A reading from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 59, verses 9
through 21. Therefore justice is far from
us, and righteousness does not reach us.
We hope for light, but there is darkness for brightness.
But we live in the night. We grope along like a wall like
the blind. We grope like those without
eyes. We stumble at noon as though it
were twilight. We are like the dead among those
who are healthy. We all growl like bears and moan
like doves. We hope for justice, but there
is none for salvation. But it is far from us, for our
transgressions have multiplied before you, and our sins testify
against us. For our transgressions are with
us, and we know our inequities. Transgression and deception
against the Lord, turning away from following our God, speaking
oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lying
words from the heart. Justice is turned back and
righteousness stands far off, For truth has stumbled in the
public square, and honesty cannot enter.
Truth is missing, and whoever turns from evil is plundered.
The Lord saw that there was no justice, and he was offended.
He saw that there was no man, and he was amazed that there was
no one interceding. So his own arm brought
salvation, and his own righteousness supported him.
He put on righteousness as body armor and a helmet of salvation
on his head. He put on garments of vengeance
for clothing, and he wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
So he will repay according to his deeds, fury to his enemies,
retribution to his foes, and he will repay the coasts and the
islands. They will fear the name of the
Lord in the West and his glory in the east, for he will come
like a rushing stream driven by the wind of the Lord.
The Redeemer will come to Zion and to those in Jacob who turned
from transgression. This is the Lord's declaration.
As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord.
My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your
mouth, will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your
children, or from the mouths of your children's children from
now on and forever, says the Lord, the word of the Lord.
Let's pray together, Father of Spirit and truth.
We pray that not only would we worship you in spirit and in
truth this morning, but we pray that You would give us many
conversations like your son Jesus had with the woman at the
well in Samaria. And we pray, Lord, that these
substantive, truth filled, compassionate conversations
would lead to the same level of spiritual renewal in the lives
of our friends, neighbors and city, and that we pray that this
would be renewing for us as well.
We and we ask all of this in the name of your Son Jesus, Amen.
Well, please be seated and do turn in your scriptures to
Isaiah chapter 59. We're in a series on our vision
as a church called Shine, our spiritual beacon calling.
And we're looking at different ways that we are called to shine
in Chicago, not just now, but for generations to come.
And today we're looking at Shining with Truth.
Shining with truth. In his novel Lord of the Flies,
William Golding tells the story of a group of British school
boys that find themselves stranded on a tropical island.
And as these young school by school boys waited and hoped for
a rescue, they're caught between two different leaders who
represent two different sets of values.
At first, the boys make the responsible choice, and they
elect Ralph to be their leader. Ralph orders the life of these
boys around what's called a signal fire, and that signal
fire has a purpose, and that is to signal to the outside world
that they need to be rescued. The signal fire is the truth of
their situation. They're not supposed to be there
and they need help from the outside.
It's kind of their true north and it's their main job that
they have as a group of school boys.
Now. For a while the boys follow
Ralph and they keep the signal fire lit for a while.
But then some things happen and the boys get spooked by by
events on the island and the boy that is in charge of hunting,
his name is Jack, begins to form an uprising.
He takes over and he sort of lures the boys away.
He appeals to their to their self protective instincts.
He appeals to their fears. He appeal, he appeals to the
part of them that kind of likes violence and and he lures them
away from Ralph and Jack really does represent self-interest.
And so he appeals to the boys base instincts.
And slowly but surely the boys, including Ralph himself,
abandoned the signal fire for this Pagan style pig roast where
all of their wild instincts are set loose.
And in the the heat of the moment, the boys unleash their
violence and end up murdering one of their own classmates.
Now thankfully Lord of the Flies is fiction, but Even so, the
story illustrates a choice that every person, group, church or
society will make and that is this will we?
Will we live by what is right and true?
Or will we live by self-interest and power?
We can live by the signal fire which reminds us of our true
condition. We are sinners.
God has rescued us and He's called us to live with hope and
not with despair. We can steward this flame not
just for us, but for our kids and our neighborhoods and our
city and for all the generations to come.
Now alternatively, we can live by a different code and that is
the rule of self-interest. We can abandoned the scriptures
and the gospel to adopt ideas and practices that are
expedient. They appeal to our immediate
self-interest. They are popular.
We can abandoned the hope of the signal fire and give into our
desires and fears. We can leave our high calling
for the pig roast. Now Isaiah is going to show us
what a devastating choice that would be for God's people
because he saw it all first hand.
He saw the poor getting trampled.
He saw no justice whatsoever in the public square for God's
people. These are the people who had
God's law. It wasn't expedient, it wasn't
popular, and they wanted to stay alive.
They wanted to get what was best for them and their families,
what was best for them in their tribe.
And so they took what they could get rather than living according
to God's holy holy rule. It was the strong eat the weak.
It was some people get lucky and some people get hurt and most
people found a way to excuse it all.
The Lord does not want us to repeat the mistakes of history
in Israel's history, or so many other cultures and so many other
churches and so many other individuals that chose
self-interest over truth. He wants us to shine as a light
for the nation's, a light for Chicago, a light for future
generations. He wants us to be a spiritual
beacon. So the Lord is going to use
Isaiah's poetry. We can pray that he would.
He will use Isaiah's beautiful metaphoric language.
Some of it is shocking and hard, but it is a good warning.
It's a great wake up call this Lent.
What happens, friends, when we abandoned the signal fire of
truth for self-interest? There are three tragedies that
result according to Isaiah, and the first one is that it results
in a blackout of purpose. A complete blackout of human
purpose versus 9 through 11. Isaiah paints a picture.
He says this. Therefore justice is far from us
and righteousness does not reach us.
Listen, we hope for light, but there is darkness for
brightness. But we live in the night.
We grope along a wall like the blind.
We grope like those without eyes.
We stumble at noon as though it were twilight and are like the
dead among those who are healthy.
All human beings need purpose and direction.
They need to know that there is meaning for their life that goes
beyond money. We can't just live for money.
Anyone who has enough money will tell you there has to be a
greater purpose. We cannot simply live for
pleasure. Anyone who has gotten all the
pleasure that they want will tell you there needs to be some
kind of purpose beyond the pleasure, beyond power, beyond
trophies. What are we here for?
What's the point of our life? Where are we all going
collectively together? Is there a common story that
we're living? We hunger for that just as much
as we need and hope for light. We need purpose and direction,
and God's signal fire tells us what our purpose and direction
is. We are created to glorify God,
to love Him, to enjoy Him with all of our heart, and to love
our neighbor as ourselves. And when that signal fire is
snuffed out, we start wandering in the dark.
We stumble through life and living for pleasure and living
for safety and living for all of our base instincts.
And the impact of the soul is just crushing.
And as we look at verse 11, I wonder if we can hear like the
hopelessness, the inarticulate hopelessness that Isaiah is
describing. He in solidarity with his
people, he says this. We all growl like bears and moan
like doves. We hope for justice, but there
is none. Without meaning and purpose,
we're left with with inarticulate groans.
We're growling like hungry bears.
We're we're moaning and cooing like doves, except that the
growls and the moans don't go anywhere.
They don't reach anyone. They don't solve any problems.
They don't achieve justice. If we have purpose as human
beings, it means that we plan and that we pray and that we
petition and that we praise. Like, like people who God has
put on this earth with purpose. But if there's no purpose,
eventually human words will fail us because human words will not
have purpose or meaning. And so we will begin to growl
and moan at the pig roast instead.
It's noise without notation. It's yearning but without any
yield. When people lack purpose, they
start grasping and and looking for the light.
They they start going like where I need to find it somehow.
I might grope along this wall, but somehow, maybe someday I can
see where the light is. Between 2019 and 2025, we saw
this happen actually with with Gen.
Z. And it was a surprise to many
people that especially I've heard a lot of young men in Gen.
Z have come to faith because in the wake of the pandemic, they
realize I don't have a purpose for my life and I need to know
my purpose. And so a significant draw back
to Christianity, not just in the United States, but in France and
in the UK and many other places in the world, young people from
Gen. Z return to church asking the
question, what is the purpose for my life?
And the reason was that the comfortable secular dream which
told them you don't really have a purpose was not satisfying for
them. One report on the trend puts it
this way. The Christian church's
counterculture is increasingly a haven for young men hungry for
meaning, purpose, and a clear identity.
And the cool thing is, they've stayed because they found their
purpose, and they're growing in their purpose, and they're
learning the joy of carrying their cross for the life of the
world. It's a privilege to know that we
have a purpose. And it is a privilege actually
to let others know they have a purpose and a God who created
them and loves them and will help them fulfill His design for
their life. Now Isaiah has another warning.
It's not just the blackout of meaning and purpose when we lose
the truth. If we abandoned the truth for
self-interest, if we abandoned the signal fire for the pig
roast, the second thing that will happen is our sin becomes
closer to us than the presence of God.
Our sin becomes more real and present to us than the presence
of God. Everywhere Isaiah looks, all he
can see are the sins of the nation.
Verse 12. Our transgressions have
multiplied before you, he laments.
Our transgressions are with us, he groans.
Now Isaiah was the one who introduced the beautiful name
for God, Emmanuel, God with us. But instead of saying Emmanuel,
God with us, all he can say are transgressions with us.
If you look at verses 12 and 13, it's like iniquities with us,
transgressions with us, and you think about what was happening.
It's like injustice with us, cruelty with us.
What happens when we abandoned? The truth is that our lives
become like a kitchen with rotting garbage in the trash can
that never gets taken out. We can't smell the really good
food no matter how much garlic we put into our dishes.
We can't smell the beautiful food because the garbage is
rotting and it's filling the kitchen and it's more present to
us than the nourishment. Let's say a Co worker confronts
us over a a bad mistake we made on a project and our mistake
will cost the company money on the bottom line and and will be
a black eye on the team's reputation.
Now if we live according to self-interest, our response
might be to defend to to deflect, to lie which would lead
to worry about being found out and thus we need to lie to cover
our tracks. And then our work relationships
become defined, at least in part, by lies and posturing and
self-interest. And it becomes deception with
us, defensiveness with us. You know that many people in our
town feel trapped in situations like this.
And when you don't know another way, it's like it's really
hopeless, and it can be very burdensome.
Now, here's the promise of the gospel for anyone who might feel
trapped in a situation like this.
Do you know that that God and all of his grace and freedom can
be more present to us than our own selfishness?
He promises to be God with us. Emmanuel, He's our signal fire.
He's our living truth. Now if we take up this promise
of the gospel, here's a way out. The Co worker confronts our
mistake and we feel our survival mechanisms kick in.
But we take a beat, we take a breath, we ask for the presence
of God with us and we say, spirit of truth, please give me
courage I don't have. And with the power he gives us,
we tell the truth to our Co worker.
We fess up, we offer actually to make it right at our own
expense. And while it hurts in the
moment, and while we might get a demotion or even get fired,
we're aware that God is with us as a father to a daughter or as
a father to a son. And when our Co worker asks us,
why didn't you just lie? We take another press, we ask
for courage and we tell them about the hope that we have and,
and just the reality of God's, God's grace and overflowing
truth begins to flow through us and begins to define not only
our private life, but our Co worker life as well.
It makes such a difference to live by the truth or not.
So Isaiah, he's got a third warning about what happens when
we abandoned the signal fire. It doesn't just black out our
meaning and purpose. It doesn't just make our sin
more present to us. But what finally happens is
something collective. And that is it is a degrading of
our common life, a degrading of our common life.
Isaiah paints a picture of human society where the rule of law
has been shoved aside completely in verse 14.
And we can think of these archetypes as as people.
Justice is turned back. You know, someone representing
justice knocking on the courthouse door, being turned
away. Get out of here.
We don't need you. Justice righteousness stands far
off. Someone representing everything
true and good, Someone who represents God's righteousness
can't even enter the city square.
And then truth has stumbled in the public square.
Someone who represents just telling the truth.
They're actually on the streets where all the business is done.
They're lying flat on the ground and people are trampling them.
They're stepping on their necks and stepping on their heads
because they don't care about truth at all.
And honesty cannot enter. Treachery has overcome trust.
Isaiah pictures it. It's every person for
themselves. It's a, it's a pig roast.
It's a frenzy. When we try to do the right
thing, he says we're punished. Verse 15 says truth is missing
and whoever turns from evil is plundered.
It's like the reverse opposite of Psalm one.
It's not Whoever turns from evil prospers.
Whoever turns from evil is plundered.
Have you ever seen this happen? Someone does the right thing.
Have you ever seen a breakdown in societal trust and a
corruption of public life? On the night of October 20th,
2014, a high school student from Chicago named Laquan McDonald
was shot death shot to death by the Chicago police.
Now the official report claimed that Laquan was crazed and that
he lunged at officers with a knife and so they had to shoot
him in self-defense. That turned out to be a lie.
The video of this incident, the the dashboard footage was
withheld from the public, which covered up the lie.
And then the mayor of Chicago said the reason that they kept
the video from being released is that it would impede the federal
investigation. And that was another lie.
Justice has turned back. Honesty cannot enter.
Truth has stumbled in the public square.
This is self-interest ruling the day.
Now, what turned the tide? Well, there was a young man
named William Callaway. William Callaway loves Jesus and
loves Chicago, and he lives by the truth.
Callaway filed a Freedom of Information request for the
Dashkim footage of the shooting. Driven by his love, he dedicated
a huge amount of time and effort to see this through.
He was not paid for his efforts. And what happened is the video
footage showed that Laquan was walking away from officers when
they choose to shoot him 17 times.
And as the truth got out, justice was finally done.
Even even though it was limited, there was some justice done.
Now author Gregory Cockel noted that modern society makes a
promise to us. And the promise is this.
You can treat reality like a game, like a game of Monopoly
with human made rules that can be changed by humans at any time
based on what you think is right, based on your situation.
That's self-interest. And so some players will get
lucky and other players will get hurt.
And you know what? It all goes back in the box
anyway. What does it mean?
Doesn't really mean anything. And that mindset of playing
reality like a game is what gets us into situations like the one
we were in with Laquan McDonald. It degrades common life.
Now here's the gospel claim. It's very different.
The gospel claim is this reality is not a game.
Reality is more like gravity than Monopoly, just as gravity
is a God-given force that we can live by and even thrive in.
The gravity of God's truth and his love and the moral arc of
his story is a force designed to ground us.
If we treat reality like a game, we will hurt ourselves and
others. And the gospel invitation is, if
that's you, come into the gravity of God's love and be
healed. Be grounded, grounded in his
truth, grounded together with his people.
Do you know, news outlet asked William Callaway, what's one
thing you read every day? The first thing he said, the
Bible, Second thing he said the Tribune, Isn't that cool?
He loves Jesus, he loves Chicago, and that was grounding
him in his way forward. So Isaiah's invitation to us,
let's join William and be grounded in God's truth and his
love and let that lead us to become a beacon of truth for all
who are ready to stop playing reality like a game.
Now the boys on that island in Lord of the Flies could not
rescue themselves. Even Ralph couldn't do it.
The signal fire, for what it was worth, couldn't rescue them.
The rescue had to come from the outside.
And that's where Isaiah takes us.
The Lord finds us, as it were, on the deserted island.
Signal fire is out. We've lost our way, we've lost
our purpose. We've lost our true north.
And here's God's response in verse 15, second-half of verse
15. The Lord saw that there was no
justice and He was offended. He saw that there was no man.
He was amazed that there was no one interceding.
The Lord here is pictured as a lot of people refer to this as
the divine warrior. He comes in in chapter 59 and we
see the divine warrior get involved in human history as we
track through through Isaiah 61 and 62.
It's a glorious image of Emmanuel, God with us.
He's coming not only as a baby, He's also coming as a warrior,
and he steps into the public square.
We can see Jesus Christ fulfilling this and looking out
and seeing. Looking to the right, seeing a
haggard group of people stumbling because their lives
lack purpose, and then looking over here to the left and seeing
a widow and an orphan being denied justice and oppressed.
Looking down and seeing God's people hiding the light of the
truth under a bushel and then looking up and seeing everyone
around him is clothed in compromise.
And so he realizes that he will need to clothe himself in
righteousness and deliver us all together.
Verse 16, second-half of that of that says, so his own arm
brought salvation. Now there's the power and his
own righteousness supported him. There's the truth.
He brings these things together and he put on righteousness as
body armor, verse 17, and a helmet of salvation on his head.
Some will hear echoes of Ephesians chapter 6.
He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself
in zeal as in a cloak. Now as you hear these
descriptions, notice something. He carries no weapons.
His body armor is righteousness. His helmet is foul for
salvation. His garments of vengeance and
zeal are for putting the world right and whole.
The only offensive weapon he brings is his mighty arm.
That's the only thing he brings. And when Jesus Christ came to
fulfill this text, to fulfill this image of the divine
warrior, He raised his arm to bring peace, to heal.
And when it came time, he stretched out both arms on the
cross to bear upon himself all of the lies of this world and
all of the injustice those lies resulted in, so that he would
bring healing and resurrection through his own life.
Jesus Christ has not come to kill us or judge us, but put to
death the lies of this world and to tell us the truth, to restore
the signal fire that God created us, that He loves us, that He
seeks us out. And this costly, glorious moment
of truth, friends, is the gravitational center of all
reality. It draws all people unto Him.
Verse 19. They will fear the name of the
Lord in the West and His glory in the east, for He will come
like a rushing stream driven by the wind.
This is otherwise translated as Spirit.
It's the word Rua, the wind of the Lord, the breath of the
Lord, which brought creation into existence and which renews
creation. You know, before we groped in
the darkness, but now the glory of the Deliverer brings light
again. Before our common life was
absolutely breaking down, but now West and East are united and
reverent fear around the Son of God.
Before it was chaos of self-interest but now the Spirit
of God has raised up one true leader.
When the British officer did arrive on the beach of the
island in in the novel, something interesting happened
and that is that all the boys gathered around him.
They all gathered to him from all around the island and they
were all there assembled on the beach of the island and they
began to tell him what happened on the island.
They began to just unburden their their souls and
consciousness to this British officer.
They shared how they abandoned the signal fire and gave into
peer pressure and joined the pig roast and savagely killed one of
their own. And as they began to weep there
right on the beach, as they faced the reality of what they
had done, they also it began to sink into them as they wept that
they were indeed being rescued and that the nightmare was
coming to an end and that healing was about to begin.
So I was just wondering this week, what if a manual Anglican
could be like that beach? What if this could be a place
where people could come and meet their rescuer in Jesus Christ
and they had space to to tell the truth, to unburden their
souls, to weep with relief that there's a rescue, that there is
a purpose, that there is a hope and there is a future in Jesus
Christ. Now, many of you have met, some
of you have met a fellow Emanuel Anglican member.
Her name is Nafisa. She's a mother of two and she
was baptized here at Emmanuel Anglican last year.
And Nafisa at one point lived here on the north side, had no
interest in Christianity. She, she did not believe either
in the Christian gospel or in the Christian way.
And in fact, she had a different moral universe that she lived
by. And, and I did get Nafisa's
permission to, to tell her story.
She she was really glad to have it told Nafisa out of a Heart
for Justice was working in the abortion industry and she did
have a sense of sense of purpose in that industry.
But there was something about the moral claims of the industry
that did not quite sit right with her.
And from a couple of different circumstances, she began to
question the assumptions that brought her to the life that she
was living and the work that she was doing.
And along the way, she began to really want to engage with
Christians about their beliefs. And and not just for Christians
to to say you believe what you believe and I believe what I
believe it she know, tell me what you believe.
And so along came a friend named Susanna.
Susanna was a deeply committed Christian who loved Nafisa and
listened well to her and had a lot of compassion, did not judge
her at all, but had the respect for Nafisa to be honest about
her convictions, her gospel convictions about human dignity
and human life and the moral arc of the universe as defined by
the Scriptures. And Nafisa challenged and pushed
Susanna for a long time and appreciated the pushback that
Susanna gave her. And a friendship formed and a
mutual respect formed. And there came a time where
Nafisa felt called to become a mother.
And as she was becoming a mother, Jesus Christ transformed
her life and her heart. And she found her way here to
get baptized and to follow Jesus, where all of us have the
privilege of walking with her. From where we're at now to the
New Jerusalem, we all celebrate in the presence of God together.
And here's my question, what if we started to follow Susanna's
lead? Susanna's not a part of of
Emanuel Anglican here in Chicago, but I think she sets a
really compelling example for us where she does not hide what she
believes, but she respects her neighbor enough to engage in
courageous, loving, compassionate conversation
around some of the most difficult topics that we face as
a society. And to live by the signal fire,
even if it might cost Susanna in the meantime a little bit of
reputation in the eyes of her peers.
What if we cared enough? There are more Nafisa's in our
city. Do we love them enough to live
by the signal fire rather than the pig roast?
Of compromise and of hiding what we really believe and of
avoiding the uncomfortable conversations.
Shining with truth is a very high calling.
And we have that calling. And it's not an easy calling.
And for all kinds of reasons, this part of being a spiritual
beacon can feel heavy in our city and in our day.
So before we end, I want to end where Isaiah ends, which is a
promise from the Lord in verse 21.
As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord.
My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your
mouth will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your
children or from the mouths of your children's children from
now on and forever, says the Lord.
Now I just want us to hear something in this verse.
Quiet confidence from the Lord. Can you hear the confidence in
the truth? Can you hear the Lord's
confidence that His truth is so aligned with the moral fabric of
the universe, with the grain of reality, that He's confident
that His words and His spirit will be passed on from one
generation to the next, no matter what the conversations of
each generation are? That His truth will speak light
into those conversations. Purpose, hope, justice and that
not only will we receive those words in his spirit, but also
the generation to come will receive it and the generation
after that and the generation after that.
Can we hear the Lord? Can we see the Lord's long term
perspective that no matter how dark things are in Isaiah's day
or our day, that his light will continue to shine?
And friends, can that just give us a little bit of freedom to
sow seeds of the gospel and let people respond how they're going
to respond to, to anchor ourselves in the deep truths of
the Christian faith, regardless of it's going to be
controversial in some way or another?
Can we just receive the Lord's confidence that that's OK and
that's actually part of our journey.
Can we embrace the distinct, beautiful truths of the
Christian gospel and let the Lord be the one who keeps the
flame going from now and forever?
That's the Lord's promise. His spirit and words will not
depart from us. It won't depart from our mouths
or from our children or our children's children.
It won't depart from our city. So, Emanuel, let us with joy
steward the flame of God's truth, not because we're waiting
to be rescued, but because the rescuer has already arrived and
his truth endures forever. In the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, Amen.