First Sunday in Advent 12/2/07 Text: Isaiah 2:1-5 Title: There Ain't No Mountain High Enough.
First Sunday in Advent
12/2/2007
Text: Isaiah 2:1-5
Title: There Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
Quite often I am asked why we are spending time this time of the year looking at Christ’s second coming, instead of preparing to celebrate his birth. Wednesday night in our Bible study which by the way we would welcome you there was a lot of discussion on the subject.
Some were for the idea that we should be singing the church’s wonderful Christmas hymns, others, including myself, were for staying with tradition during Advent. That is, we continue to study the end times so that we might long for his Second Advent, Jesus return, with as much expectation as the people of Israel did with Jesus’ first Advent, his birth.
Brenda Hesselgrave sent me an email Thursday that I want to share parts of with you this morning. She had noticed in one of the Advent devotions that each of you have in your mailbox this morning that one of them pointed out that Christ has come, comes now in the word and sacraments and will come again.
Advent is not and either/or situation, but a both/and situation. In setting aside a special season to focus on His second coming, we do not have to exclude the joyful expectation as is usually seen in children as they await Christmas. We can learn from them about excitement and anticipation as well as relating our expectation of the return of the Christ with the expectation the people of Israel had for His first coming.
So what that means is that while this particular time of the year focuses on Jesus Second Advent, we do not lose sight of the joy and anticipation of his first Advent, his birth as one of us.
(Parts of this sermon are based on notes for this Sunday by Proclaim, a study guide for pastors.)
In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah comes to Judah and Jerusalem when they are in a sorry state. The Lord has provided for his people but those in Judah and Jerusalem have chosen to rebel against him. They have chosen to follow their own ways, to delight in their own wills. They no longer listen for God. They do evil. They deal corruptly. They forsake the Lord. They despise the Holy One. They are estranged.
You only need to look at the first four verses into the book of Isaiah to learn of the people’s condition as Isaiah tells them, “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity.” The people of Judah and Jerusalem need to be refocused. They need to return to the Lord, and God speaking through Isaiah has three words for them, “Change your ways.”
In fact, Isaiah tells them that the Lord is about to do a new thing. The Lord is about to cleanse the people, to make them clean again. It is not the kind of cleansing that a mother provides for her baby when she takes a damp cloth and gently wipes their child’s bottom. But it is also not the kind of cleansing that God did when he flooded the whole earth, cleansing, except for Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark, everything. No this cleansing is going to be different. This cleansing was going to apply to all people. It was going to provide a new way, a clean start, a fresh beginning for all people.
Isaiah tells the people of their condition and then tells them of the mountain of the Lord’s house. He says, in effect, “But let’s go to a higher place. Not the mountain of power, of self destiny, but an entirely new mountain where we can be taught and receive instruction about how to live and how to act.”
We too need to hear Isaiah’s words today, for we live in a nation that is used to being on top. We like having control. Individually we love being top dog, too. We love it when it seems that God is leading us into triumphant victory.
And yet, like every other man-made kingdom or gathered group of people, we often have erred and fallen from God’s ways. We as a people and individually have focused too much on achieving the top of the mountain, forgetting the ways of the one who dwells there. We too often forget what it really looks like to climb to the top of the mountain with our Lord.
You and I do not have to ascend to the top on our own to encounter the one in whose ways we are to walk. The embodiment of Christ means that the one whose mountain is higher than any other mountain came down to the bottom, to us, before ascending to the top.
The Word became flesh and lived among us! He was born in the most humble of ways, in a borrowed manger in Bethlehem. He grew up a carpenter. He spent time with people in the pit, people caught up in a tangled web of sin. He ventured to the homes of individuals who were despised by everyone else. He touched the untouchable. He showed us time and again how there was no place where he would not go.
As I prepared for this sermon I was reminded of a hit song titled, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. For there is certainly no mountain high enough, no valley low enough, no river wide enough for Jesus not to go. He went to the people at the top and to the people at the bottom. And, all the time he was here, he worked to bring us higher, closer to God. He turned the ways of the world upside down, showing us a better way, a way in which those who are last become first. He preached good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind and release to the captives. He descended to earth so that we might be brought to the highest of mountains.
I would be the first to say that the ways of the Lord are not always easy. What Jesus has called us to do in our lives many times seem impossible. The expectations of the Lord to do justice or to love mercy or to walk humbly with our God can be difficult to do in this world in which we live.
An impossible task and yet Jesus enables us to go up to the mountain of the Lord. He comes and provides us with the instruction, the mercy and the grace we need, affording us a second, third, fourth, endless chances when we have lost our footing, strayed from the center, or found ourselves without anything to drink and in need of a new start.
Last week I read an illustration that I would like to share with you this morning. It seems that there was a wise pastor from South Africa who once asked a group of college students, “Have you ever noticed how hawks are intended for the sky? Hawks are created to fly high in the sky, ascending to the top of the earth, rising above all of creation.” The preacher then asked, “Why, then, does a hawk find itself fascinated by the cobra that dwells on the ground? How is it that something that is designed to fly can become so captivated by a creature destined to the ground ― a creature that often strikes at the hawk, killing or wounding the hawk, when the hawk can fly high above it?”
As I read that story I realized that it applies to us. In a sense you could say that Adam and Eve were created to fly, to ascend to the top of the mountain of the Lord. They were created to enjoy life free from anything that could hurt them.
As we all know their attention one day was captured by a snake, by a creature that is destined for the ground. And, just as snakes can strike at hawks, preventing them from ever flying again, the snake changed the lives of Adam, Eve and all of humanity forever. We, too, have become captivated by the things in the valley, instead of the mountain top.
And because of that we all have been struck by the same snake, Satan, but God does not leave us alone in the valley or to the depths of the earth. Rather, God has provided a better way. God sent his only begotten Son into the world. Christ lived amongst us. Christ gave his life for us. Christ died but rose again and then ascended to heaven. And he will come again, and as followers of his he will judge us, not with swords and spears but with grace and peace.
In the next four weeks, we will hear about Jesus’ coming into the world, even as we hear about his Second Advent. We will be reminded again of how he came into the world as a babe in Bethlehem. We will also hear how he is coming into this world again. We will hear how he is returning to the world a second time to judge the nations and bring his people home.
So, on this first Sunday of Advent we are called to wait and to watch. We are called to prepare ourselves for his coming by walking in the ways of the Lord, by living a holy, righteous life.
People will continue to ascend and descend the peaks of power, depending upon the results of elections every two or four years. People of all ages will continue to ascend to and descend from the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. And while we may never ascend to power or climb to the top of any physical mountain, we are all assured by God’s Word that we are on a journey to the top of the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob, to the New Jerusalem as we learn to delight in his ways and walk in his paths.
Let us leave God’s house this morning with our eyes focused on the mountain top. Amen
12/2/2007
Text: Isaiah 2:1-5
Title: There Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
Quite often I am asked why we are spending time this time of the year looking at Christ’s second coming, instead of preparing to celebrate his birth. Wednesday night in our Bible study which by the way we would welcome you there was a lot of discussion on the subject.
Some were for the idea that we should be singing the church’s wonderful Christmas hymns, others, including myself, were for staying with tradition during Advent. That is, we continue to study the end times so that we might long for his Second Advent, Jesus return, with as much expectation as the people of Israel did with Jesus’ first Advent, his birth.
Brenda Hesselgrave sent me an email Thursday that I want to share parts of with you this morning. She had noticed in one of the Advent devotions that each of you have in your mailbox this morning that one of them pointed out that Christ has come, comes now in the word and sacraments and will come again.
Advent is not and either/or situation, but a both/and situation. In setting aside a special season to focus on His second coming, we do not have to exclude the joyful expectation as is usually seen in children as they await Christmas. We can learn from them about excitement and anticipation as well as relating our expectation of the return of the Christ with the expectation the people of Israel had for His first coming.
So what that means is that while this particular time of the year focuses on Jesus Second Advent, we do not lose sight of the joy and anticipation of his first Advent, his birth as one of us.
(Parts of this sermon are based on notes for this Sunday by Proclaim, a study guide for pastors.)
In our Old Testament reading, Isaiah comes to Judah and Jerusalem when they are in a sorry state. The Lord has provided for his people but those in Judah and Jerusalem have chosen to rebel against him. They have chosen to follow their own ways, to delight in their own wills. They no longer listen for God. They do evil. They deal corruptly. They forsake the Lord. They despise the Holy One. They are estranged.
You only need to look at the first four verses into the book of Isaiah to learn of the people’s condition as Isaiah tells them, “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity.” The people of Judah and Jerusalem need to be refocused. They need to return to the Lord, and God speaking through Isaiah has three words for them, “Change your ways.”
In fact, Isaiah tells them that the Lord is about to do a new thing. The Lord is about to cleanse the people, to make them clean again. It is not the kind of cleansing that a mother provides for her baby when she takes a damp cloth and gently wipes their child’s bottom. But it is also not the kind of cleansing that God did when he flooded the whole earth, cleansing, except for Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark, everything. No this cleansing is going to be different. This cleansing was going to apply to all people. It was going to provide a new way, a clean start, a fresh beginning for all people.
Isaiah tells the people of their condition and then tells them of the mountain of the Lord’s house. He says, in effect, “But let’s go to a higher place. Not the mountain of power, of self destiny, but an entirely new mountain where we can be taught and receive instruction about how to live and how to act.”
We too need to hear Isaiah’s words today, for we live in a nation that is used to being on top. We like having control. Individually we love being top dog, too. We love it when it seems that God is leading us into triumphant victory.
And yet, like every other man-made kingdom or gathered group of people, we often have erred and fallen from God’s ways. We as a people and individually have focused too much on achieving the top of the mountain, forgetting the ways of the one who dwells there. We too often forget what it really looks like to climb to the top of the mountain with our Lord.
You and I do not have to ascend to the top on our own to encounter the one in whose ways we are to walk. The embodiment of Christ means that the one whose mountain is higher than any other mountain came down to the bottom, to us, before ascending to the top.
The Word became flesh and lived among us! He was born in the most humble of ways, in a borrowed manger in Bethlehem. He grew up a carpenter. He spent time with people in the pit, people caught up in a tangled web of sin. He ventured to the homes of individuals who were despised by everyone else. He touched the untouchable. He showed us time and again how there was no place where he would not go.
As I prepared for this sermon I was reminded of a hit song titled, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. For there is certainly no mountain high enough, no valley low enough, no river wide enough for Jesus not to go. He went to the people at the top and to the people at the bottom. And, all the time he was here, he worked to bring us higher, closer to God. He turned the ways of the world upside down, showing us a better way, a way in which those who are last become first. He preached good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind and release to the captives. He descended to earth so that we might be brought to the highest of mountains.
I would be the first to say that the ways of the Lord are not always easy. What Jesus has called us to do in our lives many times seem impossible. The expectations of the Lord to do justice or to love mercy or to walk humbly with our God can be difficult to do in this world in which we live.
An impossible task and yet Jesus enables us to go up to the mountain of the Lord. He comes and provides us with the instruction, the mercy and the grace we need, affording us a second, third, fourth, endless chances when we have lost our footing, strayed from the center, or found ourselves without anything to drink and in need of a new start.
Last week I read an illustration that I would like to share with you this morning. It seems that there was a wise pastor from South Africa who once asked a group of college students, “Have you ever noticed how hawks are intended for the sky? Hawks are created to fly high in the sky, ascending to the top of the earth, rising above all of creation.” The preacher then asked, “Why, then, does a hawk find itself fascinated by the cobra that dwells on the ground? How is it that something that is designed to fly can become so captivated by a creature destined to the ground ― a creature that often strikes at the hawk, killing or wounding the hawk, when the hawk can fly high above it?”
As I read that story I realized that it applies to us. In a sense you could say that Adam and Eve were created to fly, to ascend to the top of the mountain of the Lord. They were created to enjoy life free from anything that could hurt them.
As we all know their attention one day was captured by a snake, by a creature that is destined for the ground. And, just as snakes can strike at hawks, preventing them from ever flying again, the snake changed the lives of Adam, Eve and all of humanity forever. We, too, have become captivated by the things in the valley, instead of the mountain top.
And because of that we all have been struck by the same snake, Satan, but God does not leave us alone in the valley or to the depths of the earth. Rather, God has provided a better way. God sent his only begotten Son into the world. Christ lived amongst us. Christ gave his life for us. Christ died but rose again and then ascended to heaven. And he will come again, and as followers of his he will judge us, not with swords and spears but with grace and peace.
In the next four weeks, we will hear about Jesus’ coming into the world, even as we hear about his Second Advent. We will be reminded again of how he came into the world as a babe in Bethlehem. We will also hear how he is coming into this world again. We will hear how he is returning to the world a second time to judge the nations and bring his people home.
So, on this first Sunday of Advent we are called to wait and to watch. We are called to prepare ourselves for his coming by walking in the ways of the Lord, by living a holy, righteous life.
People will continue to ascend and descend the peaks of power, depending upon the results of elections every two or four years. People of all ages will continue to ascend to and descend from the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world. And while we may never ascend to power or climb to the top of any physical mountain, we are all assured by God’s Word that we are on a journey to the top of the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob, to the New Jerusalem as we learn to delight in his ways and walk in his paths.
Let us leave God’s house this morning with our eyes focused on the mountain top. Amen
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 1:14 PM
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