Advent I
Isaiah 64:1-8
I guess I should apologize to you all. This is the point of the service where you are expecting to hear a sermon, and I don’t have one to give you. I mean, I figured "what’s one week?" You’ll survive without one, right? Besides, I already had one to do for Thanksgiving Day. And on top of all that, my faith is fine; I know where I’m going to spend eternity, so what’s the point in me putting in any work in the study of God’s Word?
Well, today we begin a new church year, and I do have a sermon ready for you fellow Christians. But how much importance do we place in the fact that God has closed the books on one year of service and opened up another one for us? Do we view it as a tremendous opportunity for another year of work in God’s harvest fields, or isn’t it easy to be tempted to become lazy and lethargic instead? After all, we know where we are going after we die, and besides, how much productive work can I, Joe Christian, really do? The one thing our sinful natures are good at doing is making excuses for why we don’t serve God better, why we don’t serve God more. You probably thought that my excuses for not having a sermon ready were pretty weak, but don’t we all have pretty lame reasons for why we haven’t served the Lord to the best of our abilities during this past year? And I guess I’d like you to view today, the First Sunday in Advent, not as a day marked on a Church Calendar that has little if anything practical to do with my life, but just the opposite: another year to give God the open invitation with our lives: "here am I, send me! send me!" So our theme for today as we enter into this new year is: Let us place ourselves in the Lord’s hand this year!
Part I
Our text for today was written by the well-known prophet Isaiah. The well-known prophet Isaiah. What do you know about the well-known prophet Isaiah? I mean, we hear his name for so many of our Old Testament readings, we know some of the most beautiful sections of the Old Testament were recorded by Isaiah ("to us a child is born, to us a Son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"...or what about his section..."he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed"). Isaiah is well-known to us, but not as much for what he did, rather for what he wrote. We think of Bible characters like Adam, Abraham, Samson...these are people that we remember Bible stories about. We remember the life and times of these people. But Isaiah??? I’m going to give you a really easy way to remember the life and times of Isaiah: he was a bold believer in God, who lived during times that are in many ways just like ours. In Isaiah’s time the people were wealthy. Just like us. Yes, I know the economy isn’t the best these days, but I don’t think I saw too many of us riding a bike and walking to church today. In Isaiah’s time, the country was strong, just like ours in. In Isaiah’s time, there was trouble brewing in the Middle East, just like today. And in Isaiah’s time, so many people didn’t have time for the Lord, just like in our day.
In Isaiah’s day, just like in our day, God appeared so weak. When was the last time God parted the waters of a sea? When was the last time God raised a person from the dead? Why doesn’t God do things like this anymore? Wouldn’t that encourage more people to take God seriously? That’s exactly what Isaiah was thinking when he wrote the words, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you."
I guess what we need to remember, when it seems as though God doesn’t do too many miraculous things anymore, that Isaiah is speaking in the past tense when he’s talking about God’s mighty acts, but he very well could be using the future tense. Advent is a time when we prepare our hearts for Christ’s first coming as a humble baby, as well as preparing ourselves for that second coming of Jesus in power and glory. As Isaiah says, God will come down again and make the world stand and take notice.
Part II
So what should that lead us to do? Be ready for that coming! But again, here we see the tension between how God wants us to be ready and the way that the world thinks a person gets ready to see God.
There were plenty of people in Isaiah’s day that pooh-poohed this prophet’s message of repentance. They said, "Isaiah, look around! Our country is doing well. God must be pleased with us! Isaiah, we have Solomon’s temple here. What other nation can boast that? God must be pleased with us!" Isaiah’s countrymen figured that even though they might not be as "religious" as their ancestors were, they were still doing enough to keep God happy with them. After all, the priests still were going through the motions of sacrifices at the temple, so what was the problem? Here’s the problem, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." Did you catch how God considers people’s self-righteous acts? He says they are "filthy rags" in his sight. Actually the Hebrew is even stronger, which says that all our righteous acts are like menstrual rags stained with blood. These righteous acts are deeds which in their outward appearance look like they should please God, but in truth they are abhorent to him when they are not done with the right heart.
Let’s take a few examples from today. Maybe you have been shopping the past few days and you’ve seen the Salvation Army volunteers at the entryways to stores, standing next to their collection buckets and ringing their bells. How many people do you think walk by, throw something in there, and in their minds think, "well, even though I’m not a church-going person, a charitable act like this has to make me an above-average person and has to count something towards God’s book if there is a God." All our righteous acts are like filthy rags. Oh, the world has its own Advent songs, but not telling us to prepare for Jesus. No, we’d better prepare for someone else’s coming, Santa Claus is coming to down. So what? "you’d better be good for goodness sake." The world says, "you’d better be good if you want to be rewarded." Isaiah says, "All our righteous acts are like filthy rags."
To be prepared for Jesus, We first have to remember that we are nothing in God’s sight because of our sins. Isaiah says, "We all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away."
Part III
Ok, God is coming and will show his power once again, we can’t do anything to get on his good side, so is all lost? Absolutely not! In this sinful, slumbering world, God has always promised to preserve a remnant of believers. So verse 8 gives us a ray of hope in this dark, commericalized dog-eat-dog world of ours, "yet, O Lord, you are our father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand."
This is the only Gospel in this reading, but as always, it really packs a punch to lift our tired and crushed spirits. Even though this world is frustrating, even though our sins and our lack of service to God weigh on our conscience, "yet, O Lord, you are our father." When Jesus died on the cross, God adopted you as his own child. I got an email this past week from one of the members here, that I thought so well summed up the difference between Christianity and all other religions. It was a quote from our Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who compared Islam and Christianity with these words, "Islam is a religion which requires you to give up your sons’ lives to God. Christianity is a religion where God gave up his Son’s life for you." God has adopted you into his family! God didn’t adopt you because you were so useful, because you were so attractive, God adopted you purely out of grace. Isaiah also says that we were like lumps of clay, which looked pretty ugly to begin with, but what did God do? He formed us, he fashioned us with the skills and talents that we have, so that we who were once worthless may be useful to God our father. We are all the work of God’s own hand.
St. Paul put it this way, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is a gift from God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
Conclusion
As we stand on the threshold of this new church year, may we keep in mind that this may very well be the last church year in this history of this world. The hourglass of human history is running out. What would you do if you knew that by this time next year this world will have ended? Whom would you urge to come to church? Whom would you witness your faith to? If we knew that this was the last year of earth, there would be a lot of other things that we wouldn’t be as excited about, like our retirement savings. And knowing there wouldn’t be another Superbowl, we probably would be as interested in next year’s NFL season. No, I think we all would be working as hard as we could to be useful vessels in the service of the Lord, trying as hard as we can to get those last-minute Christians into the lifeboat with us.
Maybe we should then live our lives like this is our last year. In fact, I know we should. That’s how God would have us to live, always ready, and always working. Yes, let’s place ourselves into God’s hand this year, and say to him, "Lord, use me how you want to. You have fashioned me and made me to be a useful servant in your kingdom." May God help us all to give God our best this year, thankful that he’s given us his best, the Christ-child. Amen.
