Third Sunday in Advent

Richard Davenport December 11, 2022 - Third Sunday in Advent Isaiah 35:1-10 The Old Testament is chock full of prophecies and other types of foreshadowing that point the way to Jesus. A lot of those prophecies, especially those we hear around Advent and Christmas, focus on who Jesus is, how the Father has been guiding the course of history to create the perfect time and place for the birth of his Son in human flesh. These prophecies tell us how to recognize him when he arrives. Many of these are ones we know well, such as Isaiah prophecy that the virgin will conceive and bear a son and will call his name, "Immanuel." Matthew's Gospel tells us plainly that Mary is the virgin who conceives and that her Son will be called "Immanuel," which means, "God with us." Other times we hear about how Jesus will be the Son of David. He will claim not just Israelite blood and descendance from Abraham, but more specifically from King David. Jesus would have royal blood. God promises to David that one of his descendants would be established on the throne forever. Jesus now comes in fulfillment of that promise. Not only that, but that Jesus would come from David's city, from Bethlehem. So, if you were looking for the promised savior, you'd be looking for those who claimed to be descended from King David and who had been born in the City of David, and who, somehow, had been born of a virgin. If you met someone who filled all of those criteria, chances were already pretty good you'd found the guy. If you were still unsure, there were a number of other prophecies that focused not so much on who he was, but on what he would do. There are the prophecies that tell about how he will rule in justice and righteousness. There are the prophecies about how he will bring healing to the nations or how he will gather his people together to be one flock under one shepherd. There are the prophecies about how he'll bring healing and restoration. As Jesus responds to John, he asks to John to simply consider what he's seen Jesus doing. The blind see. The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised and the good news is preached to all. Jesus calls to mind what had been said long ago through Isaiah 35 and elsewhere. This is the work the savior will do. Of course, to cap it all off, he'll fulfill the very first prophecy of the savior, that Satan will strike him but his own head will be crushed in the process. If you want to know if the savior has come, you need look no further than the cross and the empty tomb. It's important you look at both who the savior is and what he will do. Promises and prophecies were made for both of these things and they both need to be there for someone to truly be considered the one sent by God. Looking at the Isaiah passage, there's a lot to consider. God will heal people of their various ailments. The blind will see. The lame will leap. The mute will sing. God will bring justice for his people. It's a very physical image. It's an image of people doing all of the things they should have been able to do but couldn't. People who are freed from their ailments. People who are able to live their lives the way they ought. You can sit and ponder what your life would be like without all of the various afflictions we face. What would you do if you never got old? What would life be like without things like cancer, arthritis, heart disease, cataracts, or even just glasses? You start thinking about all of the things you've enjoyed doing over the years. Those who are older will go back to being in the prime of their lives, the youth and vitality that they once had. Those who are in their prime now will continue on that way, without any fear of the decline of old age. What kinds of things could you imagine doing forever? Well guess what? That's what you'll be able to do! Just imagine your life and how much bigger and better it will be! How great it will be to finally be able to do what you want without any worries or concerns. That's a bit of the picture we see here. You see it further in all of the other things Isaiah talks about. Wildernesses and deserts blossoming and taking on all of the majesty and glory of the forests of Lebanon. Deserts flowing with streams of cool water once again. Everything shall be pleasant and peaceful. You can just bask in that for a while. What an amazing life to look forward to. Everything you love and nothing you hate. That would be ideal, and that must be what we are waiting for because God promises us it will be paradise. If that's the case, I don't really need to worry about this world much. I need to make it through the day and I have a few duties to those around me, family for instance. But really, my job here is pretty limited. This prophecy is all about what Jesus is going to do. It tells me the things he'll do so I know him when I see him. The whole point of a prophecy like this is that I can't do it. I'm not the savior. So why worry about things I can't do anyway? That all sounds appropriately Lutheran. You can't do it. God does it all. After all, isn't that the Gospel in a nutshell? Jesus died for you. Jesus rose for you. Jesus saves you. Jesus forgives you. Jesus redeems you. You get to enjoy the fruits of his labor because you can't do any of those things. God loves you so much that he gives them to you anyway. That's what unmerited grace means. That's also why we talk about all of this in Advent. We're waiting. We're looking forward to what God has promised to do. Whether we're reflecting on how the world waited for its savior throughout the Old Testament or whether we're looking ahead to his return now, either way we're waiting, waiting for God to do his work. So we sit around and wait for God to give us more of what we already have. More and better versions of the things we already like and already do. We'll just keep doing the fun things we enjoy doing now and wait for God to usher in the even better stuff. Why worry about anything else? When you take a look at the whole scope of Biblical history, you can see some pretty interesting themes that get repeated throughout. Obviously God's salvation is a big one. God works on behalf of his people simply because he chooses to love them despite their bad behavior. You see his forgiveness at work, as all of those who call to him are saved, even when it happens over and over again, even when it comes right after God had just done some wondrous thing for them. We are always looking ahead to what God will do next. He gives us his prophecies. He makes promises to us. We know what we're looking for and we wait expectantly for it. When he fulfills that promise, we are often disappointed. Not because God is playing some trick on us, but because what he brings isn't quite what we were expecting. God doesn't just give us more of the same. He gives us something even bigger than we could imagine, something more than we thought possible. A lot of our problems here come because we're thinking about God in the wrong direction. We think about all of the good things we have in life here and how who God is and what he does must conform to our expectations. We hear God tell us about the future and think we have it all figured out. We hear bits and pieces of what it's all about and then we fill in the rest with our own ideas. Jesus will do good stuff. We know what good stuff is. Good stuff is the things I like and the things I want. God will do those things for me because he promised to give me good stuff. After all, everything he talks about sounds great. The prophecies God makes of the savior and of the world he will bring are very visual. You can picture what the world might look like with deserts running with fresh water, with people who were once lame dancing for joy or blind people looking around in wonder. These prophecies had been around for hundreds, even thousands of years, and yet, when the time came for the savior to be born found he wasn't at all what they expected. For all of the imagery God uses for the savior and his kingdom, his new creation, the images and expectations always pale when compared with the reality. Those who sought out the savior were often so caught up in their expectations that they didn't believe there could be anything better. So, when Jesus offered them something better, they rejected it. Here in Advent, we are only two weeks away from celebrating the birth of the savior. As people who have generally been Christians for years, even all our lives, it's hard to think of a time when we didn't know what Jesus was all about. Forgiveness of sins and eternal life have always been associated with Jesus for us. But for God's people that wasn't always the case. Our familiarity with the work of Christ can lead us to underestimate what God will do in the future. Christ's work comes to feel rather bland and uninteresting. We look to the future and find we have forgotten all about how limited our understanding is. We lose sight of out everything God told the Israelites about the coming savior was preparation, was to get them ready. But none of those prophecies could compare with the real thing. A mighty king, might God, born in human flesh. God living in the world with his people. Instead of taking what was already there and making it better, God did something completely new and different, something that didn't exist in the world at all. He took his own kingdom, his own perfection and plunged it into the world. The God who created all things had just created something truly new, something beyond all expectations. We put our expectations on God. We demand he meet them. We demand he fulfill all of our wishes and dreams. We look at what he promises and twist it to fit what desire. We don't take the Bible's story, our story, into account. We don't look back at what God promised and what God did. Those who clung to their expectations in the days of Christ missed out on the even greater blessing that stood right in their midst, and the world continues to do so, continues to expect God to meet its demands instead of trusting God to do all he promised, and more. God holds out forgiveness to you. He offers it to you. He wants you to have it. He wants to have mercy on you because he loves you. He shares these prophecies with you not to confuse you, but to give you a little glimpse of what he has in store, but it is just a little glimpse. He has much more to give. Make no mistake. This is not God promising prosperity, as some might say. God does promise peace, life, joy, and many other things, but they are all fixed firmly in the future, in the perfect kingdom of our Lord and savior, Christ Jesus. The bits and pieces of these that we find in our lives today are not because of our goodness or because the world is good. Instead it is because God sends small bits of that perfect kingdom we all are waiting for in the future back to us now. God knows what awaits us and he knows how much this sinful, rebellious world is lacking all of the things only he can give. So he shows them to us. We look to Christ and find peace. We look to Christ and find mercy, compassion, and love. We look to Christ and find reconciliation through repentance and absolution, not only to God but also to each other. All of the things we look forward to in his perfect kingdom. God does not want us to take our broken, imperfect present life and to turn that into our expectation for the future. He wants us to take the future he has in store for you and start living in it here in the present. Take what he gives freely. Trust and follow where he leads. He is already showing you that future here around his altar where he already reigns in glory as his kingdom comes to us in all its perfection. See how the peace he offers now is just a small sampling of what awaits you, how the healing of body and soul that you find here and there are just a tiny glimpse of what he will bring, how the restoration of the world is beyond what we can conceive. Look to what God offers and you will find your own expectations falling far short and that God is able to do far more than you ever thought possible and that he wants to do them all for you.