Johnny Gravino: Buongiorno.
Johnny Gravino: We're back in Rome, and so the Italian is flowing out.
Johnny Gravino: I just really want to thank you so much for just uh receiving me once again.
Johnny Gravino: This has been a wonderful trip, a quick trip, and uh uh have been back to just celebrate the baptism of our son Samuel in Atlanta, and that was a real joy.
Johnny Gravino: But uh I didn't want to go back without visiting you all.
Johnny Gravino: And uh it's just been a real privilege to be with your pastor this week.
Johnny Gravino: Uh, I will say, without embarrassing him, there is no one who has uh ministered to me more uh than he has done over the course of uh this past year and ministered to our family.
Johnny Gravino: And so you are very blessed to have him in your midst and of course all your leaders.
Johnny Gravino: Uh and I have consider myself incredibly privileged to preach Isaiah and to uh sort of interrupt um in the midst of wonderful sermons that you are receiving already, having listened to your pastor online and discussed Isaiah, and so this is a rich moment for me.
Johnny Gravino: And yes, I am also here for Banu's cooking.
Johnny Gravino: In Isaiah 56, beginning verses 1 through 8, we will look at the servant according to Isaiah, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the coming of the Son, more specifically, and the people to come.
Johnny Gravino: God's people that will be drawn to him through the Son's coming.
Johnny Gravino: And so our focus will be on the sun and on the people.
Johnny Gravino: Before us, then in our passage is the sun and the people, the people to come, the people the sun will bring to salvation with his coming.
Johnny Gravino: Through the prophecy, Isaiah's vision, we we are given a portrait of salvation in the last days.
Johnny Gravino: Salvation in the last days, what does it look like?
Johnny Gravino: Isaiah's message is in the last days, salvation will include all peoples.
Johnny Gravino: All peoples.
Johnny Gravino: Herein lies the subject matter of chapters 56 through 66, this final section of the book that you have been blessed to go through until now.
Johnny Gravino: The salvation Isaiah looks to, in other words, includes all the peoples of the earth, all those God will draw, called to himself through the sons, justification of the many, you know this, through his being pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, chastened for our peace, and wounded so that we could be healed, Isaiah 53, 5.
Johnny Gravino: This salvation will reach to the end of the earth, Isaiah 49.
Johnny Gravino: Jesus tells his disciples before his ascension, and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth, Luke 118.
Johnny Gravino: And so may this message give us great encouragement to continue on being his disciples to a people through the Son.
Johnny Gravino: Please follow along as we read our passage, Isaiah 56, verses 1 through 8.
Johnny Gravino: Thus says Yahweh, keep justice and do righteousness, for my salvation is about to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.
Johnny Gravino: How blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath, and keeps his hand from doing eve any evil.
Johnny Gravino: Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh say, Yahweh will surely separate me from his people.
Johnny Gravino: Nor let the eunuchs say, Behold, I am a dry tree.
Johnny Gravino: For thus says Yahweh, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me, and hold fast my covenant, to them I will give my house and within my walls a memorial, and a name better than that of sons and daughters, and I will give them an everlasting name, which will not be cut off.
Johnny Gravino: Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to minister to him, and to love the name of Yahweh, to be his slaves, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and takes hold of my covenant, even those I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them glad in my house of prayer.
Johnny Gravino: Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.
Johnny Gravino: Lord Yahweh, who gathers the banished of Israel, declares, Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered.
Johnny Gravino: Our passage can be understood according to the following outline, just by way of help.
Johnny Gravino: The salvation the Lord is bringing in the last days includes, first of all, the perfect son.
Johnny Gravino: Verses one and two will highlight the perfect son.
Johnny Gravino: He is the perfect people, perfect head of the people of God, because this is all about, all about the people, the nature of the people that God will save on that last day, the perfect son, the servant, as you've heard until now.
Johnny Gravino: Our passage begins then with the son, who represents the sons, plural.
Johnny Gravino: And secondly, as you already heard, the people, the people to come with the son, the perfect son of God, verses three through eight.
Johnny Gravino: And so as we begin to understand our text and focus on the sun, please follow along with that overview as we draw upon our passage to look and exalt this perfect son.
Johnny Gravino: He is the one through whom the people will come.
Johnny Gravino: Salvation, in other words, in the last days, please hear me out, will be the work of the sun.
Johnny Gravino: We are gathered here this morning to worship the sun as a fruit of his saving work.
Johnny Gravino: Salvation in the last days will be the work of the Son.
Johnny Gravino: It is He alone who is the perfect one, the righteous one, the only one who can fulfill the righteous requirements of God's law and who fulfilled them.
Johnny Gravino: Please observe the presence of the law, God's law, in verses one and two of our text.
Johnny Gravino: Notice again, thus says Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: The first part of verse one introduces the authoritative word of God's special revelation.
Johnny Gravino: This is his law.
Johnny Gravino: Notice how the first two verses then proceed to employ legal expressions and terms.
Johnny Gravino: Keep justice and do righteousness, and my righteousness to be revealed.
Johnny Gravino: How blessed is the man who does this, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath, all throughout verse 1.
Johnny Gravino: All of the language, all of the language heard, from Yahweh's word, thus says Yahweh, onward, is covenantal language, the language of covenant.
Johnny Gravino: It is, moreover, the language of a legal or law covenant.
Johnny Gravino: Follow along, listen to Deuteronomy 5, verses 1 and 2.
Johnny Gravino: I'll read these passages for us.
Johnny Gravino: Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgments which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and be careful to do them.
Johnny Gravino: Verse 2 of Deuteronomy 5 continues, Yahweh our God, cut a covenant with us at Horeb.
Johnny Gravino: What is a covenant?
Johnny Gravino: At its core, a covenant is a relationship whereby God chooses to love a person and a people for himself.
Johnny Gravino: In return, he expects those same people to love him through their obedience to his commands.
Johnny Gravino: Righteousness and righteous living results from this.
Johnny Gravino: The obedient life, living in obedience to God's law, upholds justice and righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: You know this from the Old Testament, walking wisely in the fear of the Lord and giving testimony to the oneness of God, that He alone is God and there is no other.
Johnny Gravino: Deuteronomy 6.4 is another example.
Johnny Gravino: Summons Israel to this obedient life.
Johnny Gravino: Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one, you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Johnny Gravino: These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.
Johnny Gravino: You shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Johnny Gravino: Back in Exodus 19, where the covenant between God and Israel is first cut, we hear these familiar words.
Johnny Gravino: So now then, if you will indeed listen to my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Johnny Gravino: These are the words that introduce our passage, the context, if you will.
Johnny Gravino: And yet we know that this is not only Israel's covenant, but it is our covenant, in that God established it from the very beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth with Adam, our forefather in the garden.
Johnny Gravino: Do you remember?
Johnny Gravino: Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
Johnny Gravino: And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may surely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for it.
Johnny Gravino: For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.
Johnny Gravino: Genesis 2, 15 through 17.
Johnny Gravino: Please, please hear the law through that first command given to Adam and the requirement to keep it by way of his obedient work in cultivating the garden.
Johnny Gravino: It is this principle of righteousness that God requires from those he has chosen to love and to be in relationship with, covenant with.
Johnny Gravino: It is this same expectation to keep justice and righteousness present throughout Israel's history, as witnessed from the citations from Deuteronomy and Exodus and from Isaiah's prophecy, as heard in our own passage in Isaiah 56:1.
Johnny Gravino: It is this same requirement, by the way, that still holds true for us today.
Johnny Gravino: A Pharisee tests Jesus, asking him, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law, Matthew writes.
Johnny Gravino: And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Johnny Gravino: This is the great and foremost commandment.
Johnny Gravino: And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew 22.
Johnny Gravino: Summarizing the Old Testament, Jesus adds, On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets, and you say, What is your point?
Johnny Gravino: Here is the bad news.
Johnny Gravino: It continues to be that principle of obedience to God's law that we have all broken.
Johnny Gravino: Speaking of transgression and death in Adam, Paul writes to the Romans, Therefore, just as though one man sinned and entered, and sin and death entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because we all sinned.
Johnny Gravino: Isaiah himself acknowledges this in his own vision when he declares in Isaiah chapter 24, 5, you've heard it before, the earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they trespassed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.
Johnny Gravino: If we are gathered here this morning to exalt the Son, it is certainly not our merit, nor our works.
Johnny Gravino: Please listen, our works, works of righteousness to keep and do the law, have brought upon us a curse.
Johnny Gravino: For as many as are the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them.
Johnny Gravino: Returning to verse one of our passage, Isaiah 56, we now have a context to understand the words that follow God's word.
Johnny Gravino: Keep justice and do righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: The second half of verse one.
Johnny Gravino: Very interesting.
Johnny Gravino: While the command for God's justice and righteousness does not change, while the command results in condemnation for the people's inability, inability to keep justice and do righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: God's own salvation and righteousness are drawing near and to be unveiled.
Johnny Gravino: This is the sense of the revealing.
Johnny Gravino: Hence God's grace.
Johnny Gravino: Herein lies the good news from Isaiah's day forward.
Johnny Gravino: And grace of God for the people, for all peoples.
Johnny Gravino: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
Johnny Gravino: Galatians 3:19, 3.13.
Johnny Gravino: We have a Savior projected already from this time forward, who will obey, who will keep justice, who will do righteousness on our behalf.
Johnny Gravino: What is then the meaning of God's salvation about to come and God's righteousness about to reveal to be revealed in Isaiah 56.1?
Johnny Gravino: Better yet, better yet, who is God's coming salvation and revealed righteousness?
Johnny Gravino: He is none other than Jesus Christ, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, the Son of God, who will be given as a covenant sacrifice for the peoples, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 49, for Jews and Gentiles.
Johnny Gravino: Obedience He will obey in their light, in light of their disobedience to God's law and covenantal relationship.
Johnny Gravino: That is why he is my Savior and Lord.
Johnny Gravino: That is why I stand here with you in brotherhood and fellowship in the Spirit today.
Johnny Gravino: He obeyed on my behalf and took my curse.
Johnny Gravino: Notice Isaiah's words in chapter 55.
Johnny Gravino: You've already heard it wonderfully preached.
Johnny Gravino: Just immediately prior to our own passage and chapter, incline your ear and come to me.
Johnny Gravino: Listen that your soul may live, and I will cut an everlasting covenant with you.
Johnny Gravino: According to the faithful, loving kindness of David, behold, I have given him as a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander for the peoples.
Johnny Gravino: Behold, you will call a nation you do not know, and a nation which knows you not will run to you because of Yahweh your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for he has adorned you with beautiful glory, by the servants, obedience.
Johnny Gravino: We are adorned with beautiful glory, so that we join with other people and peoples of nations to be one by grace to worship.
Johnny Gravino: Notice verse two as we move forward of our passage, Isaiah 56, verse 2 continues the theme of law-keeping by the lawkeeper, not by us.
Johnny Gravino: The servant, God's coming salvation and righteousness revealed, Jesus Christ once again through the though the people are in view, as in verse 1, the perfect son is truly he who is the fulfillment of God's expectations for and on behalf of and as a representative of the people.
Johnny Gravino: And so, as we understand our passage and read it, we are always thinking of the Son, the Son, the Son, or better yet, we are thinking in Christ, in Christ, in Christ.
Johnny Gravino: The perfect son.
Johnny Gravino: Hence, as in verse 1, and together with verse 1, the Son is Yahweh's intent.
Johnny Gravino: It is he whom the people must hope in to fulfill all righteousness, Matthew 3:15.
Johnny Gravino: I am not attempting to keep justice and do righteousness on my own behalf, apart from Christ.
Johnny Gravino: But Isaiah presents my hope by which I am a people, by which I stand with the family of God in God's church.
Johnny Gravino: It is Him and only Him.
Johnny Gravino: Turn to Christ.
Johnny Gravino: Whether you have not believed or believed, turn to Christ.
Johnny Gravino: The language depicting the Son is even more pronounced than in verse 1.
Johnny Gravino: Observe the mention of the man in How Blessed is the man, beginning verse 2 of our passage.
Johnny Gravino: How blessed is the man, the son of man, spoken of in the second line of verse 2.
Johnny Gravino: The references address every man in general, pointing to the common man and a universal manhood, man and woman.
Johnny Gravino: It is this son of Adam and Son of God, going all the way back to the creation of the first man, that must do and take hold of God's justice and righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: God's law, I am hidden behind him.
Johnny Gravino: He must also keep from profaning the Sabbath and keep his hand from doing any evil, verse 2.
Johnny Gravino: These latter two commands are stated as, notice, repeated patterns of conduct.
Johnny Gravino: There is no interruption in this lifestyle at all.
Johnny Gravino: All of the actions themselves in verses 1 and 2 emphasize, particularly in verse 2, emphasize a continuity such that this man is consistently walking in obedience to God.
Johnny Gravino: Here in Isaiah's expectations on behalf of God, he takes hold of this obedience.
Johnny Gravino: At the end of the second line of verse 2, the expression itself, taking hold of, is rooted upon a very strong term addressing strength.
Johnny Gravino: The behavior, moreover, is intensive.
Johnny Gravino: This man, in other words, has a firm grip on the law and resolutely does not let it go, but walks in it blamelessly.
Johnny Gravino: You say, Is this me or is this you?
Johnny Gravino: Not at all.
Johnny Gravino: This is certainly not Paul, nor you and I apart from Christ.
Johnny Gravino: For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, for the willing is present in me, but the working out of the good is not.
Johnny Gravino: For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want to do.
Johnny Gravino: You know this, Romans 7.
Johnny Gravino: A few verses later, Paul says, I find then this principle, the principle of the law, what Isaiah is talking about.
Johnny Gravino: I find then the principle that in me evil is present, in me who wants to do good.
Johnny Gravino: You know how this passage ends so marvelously.
Johnny Gravino: Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death.
Johnny Gravino: You could almost say it, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Johnny Gravino: That is the message of Isaiah 56, verses 1 and 2 for the people.
Johnny Gravino: Thanks be to God.
Johnny Gravino: Jesus Christ is the one, the one and only who can completely fulfill the principle Paul and every man, including you and I, struggles to obey because of our captivity, enslavement to the law of sin and death.
Johnny Gravino: Jesus alone is the blessed man of Psalm 1.
Johnny Gravino: How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and in his law he meditates day and night.
Johnny Gravino: Jesus is the man of Psalm 15.
Johnny Gravino: Please don't read Psalm 15 apart from Christ.
Johnny Gravino: David, the author, fixes his eyes on the coming servant when he asks, Oh Yahweh, who may sojourn in your tent, who may dwell on your holy mountain?
Johnny Gravino: He who walks blamelessly and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart.
Johnny Gravino: And as we even heard this morning in our ABF class, and repeatedly you've heard through Isaiah, that is no one, no one among the prophets, among the people, and among even God's church, except for who?
Johnny Gravino: Christ, the suffering servant.
Johnny Gravino: The suffering servant.
Johnny Gravino: David ends the psalm with the words He who does these things will never be shaken.
Johnny Gravino: Herein lies the character from Isaiah onward.
Johnny Gravino: Notice, from the Old Testament, herein lies the character of our Christ, God in Christ.
Johnny Gravino: The character of the Son of Man is the character of the one, the only one who has taken hold of the law, set his face like a flint to perfectly obey it and die on our behalf.
Johnny Gravino: The author and perfecter of our faith, he is the true Israel.
Johnny Gravino: The Son called out from Egypt, out of Egypt, fulfilling our redemption in Israel's place, where both Adam and Israel failed.
Johnny Gravino: He is the Lord of the Sabbath.
Johnny Gravino: Both Isaiah 50, Isaiah 1 and 58, by the way, unmask Israel's hypocrisy, even in Sabbath keeping.
Johnny Gravino: Notice our passage as we end our first section on looking at the perfect sun.
Johnny Gravino: There's almost a play on words in the last two lines of verse 2 as related to the Sabbath.
Johnny Gravino: Israel's Sabbath keeping was just that: profaning and doing evil on it, using their hands, there is the imagery of violence, using their hands to do harm rather than good.
Johnny Gravino: In other words, they were showing up to the temple, as you know, to give lip service.
Johnny Gravino: And the Sabbath had become a paganistic ritual.
Johnny Gravino: Like Sodom and Gomorrah, the people, though the people convened in solemn assembly and appointed times, though they were very religious on the outside, new moon festivals and Sabbaths, their sacrifices and offerings, the Lord pronounces as worthless.
Johnny Gravino: They spread out their hands in prayer, but their hands were full of blood.
Johnny Gravino: They did not reprove the ruthless, nor execute justice for the orphan, and did not plead for the widow.
Johnny Gravino: They couldn't, because they were enslaved and needed to take hold of the promise of the servant, and yet they refused, and remained in their wickedness, and then and yet worshipped.
Johnny Gravino: How ugly is that?
Johnny Gravino: The Lord therefore hated their gatherings and was burdened and weary of bearing them.
Johnny Gravino: Isaiah 1, verses 10 to 17, paraphrasing, get away from me, get away from me, get away from me, and yet keep justice, do righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: Lord, how?
Johnny Gravino: Lord, how come to the servant?
Johnny Gravino: Come to the servant, come to Christ.
Johnny Gravino: That is the same message for us.
Johnny Gravino: Dear beloved brothers and sisters, from the perfect son, our passage moves to the people to come, from the perfect son to the people to come.
Johnny Gravino: God's people that will be drawn to him through the son's coming.
Johnny Gravino: This is the people we look forward to.
Johnny Gravino: This is the people by God's grace that we are.
Johnny Gravino: This is the church.
Johnny Gravino: From the Son, we move to the people.
Johnny Gravino: With the coming of the fullness of time, in that future day, please listen, God will send forth his son, who will be born of a woman.
Johnny Gravino: Paul says in Galatians 4, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Johnny Gravino: Our sonship is again by the grace of God in Christ.
Johnny Gravino: Verses 3 through 7 of Isaiah 56, verses 3 through 7 of our passage, in our passage, notice they point to the type of sons this future day will join together in solemn assembly.
Johnny Gravino: In other words, the foreigner and the eunuch, while they are welcome and demonstrating the Abrahamic promise already in Isaiah's day, please don't stop there.
Johnny Gravino: They are a type of what the coming and gathering will be.
Johnny Gravino: Thanks be to Christ, to God in Christ.
Johnny Gravino: These are the type of sons.
Johnny Gravino: Yahweh speaks to the foreigner first.
Johnny Gravino: The verses three, the first part of verse three and six and seven, and then we have to the eunuch second.
Johnny Gravino: Again, last part of verse three through five.
Johnny Gravino: Verse eight concludes our passage by looking to the others.
Johnny Gravino: Praise God for the others, because that is you and I.
Johnny Gravino: The fulfillment of the types of people, the foreigner and the eunuch, that God is assembling to himself in Isaiah's day.
Johnny Gravino: These include all peoples, all the peoples universally that will gather as God's people in Christ's body in the last days.
Johnny Gravino: There is no exception, there is no exclusion to and in God's church except by grace through faith alone, through the blood of the Lamb.
Johnny Gravino: Notice to the foreigner first, to the foreigner, literally, literally, the word means son of the foreign, intended as foreign land.
Johnny Gravino: At the Exodus, it is recorded that a foreign multitude also went up with them, Israel.
Johnny Gravino: And so, again, already we see the signs of where God's redemption is leading, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock, Exodus 1238.
Johnny Gravino: At the institution of the Passover meal, at the institution of the Passover meal, Yahweh speaks to both Moses and Aaron concerning such foreigners.
Johnny Gravino: They shall not eat of it unless all their males are circumcised.
Johnny Gravino: Then the foreigners, sojourners sojourning within with Israel, can come to celebrate it, and he shall be like a native of the land.
Johnny Gravino: But no uncircumcised person may eat of it.
Johnny Gravino: Both native and sojourner, notice, will be under the same law.
Johnny Gravino: In other words, they will be treated as equal before the Lord, as the same one people.
Johnny Gravino: There has always been a place for foreigners in Israel among God's people.
Johnny Gravino: Notice their description here in our passage at verse 3 again.
Johnny Gravino: Look at verse 3.
Johnny Gravino: They are the ones who have joined themselves to Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: The meaning of joining is very profound here.
Johnny Gravino: The joining is similar to that of the man and the woman uniting in marriage.
Johnny Gravino: There is a covenantal bond established.
Johnny Gravino: The word is, moreover, in the passive, such that the foreigner is joined to God.
Johnny Gravino: In other words, God is joining him.
Johnny Gravino: God's drawing them to him, a call to God in faith as a proselyte to Israel.
Johnny Gravino: At the end of verse 4 of our passage, referring to the eunuch, Yahweh speaks of him as holding fast my his covenant.
Johnny Gravino: Last part of verse 4.
Johnny Gravino: Furthermore, furthermore, verse 6 once again refers to foreigners joining themselves to Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: And in verse 7, Yahweh welcomes them, bringing them to his holy mountain, making them glad in his house of prayer, and accepting their burnt offerings and sacrifices as acceptable on his altar.
Johnny Gravino: Verses 6 and 7.
Johnny Gravino: Please notice the grace, the long suffering of God.
Johnny Gravino: He wants people.
Johnny Gravino: It's almost as though you hear repeatedly, please come, please come, come in repentance and faith.
Johnny Gravino: Come, let nothing stop you.
Johnny Gravino: Come to the Savior, bow before him in worship.
Johnny Gravino: Please come.
Johnny Gravino: It is he who will wash you in belief.
Johnny Gravino: It is he who has washed you as the elect people of God being drawn.
Johnny Gravino: Please come.
Johnny Gravino: Everything is evidence again of the Abrahamic promise coming to fruition.
Johnny Gravino: And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
Johnny Gravino: These foreigners, notice, these foreigners hold fast not to the law covenant, nor to the principle of law, but they are holding fast to the promise of a new covenant.
Johnny Gravino: The author of Hebrews speaks of Christ as the mediator, you know, of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.
Johnny Gravino: For if that first covenant had been faultless, says the author of Hebrews, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.
Johnny Gravino: Let me ask you, whose fault?
Johnny Gravino: Whose fault was the failure of the first?
Johnny Gravino: Answer Israel's, the people's, ours, if you will.
Johnny Gravino: They could not keep justice and do righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: They could not take hold of the law, nor keep from profaning the Sabbath and their hand from doing evil.
Johnny Gravino: They are, they are the vine growers, whom Jesus recounts in a parable to the people in Matthew 21, Mark 12, and Luke 20.
Johnny Gravino: What did the vine growers do?
Johnny Gravino: They thought they were the privileged ones, and yet they killed the beloved son of the owner of the vineyard.
Johnny Gravino: And so the vineyard owner destroyed them and gave the vineyard to others.
Johnny Gravino: In Matthew's version of the parable, Jesus tells the chief priests and the Pharisees, Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it.
Johnny Gravino: I am looking out at this nation.
Johnny Gravino: By grace, rejoice, embrace the Savior, and continue in Christ's likeness according to the Savior.
Johnny Gravino: There is more fruit and harvest out there.
Johnny Gravino: To these others, then, the foreigners who did not reject the chief cornerstone, nor fall on the stone that crushes those who stumble on it, but love Yahweh, walk in his ways and cling to him, Deuteronomy 11.
Johnny Gravino: Yahweh promises that he will, please notice our text again, verse 3.
Johnny Gravino: Yahweh promises that he will surely not separate them from his people.
Johnny Gravino: Verse 3, Isaiah 56.
Johnny Gravino: Surely separate is intensified so that the beginning negation, not in let not the foreigner at the beginning of verse 3, the foreigner is urged, in other words, to banish the thought that he should ever be cut off from God's people.
Johnny Gravino: Hey, who am I?
Johnny Gravino: Why should God choose me?
Johnny Gravino: Banish the thought.
Johnny Gravino: You are nothing, I am nothing, but once he chooses you, he will never let go.
Johnny Gravino: It is, it is an everlasting choice by his choice and grace in Christ.
Johnny Gravino: And so the foreigner is tremendously encouraged here.
Johnny Gravino: Rather, the end of verse seven, rather than letting go and cutting away, as those who refuse the stone and the servant, the end of verse 7 says that the foreigner will be in God's house of prayer, because it is a house, notice, for all peoples.
Johnny Gravino: At the dedication of the temple, Solomon prays that the newly built house of God would receive the prayer of foreigners.
Johnny Gravino: First Kings eight.
Johnny Gravino: Solomon prays, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name, to fear you, as do your people Israel, and to know your name is called upon this house which I have built.
Johnny Gravino: Solomon's prayer.
Johnny Gravino: Notice the temple is God's dwelling on earth to listen to the prayers and supplications of his people Israel.
Johnny Gravino: We get a very profound picture of the temple here back in Solomon's day, and all those who joined themselves to Israel.
Johnny Gravino: This is Solomon's description of it, 1 Kings 8, 28 to 30.
Johnny Gravino: Yahweh, uh notice, Yahweh is to listen to the people's confession of sin and pardon them, forgiving all their transgressions, for they are his inheritance.
Johnny Gravino: In speaking of the new covenant, Jeremiah says, But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Johnny Gravino: And they will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother.
Johnny Gravino: I love thee each man, saying, No, Yahweh, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares Yahweh, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.
Johnny Gravino: The new covenant, please observe, will accomplish what the temple pleads for full forgiveness, full forgiveness that you and I today have, by virtue of Christ, complete pardon.
Johnny Gravino: Do you realize the grace that abounds in our midst and in our lives by the Spirit of Christ?
Johnny Gravino: Notice then the temple's role.
Johnny Gravino: The temple's role.
Johnny Gravino: It is a house of prayer that supplicates God for his atonement.
Johnny Gravino: It is the place of refuge, what the promise of atonement, complete pardon, awaits God's fulfillment of it as pledged to David, Solomon's father in covenant, 1 Kings 8.
Johnny Gravino: It is the temporary dwelling that points to the arrival of a new covenant and a new David.
Johnny Gravino: From that house, we have moved to this house in Christ by the Spirit, full pardon, full access, full grace, one with God in Christ and His people.
Johnny Gravino: This coming one will be displayed publicly by God as a propitiation in his blood for a demonstration of God's righteousness and forbearance, passing over the sins previously committed, sins from the temple days, as the prayers of the foreigner and the Israelite in Solomon's temple hoped for, hoped in, all of this, so that in the last days, at the present time, he, God, would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Johnny Gravino: And when you walk into this assembly, that is the that is what we proclaim the message, so that in all that we do, whether it be in our love among each other and love for our neighbors out there, and whether it be through the listening of the preaching of the word to exalt God and to worship him, all of this is to proclaim so that all people know that he is just and the justifier of him who believes, who has faith in Jesus.
Johnny Gravino: You do not leave this place without knowing that, without receiving that, because that is what this gathering is for.
Johnny Gravino: That is what we are the fruit of.
Johnny Gravino: From the foreigner to the eunuch, quickly.
Johnny Gravino: Deuteronomy 23 addresses those who are to be excluded from God's people.
Johnny Gravino: We heard from the scripture reading this morning so wonderfully.
Johnny Gravino: The first two verses say, No one who is emasculated or has his male organ cut off shall enter the assembly of Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: Notice the gripping details, the deformity, the exclusion and humiliation.
Johnny Gravino: No one of a legitimate birth shall enter the assembly of Yahweh.
Johnny Gravino: Even to the tenth generation, none of his seed shall enter the assembly of Yahweh, Deuteronomy 23, verses 1 and 2.
Johnny Gravino: The law concerning the eunuch is paramount to calling him, as in our passage, the last part of verse 3, a dry tree, a dry tree.
Johnny Gravino: What does that mean?
Johnny Gravino: His physical deformity leaves him literally without hope of inclusion.
Johnny Gravino: To the eunuch, however, who trusts in the promise, just like the foreigner cited before him, and because of the promise, keeps Yahweh's Sabbaths, chooses what pleases Yahweh, and holds fast, holds fast to Yahweh's covenant by promise.
Johnny Gravino: God will give him a house.
Johnny Gravino: Please notice, verse 5.
Johnny Gravino: God will give him a house.
Johnny Gravino: God will give him his house, and within God's house a memorial.
Johnny Gravino: In other words, the one that was completely excluded, who had no possibility of children or a future, God will give him many sons and daughters that will remember him by his righteousness.
Johnny Gravino: God will do the impossible.
Johnny Gravino: The blessing of the eunuch in covenant with Yahweh, who awaits the fulfillment of that covenant through the coming servant and son, is an everlasting name, never to be forgotten, with all the saints of God, to him who has never had sons and daughters to be remembered.
Johnny Gravino: Second half of verse 5, God will have the eunuch remembered forever by the righteousness he trusts in.
Johnny Gravino: This is our family.
Johnny Gravino: This is our trust.
Johnny Gravino: This is how we are remembered as we live for Christ.
Johnny Gravino: Of interest, of interest, at the cleansing of the temple, Jesus drives out all those who are buying and selling in the temple and says to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robber's den.
Johnny Gravino: Matthew 21.
Johnny Gravino: Right after Matthew writes those words, he says, And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
Johnny Gravino: Matthew 21, 14.
Johnny Gravino: The buyers and sellers of Israel, those included in the temple, are compared to robbers, while the blind and the lame, those excluded, are received as heirs.
Johnny Gravino: To all the peoples, finally, verse 8, after speaking to the foreigner and after speaking to the eunuch, the types that will come, God addresses the fulfillment of the people.
Johnny Gravino: To all the peoples, verse 8, we see this portrait of salvation in the last days coming to a close, which with much emphasis on the Lord's work of gathering.
Johnny Gravino: Notice verse 8.
Johnny Gravino: It is so profound.
Johnny Gravino: Observe the repetition of the word gather.
Johnny Gravino: Lord Yahweh, who gathers the banished of Israel, declares, Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered.
Johnny Gravino: Three times.
Johnny Gravino: He gathers his own.
Johnny Gravino: Rejoice.
Johnny Gravino: Go out and preach the gospel because he is gathering.
Johnny Gravino: Yahweh is described as a gathering God.
Johnny Gravino: Isaiah 60 reveals this gathering to reach its completion in a glorified Zion, in a new heavens and new earth.
Johnny Gravino: In the present age, in the present age, we continue to live in the day of harvest, a plentiful harvest.
Johnny Gravino: As Jesus prays to the Father in his high priestly prayer in John 17, hear these words.
Johnny Gravino: Jesus prays, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.
Johnny Gravino: There are still, there are still New Hyde Park, there are still others to be gathered to his people.
Johnny Gravino: We come to worship this morning Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was in all his house.
Johnny Gravino: Only, only Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, and we are a better house because Jesus was a faith was as faithful as a son over God's house.
Johnny Gravino: We have a better covenant.
Johnny Gravino: Please, please.
Johnny Gravino: Isaiah 56 calls us to press on to maturity in Jesus Christ and proclaim him.
Johnny Gravino: Let's pray.
Johnny Gravino: Father, we thank you for your word this morning.
Johnny Gravino: We thank you for its truth.
Johnny Gravino: We thank you for its ancient truth, ancient and yet contemporary, because it reaches us, it convicts us in this present age, it saves us.
Johnny Gravino: And so as we live out this present age, please, Father, give us the grace and humility, the trust and hope in Christ to continue being used as vessels of mercy to gather those who are yours.
Johnny Gravino: In Jesus' name, Amen.