Sermon Isaiah 55:10-13 God’s Will Be Done
The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father
and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.
One of the joys of being a parent is being able to read with one’s children. I loved it when they were small and I even enjoyed it when they were in high school and college, reading texts and discussing with them what they had read. One of my favorite books, Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns, was just one of those novels. Our daughter Mary had to read it for tenth grade English and we read it too. It is a story about growing up in Georgia in the early days of the twentieth century. In one scene Grandpa is talking to Will Tweedy:
Grandpa licked some meringue off his fork while he pondered.
Finally he said, “Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.
He had good reasons for fixin’ it where if’n you git too sick or too hurt to live,
why, you can die, same as a sick chicken.
I’ve knowed a few really sick chickens to git well,
and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin ‘ ‘ cept in a coffin.
Still and all, common sense tells you this much:
ever what makes a wheel run over a track
will make it run over a boy if’n he’s in the way.
Ifn ‘ you’d a-got kilt, it’ mean you jest didn’t move fast enough,
like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog.
You think God favors the dog over the rabbit son?
I shook my head.
“I don’t neither.
When it comes to prayin ‘, we got it all over the other animals,
but we ain’t no different when it comes to livin ‘ and dyin ‘.
If’n you give God the credit when somebody don’t die,
you go’n blame Him when they do die?
Call it His will?
Ever noticed we git well all the time and we don’t die but once’t ?
Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if’n we can.
Hit ain’t never His will for us to die-‘ cept in the big sense
in the sense He was smart enough not to make the life eternal on this here earth,
with people and bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin ‘ mounds
like Loma’s dang cats tryin ‘ to keep warm in the wintertime.
Does all this make any sense Will Tweedy?
What is God’s will? Grandpa had it right. God’s will is not death and destruction.
Grandpa told Will,
“I got one more thang to say.
They’s a heap more to God’s will than death, disappointment, and like thet.
Hit’s God’s will for us to be good and do good,
love one another, be forgivin’ son.
Well, anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’,
they don missed the whole point.”
God’s will is life and health and every good thing. It is God’s will that all people have their daily bread and Luther puts it,
“Everything needed for this life
such as food and clothing,
home and property,
work and income,
a devoted family,
an orderly community,
good government,
favorable weather,
peace and health,
a good name,
true friends and neighbors.”
It is God’s will that we come to know and love God and that when the trials of this life are over, we enter into the joy of our heavenly rest. God’s will is for good life here and eternal life to come. Sin, sickness, destruction, death are never God’s proper will, but life and everlasting life.
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In our text study this week one of the pastors was relating how it was to be a pastor in Orange County, California , some years ago. He said that many of the people there had come out of a Reformed theological tradition, Calvinism and Puritanism; many people had the taken the notion of predestination to heart. Now predestination is found in the Bible and even our Gospel text seems to suggest that when the sower goes out to sow the Word of God, there is no clear answer to why some respond and others do not. I don’t think that the soil can be faulted for being rich or infertile any more than the soil is responsible for birds and thorns. The problem is not in the seed or the sower either. I suppose the answer has to lie in the Creator of the soil.
The problem with a strict predestination is that in practice, it becomes easy to suggest that somehow the elect will be especially blessed in this life. In fact it is often suggested that we can see those who are elect of God because they are healthy, wealthy and wise. Many preachers seem to be telling us that if we get right with God, everything else will turn out fine too. Well that works until tragedy strikes. This pastor visited people in the hospital who were devastated because they believed that God had given them lung cancer to punish them or that their depression was a sign of God’s disfavor. Perhaps if they had lost their job it meant that God has turned His back on them or if they divorced, maybe they really had never been part of God’s people in the first place.
Friends the Bible does NOT teach that believers will live charmed lives. As St. Peter says, “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial which comes upon you as if something strange is happening to you.” Jesus Himself said that the prophets were rejected and stoned and called His disciples to take up a cross to follow Him. When God’s Son came into the world He was not wealthy or powerful; He was rejected and crucified. Why should it be any different with us? Yes, I suppose if we give God the credit for the good things, God must share some blame for the bad. But destruction and disease and death are never God’s proper will. Remember that-God’s will is life and health and every good. Our lesson from Isaiah is clear that God’s will is done:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there until they have watered the earth
making it bring forth and sprout giving seed to the sower
and bread to the eater,
so shall my word that goes out of my mouth,
it shall not return empty to me,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which i sent it.
God’s Word accomplishes its purpose: to judge and to save, to convict and console. God’s will is done. We pray that God’s life and salvation may be done to us. As we learned in the Catechism:
“The good and gracious will of God is done without our prayer,
but when we pray, ‘Thy will be done’,
we ask that it may be done also among us.”
God’s will is good and gracious. Isaiah proclaimed that when God’s Word goes forth and accomplishes God’s purpose the result is not wailing and gnashing of teeth but rather joy and song. When God’s will is done, God’s people “shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.” The whole creation cries, “Glory be to God on high.” When God’s will is done, “the mountains and hills shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field clap their hands. Instead of the thorn, shall come up the cypress, and instead of the briar, shall come up the myrtle.” People, animals, trees and mountains will experience the goodness of the Lord, the glory of the Lord. We will rejoice in God’s word of hope and salvation and praise God, that God’s will is done.
In the meantime we have lung cancer, strokes, pink slips and disappointments galore. We remind ourselves again and again of God’s promise: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” We tell ourselves that God’s will is good and gracious and we pray that it be done among us, on earth as it is in heaven. Now we only know that will in part. We still struggle to make sense of what so often does not. Bad things happen to good people all the time and we come to realize that we are not charmed as we go through this earthly existence. In this life we understand only a part of what will be fully revealed to us as we stand before the heavenly throne and everything, finally, will make sense.
I remember reading a story of a young monk who spent months in a Belgian monastery helping to weave a tapestry. One day he rose from his bench in disgust: “I can’t do this any more! My directions make no sense. I have been working with a bright yellow thread and suddenly I am to knot it and cut it short for nor reason. What a waste!”
“My son, said an older monk, “You are not seeing this tapestry correctly. You are sitting at the back, working on one spot.” He led the young man to the front of the tapestry, hanging stretched in the huge workroom, and the novice gasped. He had been weaving a beautiful picture-the three kings paying homage to the Christ Child-his yellow thread was part of the gleaming halo around the baby’s head. What had seemed wasteful and senseless was magnificent.
We too are part of a larger pattern, the full beauty of a tapestry we may never see. God’s will-good and gracious, loving and merciful-is being done all around us and way may recognize it. We say it is God’s will when the storm strikes or the child gets sick or we lose our job. God’s will is never suffering and pain, loss and sadness.
Oh, God may allow these things to happen. There is sin and sickness and suffering and death in this very fallen world. But God sent His Son Jesus just to this world, to share with us a fallen existence, even to become sin who knew no sin that we might share His sinlessness and sharing His sufferings we share his glory. Then the hills and mountains will shout and the trees clap their hands, then we will see that God’s Word has accomplished God’s purpose and we will know that God’s will is done, even here, even now. Amen.
Copyright 2005, James D. Kegel. Used by permission.