A House of Prayer for All Nations - Isaiah 56:1-8

                

Prayer’s a beautiful gift, an invitation to come to God and talk. There’s no need to wait for God to show up or come to us, he’s always here ready to talk about whatever’s on your heart or going on in your life. We’re invited to bring our joys and celebrations, our fears and our worries, our doubts, and our pain to him. Jesus made prayer a priority in his relationship with his Father, regularly taking time to get away by himself to talk with God. His disciples noticed it gave Jesus the strength to keep on going and asked him to teach them how to pray. There’s something about what Jesus got out of prayer that makes them want the same thing. Israel has a deep history of prayer and even has an entire book dedicated to prayer, the Psalms: 150 different prayers for almost every situation in life.

Our passage is a reminder that God calls all his people to make prayer a foundational part of their life and worship. Israel is back home again after 70 years in captivity. We’re reminded why they’d been in exile when God commands them, “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the one who does this—the person who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps their hands from doing any evil.”

Our faith walk with God is shaped by two things: orthodoxy which is right thinking, or what we believe, and orthopraxy, which is right living. What we believe is revealed by how we live with God and others. Israel failed to live out their faith by failing to care for the poor, the widows, the orphans, or the foreigners among them, often taking advantage of them, revealing that they believed in a God who only cares about rituals and not who they are as his people. Part of right living is the keeping of the Sabbath, one day a week focused on coming to God, worshipping him, praying to remind ourselves that we’re not God; we’re creatures in God’s image and given great responsibility to image him to the world. Christine Caine, founder of the A21 Campaign that focuses on human trafficking around the world writes, “Prayer is a declaration of dependence. It’s our way of saying, “God, I want you. I need you.” When we bring something to God in prayer, we are saying, “God I want your rule. I want your reign. I want your direction. I want your will. I want your help in this. I want you in this.”

As the Lord keeps talking to his people through Isaiah, we get a bigger picture of what Abraham’s call to be a blessing to the nations looks like, “Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” Earlier in chapter 54, the Lord says, “Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” …. For your Maker is your husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.”

The barren woman, the foreigner, and the eunuch are all people on the fringes of society, considered disgraced. The foreigner and eunuch were banned from the temple except for the outer courts. The barren woman and eunuch were especially considered disgraced because they couldn’t have children. The Lord tells Israel that he sees them and invites them into his house, the temple, “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Sovereign Lord declares—he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.” What a shock to the Jews! This isn’t how things work; they’re God’s special people and now he’s inviting all these foreigners and disgraced people into the temple to experience his presence. God’s moving from having Israel as his specially chosen people to inviting anyone who chooses to follow him to become his people. God’s breaking down all kinds of barriers to the temple and his presence that have been in place for generations; shocking many Jewish believers.

Israel saw the world as divided between “them and us,” yet the story of Scripture is God working to reconcile the world to himself. He chooses Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations, so that the nations will come to know God as their God. Twice the Lord refers to the temple as “his house of prayer,” the second time as “a house of prayer for all nations.” God is God to all people; he’s gathering people from all nations for himself. Jesus, the good shepherd, tells his disciples that he has sheep in other folds that he needs to gather so there will be only one flock instead of many. God created humanity in his image; our identity in God and Jesus is greater than any national or ethnic identity we may choose.

When we keep the Sabbaths, accepting God as our God, shaping our lives around worship, trusting in God, he gives us an eternal name that’s better than having sons and daughters. In a culture where your family was central to your identity, becoming part of God’s eternal family is huge; it means your name won’t be forgotten. Jesus offers this in Revelation, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.” and, “The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name.” This is why Jesus gets so angry in the temple when he sees how the Gentiles are being treated because they’re family who’ve come to talk to their Father too. Luke writes, “When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The invitation to prayer is for everyone. God listens to us all, inviting us to come closer to him, to come into his house and talk to him. Prayer keeps us connected to God; prayer moves God’s plans forward. Prayer’s a big part of our faith walk with God, but it’s not always easy. Praying can look really different from one day to the next. One day you’re talking quietly to God, the next day crying with tears pouring down your face, then the next day angrily yelling at God. Christine Caine: “Sometimes, when we feel he hasn’t come through for us or answered our prayers the way we hoped, it’s easy to want to quit talking to God, just like we naturally want to withdraw and quit talking to people who disappoint us, who don’t come through for us. It’s as though the same reasons we run to God in prayer can be the same reasons we drift away…. I don’t know why things we pray for so hard about don’t always work out.”

It can be tempting to simply stop praying when life gets disappointing. Maybe ask yourself, “Is there a reason why I’ve stopped believing that prayer can change things, a reason why I’m no longer running to God with the same faith I once had?” When you don’t feel like praying anymore, keep on praying. Keep coming to church on Sundays so we can pray for you and with you, and you can be surrounded by others who are praying in God’s house of prayer. God wants to hear you and to help you hear him in worship. Prayer reminds us that God loves us and that we love God. God is faithful to us. Prayer connects us to God and to each other; prayer brings unity and hope, prayer leads us back to a place of trust and faith in Jesus again.