Isaiah 11:1-5 & Luke 2:25-32 - The Dear Christ Enters In

Well, while we regularly study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, you know, we've kind of shifted during Advent, and today we're going to take a really brief look at a couple of short passages, one from Isaiah, one from Luke, and we will get you on your way so you can get some more wrapping done or bake some cookies or just have a little joy, and then hopefully come back tonight for our Christmas Eve candlelight service, which is just going to be awesome.

4 and 5:30, as always.

Encourage you to get here early because it'll be pretty, pretty nutty, but we're so excited about it.

If you'd like a paper copy of the Bible to follow along with, we've got some here.

Jeremy's walking around.

Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you, Christy.

Hold up your hand and someone will get you a copy.

And as always, if you want to hop on our Wi-Fi, there's the information and the password you can follow on your device, and then you can download the QR code and get notes and quotes.

And if this is your first time here, if you're visiting family for the holidays, boy, we are thrilled that you're joining us today to worship and to just get a glimpse of the truth, the true meaning of Christmas.

We're glad you're here.

We want nothing from you and everything for you.

Before we dive in and start reading our passage, I'd like to read this J.I.

Packer quote.

And I've got to say, boy, if the account of the incarnation was a book, this would be the most perfect preface.

So J.I.

Packer says, yes, God became man, the divine son became a Jew.

The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.

The babyhood of the Son of God was a reality.

The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets.

Nothing, nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this is this truth of the incarnation.

And friends, I know we've we've been on this theme for four weeks now, but can we just stop and marvel again at what an amazing account this is?

That the creator of the universe, in order to save us, would unzip the veil and step into physical reality, become one of us.

And why would he do this?

Because he was determined to set things right.

He was determined not to let sin have the last word, and he was determined to pull us up out of that miry pit of quicksand that we had run into of our own free will.

This is why he came, no matter what the cost.

I just love that.

Let's pray, church, and then we'll read our passages.

Show us your ways, O Lord.

Teach us your paths, guide us in your truth, and teach us, for you are God our Savior, and our hope is in you all this day long.

Amen.

Alrighty, so if you'll turn with me to Isaiah chapter 11, we're just going to read the first five verses.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

Here's verse one.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

Well, remember, remember that Isaiah was written around 740 BC, about 20 years before Israel was carried into exile by the Assyrians.

And this first verse, man, this gives us a picture of the utter devastation that is on its way to Israel.

It's like a stand of trees that is clear-cut, and there's just stumps and roots remaining.

Apparently, there's nothing physically left here of David's line.

And yet we know that there is something that remains.

This righteous branch, which is the Messiah, is going to grow out of the ruins here.

This is the greater David, the greater Solomon, as Pastor Jim says, the king that we've always really wanted and really needed.

Let's go on to verse 2 and verse 3.

And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight, his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

Look at how active the Holy Spirit is here in the Old Testament.

Isaiah is telling us that the coming Messiah is going to be full of the Spirit of the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit.

And that the last little bit that I read, his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

We know that this is an accurate picture of Jesus' character and personality while he walked the earth in human form.

He was ever and only seeking to do the will of the Father.

He was walking in unbroken fellowship and communion with the Father all the way up until the cross, where that fellowship was broken as Jesus bore the punishment for our sin and our brokenness.

The Holy Spirit, Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit.

Well, let's continue on with verses four and five.

So the the I'll start at the back half of verse three.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

Wait a minute, you might be saying, What's all this about?

Judgment and striking the earth.

What part of the Advent story is that?

Right?

Well, in a sense, man, it is truly the best part of the story because Jesus comes not only to rescue us, but to make things right.

And that is what judgment and justice is all about.

He comes not only to restore us, to rescue us, but to make things right, to right all that is wrong with the world.

And I would suggest whether you're Baptist or Buddhist or atheist, we all can see that things are not as they ought to be, and they need fixing.

Right?

No matter who you vote for, no matter what you think about politics and policy, we can all tell that that things are broken and need fixing.

Well, in order to trust someone to judge fairly, right, we have to trust that they're fair, that they're impartial, that they're unable to be swayed or corrupted.

And Fleming Rutledge addresses this in her book on Advent.

This isn't a slide, Tim.

She just points out that the word in both Hebrew and Greek, both Old and New Testament, the word for justice, judgment, and for righteousness, they're basically the same word, and they can be referred to as a noun and a verb.

So therefore, all references to justice and judgment in the Bible, they need to be understood in the context of God's righteousness, right?

He is not only righteous as a noun, he is also seeking righteousness.

He's seeking to make things right.

Well, how does this how does this holy God respond to us?

And what does that have to do with Christmas?

And I love this quote from Tim Keller in his book Hidden Christmas.

He says, okay, a God who was only holy would not have come down to us in Jesus Christ.

He would have just demanded that we pull ourselves together, that we be moral and holy enough to merit a relationship with him.

Good luck, kid, you're on your own.

Right?

But then on the flip side, a deity that was an all-accepting God of love, he would not have needed to come to earth either, because this God of the modern imagination would have just overlooked sin and evil and embraced us.

Neither the God of moralism nor the God of relativism would have bothered with Christmas.

And as we often say, I love how the Bible tells it like it is.

Doesn't sugarcoat anything, but it also tells us how the problem's going to be taken care of.

Jesus is coming to make things right.

Okay, well, let's fast forward some 700 years from Isaiah.

Israel has been battered and bruised, and there has been apparent silence from God and the prophets for over 400 years.

Not a word.

And so Israel has been groaning under the weight of oppression of foreign power after foreign power after foreign power, and they are looking, groaning, crying out for the Lord's Messiah.

You get this sense that they are saying, God, are you even there?

God, do you care?

Which, frankly, a lot of times that's that's our feeling too, right?

When things are going desperately wrong, God, are you are you even there?

Do you even care?

So turn with me to the right, turn to the right, um, to Luke, to the to the book of Luke, chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

We're gonna start with verse 25, and this section is often called the Song of Simeon.

And I think another title for this passage could be The Extraordinary Ordinary.

One of the most extraordinary things about the incarnation is how God has chosen humble and ordinary, everyday ways to accomplish this grand plan of rescue and redemption.

So let's look and read verse 25.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him.

We don't know much at all about Simeon.

He's just ordinary, he's just a dude.

But we are told that he was righteous and devout.

He's waiting for the consolation, the rescue, the healing, the redemption of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him.

You know, look, 700 years later, here's the Holy Spirit showing up again in the life of a very ordinary man in Jerusalem.

And I'd like to suggest that we know our salvation does not rest in our works or our performance.

It only rests in Jesus alone.

But there is something to be said for living a life of devotion and righteousness.

Living a life that makes space for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.

Can I get a Christmas Eve?

Amen.

Well, let's continue with verse 26.

So it had been revealed to him to simulate by the Holy Spirit.

Hello, Holy Spirit, again, that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God.

So here he is going about his extraordinary ordinary day.

Simeon is led by the Spirit to the temple where he just happens to meet up with Mary and Joseph and Jesus, who are also going about their very own extraordinary, ordinary day.

They're just bringing Jesus to the temple to do for him according to the custom of the law.

And look what happens.

The Holy Spirit reveals to Simeon who this baby is.

That they all meet, they all connect, and the Holy Spirit is there amongst all of them.

And let's read the last four verses of this.

So Simeon takes Jesus up in his arms, he blessed God and said, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel.

Wow.

My eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.

Just love that.

Not just some select few, but all peoples.

And that's such a good reminder that this free gift of God, this salvation through Jesus, it is meant for all peoples, including your nosy neighbor, including your irritating Aunt Betty.

Fictitious Aunt Betty, by the way.

Well, these two these two passages, some 700 years apart, they're connected by the Holy Spirit, which is found in the Bible from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.

I've got three short thoughts on these two little passages, and I'd like to share them.

And the first is kind of what I was just talking about with the Holy Spirit.

God is weaving a tapestry throughout redemption history.

We see specifically here with the Holy Spirit, gosh, we see the Holy Spirit present at the very beginning, Genesis chapter 1, verse 2.

Genesis 1:2

The Spirit was brooding over the waters as God begins the creation act.

And we see him, fast-forwarding to what we read in Isaiah 11 today, we see the Spirit present there foretelling how Jesus, the Messiah, would himself be filled with the Holy Spirit.

He was present when the angel told Mary that she would carry God's child.

He was present here with Simeon.

And then we'll see him descend on Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism.

Each one of us is a thread in this tapestry, too.

So if you if you zoom out, you see just this magnificent tapestry that God is creating.

It's kind of like seeing pictures of the earth from outer space, right?

But then as you zoom in, you begin to see these pictures of individual threads and individual pictures and stories that each make up a part of this grand tapestry.

And I'd like to suggest because of our brokenness, those individual threads are severed and frayed and not connected to one another.

And the amazing thing is, Jesus came for each and every one of those individual threads in that tapestry to find those loose and frayed ends, to weave and knot them back together, and then continue weaving them into a story.

That's the magnificent story of the incarnation.

Jesus coming to grab our loose threads, bind and weave and connect them back together.

Paul Tripp says it like this in his Advent devotional book, Come Let Us Adore Him.

This story is so miraculous in every way that it could have only come out of the mind of God in eternity before the foundation of the earth were laid down by his mighty hand.

This story is itself an argument for the existence of God and it is a portrait of his holy character.

Don't you love that?

Psalm 136 says the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever, which launches us into our second point, which is that God never gives up on us.

This amazing, steadfast, tenacious love of the Lord never gives up on us.

Thinking back to that Isaiah, the verse one about the stump and the root, out at our farm, I'm sure a lot of you do, we have these locust trees that are native trees, and boy, they are prolific.

In the summer, if you don't, if I don't mow the lawn for a week and a half, I have these little tiny seedlings sprouting and growing up.

Well, under the very bottom steps of our deck, several years ago, some of those little seed pods blew underneath there, and then next summer we start seeing these shoots of this locust tree grow up through the through the the step boards, the the treads of our deck.

And so I keep lopping those things off at the root, and it kept coming back.

And one year it was frankly so bad, and we were so busy, and I didn't lop them off.

They got so big they started pushing the deck board up, so finally I just had to rip the deck board up and dig down and dig the root out.

But that that tenacious, tenacious life of that tree reminds me of the tenacious love of God that will not let us go.

And it reminds me of that root, that stump in verse 1 of chapter 11 of Isaiah, where God says, I know it looks like all is lost, but trust me, there is a little tiny branch growing that may seem like the smallest, most ordinary human child ever, and this is going to be the Savior of the world.

God not only looks for us in our brokenness, he also looks for us in our hiding place.

As I was thinking about this idea of God's tenacious love, I was thinking back to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

You know, right after Adam and Eve take of the fruit from the serpent, they realize they've sinned.

Do they respond by running to God and saying, forgive us, we messed up.

No, they don't do that.

Instead, they hide from God.

As if you can really hide from God, but that's their response.

The Bible constantly compares us to sheep, which frankly is not a very flattering comparison because sheep are dumb.

But we're compared to sheep, and Jesus is the good shepherd.

And the beauty of Jesus, he comes looking for us when we're lost, but not only when we're lost, he comes looking for us when we are running away from him.

He comes looking for us when we're hiding from him.

Malcolm Guide in his book, David's Crown, says this this isn't a slide, this is not a slide either, Tim.

I trace once more the story of his steadfast love.

He sought me even when I turned my face away from him, descended from above, and found me in my hiding place.

It's just amazing to me that God runs after us even when we're running from him when we don't want anything to do with him, even when we're hiding from him.

He runs towards us, steps into creation, runs towards us when we least deserve it, and when we're in fact still running from him.

In his book, Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortland says it like this the cumulative testimony of the four gospels is that when Jesus sees the fallenness of the world all about him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it.

That's just outstanding, isn't it?

And if the actions of Jesus are reflective of who he most deeply is, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is the very fallenness which he came to undo that is most irresistibly attractive to him.

It's just an unbelievable bit of good news that in our very worst, Jesus runs towards us and not away from us.

We cannot push him away by our actions, only by our will.

As Miss Jamie teaches us, our kids, about baptism, she talks about the idea that sin and brokenness is both global and personal.

Right?

She teaches our kids that sin is out there, but it's also in here, and so it needs to be dealt with in here as well as out there.

The beauty of the Gospels is that very thing that redemption is both global and personal.

John 3, 16 tells us that for God so loved the world global that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

So salvation is global, right?

But it's also personal.

God so loved you that he gave his only son.

And my apologies to those of us here who are introverts, but I'd like to ask if you would turn to your neighbor and say that very thing.

Turn to your neighbor and say, God so loved you that he gave his only son.

God so loved you.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Says the extrovert.

Lastly, okay, I think that these passages and advent point to the fact that the God who is with us is the God who is for us.

You know, not only is God with us, which is hard enough to comprehend, because we can't even fully comprehend who God is because we're finite and he is infinite.

But the fact that not only is he with us, he is for us.

No matter what happens in this life, the creator of the universe is actively for you.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans, if God is for us, who can be against us?

Man, that's something I have got to remember Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, in between Sundays, right?

That if God is for us, who can be against us?

And it's a bit of a rhetorical question, is it?

No one.

No one.

And this Advent message, it continues to funnel down.

Look at this statement from Psalm 18.

I just love this.

You rescued me because you delighted in me.

And that is another stunning statement, isn't it?

God doesn't hate you.

God isn't angry with you, He's angry with the sin that does us harm, and He intends to make things right.

God doesn't merely tolerate you, God delights in you.

That is amazing news.

Friends, to relieve us of performance anxiety, there's nothing that we can do to make God love us anymore because he already delights in us.

And by the same token, there's nothing that we can do that will make him love us any less.

Because he loves us and delights in us, he was willing to do whatever it took to rescue us, to right all wrongs.

He was willing to make himself known to us personally.

Tim Keller says this in Hidden Christmas.

You can know the glories of God from the Old Testament, so overwhelming and daunting, but in Jesus Christ they come near.

He becomes graspable, palpable.

He becomes, above all, personal, someone with whom to have a relationship.

Christmas and the incarnation mean that God went to infinite lengths to make himself one whom we can know personally.

That is just amazing, isn't it?

The fact that the creator of the universe is willing to make himself known.

So I'd like to say, friends, if you're here this morning and life is really hard right now, and I know for many of us this time of year, it's just every time this year part of the year comes around, it's just excruciating.

But if you're feeling helpless or hopeless, adrift or battling something, I hope you hear that Jesus has gone to infinite lengths to make himself known to you personally, you are not alone.

He is with you and he is for you.

I'll close with these last two slides.

Here's a verse from, oh little town of Bethlehem.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Boy, that is really good news.

Even today.

And then lastly, this is from the Irish poet Andrew Roycroft, and this is just a snippet of this poem, which is fantastic.

He comes, and all our words, though wide as worlds, and all our songs, though voiced in grandest composition, can never carry the incomparable weight of this one who comes, whose incarnation is our hope, our joy, heaven's confirmation that though light from us was long withheld, God has shattered the sin that was our hell.

He comes, he has come.

Emmanuel.

Amen.

Let's pray, church.

God, this is stunningly good news that you exist, but that you are not just some force in the universe.

You have a name, you are personal.

You are writing this grand story, and you've written us into the story, and we when we just go off the tracks, you have put yourself into our story to come rescue us and make things right.

Lord, I pray that that for each one of us here in all of our various places in life where we are journeying right now, meet us right where we are.

Be with us and before us.

We are so grateful that you chose us and chose this path.

So grateful that you came for us.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.