Julius: The first reading will also serve as a sermon text this morning from Isaiah chapter twenty nine. Isn't it true that in a very short time Lebanon will be turned into a fertile field, and the fertile field will seem like a forest? On that day the deaf will hear the words from a book, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. The humble will rejoice in the Lord once again, and the poor will delight in the Holy One of Israel, but the ruthless will come to nothing. Those who mock will be no more, and those who plan evil will be cut off. All those who slander others with a word, all those who argue cases at the city gate, all those who use false testimony to deprive the innocent of justice. Therefore, this is what the Lord who redeemed Abraham says about the house of Jacob. Jacob will not be ashamed any more, his face will not grow pale, but when his children see what I do among them, they will honor my name. They will honor the Holy One of Jacob, they will stand in awe of the God of Israel. Those who are confused will come to understand, and those who complain will gladly receive instruction. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, open the eyes of our hearts to see wonderful things in your teaching. Amen. At the start of the school year, teachers are once again experiencing the range of students. And some students are very good and some students are very bad. Now, what makes a student difficult to teach? Well, I think there's a couple things we could pick out. One is when the student finds out they have something to learn and they immediately shut down. It's like you've only taught someone addition and subtraction. And then you say, Today we're gonna learn division, and you show that symbol on the board, and they go, I've never seen this before. It's impossible. You go, no, no, no, you just need to learn. So you have the people who shut down when they find out they have to learn something, but then I think the even worse student, maybe the worst student, is the one who thinks he doesn't have to learn anything at all. The one you start explaining things to the student and they immediately start tuning you out and working on their own, because they can figure it out. They don't really need you. The worst students maybe are the ones who think they're already the teacher. And this isn't just true in a normal school environment. This is true when the Lord tries to teach us in a spiritual environment. We're called disciples, after all, and Jesus calls himself a teacher. And we have both of those students within us. Within our sinful nature. The kind of student that shuts down when we find out we have something to learn. And more than that, the kind of student who is very proud and thinks. I don't really have anything to learn from the Lord. We're looking at a prophecy from Isaiah today, and just looking at the entire book of Isaiah, it makes you think of a very frustrating classroom environment where a teacher is trying really, really hard, that's the Lord, and the Israelites are just being the worst possible students. In Isaiah chapter one, he compares them to a stubborn donkey, unfavorably. He says, You guys are worse than a stubborn donkey. Donkey. At least the stubborn donkey knows his master. He knows his master. He just doesn't want to listen to him. The Israelites, not only do they not want to listen to the Lord, but they're not even acknowledging him as their master and teacher. And so the Lord comes up with this crazy lesson plan, and it's really simple, to try to teach these students that he is their master and that they really need him, to humble them so that they look to him. To learn how to be saved. And the lesson plan is laid out in Isaiah chapter 29. And it's like this: God says, I will send an enemy army, and they will surround Jerusalem, and you will be in big trouble. And then in an instant, they'll be gone. The enemy army will vanish. It will be a sign of my law. My punishment, because you haven't been listening to me, and a sign of my gospel, my grace, that I'm the kind of Lord who saves you no matter what, even when you don't deserve it. A simple lesson plan. And so Isaiah comes to the people, and he's got this two-part prophecy, and he says, Here you go, trust in the Lord. Here's what he's gonna do. And they don't listen. Just a couple verses before the text we're looking at, we can find this. It says, For you, that is the Israelites, This whole vision has become like the words of a sealed scroll. If you give it to someone who can read and you say, Read this, please, he will say, I can't. It is sealed. And if you give it to someone who cannot read and you say, Read this, please, he'll say, I can't read. It's like a frustrating lesson plan. He comes, here it is, two-part, enemy army. Jesus saves you. Trust in the Lord, and they go, It's too hard. And it'd be okay if they were saying that humbly and saying, Lord, teach us. We don't really understand this. But they're not. They're saying, it's too hard, but really they just don't want to learn. They don't want to hear from the Lord. They want to come up with their own plans because really they think they're the teachers. And that's what's said in another verse just before our reading today. Isaiah 29, 13 says, The Lord says, These people approach me with their words, and they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is nothing but the commandments taught by men. So they claim to be students, they worship the Lord with their outward actions, they claim to be disciples, but the Lord says, Their hearts are far from me. They're sitting in the desk, but they're daydreaming. And not only that, they're coming up with their own commandments. The Lord says, Here's what you should do, and here's what you should believe, and they go, I'm gonna do this anyways. It's like the Lord hands out a worksheet and they say, I'm gonna doodle over here. And they're doing that because they claim to be teachers. It says they teach their ideas. As commandments. So there you go. The Israelites, poor students, the worst students, either refusing to listen to listen and learn or saying we don't have to learn because we're teachers already, and this is what we need to find in our own hearts and repent of, too. And you know what this is like. When you open the Bible and you come to a verse and you go, It's too hard. You immediately come up on something that's just confusing. And you think, I can't make heads or tails with this. This is a big book. Maybe I'm just gonna set this aside for a while. And you just give up. Sometimes people who have actually come to Bible study, which is a brave move, thank you, everybody should. They come to Bible study and then they go, this is too hard. I'm learning things. This is confusing. I didn't understand that question. Maybe this is just for the smart people. And the Lord's saying, No, if you need to learn, stay. And then, of course, a danger for all of us who've had a lot of experience with the Bible is that. We think we already know it all. We become like teachers. yeah, I know that story. yeah, I know what the Bible says. I can take it from here. But there's no really remaining stagnant when it comes to Bible knowledge. You never get to a point where you have enough. The Bible says, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, because if you're not learning more, you're losing it. And it's creating this vacuum, and this vacuum, when you're not studying the scriptures, becomes filled with the commandments of men. Things that we make up that we think, this is good to do. I'm pretty sure God says this. I'm a Christian after all, I think I got this down. And the Lord says, No. We all need to learn. So we can establish ourselves as pretty similar to the Israelites in being the worst possible students. But the good news of this text is that God is very good at teaching the worst possible students. That's what makes him a good teacher. And that's what he talks about in the text that we're looking at today. Here's verse 17. Isn't it true that in a very short time Lebanon will be turned into a fertile field, and the fertile field will be will seem like a forest? Now you come to a verse like that, and you're thinking, okay, now I need to become a Bible student. And me too. I spent way too many hours trying to figure out what in the world this verse is talking about this week. And it's okay to study and have to learn. But what is the Lord basically saying here in just a little while? Lebanon will seem like a little field, and the little field will seem like Lebanon. Well he's basically saying that I'm gonna turn your world upside down. In other words, somehow the worst students are gonna become the best, and the best students are gonna become the worst. He's changing the teaching environment. It makes me think of a teacher who won the $1 million global prize for best teacher in the world. That's a nice award in 2021. It's an Indian teacher named Desale. He graduated and he got assigned to a small rural farm village. And he made it to the village and he made it to his classroom, this one-room kind of mud-looking hut, and it was filled with cows. And buffaloes and farm equipment. And he went to the farmer and he said, Hey, get this stuff out of my classroom. And the farmer said, No, these kids don't need to learn. They either need to farm or get married. And somehow this teacher, even when the cops didn't help him, was able to clear out that classroom, fill it with students, and teach them so much that when people look at their academic achievement, they say, It is a miracle. Teacher of the year. The Lord is saying, I can do that. If you feel like you have made it in the biblical world, you should be the teacher. You should tell everyone what the Bible says, let alone what it actually says. Let's say you're in the university, the Lord says, if you think you're in the university, I'm gonna turn your classroom into a mud hut. On the other hand, If you're that Christian who says, I'm a bad student, I need to learn. How could I possibly learn in a situation like this? I feel like I'm in a mud classroom with no teacher. The Lord says, Ooh, I can change that teaching situation into the university of the Lord. Lebanon, this place of mountains and tall trees, turned into a little garden. A little garden turned into a place of mountains and tall trees. The Lord does that with us because He's that kind of teacher. And if you're still not convinced that he can teach the absolute worst students, the one that nobody can get to, listen to what he says next in verse eighteen. On that day the deaf will hear the words from a book, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. That day, coming soon, it's a prophecy, it'll be fulfilled when Jesus comes. The blind or the deaf will hear the words of a book. Isaiah, I don't think you know how hearing works. In Isaiah's day and in Jesus' day, there wasn't Braille yet. And yet he says, the deaf will hear the words of a book. Not only that, he says the blind who are in gloom and darkness will see. I love how he almost rubs it in there. The blind, it would be enough of a miracle, right, to say the blind will see. He says, no, no, no. The blind who are in gloom and darkness. It's like he takes a blind student, puts him in the classroom, blindfolds him, closes the blinds, turns off the lights, and pumps it with a fog machine, and then says, Now can you see? And he says, Yes. What? Jesus can do that. We saw it in the gospel reading, we saw it in his ministry. He came to people like the deaf person and allowed him to hear the word of the Lord. He came to the blind and he allowed them to see the glory of the light of the gospel. He came to people like the disciples, who, if you follow them, were very slow and very dumb sometimes. And Jesus was actually able to get through to these people, which means that Jesus can teach even the worst possible students good news for people who are born spiritually blind and deaf like us. Jesus can teach us. And he repeats that again at the end of this prophecy. What's gonna happen when the Lord, the great teacher, comes into the world with the words of his book? It says, The humble will rejoice in the Lord once again, and the poor will delight in the Holy One of Israel. That's a eureka moment, right? The humble who go, I can't learn, will rejoice once again in the Lord. I can. And the poor, the poor who say, Can I learn in my life in this classroom? Impossible. Will delight once again, not in themselves and their ability to learn, but in the Holy One of Israel, the teacher of the year, the teacher of the universe, Jesus Himself. And what does he use to teach us? What did it say? The deaf will hear the words of a book. No, if you try to become a good teacher, sometimes you wind up using all sorts of things to teach. And I'm sure all the university professors are working very hard right now trying to decide or they've decided already. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna use the textbook? Which the students have to buy for like four hundred dollars. Are we gonna use the the print textbook or maybe the print textbook with the ebook? Or the print textbook with the ebook with the online exercises? Are we gonna let them use AI? Are we gonna give them a subscription through the school? What tools are we going to use to get through these thick skulls? The Lord says, I'm gonna use, wait for it, groundbreaking technology, the words of a book. The Bible. God's inspired words. Yes, even the prophecies that some people misunderstand and close their ears to and don't want to hear, those are the words that can take the humble. And lead them to delight once again in the Lord. The word of God, yes, his law and gospel, his commands and his promises, these words are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. The Lord can do that. Which turns our confusion into clarity. Verse 24 says, Those who are confused, if you ever feel that way about the Bible, this is great. What's gonna happen? Those who are confused. Will come to understand. And those who complain, do you ever feel that way? You read a verse, this is confusing. I don't like Leviticus. Those who complain will gladly receive instruction. The Lord can do that. How does he do that? Nothing new. Through his words. And I think this is exemplified really well in the life of a man named Flame. Flame. Not his given name. His given name is Marcus Gray. Flame sounds a lot cooler. Why is his name Flame? Because he's a Christian rapper. Now, Flame grew up kind of in a vaguely Christian upbringing, but he kind of loved Jesus and kind of knew some stuff about the Bible. And so he started doing Christian raps and he was pretty good at it. So this group of Christian artists noticed him and took him in. And they said, You get to tour with us. And this group of Christian artists were very committed Christians and very committed Calvinists. And they would say that, we are Calvinists. Flame, are you a Calvinist yet? You need to be a Calvinist. You can't be an Arminian. Those are the two options. Okay. All right, what's the main thing about Calvinism that they wanted to teach that the Bible says? Well, it was something they teach called limited atonement. Limited atonement. And that's the teaching that Christ died on the cross for all who would believe. In other words, Christ died on the cross, not for everybody in the world, but for some, the people who would wind up in heaven someday. They studied it. They looked at passages and Flame became convinced this is what the Bible says. And for 18 years he studied hard and he even went to seminaries and he went on tour and he started teaching this stuff as he talked to the crowds, talking about the truth of the Bible as he saw it, this limited atonement. But you can see how that might hurt your conscience. If you don't teach that Christ died for all, but for some, then you start wondering, am I included in that some? And he started wondering that. And because of that, he started adding commandments to God's word because he had to convince himself that he was one of those. He remembers a time where he he parked, he parked in the handicapped parking spot for two minutes to run in and grab something and come out. And he remembers being destroyed with guilt. He thought, man, what if what if the granny in those two minutes really needed that spot and I did something horrible? And maybe I'm not a true believer. Maybe Jesus then didn't die for me. And so he started trying to convince himself that he was a true believer by adding commands. For a long time, he stopped sleeping in his bed and he started sleeping outside to show how much he loved Jesus. It's the 11th commandment: sleep outside, not on your cozy mattress. No, he's adding these commands. Why? Because he needs this assurance, I have to do these things to convince myself that I'm a believer that Jesus died for me. And it finally all came to a head after 18 years of touring with this perspective. He said he was doing a big concert at the University of Jamaica. I thought, I want to study there. That sounds great. So a big concert at the University of Jamaica, and he's looking out on all these people. And he has the microphone. And what he really wants to say to them is, Jesus died for you and God loves you. But he can't. Limited atonement. And so he mumbles without conviction in his heart. Jesus died for those who would believe. And he goes off stage and he goes in his room and he collapses. And he leaves. And he goes home to St. Louis. And he complains. He says to God, I know what your will is, what your Bible says, but it's too hard. I can't follow it anymore. And while he's going through that, he gets a phone call from a random friend in California going to a Christian university who wants to study more Christian church history. And the professor of this student in California says, You should go to Concordia Lutheran Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri to study church history. And the guy in California says, No way, but I have a friend who might like that. And he calls up flame. Who had been to all sorts of different seminaries, and he says, Hey, I know you've been looking for the right seminary. You should go to Concordia Lutheran Seminary down the road. And Flame says, Okay, last resort. And he goes to the seminary, and they start saying some pretty crazy things that the Bible says, like, God so loved the world, like Christ died for all, and he goes through two years of back and forth. Jesus is the atoning sacrifice not only for our sins but the sins of the entire world. Can that actually be what the Bible teaches? And for two years he goes back and forth and finally he graduates with his Masters of Arts and Church History. And two years after that, he produces a Lutheran rap album. I shouldn't say a Lutheran rap, but probably the Lutheran rap album. And it's talking about stuff like justification, sanctification. The two natures of Christ, the small catechism, the table of dudes. Whoa! And in this rap album, he communicates no longer with confusion, no longer complaining, but he communicates clearly, this is what the Bible says. The truth that brought him back from the brink, that brought him back to joy and made him believe in Jesus, the truth that Christ died for all. Without exception, and now he is a teacher at a Concordia University teaching that truth. Now I should end the sermon there, but my little brother said it's my birthday weekend and I can do whatever I want. So he told me that I should repeat a couple lines of his rap. So, on a day where we talk about the deaf being able to hear, I hope this doesn't make you want to go deaf. Here is part of Flames Rap talking about unlimited atonement. He says, the text reveals he did fulfill all righteousness in fact, then hit Golgotha's hill, and blood was spilled in a sacrificial act. Historic objective for women and men, with no exceptions. He died for our sin. With no exceptions, he died for our sin. That's it. Flame, who had thrown his hands up, who thought he was a teacher, and then was in despair, was brought from confusion to clarity, from complaining to explaining with joy the truth of the gospel. And this is what Jesus, the master teacher, is able to do with every single one of us. Through the power of the word, by the power of the Spirit, all about Jesus grace. Thank you, Lord. Amen.