A Promise Kept

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 1, 2013.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 7:3-17 and Luke 1:26-38.

We just got done with Thanksgiving, and I hope you all had a wonderful one.  I hope you got to eat lots of turkey—at least if you like turkey—and I hope you got to watch lots of football—if you like football—and I hope you got to spend some time with family and rest and do all the things we do to celebrate Thanksgiving.  And of course, I also hope you spent some time actually giving thanks to God for all the things God has done for us.

But now, in the church, it's time for us to turn the calendar page to preparations for the coming of Christmas.  This is the first Sunday of Advent.  We lit the first candle of the Advent wreath, we're singing the Advent hymns, and we're starting to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ.

That's good.  We need to prepare to celebrate Jesus' birth.  They prepared for it in Old Testament times, too.  They may not have known just what they were preparing for, exactly, but they were still preparing for it.  There are lots of Old Testament passages that talk about the coming of the Messiah.  So, our sermon series for December is “Jesus Foretold”.  We're going to look at some of the Old Testament prophecies and see what they had to say about the coming of the Messiah.  And we're going to start by talking about the sign of the virgin birth, as referenced in the book of Isaiah.

The book of Isaiah, or at least the part we're dealing with today, was written in the eighth century B. C.  In other words, it was written about eight hundred years before Jesus was born.  At this time, Israel was separated from Judah, and Judah was in big trouble.  There were two kings who were sending their armies to march on Jerusalem and take it over.  The king of Judah, King Ahaz, was scared, because he did not think his army could defeat these other armies.

God sends the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz, and tells him to tell Ahaz not to worry about it.  It'll be okay.  Just stand firm in your faith.  God will defend you.  God will defeat your enemies.  And, he says, ask God to give you a sign of how God can be trusted.  And Ahaz says no. Ahaz says, no, I don't want a sign.

Think about that.  How many times in your life have you wished God would give you a sign of some sort?  I have, sometimes.  I might ask God for a sign that I'm on the right track.  I might ask God for a sign that things are going to work out.  Sometimes, I might just ask God for a sign that God is still there and that God knows what I'm going through.  Sometimes I've thought that I've gotten a sign and sometimes I have not, but there have been several times when I've asked for one.

But Ahaz did not want a sign.  Why not?  I mean, here he is, scared that two different armies are going to defeat him and take over his country, and he does not want a sign that God will protect him?  I'd think you'd love to have a sign in a situation like that.  In fact, I think I'd be looking for a sign, desperately trying to find one, trying to find something, anything, that said God was with me and that things would be all right.  But Ahaz did not want one.  Why not?

Well, you know, as much as we might think we want a sign from God, sometimes it's a tricky thing.  You see, if we ask for a sign from God, what we're really agreeing to do is surrender to God's will.  If we say we want a sign from God on whether we should do something, and God gives us a sign that we should, then we have to do it.  Even if we really don't want to do it, if God gives us a sign to do it, we'd better.  If we say we want a sign from God on whether things are going to work out the way we want them to and we get a sign that says no, then we have to re-think everything we've been doing.  Even if we really want things to work out a certain way, if God gives us a sign that they won't, we need to adapt to that.  If we ask for a sign from God, we need to surrender our will to God's will.

And a lot of times, we really don't want to do that.  We might think we do, but when it comes right down to it, we probably don't.  Ahaz did not.  He wanted God to defeat his enemies, of course, but he wanted God to do it in a way that left Ahaz in control of the situation.  After all, that's what it means to be king—to be in control of everything.  If Ahaz asked for a sign from God, then he would be surrendering his will to God's will.  He would be acknowledging that God was in control, and not Ahaz.  Ahaz did not want to do that.

But Isaiah tells Ahaz that he's going to get a sign anyway, a sign that showed God would always protect God's people.  The sign is that a virgin is going to give birth to a son and he will be called Immanuel, which means “God with us”.

And eight centuries later, it happened.  Jesus was born to the virgin, Mary.  Jesus was “God with us”.

Eight centuries is a long time to wait for a promise to be kept.  You know, one of the things about the way we read the Bible is that we kind of compress the amount of time it took for these things to happen.  Think of it this way.  Eight centuries ago, it was the year 1213.  Think about if God made a promise to someone in 1213 and it had still not been fulfilled.  You think people would start to doubt God's promise?  You think people would start to wonder if that promise was actually true?  You think there'd be a lot of questions about a promise God supposedly made in 1213 that had not come true yet?  Of course there would be.

And there were doubts among the Jews before Jesus was born, too.  They believed in God, and they believed Isaiah was a prophet, but still.  Eight centuries.  Eight hundred years.  And nothing had happened.  For a lot of that time, they'd been under the control of some other country.  Once in a while something would happen to give them hope.  They'd even gain their freedom, momentarily.  But it would never last.  And so, even though they believed that a Savior would someday come, very few of them actually expected to see it happen in their lifetime.  They believed, in theory, but that belief did not really affect their lives in any meaningful way.

Does that make them much different from us, do you think?  We believe in God, and we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior.  And yet, those things we read in the gospels, the story of Mary we read this morning in Luke, happened two thousand years ago.  God was with us, in the form of Jesus, two thousand years ago.  And we're told that, sometime, Jesus is coming back.  And we believe it, but still.  Two thousand years.  Two millenia.  Twenty centuries.  And, as far as we can tell, nothing has  happened.  For a lot of that time, in fact for all of that time, somewhere in the world, Christians have been persecuted.  Once in a while, something happens to give us hope, but it never lasts.  And so, even though we believe that Jesus did come, and even though we believe Jesus will come again, very few of us actually expect to see it happen in our lifetime.  We believe, in theory, but too many times, that belief does not affect our lives in any meaningful way.

And so, we doubt.  And we worry.  And we get scared of our enemies, whether those enemies are physical enemies like King Ahaz had or are enemies like illness or debt or loneliness or broken relationships or all the other things that affect us in life.

And God comes to us, just like Isaiah came to Ahaz.  And God tells us not to worry about it.  It'll be okay.  We just need to stand firm in our faith.  God will defend us.  God will defeat our enemies.   All we need to do is trust God.  All we need to do is surrender our will to God's will.

God gave Ahaz a sign.  That sign was a promise.  Eventually, that promise was kept.  It took a long time, but eventually, the virgin did conceive and give birth to a son, and the son was Immanuel, God with us.

God will keep God's promises to us, too.  It may take a while, but eventually, it will happen.  The question is, do we believe that?  Do we believe it enough to let it truly affect our lives?  In other words, do we believe it enough to do what King Ahaz could not do?  Do we believe it enough to trust God and surrender our will to God's will?

On this first Sunday of Advent, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, those are questions we need to answer.