The Coming Of The King; He Brings Hope, He Is Our Hope. Similar To An Earlier Sermon Of Mine But Targeting The First Week Of Advent. Series

The Coming Of The King; he brings hope and he is our hope.

Scripture:?Isaiah 9:1-7

Summary:?730 years before Jesus birth, Isaiah fore told the coming of The Messiah. A look at what that ment then and what it means today... a look in this direction.. for a great light has dawned!

As we enter into the season of Advent we look towards the Biblical coming, the actual coming of the Saviour of the world. No small thing this.

I see the King of Glory [(Brooke Fraser) Check out this song, brilliant!]

I see the king of glory

Coming on the clouds with fire

The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes

I see his love and mercy

Washing over all our sin

The people sing, the people sing

Hosanna, hosanna

Hosanna in the highest

I see a generation

Rising up to take the place

With selfless faith, with selfless faith

I see a new revival

Starting as we pray and seek

We’re on our knees, we’re on our knees

Heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Break my heart for what breaks yours

Everything I am for your kingdom’s cause

As I walk from earth into eternity.

What a great picture of the coming of the King of Heaven, The Messiah who would come and set his people free from oppression and their physical burdens, giving them great power to defeat their sins and stop their selfishness and wrong way of living.

Beautiful words, allowing ourselves to have our hearts broken for the things that break the heart of God, you have sung those words are you ready to have your hearts broken? This is more than some pretty tune, it is a prayer. Is this how you see God working in your lives? For this is how God will work and has worked since Adam.

If we allow him full access he will take it and our lives will be enriched beyond our imagining, but in ways that will not likely be physical, the enriching is almost always spiritual, it is what is ongoing and everlasting for that is what remains, “the Spiritual”.

Now the Hebrew people some 740 years before Jesus was born had a few dramas going on in their lives and these weren’t Coro Street / Shortland Street or even Days of our lives type dramas these were really nasty dramas. The drama!

Because of the way that had acted, The Kingdom of Israel had been divided into two; Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Without going into the nitty gritty of the whole thing, some alliances had been made with foreign nations. So, we have a picture of the Hebrew people divided and siding with different foreign superpowers. At this time the superpower of Assyria took control of the Northern kingdom of Israel… life for people under this foreign oppressor became a huge, big bucket of crud. Life was as miserable as it could be! They were literally carrying the loads of an oppressive nation on their shoulders, they were being beaten by the rod of the oppressor, beatings, bruised faces and cracked heads were the order of the day.

Why, because of sin. We see the old hardy annual with the Hebrew people, they sinned, God judged them; they then had the opportunity to realise their sins and repent coming into God’s grace. The cycle was as we know sin, judgment, grace.

How was this to happen? How would they come into God’s grace, and continue in his grace once and for all?

The Chosen One, The Messiah the one we refer to in English as The Christ! Hope great hope was the theme of this Prophetic poem that Isaiah wrote.

Let’s look at the words of Isaiah and see what he says about this Messiah bloke!

Read (Isaiah 9:1-7).

It all sounds very much like the story of a great king. Let’s have a look at the various verses and see what God was saying to these people. And what he is saying to us today.

Looking at verses one and two, we see that the gloom will be no more, that the mess that they were currently wallowing in would cease. That those who were at this time walking in darkness would see a great light… could this be ‘The Light of The World’? In the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan. How was this to be fulfilled?

Let’s have a look at a couple of passages from Matthews’s gospel, roughly 750 years later this happened.

“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come follow me, ‘Jesus said,” (Matthew 4:18-19a) and this “Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” (Matthew 4:25) Could it be that Jesus is the Great Light, the hope of the nation, could it be that he would bring a solution to their painful oppressed existence?