The Promise

December 12 2010 Readings: Isaiah 35.1-10, Matthew 11.2-11

Third Sunday of Advent

Theme: Promise and Fulfilment

In the Advent season, this Advent season, there is a pattern to the Bible readings:

What is the pattern........ well, each Sunday for 4 weeks, the 4 Sundays of Advent we read a passage from the Old Testament, in which the prophets foretell the coming of Jesus,

and then from the Gospels we read a passage which speaks of the reality of His coming among us................

Or, to put it another way, in the Old Testament, in times of despair, in dry desert times,

in times of fearful difficulty, in those times, the prophets lift up their heads to look to what is to come......... to the day when God will rescue His people.............

A pattern.................

If we look closer, the pattern in the Bible, is this:

First: there is a situation: the people’s despair or difficulty, or slavery, or exile, or defeat,

Second: into this situation there comes the living Word of God with a Promise...........

that in their slavery He will bring freedom, from exile He will bring them home, out of defeat He will bring victory..............

Third: then comes a stretch of time in which the Lord’s people trust and hope and look for the reality itself, the fulfilment..............

Fourth: the day dawns, when to the joy of His people, they find freedom,

they return home,

victory is theirs........................

And this pattern of: desperate situations; God’s promise; patient waiting; and fulfilment, the promise becoming reality - this pattern is to be found all through the Bible, almost on every page.

This is what we heard last week............ you remember............

the army of Israel was defeated, Jerusalem destroyed, and most of the population were moved to Babylon. Once a people in their own rich, fruitful land, they are now slaves trapped at the heart of a huge Empire which will, seemingly, last for ever. As exiles they have no status. The only thing they possess is was a sense of loss and a longing to return to their beloved homeland. The words of Psalm 74, written in exile in Babylon sum up the feelings and emotions, of the men and women of Israel: “Why have you abandoned us like this, O God? Will you be angry with your own people for ever? Remember your people, whom you chose for yourself long ago, whom you brought out of slavery to be your own......... So, this is their condition: they are slaves, they are 600 miles journey from home, with hundreds of miles of desolate wilderness and desert between themselves and Israel. Jerusalem is a charred and desolate ruin. Israel powerless, locked in at the heart of a vast empire........

That’s the situation....... now the pattern we have been speaking of unfolds.......

now from the living God comes the promise for the future

Into their situation the Word of the Lord comes, breaks through, calls out, in their darkness there is suddenly a radiant shining light. A message for them, from the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah.

Into this desperate situation comes the Word of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord to His people in exile in Babylon declares this: that God in His power will come, He will break their chains, He will guide them out of Babylon, and through the desert. There will be a highway, a levelled, even, solid highway leading through valleys made level and hills brought low, with fresh streams of water flowing so the desert will not be a place of burning sand painful to walk on,

rocks throwing back impossible heat and glare,

no, it will be a place of pools of water, with green, flourishing reeds and shaded woods, and dazzling blossoms.............. says Isaiah 35.

And here is the Word of the Lord in Isaiah 43

I am the Lord, your holy God. I created you, Israel,

Watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already- you can see it now! I will make a road for you through the wilderness and give you streams of water there.

then comes a stretch of time in which the Lord’s people trust and hope and look for the reality itself, the fulfilment..............

Now of course, this time span in is the care of the living God............

the years in exile turned out to be 50 in the case of Israel.........

And we can be sure that sometimes, hope weakened over those long fifty years

as we all know, the human heart is not so strong, and sometimes hope

fades. But says the prophet..............

Everyone will see the Lord's

splendour, see his greatness and power.

Give strength to hands that are tired and to knees that

tremble with weakness.

Tell everyone who is discouraged, "Be strong and don't

be afraid! God is coming to your rescue, coming to punish

your enemies."

and then in the Lord’s time comes the reality itself, the fulfilment..............

In the year 538 BC, some 50 years after Israel had been taken into exile, into captivity, the Babylonian Empire, the terror of the nations, the pride of the earth’s power, was split from top to bottom by the army of King Cyrus............... And in the power and grace and love and might of the living God, just as He had declared in His Word, leaving Babylon, crossing the great desert places - Israel came home. The nations around were stunned, amazed..........

Let’s look at that pattern once again,

the present situation,

the promise of God

trusting, hoping, in His promise.....

then finally the reality, the fulfilment, of all He has promised...........

Let’s take that great Biblical pattern and think about ourselves........... our own situation.

Can we use that great Bible pattern to think about ourselves ?

Yes........ first, today, December 12th. 2010 what is our situation ?

Well, first, we are in a different time zone from Israel. They were looking for the One who was to come, trusting, hoping, praying for His coming.

We have seen that coming............

In Jesus Christ the living God has come near............ as He promised,

As promised, He made the highway, He straightened the road for us,

levelled valleys and lowered the hills, He put a path at our feet so that we could come,

He made it possible and He took away every barrier..............

opened up a way for us in Jesus Christ through the desert through the power of His life-giving Cross and resurrection............

So we are living in a time where we look back. And we see that, as the gospel proclaims, the living God has come seeking us in His Son, in Jesus Christ, As of old, as He promised, God has acted, in His Son, Jesus, the Good Shepherd who has come looking for us... Jesus has crossed the wilderness, the gulf from beyond and has come into our world........... our exile...... to find us.......

As the Bible says, the prophets of old longed, their hearts longed to see the things we see.......... the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But to come back to this moment............

To December 12th. 2010 and our situation, there are some differences for us that were not here fifty years ago..................

Well, the great days the days of a full Church are in the past, and we seem to be in exile in our own country. As we know, the Church as a whole is facing challenges, deep, searching, testing challenges........... that’s our situation, nobody’s arguing with that...........

And the indifference of the many, as I am always calling it, just deepens with every passing day. That’s our situation........ I am sure you will agree.

But here’s the promise of the Lord Jesus:

I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it !

We know each other well enough for me to say this.........

The Churches were full in the past, busy, crowded........ great days........

But, we seemed somewhere along the line to have lost something of the gospel,

we are always talking about full churches in the fifties...........

what about the full gospel ? the unparalleled, fantastic news of Jesus Christ, and our sins forgiven, and all our life anchored in Him ? did we lose hold, lose our grip on that ?

somewhere along the line ? So that now, the actual heart of the New Testament seems so strange, so alien, so far away from us........... ? And really, our faith for the future is at a very low ebb, the only thing we can think of is to construct yet more projects, programmes..............

But here’s the promise of the Lord Jesus:

I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it !

Now, the thing we see in the Bible is that men and women, took the promise of God seriously...............

So my question is: what if we took the promise of the Lord Jesus seriously,

I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it !

let’s say for five minutes........ because, if we do take that promise seriously,

the whole Church looks different........... ! And we would join Israel of old in travelling

not with all the stuff we’ve accumulated, but with a promise........... the promise of Jesus !

I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it ! Let’s take that promise utterly seriously ! To do so for, say, not just five minutes, but half an hour........

and we could never go back to seeing the Church in the same old way..........

And here’s another promise of the Lord Jesus the Church might take seriously,

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth..........

Now, the Spirit is the source of His joy,

the source of his power,

the source of His creative living words.............

guiding and drawing Jesus, bringing Him through test and trial, and suffering,

by what power ? by the power of the Spirit

And the Spirit is the gift of Jesus Christ to us, to every believer....................

the gift of the great King to us,

And the Spirit is the gift of Jesus Christ to us, to every believer....................

so that when we know Jesus Christ we receive the Spirit

we come to be filled with the Spirit,

So that Jesus Christ shares with us His Spirit, that same Spirit resting on Him

rests in us too: to be source of our joy,

source of our strength in overcoming the troubles and trials of life, and bringing us through the challenges facing the Church........

This is what the apostle James writes, a word for us:

Be patient, then, until the Lord comes. See

how patient a farmer is as he waits for his land to produce

precious crops. He waits patiently for the autumn and spring

rains. You also must be patient. Keep your hopes high, for the

day of the Lord's coming is near.

Remember the prophets who spoke in the

name of the Lord. Take them as examples of patient endurance

under suffering.

We call them happy because they endured. You have heard

of Job's patience, and you know how the Lord provided for

him in the end. For the Lord is full of mercy and compassion.

AMEN.