A House for the Outcasts
Introduction: The Great Ingathering
We live in an age that is utterly obsessed with inclusion. Our culture preaches a gospel of affirmation, where the highest virtue is to welcome everyone and the greatest sin is to draw a distinction. But this modern gospel of inclusion is a house built on sand. It is a sentimental embrace that has no substance, a welcome mat laid out in front of a house with no foundation and no roof. It offers a community defined by nothing more than a shared refusal to define anything. It is, in short, a lie.
The Bible, in stark contrast, presents a doctrine of inclusion that is far more radical, far more costly, and infinitely more glorious. God is also in the business of inclusion, but He does not do it by lowering His standards. He does it by raising the dead. He does not welcome us by pretending we are not sinners; He welcomes us by crucifying His Son for our sin. God's inclusion is not a mushy, sentimental group hug. It is a robust, covenantal adoption. It is a grafting into a living tree. It is a citizenship granted in a holy nation.
Here in Isaiah 56, hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the prophet gives us a breathtaking preview of this new covenant community. He addresses the deepest anxieties of those on the outside, the foreigner and the eunuch, who by the standards of the old covenant administration were ceremonially excluded from the central life of Israel. And God tells them that a day is coming when the doors will be thrown open. Not because the standards of holiness have been abolished, but because they are about to be perfectly fulfilled, and the basis of membership is about to be transformed from bloodline to faith.
This passage is a death blow to all forms of ethnic pride and a glorious promise of the catholicity of Christ's church. It shows us that God's plan was always to have a house of prayer for all nations. The gospel is not a tribal religion; it is a global summons.
The Text
Thus says Yahweh, "Keep justice and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come And My righteousness to be revealed. How blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who takes hold of it, Who keeps from profaning the sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil." Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh say, "Yahweh will surely separate me from His people." Nor let the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree." For thus says Yahweh, "To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, And a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off. Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh, To minister to Him, and to love the name of Yahweh, To be His slaves, every one who keeps from profaning the sabbath And takes hold of My covenant, Even those I will bring to My holy mountain And make them glad in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples." Lord Yahweh, who gathers the banished of Israel, declares, "Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered."
(Isaiah 56:1-8 LSB)
The Posture of Expectation (v. 1-2)
The prophecy begins with a command and a promise.
"Thus says Yahweh, 'Keep justice and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come And My righteousness to be revealed. How blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who takes hold of it, Who keeps from profaning the sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil.'" (Isaiah 56:1-2)
Notice the connection. The coming of God's salvation is the reason for present obedience. This is not salvation by works. It is the opposite. It is the fruit that grows on the tree of faith. When you know the king is coming, you start cleaning up the house. The expectation of God's decisive action in history produces a certain kind of people. They "keep justice and do righteousness." This is covenant faithfulness in shoe leather.
And what is the sign of this faithfulness? The Sabbath. "Who keeps from profaning the sabbath." Why the Sabbath? Because the Sabbath is the great weekly declaration of trust in God. It is a ritual enactment of the gospel. On the Sabbath, we cease from our own works and rest in God's finished work. In the old covenant, it pointed back to creation and the exodus. In the new covenant, it points to the finished work of Christ in His resurrection. To keep the Sabbath is to say, "My life, my provision, my salvation, and my future do not depend on my frantic efforts. They depend on God." It is the antithesis of the anxious, self-reliant spirit of the world.
The man who does this, who lives this way, is called "blessed." This is the life of faith. It is a life that is oriented toward the coming salvation and righteousness of God, which we know is not a what, but a Who. The salvation and righteousness of God is Jesus Christ Himself.
The Anxieties of the Outsider (v. 3)
Next, God addresses two specific cases of exclusion, two categories of people who had every reason to feel hopeless.
"Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh say, 'Yahweh will surely separate me from His people.' Nor let the eunuch say, 'Behold, I am a dry tree.'" (Isaiah 56:3)
Under the Mosaic administration, there were ceremonial barriers. Deuteronomy 23 explicitly excluded eunuchs from the assembly of the Lord. Foreigners, while they could become proselytes, were always in a precarious position, subject to the whims of ethnic prejudice. So their fears were not unfounded. The foreigner fears ethnic separation: "I am not one of them by blood." The eunuch fears genealogical separation: "I am a dry tree." In a covenant community where lineage and inheritance were paramount, to be a eunuch was to be a dead end. You had no future. Your name would die with you.
These are the deep-seated anxieties of the human heart apart from Christ. "I don't belong." And "I have no future." God hears these whispers of despair and He answers them directly and powerfully.
A Name Better Than Sons and Daughters (v. 4-5)
God's answer to the eunuch is a complete reordering of what matters.
"For thus says Yahweh, 'To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, And a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.'" (Isaiah 56:4-5)
This is a gospel atom bomb dropped right into the middle of the old covenant world. God says to the man who is a genealogical dead end, "If you hold fast to my covenant, I will give you a legacy that is not dependent on biology." The conditions are faith and obedience: keeping His Sabbaths, choosing His pleasure, holding fast to His covenant. And the promise? A place in God's house, a memorial, and a name "better than that of sons and daughters."
What is this name? It is the family name of God Himself. It is the name "Christian." In Christ, our identity is no longer found in our bloodline, our family tree, or our ability to produce heirs. Our identity is found in our adoption. We are given a new name, an everlasting name, that cannot be cut off by death, or childlessness, or any other earthly circumstance. This is a direct prophecy of the nature of the new covenant family, the Church, where there is "neither Jew nor Greek... for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). Your standing before God is not determined by your family tree, but by whether you have been grafted into the true vine, Jesus Christ.
A House of Prayer for All Peoples (v. 6-7)
The promise to the foreigner is just as radical.
"'Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh, To minister to Him, and to love the name of Yahweh, To be His slaves, every one who keeps from profaning the sabbath And takes hold of My covenant, Even those I will bring to My holy mountain And make them glad in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.'" (Isaiah 56:6-7)
The foreigner who joins himself to Yahweh is not just tolerated. He is fully incorporated into the life of worship. He will "minister" to God. He will "love the name of Yahweh." He will be His "slaves," which is the highest title of honor, the title of Moses, of David, of Paul. It means to be a bond-servant, one who belongs wholly to the master.
And look at the result. God will bring them to His holy mountain, the place of His presence. He will make them "glad" in His house. And their worship, their "burnt offerings and their sacrifices," will be acceptable. This is revolutionary. The old system, with its Levitical priesthood and its restrictions, is being superseded. A new and better sacrifice is coming, the Lamb of God, which will make the worship of a believing Gentile from Ephesus as acceptable as that of a believing Jew from Jerusalem.
The reason is given in that thunderous phrase that Jesus Himself would later quote when He cleansed the temple: "For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples." The temple was never intended to be an exclusive ethnic club. Its ultimate purpose was to be the beachhead of God's saving reign for the entire world. When Jesus cleansed the temple, He was not just having a fit of pique. He was enacting this very prophecy. He was judging the corrupt, exclusive system and declaring that the doors were now open to the nations through Him.
The Gatherer Gathers More (v. 8)
The passage concludes with a magnificent summary statement from God Himself.
"Lord Yahweh, who gathers the banished of Israel, declares, 'Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered.'" (Isaiah 56:8)
God's identity here is "He who gathers the banished of Israel." He is the God of restoration, the one who brings His scattered people home. But His gathering work does not stop there. He makes a solemn declaration: "Yet others I will gather to them." The ingathering of Israel is just the beginning. It is the foundation for a far greater, global gathering.
This is the Great Commission in seed form. This is the postmillennial hope of the Old Testament. The kingdom of God is not a shrinking remnant hiding in a bunker. It is an expanding kingdom, a holy mountain that will fill the whole earth. God's purpose in history is to gather His people, first from Israel, and then from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The flow of history is not from the garden to the grave, but from the garden to the globe. God is a gatherer, and His work of gathering will not be complete until the knowledge of His glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Therefore, the Church is not a holding pen for saints waiting for the rapture. The Church is God's house of prayer for the nations. We are the fulfillment of this prophecy. We are the eunuchs given an everlasting name. We are the foreigners brought to His holy mountain. And we are the agents of His great gathering, calling out to a world of exiles and outcasts, "Come home. The doors are open. There is a place for you at the Father's table."