What are you looking for this Christmas? What are you hoping for and expecting?The LORD told the ancient Israelites in Jeremiah 29:13-14, at the end of their exile and awful time of punishment, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you. I will bring you back from captivity.” While those words were spoken to a specific people at a very specific time and place, the principles transcend time and place.
Almighty God longs for us to find and enjoy him. He promises we will find him when we seek him with all our heart. He will be found by us. Glory! What a promise!
So what are you looking for? What are we hoping for?
From Genesis through Malachi, the people and prophets of the Old Testament looked for a Savior and a King. Beginning with the very mysterious language of Genesis 3:15, where God curses the serpent saying, “and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Why the singular and what could this be about if not the coming Messiah?
Micah 5:2 said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 7:14 said he would be born of a virgin. Deuteronomy 18:15, 18-19 said he’d be a prophet like Moses and Zechariah 9:9 said he would enter Jerusalem in triumph. Isaiah 53:3 said he would be rejected by his own people and Psalm 41:9 said he would be betrayed by one of his followers. Isaiah 53:8 said he would be tried and condemned, yet verse 7 said he would be strangely silent before his accusers. Isaiah 50:6 said he would be struck and spat on by his enemies. Psalm 22:7-8 said he would be mocked and insulted. Psalm 22 clearly depicted Messiah dying by crucifixion and Isaiah 53:12 said he would do so alongside criminals he would be praying for. Psalm 69:21 said he would be given sour wine to drink and Psalm 22:18 said people would throw dice for his garments. Yet strangely, Psalm 34:20 said, in spite of all this horrific abuse, just like any good Passover sacrifice, not one of his bones would be broken! Isaiah 53:5-6 said he would die as a sacrifice for our sin. Psalm 16:10 said he would come back to life and Psalm 110:1 said he would now serve at God’s right hand. And all this stuff is just the tip of the prophetic iceberg! All these prophetic expectations and hopes came vividly and clearly true and yet most people missed it all because they weren’t looking for the Jesus that showed up.
And so I say again, what are you looking for? What are you expecting?
Come, Thou long expected Jesus born to set Thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
When the great Charles Wesley wrote the words to that beautiful old hymn in 1745, he wasn’t encouraging us to invent some lovely, politically correct, sanitized Christmas fantasy. He was saying, “Let these words be true! Let Jesus come, the Jesus we were taught clearly in your Word to expect – let this Jesus come and live among us again and do the things He promised!”
What are we really expecting? Do we even know?
Probably the single most important prophecy about Jesus is found in Isaiah 61:1-4. I say this is the most important prophecy because, in Luke 4:18-19 when Jesus stood before his hometown synagogue in Nazareth to introduce himself and his mission, these are the words he quoted and claimed. These are the words that got Jesus angrily run out of town and almost thrown off a cliff had God not protected him. This is what Jesus said we should be expecting.
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor [interestingly – Jesus ends his quote here] and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.
On this first official Sunday of the Advent season, this Sunday of prophecy, expectation and renewed hope in Christ our Christmas Messiah, we must clarify for ourselves what sort of Jesus we’re expecting. What sort of Jesus has the Word of God taught us to expect?
I passionately believe God’s Word has a two fold answer for us today. This prophecy Jesus embraces, the one that got him in so much trouble, gives us a two-sided expectation we must be clear about. The second verse of this prophecy proclaims two unassailable facts.
The Year of Favor
Our LORD Jesus came to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. If you’re here this morning hopelessly stuck in poverty of one sort or another, if you are brokenhearted and alone, if you are held captive or trapped in some sort of prison darkness, Jesus comes to you with very good news. Jesus comes to you this morning with the offer of comfort and provision, a crown of beauty, gladness instead of morning and a life of praise instead of despair. Our long expected Jesus comes to you today with God’s favor in his hands as a free gift to you.
If you feel like some sort of awful leper sitting unwelcome on the outside of church and respectable society, Jesus comes to you today as a friend. You are not alone. You are not at all unwelcome. You are not weak. You are not worthless. You are not ugly. You are not just some awful list of diseases that plague you and cause others to avoid you. Jesus loves you.
If you came in here this morning utterly convinced your sins and wrong-doing are too awful for God to forgive, too heinous and disgusting for others to know about and too ingrained to give up, Jesus comes to you and says, “Don’t be silly! Stop thinking that way! Compared to the staggering holiness of God, you are all swimming in the same swill of condemnation.” Jesus comes to all the sad and guilty today, offering complete forgiveness and a completely different life. Jesus offers the real possibility of purity and pleasure beyond our wildest dreams.
If you feel trapped in darkness and imprisoned, perhaps even as a result of your own sinful and stupid decisions along the way, Jesus comes to you with a big, old set of Christmas keys able to open any door. While we might read the words of this prophecy in a prison cell, as many of you are, Jesus smiles at each one of us and offers us release. Where we are is just a question of real estate – what we do there is what matters. From what I read in the Bible, I suspect the Apostle Paul may never have been freer than when he was writing letters from a Roman jail cell. We don’t have to live a stuck life just because we’re momentarily stuck!
This is the great year of the LORD’s favor. Come thou long expected Jesus!
There is no longer any such thing as hopeless!
Corrie Ten Boom, the Holocaust death camp survivor, has famously declared, “There is no pit so deep but Christ is deeper still.” Dr. Ray Ortlund, a Nashville pastor and well known author has taken this quote as the theme of his blog, Deeper Still. I was looking at his website this week and came across a painting by Frank Bramley, entitled “The Hopeless Dawn.” It is a painting of a young woman who just found out her husband was lost at sea, being comforted by her godly mother-in-law. And in the picture is a table suggesting the Lord’s Supper and huge open Bible lying in the light of the window. You are not alone in this thing, sweetie! This moment of hopelessness is not the end for you; it is the dawn of something new. Jesus is constantly offering each one of us, even in the depths of our despair, a completely new day.If that is where you find yourself today, broken, sinful, guilty, suffering, alone or captive in some awful way, please know that this is the year of our LORD’s favor. There is no longer any such thing as hopeless. This is the first, long expected message of prophecy for us today.
The Day of Vengeance
But this is only half the long expected message. Our LORD Jesus spent most of his time focusing on the first clause of the prophecy because it was most immediately relevant to his first century hearers. Jesus cut off his prophetic quotation mid sentence, but we cannot do so. While we are still living in this wonderful year of the LORD’s favor, the somber second part of the prophecy might be even more important for us to consider today. Our long expected Jesus came not only to bring a year of favor, but also a great and terrible day of vengeance.
The video I played at the opening of this message is a lovely image of someone finding what they were looking for with all their heart. A little girl anxiously looks for her dog while the soft music plays. The two are reunited, they cuddle and everyone lives happily ever after.
In one sense it is a beautiful picture of our pursuit of Jesus. The more we understand of God’s lavish, absolutely prodigal love (as Tim Keller describes it ), the more we truly begin to fall in love with his Word and its good guidance, the more we will honestly begin to feel our relationship with God somewhat resembles that between some girl and her affectionate dog.
But folks, our LORD Jesus is not your lost puppy. Our long expected Jesus came into the world proclaiming not only the wonderful year of the Lord’s favor, but also the great and terrible day of God’s vengeance. We cannot spend only one side of this coin.
There are many today who would discourage any conversation about the wrath and vengeance of God, certainly during the Advent season. They paint any attempt to do so as old-fashioned, judgmental and hateful. Almost any meaningful conversation about sin, biblical standards of righteousness or the profoundly clear and absolute truths of God become quickly suspect. Many today set up elaborate, yet utterly superficial, straw man images of bullhorn preachers screaming hellfire and damnation at the world and then they knock them down. And the sinful world, coddling its evil, applauds their wonderful enlightenment and sensitivity! One writer I read last week proclaimed, “The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it.” True, but the writer ignored the central, underlying context of the verse. While the Gospel of John tells us clearly our LORD Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn it, it also makes clear he only did so because the world was condemned already. Condemnation is our default condition. A miserable eternity apart from God is our default destination apart from this baby. This condemnation was foundationally understood. And frankly, I don’t believe our condemnation apart from Christ is so well understood anymore.
I don’t see it. I see people doing whatever sinful, utterly selfish thing they wish to do whenever they wish to do it and, if anyone ever stands up and quotes them a Bible verse or two, that person gets grouped together with the bigots and haters and is summarily dismissed.
Folks, our LORD actually expects us to read, know and obey His Word! Our LORD longs for us to spend time with Him in prayer, know His voice and do whatever He tells us to do. Our LORD expects us to enter our churches (whatever kind of church we’re going to) hungry to worship, not hungry to selfishly dissect and gluttonously consume. Our LORD expects us to constantly display the fruit of the Spirit. Our LORD expects us to seek Him first in all we do. Our LORD expects us to sacrificially give of ourselves – our time, talents and treasure. Our LORD expects us to really love Him and love others. These things are not optional suggestions.
We’re not going to get into heaven, we are not going to see our LORD’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven unless we properly appreciate our utterly condemned condition apart from Jesus Christ. Those who refuse to admit how lost they really are never go looking for a map! I will never embrace the full favor of the LORD unless I see how precious, valuable and necessary it is. I will never properly embrace favor unless I properly understand vengeance.
There is coming a day when God is going to say “enough” to this world’s sin. Folks; the Gospel is not good news to those refusing to embrace it. This prophecy is a choice! We can choose to wallow in God’s favor or we can continue on our rebellious path to God’s vengeance.
Jesus Christ is not your lost puppy.
Late Tuesday evening after finishing up the bulk of this message, I went home and lamented to Monica the strange, surprising direction my sermon studies took this week. I shared with her how profoundly struck and utterly exposed I was by this year of favor and day of vengeance stuff and Jesus using only half the quotation. But as soon as I mentioned the day of vengeance side of the conversation, my sweet, wildly non-confrontational Monica had an almost visceral reaction. “Oh Kevin, don’t use the word vengeance during Christmas time. That’s terrible - I hate that word! It makes God sound so mean!”
Sorry Sweetie! I’m really not the one using the word.
As a side note, I found it very humorous that for the rest of the evening as we were talking and watching television, the word “vengeance” kept appearing in every program, over and over again. It was downright creepy! I kept chuckling and poking Monica in the ribs. Finally she shouted, “Vengeance is mine!” to which I immediately responded, “Says the LORD!”
We may not like the word, I suspect we aren’t supposed to like the word, but it is very clearly there. In Psalm 94:1, David, a man after God’s own heart, prayerfully exclaimed, “O Lord, God of vengeance; God of vengeance, shine forth!” Eew! We may not like the sound of that prayer, but there is coming a day when that prayer will be fully, finally answered. Folks, the only way to avoid the scary word we hate is to fully embrace the wonderful word we love.
This prophecy, this Advent season, this day like every other day, offers us a choice. If you recognize your brokenness, your sin, your need of a Savior, your darkness and your utter captivity, if you enter this room on your knees – this long expected Jesus has very good news for you. This day is about favor. We have been living in a long and wonderfully gracious year of God’s favor, but there is coming one sure and certain day of God’s vengeance.
So choose wisely today!
Come, Thou long expected Jesus born to set Thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
Amen.
