In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The problem with statement “blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God,” which is what a certain man cried out to Jesus in our Gospel lesson today, wasn’t so much with what he said, but when he said it. The man was literally reclining at table with Jesus. He was sharing a meal with the Incarnate Lord Himself. And yet, instead of basking in that moment, and realizing the great treasure that was right in front of his face, the man talked about how wonderful things would be later on. It was sort of like if a new husband spent his entire wedding night talking to his wife about what they would do for their ten-year anniversary. It’s your wedding night, for goodness’ sake! How about you focus on that, first?

But this interaction from our text reveals to us a very common misconception that a lot of people have about heaven. Lots of times people think about “heaven” purely in terms of something that happens later on. Heaven isn’t a “right now” thing, in their mind, it’s a thing that you get in the future. You live your life here on earth, and if you live it in the right kind of way, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll be good enough to go to heaven when you die. Now, there are a lot of different problems with that line of thinking, but besides the obvious works righteousness, there’s also the error of not realizing that we have access to heaven here and now already through the means of grace.

What even is heaven according to the Bible? Heaven isn’t some location far away in the clouds, it’s fellowship with God and all of His saints. It’s Communion with the Lord and those who belong to Him. One of the most common ways that the Holy Spirit describes heaven for us in the Bible is as banquet, or a great feast, that never comes to end. As Jesus says in Matthew chapter 8, “Many will come from the east and the west to recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” And as Saint John tells us in the book of Revelation, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” But the question is, when does the marriage supper of the Lamb really start? When does heaven truly begin? 

Well, what does Jesus tell us in the parable today from Luke chapter 14? He says, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.” The man in the parable clearly is supposed to represent God. The servant is meant to represent God’s messengers who go into the world to proclaim the Gospel. But the message of the Gospel, that your sins are forgiven, and that you’ve been invited back into fellowship with your Creator, isn’t just for a future date. It’s for right now. 

In fact, it happens every single time that we gather together around God’s Word and Sacraments in Church. It happens there because that’s where God promised to be. What do we sing every Sunday in Church that we use Divine Service setting one? For at least a couple of you, I know it’s your favorite hymn. We sing the canticle, “This is the Feast.” And what feast are we talking about? Are we talking about something that’s going to happen later on? No. We’re singing about something that happening right now. This is the Feast. Church is the Feast. What we are doing in the Divine Service is heaven on earth. We’re participating in fellowship with God and all of His saints. We are dining at table, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we eat the Lord’s Body and Drink His Blood, we have communion with the One who suffered and died for our sins.

So, what are people really skipping when they skip Church? They aren’t just skipping a speech from some guy in fancy clothes, or a time to say “hi” to their friends. They’re skipping heaven. And the danger with skipping heaven now, is that you might miss out on it later on. The invitation only lasts for so long. Yes, God has invited us to receive forgiveness, life, and salvation, through His Word and Sacraments, but what happens to those who neglect them? What happens to those who put other things in front of them? As Jesus says at the end of our reading, “None of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.” 

This is a stern warning to us from God’s Word about the dangers skipping Church. Don’t do it. And ff you have done it before, then repent of it, and don’t do it again. Because if you keep doing it without remorse, you put yourself at risk of falling away from the faith. People tend not to lose their faith overnight, and they almost never think they’ve lost it when you ask them.  But one skipped service leads to another, which leads to a month, which leads to two months, which leads to a year, and before you know it you forgot how to say the Apostle’s Creed and what to do at the Communion rail. 

There are lots of different reason why people don’t come to Church. Jesus gives us a couple of the most common ones in our text today. First, there are the guys who say that they can’t come because they’re busy. One of them just bought a field and the other one bought a couple of oxen. This represents those who put things like work, or as they might say “making a living,” before regularly coming to God’s house to receive His gifts. They act as if having a job and paying your bills is more important than getting your sins forgiven and being spiritually fed. Sometimes people who skip church for that reason will make the excuse that Sunday is there only day to sleep in. I heard from another pastor this week, though, that he always tells those people to sleep in on Monday. Just call your boss and tell him that you’re tired and you need to take a break. Obviously, the people always get flabbergasted by that because they know they would get fired. But what the pastor was trying to reveal to them was what their hearts truly valued. They couldn’t even image not getting paid. But they could imagine not getting God’s Word and Sacraments. So, which one of those things did they really care about more? What did they actually think was real? 

The other popular excuse that people sometimes make for why they can’t come to church is because they have other obligations and commitments. This is like the man in the parable who said he couldn’t go to the feast because he just got married. First off, how come you and your wife can’t just go the Feast together? Why does something like marriage, or any other good thing in this life, have to be used against God’s Word instead of to support it? That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Either way, what does God’s Word teach us even about our family if we are to be one of Christ’s disciples? Just two verses after our text today, Jesus says this: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters; yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Now, certainly Jesus doesn’t mean that we should wish evil on those people, and hate them in that way, but that we should love Him and His Word so much more than anything else that to the world it looks like hatred.

Is a father loving Jesus and His Word more than his kids when he lets them skip church to go play sports? Is a wife loving Jesus and his Word more than her husband when she makes excuse for why he’s never there on Sunday’s?  Is a congregation loving Jesus and His Word more than its members when they let people to stay on the roles for years and years and years and defend their absence no matter what, even if they have no good reason for not being in the sanctuary? We know the answer to those questions.

Christ never promised us that being his disciple would be easy. But he did say that it would be worth it. It’s worth it because of what God gives us. Even if no one else wants to come to the Feast, we still know what’s there for us at it, and we need to make it clear to other people what they’re missing out on. Jesus is there. And He is there to bless us, forgive us, and strengthen us to eternal life. He’s there to give us a taste of heaven now, so that when the fulness of it arrives, we won’t miss out.

Yes, there are lots of things that can keep someone from wanting to come to church. But when we know what we get in church and who church is for, that ought to change our perspective about it. What did the master of the feast say about those who had been invited to the banquet? He said, “Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” And after that had been done and there was still room, he said, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compelled people to come in, that my house may be filled.” God wants His house to be filled. He wants each and every person in this world to receive the forgiveness of their sins and enter into His eternal Kingdom. He wants everyone to be saved. Even those who have neglected His invitation in the past, He invites them to come back anyway.  And when we see ourselves in those poor, crippled, lame, and blind people from out text, when we recognize the miserable state of our sinful condition, and the great mercy of God who offers us a place with Him regardless, that alone is what compels us to come in. It’s what keeps us coming back to church again and again and again, and never skipping if it’s left up to our choice.

We go to church not just because of God’s command. We go because of His promise. We go because of what we get there. What we get in church is something that we could never have on our own. We get the forgiveness of our sins. We don’t just get a place in heaven. We get heaven itself.  And that’s why we never give it up for anything else. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The account of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke chapter 16 is supposed to teach us about the good life. Jesus tells us a story about two different men, with two very different lives to show us what kind of things in this life actually matter and what things don’t.

If you didn’t know anything else about them, you’d assume that the rich man had a much better life than Lazarus did. After all, the rich man was rich! He was clothed in purple and fine linen, meaning he had a lot of expensive clothing, and he feasted sumptuously every single day. Apparently, the rich man was so rich that he lived in one of those gated communities, because that’s where it says poor Lazarus was laid out on the ground. And speaking of Lazarus, well, Lazarus had next to nothing. His body wasn’t covered in purple and fine linen. It was covered with sores. Lazarus didn’t get to eat like a king. He barely got to eat anything at all. As our text tells us, he longed for even the scraps of food that fell from the rich man’s table. No doubt, the rich man was been a very prominent person in town, and well respected in the community. That’s why it says he got a funeral after he died. But the only friends that Lazarus had were a pack of dogs that would come by every once and a while to lick his wounds.

And yet, where did each of those two men end up for eternity? The rich man we’re told died and went to hell. The body that he lavished in this life with expensive clothing became food for the worms. The tongue that he used to taste so many exquisite foods longed even for a drop of cool water. In this life, the rich man, received his good things, but then all of those things eventually came to an end. Lazarus, on the other hand, when he died, he went to heaven. Even though his life is this world look miserable, when he left this world, the angels came and carried his soul to Abraham’s side. 

So, the first and most basic thing that we learn about the good life from this text, is that it can’t be measured simply by the things that we have like money or material possessions. Rich people aren’t necessarily rich, and poor people aren’t necessarily poor. At least, not in the truest sense of those terms. In fact, if God can take away everything that we own in a moment, then how can we claim that we even own it at all? We don’t. Everything that we have belongs to the Lord. It has been entrusted to us by God, and eventually He’s going to ask for it back. And when He does, He won’t ask for our permission before He takes it.

That teaches us to look at our possessions differently, and use them for godly purposes. God didn’t give us the things that we have simply so that we could spend them on our passions. He wants us to use them for His glory and the service of our neighbor. There are lots of different ways that we can do that, but one of the main ways according to God’s Word is through our tithes and offerings that we give to the church. What we put into the offering plate is a reflection of what we value. “Where your heart is,” Jesus says, “there your treasure will be also.” What we Christians treasure more than anything else is the Gospel. It’s the forgivness of sins in Christ. Not only do we want to have a place to gather together to receive it, and a pastor who is called and ordained to give it to us, but we want that for other people too. We want it for our kids, and we want it for those who don’t yet know it. So, even if it requires financial sacrifices on our part, we are willing to make them, because of the sacrifice Jesus has already made for us. Isn’t it an amazing thing that God gives us the opportunity to participate in the advancement of his Kingdom by the meager amount of money that we give to the Church to spread the Gospel. Money that belongs to God already.

Another thing that we learn about the good life from the story of the rich man and Lazarus is that it’s always defined by faith. How come Lazarus got to go heaven and the rich man went to hell? Well, it wasn’t just because the rich man was rich and Lazarus was poor. Having a lot of money, or not having any of it at all, isn’t by itself the cause of anyone’s salvation. We know that from this text alone, because who was it that was waiting for Lazarus when he got there? It says, the angles came and carried him to Abraham’s side. That’s very interesting. Because Abraham, according to the Old Testament, was not a poor man by any means. He had so many flocks and herds that at one time he had to split off from his nephew Lot, because there wasn’t enough land for them to go around. So, this shows us that it’s possible to have money and still be saved, even if it’s more difficult. Remember what Jesus says about wealth in Matthew chapter 19, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” That’s because riches can easily pull our attention away from the things that actually matter. They can deceive us into investing everything toward this life, even though this life doesn’t last forever.

The problem, though, is not with having money itself, but with trusting in your money, and worshiping it instead of Christ. And that’s what the rich man did. The reason why he went to hell wasn’t because of what he had. It was because of what he didn’t have. He didn’t have any faith. We know that the rich man didn’t actually believe in Jesus, and trust in Him for the forgivness of his sins, because he despised God’s Word and didn’t love his neighbor.

First, the rich man despised God’s Word. Even after he died and went to hell, he still didn’t think that God’s Word was something worth listening to. That’s why he told Abraham to send someone one from the dead to try and get his brothers to repent, and argued with him, when Abraham said that they didn’t need them because they still had Moses and the Prophets. The rich man didn’t think that was good enough. He thought that the written Word of God was useless and that his brother needed something more if they were going to be saved. But God’s Word is the only thing that can save a person’s souls. God’s Word is the exclusive tool that He uses to bring us to faith. It’s the instrument that the Holy Spirit works through to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the whole Christian Church on earth. If someone won’t listen to God’s Word, then there’s nothing that be done to help them spiritually. And on the flip side, as long as a person is at least open to hearing what God’s Word has to stay, there’s still hope for their salvation.

You can almost image exactly what kind of guy the rich man was like. He was like one of those people who comes to church maybe once or twice a year just to keep up appearances. But when the pastor preached about repentance, forgivness, and feeding your faith with the Word and Sacraments, he didn’t pay any attention. Oh yes, he nodded along with the sermon, as if he cared, but when it was over, he went right back to his same old life of selfish ambition and neglect for the means of grace. Once a year seems like plenty of church time for someone who doesn’t think that they’re that big of a sinner. But how could that be enough if you know the true depravity of your condition?

The other reason why we know the rich man didn’t have any faith, was because of how he treated his neighbor. Every day the rich man had an opportunity to help poor Lazarus who was laid at his gate, but the rich man refused to take it. Maybe he thought that Lazarus deserved to be there. Maybe he thought that if he helped him, Lazarus would never learn to help himself. Who knows how the rich man rationalized his greed and convinced himself that what he was doing was actually a virtue. But God saw right through it. What does Saint John tell us in his first Epistle? “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him.” The rich man closed his heart to others, because his heart was not open to the love of Christ. You can’t give what you have not received, and the rich man had not received the Gospel. He didn’t know what it was like to be saved by grace, and have all of your sins forgiven even though you don’t deserve it, so he withheld things from others when he thought that they didn’t deserve too. But he didn’t deserve what he had either. And then, he got what he deserved for good, which was God’s eternal punishment.

Compare that, though, to what we hear about poor Lazarus. Our text makes it clear that even though he was poor, Lazarus never wanted to be like the rich man and trade places with him entirely. But that’s how it is for a lot of poor people. They’re in the same spiritual condition as the unbelieving rich, because even though they aren’t rich, that’s all that they want to be. Instead of spending their life protecting what they have, like people who have a lot, they waste aways their life wishing that they had more. But not poor Lazarus. All that Lazarus wanted, we’re told, was to eat the scraps of food that fell from the rich man’s table. He would have been content with next to nothing, because Lazarus already knew that he had everything. Even though his body was covered in sores, he knew that in God’s eyes he was clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covered all his sin. Even though he didn’t have any earthly bread to eat, he knew that he had full access to the Bread of Life Himself. Unlike the rich man, Lazarus trusted in Jesus. He knew that when you have Christ, and the forgivness of all of your sins, you have everything worth having, even if you have nothing else.

There’s only one thing in this life that can’t be taken away from us. That’s what the story of the rich man and Lazarus is really about, and that’s how we know what really counts as the good life. The only thing that can’t be taken away from us, is the salvation that God gives us through Jesus. It’s the promise of eternal life that belongs to all those who put their trust in Christ, and rely on Him for forgivness. Remember what Jesus told Mary and Martha that one time that He came into their house and did a Bible study? Martha, we’re told, was busy with much serving, while Mary sat at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching. So, Jesus said to Mary, “She has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

There’s nothing in this life that can’t be taken away from you at any moment. You could lose your house. You could lose your health. You could lose your spouse or your children. You could lose your own life. But if you’ve already died with Christ, if you’ve been joined to him through a living faith, that relies on His Word and clings to His promises, you’ll be raised to new life again. No matter what kind of life God gives you to live here in this world, you’ll enjoy never-ending life with Him in eternity.

So, don’t waste away your life on things that don’t matter. Invest it in the things that do. Don’t skip church. Never miss out on hearing God’s Word with your brothers and sister in Christ, and don’t neglect taking Communion. Read your Bibles at home and say your prayers every night. Be generous with what you have, and gladly tithe your income. Love and serve the people around you through your various vocations, and tell them why you’re doing it. It isn’t because you’re trying to earn your salvation, it’s because you already have it. It’s because Jesus gave everything that He had to save you, so how could you withhold anything that you have from others?

The good life is the life of faith.  It isn’t measured by how much money you have.  It doesn’t come by getting a bunch of stuff.  The true value of the good life is hidden in the life of Jesus Christ. It’s revealed to us in God’s Word, which tells us about how the Son of God suffered and died in our place. When you listen to what God’s Word teaches, you know what it means to be truly rich. You know that when you have the forgiveness of your sins in Jesus you are rich even if you’ve lost everything else. You know that when you a clothed with the righteousness of Christ through faith you are precious in the sight of God even if you are covered with sores inside and out. You know that when Christ has washed you clean in your Baptism, and purified you with His blood in Communion, you’re a child of Abraham, and someday you’ll enter into an inheritance that is far better than anything this world has to offer. Because even if you find yourself lying on the ground, beaten down by life, when you die, the angels will come and carry your soul to heaven. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Isaiah’s vision of God sitting upon His heavenly throne from Isaiah chapter 6 is the perfect text for us to hear on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, because Isaiah’s vision reminds what God is like and this is the day in Church year when consider God’s properties and His essence. It’s the day when we Christians think more deeply about God Himself. 

The first thing that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God is that He is Triune. To be Triune means to be three in one. God is Three in One because even though there is only one God, the Bible teaches us that there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead. The Father is God. The Son is God. And the Holy Spirit is God. And yet, as we say in the Athanasian Creed, there are not three gods, but One God. When the angles sang to one another in Isaiah’s vision, they said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” The angels called the One Lord, “holy,” three times over, because He is thrice holy. He is Three in One. 

Sometimes it’s suggested that the doctrine of the Trinity is not something that comes from the Bible but something that the Church just made up later on. But that’s not true at all. God has revealed Himself as Triune all throughout the Scriptures in both the Old and the New Testaments alike. In addition to what the angels sang in Isaiah vision, there is also, for example, the way that God spoke about Himself at the very beginning of creation. Right before God created Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter one, the Bible tells us that God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth. So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.” Notice how in these verses God refers to Himself in both the singular and the plural. That’s because He is both of those things at the same time. He is Three in One. Likewise, we find another reference to the Trinity in the words of King David from Psalm 110. In fact, if you remember, this is the exact passage that Jesus once used to prove His divinity to the Pharisees. David says, in the Spirit, “The Lordsays to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Here, again, we have a reference to all three Persons of the Holy Trinity. There is David speaking in the Spirit about God the Father talking with God the Son. And all of this comes from the same Old Testament that tells us plainly, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

Besides the many references to the Trinity in the Old Testament, there are also, of course, an overwhelming number of passages about it in the New Testament. There’s Jesus’s Baptism where God the Father speaks from heaven to God the Son while God the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove. There are the words of Jesus from John 8 and John 14, where Christ tells us that He is the “I AM” and that whoever has “seen Him has seen the Father.” There’s the Great Commission, where Jesus commands His church to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in God’s Name, the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then there are the letters of Saint Paul in which almost every single one of them either begins or ends with an explicit reference to the Triune God. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says, “the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

The real reason why some people reject the doctrine of Trinity in not because it isn’t found in the Bible, but because it is hard for them to understand. In fact, it’s impossible for us to understand. How can God be Three in One? How can Jesus be God, and the Father be God, and the Holy Spirit be God, and there still only be One God? The answer is, only God knows. One of the things that makes God, God in the first place is the reality that He is beyond our understanding. God knows more than we do, and especially about Himself. If we can’t even understand things like gravity, or time and space, and get overwhelmed when we try think about how those things for too long, then why would we expect to have prefect understanding of the One who made all of those things to begin with? We shouldn’t. We should approach God with humility. We should listen to what God says about Himself in His Word and then we should simply say back to Him the same thing, even if it doesn’t always make perfect sense to us.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not a way to try and explain God, or make sense of God, it is the Biblical way to confess God. We confess God in the way that He tells us to confess Him, because every other thing that someone might say about Him is just another way to deny Him. Whenever a person denies the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other teaching from the Bible for that matter, because it’s beyond their reason, what they are really doing is denying God Himself. They’re putting themselves in the place of God, and worshiping their own brain instead of the One who gave it. They are turning their mind into an idol. But the problem with idols is that they can’t save us. Only God can save us. And as we are reminded from Isaiah’s vision, the real God is Triune. He is Three in One.

The second thing that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God is that He is Holy. Besides being Three in One, and each Person of the Trinity being perfectly united with one another other while at the same time perfectly distinct from each other, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are also altogether perfect in every way imaginable. Again, when the angels sang their song about God in Isaiah’s vision they said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” God is Holy in and of Himself because He is without the one thing that makes something unholy. God is without sin. As the Bible says elsewhere, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; and evil may not dwell with you.” 

Yes, it’s true that when the prophet Isaiah got to look at God in all of His glory, it made him very afraid. But the reason why Isaiah was so terrified was not because there was something wrong with God, but because there was something wrong with him. Isaiah was a sinner.  As Isaiah himself said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” All throughout the Scriptures, there are examples of sinners coming into contact with God and that encounter bringing them to their knees in humble repentance. What did Saint Peter do when he witnessed the miraculous catch of fish? The moment that Peter realized what had taken place, and who he was standing next to, he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet and said to Him, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man.”

God’s Word shows us repeatedly that it’s not safe for sinners to stand in the presence of God with their sin. And that’s not because God is not good. It is because His goodness is so good that it cannot tolerate any evil at all. Just like a police officer can be good and dangerous at the same time, because they’re dangerous to those who are breaking the law, that is how it is with God too. That is how it is with the Author of the Law. One of the things that His perfect holiness always does is expose our unholiness. It shows us just how bad our sin really is.

It's become very popular these day for churches to replace Biblical concepts like “sin” with words that don’t sound so accusatory like “brokenness.” Especially among the so-called Evangelicals, you will hear people go on and on about how broken they are or how broken the world is, but what you will rarely, if ever, hear them talk about is who did the breaking. But that is very far away from what Isaiah said about himself, and not nearly enough of what the Bible tells us about ourselves. Who did the breaking? Why is there so much suffering in the world? It is not because of God, and it is not only because of other people. It’s also because of us. And the problem with “brokenness theology” is that it shifts the blame away from us. It allows people not to take accountability for their own sin, which makes it impossible for them to receive forgiveness for it.

The first thing that we Lutherans do in our worship services is have confession and absolution. When we come into God’s House, and approach the throne of His holy altar, before we say anything else, the first thing that we say is that we don’t deserve to be there. The first thing that we do is acknowledge that if God did what was right, that is, if He did what He had every right to do, we wouldn’t be allowed to be there at all. We don’t shift the blame to somebody else. We don’t pretend that there is no one to blame at all. We take the blame ourselves. If we have sin in our lives, we confess it for what it is. If we’ve put things before God and His Word, if we’ve skipped church, been lazy in our prayers or devotional life, dishonored our parents, hurt our neighbor, polluted our bodies, lied, lusted, cheated, or stolen, we admit it. We own up to it and we repent of it. We ask God to take away our sins from us, because if He didn’t do that, then our sins without a doubt condemn us. If God didn’t remove our sins from us, then as Isaiah says, we would all be lost. And again, that is because God is holy.

But the last, and the most important thing, that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God, is that He is merciful. Not only is God Triune, and not only is He holy, but above all, He is forgiving. The perfect God wants to be with His imperfect creatures. And since, we cannot stand to be with Him because of our sins, He Himself does what we could never do and takes those sins away. After Isaiah cried out to God in repentance, after he admitted to God who he was, what he had done, and what he deserved to happen to him because he did it, what did God do for Isaiah? God sent one of the seraphim to him, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. Then the angel touched Isaiah’s mouth and said to him, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

When we confess our sins to God, God forgives them. He forgives them, because He has already atoned for them. His very own Son paid the price for them all. As we read in Revelation chapter 13, “the Lamb was slain from the creation of the world.” That doesn’t mean that Jesus died on the cross before God made the heavens and the earth, but it does mean that what He did in space and time, counts for everyone no matter what place and time they live in. Isaiah lived long before Jesus was ever born, and you live long after. But the atoning sacrifice of Christ is what makes it possible for us to stand in God’s presence. 

One of my favorite parts of the Lutheran Liturgy, besides the confession of sin, is what we sing right before the pastor says the Words of Institution and we take Communion. I don’t know if you’ve ever made this connection before, but we sing the song of the angles. We sing the same thing that the six-winged seraphim sang from our reading today: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of power and might; heaven and earth are full of His glory.” The reason why we sing that song when we do is because it reminds us of how the same thing that happened for Isaiah also happens for us. When Isaiah confessed His sins to God, and humbled himself before the Lord, God provided him with a pledge and promise of His forgivness. When Isaiah admitted that he was a man of unclean lips, who dwelled in the midst of a people of unclean lips too, God sent one of His messengers to take something off the altar and place it on his lips to cleanse him. And what happens for us when we take Holy Communion? God sends one of His messengers to His altar again, to place something on our lips that cleanse us too. He gives us a pastor to bring us the Body and Blood of Jesus, which though it can be like a burning coal for those who take it wrongly, is the assurance of forgivness, life, and salvation, for all those who receive it in faith.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is the high point of our worship service. It’s the greatest moment in our life, even though it can happen every week or multiple times a week, because it’s the moment that we come in contact with the Triune God who gives us healing. If you’re weak and ashamed, if you’re disgusted with yourself and your sins, if you’ve done things that make you feel gross, and you wish you’d never done them, but can’t take them back, God has given you a remedy for that. He’s given you the Blood of His Son. Remember what Saint John tells us about the Blood of Christ in 1 John chapter 1. The blood of Jesus His Son,” he says, “cleanses us for all sin.” All sin. The sins you know about. The sins you’ve forgotten. The sins that keep you up at night. And the sins that you just can’t seem to stop doing no matter how hard you try. Through the blood of Jesus, God takes them away. And when you eat His Body and drink His Blood, in faith God cleanses you from them, like He cleansed Isaiah. He makes you fit for His presence and His service, and equips you to live in your vocations with a clean conscience.

Isaiah’s vision of God from Isaiah chapter six reminds us what God is like. He is triune. He is holy. And He is merciful. That’s the way that God has revealed Himself to us in His Word, and so that’s the way that we confess Him before the world. That is what we say about Him even if it means saying things that other people don’t like to hear. The world doesn’t think that it’s very nice to tell the Mormons, the Muslims, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Jews that they aren’t worshiping the true God because all of them deny the Trinity. But we say it anyway, because we know that it’s only the Triune God who can save us. It’s only Jesus who has the power to take away our sin. And He has. So let us worship Him in the Unity of the Divine Majesty, praising God together with the angels, and singing with them, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.