“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” is the question asked of witnesses in a court of law. They are adjured to testify to what they have seen and heard as faithful witnesses.
The Lord spoke through the prophet Isaiah to summon and to send His people to be His witnesses: “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord” (Is. 43:10 ESV). As in a courtroom, the people of Judah are summoned to the witness stand to testify to what they have seen and heard.
What have they experienced to which they may testify? They had beheld the gracious work of the Lord on their behalf. They had been chosen to be God’s special people by covenant. He had promised His blessing and protection upon them. He acted on that promise by delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt and providing them with a bountiful land. Despite their repeated waywardness, God held true to His love by disciplining His children and rescuing them from their enemies. In Isaiah’s day, the Lord delivered Jerusalem from a deadly siege of the Assyrians by slaying 185,000 enemy troops. Time and again God had been a faithful Savior to His people. Indeed, through the mouth of Isaiah, the Lord promised an even greater liberation through a greater exodus — rescue from sin and its curse, deliverance from death itself.
Even as He had been a faithful Savior to His people, God summoned the people of Judah to be faithful witnesses to His salvation. They are called to testify among themselves and to the nations around them that the Lord is the only God, “that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (v. 10). Furthermore, they bear witness that the Lord is their sole Savior (v. 11).
With this summons to be God’s witnesses, there is also a sending. His people are to testify among themselves but also to the nations around them (v. 9). They are sent to bear witness to others regarding who the Lord is and what He has done. In this they serve others with the saving message of God’s gracious acts. They are God’s chosen servants to herald His truth: “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen’” (v. 10).
Several centuries later God would accomplish His greatest work of salvation through His chosen servant Jesus Christ. Isaiah had foretold Him to be the Spirit-filled Servant who would bring righteousness to the nations and salvation to the ends of the earth through His substitutionary suffering and sacrificial death (Is. 42:1-9, 49:5-6, 52:13-53:9). Yet the Lord would “prolong His days” by raising Him from the dead so that the spoils of His victory over sin and death might be distributed to the many (Is. 53:10-12).
Following His death and resurrection, Jesus summoned His disciples to be His witnesses. On the evening of Easter, He appeared to them in the upper room and said: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:46-48 ESV). In summoning these disciples to be His witnesses, Jesus simultaneously sends them into the world. Forty days later, at His ascension, Jesus similarly commissioned His followers: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8 ESV). Like Judah of old, God’s people are summoned and sent as His witnesses.
This process of summoning and sending witnesses continues today. Certainly, God summons all Christians to bear witness to His saving work in their lives. They do so by testifying of Christ’s redemption for all. They are sent into the contexts of their everyday vocations to bear witness to God’s grace and mercy in Christ. The Apostle Peter says regarding all Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his [God’s] own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9 ESV).
But God has established a special office to bring this witness into the world, that of the holy ministry. He summons and sends pastors to be His witnesses by means of preaching the Gospel, administering the Sacraments and teaching the Word of God. He summons them by His call mediated through a Christian congregation. When a church calls a man to be its pastor, God summons him to serve as the chief witness to Christ in that gathering. But God also sends him to the church’s context and community as His chosen servant to witness to the people with the Word. Similarly, women are summoned and sent as deaconesses to support the office of the holy ministry through the call to a congregation or other ministry setting.
The summoning and sending of pastors and deaconesses are celebrated at Call Day each spring at Concordia Seminary. At this special worship service (and indeed at other similar assignment services throughout the year), the candidates for pastoral and diaconal ministry receive their assignments to locations throughout the nation and even across the globe. They become the Lord’s chosen servants to bear witness in word and deed to the love of God in Christ. They go forth to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” by testifying of Him who is the Truth, Jesus Christ our Lord (John 14:6).
“‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen’” (Is. 43:10 ESV). God’s declaration through the prophet Isaiah continues today as Seminary students are summoned by God’s call and sent into the world to bear testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. This is done so that people might know and believe that He is the sole God and only Savior of the world, as the Lord Himself declares: “That you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior”
(Is. 43:10-11 ESV). The graduates of Concordia Seminary bear witness to this truth so that more and more people may believe in the One who is the Truth, the One who is their only Savior.