Shollenberger clan lighting the 2nd Advent Candle to honor the birth of ChristToday's Message
1. what do we know of waiting?
Þ I have to wait another year for the Ducks to get revenge against the Beavers in the Civil War (my hat goes off to the black & orange)
Þ we have to wait 1 more year to see who is going to be our next President
Þ we wait to discover what we’re going to get for Christmas
Þ we wait 6 more days to get married if we’re Amanda & Luke
Þ you wait for me to quit preaching so you can snag the best cup of coffee in town out in the Great Hall
2. the Bible is a book woven together in all of its parts by waiting. Not just for days or weeks or months or years BUT sometimes for centuries & occasionally for millenniums.
a word about history
1. God does not work in a vacuum. He works in history. Our history. He reveals himself & acts in history.
2. for example – the birth of Jesus split history in two. John 1:14: the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God came into our world. Drank earth’s water & wine. Ate earth’s bread & fish. Slept on earth’s hard ground. Sailed on earth’s rough seas. Rubbed shoulders with earth’s children women men.
3. the story we live in begins with creation. It charts a path through God’s covenant with Abraham that Kyle touched on last week. Next follows the exodus from Egypt under Moses’ leadership. Then the kingdom led by David at its apex of power & wealth. Life was good under David’s rule. The economy was strong. Jerusalem mailed out kicker checks.
Enemies were kept at bay.
4. and then things began to unravel. Opposing parties developed. The country divided. Bad kings ruled. Prophets were raised up to summon the people to live as God’s chosen & blessed. In 722 BC Assyria slid down from the north, & defeated the northern kingdom, Israel.
5. in 586 BC the southern kingdom, Judah, fell to Babylon. City & temple destroyed. People carted off into exile. Freed 70 years later to return to ghost town-like conditions in Jerusalem.
Isaiah (740-681 BC)
1. Isaiah spoke words of warning, judgment & mercy to dull ears. Though he lived & spoke around 700 BC, the last third of his message, chapters 40-66, were fast forwarded 120 years to 586 BC & beyond.
2. the time of Babylon & Nebuchadnezzar. Fierce soldiers on muscular horses marched into Jerusalem. Wacked the people into submission & others into the grave. City walls were knocked down, homes & buildings burned. The temple, Solomon’s majestic temple, was laid down on its side in dust & ruins.
3. Eugene Peterson – (the people of God) were force-marched across 600 miles of desert to eke out a bare exilic existence in a strange land. They had nothing. They were stripped not only of their possessions but of their very identity as a people of God. They were uprooted and plunked down in a foreign and idolatrous society.
4. Isaiah spoke God’s Word into this hopelessness, this holocaust. He spoke new words of a new day and a new time for the people of God. All was not lost. It was time to dust off God’s promises & hold them high for all to see.
Waiting matched by creating – Isaiah 42:1-9 = Servant
1. Eugene Peterson – the verb ‘create’ is our Bibles is used exclusively of God. Men, women, and angels don’t create. Only God creates.
2. the most frequent use of the verb ‘create’ in the Old Testament is NOT in the creation account BUT in Isaiah’s prophetic ministry to the exiled people of God in the 6th century BC.
3. Isaiah’s message: the Spirit of God is going to create life out of nothing for the 6th century exiles in Babylon just like he had at the beginning of time. God is still creating, says Isaiah. NOT a world this time BUT a new people for a new day in a rebuilt, renewed Jerusalem.
4. 1 note of interpretation. This is a Servant song. It is primarily about the Messiah, Jesus. Over time it came to be interpreted as being about the people of God as well. 1st Israel & then the followers of Jesus, the church.
42:5
1. Genesis 1-2 is recounted. Heavens, earth, people & the breath that fires them ALL created by God the Lord. The very life we live & walk is given to us by God. The Creator God is speaking again, creating again.
42:6a
1. this is a word of restoration. God will take hold of the hand of his people in Babylon. They will be called in righteousness once again. He is going to keep them & make them. Covenant is back on the menu.
42:6b-7
1. God has a purpose for these restored, renewed people. A missional purpose. They are blessed in order to be a blessing.
5. 1300 years earlier God said to Abraham, I will make you into a great nation and you will be a blessing.,,and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Genesis 12:1,3).
6. Isaiah the prophet sheds more light on God’s word to Abraham. You – the people of God – are going to bless all peoples in the following manner. A mission statement in 4 parts –
Þ be a light to the Gentiles
Þ open eyes that are blind
Þ free captives from prison
Þ release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness
7. 1st be a light to the Gentiles. Tell the nations about God the Creator. The One revealed in Jesus the Messiah. Ragna did this at the Advent Dessert when she shared her story.
8. 2nd open eyes that are blind. Blind to perceive spiritual truth. They need to be opened to the God who created them. The God who has revealed himself in Jesus.
9. 3rd & 4th free captives from prison & release those who sit in dungeon darkness. Literally & historically, liberation from Babylon’s dungeons & prisons which occurred in 586 BC. But there is much more here. Spiritual liberation is in mind – freedom from spiritual blindness, strongholds & darkness.
10. think Jesus, think Luke 4:18-19 which he read from Isaiah 61 & applied to himself:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
11. we as a people are poor, imprisoned, blind & oppressed. We need good news. We need a word of freedom. We need recovery of eye sight. We need release.
12. literally for SOME of us in our historical circumstances BUT spiritually for ALL of us in our relationships with God, each other & ourselves.
13. some of us have things in our lives that imprison us. They keep our lights from shining:
® fear anxiety worry
® over-eating spending hoarding
® addictions to drugs (prescription or illegal) pornography, alcohol
® bitterness anger pride
® past abuse is a big one in our day
14. we desperately need God to touch us. And then we can touch others. Blessed to be a blessing.
15. the way Abraham’s people (2000 BC) will be a blessing to all peoples is revealed in Isaiah’s word (700 BC), demonstrated in the life & ministry of Jesus (30 AD), and carried on by us, the Body of Christ (2007).
16. this passage end on a note of hope.
42:8
1. God is the sovereign Lord of the universe. He is a jealous God who will not share his glory with another. This is a big God. God of God. King of Kings. Lord of Lords. And he’s on our side.
42:9
1. he is going to create new things for the exiled people of God. Literally, historically they will be freed from Babylon & march home to Jerusalem to take up their life as the people of God. But there’s more…
2. what God did historically & literally for Israel he does spiritually, emotionally & relationally for us. He shines light into our darkness. Opens our blinded eyes. Frees us from prisons that capture our time, money & energy. Releases us from people or objects that are dungeon-like in their power to render us less than human, less than creative, less than what God intends for us to be.
3. prayer
Music I listened to while sermonizing – Over the Rhine, U2, David Crowder Band, Chris Tomlin, Bruce Springsteen
Books I read & studied while sermonizing – The Intimate Merton by Thomas Merton; Intuitive Leadership by Tim Keel; A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight; Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson; The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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