Advent Midweek 3 – Isaiah 52 –
December 17th, 2014
In the Name of Christ Jesus, the Advent King +
In the Name of Christ Jesus, the Advent King +
For this final Advent lesson, we are going to look at the
beginning of Isaiah 52. Now, what is
interesting is you know what comes after this – this passage rolls into the
great suffering servant section from Good Friday. However, we don’t normally pay much attention
to this part of Isaiah, yet these verses capture the joy, the passive joy of
our salvation that is accomplished by Christ Jesus. Let us go through the text and see. “Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no
more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean.” We get a familiar start. The idea of waking up is a familiar way of
describing the idea of waiting for the Lord, of the Lord’s coming. We know the parables of the Wedding Feast
that Jesus gives – put on your beautiful, wedding garments! Wake, awake, for night is flying! And what is the hope – Jerusalem isn’t going to be messed with
again. But here is the twist – put on
strength. No, the strength isn’t going
to be your own – Isaiah isn’t saying “You folks need to man up” – no, put on
strength like a garment. “Shake
yourself from the dust and arise; be seated, O Jerusalem;
loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.” Arise, be seated. “Good night, almost as much up and down as
Pastor Brown makes us go through in our service!” What’s going on – wake up, pay attention –
now rest, relax, sit down, and behold what God is going to do for you, Jerusalem.
“For thus says the LORD: ‘You were sold for nothing, and you shall be
redeemed without money.’” When
you went into Egypt,
you were welcomed with open arms – Joseph’s family, the family of the wise man
who saved the nation in the face of famine.
And then, as time passed, you were just cast into slavery. God delivered you from Egypt – not by buying you, but by
rescuing you. Likewise, now, Israel, you
won’t buy or bribe your way out of the current political problems you are in. You aren’t going to sweet talk the vile
Assyrians out of anything. Instead, God
will deliver you. But even more than
that – this points forward to Christ Jesus.
This is actually going to be our Catechism lesson this next Sunday –
what has Jesus my Lord done – “[He] has redeemed me, a lost and condemned
person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of
the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with
His innocent suffering and death.”
This brings us really into the topic, the idea of
redemption. We will talk about Christ
Jesus being our Redeemer – but I think that we often forget just how visceral
that word is. To be Redeemed means you
had been a slave, that you had been trapped and caught and unable to go where
you wish, unable to do what you wanted.
And this is actually the classic Scriptural depiction of original sin,
of what it means for us to be born sinful.
We are born stuck in sin, slaves to sin.
Often we tend to think of sin as a mere bad moral choice – I can choose
to be good or I can choose to be bad.
That’s not the fullness of it – we are born sinful, full of sin. We aren’t able to simply choose God or come
to Him, we aren’t able to choose to be righteous in God’s sight. We cannot of our own power choose to believe
in God – But how are they to call on Him in Whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of Whom
they have never heard?” We know
this – faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Without that Word of God coming you to, you
are stuck without faith, and if you are breaking the first commandment, it
doesn’t really matter how “nice” you are and choose to be. Rather, God must come in, burst in and win
salvation. Christ Jesus must defeat and
destroy sin and death, and that is how He delivers, how He redeems, how He buys
us out of the mess we are in. When it
comes to our salvation, our redemption, it isn’t about what *we* do – we are
passive. We were sold into slavery, even
before we were born – and we were purchased out of slavery, redeemed.
That is why we get this next part – “How beautiful upon the mountain
are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good
news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God
reigns.’” Feet are associated
with the Gospel – it’s why in Ephesians when Paul is talking about the full
Armor of God, he says, “and, as shoes for your feet, having the
Gospel of peace.” The reason for
this is that the Gospel is never something *you* do, but something you hear,
something that is announced to you, that is proclaimed to you. Something that a messenger comes and
proclaims. We get this – the word for
messenger in Greek is “angelos” – angel.
A week from now, come Christmas Eve, what do we think of when we think of
angels? They come and they announce good
news to the Shepherds – and what had the Shepherds *done* to earn or merit this
news? Nothing. It’s not about them and what they do. It’s not about us or what we do. Rather, the news, the good news, the Gospel
is this – your God reigns – Christ Jesus has come and with His death and
resurrection has defeated sin and death and won you eternal life. It’s not about you, but it is for you – it is
the declaration of God for you, being born for you, suffering for you, in your
stead, rising for you – and even coming again for your good.
“The voice of your watchmen – they lift up their voice; together they
sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion.” Your watchmen are the folks standing on the
city walls, keeping a watch out for anything approaching – so they would be the
first one to see the messenger coming.
They would be the first one to see, maychance even to hear the shouts of
joy and victory of the messenger. And
then, there is rejoicing, rejoicing that cannot but help to spread. “Break forth together into singing, you
waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has
comforted His people; He has redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD has bared His holy arm before the eyes
of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of
our God from this time forth and forevermore.” This is the might of God. Even the waste places, even the dead and dull
places, they will break forth in singing.
So, what of you? Do you face and
feel the weight of life in this sinful world?
Do you feel worn and beat down, like a used up piece of land? Christ Jesus has redeemed you. And all this relies not upon you, but upon
Him. He has bared His arm, He bared His
arm as He hung bare upon the Cross, taking upon Himself all the weight of sin,
including that weight that bothers, that oppresses you. This is why He came – to take on sin and
death and to burst them open and destroy them with His death and
resurrection. Christ is risen – Jesus
Christ, true God and true Man is alive – a true Man is alive, never to die
again – and thus you will live; we are all going to follow after Him. God grant that we who are still on earth in
this life see this salvation ever more, even until He comes again and we see
Him face to face and break forth with the watchman’s joy. Come quickly, Lord Jesus! In the Name of Christ Jesus our Advent King +
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