Iliff and Saltillo UM Churches
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 19, 2004
“Indications of His Love for Us”
Isaiah 63:7-9
INTRODUCTION: How many have your Christmas shopping all done? How about all wrapped? This morning I want you to think about your Christmas shopping list. Think about the people on your list that you really enjoyed buying for. Think about the people you didn’t enjoy buying for. Think about someone you had on your list but you felt they just didn’t deserve a gift from you. Maybe you felt they never appreciated what you got them last year and besides that never even said “Thank You.” Maybe they came right out and said, “I don’t like this gift”--don’t like the color, it’s ugly, and tossed it aside or exchanged it. Did you ever have that happen to you?
In today’s scripture Isaiah is talking about people who were like that. He enumerated all of the many kindnesses that the Lord had lavished on his covenant people, the Israelites, throughout the years--God had shown his love and compassion for them on all kinds of occasions. He said, “Surely these are my people who will not be false to me.” But in verse 10 it says, “Yet they rebelled.” God was disappointed in how they received His gifts. They certainly did not appreciate or deserve them. In spite of their unworthiness, He did not write them off. Neither does he write us off today.
1. Compassion Lavished, in Spite of Our Unworthiness: How many times do we take God’s love for granted or even outright reject it? Scripture sums it up this way in Isaiah 53:6. “We’re all like sheep who have wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong on him”. In spite of their unworthiness scripture says He became their savior. He wants to be OUR Savior as well.
2. In All Our Troubles, He is Troubled Too: When Jesus came to earth He made it His business to know what we were struggling with. Isaiah says in verse 9, “In all their distress, he too was distressed.” He took their pain personally. Isaiah tells us in 53:4 “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows...he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities (willful deliberate sins). He knows our current needs and knows what to do about them even when things look impossible.
Story: A North Dakota blizzard was howling outside Dr. Thompson’s office one night. About 9:00 the phone rang. A man said, “Doc can you come out to my place? My boy is running a high fever and is unconscious. It’s impossible for us to get in to see you. Do you think you could make it out to us?”
The doctor said, “Tony, I’ll do my best but I never saw a storm this bad where I came from and it sure scares me.”
On his way out of town he stopped at the local bar and asked three men if they would go with him to help shovel. About halfway the men became exhausted because the snow drifts were getting so deep. The doctor left his car with the men and got a farmer to saddle a horse for the rest of the trip out to Tony’s. The boy was so sick that the doctor knew that if he didn’t get him to a hospital in intensive care soon that he wouldn’t make it. He thought of Ed the County Commissioner. He called him but the commissioner said, “Don’t think I can do anything, but I’ll try.”
At sunrise the doctor got his patient down to the main road, and to his surprise, he found his car running and waiting for him and to learn that the road all the way to town had been cleared.
The doctor called the county commissioner to thank him.
“Don’t thank me. I had nothing to do with it.”
Surprized the doctor said, “Who did then?”
The commissioner said, “Well, you’ve got to know the people around here to understand what happened. When they heard you call me on the party line, they knew something must be wrong. They all listened in and every able-bodied man and boy along that road went to work shoveling and plowing snow. We live out here in God’s wide-open country where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free. When anybody’s in trouble, we all pitch in to help. We call it “putting love on the line.”
I think that we can say that Jesus put “love on the line” for us.
Paul said in Romans 5:6,8, “Just at the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
3. By Coming to Us in Person: Jesus came into our world Himself. He didn’t send a messenger or His assistant. He didn’t send an angel to be there just long enough to deliver the message and then leave. God comes into our life to stay. As long as we let Him, He will be there. He said He would never leave us nor forsake us. Then, why does it seem that Christianity doesn’t work for so many people today? We need something that will work in spite of our struggles. We don’t just want some nice little poem about God’s love for us. Jesus wants to stand with us in our struggles and work side beside us in our daily life. Not just on Sunday mornings or on special occasions.
We often find that Christianity doesn’t seem to work for us because we have a tendency to keep Him at a distance--on the outside looking in. We acknowledge Him on special occasions--Christmas, Easter, at weddings or funerals, when we need prayer in times of emergencies. That is not enough. That is where we are missing it. We’ve got to open our whole life to the one who came to earth to be our Savior. That’s when He can begin to walk with us in our daily struggles and temptations working side by side with us.
Story: A priest and his parishioners lived in a Texas border town. Across the border in Mexico was a neighboring town full of poverty and despair. The town had a huge dump. People lived in that dump. They survived by digging through the garbage and finding scraps of food, aluminum cans and other junk they found. It was smelly, disgusting work. The priest and his congregation wanted to help these people so they prepared some sack lunches and took them out to the dump. They decided to continue helping these people by bringing food and clothes and even organized a kind of “dump market.”
But to make a real difference they would have to do more than just give aid. They began to work side by side with the dump people, digging through the trash on appointed days. They became brothers and sisters to them.
At the risk of getting tuberculosis and other diseases, and having to endure the garbage smell and the indignity of the work, they became part of the “dump family.” As they did, they found that people responded to their kindness and over time many of the people began to receive Jesus as one who cared for them. In turn the church members found their own lives were changed by what they saw God doing in these lives of these poor people.
When Jesus left the glories of heaven, He came to earth to live in a world filled with its sin and struggles. Scripture says, “He came and dwelt among us.” The Message Bible says, “The Word (Jesus) became flesh and flood and moved into the neighborhood (John 1:14). Would you like to have Jesus in your neighborhood? We need him in our neighborhood more than at any time in history. He’s just waiting for you to give Him permission to be there. Give Him permission to move into your life this Christmas season and stay all year long--not to be just a guest but at home.
CONCLUSION: There are many indications of His love for us today.
1. He shows His love to us in spite of our unworthiness
2. He is a part of all our troubles and distresses.
3. He laid His “love on the line” by coming to us personally.
The most important thing you can do at this Christmas season is to give Him permission to come into your life, to change from the inside out, to help you to become what He has always planned for you.
Let us Pray:
