Advent 1 - Isaiah 64:1-9

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9 This past March the cities and towns on the eastern coastline of Japan were wiped out as a 30 foot wall of war tore across the coast and dismantled entire towns, reducing them instantly from thriving communities to piles of rubble. Peoples’ entire lives were undone in an instant. A relentless wall of water broke apart homes and businesses, carried away livelihoods and reduced a lifetime of effort and planning and work to nothing. One woman was in the stairwell of her apartment building when suddenly it started to fill with water. She rushed up the stairs to the roof and as the water completely engulfed the building and she was able to climb up onto a raised platform and hold on for dear life so that she was spared from being washed out to sea. Likewise a man was driving along in his car that was suddenly picked up and carried away by the surge. He was able to climb out his window and onto the roof of his car as it floated along. His car was on its way out to sea but passed beneath an overpass where he then was able to jump to safety before his car floated out to the ocean. Out of hundreds of thousands who died, these two survived. A man driving along in his car… Where do you suppose he was going on that day in his car? To work? To the Doctor? To the bank to take out a loan? Perhaps he was on his way to do something he thought was going to change his life. How do you suppose that day undid those plans and changed the direction of his entire world. Or that woman. What do you suppose she had on her agenda for that day? How do you suppose her agenda has changed since that day? The projects she was hoping to complete have all washed away and her current project involves simply starting over. And they were the lucky ones. Isn’t it strange how important we think our lives and our plans to be? Isn’t it ironic how we consider ourselves to have the power and the ability to manipulate and control the direction of our lives? Yet something as small as the shifting of some dirt in the ocean can have a dramatic impact on our small little lives in our small little corner of a small little world hung in space in a vast universe. Our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah: Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence – as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil – to make your name known to the adversaries and that the nations might tremble at your presence! The presence of the Lord is to the mountains and the oceans as a fire is to a pot of water. He causes the world to shake and to tremble like tectonic plates that cause (what appear to us) as massive shifts in the earth and create waves and phenomenon that we cannot control, that we cannot stop, that we can only hope to withstand. We can barely comprehend the power of the ocean yet we think we can comprehend the power of God. There is none like him. There is no power that can define him, let alone tame him and control him. But we think we do. We think we have. “The Lord has blessed me because I have deserved it. Because he couldn’t do anything else. He had to acknowledge my goodness and skill and cleverness with the blessings I have received. What a good job I have done.” In our pride we minimize and reduce God, we shrink him down to a size we can fit in our pocket and take along with us like a rabbit’s foot or good luck charm. How proud we can be of our plans and our schemes. Yet in a moment God can undo even the best laid plans of men. Tremble Oh nations. Tremble before the Lord, see how things more powerful and longer-established than you tremble at his presence and bow before him. Empty yourself, humble yourself, prostrate yourself before the Lord. Acknowledge your lowliness in his presence and pray that he does not deal with you as you deserve. Pray not that he spare your plans and your schemes, not even that he spare your life. Pray that he spare your soul. Behold you were angry and we sinned, in our sins we have been a long time and shall we be saved? We have become as one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like an polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind (or perhaps like a 30 foot wave) take us away. When we are puffed up and prideful, when we are “entitled” and “too good for words” the Lord has no use for us. We are our own gods; self-righteous and self-made. It is when we are wholly undone that the Lord can use us. It is when we are fully aware of our guilt and our sin and when we are fully aware of God’s power and might, it is when we are completely poured out and empty that He can fill us full and make use of us. It is when we have been softened and malleable that the Lord can make something out of us. But now O Lord you are our Father; we are the clay, you are our potter; we are the work of your hand. Be not so terribly anger O Lord and remember not our iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. What goes beyond hope or expectation is that God our God, the true God, the great and exalted God who is above all gods and above all names, who is the Lord Enthroned in Heavenly splendor, who tears open the heavens and makes the earth tremble, who is the Lord of armies and who turns the hearts of kings and dignitaries like a child playing with a toy, that this God hears and acknowledges our prayers. Paganism, false worship of false gods, offers only a false hope, but these gods who are less than and lowly, gods only of the sun or the rain or the sea or the seasons, these gods are capricious and cold. They are far below in the scope of their power and their authority. And in terms of their character, they are more like people than gods. They are callous and aloof. They don’t care for men, they don’t care for your life, they don’t care for your happiness or your well-being. Likewise with your gods – your materialistic gods, your money, your power, your wealth, your youth, your independence, your intelligence and ingenuity. These are gods that cannot save you. On the day of calamity, let alone on the day of wrath. They can’t save you when the tsunami hits so how are they going to save when the Lord comes to judge the living and the dead! But the true God, the real god, the God who speaks his word over the wind and the waves so that they obey. The god who speaks and light and land and life all spring into being, this God hears. This God listens. And this God cares. From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. Can it be any better? Can there be any more important truth. There is a god. And this God is not just a small god, not just a helper on the occasion of small life events. He isn’t just around to help you find a job or a spouse or a home or a rainstorm in the middle of a drought. He guides cosmic forces of time and space. He holds all the world and the cosmos on a string. And this God knows you. He knows your name. He has solved the mysteries of the universe, the things that are unsearchable to human wisdom and he knows every detail of your life. Every fear you have hidden in your heart. Every cry that you muffle before it reaches your lips. Every worry. He knows them all. And before a prayer has formed in your heart and a word has passed to your lips he has already determined what to do about it. Before you even know you have an issue to be concerned about he has it solved and has moved on to the next thing. But what is better and the truth that is even greater and more wonderful is realized when we remember that we have offended this God. This almighty and all powerful God has been offended by us. The things we have done, the attitudes that we have held in our hearts, we have set ourselves against him and worked our plans contrary to his. He has had every right and every opportunity to destroy us, yet he has not! He has been merciful. He has seen us inside and out and he has seen our sin. It has caused him injury and grief and even anger, but he hasn’t responded according to His anger; instead he has restrained his judgment he has permitted us to go on in our sin. And what is even more remarkable… our sin results in suffering. When we disobey God’s law there are consequences. Immediate results of bad decisions. Yet God sees us suffering in the misery of our own making, afflicted by our own error and he has compassion for us. We have gotten only what we have deserved, yet he is distressed for us. He is in anguish because of our injury. He is in agony because of our pain. And so he has come to help. That is simply unbelievable, inexpressible and beyond words. The Lord God, the God of gods and the Light of light, has been justifiably angered and injured by our sin; yet he has not punished us for that sin, instead he has be felt sorrow for our plight. And in his sorrow he has set about constructing our salvation. And if our sin has caused him pain and injury, our salvation has caused him double. Our salvation has meant satisfaction – justice and righteous anger and judgment had to be satisfied. Payment had to be made for sin. No one is righteous, not even one. Even our righteous deeds are as a polluted garment. And he paid for every one. Every last sin. Every last offense. Every last wicked word and self-interested thought. Ever last bit of pride and arrogance and every last instance of that I-don’t-need-you attitude that we have passed off against the God who made us and gives us all that we have and all that we are. He has forgiven us completely, washed us clean from the inside out. Dipped us in his blood so that we are completely restored and new. The way of the world can seem so reckless and untamed and random; but God gives it purpose. God gives you purpose. He has bent his will toward your specific situation; to help you, to restore you, to win forgiveness for you and to earn salvation for you, and now he has made you his own. He watches you, every step of the way and guards and protects your every move. Random people in random corners of the world meet with random situations and random circumstances, yet the Lord controls each one. None is as important as it seems to us at the time, yet likewise not one is as inconsequential as we might assume. The Lord gives us purpose and the Lord gives us meaning and the Lord gives us importance. We are His people, involved in His mission, doing His Work because he has called us and made us His own. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.