A Christmas Present - Advent Day 24

The Light of Salvation

Acts 13:47    "For so the Lord has commanded us,' I HAVE PLACED YOU AS A LIGHT FOR THE GENTILES,THAT YOU MAY BRING SALVATION TO THE END OF THE EARTH.'"
 

I Corinthians 4:5    Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

Ephesians 5:8   for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light

Do you remember it?  A vision you once had for making a difference for Christ?  Do you remember it?  Do you remember having a vision for something greater than your own life?  Do you remember ever having a vision of the world as a better place, as a peaceful place, the vision of the world as very good, as God made it to be?

If we are going to recover a vision of a peaceable kingdom, it helps to know how this will be.  It helps to know that the vision of a peaceable kingdom is not just wishful thinking but the result of something God will do to overcome the distrust and hostilities that divide us.  It is a faith in Jesus.  Can we see it?  Can we see a world at peace because our love and respect for Jesus is greater than the hostilities that divide us?

The day is coming when God will act in this world as He did in sending Jesus.  So it becomes very important, it becomes vital to our recognizing the work of the Lord, that right now we walk in the light of the Lord.  Just do it. Walking in the light means we let Christ shed the light of His vision for peace on earth to us, and we share it.  Every time we deliver food boxes to the elderly or Meals on Wheels we are not eliminating world hunger, but we are walking in the light of the peace Christ wants to give.  Every time we speak a word of love instead of hate, every time we give thanks instead of complain, we are walking in the light of the Lord.  So it becomes very important, it becomes vital to our recognizing the work of the Lord, that right now we walk in the light of the Lord.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 23

A Real Joy

Isaiah 12:2-6     ²Surely God is my salvation;  I will trust and not be afraid.  The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation."  ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  ⁴In that day you will say:  "Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.  ⁵Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.  ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you."

Zephaniah 3:14-20      ¹⁴Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel!  Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem!  ¹⁵The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy.  The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm.  ¹⁶On that day they will say to Jerusalem, "Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp.  ¹⁷The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."  ¹⁸"The sorrows for the appointed feasts I will remove from you; they are a burden and a reproach to you.  ¹⁹At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you; I will rescue the lame and gather those who have been scattered.  I will give them praise and honor in every land where they were put to shame.  ²⁰At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.  I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes," says the LORD.

Most of us need a good dose of jubilation and joy during the Christmas season, do we not?  But if we are going to have joy, we also need to have the real thing.  And it is to real joy that Zephaniah calls us.  The Lord God is in our midst, a warrior who gives victory.  We like to hear the positive, up-beat word joy in a world where pessimism often seems to be the order of the day, but certainly we do not want to be a part of any empty headed joy that has no substance to it.  And that is not the kind of joy in which Zephaniah invites us to participate.  The joy that Zephaniah and Christmas proclaim is this:  God is in our midst.

And remember how God came into our midst.  He came as a vulnerable baby, amid the sounds and the smells of a stable, surrounded by the cold damp walls of a cave.  He was given birth by a couple ordered by the government to travel 80 miles to another town so they could sign up to pay higher taxes.  Jesus was born into a people where the wish for God in our midst was high and the hope was low.  Christmas reminds us that God is in our midst in the hard, cold reality of our days as much as He is in our midst in the warm sunny days.  Christmas is the great good news that God has His heart set on our humanity in all its vitality and vulnerability, with its joys and its pains, in the routine and the unusual days, in its triumphs and its tragedies, in our nobleness and our callousness. 

Christmas came to a remote little town, in a darkened corner of the village to say that there is no corner of experience so bleak that it is immune to joy.  Christmas claims that there is no heart so hidden that it cannot be reached.  Christmas holds out the hope that there is no moment so dark that it can extinguish the light of God’s truth and love.  The real joy of Christmas is discovery of God in our midst, in knowing that there is a rightness at the essence of life, and that rightness is the person we call Jesus.

How do we find the joy that is promised in the season, that is tasted in the giving and receiving of gifts, that is sampled in the glow we often feel when Christmas is said and done?  The real, lasting joy of Christmas comes to those who have had a day that has shaken them out of their superficial experience of joy.  However that day comes, it must come to burn away the callous crust that is a natural by-product of our busy lives.  That day must come to sensitize the heart that grows naturally dull by default. 

I have never paid much attention to the Biblical command to rejoice.  Have you?  “Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart.”  I believe that somewhere in our soul we all have a “joy muscle” and it needs to be exercised.  The joy muscle has to be flexed against the resistance of our discouragement and our pessimism.  It has to be pushed against the coldness and callousness of our hearts.  It has to be stretched when the cynicism of our world says, “There is nothing in this world to be joyous about.”   But still we hear the small voice of an obscure prophet saying, “sing aloud, shout for joy, rejoice and exalt with all your heart.”  Who are you going to listen to?

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 22

In a Perfect World                                                   

Isaiah 2:1-5       ¹This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:  ²In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.  ³Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths."  The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  ⁴He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.  They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.  ⁵Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.

Jesus was born to give us hope.  Jesus is evidence that at any moment God is liable to burst again into our world and into our life.  Jesus gives us a sense of hope that waits on God, wondering what God will do next.

Isaiah’s vision of Jerusalem is vivid.  Jerusalem is in ruins, a pile of smoke and rubble, and the people are devastated.  They feel that God has betrayed them, and they lose all hope.  And into this devastation comes the word:  “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit” (Isaiah 11:1).  In the midst of rubble, amidst everything dead, a small green branch grows out of the seemingly dead base.

The hope that came from that stump was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Hope arose form the root of Jesse and his son David.  Hope was heard with a baby’s low cry.  Nothing big, a sign that could easily be ignored.  But in the dead of darkness, in the spiritual devastation of Israel, a root sprang forth and the life of that root had the power of God to bring peace to the world and to each person in it.

When it seemed to everyone that Jesus was taking Israel by storm, suddenly He was cut down, arrested, hung on a Cross to die, and the cry for the Cross was not the baby’s low cry but the anguished cry of a dying man.  When the disciples saw Jesus slowly dying on the Cross they lost all reason to hope.  The Cross destroyed their hope that this was the one who would deliver Israel from the hands of Rome. 

The Cross seemed to destroy everything the disciples had hoped for in Jesus, and yet that cry from the Cross was also a “shoot coming from the stump of Jesse.”

Hope that depends on the ups and downs of our life is not hope at all.  It is wishful thinking that comes from assuming that we are the center of the universe, and life according to the way it happens to us is all that really counts.

The hope that Jesus gives is different from that.  When we are living in comfortable circumstances, surrounded by security, we sometimes shut out real hope.  The hope that comes to us from Jesus usually comes to us only after all false hopes have been destroyed.  Hope that comes to us as a gift from God most often comes when our life is mired in soil of hopelessness where all we can feel and all we can see says to us, “It is hopeless.”  That is when God says to us, “Take off your shoes for you are on holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).

And God gives us evidence, small signs like a branch growing out of a seemingly dead tree trunk, like a baby’s low cry.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 21

Who Would Have Dreamed                                   

Luke 1:67-79      ⁶⁷His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:  ⁶⁸"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people.  ⁶⁹He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ⁷⁰(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),  ⁷¹salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— ⁷²to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,  ⁷³the oath he swore to our father Abraham:  ⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.  ⁷⁶And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, ⁷⁷to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, ⁷⁸because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven ⁷⁹to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace."

 

An elderly priest named Zechariah had a dream, a vision, in the Temple.  He was told that he and his wife, Elizabeth, would give birth to one who would help Israel’s dream about the good life God would give them come true.  Zechariah’s voice was frozen in disbelief and he could not speak until after his wife gave birth to a boy, whom they named John, which means gift from God.

When the boy was born the frozen voice of Zechariah melted into gratitude and praise to God. The dream was coming true.  God was redeeming His people.  To redeem means to “buy back.”  Among the Gentiles redemption was the way a slave bought back freedom.  Among the Jews redemption had to do with the way God had delivered the people from oppression and given them back their freedom.  Now God would redeem His people in a more personal way, in the sending of the Messiah, and John would have a part to play in the dream coming true.  Zechariah would be the parent of one who would go before the Lord to prepare His way.

As we enter this Christmas season, what kind of dreams fill your mind and heart, in the daytime as well as in the night?  Some of us are simply dreaming for Christmas to be over.  Some of us are dreaming of surviving the hassle and stress of this season. 

But do any of us dream of being delivered from some of the current forms of slavery?  The expectation that others have of us?  The demands of life?  Loneliness?  Do we dream of being delivered from these various kinds of slavery to a life of holiness and righteousness before God…and to have God guide us in the way of peace?  This is a life lived in harmony with God’s will for us and in fulfillment of God’s plan for us.

Can you feel the heartbeat of Zechariah’s praise?  Blessed be the God of Israel for He has visited and redeemed His people. Do we still dream of God’s fulfillment for our life or have we settled for being happy slaves?  Christmas is the announcement of a dream come true, and Christmas is a promise that you and I can make a difference.  God does not deliver Israel by magic or through some mighty act disconnected from the people.  He delivers through the co-operation of people like Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, you and me. 

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 20

Jesus Christ is Coming to Town

Malachi 2:17-3:4     ¹⁷You have wearied the LORD with your words.  "How have we wearied him?" you ask.  By saying, "All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them" or "Where is the God of justice?"  ¹"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.  Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty.  ²But who can endure the day of his coming?  Who can stand when he appears?  For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap.  ³He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.  Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, ⁴and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

Do you enjoy the things you do to prepare for Christmas?  Whether we enjoy it or not most of us realize that this time of preparation is important - important not only so we can enjoy Christmas day, but also important for enjoying the whole Christmas season.  In the midst of the preparing that we are doing, I hope we can see that it is also important to remember that God is doing some preparing work as well.  As we prepare for Christmas, how well prepared are we to see and experience the work God is doing.  Perhaps we can be as prepared for the coming of Jesus as we are for the coming of the Christmas season.

It was rush hour in Jerusalem, 450 B.C.  It seemed like the entire nation of Israel had crammed in to the walled city.  Now, the crowd pushed, squeezed and jostled one another trying to get home before dark.  Shop owners were closing the flaps of their tents.  A group of women stood by a well getting the evening news.  The homeless began to seek some out of the way spot where they could spend the night.

Things were not good in Israel.  The people had returned from Babylon about a hundred years earlier. They had come back with high hopes and great expectations.  They had learned their lesson.  They rebuilt the wall around the city, built a new Temple, pulled together and built new homes for the people, and then waited for God to bring them prosperity.  It did not happen.  The economy was in shambles.  A few prospered, but most did not, and the few who had prospered made sure they would stay that way.  Families were falling apart.  Worship was lethargic and routine, and the Priests were more concerned about the size of the offerings than about the needs of the people.

And the people complained, “Where is God…Surely I thought God would…,”    And Malachi spoke: “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver...”  Get ready, be alert, be prepared.  God is coming to burn the dross out of your heart and to wash the linen of your lives completely clean.

Malachi never spoke of repenting.  He said, “God is coming to clean up the mess you have made of Israel and of your lives.  You can welcome it or you can run from it.  But God will do it.”  You have heard the descriptions of our current world.  Some of it sounds like it came directly out of Malachi: Families falling apart, the historical churches on the decline.   “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me.”  God will act.  God will act to clean up the mess that our world is in.  God will clean up the mess our life is in. God began keeping His promise when He sent a small baby to be born as a sign of His immeasurable grace. 

Do you believe that?  Do you expect that?  

From a sermon by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 19

Emmanuel

Isaiah 7:10-16       ¹⁰Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹"Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights."  ¹²But Ahaz said, "I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test."  ¹³Then Isaiah said, "Hear now, you house of David!  Is it not enough to try the patience of men?  Will you try the patience of my God also?  ¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you  a sign:  The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.  ¹⁵He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.  ¹⁶But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.

Matthew 1:18-25      ¹⁸This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about:  His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.  ¹⁹Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.  ²⁰But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  ²¹She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."  ²²All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  ²³"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”^]—which means, "God with us."  ²⁴When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  ²⁵But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.  And he gave him the name Jesus.

Isaiah spoke to Ahaz, the king of Judah, for a particular reason and because of a particular problem that Ahaz was facing.  Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Ephraim were threatening to attack him unless Ahaz agreed to join with them in trying to defeat the super power of the world, Assyria.  King Ahaz already had a plan to deal with the threat.  He was going to appeal to Assyria for help against Syria and Ephraim.  Isaiah has a different plan.  A plan rooted in trust in God; a plan of willing to be obedient to whatever God commanded.  This trust and this obedience was the key to Judah’s safety.  Isaiah had God’s word on it.  So he takes that word to Ahaz.  He lays it on the line.  “Ask a sign of the Lord your God.  Ask God to prove to you whether you can trust Him or not.  God is reliable.  And He will prove it on your terms.  Whether it is a sign from Sheol or a sign from Heaven, God will give it to you.”  But Ahaz rejects that offer.  He said, “I will not ask.  I will not put God to the test.”  Ahaz rejects the offer on religious grounds as if to say “I will not bother God with something like this.”  Ahaz’s refusal sounds like faith, but he simply gave a religious cover up to his determination to seek the help from Assyria, which he did and for which he paid.

Are we familiar with the mind and heart of Ahaz?  Certainly we know what it is like to be threatened, to be worried and anxious and stressed.  Do we also know how we slip into the disguise of Ahaz?  We are worried and anxious and stressed, and we say things like, “Well, this is really something God cannot help with, I am not going to bother God with this.  I mean, after all, God has given me a mind to think with for myself.”  Do you ever think like that?  It can be a cover up for stubborn self will.  We appear humble when we are being haughty.  We appear sanely religious when we are being rebellious.

The cover up of Ahaz looks unpretentious when it is really a smoke screen for an unwillingness to run the risk of trust, to open up to the call of obedience.  We deeply desire one who will deliver us from our distress and overcome our difficulties, but we dig in our heels to the One who comes to deliver us from our own determination and from our distrust.

How does God get through to someone like Ahaz, to someone who seems humble and religious but is really haughty and rebellious?  “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.  Look, the young woman shall bear a child and name Him Immanuel, which means, God with us.”

Emmanuel is God’s commitment to deliver us.  Emmanuel is God’s sign that He is more committed to us and our well-being than we are to ourselves.  Emmanuel is God’s commitment to us in Jesus, even to us when we have the mind and heart of Ahaz.  The Spirit Emmanuel somehow invades the small world of our heart and mind.  The mystery of Christmas surrounds us with its words and stories, and nativity scenes.  The majesty of Christmas whispers yes to our deepest hopes.  And the steadfast love of God in Christ takes hold of us for dear life, as the sheer grace of it all calls us to trust and obey the realness of Emmanuel, God with us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

A Christmas Present - Advent Day 18

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Isaiah 40     ¹Comfort, comfort my people,  says your God.  ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.  ³A voice of one calling:  "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.  ⁴ Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  ⁵And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."  ⁶A voice says, "Cry out."  And I said, "What shall I cry?"  "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.  ⁷The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them.  Surely the people are grass.   ⁸The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever^{."  9}You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain.  You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, "Here is your God!"  ¹⁰See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him.  See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.  ¹¹He tends his flock like a shepherd:  He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.  

 

II Corinthians 1:3-5      ³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  ⁵For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

When?  When will it ever end?  This pain in my back?  This aching loneliness?  This dull boring job?  Having to learn all this useless information?  When?  When will it end?  Some of us may have been spared the anguish of that question, but I believe most of us have know the agony of “when will it end.”  We know the feelings of the question.  

Isaiah offers the power of comfort.  Comfort does not answer the question of when it will be over.  Comfort has the power to sooth the agony of wondering and even the power to extinguish the need to ask “when will it end.”  The comfort of Isaiah is not the comfort of sympathy.  It is not the effort to speak some soothing word during a difficult time.  This is not the impotent phrase we might say trying to comfort someone.

Comfort, real comfort is something that is given.  Comfort is something that happens.  Real comfort is an event in the soul.  Real comfort is a kind of deliverance before deliverance comes.  Have you known that deliverance before deliverance comes?

Comfort is this inner awakening of the soul that Jesus spoke of when he said to his disciples, “I will give you the comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). Comfort is the inner awakening and power that Paul spoke of to the church at Corinth.  

Comfort is this deliverance before our deliverance.  It is this inner awakening of our soul.  During the rush and busyness of Christmas time a small bit of comfort continues to reach me.  Something happens and I realize “It’s all a gift.  My life, my marriage, my children, my opportunity to serve this church, my abilities.  It is all a gift.”  

Can we receive the gift of comfort?  What will it take to get our attention?  Does it take a megaphone of problems, pains and pressures or do the problems, the pains, and pressures of life tend to drown out the Word of God to you and me?

What will it take to get our attention?  “Cry…a voice says cry.”  Maybe that is it.  Maybe a baby’s cry will get our attention.  A baby’s low cry has the power to shatter the darkness of the soul that believes God cannot or will not do anything about it.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell