Isaiah 56
Introduction
Social Justice. That is quite the loaded phrase these days. Today that idea may bring up thoughts of race relations, sexual identity, and even immigration. And that is partial because that phrase has taken on many different meanings in the last several decades. Here are just a couple of the definitions I found online:
“Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society.” (Oxford Language)
“Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.” (San Diego Foundation)
“Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals’ rights are recognized and protected.” (Wikipedia)
Politics. Privileges. Social Rights. Wealth. Opportunities. Those definitions are so broad that there may not be any idea of human living that does not fall into them. And part of the frustration for many Christians is that social justice is not only broad but that it is currently being defined by the world and given worldly contours. These ideas are talked about from a perspective that ignores God and his will for us through Christ. Yet, social justice is a biblical concept.
That shouldn’t surprise any of us! We have a shorthand here at Main Street Church when we want to talk about the mission of God’s people found in Scripture. We say:
Love God
Love Others
Make Disciples of Jesus
Loving others must surely mean that we must care somewhat about how other people are living—even in all these spheres that we see in those definitions. This morning, as we come to Isaiah 56, we are going to see that one of the main concerns of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is the ways that God’s people rightly model and demonstrate his character to the world around them. And especially after we have seen this Servant of God in the Servant Songs of Isaiah, God wants us to see how the Servant’s work on our behalf will now play out in our lives daily as we relate with one another and the world around us. That is social justice.
And we will see this morning that a major component of social justice is what we are offering people. One of the best ways we can live out social justice is to be sure to offer to all people the rest that God has given us now in Jesus Christ his Servant. Even to those we may find it difficult to share with.
Let’s start with looking at the first two verses of chapter 56.
Keep Justice & Do Righteousness (Isaiah 56:1–2)
Thus says the LORD:
“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
We have this interesting phrase here right in the beginning. “Keep justice, and do righteousness.” This is one of those phrases that we can’t simply understand by understanding the idea of righteousness and then understanding the idea of justice. They mean something very specific when they are used together.
We have the same concept in English. It is called a hendiadys. And that probably didn’t help you at all. Those are phrases where two words are connected by “and” to make a new idea. Think of the phrases:
Safe and sound
Nice and warm
You may get close to the meaning of the phrase if you look at the words themselves, but together, they mean something more specific than the individual words. Nice and warm is meant to connote a state of being—emotional and physical—that is found in the safety and security of being out of cold weather and in comfort again. We all know that, but we need more understanding than just the definitions of “nice” and “warm” to get there. It’s even harder when you think about safe and sound!
It is the same here in Hebrew. When we see these two words together—righteousness and justice—together they have the meaning of “social justice.” An idea that has something to do with righteousness and with justice, but it is has a larger and more specific meaning than that. It has something to do with how we live out these ideas in our lives and how it affects others. And to understand that better, we need to go back to where we first see this concept come up in Scripture.
Abraham
We see the first example of social justice—righteousness and justice paired together—in Genesis 18:17–21 as God comes and talks to Abraham when he is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah:
The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”
(Genesis 18:17–21, ESV)
This information matters to Abraham because, if you forgot, Abraham’s nephew Lot was living in and around Sodom and Gomorrah. This means Lot was in trouble and would die if God continues with his plan. Previously when Lot was in trouble, and his family and goods were kidnapped and taken, Abraham saved Lot by his own means. In Genesis 14 we see Abraham ride out with 318 of his servants and attack these enemies in the night and saves Lot and all he has.
Here, God (likely an appearance of Jesus prior to his incarnation) comes to Abraham knowing what he is going to do. And yet, as he says here:
Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do
This isn’t a problem of simply not letting Abraham know the plans of God. God desires a certain relationship with Abraham. God has a particular goal for Abraham. We see it here:
For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.
God has made a promise to make Abraham a great nation himself and for his family to be a blessing to the whole world. God wants Abraham to know him and to teach his family all about God. And for Abraham to become that kind of person God wants to work into him this idea of “righteousness and justice.” Social justice. And to do that, he brings Abraham into the problem he is having with Sodom and Gomorrah and uses it to teach Abraham what to do. What we see Abraham do here in Genesis 18 helps us define what social justice—God’s righteousness and justice in action—looks like.
It is a poignant difference between how Abraham solved problems previously and what he has to do here. Previously he used his own strength and might to save Lot. Now, in this situation, Abraham is aware he can’t succeed using those methods. So, Abraham must learn about social justice (righteousness and justice in action). And what we see here is Abraham:
Intercedes as a priest on the basis of God’s character.
Abraham begins to plead with Yahweh to not destroy the righteous alongside the wicked in Sodom and Gomorrah. If there are any who could find God’s grace and mercy, Abraham wants to see God do that. Abraham identifies both with Lot and any other potentially God-fearing people in Sodom and Gomorrah and wants them to see and find the same mercy in God that he has seen and known in his relationship with God. He is seeking their good and God’s mercy and grace in their life. In doing so he takes the first steps of social justice and the beginning being a blessing to others.
In fact, for Abraham, this is the first steps he takes in becoming a father of the nations. It is Abraham’s prayers and intercession that save Lot, his wife, his daughters and their fiancés thus saving the future nations of Moab and Ammon. That is who those families become, and Abraham is a blessing in this moment to the other nations.
Abraham is caring about others and wanting them to have the same access to God’s grace and mercy as he has. This is social justice—God’s righteousness and justice in action. We could summarize this then by saying:
Social Justice = Wanting others to have the same access to God’s grace and mercy that you have.
The Law
As we move forward in Scripture, we see another helpful definition of social justice emerge as we get to the law. In Leviticus 19:18 we see that God says:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
(Leviticus 19:18, ESV)
As God’s law is being revealed and recorded in Leviticus 18 and 19, Leviticus 19:18 is a summary of the last six of the ten commandments in Leviticus and the content that came in those sections. It’s a summary of those passages concerning “Loving Others.” And the summary is to love your neighbor as yourself.
As we move forward in Scripture to the prophets like Isaiah, we see there are actually two of these hendiadyses used to summarize the ten commandments and all of Torah (God’s law). One combination is “Loving-kindness and truth,” which is often used to mean “faithful, loyal love,” and is often how our love for God and his love for us is described by the prophets. The second is the one we see here in Isaiah this morning—righteousness and justice. Social justice. So if Leviticus summarizes the Love Other sections of the ten words as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and the phrase social justice is also trying to summarize the Love Others, then:
Social Justice = Love your neighbor as yourself= Wanting others to have the same access to God’s grace and mercy that you have.
Israel
This is the call to God’s people, and not just through the law, but because of the Abrahamic covenant that we all receive even today through Jesus Christ. We see this also in the call to Israel through the Mosaic covenant. God’s covenant people are meant to display his justice and righteousness in their lives—social justice. This was true for Abraham and all his children. This was true for the nation of Israel.
One of the ways God wanted to show his character was through Israel and their modeling of his own social justice in their care for the nations and those who were not as privileged around them. They were meant to strive to see the good of the nations in knowing God through them. That is one of the problems we see here in the prophets. Israel was not loving and rightly following God and this was evident through their failure to demonstrate social justice, the last part of the ten commandments. As some authors have said:
“As a community in covenant relationship to Yahweh, they [Isreal] are called to mirror to the world the character of Yahweh in terms of social justice and to be a vehicle of divine blessing and salvation to the nations. But the way the people of God have treated each other is characterized by social injustice [emphasis added]. The ‘city of truth’ has become a whore (Isaiah 1:21). The Lord has no choice now but to fulfill the gravest curses and threats entailed in the covenant in Deuteronomy 28. The final threat is exile, and this them is taken up in Isaiah 5-37.”
(Gentry & Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 491-492)
Why?
Come back to our passage here in Isaiah for a moment:
Thus says the LORD:
“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
We are also given God’s reason or command for why we are to do social justice here in Isaiah 56:
For soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed
So, the first half of 56:1 is a command to practice social justice, and the second half of 56:1 bases this command on the sovereign work of God that his people are about to see. Work that we will see in the Servant whom God has just shared about.
In fact, there is a case to be made that here in Isaiah 56 we see one of the first instances of Jesus being talked about as the Son of Man, a title we see often in the New Testament. Usually in the Old Testament this phrase son of man means the progeny of a people group. But look what it says here:
Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
We are blessed when we are able to live the social justice of God BECAUSE of THE son of man, Jesus, who holds that justice himself, who keeps the Sabbath not profaning it, and who keeps OUR hands from doing any evil. This sounds a lot like the gospel and the Servant Songs that we have seen previously in Isaiah. Everything we have and can do is not because of our striving, but because Jesus has already done it for us and we are simply living the grace and mercy he gives us.
We pursue social justice—the right care of others—because God has chosen to show US his justice through “salvation-righteousness,” another hendiadys phrase used here in the last half of Isaiah. This salvation-righteousness is defined by what the Servant will do (or has done from our perspective). This servant did everything FOR us—was discipled for us, suffered for us, laid down his life for us, and died for us. God has shown ultimate care—a kind of care we can’t show for one another—in Jesus Christ. The revelation of that kind of love, God’s salvation-righteousness, should make us want to live out just-righteousness, social justice, in love to all those around us. To care and love others and seek their good as we have been given good in God through his Servant Jesus.
Previous Examples: Widow, Orphan, the Poor
If you are wondering what this would look like, we see a fairly prominent example of social justice throughout scripture in the imagery of the widow, the orphan, the poor.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.
(Zechariah 7:9–10, ESV)
We see the same thing in Exodus 22:22–27 where God talks about how he hears the cries of the widow and the orphan and will act accordingly. We even see this image of caring for the widow and orphan as an example of social justice in the New Testament. James says:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
(James 1:27, ESV)
We see social justice—caring for those as God would care for them—most clearly when we think about those who don’t offer us anything. In fact, it is seen most clearly in those who likely need us to give much to help them.
Application
I know we all would want to say that we strive to Love Others, but do you strive to love others in this way? I think it is fair to say that we (Americans) often think in ways that could only be explained as American exceptionalism. We act as though we deserve something that, often times, we don’t want to give easily to others. If social justice is:
Social Justice = Loving your neighbor as yourself = Wanting others to have the same access to God’s grace and mercy that you have.
We should want others to have access to all the same joys and goodness we have been given in God’s mercy and grace. And that then means that social justice really is quite a broad category. Broad much like the definitions that we saw before but even broader in God’s design for people to be cared for in all ways. And yet, we ground social justice not in the intrinsic goodness of people, but rather in the overwhelming and overflowing mercy and grace that our God has shown us. We image God’s salvation-righteousness, a gift only he can give, in our pursuit of just-righteousness, a gift we can share with others around us. Social justice.
Consider for a moment this morning if that is true of your heart for others? You and I are now priests of God as we have been saved in the great high priest, Jesus (1 Peter 2:9). We should be interceding at least in our prayers, but also in very real ways for those who do not know the grace and mercy of God that we have. When we look at the last six of the ten commandments, we should notice that they are written in the negative. “You shall not…” This is to make us look away from ourselves and think first of the rights of others and what they deserve, not us. Do you think about others in this way? This was the heart of Christ—our Servant King who came and thought not of himself but thought of us. We should want to be like this servant in our love and care for others.
Do you desire that others might find mercy and grace in knowing the kind of relative safety almost everyone in this room lives in at their house and neighborhood? The grace and mercy most of us have access to in the job opportunities we have access to? The grace in mercy we have in how we are often treated even in our sins? Do you want those same types of graces for others? I dare say that we all, at some point, seem to grow tired of extending mercy and grace in particular issues and ways and, rather, want to see others not receive mercy and grace but rather judgement or difficulty instead. Do you want to seek God’s social justice for all peoples, even those who are difficult, that they may get a tangible foretaste of God’s salvation-righteousness, ultimate right relationship with God again through his Servant Son Jesus?
These are all big issues, hence the broad definition of social justice. It will take both small, individual efforts and large, group efforts of God’s people to bring this kind of care to one another and the world. But note, I am not trying to define how that will happen. Scripture doesn’t give us the formula for how to make social justice happen. It shares with us often about God’s character and we see this care in Jesus’s life, but God doesn’t always tell us exactly what to do. There are many ways to consider how social justice will happen that can model God’s grace to one another and the people of this world, and good people in this room will likely disagree on that. We will almost assuredly have different perspectives on how best to enact different forms of social justice. And that is okay. In fact, that is the beauty of being Christians, that we can believe the exact same truth that we have been called to demonstrate social justice to one another and the world, and God may call us each to engage in social justice in different ways. I pray we find much grace for one another as we all pursue social justice in many different ways.
Examples of Social Justice: The Eunuch and Foreigner
Yet in our passage, God through Isaiah is also thinking about a particular sub-set of social justice. We need to understand this larger image of social justice so we can see how God makes it very specific here. He doesn’t go to the easy and regular image of the widow and the orphan and the poor to make us think broadly about caring for others, especially those who can’t help us. He goes to two specific images: the image of the eunuch and the foreigner. Let’s look at Isaiah 56:3:
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say:
“The LORD will surely separate me from his people”
and let not the eunuch say,
“Behold, I am a dry tree.”
The foreigner and the eunuch both had unique concerns in coming into relationship with God through the Mosaic covenant that Israel lived under.
Foreigners could come to God, but only as they lost their relationship to their previous people and instead had to bind themselves to God’s people. They could sojourn with the people, but if they wanted to come into the temple and worship God beyond the outer court, they had to lay aside their previous identity and, in the Mosaic covenant, be circumcised (if you were a man) and now identify as God’s people. This was meant to be an image of how you and I all give up our previous identities bound in sin and death to come and live in the new identity of God’s sons and daughters. Yet it was happening on a national and ethnic level. In that sense, the image was incomplete, since we know God loves all the peoples (nations, ethnicities, etc.).
The foreigners at least had a pathway into the people of God even if it was at the cost of their identity. For the eunuch, it was a larger problem. They couldn’t come in at all:
No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
(Deuteronomy 23:1, ESV)
Part of the problem here is that a eunuch couldn’t bear the symbol of Israel and God’s people under the Mosaic covenant, circumcision. Additionally, they couldn’t take part in God’s plan to bring about his Messiah through his people—they weren’t able to have kids.
Here in Isaiah 56 God is building on his previous revelation of what social justice looks like throughout all of Scripture and is wanting us to think about a very particular part of social justice. We are to be thinking about those who wouldn’t feel like they could ever be part of God’s people. That is the concern of the foreigner and his concern is right. That is why Isaiah uses the word “foreigner.” This isn’t a sojourner (visitor) wondering how to become part of God’s people, it is the foreigner, someone not Hebrew, who is trying to understand how he can truly be acceptable to God as a “foreigner.” As long as he stayed a foreigner under the Mosaic covenant he could not truly be joined to the people.
And the eunuch is right that under the Mosaic covenant he could not take part in the assembly of the people, nor could he take part in the process of having progeny who would help bring the nation of Israel forward to the moment where the Savior was born out of Israel.
Yet, again, everything has now changed in God’s servant from the Servant Songs, Jesus! Look what he says here to the foreigner and the eunuch:
For thus says the LORD:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares:
“I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”
(Isaiah 56:1–8, ESV)
In this Servant of God even eunuchs and foreigners have a hope! Because everything has been accomplished through the servant, eunuchs can take part in God’s plan, have a house, and have spiritual progeny even better than real progeny. They can have a name that will last forever in their acceptance of the work of the Servant and their living in him and his work. The Servant cares not about fleshly works and circumcisions outwardly, but circumcision of the heart, which is entirely possible for the eunuch in Jesus. The servant allows the eunuch to have ‘spiritual’ children that may number more than anyone’s physical children.
Similarly, the foreigner can be joined to God and minister to him in the name of the Lord—this servant. They can be a true servant, and be a part of the assembly now, those who truly are part of the house of prayer. Under the new covenant God no longer requires people to come into the nation of Israel, but rather come into the TRUE Israel, God’s forever people, knowing full well they are not of the family of Jacob. God has gone to the Gentiles as Israel has rejected him.
Demonstrating social justice to others—justice-righteousness—happens in many ways, but it most importantly happens as we want to see people particularly enjoy the knowledge of worshipping God in coming back into right relationship with God through his servant Jesus. This is a very specific type of social justice, one much greater than any physical good we might do for people.
How do these people enter into this kind of grace and mercy? Here it is said that they keep the Sabbath, which brings us to our second main idea in this passage this morning: Sabbath.
Sabbath
We see the idea of Sabbath in each section of Isaiah 56. It is in the first section as a general statement that the Sabbath is kept by God’s people. It is said of the foreigner, and it is said of the eunuch that they keep God’s Sabbath.
It is interesting that even from the very beginning we see that the command to keep the Sabbath (third or fourth commandment depending on how you count) is described differently.
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
(Exodus 20:11, ESV)
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
(Deuteronomy 5:15, ESV)
In Exodus, the rational for keeping the Sabbath was that God rested on the seventh day. In Deuteronomy, the rational for keeping the Sabbath is that Israel was slaves in the land and they should give their slaves rest as well. This should help us see right from the beginning that the Sabbath (resting on a particular day) is actually an image of something much bigger than just creation and the slavery of Israel. To quote a source again:
The week of creation itself culminated in the rest of God on the seventh day (Gen 2:1-3). And this one day of completion and rest became a typological pattern that grounds observance of the Sabbath under the old covenant (Exodus 20:8–11) but ultimately points to a final ‘Sabbath rest for the people of God’ (Heb 3:7–4:13) under the new covenant that will never end (Rev 21:22–25), due to Jesus’s work that inaugurates the great salvation rest anticipated from the Old Testament.”
(Gentry & Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 651)
What they are saying is that the image of Sabbath moves from creation through the entire story line of God’s people pointing towards a final resting place for God’s people in the new heavens and the new earth. And we begin to see that rest in a very real way today through Jesus and his work. The writer to the Hebrews picks up this idea in Hebrews 3 and 4.
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
(Hebrews 4:8–11, ESV)
It is interesting that in Isaiah 56 that the sign of the eunuch and the foreigner coming into God’s covenant is the Sabbath. The Sabbath is consistently one of the pictures used throughout the Old Testament, but this passage ignores circumcision, one of the clearest images and actions for God’s people. This is because already, in Isaiah, the images are beginning to point forward to a new reality in this Servant of God. Hebrews is key to understanding Isaiah 56 this morning. Sure, there may have been a practical problem in using circumcision as a sing of faith for the eunuch, but using the symbol of the Sabbath is pointing to a major change in the covenants.
The eunuch and the foreigner, those who never though they could truly become part of the people are part of GOD’s people through the Servant as they REST in what God has done for them! Again, as the writer to the Hebrews says:
whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience
Outward circumcision, or works, will no longer be the sign of the covenant of God’s people and outward works will not be how anyone comes into relationship with God, let alone eunuchs and foreigners. In this image in Isaiah 56 we see the beauty of how all peoples can now come to God as they come through rest in what he has already done for us. A rest that means we walk in what the Servant Son has done for us in trusting God.
Summary/Connection
Friends, we are all called to demonstrate social justice, the justice–righteousness of God, to one another and to the world. Caring about the real circumstances people find themselves in is our way of trying to image the amazing love of salvation-righteousness that God has given us in Jesus. We should want to see and share social justice in every sphere of life! We should want to see others around us know true love from us and an image of God’s love as they experience mercy and grace in almost every area of their life. That they might get to see glimpses of the new earth breaking into today. That means we should pursue this in many spheres, with many different types of peoples, and in many ways both personally, corporately, and even socially and politically. We should love that all of God’s people would try to show this kind of justice and righteousness to others that they may, in grace, glimpse the beauty of God love and care for them.
But we should be particularly concerned to show social justice by letting no-one believe they are outside of hope in Jesus. There is no foreigner who must change his nationality, there is no person too removed from God by the damage they carry—physically, emotionally, or mentally—who cannot come to Jesus. We do not want anyone to think that there is a hoop they need to jump through to know God, nor works they need to do, to find the mercy and grace of God as we ALL must stop and REST in the good news of the gospel in Jesus Christ. Jesus has done it all! And in doing so, he invites you and I to enter his salvation-righteousness in REST. Through Sabbath! To know he has done it all and to trust that he will continue to work all things in us as we rest and live in him. Jesus’s yoke is gentle and his burden is light (Matthew 11:29) because it is ultimately REST for us!
Conclusion
Friends, come this morning and see the beauty of our call to love others though social justice. And see the greatest way we can love others in this social justice is to make sure they know they can come to Jesus through his work and in rest!
Response
As you think about how to respond to this sermon today, here are some questions you might ask yourself:
Is there any type of person (like the foreigner or eunuch) that you believe must first change before they can come into the REST of Jesus?
Is there any person or situation you do not believe you could walk into loving to demonstrate social justice (justice-righteousness) that people might see God’s salvation-righteousness?
Who or how might God be calling you today to show social justice to those around you that they might see Jesus?
Benediction (Paraphrased)
(May) the [Rest] of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil 4:7
