Isaiah 12:1-6 [Easter Sunrise]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
April 1, 2018
In that day you will say, “I will give thanks to you, LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger has turned away, and you comfort me.” Surely God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid; for the LORD Yahweh is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation.” Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. In that day you will say: “Give thanks to the LORD! Proclaim his name. Declare his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim that his name is exalted! Sing to the LORD, for he has done amazing things! Let this be known in all the earth! Shout aloud and sing for joy, daughter of Zion, for the Holy One of Israel is great among you!” (EHV)
In the name of our risen Lord, Jesus Christ, who has conquered sin and Satan and the sting of death, dear friends, Today is the day! You’ve felt this before—It’s Christmas morning and time to rip open wrapping paper and get to the gifts! Today is the wedding! It’s game day! It’s your birthday! You’re just waiting for the FedEx driver to pull up because…your new phone is coming today! No alarm went off this morning because…you’re retired! You’ve felt this way before. We all know what it is like to look forward to something, to have this sense of swelling anticipation as we wait, and then to finally experience the happy arrival of that day. There are so many things in this world that we look forward to like this and which bring us joy. Though we know the feelings well, there is nothing that compares to this day! TODAY IS THE DAY! It is Easter, the Day of Resurrection! This is—without question— the biggest day for a Christian. It has been since that first Easter day when the tomb of Jesus was found empty and people saw him raised from the dead. TODAY IS THE DAY that so many people will not miss church. Many of you who are here today will not only not miss church, you’ll do “double church”—and throw in a breakfast and a concert too, maybe making it your longest day at church all year! Those who are not at church often know that this is a “can’t miss Sunday.” TODAY IS THE DAY to wear your Easter best, maybe a new dress or a pastel-colored shirt to match the Easter eggs. It is a happy day, full of excitement. The anticipation is over and the day is here—TODAY IS THE DAY! Earlier we heard the words of the prophet Isaiah, who lived and worked for the Lord right around 700 BC. Those words from chapter 12 are part of what was his message of anticipation. The words God had him write caused him and those who heard his message to look forward to a day. That “Day” may be understood in a couple ways, but no matter how you view it, the focus is on Christ’s saving work and what he has done for you and me in particular. How exciting it must have been for Isaiah to see with prophetic vision the day that the long-promised salvation of God would appear. What divine images may have swept through Isaiah’s mind as the Lord told him to write about… the birth of Jesus (“To us a child is born, to us a son is given” [9:6]), and Jesus’ life of service to sinners (“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse…the Spirit of the LORD will rest on him…righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist” [11:1, 2, 5]), and then the words of chapter 12 declaring that salvation has come and the whole world deserves to hear about it so that God may be praised!
Isaiah saw up ahead the Day of Salvation, the day that the LORD filled the well of salvation so that sinners could draw spiritual water from it and live. The day that the LORD did that was the Day of Resurrection for Jesus. The prophecies of Jesus’ saving work providing forgiveness and eternal life were fulfilled by the resurrected Jesus, evidenced by the empty tomb and the words of comfort he gave to those who had followed him and trusted in him as their Savior. Isaiah understood the magnitude of that day. He looked ahead and saw people shouting out: “Give thanks to the LORD! Proclaim his name. Declare his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim that his name is exalted! Sing to the LORD, for he has done amazing things! Let this be known in all the earth! Shout aloud and sing for joy, daughter of Zion, for the Holy One of Israel is great among you!” We gather on Easter to do exactly what Isaiah said people would do when they saw THAT DAY! We are giving thanks to the LORD! We are proclaiming his name! We are declaring what he has done! We are singing to the LORD! We give offerings so that we can be part of letting this be known to all the earth! We understand that the Holy One is great! TODAY IS THE DAY that we celebrate what Isaiah saw coming. What he saw 700 years before it happened, we look back 2000 years to see. Today is the day that we celebrate that day! “That day” prophetically seen by Isaiah is also seen and experienced every day since the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection—and this is why: because now there is everyday opportunity for people to know, to read, to hear how Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, came to be their Savior, lived a sinless life before the Father, gave his life up on the cross to pay for the world’s sins and then rose on Easter Sunday morning guaranteeing not only his victory over sin and death and the devil, but also theirs when their faith is placed in him alone! You are here because you know that. You know that this is a day worth celebrating… and that this is a day worth celebrating all the time! You get it because “that day” came to you once upon a time! It may have happened on the day of your baptism as a baby. It may have happened later on in life as a friend told you of Jesus, as you went to church while at college, or later still as life sent changes your way. And perhaps for some, “that day” is today—the day the Holy Spirit convicts you of your sin and convinces you that Jesus is your Savior from it and you see the wisdom and the need to thank and praise God for what he has done for you in Jesus. Perhaps today is that day that affects your every day going forward. Easter makes a difference to the person who knows the truth of Isaiah’s words, the LORD was angry with me! Why? Because I was not godly. I didn’t think, act, or talk like God and like God wants. God had every right to be angry at sinful me and he was. BUT his anger has turned away and instead of the surefire punishment coming my way, God brought comfort! That comfort comes in the salvation earned by Jesus’ death and guaranteed by his Easter resurrection. That inspires us to trust and not be afraid! God is not angry with us!
Those who understand this day realize that they get to celebrate Easter every day as a Christian. The forgiveness and love of God are new every morning for every person who trusts in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus’ victory is their victory because through it, Jesus hands them forgiveness and love and the promise of rising from death just as he did. So they speak daily prayers of thanks to God and live in a way that praises the Savior. People who have experienced “that day” in their lives also get a weekly chance to celebrate Easter! You know that’s why Christians picked Sunday for getting together for worship, right? They changed from the Saturday Sabbath Day to Sunday because it was on Sunday that Jesus conquered death with the promise that his victory is ours. That’s why we still do this. Every Sunday when we go to church, we are reminded of the sin that Jesus paid for with his life and the fact that death could not hold him. Every Sunday we are reminded that our lives have meaning because we are God’s children by faith in all that Jesus did for us. Every Sunday we are reminded that Jesus rose from the dead and promised that we too will rise from death to eternal life with him in heaven. Those things that are given and promised by our risen Lord Jesus are why this is a day worth celebrating all the time. TODAY IS THE DAY that makes every day important and every opportunity to worship our risen Savior together important! The excitement and anticipation of Isaiah, who saw all this coming, ought to be the kind of excitement we have also because we look back on the day he had to look forward to see and we see the fulfillment of his words. What a privilege it is to celebrate in a special way today and every year at this time. What a privilege it is that God allows us to come into his house every week to have him speak to us in his Word and as he comes to us with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as we prepare for another special day—the Last Day when all of this comes together and we receive what Jesus won for us on that first Easter. Isaiah urges us to make it known in all the world that surely it is God who saves us! That’s why we invite our friends and family to join us on a day like this. That’s why we regularly share the comfort of Jesus’ love with others. That’s why we stand prepared, like a lifeguard on duty, so that at any moment, we might respond to cries for help from others and offer them the life-giving news that God loves them enough to have sent his own Son to save them, to forgive them of every sin and give them heaven. There is no other way for a Christian to behave than to proclaim the great things their Savior has done! God has done glorious things and it naturally brings praise from our hearts and mouths. Anyone who knows the tune to the “First Song of Isaiah,” which is based on this lesson, can hardly hear the name of it and not start singing it in their head! That’s the way it ought to be when it comes to praising God and telling the whole world about the glorious work of salvation Jesus accomplished for us! It is the most natural, automatic thing to proclaim what he has done.
Finally Isaiah points out, the Holy One of Israel is great among you. On that first Easter it was proclaimed, “He is not here; he is risen!” Jesus is not in the grave and he is not only at his Father’s side in heaven. As true God, Christ is omnipresent—he is present everywhere. As he promised to his disciples before he physically departed this world, so he promises to you and me: “Surely I am with you always.” He is not dead; he lives! The living Lord Jesus is with us when we meet like we are today—inside the church or out here in the courtyard. He is with us at home and at work, at school and on the playground, when surrounded by others or all alone. Jesus, our Risen Savior, is with you! The Holy One of Israel is among you! What comfort we have today! Jesus Christ is risen! He has defeated sin and death and Satan! Because he lives eternally, so will we. As we trust in him, he promises to be with us as we await the day of our salvation. There is no better news, nothing that changes our lives like this does, and nothing that moves us to celebrate like we celebrate today. May the Easter victory of Jesus bring you constant comfort and joy and lead you to give him your thanks and your praise! Amen. Please join to sing the refrains of The First Song of Isaiah as indicated on page 6.