Scripture reading: Mark 13:24-37.

Sermon text: Isaiah 64:1-9.

Today marks the beginning of a new Church year and the beginning of the season of Advent. During Advent, the Scripture reading will be followed by a devotional pointing to the lighting of the Advent candle for the day.

Devotional

“Advent.” In Latin, the word “adventus” means “coming.” The season of Advent, therefore, points us to a coming of something. What do we expect?

Most people today think of Advent as the season of celebration, the season in which we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ coming as a baby in Bethlehem. And surely, we will celebrate Jesus’ birth. However, “Advent” also points us to a more graphic truth: The Second Coming of Christ, the coming of judgment.

In the Scripture passage today, Jesus and His disciples had come to Jerusalem for the Passover. All Jerusalem expectantly waited for the coming of a Messiah to rescue the nation from the pagan Gentiles; now, their Messiah strode down the streets of the city, teaching in the Temple and striking down Pharisees left and right.

In the midst of the religious displays of the most religious city in the world, Jesus prophesied destruction. In the expectation of their Messiah, the people crying for God to intervene had forgotten the God they served. God would intervene, but as always, God’s intervention would purify His people more than it would inconvenience the pagans. God never distinguishes between the sins of the pagans and the sins of His people, Jesus reminds us, and His coming would deal with both. The Jews of first-century Jerusalem wanted God to come, but on their own terms. God doesn’t work that way.

Today, although we talk of Jesus’ return, we usually live as if it’ll happen any time but now. We expect God to come, but in our way and our time, as we call for Him to work in our lives and the lives of those we lift in prayer. I warn you: When God comes, He begins with His people. If you’ve ever called for God to work in someone’s life, stay awake to an important fact: He will first work in you.

Sermon

Society seemed beyond hope, with depravity and uncertainty everywhere. Internationally, the government seemed totally inept in trying to juggle the major powers that controlled both military might and economic clout. Some of the faithful, desperate for any kind of help they could get, cried for God to come on the scene, judge the unbelievers, and elevate their country above those that oppressed them.

Sound familiar?

The Sunday morning sermons this Advent season will all come from the book that theologian John Calvin called “the Gospel of the Old Testament,” the book of Isaiah. Isaiah wrote his book during the reigns of 4 kings of Judah beginning in 742 B.C. and continuing through c. 680 B.C. Isaiah prophesied to 3 distinct groups of people: Those of his lifetime, those of the time of the Exile roughly 100 years after his death, and those who would return approximately 70 years later and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. In all 3 times in Israel’s history, the nation faced spiritual, economic, and societal uncertainty. In all 3 times, the faithful cried for God’s help.

Today’s sermon text, although it prophesied primarily to people living more than 150 years after Isaiah’s death, reminds us that asking God for His intervention always brings unintended consequences.

In this passage of Isaiah’s book, Isaiah lamented that even exile and destruction could guarantee faithfulness among God’s people. Isaiah’s lament began in verse 15 of the previous chapter. The Jews needed more than God’s direct intervention; they needed assurance that God would mold His people into righteous believers who would fulfill their calling before the nations.

Isaiah began this passage with a call for God to work as He had before. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence — as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!  When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.”

We often forget that unlike our national history, Israel’s national history overflowed with stories of God’s work for His people. Israel’s history began with the calling of Abraham, a calling all Jews admitted Abraham never deserved. Israel celebrated God’s mighty redemption of the enslaved nation with the yearly festival of Passover. Israel also remembered God’s deliverance of the nation through mighty judges and kings. In Isaiah’s lifetime, Jerusalem experienced God’s direct deliverance from the might of Assyria during Hezekiah’s reign. In one night in 701 B.C., God’s angel destroyed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (Isaiah 37:36).

Unfortunately, God’s intervention included times of judgment as well. Isaiah and Judah witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians, an event Scripture attributes to God’s judgment of the sinful nation (2 Kings 17).

Isaiah called for God’s work in His nation because Israel worshiped a God unlike any other god in humanity’s history. “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.  You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways.” Time and again in Israel’s history, God had demonstrated His uniqueness in His gracious love of Israel. God had demonstrated His care for His people from the covenant of Mt. Sinai to the time of Isaiah’s life, a period of over 700 years.

Isaiah knew, however, that calling on God was a risky proposition. God always expected His people to live according to His standards, not their own. God always called the Jews to account when He appeared on the scene, punishing the nation for their sins even as He worked to preserve the nation. Isaiah understood that God never preserved Israel because the Jews deserved His protection: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” Nothing that Israel could do would truly atone for the nation’s sins. The covenant of Mt. Sinai lay shattered by centuries of rebellion and sin: “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

As Isaiah understood, Israel seemed to ignore God in the good times and call upon Him when they faced adversity: “There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you.”  In times when the people really wanted God to intervene, it seemed He disappeared: “you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” Israel never really connected blessing with obedience and peril with disobedience.

Isaiah knew God would never allow Israel’s sins to go unpunished, but he also knew God constantly showed grace to His rebellious people. Isaiah could remind God that He served as Israel’s “Father;” Israel served as the “clay” God could mold into an obedient people who would bless the nations. Isaiah knew that God could show mercy to His people, as He had done before. “Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.”

As we read passages from Isaiah, we must remember that we stand in a different era, under a new covenant established by God the Son. Jesus had told His disciples on the night of His last Passover, as He passed them the cup of wine, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). While God continues to hold promises in store for Israel, the Church lives in a new relationship with God, a relationship established by Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

With this reminder in mind, we must remember the theme of Advent. We know that just as Jesus ascended into heaven, the Scriptures assure us He will return. Every ancient creed of the Church confidently states Jesus will return “to judge the living and the dead.” We live in the shadow of Jesus’ sure and certain return.

Even as we know Jesus will return, and even as we join with every believer of every time in calling for Jesus’ return, we must remember that God never comes onto the scene without first working within His people. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, came into the Church on the day of Pentecost in A.D. 33 and has worked in the Church ever since. The Holy Spirit has, on occasion, swept through peoples and nations, converting the unbelievers and empowering the Church to evangelize new areas.

Even as we have witnessed the spread of Jesus’ gospel throughout the world, some believers today believe His return is needed more than ever. These believers see our nation entering a post-Christian era in which, in their eyes, sin and depravity will overtake even the Church herself. These people had rather see Jesus return to judge all humanity than see live through what they perceive as the defeat of the gospel.

I see things another way, and for the same reason as Isaiah. Scripture and history tell us we’ve been here before, and God has graciously used our adversities to purify His people and recommit them to the spread of the gospel. Even as I pray for Jesus’ return as all believers should, I also pray that He will tarry long enough for the gospel to reach untouched tribes. I also pray Jesus will wait long enough for the Holy Spirit to convict the unsaved in my family and among my friends.

I also think those praying for God to intervene directly in situations forget that God never intervenes as we expect Him to. God understands the situations far better than we, and should He intervene, He will do so in a way that furthers His will, not ours. Remember that our God is a consuming fire (Malachi 3:3), and He will not be used for our own purposes.

C.S. Lewis explains this powerfully in Mere Christianity:

1. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else — something it never entered your head to conceive — comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it. — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, “The Practical Conclusion”
   

In this season of Advent, pray more for the Holy Spirit to work in you and to use you to bring people to Jesus, the One who will return one day. Until that day, let the Holy Spirit use you as a testimony of God’s love for a broken world that Jesus will restore with His return.