Fourth Sunday in Advent

Richard Davenport December 18, 2022 - Fourth Sunday in Advent Isaiah 7:10-17 Last week I talked about expectations. When talking about Jesus and Christianity there are certainly some expectations that come along for the ride. There are all of these words and ideas that go along with Christianity that you kind of expect to be there whenever you're talking about it and about Jesus specifically. Love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, the Bible, healing, restoration, and a number of other themes usually crop up whenever you get into a serious discussion about Jesus or Christianity. For the most part, over the last 2000 years, life as a Christian has generally revolved around making God happy. It didn't start out that way, but after the first couple of centuries as the church progressively became the Roman Catholic church, that's what we see being taught. God is righteous. You are not. If you want to be with God, you have to be righteous. So, you have to figure out how to get righteous so you can be with God. The church will help you with that. The church will help you learn what kind of life leads to being with God. This notion of Christianity is still taught just about everywhere today in one form or another, whether in the Catholic church or in any number of other church bodies out there. You're still talking about the Bible. You're still talking about love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and all of those other things. They just take on a particular feel. God still has mercy on you on account of Christ. Forgiveness is still there. The question is how you earn that mercy and forgiveness. God still loves you, otherwise this wouldn't even be an option. But it is. He loves you and wants you to be with him, you just have to show him you really want to be there too. There's the other side of the spectrum, which uses all of the same words but in very different ways. God still loves you. God still forgives you. God still wants you to be with him. God does all of that primarily by affirming who you are and who you've chosen to be. The things you do and the way you live are all part of how God made you and he wants you to live that way intentionally, authentically. Trying to live any other way is a denial of how God made you. God loves you, he wants you to be you. To make things a little more confusing, this is just the spectrum we find within what we broadly call "Christianity." There are many who use these very same words but who have taken themselves outside of the bounds of the Christian faith. They don't ascribe to the summary of the faith found in the creeds and are off doing their own thing. These are folks like modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Scientists, even Scientologists, and other little groups scattered around the world. Still, they use the same words and their views get mixed in as others consider these words and ideas. When Luther came around in the 1500's and started reexamining the prevailing thoughts on what God was all about, he added his own voice to the discussion. He was still trying to answer the same sort of question everyone else was, which was how God comes to be pleased with you. Luther puts the emphasis in different places. He changes the perspective on God's love a little bit and takes a slightly different view of the Bible than the Catholic church and some of the other reformers, but he still ends up using the same group of words and ideas. Hearing all of these voices, these slightly different, slightly nuanced views of who God is, what his love looks like, what he has to say to us, how we can be reconnected with him and all of the rest, it can be tough to navigate through all of it and make any sense of things. With so many different ways of talking about God, talking about his love, his grace, and all of the rest. A lot of the different views on God end up being kind of contradictory. You have some who see him as a harsh judge, who has mercy only for the most dedicated. You have others that see God as open, inviting, welcoming all no matter who they are or what sort of lives they lead. Sin and consequences have little place here, for God's love accepts everyone anyway. If your goal is to please God, the path can be a bit bewildering. How do you know if you're doing the right thing? You don't want to risk getting it wrong and making everything worse. The consequences could be dire, especially depending on your view of God. That makes what Ahaz says here rather reasonable. Ahaz is the king of Judah during a rather tumultuous period. The king of the northern kingdom of Israel is in league with the king of Syria and they are planning on travelling south to attack Judah and lay siege to Jerusalem. Even if they aren't completely successful, they could do a lot of damage along the way and make life generally miserable to everyone around. Ahaz is worried and he doesn't quite know what to do about it all. Are they going to conquer Judah? Are they going to raze the city of Jerusalem? Are they going to plunder the wealth of the kingdom? As a king, this sort of thing is causing a bit of stress. God sees the problem and sends Isaiah to Ahaz to reassure him that all of these plans would come to nothing. God had other plans for the kingdom of Israel and they weren't plans Israel was going to like. So Isaiah relays this message to Ahaz so that Ahaz won't have to worry any more. As further proof of God's good will, he speaks through Isaiah to tell Ahaz he can ask for some sign, some proof that this is truly how things will be. Ahaz seems to consider this but then reject it. "I will not put the Lord to the test," he says. What a display of faith! Such a trusting man! God tells him this will all happen and he needs nothing more. This is the opposite of poor Thomas the disciple who hears that Christ has risen and refuses to believe it without a sign. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when Isaiah responds the way he does. Ahaz isn't being faithful at all. Instead, he's wearying God with his refusal. In fact, God gives in a sign in spite of the fact he claims not to need one. He is given the wonderful prophecy, recorded for all time, that the savior would be the son of a virgin and his name would be Immanuel, "God with us." Navigating all of the different views on God and his work can be tricky. With so many competing voices it can be hard to know what to do. The only thing that helps you from going off course is by charting your course, not by what everyone else says about God, but by what God says about God. Only he can guide the way that leads to righteousness. Only he can truly show you what love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness mean. The Bible is the only sure and certain way to know who God is, what he is doing, and why he is doing it. For most of you here, that probably sounds obvious, but so many of us start on the path and then start adding in our own ideas, listing what we think are shortcuts, side routes, alternate options. "Is perfect righteousness necessary to be with God, well...I think God will be ok with it as long as you try your best." Or, "I know God loves me because God loves everyone. I know he wants me to be happy and would want me to do all of the things that make me happy." Either of these is just one of many examples of someone knowing just enough about God to be dangerous. Not to God of course, but to themselves and to everyone else around them. Ahaz's problem wasn't that he had simply missed a turn and was looking for the way back. He wasn't on the path to begin with. He was a pagan idolater from his youth and had no interest in listening to what God wanted. He had his own ideas and was following his own course. It's so easy to make up ideas about God. It's so easy to convince people you know something because you use the right words. It's much more difficult to let God speak for himself. It's more difficult to let God be in charge, because it means admitting you aren't. Ahaz wasn't looking for someone to tell him what to do and so he blows off God's messenger. Looking at the situation from Ahaz's perspective, maybe he didn't really want what God had to offer, or maybe he didn't care. He would find his own solution to the situation. You might think that tendency disappears when you profess to trust God, but it's always there, the tendency to let your own ideas stand in for what God says instead. It always ends in disaster. Ahaz continued the practices of his fathers, who thought they knew better than God and it eventually lead to the destruction and exile of the whole nation. But even right here, as Ahaz responds with his condescension, he's missing out on this wonderful gift God is offering. The savior is coming. God lifts the fog just a bit so the world can see a little more clearly who the savior will be. This is what every sin is, a statement that you know better than God, that you understand him and the world he created better than he does. Every sin is a rejection of him and his blessings. Though we reject him constantly, God offers one more gift in spite of how we treat him. He offers to take the consequences of our sin on himself. He offers to forgive us when we finally realize we don't actually know much of anything and we need him to lead the way, to chart the course that leads through all of the questions and brings us to righteousness. Here, on the 4th Sunday of Advent, we are remembering why our savior had to come to earth. We are the ones who can't find the way, despite what we like to tell ourselves and others. We are the ones who are lost. We can't find our way to him, so he comes to us. He steps into our lives out of the gloom, out of the darkness and takes us by the hand. He leads us on the path of righteousness, a path that follows where he goes, even as he climbs the hill that leads to the cross and death. We keep following him, because his path leads through death and out into life in the garden outside of the empty tomb. He comes to tell us about himself, so that we may listen and learn from him as our teacher and follow where he leads us. Nothing we say or do, nothing anyone says or does can match what God says. We set aside our own notions, which can only lead us astray, and focus on his Word, his promise, his righteousness, and his life. Following him, we find that he leads us to all of the things we wanted so badly and sought to find on our own. Now, instead of being lost, we have gained everything through him.