The First Sunday after Epiphany – Pr. Anderson sermon
Isaiah 12:1-6 “God is My Salvation”
January 11, 2026 | Christ Lutheran Church
In Nomine Iesu
+ + +
Heavenly Father we thank you for saving us. It is only because of your great mercy and love that you have done this. Sending your one and only Son to die in our place. You deserve all honor and glory. We pray that as we fall in our deeds in service to you, we remember this truth, you give us our strength because you are our Salvation. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. (Rom. 1:7, etc.)
The sermon text for today is taken from the 12th chapter from the Prophet Isaiah. We read selected verses in Jesus’ name:
You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. “Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
These are Your words, heavenly Father. Sanctify us by Your truth, Your Word is truth. Amen. (Joh. 17:17)
In Christ Jesus, who from promise has come to give us strength, is our song, and what joy that He is our Salvation, dear fellow redeemed:
Do you have any activities that you do where you become the promotor for it? Something that you know information about it so strongly that you must tell others about it. You even can talk to complete strangers about it because you know it so well and are comfortable with it. If you have talked to me before, you will know that I can talk about hunting and fishing for a long, long time. Let’s also be honest about the fact that hunting and fish is way too broad of a topic. We could narrow it down even further to a singular topic of location, time of year, temperature, cold front, stand times, etc. for a whole day’s discussion. It is great to have things like this that we are interested in. They keep us busy and they keep us happy. People, even complete strangers, see how this one topic that we love can change our mood. They see it in how we act. Isaiah tells us about this excitement that we have in God! “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.” We are passionate about all sorts of things and look how passionate we are about the Gospel! Why are we like this? Isiah makes it clear that we can all answer, God is my Salvation!
Now Israel is going to hear this for a long time. For Israel, it will not look like God is with them, that God is their salvation. In chapter 11, we hear of the remnant. There will be a remnant because Babylon is coming. That is what chapter 13 is all about. Isaiah is giving them about a 200-year warning but that isn’t enough. Israel is doing all the wrong things. They have forgotten what God has done for them. They have thrown God to the wayside, worshipping idols. God has relented for a long time. He chastises them and he sends prophet after prophet to warn them about the coming destruction. He wants to get them to repent of what they are doing. God has every right to be angry with them. He had blessed them beyond all measure, giving them a land that wasn’t theirs. He gave them laws to follow, and he gave them a warning. Isaiah is giving them a message from God. God is angry, and destruction is coming.
Why would God give them such a message? Manasseh was one of the kings of Judah reigning while Isaiah is prophesying. Scripture records that He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the disgusting practices of the nations which the LORD had driven out before the people of Israel (2 Kings 21:2). These are the things that God didn’t want the people of Israel to commit. He was so bad that he put an idolatrous image of Asherah, which he had made, into the house of the LORD, God’s holy temple. There are other foreign powers that had more respect than this. You can imagine God’s anger. Can you imagine that the people would follow a leader who committed such practices and allow it to stand, knowing what was in his law? God then says the punishment he will give them. It is so bad that he says, they have done what is evil in my eyes and have provoked me to anger from the day when their fathers came out of Egypt until today (2 Kings 21:15).
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I will find myself doing that. Maybe some of you think, like I sometimes do, that we aren’t committing those sins that Manasseh did. We have never put a false god into God’s holy temple. Am I right in saying that? How about the heinous sexual sins of the Canaanites? If you said no to those questions, then what do we do to anger God? Our sins of habit are enough. We commit them with ease. We forget that God sees everything that we do. He sees how maybe we have been tempted to put the idol of money in front of our path, how we can put our fear, love, and trust above all things into objects of this world. Maybe it has happened where we looked to put our rest in St. Mattress and Pastor Pillow to catch some sleep instead of catching and resting with God’s Word at the divine worship service. Talking to complete strangers is easy when we talk about something we are invested in until the conversation turns to letting our light shine with the gospel. We can clam up. When God lets us know that he sees our sins that we sweep under the rug, our guilt puts us into Canaanite territory. If we aren’t repentant with our sins, God lets us know about his righteous anger. He demands perfection and repentance, two things that we easily forget about as we at times can try to keep hold of the sins we love most dear.
You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Now Israel would go through some hard times because of their sins. Yet God would have mercy on them. He would turn his anger from them. When God delivered their ancestors in Egypt during the Exodus, they praised God saying (Exodus 15:2) The LORD is my strength and song. He has become my Salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. God recalls this to prime the pump. Just as certain as Israel rejoiced when they came up out of Egypt, so too Israel will rejoice in their deliverance from Babylon, and we can sing because of our deliverance from sin.
Surely God is my Salvation! As we wandered in our sin, we couldn’t turn God’s anger away from us. Likewise, when the Israelites were being chased by the army of Egypt, they were cornered, yet God was their salvation. Moses led them on dry land and crossed the Red Sea with Egypt being swept away. Isaiah tells Israel that great will be their rejoicing. They too will experience an Exodus from Babylon. But our rejoicing does not come from Moses. Christ is an even greater Moses (Deut. 18), protecting us from the devil who chases us to corner us at the Red Sea. In his death, he drew the devil, sin, and death to drown them in the Red Sea of his divine blood. In baptism, we too are incorporated into his death and resurrection where our old man dies, and our new man comes alive. He comforts us. At our lowest points, when we fail to do what God says, we have comfort because Christ is our salvation, earned for us by him.
There is no hiding this great proclamation. Christians cannot be quiet with such a great message. The text is abundantly clear in this. The Holy One of Israel is great among us! Just as ancient Israel was so seized with joys of their salvation their worship spills over into mission, so too we are so enriched that our worship can’t help but spill into mission. We are living witnesses of the Gospel in all that we do. When we sing and shout, and worship together in praise, this body of believers can make noise, just like when we make noise to complete strangers over topics we love. The world sees a unified message, one of Christ crucified. There are also some who may have let their flame blow out, who may need to hear that Gospel message again. When they are at their lowest points, we can remind them that they are not alone. As they search for their redeeming qualities and find none, we can show them that we don’t have them either. We can remind them that they have been redeemed not based on their merit, but by the blood of Christ.
People may ask now how can we rejoice in troubles like this? As the world looks like it is getting darker, we know that the light of the world has come, and the prince of this world has been defeated. Our rejoicing is because of the peace that we have, peace that God has turned his anger away, peace that God sends us comfort in these trying days as our Savior holds us in his arms.
There is so much in this life that we can be passionate about. We always have a message to share. Isaiah shows us the passionate love we have for the gospel. This love for the gospel is a love that shares with others. The very love of Christ Himself. We have joy in our hearts because of our Savior. We have this joy every day. Nothing that we can do, only what God has done. This text has comforted so many that it has been put to song. Sing it and internalize it. It will be your comfort whenever you are blue. It is easy for us to learn and like all the children who learned it, we can always sing it and know that surely, it is God who saves me. I will trust in him and not be afraid. For the Lord is my Stronghold and my sure defense, and he will be my Savior. Amen.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +