The Coming King

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the comic. From the image of Uncle Sam to the Marvel characters, Americans have been reading comics for one and one-half centuries.

Today, though, probably no comic series is as familiar to Americans and non-Americans as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been with us since 1939, and it’s a set of film adaptations of the Marvel series. There’s over 20 of them!

Ice-breaker:

Get in groups and decide on a common favorite

Elect a spokesperson to be your group’s voice

So, here’s how I want ya’ll to participate. I want you to take two minutes and gather with the people around you and determine what you think was the best Marvel movie you’ve seen. Then, elect a spokesperson to be your group’s voice.

[GIVE TWO MINUTES]

Have your chairperson stand up.

[GO AROUND THE SANCTUARY IN CLOCKWISE ORDER]

Self salvation projects

Have you ever wondered why we like superheroes? “They’re cool” - I get that they’re cool, that’s not in question. I’m looking for a deeper answer. Is there something about our nature that predisposes us to love superheroes?

Why do we have a fascination with superheroes? If I might venture a guess, I think it’s because they embody what we wish we had but are painfully aware that we do not.

Let me put that another way: Superheroes appeal to us because we know deep down that we are not enough. We want to know that there is power that can enable us to transcend our own weakness.

Because, the fact is this: as much as we might want to believe that we can accomplish everything and face anything, we simply can’t. And we know it. No matter how high the expectations we set for ourselves, and no matter how hard we try, there are some things that are beyond our reach, and those things are the most important things. Things like, How do I deal with my guilt and shame? Is there forgiveness available for me? How do I break this addiction or break this or that pattern of bitterness or revenge? How can I find salvation? How can I achieve eternal life? We can succeed at a lot of things, but the most important things are just beyond our grasp. We always let ourselves down.

Even those around us let us down, don’t they? Forget our own weaknesses. We’ve been hurt enough by the weakness of others. We pass our lives in disappointment because we had too much faith in people, and they failed us. In fact, some of us go from relationship to relationship, from friendship to friendship, from job to job, each time thinking that “this one is different” - finally I’ve found something or someone I can rest my hope in.

And yet, bitter disappointment sets in, because no person or relationship or job or house of car or bank account can ever fill the weakness inside of us. We need help from outside of ourselves.

“When all human have let us down, we might be ready for the only real salvation that exists.” [Ortlund, Isaiah, p232]

And then along comes Christmas. Because when you boil it down to its essence, Christmas is about our that very thing. Christmas is the unbelievable but true story of our holy and merciful God coming down to us and living among us as one of us, almost wrapping himself around us, so that He might do for us and in our place what we could not and cannot do for ourselves. That is the message of Christmas, the message of the promised coming King.

Will you notice with me four things about this message of Christmas, this message of the coming King?

#1: It is a message of comfort

This message is first and foremost a message of comfort. Chapter 40, which by the way begins the second major section in the book of Isaiah, has this opening line. Isaiah the prophet has a message from the Lord of Hosts Himself, and it is a message of comfort.

It opens like this in verses 1-2: “‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:1-2 ESV).

That word for comfort comes from a Hebrew word that may have meant something like the sound of breathing.

Take a deep breath with, and let’s enact this. Breathe in through your nose, and out from your mouth. In through your nose, out from your mouth. Relaxing, is it not? Think of the comfort God gives His people as a sigh of relief. What do you think of when you think of a sigh of relief? A happy outcome when a bad one was anticipated? Maybe good news when bad news was expected?

Two sections of Isaiah

Isaiah 1-39: written to Israel before the exile

Isaiah 40-66: written to Israel after the exile

Israel definitely had gotten her share of bad news. I said Isaiah had two major sections earlier. Now it’ll help us to understand this message if we can grasp those two section. Isaiah 1-39 was written to Israel before they went into exile. The message of Isaiah 1-39 was this: Come back to the Lord; repent of your sins and trust in Him and you will find mercy. If you don’t, He will cast you out of the land He promised you. The message of Isaiah 41-66 was, “So you’re in exile. It’s going to be okay. The Lord’s anger has run its course. Now He wants to comfort you. That was good news when bad news was expected. A happy outcome when a bad outcome was anticipated. A sigh of relief. A sigh of relief, because God has come to us in love when we expected Him to come in wrath.

By the way, this whole idea of comfort from God is sort of complex. On the one hand, it makes sense. We know that God is a God who comforts His people. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” the apostle Paul wrote, “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2Cor. 1:3-4 ESV). We also know the comfort of God ourselves; we’ve experienced it in times of trouble. And so iot makes sense that God would offer comfort to us, because it fits what we already know of Him.

On the other hand, the comfort of God does — or should — perplex us. You say, why is that, pastor Dustin? Doesn’t God owe us comfort?”

And the answer is, of course, “Well, no.” It might make sense to us that God would owe us comfort. As Americans we’re so accustomed to talking about our rights and getting what we deserve. We forget that God is God, and we are not. God is Creator and Judge, and we are not. God is holy and righteous, and we are not. How, then, can a righteous and holy Creator Judge possibly forgive our sins? How can the the Creator and Judge of the universe comfort us, when what deserve from Him is wrath?

The answer is, the cross of Jesus Christ. Isaiah explains how God will provide comfort to His people in exile, and why He is able to provide comfort to His people in exile. “‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God. ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem’ — literally says “speak to her heart” — “and cry to her that her warfare is ended,” — and then, look at this: "her iniquity is pardoned, and she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:1-2 ESV).

That’s the crux, church, right there: her iniquity is pardoned. Forgiven. Wiped clean. How can a holy God forgive us sinners and comfort us when we deserve wrath? He pardons our iniquity. How? By sweeping it under rug? No, not by sweeping our sin under the rug; God must be true to His character as a holy Judge; He must punish sin. And so, rather than sweeping it under the rug, God lays it on His Son. That is how a holy God can pardon sin and comfort sinners when we deserve wrath instead. Later on the prophet Isaiah will spell out more clearly what this looks like: Isa 53:5

Isaiah 53:5 ESV

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

The Promised, Coming, Messianic King has saved us by suffering for us, and He rules us by serving us. This King stands at the center of human history. The OT saints looked forward to the coming of this One. They believed the promise. We now look back to the coming of this Promised Messianic King. And we too believe the promise that by faith in His name we too can be forgiven, our iniquity pardoned, no matter what you have done. The message of this forgiveness goes out to all: to professing Christians and to hypocritical Christians; to the lost as well as to the saved; to the backsliding and to the faithful. Turn from your sin today and experience the comfort of the Lord.

The Christmas message is first a message of comfort. That’s why when God chose the circumstances into which this King would be born, He chose a lowly family, from a humble town, in a out of the way place. He skipped the halls of power and went straight to the feeding trough in Bethlehem, that you and I might understand that gospel comfort is not something only the rich and famous and powerful and religious people get. It’s for - primarily for - the humble of heart. Some of you are trapped and stuck because you see God as a taskmaster, someone impossible to please, someone who’s always more concerned to point out what you got wrong rather than celebrate with you what you got right.

Church, that’s not our God. Listen to this quote:

“Christianity is all about the saving grace of God. He overrules our stupidity with his own absolute pardon through the finished work of Christ on the cross. Do we sin? Yes. Do we suffer for it? Yes. Is that where God leaves us? No. When his discipline has done its good work, God comes back to us with overflowing comfort. See in God not a frown but a smile, not distance but nearness. Even when we don’t act like the people of God, he still identifies with us: “…my people…your God.” He still calls us “Jerusalem”, even when we are far away in exile.” [Ortlund, Isaiah, p235]

The Christmas message is not only a message of comfort from God. It is also a call to open our hearts to Him.

#2: It is a call to open our hearts to Him

The Christmas message is not only a message of comfort from God. It is also a call to open our hearts to Him.

Look with me at verses 3-4. And I want to give you an assignment. The call to open our hearts to the coming King is described here in terms of making the terrain easy for Him to traverse. So as I read it, count those references with me, will you?

“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.’” Not counting the first one “prepare the way of the Lord” because that one is introductory, I counted six. Otherwise, if you want to count the first one, that’s seven.

Now think about a wilderness: what’s it like? Think about a desert. Imagine yourself to be an ancient Israelite, wandering with your cattle by your side, your children on the donkeys, your extended family behind and in front of you, the entire nation of Israel stretching in front of you and behind you as far as you can see.

What do you see? You see the carcasses of dead animals in front of you. To not walk over them, you have to veer to the right and then to the left, so the way is crooked. rugged mountain ranges, not passable by most travelers. You see valleys ahead of you. It’ll be tough to venture down the steep mountainside into the valley, taking maybe an entire day just for that. Then you’ll have to do it again on the other side of the valley. As you walk, you feel holes and rough places. These make the journey more tiring and more dangerous. There’s not much you can do for a sprained ankle in the middle of the Judean desert.

What do you feel? Blinding sun, paralyzing heat. You feel the scalding hot sand stinging your toes, and irritating the soles of your feet. What else do you feel? You feel tired — no, exhausted. Hungry — no, famished to the point of weakness. And thirst - you’re so thirsty. What you wouldn’t give for a fresh, unopened, ice-cold Dasani, right?

The desert is an incredibly unhospitable and unfriendly place. If you’re to arrive to your destination, you have to navigate these obstacles or else you won’t make it to your destination on time — or, you just might not make it at all. That’s why in the Bible, the actual, physical wilderness also becomes a symbol of something else: it becomes a symbol of the wilderness of my own heart, and your own heart.

So when Isaiah here speaks of the valleys being lifted up and the hills being made low, when he talks of making the rough places into a plain and the uneven ground level, he’s talking about preparing Israel spiritually to receive their Messiah. Look with me at verse 5. Who is this visitor, this special guest, this coming King: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken”.

“The glory of the Lord” — that means the Lord, in all His glory [Motyer, TOTC p276]. Put on your Bible thinking cap for a minute. What is the glory of God? The glory of God is essentially His holiness on visual display. It’s His radiance. It’s His beauty. The glory of God is His blazing purity.

Now take one more step with me: How is Jesus described in the NT? Is Jesus ever described as the glorious reflection of the Father? He is.

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

2Cor. 4:6

2 Corinthians 4:6 ESV

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Col 1:15

Colossians 1:15 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

“The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together”. When Isaiah preaches this to the people of Israel, it is a summons to prepare themselves for the coming of their Messiah. They weren’t ready. There were obstacles. Idolatry, sexual promiscuity, unbelief, to just name three. These obstacles don’t block His way, but they do make it hard for us to receive Him gladly.

There are obstacles in my heart to the Lord’s coming. Pride — thinking too highly of myself than I ought. Unconfessed sin — what will people do if they knew the truth? Worry and anxiety — not believing that God’s purposes for me are ultimately good even if they are temporarily hard.

What are the obstacles in your heart this morning? We all have them. The prophet Jeremiah said this about the heart: He said the human heart is desperately sick. The human heart is a messy place, and yet, it is there that Jesus our King wants to enter and clean it up and make it His own.

The message of Christmas is a message of comfort, a call to prepare our hearts, and thirdly, a reminder of the power and faithfulness of God.

#3: It is a reminder of the power and faithfulness of God

How many of you this morning would say that you are older than you’d like to be?

I’m 41 this year, and I have concluded that I don’t like this thing we call aging. One day you’re in your thirties, the last decade of real youth, and then the next day, boom - you’re halfway to 80. And what I’ve found is that everyone treats you differently when they know you’re 40. They say things like, “So, you’re now 40, now? Hehe...” Then I think, “Okay, have I joined some kind of club?” And I’m not even as old as Joel is yet!

Some of you have reminded me that 40 — or 41, to be exact — is young. And it is, it’s relatively young. But 41 has reminded me that I won’t live forever. My wife won’t live forever. My parents won’t live forever. Somehow the future looks less certain to me now that I’m in my forties, although I realize that the future has always been uncertain. It’s just that I’m aware of it now.

But here’s where the Christmas message helps us even with something as trivial-seeming as aging.

Look with me at verses 6-7: Isaiah 40:6-7

Isaiah 40:6–7 ESV

A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.

How do you feel about the Bible saying that you and I are just grass? I mean, there are few things in the world around us that are more transient than grass. It’s here today and literally gone tomorrow when I get on the mower. Flowers, too, Isaiah says. The beauty of flowers doesn’t exempt them from suffering the same fate as grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, note this, verse 7: “when the breath of the Lord blows on it”.

We can earn money and invest it in the stock market; we can buy houses and fix them up and increase their value and sell them or live in them; we can build our careers so that while we may have started on the bottom rung, we finish on the top rung. We can build governments and empires. Human beings made in the image of God can do just about everything, except for the most important thing, and at the end of the day, we are as fragile as the blades of grass. We remain strong only as long as the Lord sees fit, and the slightest breath from the mouth of the Lord will sweep it all away.

But there is something that is not as fragile as grass. And that is the Lord. And His word. The two are one and the same. The Lord cannot be separated from His Word. “The grass withers,” Isaiah warns us, “the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8 ESV).

Now what is the word of God? Sometimes the word of God refers to a message from a prophet. Sometimes the word of God in the Bible refers to the message of the gospel. I think that’s what it means here. Because the book of Isaiah is fundamentally a book about good news, and that’s what the gospel is. In fact, the gospel is all through Isaiah. I love this quote I came across this week on the book of Isaiah.

“[Isaiah] was, above all, a herald of good news for bad people from a surprising God.” [Ortlund, Isaiah, p234]

The quote applies to Isaiah himself. But it could just as easily describe the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah is, above all, a message of good news from bad people from a surprising God. And that message, that word,. Isaiah tells us, will stand forever, even as we and everything around us fades. We were never meant to live forever on this earth. Christmas reminds us of that. But it also gives us hope and joy because we’ve been given something so much better than immortality here on earth; we’ve been given eternal life, a different kind of life altogether from what we know here.

The message of Christmas is a message of comfort from God; it is a call to open our hearts to Him; it reminds of the faithfulness and power of God. And lastly, the message of Christmas is a revelation of the King Himself.

#4: It is a revelation of the King

Pastor Tony Evans tells a story about forgetting the the reason for celebrating Christmas.

There was a mother who had just had her first child, and she threw a part to celebrate. She invited her friends over and had food and drinks ready. When they arrived, they started celebrating. They celebrated so much in fact that the mother barely noticed the fact that her newborn son wasn’t even there. It wasn’t until one of her guests said, “Well, where is this baby whose birth we’re celebrating?”

The mom had that momentary feeling of panic that all of us who are parents know too well, that moment when, for a split second, your child is out of your sight. She was relieved but embarrassed as she remembered that her newborn son was at her mom’s house where she had left him that morning. She had been so busy celebrating that she forgot the reason for the celebration in the first place.

How could a new mom throw a party in her son’s honor yet not even realize that he isn’t there? It’s absurd, and that’s the point. It’s equally absurd, even more absurd, to celebrate Christmas and never give a thought to Christ.

And yet, Christmas is not only a message of comfort and a call to open our hearts to Him; it’s not merely a reminder of the faithfulness and power of God. Christmas is a revelation of the King Himself.

And so it’s no surprise that Isaiah starts talking in gospel language. Look with me in verse 9: “Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news” (Isa. 40:9 ESV). Today we have the news and social media to alert us to the latest news, although it’s rare that any of it is good. Back then, though, if you wanted to get the word out, you go up onto a mountain, you take a deep breath, and you give it all you’ve got. That’s why Isaiah says “lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not” The best news is worthy of our best efforts to spread that news.

What is the content of that news? Look at the end of verse 9: “Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’ Behold, the Lord comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before Him”. At Christmas we celebrate the coming of our God.

Remember how we opened? We long for superheroes to rescue us because we know deep down that our biggest problems are unsolvable by us. We must go against the grain of our culture and say, gladly, that we are not enough in ourselves. We gladly confess our weakness! With the apostle Paul we gladly say, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2Cor. 12:10 ESV).

It is this God who comes with might - He comes with might to fight our battles for us. His arm rules for him, Isaiah says: He will reign over all things for our good. His reward is with Him - He will rescue His little ones; His recompense is with him, He will mete out perfect justice.

And this God is tender, church. He uses the imagery of justice and battle here in these last verses when he’s talking about those who’ve rejected Him. But how does He speak of His relationship with us? Look with me at verse 11: “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young”.

Take note, church: God is just and He is good. God is righteous and holy, and yet He is also gracious and loving. The question that is often asked, Is God a wrathful God or a loving God? Do you know what the answer is? It’s both. God is not only wrathful, or not only loving. He is both. He is grace and truth. He is the Lion as well as the Lamb. There is no one like Him.

Conclusion and call for response

Ill. Last Sunday night, I made what I thought was going to be a quick trip to the gas station about five minutes away to get some milk and ice cream. I took Abigail with me for some one-on-one time with her. And as we were driving, the sky is getting darker and darker. You can hear the thunder rumbling even though we were driving in the car with the music on. Then a few rain drops hit the top of my car. Then you could the trees swaying as the wind picked up. I was hoping and praying we would make it into the store before it hit, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Abigail and I were treated to an up-close view of one of the worst storms I have ever seen. It got almost as dark as night even though it was only 7pm. The wind was blowing the rain sideways in sheets. The trees were leaning really far to the side and straining under the load of the wind. Lightning was flashing frequently all around us and there would be these really deep crashes of thunder that would shake the car.

Ill2. Then the hail started. I like watching storms, but hail always makes a little wary. Hail often means the storm is bad enough to produce a tornado, and I didn’t have my phone with me so I had no way to get a weather report. I figured we would probably need to somehow get into the store, but the problem is that Abigail is deathly afraid of storms. By this point she had climbed up into the front seat with me to be closer to me and was actually crying because she was so afraid. But I really wanted to try to get us into the store because the storm was so bad.

Ill3. So I decided we would make a run for it. I got in Abigail’s face and I said, “Abigail, I’m going to come around to your side, and get you out, and carry you into the store, and what I need you to do is cooperate and hang on to my neck.” So I got out of the car and ran to her side, and the rain was coming down so hard by that point that all I had to do was run to her side and I was already drenched. I didn’t worry about that, though, and I yanked her door open, yanked her out, slammed the door back and ran through the huge puddles to the door and into the store. We were absolutely soaked, but we had made it.

Looking back on it, even though I had told Abigail to hang on to me, she really didn’t do much hanging on, it was me that did the hanging on. And that’s often how it is in our relationship with God. His faithfulness means He’s hanging on to us, even when we think we’re holding on to Him, and especially when we don’t feel we have the strength.

This is the God, church, who has come near to us. His coming is what we celebrate. The faithful God has remembered His ancient promises and has come to us. He has not asked us to work our way to Him. He has come to us. He did not say “Clean yourself and approach me, and then I will help you.” No, He says “Come to me, all who are weary or heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

You can open your heart to a God like that, can’t you?

Now it may be that some of you don’t know Jesus yourself. You know things about Jesus. But you don’t know Jesus. Jesus is an abstract reality for you. He’s someone that other people need. We say, “The world needs Jesus”, and yet you’re not conscious of your own desperate need for Him. You don’t sense His presence. Fellowship with Him does not appeal to you.

And if that is the case, then nothing I’ve said this morning is true of you. Until you commit yourself to Jesus Christ, unless you rest your hope for eternal life on Him, until you can put away any delusion of your goodness and trust exclusively in Him and His sacrifice on the cross, only then will you know Him personally and experience a relationship with Him. But He wants to have a relationship with you. He invites you to Himself this morning. He says “If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink” (John 7:37 ESV). He says “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:19 ESV). Trust in Him today. Find me or find pastor Shawn or one of our deacons and let us help you settle this. Don’t wait.

For the rest of you who have committed your life to Jesus, how is the Lord asking you to respond today? Do you need comfort? The Lord offers you comfort. Do you need help opening your heart to Him? Do you need to remember your own frailty and God’s faithfulness and power? Or do you need to refocus yourself on the King who is coming to us?