"Multiplying Salvation," Isaiah 49 & 59, Sulmane Maigadi

Let me pray for us. We come before you, Heavenly

Father, with your word before us, and we ask that you help us

to see Jesus Christ lifted and glorified.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be

pleasing unto you. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. That's a weaker for 11 AM.

What happened? Good morning, everybody.

OK, All right. For those of you who are new, my

name is Sulemani Megadi. I'm one of the pastors here at

the church. This is the fourth Sunday of

Advent. And the call like that we just

said a few moments ago, we prayed, says that we asked God

to stir up his power and with great might to come among us

because we are sorely hindered by our sins.

We want his bountiful grace and mercy to speedily help us and

deliver us. That prayer assumes that we need

help and it asks God to come among us and to deliver us.

But what exactly does that mean necessarily?

What does it mean that we need to be delivered?

What? What are we being delivered from

our sins? Yes, but what does that mean?

And that's what I want to talk about this morning using the

three passages that we read, the Psalm, the passage in Isaiah,

and the gospel. But we're going to spend most of

our time in Isaiah 15-9 found on page 579 in your Bible.

You can follow along if you wish.

Isaiah 59579. Now, I am a fan of space.

It's one of my favorite things that is not in the world.

I love space. I love its vastness, its

mystery, the sheer scale of space.

I love sci-fi and kind of one of those sci-fi nerds.

I love Star Trek and Star Wars. It's amazing.

I love the physics and the math behind what happens in space.

Fascinated by a collapsing star that becomes a singularity and

has such a huge amount of gravitational pull that even

light cannot escape it. That 1.3 million earths by

volume can fit into our sun. And I cannot conceive of that.

I don't know what that means. And our sun is not even the

biggest sun star in the Galaxy. It's kind of pretty average.

I, I, I love space, I really do. And when I think about that,

when I think about space and how huge things are, the moon, the

stars, the heavens, I understand why the psalmist says, O Lord

our governor, how majestic is your name in all the earth,

Because God's creation is glorious.

He has set His Majesty upon above the heavens, and he's done

all these wonderful things. Yet in his infinite wisdom, when

he looks at the vast universe, it's awesomeness.

He turns to us, you and me, and he says, you, you are my

crowning achievement. You are better than all the

stuff that's happening out there.

Wow. He crowns us with glory and

honor. He entrusts dominion of his work

over to us. That's amazing to me.

And if everything had remained perfect as it was intended to

be, no sin, no problems in the world at all, I would be out in

space night right now with my own Starship command,

gallivanting from one Galaxy to the other.

I would be having fun. I still plan to do that in the

new heavens and the new earth. And if you guys can convince my

wife to join me when that happens, that would be great.

But that's not what happened. Things aren't perfect.

Sin and death entered into the world because of our

disobedience. And the majestic work of God has

not been destroyed. There is still goodness and

beauty and truth, but it's been marred, It's been maimed.

And no one but the Lord Himself fully grasps the reach of sin in

our world and the consequences of sin in our world.

But I want to name at least four ways that this beautiful,

perfect world that God created is now marred and broken.

The first one is the creation itself has been subjected to

futility. That's what Paul says in the

book of Romans. Sin and death have bent creation

out of shape such that it no longer functions the way it's

supposed to without resistance. And we feel that resistance at

every turn. I was at a park one time, not in

DC, but I was at a park one time with my wife who were just

walking through. It was a gorgeous day.

And all of a sudden I started coughing and there was like snot

running down my nose. I felt like I was having a

headache. I was like, what in the world is

going on? The trees were trying to kill

me. We had to hightail it out of

them. When we left the park, I was

fine again. Everything was fine.

It was OK. Now, I don't know if that's the

result of sin, but that was definitely uncomfortable.

It felt like a groaning. The ground produces thorn,

thorns, and thistles. Death is woven into how the

natural order operates right now.

Every beast of the earth is naturally afraid of us, so we

are their enemy and creation. Creation groans in ways that we

can't handle. Earthquakes, storms, diseases,

signs that things are not the way that God wants them to be

yet. But sin and death have also

broken every human being from the inside, each of us.

And this is where Isaiah 59 is particularly helpful.

That passage was written in a different setting, but it names

some things that are very familiar to all of us.

In verse 3, the prophet says, For your hands are defiled with

blood and your fingers with iniquity.

Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.

We are unable on our own to live holy and righteous lives because

we've been cut off from the source of holiness and

righteousness himself, God. And so we are slaves.

The sins, impulses and desires, the things that we are supposed

to do, we don't want to do. And we don't do the things that

we're not supposed to do. Oh, that's the that's what we

love to do. And that inner broken nature

shows up in other ways too. So verses 10 and 11 of Isaiah

59. We grope for the wall like the

blind. We grope like those who have no

eyes. We stumble at noon as in the

twilight, among those in full vigor.

We are like dead men. We all growl like bears, We moan

and moan like doves. We hope for justice, but there

is none for salvation. But it is far from us.

This is the language of despair, of hopelessness, of

meaninglessness. Yes, sin causes outward

rebellion. Oh, but the things in our hearts

that arise as a result of this fracture in our lives, it breeds

fear and insecurity and numbness and exhaustion of all sorts.

And sin has also soured our relationship with one another,

with other human beings. We were made to love one

another, but we live in distrust, and understandably so,

because we constantly hurt each other.

Sin creeps into every corner of our lives and it incarcerates us

in in these prisons of bitterness and unforgiveness and

wrath and dissensions and jealousy and covetousness and

malice and all sorts of wickedness.

We bite and devour one another, which is precisely what the

enemy of our soul wants. And all of this flows from the

4th and deepest effect of sin. We have been separated from God

Himself. Isaiah 59 verse 2 says verse one

Isaiah 59:2

and two say, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it

cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear, but your

iniquities have made a separation between you and your

God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that he

does not hear. We no longer honour God as God.

We do not glorify him or give him thanks.

Instead, we exchange his glory and serve other gods of our own

making. And without God's intervention,

this is the world that we would continue to live in.

A place of endless plans and constant anxiety, of earnest

talk about justice alongside quiet, everyday cruelty.

We try to love our neighbor, yet our hands are still defiled with

iniquity. We speak about truth, yet our

lips learn to twist it. We build systems to uphold

righteousness, then discover how easily it is that we can turn

these systems to serve us instead.

We want to say peace. We want peace, but we don't know

the way of peace. Our education, our influence,

our good intentions, no matter how hard we try, will never heal

the human condition. Every step toward the good bears

the mark of our sin. We are not standing outside the

problem trying to fix it. Humans aren't the solution, we

are the problem. That, my friends, is the state

of the of humanity in the world that we live in.

Isn't that such great news? This is what God wants to save

us from. So Isaiah doesn't leave us

without a solution. In verse 15, the Lord saw it,

and it displeased him that there was no justice.

He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one

to intercede. Not that no one was praying,

there were people who were doing that, but that nobody was doing

it perfectly in holiness. Nobody was righteous enough,

clean enough, holy enough to deal with sin at its source.

So God does it because He's the only one who can.

He steps in, Isaiah continues. Then his own arm brought him

salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.

He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of

salvation. Yeshua, that's the word there on

his head. He put on garments of vengeance

for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.

Them frightened words. God is arming himself for battle

here. So on the one hand, that means

judgement, because justice matters to God.

He will set things right. Righteousness will fool the

earth, and those who refuse to repent will face judgement.

But that's not the whole picture.

God also promises salvation. And so verse 20 he says, and the

Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from

transgression, declares the Lord, there is a Redeemer who is

showing up. Who is this Redeemer?

The book of Isaiah introduces us to someone that he calls the

servant of the Lord. This is somebody that God has

chosen who is obedient, who is faithful, and who brings

salvation through suffering. He bears the iniquities and

transgressions, and of his people, He takes them on himself

and brings them salvation. So Isaiah 59 shows us why the

Servant is needed. Israel's sin problem, our own

sin problem had not been solved. There was king after king after

king, even sons of David who came who could not deal with sin

because they were imperfect. So God declares that there's a

Redeemer coming, and the Redeemer himself speaks in

Isaiah 49. He says, And now the Lord says,

Who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back

to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, For I am

honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my

strength. He says, it is too light a

thing, that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes

of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel.

No, that's not enough. It's too little.

No, I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation

may reach to the end of the earth.

And therein lies the mysterious, wondrous truth of Christmas.

The solution God gives to the sin of the world is not a

sequence of reforms or a moral checklist or a spiritual

technique or a list of rules that if we just follow hard

enough, we'll make everything right.

The solution is a person, a Redeemer, a judge, a savior, a

king, Jesus Christ, God from God, light from light, true God

from true God. Amen.

That's the solution to the problem, and it should help us

breathe very easily. It should make us excited that

that's the solution. And I imagine that when the

people of Israel first heard the promise that Isaiah speaks about

in these chapters, they were probably ecstatic with joy, yes,

eagerly awaiting the arrival of this Yeshua.

Maybe it'll be this year, next year, next year.

Decades pass, centuries even up to 750 years past.

God's people lived in expectation, longing for their

Deliverer, their Yeshua, their salvation to come.

Then at last, God moves. The waiting ends, but not in the

way that the people expect. Keep in mind, the language of

Isaiah 59 is that God is putting on armor for battle.

But he doesn't come with the trumpet blast.

He doesn't come with an army, not even with the public display

of power. He comes silently, quietly, in

the background. Joseph, a devout and righteous

man. He's betrothed to a woman named

Mary, and she's found to be with child before they get married.

And he's a righteous man, so he doesn't want to cause her shame.

He's going to divorce her quietly.

And then an Angel of the Lord tells him in the dream, Joseph,

son of David, don't do this. The child that is being

conceived in Mary's womb is of the Holy Spirit and you are

going to name him Jesus because he will save his people from

their sins. Jesus, God saves That is Isaiah

59 in the flesh. The solution to what is broken.

I'm saying it saying it again is Jesus and will always be Jesus.

And that healing reaches every, everywhere.

The sin has done its damage, so Jesus clothed himself with

righteousness and salvation, and throughout his life he lived

under righteousness. At his first coming, His

judgement is aimed specifically at sin itself, evil and death.

Of course, This is why Paul can say that he who knew no sin,

Jesus, was made to become sin so that we might become the

righteousness of God. All that I have spoken about,

the brokenness of the world, the wickedness it's suffering, Jesus

takes upon himself. He bears the punishment for it,

destroys its power, and in its place he offers true light.

And when he does this, he condemns sin in his flesh.

The fracture between God and humanity is healed.

Those who are truly joined to Jesus Christ have become new

creatures. The old has gone, the new has

come. Not only that, the fracture

between us. Jesus tears down those walls of

hostility, walls of fear and resentment and history and tribe

and place, class and race and ideology.

And he makes one people out of what was divided before.

He addresses the inner brokenness that we carry inside,

the despair, the fear, the captivity and wickedness in our

hearts. He provides healing and meaning

that will be fulfilled when he finally comes and wipes every

tear away from our eyes and undos.

Death and even creation is not left out.

Paul says that the natural world groans waiting to be set free

and it's hope is bound up in the redemption of the children of

God. One day I will be able to walk

into a park and the trees won't try to kill me.

That's amazing. Jesus is not a partial fix to

sin and evil. He is God's whole

all-encompassing answer to it. I know that almost every sermon

I've preached in the last few months has used examples from

Nigeria. This is the last time this year.

I promise, my country suffers from corruption at every level.

Is anybody here familiar with the with the, with the phrase

419? You are the blessed few.

OK, there's some of you who get it.

You are the blessed few. 419 is taken from our Criminal Code and

it's now globally recognized as shorthand for scams.

If you ever get an e-mail from a Nigerian Prince, don't read it.

Don't even open it. Things have grown so desperate

that a common saying among the everyday person is it to the

leaders. Look, we don't even mind if you

steal. Oh, please, go ahead and steal

the money. Just give us the natural, basic

things. Give us water, give us food,

give us power. That's all we want.

That's it's so bad that it's like, yeah, go ahead and steal,

but just give us the basic necessities, how far we have

sunk in human dignity. Jobs are scarce.

Food is expensive and often hard to find.

Vast numbers of people live in grinding poverty.

And you. Add to that the terrorism in the

north and you and the banditry and kidnapping in the South and

the original killings throughout the country, it's like leaving

your house is an act of faith. It is.

There are multiple fronts for for for practicing your faith,

unsafe roads, harassment by security forces that are meant

to protect you, and of course there's constant threat of

militant attacks, especially in a time like this during the

Christmas holiday season when sectarian violence is very, very

possible. Healthcare weak and you

constantly hear people spending hours, myself as well talking

about what the solution is. We need better systems,

policies, reforms, all good things.

And we always end with, oh, we wish we had people of integrity

and power. And that's right.

And that's true. But the problem in my country

and also here is that not the solution is not wrapped up in

any human being. There is no one who can bear the

weight of this problem except Jesus.

Only Jesus. This last Sunday of Advent

should remind us that Jesus is not one solution among many, nor

is he just part of the solution. He is the solution.

While policies can restrain evil, they cannot heal the

heart. Systems can organize life, but

they cannot make it. New methods can improve

outcomes, but they cannot save. And even Christian ethics,

truth, justice, compassion, they cannot stand on their own.

The moment you sever virtue from Jesus, it slowly becomes

something else, something more sinful.

We see this again and again. You cannot build a Kingdom out

of good things while rejecting the good king of the Kingdom.

Just not possible. And we should breathe a sigh of

relief that we are not the saviors we were never meant to

be, that only Jesus saves. What does that mean for us?

I think the most important thing for all of us is that it means

we must repent. If you have not surrendered your

loyalty completely to King Jesus, then you're still bound

up in your sins. You're still going to continue

groping for meaning, for salvation, for freedom, for

hope. You're going to grope in areas

that will never satisfy or provided.

And Advent says to you, the Redeemer is coming, so turn from

your sins and receive the light of salvation.

But even if you are a believer, you are surrendered to Jesus.

You've embraced his salvation and fully who he is.

You must continue to repent. In fact, for a believer,

repentance must be a daily habit.

It must be a path of life. We must come to Jesus every day

and say, I have sinned against you.

I have murdered with my anger. I've committed adultery with my

eyes, with my heart. I've not kept my promises to you

or to other people. I've sought vengeance for my

enemies rather than love them and let you handle their

justice. I've not given to the needy.

I've not fasted and prayed as you desire of me.

I've not forgiven others as you have forgiven me.

I have been anxious and worried over everything and not trusted

in your goodness to provide. I've not treated others as I

would have them have them treat me.

I've preached, taught, believed false doctrines, and this is my

house on sin rather than the solid word and work of Christ.

I have not loved you with my whole heart, and I have not

loved my neighbors as myself. Friends, this great salvation

means that we must continually repent, and then we must live

like we have repented. God puts on righteousness and

salvation. Jesus does the same thing.

He puts on righteousness and salvation.

And then Paul calls us to do the same thing in Ephesians chapter

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

6. The full armor of God, the

righteousness, the salvation, the belt of truth, the shield,

the faith, the sword of the Spirit, the shoes of the gospel

of peace. With prayer, we carry these

things with us. We bring this armor to bear on

every single daily task, whether it's I'm writing an article, I

am writing an e-mail. Is it submitted to the truth and

righteousness of God? As I'm wrestling with this

decision, does it come from faith or something else?

As I'm entering this particularly difficult

conversation with my family or with my friends, am I coming in

with the gospel of peace or am I coming there to dominate?

As I interact with friends and neighbors, do I raise up faith

just so I can refuse anything that breeds lies of suspicion

and contempt? When sin tries to hinder my walk

with Jesus, am I standing firm with the Word of God and saying

no? Am I using the armor daily to

love God and to love my neighbor as myself?

This is where Advent wants us to be.

We began by praying. Stir up your power, O Lord, with

great might come among us. Jesus is the answer to that

prayer. He has come among us, and in him

and through him his power is stirred up within us.

The Lord who holds galaxies together, who set stars in their

courses, and measures the universe without any strain at

all, He does not remain distant. He comes.

He enters into the smallness of our world, the depth of our sin.

He takes on flesh, He bears what we cannot, and he redeems us.

Friends, Jesus saves and only Jesus saves.

Let's pray. You have presented us, Father,

with a great salvation in your Son, Jesus Christ.

May we come before you in full repentance daily to surrender to

Him, to receive from His hand the salvation that He promises,

so that you are glorified, and your salvation is extended

throughout all the earth. In the name of the Father, and

of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.