Advent 3
Isa
40:1-8
12/14/14
Right now if you drive north from
here on I-57, get off at the Herrin and Johnston City exit, and then head west
on Herrin Road you encounter an interesting sight. A little over two miles from the exit you
meet a location where an arrow straight and level strip of dirt heads of from
the road.
The Herrin Road itself continues on
and soon enters a very windy curve that goes left and then back to the
right. As it curves back to the right,
you again see this straight strip of dirt.
You can tell that massive amounts of earth have been brought in to build
it up so that it is higher than the surrounding area. The strip of dirt crosses the railroad tracks
and heads into Herrin, at which point, the road and the strip of dirt basically
intersect as the dirt comes to an end and the road continues on.
The strip of dirt is a construction
project that is currently going on. It
is intended to straighten out Herrin Road and eliminates that curvy
section. It’s not hard to understand
that over the years it probably has been the cause of a number of
accidents. Certainly, the new
construction will be easier and safer to drive – though I would say, not as
much fun. I enjoy the curves.
In order to build the new road,
workers have leveled everything in its path and cut a swath through the
woods. And then, because that area has
some creeks that flood when there has been a wet period of heavy rain, they
have filled in areas with dirt and built it up so that the level of the road is
higher than the surrounding area. As you enter Herrin, you can see a large
depression on the right from which they have taken all of this dirt. The landscape has been cleared, filled in and
leveled in order to build this new stretch of road.
When I began working with our text
from Isaiah chapter 40 for this sermon and drove by the construction, I was
immediately struck by the correspondence: Here in our area is exactly what
Isaiah is talking about! Isaiah declares
to Judah that they are to prepare the way of the Lord. He uses the metaphor of a highway for which
everything is to be filled in, leveled and smoothed over. The prophet declares that God is coming to
bring salvation and everyone needs to be ready.
Preaching on the portion of Isaiah
that begins here at chapter forty is always a bit of a challenge because of the
history that it covers. Isaiah lived in
the eighth century B.C. – so, during the 700’s.
During his ministry the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom
of Israel and took the people into exile.
The northern tribes were taken away and were never heard from
again. The Assyrian leader Sennacherib
attempted to conquer Judah and take the city of Jerusalem, but failed when God
intervened and killed one hundred and eighty five thousand of his troops in the
middle of the night.
After this rescue, in chapter thirty
nine envoys from Babylon arrive. King
Hezekiah naively welcomed them and showed them all wealth of his storehouses
and his land. He practically put out a
sign that said: “This country is a great place to conquer.” It was not a good
idea. Isaiah said to the king: “Hear the
word of the LORD of hosts: Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in
your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be
carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD.”
When we turn to chapter forty we are
now hearing about a different time and a different situation. Having just mentioned what the Babylonians
would do, Isaiah now speaks to Judah in what for him was a future time. He speaks to Judah in the sixth century B.C.,
because in 587 B.C. the Babylonians would conquer Jerusalem, destroy the
temple, and take the people into exile.
Isaiah speaks about a destruction and exile that had not yet happened,
and speaks comfort to the people who would experience it.
During the course of this section of
his prophecy, Isaiah announces that God will use Cyrus to bring the people back
from exile. Cyrus turned out to be the
Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and issued an edict that allowed the
people of Judah to return and rebuild the temple. The return from exile to the
promised land is the salvation that God is going to bring. Yet this salvation is described in terms that
point beyond the mere return to a piece of land.
In our text, the Lord declares
through Isaiah: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to
Jerusalem,
and cry to her that
her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from
the LORD's hand double for all her sins.”
God had punished Judah because of her
sin. They had rejected God by choosing to worship the false gods of the
surrounding lands. And this lack of
faith had infected the way they treated others.
Twenty six hundred years may
separate you from ancient Judah, but the story has not changed. You still worship false gods – you worship
money, possessions, pleasure,sports and hobbies. And because you do this, it infects the way
you treat others as well. You don’t seek
the welfare of your spouse, and instead you make selfish decisions. You don’t obey and help your parents, and
instead you sulk, you whine, you complain – anything to make life difficult
because you aren’t getting your way. You
don’t forgive others, because you would rather bear a grudge that eats away at
you inside and poisons life around you.
God had punished Judah. Yet now he spoke a word of comfort. Where
earlier in Isaiah when talking about their unfaithfulness he had referred to
Judah as “this people”, now he speaks about “my people.” Yahweh was going to
bring rescue and the people needed to be ready.
We hear in our text: “‘A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way
of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley
shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground
shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the LORD
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the
LORD has spoken.’”
The return from exile by Judah was a
type. A type – as our catechumens can
tell you – is a person or event in the Old Testament that points forward to
what God is going to do in the New Testament.
The rescue from exile pointed forward to the rescue from sin and the
return to life with God in the new creation.
We know this because the New
Testament tells us that these words of Isaiah find their ultimate fulfillment
in John the Baptist. Matthew tells us, “In those days John the Baptist came
preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.’ For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, ‘The
voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his
paths straight.’”
John the Baptist called people to
repent. He called them to turn away from
their sin and remove those things that prevented them from receiving God. They needed to do this because the arrival of
God’s kingdom – his reign – was imminent. God’s end-time saving action was
about to begin. It was bringing
forgiveness, but this forgiveness could only be received by those who were
repentant.
John the Baptist prepared the way
for Jesus Christ. It was in Jesus that the words of our text were fulfilled: “And
the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for
the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” The
glory of the Lord was revealed in Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. He was God bringing rescue from sin and
death, for he came to die on the cross and rise from the dead. Because of his sacrifice you have been
redeemed – you have been freed from the slavery that held us as we shared in
Jesus’ saving death through the waters of Holy Baptism.
The words of Isaiah
fulfilled in John the Baptist still apply to you. They apply every day because you continue to
struggle against sin. You continue to need to drown the old Adam in you by
daily contrition and repentance as you return to your baptism so that a new man
daily emerges and arises to live before God in righteousness and purity
forever.
And especially now during Advent, as
you prepare to celebrate your Lord’s first coming, you need to take Isaiah’s
words to heart. You need to remove every
obstacle that hinders us from focusing on Jesus Christ in whom the saving glory
of God has been revealed.
When you do this, you can recognize
the wondrous reason for the season of Christmas. As the cover of this month’s Lutheran Witness indicates, it’s you.
You are the reason. You are the
reason because of your sin. And you are
the reason because in God’s unfathomable love he desired to save you.
He has loved and forgiven you, so
that now through the work of the Spirit you can love and forgive others. During the days that lead up to Christmas we
do a number of special Christmas events in order to share this love.
Congregation members donate money that the youth use to purchase and wrap
Christmas gifts for children in foster care.
Congregation members help to pack Christmas food boxes at the Marion
Ministerial Alliance food pantry using food items purchased through money
donated by Thrivent.
But more than those special events,
the love and forgiveness received in Jesus Christ is something that permeates
our daily life. It is shared with
others in our home, work and school. The
act of repentance removes those barriers that hinder the glory of God from
being revealed to others through us who are in Christ. Through the work of the Spirit, God sends us
as “little Christs” into the world so that in word and deed we can share this
love and forgiveness with others.
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