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Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

First Advent Midweek sermon 11/30/2011

First Midweek Advent Sermon 11/30/11 Text: Isaiah 40:1-2 This Advent in our Wednesday services we are going to take a closer look at Isaiah 40:1-11. Each week I will take two or more verses and talk about them so that we can get a better understanding of the text thus strengthening our faith. As we go through the text each week you will see how relevant God’s Word is for our lives today. Sir Winston Churchill was once asked to give the qualifications a person needed in order to succeed in politics, and he replied: “It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” While that is certainly true for a Politian it is not true for God’s prophets who were correct all of the time. They didn’t have to explain away their mistakes, for God tells us in Deuteronomy 18:22 that “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true it is a “message that the Lord has not spoken.” In other words the person who called himself a prophet was not one if what they said did not come true. Something to remember today when you listen to the pastors proclaiming the end at a certain time or some other prophetic saying. And in Isaiah 8:20 the Prophet Isaiah says, “If they speak not according to this word (that is God’s Word), it is because there is no light in them”. Isaiah was a man who had God’s light, and he was not afraid to let it shine. That is why it is so appropriate to study Isaiah’s writings in Advent the season of light. Before we examine the text of Isaiah’s prophecy, let’s get acquainted with the background of the book so that we can better understand the man and his times. Isaiah which means “Salvation of the Lord” proclaimed to the people of God five different acts of deliverance that God would perform. First the deliverance of Judah from Assyrian invasion. Second, the deliverance of the nation from Babylonian Captivity. Third, the future deliverance of the Jews from worldwide dispersion among the Gentiles. Fourth, this prophecy concerns us, the deliverance of lost sinners from judgment and last, another prophecy that concerns us, he prophesied about the final deliverance of creation from the bondage of sin when the kingdom is established. While the last two prophecies have not been completely fulfilled yet there is no reason since the other four prophecies have come to true to not believe that they will take place. Isaiah was definitely a man in touch with God. He saw through visions God’s Son and God’s glory. He heard God’s message. When Isaiah spoke he spoke for God, as he sought to bring the nation back to God before it was too late. Just as God loved Judah Isaiah loved his nation. He uses the phrase “my people” twenty-six times in his book. He pleaded with Judah to return to God and warned kings when their foreign policy was contrary to God’s will. Just as God hates sin Isaiah hated sin; especially the sin of just going through the motions of worshiping God. As much as God is quick to condemn sin through his prophets he is just as quick to offer the wonderful Gospel message of forgiveness through his prophets. That is what Isaiah is doing in our readings today. It is a wonderful Gospel message to a people whose world had come crashing down around them. They were in a heathen land. Their beloved city Jerusalem along with the temple where God resided was leveled and burned. I would imagine that, as they were being forced to go to Babylon and while living there they were wondering what happened to their powerful almighty God who had promised to protect them. Heartache and despair were abundant. Then God spoke through Isaiah wonderful words of comfort. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2Speak 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.” Comfort in the context that they were in did not mean that God just sympathized with the plight of the Israelites. God through Isaiah is encouraging them. That is a long way off from having sympathy for them which is a feeling while comforting them by encouraging them is an action. God is going to restore his relationship with them by having their beloved city and temple restored. His presence in the temple will comfort them. In verse two Isaiah is saying that God loves them sacrificially. This is where the idea of the suffering servant begins to take place. God is willing to do whatever is needed to restore his people, the people he so dearly loves. He wants them to know that their sin that got them in the mess they were in has been forgiven, not because of anything they did, but because loves them. He forgives them. The last part of verse two is a hard one to understand, “that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.” It sounds like God is saying he doubled the punishment for their sin. It is sort of like you sin a little, I will punish a lot. And then after I have punished you double amount of the sin you did then you are forgiven. That is what it sounds like, but is that what it is saying? It makes sense to us because that is the way we would like it to be, but is that what God is saying through Isaiah? Let’s take a look. You have to go back to the Hebrew and its general usage concerning the words that are translated, “she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.” Once you have done that and I don’t have time to go over the passages today, you see that the people of Israel received double blessings from God not double punishment. Double grace; that is the foolishness of God. Now that we have a better understanding of the first two verses of our Scripture reading for today the question has to be asked: Since God’s Word is timeless, what do the verses mean for us today? The only way to answer that question is to ask another series of questions: How is your life today? Is everything going good or could there be some improvement in your life? Are you troubled with some sin that you, as hard as you try, cannot get rid of? How is family life going? Could it be better? I could go on and on, but you get the idea. If your answer to any of those questions was that you need help this passage is for you. We all need a Savior who does not just stand by looking at us with sympathy, but acts in power, giving what only he can give us; peace between us and God and peace in our lives as we live them today. Peace be to you. Amen.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

First Sunday in Advent 11-27-2011

First Sunday in Advent
11/27/11
Title: The Presence Of God

Today is the first Sunday of Advent; the first major season of the Christian Church year. It is in all honesty a strange season considering that the readings are not about the events leading up to Jesus’ birth which we will celebrate just four Sundays from now, but are about the Second Coming of Jesus when he comes back in all his glory to judge the world.
The reasoning behind the readings is that we, like the people of the Old Testament, should be looking for the coming of our Lord just as eagerly as the people of Old Testament time looked for the birth of the Messiah. The problem is that Christians, for the most part, are not living under duress and oppression like the Old Testament people were, thus we, at least we who live in the United States, do not look forward to Jesus second coming, like they did, because in all honesty life is pretty good and we really are in no hurry for Jesus to come back.
Being a faithful Lutheran pastor I have always preached on the end times during Advent because they are the assigned readings, but this year I am going to speak on the Incarnation during the Advent season. The reason I am, is that we, I am afraid, don’t have a really good understanding of the incarnation and because of that we probably don’t have a real good understanding of the critical articles of faith that rest on the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Incarnation is a fine church word which means God becoming man. In other words it is about the birth of Jesus when God became a human being that we know as Jesus. Each Sunday this Advent season we are going to look at different aspects of the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus and it is truly a mystery, for how is it that God who exists from all eternity could also become a man like us? It is a deep mystery, but it has enormous practical value for the Christian life and we need to have a better understanding of the incarnation.
For you see Christianity is not just another belief system out of many other belief systems, as so many believe. Nor is it, as others believe, just about what happens when we die. Christianity is a way of life here on earth and beyond which was first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man who without his incarnation, that is his becoming human the world was reconciled to God. This reconciliation brings back together what was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. We are no longer separated from God by our sin and thus we are in a relationship with God, as he desires us to be.
It is said by the people who research society that more people feel alone today than at any other time in history. There are many reasons given for loneliness, but no matter what the cause loneliness is terrible thing. It can lead to all kinds of emotional, spiritual, and physical problems. In the worst case loneliness can lead to suicide.
There was no loneliness in the Garden of Eden. Loneliness came into being when, as I said earlier, Adam and Eve fell into sin corrupting their intimate relationship with God. But God would not let their sin separate them from him, even though Adam and Eve hid from him because they were afraid of what he would do to them. God could have just punished them right then and started all over, but because he loved them so much God promised, even before they were forced out of the Garden of Eden, that there would be a Savior who would restore the relationship that God intended. They would never be alone.
God kept his promise. God wants fellowship with his human creation. He wanted to reveal his presence among them. God appeared in many ways to his people, but usually it was in the form of fire, smoke, or a cloud. His presence reassured the people giving them comfort in the tough and sometimes terrible times of their lives.
But he wanted to do even more, so that the relationship with God that was broken would be restored. God through Moses set up a system of worship that would not only remind them of his love, but would also remind them of their sinfulness, so that they would seek him out.
The sacrificial system while not forgiving the sins of the people did through the blood offered to God keep their focus on God and the promised Messiah. There was one particular rite that I want to look at this morning. It only happened once a year. It was called the Day of Atonement. It was, as you will see a foreshadowing of Jesus death. Listen to Leviticus 16 starting at verse 20, “20 And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.”

The laying on of the sins of the people on the goat and the sending the goat into the desert gave the people a picture of what Jesus did in his being taken out of the holy city Jerusalem and crucified, so that all people could be at peace with God.
God made his presence known to the people by the Tabernacle and later the temple. But, as we are told in Galatians 4:4, “When the time had fully come” he became man in the person of Jesus. God lived among us.
In John 1:1 we are told by God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And a little further down in verse 14 we are told, “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.” What John is saying is that Jesus always existed, so he has to be God and that when the time was right he became human. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear saw God in Jesus, for he and the Father are one, as Jesus said many times. Jesus thus is God incarnate.

One of the most remarkable things that Jesus said just a short time before his death was his comparing his body to the temple in Jerusalem where God existed for the people of Israel. By comparing his upcoming death to the destruction of the temple he was saying that the old sacrificial system was over. In his person God is present. Jesus was to be the final sacrifice. There was no further use for the temple and its system of sacrifices.
God is present with his people. In the Old Testament his presence was shown in the tabernacle and the temple in the holy city Jerusalem. Now God is revealed to us in Jesus. In Jesus we are one with God. In him we have forgiveness, because his own sin-offering of blood reconciled us to God the Father.
Next week we will see what the blessings are that we receive because of the incarnation.
So now we who are reconciled to God can look forward to his second coming in the flesh as our sermon hymn 333, The Advent of our King tells us. Amen.