Remember Advent
Is.11:1-10 (NLT)
Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. 2 And the Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 He will delight in obeying the LORD. He will never judge by appearance, false evidence, or hearsay. 4 He will defend the poor and the exploited. He will rule against the wicked and destroy them with the breath of his mouth. 5 He will be clothed with fairness and truth.
6 In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard and the goat will be at peace. Calves and yearlings will be safe among lions, and a little child will lead them all. 7 The cattle will graze among bears. Cubs and calves will lie down together. And lions will eat grass as the livestock do. 8 Babies will crawl safely among poisonous snakes. Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes and pull it out unharmed. 9 Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. And as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the LORD.
10 In that day the heir to David’s throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world. The nations will rally to him, for the land where he lives will be a glorious place.
Perhaps you read the one about the Alberta man who left the snow-filled streets of Calgary for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick E-mail message. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her E-mail address, he did his best to type it from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter in the E-mail address and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her E-mail, she took one look at the computer monitor and let out a scream; and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen: Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow. P.S. Sure is hot down here!
Oi, how do u like that? Are you prepared for the arrival of Christ? When all of a sudden, Christ appears, will you be prepared? Due to the war on terrorism, I watched with interest how some office towers in Canada are now running drills to evacuate their buildings. They want to be prepared in case of an attack.
Similarly, Advent is a time of the year in the Christian calendar, where we are running a drill to prepare for Christmas. Time to reflect not only on the first coming but also the second coming of Christ. Time to slow down, check our hearts, preparing the heart to receive the promise of what the Christ-child would mean for the redemption of the world. Time to reach out with the message that God does love the world so much that He gave us the humble Christ-child, to tell us God is approachable, not an uncaring distant relative who writes once a year, a Christmas card, if you are lucky.
But this Advent season is kinda clouded isn’t it? With news of war, terrorism, economic slowdown, jobs being cut here in BC in big ways… Do u agree that the world we have now is a scary place? It’s like we have been dropped behind enemy lines, ducking for safety all the time wondering when the next round of gunfire is starting up again. The workforce magazine “Personnel Journal” put together this incredible statistic: since the beginning of recorded history, the entire world has been at peace less than eight percent of the time! In its study, the periodical discovered that of 3540 years of recorded history, only 286 years saw peace. Wow! In that time more than 8000 peace treaties were made--and broken. Yikes! Now wonder, the Bible says we live in a broken world, where we are thirsting for perfection, for heaven. 2 Cor.5:1-5 (NLT) says,
For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. 2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long for the day when we will put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. 3 For we will not be spirits without bodies, but we will put on new heavenly bodies. 4 Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and have no bodies at all. We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by everlasting life. 5 God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
Yes, in this advent time of waiting we are preparing ourselves for what God has in store for us. Just the like the apostle Paul, just can’t wait to try out our new bodies. Can u imagine, a body that will not break down, that don’t need medication , surgery or bodies that do not make us sigh nor groan. Indeed , the Bible gives an optimistic view of the future and it is all because of the Christmas event and the Easter event. How optimistic? Will you check out Isaiah 11:6-9?
Try to imagine a world in which the wolf and the lamb will share the same stall. The leopard and the baby goat will sleep together. A little child will put halters on a lion and a calf and lead them around. The lion will eat straw like the oxen. A little child will reach down into a cobra’s den and not be harmed. That’s what the world will be like one day, according to Isaiah the prophet. At some future time the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the oceans are with water; then no creature shall harm any other creature in all of God’s earth. But for now we seem bent on destruction. I believe this is one way we can be prepared for the arrival of Christ, i.e. to remember with hope what the real future is like. Don’t fight the future alone, the truth is not out there, we are gonna be going to a place where Someone has gone before, i.e. Christ’s future, heaven. Advent is time to remember there is a heaven and Jesus will be bringing us home to His father, in sweetest way where wolf and the lamb can lie together, and not become dinner. Yes, Toto, there is a happily ever after…
How and when will the prophecy of Isaiah become a reality? Remember, the Bible does not say that Isaiah’s golden age will come through the achievements of people. It is by the mercy of a loving God, who could have left humanity to its own devices. There was a cartoon in Vancouver Sun that depicted human nature. Even after a nuclear holocaust, with the world a waste, there 2 humans in the picture, still fighting this time with sticks and bones. Human solutions will never work, if story of Afghanistan’s history is indicative, they have fought and fought in civil wars for the longest time, invasions… Divine intervention is needed and how that’s gonna come about is through this… from the stump of Jesse (who is David’s father), from a devastated world, broken world, will rise Messiah, a shoot will come up and all of this is God’s doing. 11:2 specifies it is the Spirit of God (4x mentioned) who is in the middle of this.
“Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. 2 And the Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 He will delight in obeying the LORD. He will never judge by appearance, false evidence, or hearsay. 4 He will defend the poor and the exploited. He will rule against the wicked and destroy them with the breath of his mouth. 5 He will be clothed with fairness and truth.”
We now recognize Is. Was talking about Jesus. Hence the realization of this hope rest on Him when Jesus returns in the clouds with great power and glory for all the world to see. But until then, there will be wars and rumors of war. Nation shall rise up against nation.
It is somewhat sad to realize that until Jesus returns, there will be always be Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein types around to disturb the peace. Because of sin, nations will always be squabbling. Yes, it helps to have a United Nations, a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and a strong military; but there will be no golden age of peace until Jesus returns in glory. As comforting as it may be that terrorism has been dealt a serious blow and the Afghans are sitting around the peace table to draw up a new regime, peace, yet beneath all that is distrust, seeds of more unrest brews. Indeed, lasting peace, will only come when the Prince of Peace is ready.
In Advent we remember that Jesus succeeded in fulfilling this prophecy, no one has found him guilty of sin with His first coming. As we find Jesus in the gospels, He is wise and understanding, full of power and knowledge and fear of the Lord. He defended the poor, exploited, obey the Lord, His teaching was packed with power and authority. But the fullness of that prophecy will be realized when He returns in the promised 2nd coming to rule against the wicked and destroy all of those who threaten to destroy peace with the breath of his mouth, just as Isaiah said.
So Advent is a reminder of a time of hope, of waiting hope. Hope in a God who loves us as a loving doting Father would. Hope in a God who sent His own Son to tell us there is a heaven where the lamb and the lion can lie together and He wants us in it. Hope that we are included in His plan of what heaven’s gonna look like. Hope that we are His family! Hope that He will return to take us to our final destination cos we are just passing through! I John 3:1 declares with a resounding gong of hope in a PLACE OF CONFUSION: “See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for he allows us to be called his children, and we really are! But the people who belong to this world don’t know God, so they don’t understand that we are his children.” Do you have this confidence, assurance that since u believed in Christ, that u are God’s children? If so, have you been prepared in your heart and in your life to live for Him by living in Him, by being spiritually connected to Him through faith?
Or have u got lost in this world today, with all the confusing signs of the times, will all the details of life? Got lost in shopping for the perfect Christmas present for Sally? Got lost in own house, the noise, the noise, the noise of kids, toys, dogs barking, noise of traffic congestion, noise of Christmas carols or lost because of numerous chores of dishes to be clean, laundry to do, projects, homework, the carpet was not vacuumed, the bed not made? Listen to this story:
There was once an absent-minded professor who became so absorbed in his work that he forgot the simplest details. One morning his wife said, "Now Henry, remember, we are moving today. Here, I’m putting this note in your pocket. Don’t forget." The day passed by and the man came home to his house. He entered the front door, and found the place empty. Distraught, he walked out to the curb and sat down. A young boy walked up to him, and he asked him, "Little boy, do you know the people who used to live here?" The boy replied, "Sure, Dad, mother told me you’d forget."
Indeed, how often do we become so absorbed in "the little things of this world" that we forget who we are and whose we are and where we are going... Donald L. Deffner, Seasonal Illustrations, Resource, 1992, p. 6.
Be prepared. That the scout’s motto, I learned when I was kid. I think that’s a good way to go about life, don’t you think? The Bible expects such preparation. Let’s be prepared by remembering who we are in relation to Jesus, that we will be like Him when He returns. This advent I hope you will see the big picture, so that u can be prepared for the arrival of Christ. Oh, there is place where lamb and wolf can be together, there will be a peace our hearts are aching for and it comes because of the love of God, read I John 3:1-3
See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for he allows us to be called his children, and we really are! But the people who belong to this world don’t know God, so they don’t understand that we are his children. 2 Yes, dear friends, we are already God’s children, and we can’t even imagine what we will be like when Christ returns. But we do know that when he comes we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. 3 And all who believe this will keep themselves pure, just as Christ is pure.
Are you prepared this advent for Christ’s return with the purity of this hope, this love that we are called God’s children? Have you kept your heart alive with the hope that the birth of the Christ-child? Have you lost sight of the hope you have?
Someone once asked Wayne Gretzky, the great hockey player, how he managed to become the best goal-scorer in the history of the game. He simply replied, "While everyone else is chasing the puck, I go where the puck is going to be." Has you heart tuned into where you’re gonna be in eternity? Have you got the hope that we will be like Him when we see Him coming again in the clouds? Or are u chasing after that which will not last - broken dreams, the broken peace, the things of this world that will crack, break down and fade away?
At the university there was a piano teacher that was simply and affectionately known as "Herman." One night at a university concert, a distinguished piano player suddenly became ill while performing an extremely difficult piece. No sooner had the artist retired from the stage when Herman rose from his seat in the audience, walked on stage, sat down at the piano and with great mastery completed the performance. Later that evening, at a party, one of the students asked Herman how he was able to perform such a demanding piece so beautifully without notice and with no rehearsal. He replied, "In 1939, when I was a budding young concert pianist, I was arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. Putting it mildly, the future looked bleak. But I knew that in order to keep the flicker of hope alive that I might someday play again, I needed to practice every day. I began by fingering a piece from my repertoire on my bare board bed late one night. The next night I added a second piece and soon I was running through my entire repertoire. I did this every night for five years. It so happens that the piece I played tonight at the concert hall was part of that repertoire. That constant practice is what kept my hope alive. Everyday I renewed my hope that I would one day be able to play my music again on a real piano, and in freedom."
How have you practice, remembering the hope of Advent with the hope of Christ? I submit to u look to the future of the reign of Prince of Peace, see with hope the vision painted for us so magnificently by Isaiah. That what u do for Christ, as you walk with Him, as you talk to others about Him, as you do the mundane tasks in life, is significant, worthwhile and beautiful. Cos this world is not going to hell, that is if u trust in Christ, but to a glorious future, promised by His first advent and guaranteed by the resurrection power of His second coming. So treat Every Day as a Special Occasion to live life with hope, with His energy, while we wait and bring others to know of this hope in our gracious God, as we remember this first Advent Sunday, the hope of Messiah.
