants it for you, He wants it for me.

That's when you can sing the song like we did earlier with confidence.

I now draw nigh.

Father of a father.

You can't sing that song from your heart if your soul is bound.

But that's why Jesus came to free us.

Oh, may He free each of us anew this morning.

He says, verse 11, you shall be like a watered garden whose waters do not fail.

I think what he's saying is what we need is endurance.

To serve our city well, we need endurance.

It's hard work.

To go into the neighborhoods of our city, to go into the infrastructure of your city, to go into the businesses of your city, and to have an impact and to be salt and light requires a spirit of endurance.

He knows that.

I want to close by thinking about that line that everybody likes, you know, for good reason.

Verse 12, he talks about the breach.

He says, Your ancient ruin shall be rebuilt.

Okay, once you get your hearts right, once you get your hearts right, watch what God's going to do with you.

Your ancient ruin shall be rebuilt, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations.

You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Your city is going to flourish because of your righteousness.

That's what he says.

Isn't that a vision that you could get behind?

To really believe that your life is going to have impact?

Eternal impact.

What's a breach?

A breach is a place where the enemy comes in to destroy.

It's a gap in the wall.

It's a gap in a barrier or defense.

A breach is a place where the enemy comes in to destroy, or where in their day the sheep would break out and get lost.

It's that one weak spot in the levee that gives way to the flood.

That's time leave.

Bolt down, Alexander.

It's the break, it's the gap.

Where trouble gets in, where the enemy gets in.

Isaiah is telling us unmistakably, I want you to stop, I want you to look, I want you to ponder, I want you to pray.

Where are the breaches in your life?

Where are the breaches in your city?

What needs healing?

What needs to be fixed?

What's broken that needs to be rebuilt?

Where are the gaps?

Where are the breakdowns in our families?

Our churches, our cities?

Where is the enemy getting in?

Only the Lord can enable us to truly see the gaps and then move toward them to repair them with the Holy Spirit power to build back up the things that are broken.

Are you aware of what's broken in you?

Are you aware of what's broken around you?

Is the Holy Spirit giving you eyes to see and to move toward and to step into?

Only God can do that in me.

Only God can do that in you.

Jonathan Edwards said this in his famous sermon, Charity and Its Fruits.

Christian love disposes a person to be public spirited.

A man of a right spirit is not a man of a narrow or private view, but is greatly concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city where he lives.

That's a good summary of the sermon.

Daughters of God, sons of God.

Is the Spirit putting that in your heart?

Is the Spirit at work this morning giving you a growing vision of how God wants to use your life in these ways?

Isaiah spells it out, feeding the hungry, shelter for the homeless, coming to the aid of the afflicted.

You shall raise up the foundations of many generations.

I realize as a pastor, I'm speaking to people from all kinds of backgrounds.

Some of you are the product of generations of this.

I was.

By the grace of God in our story, I go back many generations.

This past summer I was in countryside in Pennsylvania for my mother's funeral.

The funeral took place in the church that my great-grandfather pastored for 25 years.

I am the product of generations of people who believe this.

My great-grandfather resigned from his church at the time at the height of his success.

They had experienced a revival in about a two-year period where 146 people came to Christ and joined that church.

What a work he did.

At the height of his success, he resigned to become a teacher and a trustee at Lincoln University, what became Lincoln University, the first black university in America that grants degrees.

Man, I love that.

The more I get to know this guy's story, the more inspired I am.

I want to be that guy.

I want to do that kind of work.

How about you?

You might say, well, that's not my story.

My story is I don't have generations of that kind of faithfulness.

Okay, this is about you.

You're gonna start the generation.

You're gonna be the first person in your generation.

You're gonna rise up, and you're gonna be a faithful witness to the work of God.

You're gonna be a repair of breaches.

And think of it a few generations from now.

Think about a century from now.

You're in heaven.

And think of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who you're gonna meet that you pass that baton on to.

And you're gonna see, and you're gonna thank God for this kind of repairing the breach ministry in this world with your life.

You're not gonna waste your life on your comfort.

You're not gonna stay behind a bunker.

You're not married, you've got friends that you're investing in.

You've got friends that you're investing in, and their children, their children are gonna bear fruit.

Is this a vision that you can get behind?

Man, I am.

The whole church, the whole gospel, the whole city.

It's not just for the staff, it's not just for the elders or the deacons, it's for every member of the church, the whole church.

Addressing the whole city with the whole gospel.

We need empowerment to do this.

The good news is the Holy Spirit's here.

Let's invite them in.

Father, thank you.

Thank you for trusting us with such a mission.

Lord, we would never think of this on our own.

But in order to serve our city in the name of Christ, we desperately need to be renewed in our own personal lives.

God, would you please address whatever might be obstructing the communion, the flow, the flow of communion with you in our lives?

Would you please speak, O Lord, to whatever is in need of healing in us?

Would you take us out of ourselves?

Would you move us into the city of Alexandria, Washington, D.C.?

Father, would into our neighborhoods.

For some of us that's starting in our families, because our families need repair.

Wherever it is, show us.

Empower us.

Oh God, for the glory of your name, for the good of the city, that the city would rejoice.

May your people live righteous lives.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.