"Then It Will Be OK"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

Our meditation this morning is based upon our Old Testament Lesson from the prophet Isaiah:

Say to those who have an anxious heart, "Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water…” Here ends our text.

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It was a cold and rainy…just overall dreary day outside as a young husband hung up the phone on that fall afternoon. He tried to put on a happy, smiling face as he walked back into the living room where his young, pregnant wife sat curled up on the couch, wrapped in a small blanket looking at different colored paint chips, trying to decide which color to paint the nursery. “Who was that on the phone, sweetie?” “Well,” he replied, “it was Dr. Johnson calling with the test results.” Her smile quickly faded and her full focus was on her husband now. “Well, what did he say?” As the husband slides onto the couch next to his lovely wife, he takes her soft hand in his and says “He said the news is not what we had hoped for, its cancer”…he could see the look in her face… “but…he said we’ve caught it early and there’s lots of treatments…I’ll just go through weeks and weeks of chemo and radiation and then it’ll be okay.” Trying his best to believe himself…

Just before Christmas, a blue-collar assembly line worker reported for his overnight shift as he had so many times before in the last year since his buddy had put in a good word for him and got him hired. However, this time was different, as he walked through the gate, someone greeted him and handed him a pink slip. He would be laid-off and unemployed within the month. As he walked through the door of his house the next morning, his heart was heavy. There was his happy family. His wife preparing his breakfast on the stove, his three kids…2 boys and a girl at the table throwing corn pops at one another, having lots of fun and very excited because today was the Saturday they were all to be going Christmas shopping as a family. Very gently he explained what had happened and what this would mean financially for the family. As the kids’ and his wife’s excitement and joy faded into despair, he did the best he could to encourage them… “I’ll find something new and then it’ll be okay.” Not sure that he believed that himself…

A local farmer had over the years seen his fair share of adversity…in that business you learn fairly early on what you have control over and what you don’t…like the weather. Last fall, it was so wet that he nearly didn’t get his wheat in the ground, but by God’s grace it happened. And the winter was a bit unusual…he actually got a lot of snow…which his wheat crop loved. By the time spring came around, this old, gruff farmer was excited…actually smiling as he looked out over his fields. This was going to be a bumper year he told himself…one of the best in a long while. That night however, he was awoken by the sound of thunder and then a series of thuds…it continued and became faster and faster…harder and harder…and his worst fear was realized…hail, and lots of it. The next morning the damage was nearly 100%...he was distraught, that excitement and smile now gone… “guess we’ll try again next year…then it’ll be okay.”

Then it will be okay…then it will all be fine…comforting words to be sure…but in the midst of it all, then reminds us that we’re still in the pit. Then seems so far off, so distant, so unattainable. And the longer that it takes then to become now, the harder it is to believe that then will ever come.

We can no doubt relate to this ourselves, but my friends, it has always been that way. Look at the children of Israel. Time and time again, they cry out to God for deliverance and promises of deliverance come. But the children of Israel…like all of us…are impatient. Here in the time of the prophets they hear Yahweh promising deliverance, but all they have to do is look a few hundred miles north and there is the fiercest, most deadly military force on the face of the earth, able to invade at a moment’s notice and with the most barbaric methods, kill every man, woman, and child. For Israel, they find it quite difficult to believe, to have faith in the promises of God in the face of that. And so, in disbelief and fear, in sin, they rely on man rather than God’s promises that “then it will be okay” and so God sends his prophet Isaiah. And Isaiah brings to them God’s Law, God’s words of judgment against them for ignoring His promises, for not remaining faithful. Yahweh God recounts all that He has done for His children, calling them His vineyard… “He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2). He had told them…remain faithful to me, trust in me and then it will be okay. The children of Israel heard these words but because of their hardness of heart and because of their sin, they did not trust in them. Then seemed so far off, so distant, so unrealistic and ignorant of the “facts”, that they turned aside from the promises of God and relied on their sinful selves. Yahweh’s response to this is pretty straightforward, “How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers (Isaiah 1:21). No doubt the promises of God…His promises that then it would be okay…sounded sweet, but they turned their backs on God and His promises, His mercy, His love.

But even then…even in the face of rejection…God brings more promises to His children. “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” (verse 4). After chapter upon chapter of Isaiah promising this sinful generation that they will be hauled mercilessly into exile in a foreign land while their homeland is burned and completely destroyed, the loving and merciful promises of God still come. “Trust in me and then it will be okay.” And the promises become even more pointed… “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (verse 5). Then it will always be okay, then you will know that your God has come to you, then you will know that God fulfills all His promises, then you will know that He is your God and you are His children, then you will know that He loves you and cares for you—not with some sweet, syrupy love, but with a fierce, undying love.

Then it will be okay…yes God’s children were hauled into exile, their homeland destroyed, and even when they came back, things were never the same as before. The glorious temple was replaced with one much smaller, much less grand in their eyes. But God’s promises remained…then it will be okay. The promises remained, but the people’s faith in them did not. Israel once again returned to relying on themselves for strength, for protection, looking everywhere but to their Heavenly Father for deliverance.

I wonder if you can blame them though. I wonder how different you and I really are from the children of Israel. Each and every Sunday God’s promises come to you through His Word and through His Sacraments. But on Wednesday, when your loved one is rushed to the hospital because you’ve found them too weak to do anything, what’s your reaction? When your child comes down with an illness that can’t be explained and you just sit and watch your little one grow sicker and sicker, what do you do? When you find yourself surrounded by a huge, empty, quiet house and you are overcome with loneliness, where do you look? When in one month your retirement looks comfortable, and in the next month you find that the economy has shrunk your savings in half, how do you handle that? When you watch the funeral director close your loved one’s casket for the final time, what do you feel? God be praised for those of you who never question, never wonder, never doubt. But if you’re like me, in situations such as those…I sometimes have an anxious heart. Oh, how easy it is for pastors and vicars to stand in the pulpit and say, “then it will be okay”, but that ignores the “facts.” Then seems so far off, we need then to be now. Then seems so distant, so unrealistic, so unattainable. As Isaiah writes in verse three, just before our text, we are those who have weak hands and feeble knees. Too often you and I are blind to the promises of God, too often God’s word of comfort, of assurance that then it will be okay doesn’t even make it in our ears, too often our anxious and sinful hearts have us shut inside our homes—silent and looking to ourselves for help rather than running through the neighborhood singing the praises of God who promises us deliverance.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, God has a message for you, “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” The children of Israel heard the promises of God through Isaiah, but then always seemed so far off. That is, until a young man from Nazareth returned to the Gentile region called the Decapolis. This man, Jesus Christ, had quite the reputation in the land and so people were bringing their ill to Him. And on one particular day, a man was brought to Him who was deaf and could not speak. And he who could not hear, heard…he who could not speak, spoke. And shortly after this, a man who was blind was brought before Jesus and in a moment, with the touch of Jesus’ hands, he saw everything. In that moment, for those gathered there, then became now. At that moment, they remembered Isaiah’s words from long ago, God’s promises from long ago…they knew that here in front of them was the Almighty God, in the flesh. As He had promised He had come to them…He had come with a vengeance ready to destroy His enemies. And that he would do on the cross. On that cross, Jesus gave up his life…on that cross Jesus saved you. And three days later, Jesus rose from the grave victorious, coming out of that grave with a vengeance, having defeated Satan and the power of death itself. Because of Jesus’ death and His rising again, you have been promised an eternal inheritance in His Kingdom…for then, in that place, it will all be okay. I can stand before you this morning and offer you…you who are hurting, you who struggling, you who are lonely, you who are grieving, you who are dying in sin…I can offer you the sure promise of God that then it will be okay…it is okay…you are forgiven, you are loved.

However, I can assure you that when you leave here, you will suffer hurt, pain, distress. This world and its prince will try with all their might to turn you away from the promises of God that then it will be okay. But “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” In fact, He comes to you today…with a foretaste of what is to come. Here, at this altar, your Lord and your Savior comes to you and with His body and blood He saves you. Here it is that you can hear God’s promises for you…He says to you “when I come again, when this earth shall end and the new heavens and the new earth appear, when your grave opens and your body rises out of it, when all creation is restored, then it will be okay. But even now, your God is here, even now…right here this morning…He fulfills His promises for you. “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God is here with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He is here and He saves you.”

All in the Name of Jesus, our Savior, Amen!

            Amen.