“My people will know my name” (52:6).  Did they not know His name?  What is God’s name?  God?  Jehovah?  Just to be clear, it isn’t Jehovah.  Jesus?  Yes, His name is Jesus, but who is Jesus?  We know who Jesus is both by what he says and by what he does—and not only in Scripture but even now, by what he is doing and saying in our own lives and the lives of those around us.  We come to know his character.  “My people will know my name”: they will know who I am; they will know my qualities.  And the result?  We will know, beyond all doubt, beyond all fear, that God has fulfilled His promise.  We will know that God is faithful.

We know this already, in a sort of provisional way.  Sorrow, pain, sickness, fear, and doubt intrude; they block the view, demanding our attention and energy.  They drain us, and we feel weak, sad, and thirsty.  How shall our thirst be satisfied?  God shall pour.  With Him are the waters of life.  He shall pour.  In love, He pours.  By grace, He pours.  Gloriously, he pours.  Be filled.  Drink deeply, and rejoice.  Then, hold onto your knowledge of what God has done for you, for it is what He promises to do for you still and again.  You and I have been filled and shall be filled, and together we shall praise God.  We shall know His name.

And what then?  If we, in a dry, thirsty land, find abundant water, shall we keep this news to ourselves?  If these waters were merely physical waters, material resources, perhaps: more for us!  Where resources are limited, truly limited and truly exhaustible, is wisdom in the sharing or the hoarding?

“How beautiful / on the mountains / are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (52:7).  Oh, those beautiful dusty, sore feet!  They have seen hard service in bringing good news.  In times when the news seems continually, dishearteningly bad, remember: you and I have good news.  The world seeks to make us sad to trap us there, to trap us in diversions, diversions from the sorrow, destructive diversions.  People make themselves sick with diversions.  They’re dying by their diversions.  But God will make you glad.  Good news from the mountain.  From the mountain, you can see into the far distance; from the mountain, you have a stunning view of God’s creation, His power.  What is the message of this creation power, this power for creation?  Peace.  Shalom.  Good tidings of great joy.

God is angry with sin, angry with us, so what does He do?  He offers forgiveness, reconciliation, peace.  He offers us peace where there had been conflict, a way where there had been no way, hope where there had been despair.  He offers us life where there had been only death like a valley of dry bones, very many, and very dry.  God offers us salvation in the name of Jesus.

We Christians do, or should, speak much of salvation.  Those still in their unseen chains wonder what that could be: salvation.  They don’t see that they need it; there’s nothing they want to be saved from, except maybe bothersome Christians.  Salvation means broken chains, another chance.  It means life and not death.  It means liberty and not condemnation.  But those whose hearts are full of the world find this talk foolish, boring, irritating, just wrong.  Life is short, then you die.  He who has the most toys wins—and what is Christmas for, if not for toys?  Buy, buy, buy.  Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow . . . It is good to eat, drink, and be merry, beloved, especially in this season, and let us be mindful of why it is good.  Are we celebrating our good fortune, our success, our affluence?  Are we feasting to forget our woes, drown our sorrows and stuff the empty places in heart and soul?  We rejoice because we have a Savior, we have salvation, as a gift, just . . . given!  From love.  Because God loves to give.  To love is to give.  Isn’t that what all these well-loved carols we’ve been singing say?  Who loves gives.  By these old songs we remind ourselves, and find new delight in the reminding, that God is love!

“Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy” (52:8).  In days of old, the prophets were the watchmen of Israel.  In these days of the Spirit, every believer is a sentinel, a watchman with news to share, good tidings.  Lift up your voice!  Be heard among your family.  Be heard among your friends.  Be heard among your co-workers, neighbors, fellow students.  Lift up your voice; lift it up: don’t be afraid.  Back in November, Bo Wright shared with me that 735 times the Bible says not to be afraid.  The opposite of fear isn’t courage, beloved, it’s faith!  At Christmas, the Lord came to Zion; he came to Bethlehem and to Zion, to His own, His own people.  He shall come again.  “Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem” (52:9).  Yes, the Lord comes to the ruins—the ruins He finds, here, and He rebuilds.  The president has that catchy slogan: Build Back Better.  Whether or not this administration can, with all the factors they laugh away as ludicrously beyond their influence, God is building back better, in you, in me, in His Church, all over the earth.  He will not let these ruins remain ruined.  He will glorify His name in us.  He will make His power and presence known in us, through us.  Be one who lives to make His presence and His power known—to yourself, too!  Know His name; know Jesus.

The Lord comforts.  God is not cruel.  Sin is cruel.  God sees these ruins and has compassion, like the Good Samaritan, the reviled man.  Do you find comfort in God’s Word?  In salvation, do you find salve for your wounds, even the old self-inflicted wounds?  Those are the hardest to heal, but God will heal them.  Only have faith.  Let God be God and rejoice in the gift.

God has redeemed.  We were lost; now we are regained.  We were alienated; we have been repatriated.  God gave His Son, for us.  Wonderful thought—awful thought.  What child is this?  “The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (52:10).  When we read of God baring his arm, like rolling up his sleeve, we know we shall behold His power, His strength, His victory: God sets to work.  We shall know His name.  Oh, He bared His arms, beloved, and we beheld His power, and we beheld His love, and we beheld His glory, nailed to the tree, cursed—to be a blessing.  Good news.  Good tidings of great joy.  Peace not as the world conceives, as the world gives, but peace as only God can give.  We are reconciled.  We are forgiven.   And how have we earned it?  How have we deserved it?  Who are we, that God should come to us?

Yet He does come.  He calls to us.  He claims us, and the one who came tells us to go, to leave Babylon, the place of exile and chains.  Christ has come.  It’s time to depart.  “[T]ouch no unclean thing” (52:11) on the way out!  Don’t be as Lot’s wife, pining for the pleasures she had known before salvation came.  Don’t be as the freed Israelites, enslaving themselves to a golden idol, the work of their fevered, fearful imaginations, the labor of their stained hands, the forgery of their religious leaders!  Come out.  Come out from there, and come in to Christ’s embrace; come in to the safety of the ark, the Church.  “Come out” from the world “and be pure” (52:11).  But who can be pure?  Beloved, those whom Christ calls, those whom the Spirit claims, God purifies.  He causes us to know His name.  We in Christ are, mysteriously, already pure and being purified, becoming more resplendent and beautiful than the most glorious Christmas trees of our happiest memories.

To the God of all grace, who calls you to share His eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever!  Amen.