6-22-2025

“SECURE IN GOD’S GRACE”

Text: Isaiah 65:1-9

Sunday June 22, 2025 – Pentecost 2

Trinity – Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Our text for this Second Sunday after Pentecost is the Old Testament lesson form Isaiah 65 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that the wisdom of the world does not recognize who you are. Remind us that secure in your grace we find our identity in which you came to us and gave us your name.  Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Last week we noted the mystery and saving work of the Trinity as God’s true wisdom for the way of life. Today Isaiah calls us to consider what it means to live as God’s people on the way of life, and the message is simple: We are blessed and graced by God to live as his people in humble repentance and faith, showing forth the fruits of knowing the one, true God.

God’s People Walk in God’s Grace on the Way of Life.

Of course, we will continue to fail, to falter and fall. And so we daily seek God. And he is a gracious God, always there to be found. As we turn to the Pentecost season and its theme of spiritual growth, we remember that our salvation is grounded in God’s grace to us. Even as we seek to grow, our salvation is secure in God’s Word of promise and forgiveness.

       I.   God’s people Israel were not walking the Lord’s way.

A.  Judah in Isaiah’s day had lost its way.

1.   There was an abundance of proper ritual and sacrifices (1:11–15; 56:1–2; 58:3–5), but with a vain spirit; they were doing the right actions but just going through the motions. One king, Ahaz, even practiced pagan child sacrifice.

2.   What’s worse, Ahaz was looking for salvation in all the wrong places, playing power games in the ways of the world (2 Ki 16:7–18; Is 8:6–8).

3.   God notes that his salvation is for all nations and that those “not called by [his] name” have found him (v 1), while his own people remain obstinate (v 2).

B.  As God’s people today, we can likely identify with this ongoing battle with our sinful flesh and the ways of this world.

1.   It is real. It is strong. It is a fact in every generation. It doesn’t go away just because we are the people of God.

2.   We also can look for salvation in all the wrong places, trusting in ourselves, in our spiritual “growth,” or in doing all the proper rituals and “sacrifices.”

       II.  Nevertheless, God continues with us on the way in his grace and mercy.

A.               He makes himself able to be found.

B.                 

C.                I remember playing hide-and-seek with our small children. We had one of those home floor plans where you could run in a circle—front hall to living room to dining room to kitchen and round again. I would hide in a corner, in fairly open sight, but the kiddos would run round and round right past me. And then I’d jump out right in front of them. And what did they say? “We found you!”

In our text, God describes how he allows himself to be found, even by those who did not seek him (Is 65:1). More often than not, he finds a way to get in our way and to be found. Even when we do seek him and we might think we’re the ones who did the seeking and finding, he’s the one who really found us.

D.               That’s the kind of gracious God we have. We may be looking for him, and he finds us. We may not be looking for him—we may actually be running away from him—but he would find a way to find us.

E.                That is the basis of our life as his people. He has found us and claimed us as his own in Baptism, and he comes to us again and again, here in this place, where he is to be found again and again.

F.                  

1.   We can’t really “find” God, the true and only God, on our own.

2.   Sometimes we do seem to play seek-and-find, and God will find us. (

3.   But he will continue to save those who seek him, and he will do that by finding them.

B.  This is God’s wisdom for the way of life: God has made us his own by becoming one of us and taking our sins to the cross, by baptizing us into Jesus’ death and resurrection, and by his ongoing grace and for­give­ness.

C.  This is God’s wisdom on the way of life: we now can live the way he intended life to be.

1.   As his people, we live as his people!

2.   As we fail in our stubborn sinfulness, we remember his way for life.

3.   As his servants, we are incorporated into the life, death, and resurrection of the Servant, our Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Conclusion: Brothers and sisters in Christ, he is our way—and our truth and our life. That is, for the way—yes, he is the way we have eternal life. But we also live that life, and Christ is that too—the one who enables us to live on the way, every day, as God’s people, to that blessed eternity. Amen.

Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  Amen.