Scripture:
OT: Isaiah 2:1-5
NT: Matthew 24: 36-44
Isaiah and Matthew introduce our
Advent season with complementary messages. They both fit with our tendency to
follow our children who get so excited waiting for Christmas and all the
festivities that they forget what it is we are waiting for in Advent.
Remember last week we heard that
the Advent season is not really waiting for Christ’s birth; that happened 2000
years ago. We are waiting to celebrate that birth as the act of our salvation,
but Christmas is a sign of our waiting for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of
God marked by the return of the Son of Man.
Christmas is a reminder of Jesus and Christ’s promised return.
Isaiah and the gospel writers go to great extent to
prophesy about the future Son of Man. Isaiah talks of peace on earth but Jesus in Matthew
talks of doom, gloom and woes before the return of the Son of Man. All three
Gospels, Mathew, Mark and Luke give us tes same warning and promise.
The Matthew reading
almost pushes Isaiah’s upbeat prophesy into the background. Jesus talks about
the ominous signs of the time He is coming. His descriptions of wars and
upheaval encourage us to look to events of our current time and wonder, “Do
they signify the immediate coming of the Son of Man?”
Jesus says we will recognize the signs, they will be as
obvious and certain as the coming of Spring when we see leaves on the budding
fig tree. They will be reminders the Son of Man is coming. The fact the events
match up with out own present day experience assures us our wait is not in
vain. But realize they are only signs of the future. I can say with confidence that they are not
signs that the time of the Son of Man is now because Jesus says when that
time comes we will know it with certainty.
It will come with the majesty and glory that Isaiah describes and leave
nothing to wonder about. [Many will not be prepared because they do not heed
the signs. [move these two to wards end]
2. Let’s look at the different
emphasis of the passages from Isaiah and Mathew.
(a) Isaiah is an upbeat promise of
joy to the Hebrew nation in captivity encouraging everyone including gentiles to
wait for the good things, like peace on earth and that Zion will be raised on
the highest mountain: Everything about Isaiah’s prophesy is celebratory:
“…in the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as
the highest of the mountains, and … all the nations shall
stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up
to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob (the Temple);
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” [Isaiah says
that the Temple shall be open for all people. ] For out of Zion shall go forth
instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall
judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
[The Lord will rule over all – SoN]they shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O
house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
If you were in our Sunday School class over the last quarter you would
have read how Ezra and Nehemiah rebuilt the Temple after the Babylonian exile.
What we read of their actions after doing that does not fit with Isaiah’s
vision of the future. Ezra and Nehemiah barred all nations but Israel from the
temple as well as expelled all Jews from the community who married Gentiles. To
a great degree it remains that way in Israel today, a place full of wars and
threats. P eace is perhaps a distant, irrational hope.
If Isaiah’s prophesy is true, and we also see the fruit of Ezra and
Nehemiah’s labor, then we must conclude Ezra and Nehemiah did not consummate
the deliverance of the Jewish people to the rule and promise of God’s steadfast
love for all nations. We are still waiting for that day of the Son of Man and
Kingdom of God that Isaiah predicted.
(b) We
can relate to Matthew’s description of Jesus’ message because it sounds a
little more relevant to our current situation. Jesus says the time of his
coming will be like the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking and
marrying (that is they were carrying out the normal day-to-day activities of
living) amid the chaos and turmoil of the time. No one
realized what was happening until the waters of the flood came upon them.
Who doesn’t pick up and read the
newspaper or listen to the evening news on TV of all sorts of world-wide evil
and catastrophe and not wonder if the time is upon us for Christ’s return? We
can relate to these predictions because we are surrounded by so much
unchristian behavior.
Sometimes I go through the paper
and note all the stories of what I’ll call aberrant and criminal behavior, and stories
of greed and callousness. Every issue tells of people who have let responsible
behavior slip away. I am not going to repeat the gruesome stories I read in
yesterday’s paper except by example to note the article about people who
resorted to violent confrontation motivated by greed and anger while shopping
for gifts on the Thursday and Friday. It seems to me calling it “Black” Friday
turns out to be a good label for the whole mess.
The craziness I read in the
paper does raise a big question. What
should we do when we see or read some thing that seems an injustice, one of
those signs of his coming that Jesus talked about? Our first natural reaction is often confrontation.
We want to castigate, protest and criticize the people who seem to be ignoring
or opposing Christ’s authority.
Confrontation can be good or bad.
It can be used in a constructive way to intervene or encourage someone to
change to a more positive Christ-like behavior that we exhibit ourselves (of
course). It is always a difficult task because it is easy to become destructive
and attack a person for a behavior or belief that we think is bad. That is when
we put a person under judgment, a very dangerous thing to do.
I am convinced we overlook, or
are blind to a universal human reality. Our inclination is to try to change
people, forgetting the only behavior we can confidently address and change is
our own. Paul says, even that is an
“iffy” proposition, even knowing what is the right thing to do does not reduce
the great difficulty in actually doing it rather than the wrong thing.
It is even easier to slide into
the idea that if we attack people who we judge are misbehaving, we can change
them by the weight of the assault. I have in mind the woman street preacher who
has been down at the University ofTennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Is it worth looking at her actions in this light? She
claims she is motivated to bring people closer to God. I have a hard time
deciding if she means it since I have not walked a mile in her shoes. However,
it is easy to observe her and see she seems to be more interested in “calling
out” people she believes are sinners, engaging them in argument and name
calling, and calling attention to herself. I wonder if rather than changing
lives for the better, she is hardening hearts and pushing sinners away from
Christ. Is she trying to change people’s minds by creating fear of a coming
judgment in the Kingdom of God, or is she a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to
drive people away from Christianity, one of the signs Matthew talks about? I
can only say the justice in the answer to that question is between her and God.
Actually it is ALL between God
and us. Can we affirm that we are doing justice to Christ’s presence in the
world? Am I more likely to bring a person into our fellowship or chase them
away by my activity? Is it my fault or theirs?
Such questions underscore how hard it is to address objectionable
behavior and remain true to Christ’s command that we love our neighbor.
Let’s put our street preacher
aside for now. I think the real problem in all these controversies and worry
about signs is they distract us from the core message of Isaiah and Mathew and
the fact that the only mind we can change is our own. We let our concerns about
others lull us to sleep and we miss the most important message in these two
scriptures; they are about waiting.
Waiting is really an interesting
thing. Some times I half-wake up early in the morning before the alarm goes
off, and lie there in bed wondering, “ When is it going off? Should I just get up and start the day?” I
usually go back to sleep. Then the alarm
goes off and now I’m liable to think, I’m still so sleepy, how about hitting
the sleep button and getting about 10 more minutes of sleep on the clock. I
have a private worry that one time I’ll go to that well four or five times and not
wake up, get dressed and out the door to the airport in time and miss an
airplane departure. That’s why I’ll set my alarm and my phone alarm sometimes.
Waiting is why Jesus ends his
talk (Matt 24:42-44) with us about the coming Son of Man saying, “4Keep awake…for you do not know on what day your Lord is
coming…"Therefore you also must be ready, for … an unexpected hour" (that comes like a thief in the night.)
We can confidently say to any
street preacher who claims the end is here that Jesus said not even the Son knows when the Son of Man
will return. He will take one worker in the field and leave the other, and one
woman at work and leave the other.
What we know (the
only thing we know) is we can
see the real signs of the coming of the Son of Man, but the signs do not mark
the time of the Son of Man. When that time happens it will come upon us
suddenly like Noah’s flood, and we will know what is happening by the power and
glory around us.
Should we fear these calamities
or just be prepared for the time when He comes? Jesus saying if you are really watchful, awake
and prepared you have no worry about these signs of turmoil and chaos. He is
with us. The ones who need to worry are those sleepy Christians and renegades
who are not prepared and too preoccupied with the world.
So how do we be prepared? We di
it by continuing to praise God and love our neighbor. When you feel like
tossing an invective, seek out a supportive word of encouragement to bring
people into our fellowship.
If the street preacher asked my
advice I would ask her, “Do you have compassion for the sinners you attack? Are
you trying to attract sinners to God by judging them before their peers or
chasing them from Jesus?”
These questions are for all of us. We all have
to decide if we want to be awake or asleep at the wheel when we face the Son of
Man alone.
Each candle we light at Advent
is a reminder that beyond all the real signs of the coming of the Son of Man,
they are ultimately only reminders that we are waiting on God for the
fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. It is a time to remember the lessons and
sacrifice of Jesus on the way to the cross.
These scriptures really tell us
not to be sleepy Christians who fail to be prepared but rather more closely
model our own life to His waiting for His day to come.
*NOTE:
*NOTE:
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