Here With Us In Our Waiting
Notes
Transcript
Can you believe it is Christmastime already? The older I get, the faster it seems to come. Don’t you remember when you were kids Christmas seemed like a lifetime away every year. Now, Christmas 2023 feels like six months ago. The agony of waiting to see what was under the tree has been replaced by hoping I’ll even remember to buy Christmas gifts this year!
But waiting is hard.
When I was in the sixth grade, my parents made the decision to move us out of Greenspoint, a suburb of Houston. This place was nicknamed Gunspoint because of its gang and gun violence. We moved to Spring, which was a much safer environment. The house we moved into was two stories and it felt like we doubled the square footage of our living space. We inherited a basketball goal in the driveway from the previous owners. It was cemented into the ground and you could adjust the height of the goal. It was pretty cool. The only problem was location. You see, you can’t play basketball in the driveway when cars occupy the same space. So, if I wanted to play basketball, I had to ask my dad to move the cars and park them in the street. Well, that means I had to wait on dad to be available, and that didn’t always work for me. Looking back now, I’m sure I only waited five minutes, but as a kid eager to shoot some hoops, it felt like an eternity! I look back and think how silly to think that was a big deal.
But we don’t like waiting. We live in an “I want it now” society. You can get online shipments in two days. You can microwave a meal in a matter of minutes. You can make an international call in the blink of an eye. You can speak face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world in real time. We are not accustomed to waiting, but God operates on his own timetable, not ours. God operates slower than we would like.
Adam and Eve, through their own rebellion against God’s commands, brought sin into this world. What was a paradise began the descent into a world full of broken systems and broken people. As God pronounced his curses on all parties involved in the rebellion, he declares a promise. He declares that one day one of the woman’s offspring will come and crush the serpent. A hero will rise and defeat the one who seduced Eve to betray her maker and choose her own path. Ever since then, we have been waiting.
The passage we are going to look at today is a familiar prophecy from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah the prophet lived in a time where Israel had been divided. The twelve tribes were divided into two kingdoms. The ten tribes of the north retained the name Israel, and the two tribes of the south took the name Judah. Isaiah prophesied of a coming invasion into the north by the Assyrians in chapter eight. History tells us that the Assyrian invasion took place in 722 B.C. This was the beginning of the exile. But in the midst of bad news, God delivers good news. There is always a promise of deliverance and restoration, and this is what we see in chapter nine.
But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
The land of Zebulun and Naphtali refer to the tribal land allotments given at the time of conquest. You can read about this in the book of Joshua. These territories were in the Galilee region. By the way of the sea refers to trade routes others would use to get not just to the sea of Galilee, but the Mediterranean. Guess where Jesus spent the majority of his ministry. He spent it in the Galilee region. One day, according to Isaiah 9:1, the land that has fallen under the judgment of God will be made glorious, but it will be done so at the arrival of a person.
How do we know that? Let’s keep reading.
The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them.
You shall multiply the nation,
You shall increase their gladness;
They will be glad in Your presence
As with the gladness of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
We see that the hope of Israel is not based on the hope that the people will get their act together. It is based on a person. Isaiah speaks as if he is speaking to the person who brings the hope. By saying you, Isaiah is signifying a person will come. We understand through connecting biblical prophecies, the person Isaiah is talking about and the person God is talking about in Genesis 3:15 are the same person. The result of his coming is that the people will experience hope. There will be gladness!
But look at what else this person will do...
For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders,
The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.
For every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult,
And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
The oppressed shall be free from their oppressors. The tools of war will be no more. Israel has been no stranger to oppression and wars. Sometimes this came from outside aggressors. Other times they were warring between themselves. But the prophecy claims that there is coming a day where Israel will be free. They will experience peace.
We, as the adopted children of God, can begin to relate to this as we long for the reign of Christ on earth. We, just like Israel, have been waiting for our deliverer. Many of us are nervous about the potential start of World War III. Many of us are nervous about the war in Israel going on right now. We are tired of seeing lives ruined by one form of evil or another. We cry out to God to intervene and we wait. We long for the day that lives are no longer lost to violence. Isaiah 2:4 says that in the last days swords will be made into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. One day our guns won’t be necessary.
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
We recognize this prophecy speaks of Jesus the Christ. This man, the hope of Israel, was not just a man. He was God himself. A child born to Israel and for the whole world. We recognize that he was born to his mother Mary. Jesus came and he lived his life in total obedience to his Father. He claimed to be God’s Messiah, but not the warrior king his people had come to expect. Because God came in a way they did not expect, they rejected him. He was then caused to suffer and die a humiliating death, a death on a cross. But of course this was all done by design because he knew that real hope comes not from a military campaign, but from purchasing pardon for sin for everyone who believes.
This prophecy was given around 700 years before Christ came. That is a long time. It is hard for us to grasp how long that is. George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789. That was 235 years ago. The time between Isaiah’s prophecy and Christ’s arrival is three times longer than the time between George Washington’s inauguration to today. That is a long time.
Jesus walked the earth nearly two thousand years ago. He promised his followers he would return, and here we are…waiting…anticipating…hoping that we might be the generation to see it. Yet every generation waits and hopes and wonders, then we begin to wonder if we have hoped in vain. But I want to remind you again that God does not operate on our time table, and what seems like a long time to us is nothing to the one who invented time itself. And though we wait for the return of Christ, this does not mean we live a life absent of Christ.
At the end of the book of Matthew, in the famous Great Commission, Jesus commissions his disciples to go out into the world and make disciples of every nation. This is our task as the people of God. This is our task as the church. We have framed it in our own way by saying we help people find forever family through Christ-centered relationships. But it is his promise in the commissioning I want to focus on. In Matthew 28:20, there is a five word promise Jesus gives to his disciples: I am with you always.
But how does he do this when he is away?
Jesus is with us in the waiting through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is with us in the waiting through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In John chapters 14 through 16, Jesus is preparing his disciples for the next step: a life without him. And what he means is that he will no longer be with them in the way he was before his ascension into heaven. Jesus is leaving. He is going to prepare a place for them. However, he lets them know they will not be alone. In John 14:16-17, Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
Jesus is going, but the disciples will not be without the presence of God. He will be present in a new way. In John 16:7 he says,
“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
We know from Acts 2 that the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost when the disciples were praying together as they waited according to Christ’s instructions. Scripture testifies that we are indwelt, meaning the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, on the day of our salvation. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. But we are also given the Spirit of God as a guide and a teacher. When we read the Bible and accurately interpret it, that is a work of the Holy Spirit in us. God is with us each and every day through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us.
We are waiting for a lot of things. We are waiting for grocery and gas prices to come down. We are waiting for interest and insurance rates to fall. We are waiting for Christmas to come. Some of you are waiting for retirement. Some of you are waiting for a better job opportunity to present itself. Maybe you are waiting for a promotion. Maybe you are just waiting for this season of life to end.
We patiently await the return of Christ (Zech 14:4; Acts 1:11; Titus 2:13; Rev 1:7, as well as a number of parables). It has been nearly 2000 years since he ascended into heaven promising to return. Generation after generation has waited and hoped. We continue to wait day after day, year after year, watching the world fall apart. We long for the return of Christ so that this mess will finally get cleaned up. There are days where all I want to do is go home! Don’t you?
There is a day when Christ shall come. Until then we wait…and we do our duty.
My father served in the Army during Vietnam and he wrote something that he gave to me that I would like to read for you.
I remember the day I left Vietnam. I left Vietnam in a stretch DC-8 with one hundred seventy or eighty soldiers on board. As we taxied to the runway there was the general chit chat up and down the aisle about experiences, friends, family, next duty stations, etc., and others just sat quietly. Then as the pilot applied power and released the brakes the airplane gained momentum. As the plane gained momentum one soldier after another began to cheer, and when the wheels lifted off the runway the entire aircraft was in an uproar with cheers, shouts, whistles, and applause. WE WERE OUT OF THERE! WE WERE GOING HOME!
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
Listen for the shout. He is coming again!
If you are here today and you have not made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, I have some unfortunate news for you. Christ is not with you. Many people today assume God is with them based solely on the fact that God loves them. And he does. But I want you to understand that there is no relationship without repentance. There is a standard of ethics that God has established and we have all violated that standard. The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The result of that sinfulness is death. But the good news is that Jesus came to pay the penalty of our sin, to die a death we deserved, and was raised to life. Your allegiance to Christ is not automatic. You must choose to acknowledge him as Lord. When you come to him for forgiveness of sin, and through repentance pledge your allegiance to him, he will send the Holy Spirit of God and then he will be with you always.
For the redeemed, we wait with great anticipation for the return of Christ. As we wait, may we never grow weary of doing the work he has called us to do. May we be faithful in taking the gospel to our community and impacting the lives of those around us.
