When You Care Enough To Send The Very Best Series

“When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best"

Isaiah 40:1-11

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11

Pause right there. “Are you ready for Christmas?” That’s a popular question this time of year. It has to do with Christmas card lists and presents for the family. How important are all those things in a world that needs to recognize the Messiah of all humanity becoming flesh and blood in a Bethlehem barn. It was very popular to have signs that said, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Do you agree? Do your Christmas celebrations give this message?

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Do you remember those old Hallmark commercials? The person would turn the card over and look on the back to see the Hallmark logo. Each year, we spend billions of dollars on Christmas cards, not even counting the postage for the ones we have to mail. What is the purpose? When so much of the world seems to be on-fire, what message is worth that kind of spending? How do you feel when the card reads, “Happy holidays from all of us to all of you… and a happy New Year”?

The prophet Isaiah had a hard message to give the Israelites that had been in exile more than 50 years – “Comfort, o comfort my people, says your God.” Let’s look at that message and see what it might say to us in 2023.

First, God gave them a MESSAGE OF PARDON, v.2

2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,

that her sin has been paid for,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

This is a message of forgiveness for what they had done – “sin has been paid for.” So, what had they done? Actually, it was a list of sins:

• They worshiped other gods

• They created a social structure where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer

• They were involved in many forms of immorality

Stop right there – do we live is this kind of culture today?

Americans have other gods. We worship the god of entertainment, the god of “I-gotta-have-it-right-now”, and the gods of comfort and convenience. The result is a world in which things matter more than people. We live in a world where it’s too easy to look the other way and wait for the government to pass another law and another law and another law.

We need the message of pardon – this message that God gave to Isaiah when His people were in a land far from what they knew. We need to see that God wants to forgive our sins. This forgiveness is a basic need of every person and every nation.

Jesus looked at the woman who had been set up to be stoned to death for the crime of adultery. In John 8:11 we read Jesus’ words to her, “11 “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Christ is speaking to each of us this day – “I forgive you, now repent – turn from the sin in your life.”

Second, God gave them a MESSAGE OF PROMISE, v. 5

5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,

and all people will see it together.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah gave them (and) us a promise that the Messiah is coming. Or, is it a warning?

We know that God heard the cries of the Israelites in Egypt: Exodus 2:23-25 “23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.”

God must have heard them in Babylon: Psalm 137:1-4

“1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?”

God hears our prayers and our cries as we long to hear the words I told you last week that Jesus would say one day – READY OR NOT, HERE I COME! This is a promise to those who will repent – who will straighten out the crookedness of the paths on which they now walk.

That’s a message of promise to us – to you and me. God cares about even the little sins. Ever take something from work? One of the side benefits of folks working from home is that employee theft of office supplies has dropped to its lowest point in years. In the US, it is usually estimated to be more than $10 billion.