The Glory of the Lord Revealed

Isaiah 40:1-5

It is very easy to over sentimentalize Christmas. And it is because we tend to over sentimentalize Christmas, that elements of today’s service may seem a bit odd, a bit out of place.

Our reading for the lighting of the Advent Wreath came from Mark’s Gospel. Where is the Christmas story in that? The Call to Worship came from Isaiah 53. That’s an Easter passage, why read that at Christmas?

There is a poem in the bulletin that may help to make the connection.

Christmas is Really for the Children
Especially for children
who like animals, stables, stars and
babies wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Then there are the wise men,
kings in fine robes, humble shepherds and
a hint of rich perfume.
Easter is not really for the children
unless accompanied by a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails, a spear and
allegations of body snatching.
It involves politics, God
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop of spring.
Or they’d do better to wait
for a rerun of Christmas
without asking too any questions
about what Jesus did
when he grew up or
whether there’s any connection.
Steve Turner

Christmas and Easter cannot be disconnected. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he was born for a purpose and that was to die in Jerusalem.

We celebrate Communion this morning after this sermon which we would not be doing had not Jesus been born in Bethlehem and died in Jerusalem. I pray that this message will prepare us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper with our heads and hearts.

[Pray]

Isaiah 40
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak 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.

I can’t read these words without hearing the tenor singing in Handel’s Messiah. This is such a beautiful passage, expressing the nurturing side of God’s character. This is not God at Mt. Sinai revealing the law with smoke and fire and the ground shaking. This is not God who is all powerful, all knowing, ever present. This is God speaking as a mother would speak to her child.

There are times when we need a kick in the butt to get our attention and begin doing what is right, but there are many more times when we need to hear these words. Comfort, speaking tenderly, kindness, gentleness.

And so this passage speaks to us, going deep into our hearts like dry soil that eagerly takes in the water that falls on it.

When God acts in history, he does so because of his love for us. When God acts in our lives, he does so because of his deep compassion for us. God loves us, he has compassion on us. In reading these words, you can feel God’s heart breaking for us. His love for us oozes from these lines of Scripture.

When you accept the gift of salvation God offers you, you and God embark on an adventure. You and the Holy Spirit begin the process of transforming your life, leading you toward holiness, righteousness. This process is not always easy, not always pleasant, sometimes painful. In Hebrews we read that God disciplines his children and that when we endure hardship, this is proof of our legitimacy.

When God acts in our life, when God brings revival to a community, when God was born as a man in Bethlehem, it was his deep love for us that led him to act. “Comfort, comfort my people.”

Sometimes we get caught up in the trap of working hard to please God because at the root of our faith, we have a hard time believing God really loves us. In my own life, I have said many times that if I were God, I’d have gotten rid of me a long time ago. I’d have lost patience with me long ago. We want to work hard at our faith so God will see that he was not wrong to offer us his hand and bring us into his kingdom.

To those of us who are caught in this trap, stay with this passage this week.

Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak 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.

Soak in the gentle words of God and be renewed in your spirit.

That’s the first point this morning: underlying all that God does for us and to us, is his deep, deep love.

The first section of Isaiah 40 makes me think of the tenor in Handel’s Messiah. This next section is familiar to us as the Scripture applied to John the Baptist.

3 A 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.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the
LORD has spoken.”

John the Baptist was the voice calling in the desert to prepare the way for the Lord. And his message was not an easy one. When you want to raise up valleys and make mountains and hills low, some hardship is required. We read in Luke 3:

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

John the Baptist was a voice calling to prepare the way for the Lord and in order to do that, pride had to be humbled. Those who put their trust in their power and position had to be brought down. A humble and obedient heart had to be created so the glory of the Lord could be revealed.

In one of the most popular and joyful of Christmas hymns are these words:

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King.
Let ev’ry heart prepare Him room,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and heav’n and nature sing.

Let ev’ry heart prepare him room. A humble and obedient heart is a heart that has prepared Him room. We’ll come back to this but now to the end of the text for this morning.

5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the
LORD has spoken.”

How was the glory of the Lord revealed in the coming of Jesus?

There is, of course, the obvious.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.  12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
That’s pretty spectacular.  When we think of the ways in which the glory of the Lord was revealed in the life of Jesus, isn’t this one of the first things that comes to mind?

What about Gabriel appearing to Mary and telling her she will conceive a child even though she is a virgin? And what about the Magi following a star to Bethlehem so they could worship Jesus? That reveals the glory of the Lord, doesn’t it?

These are spectacular events that cause us as it caused the original participants: Joseph and Mary, the shepherds, the wise men to stop and wonder. What did it mean?

The glory of the Lord was revealed even though they had a hard time understanding all that it meant. But I want to make the point this morning that these spectacular events pale in comparison to other ways in which the glory of the Lord was revealed in the life of Jesus.

If we believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, Emmanuel (Emmanu which means “with us” and “el” being the shortened version of Elohim. God with us), then the spectacular is to be expected. How could it be possible for God to be born as a baby in Bethlehem without some of his heavenly glory being revealed? How is it possible to bring a cup of liquid light into total darkness without some of that light leaking out?

That God being revealed in this material world in a material way has the spectacular accompanying it is to be expected. Angels in the sky announcing the birth of Jesus, Magi making a long journey to find Jesus, a virgin birth, a resurrected Christ. This should not surprise us.

What is surprising, what is most stunning, what is most amazing is that God humbled himself and was born a man. That God limited himself to the extent that Jesus sweated, ached and thirsted. What is too incredible to comprehend is not that Christ resurrected from the dead but that God died! How could this be?

When Muslims ask, “How could God have a son?” they ask the right question. It is only because we have been brought up with this understanding that the words fall so easily off our lips. This is astounding and we are unable, except in very limited ways, to comprehend what God did.

This is where the glory of the Lord is most powerfully revealed. God born as a man, God being tempted in every way just as we are tempted. God being beaten and mocked and crucified. God dying on the cross. God dying in our place. It is in these ways that the glory of the Lord was revealed most powerfully.

Paul, in Philippians 2, quotes a hymn of the early church that paints a picture of Jesus receiving honor and glory. This is a scene that has not yet happened but which we eagerly anticipate. It is a picture of Jesus on the throne surrounded by thousands upon thousands of angels and Christian saints from all of time.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

That is certainly a moment when the glory of the Lord is revealed. No person or any other created being will be able to deny or miss the exaltation of Jesus. But what leads to that celebration? What makes that celebration possible?

Paul urges us to have the attitude of Jesus expressed in the first part of that hymn of the early church:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

The glory of the Lord is most powerfully revealed when we have the attitude of Christ Jesus who made himself nothing, took the nature of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient to death.

Standing in the multitude of those who are praising Jesus, being one of the tongues confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord will be exciting. But the spiritual life of believers, like the life of Jesus, is not only praise.

John Fischer wrote a wonderful song titled, Everyone Wants to Get to Heaven Lord, Nobody Wants to Die. That is a problem in the church. We want the glory but not the work that it takes.

The disciples of Jesus were aware of the status that came from being involved in the work of Jesus. Jesus was extremely popular and to be one of the chosen 12 disciples gave the disciples a lot of opportunity to bask in the popularity of Jesus.

35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
39 “We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with,  40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.  42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Those closest to Jesus, who heard him teach over and over again, who saw the example he set, still missed the point. As do we.

We easily fall into the same trap. We want to be with Jesus and share in the glory of Jesus but we struggle to live our lives the way Jesus modeled for us.

Jesus came as a servant. He set aside his heavenly prerogatives and limited himself to be born as a man. He came to serve and demonstrated over and over again his servant nature. He set the example for his disciples by washing their feet at the Passover meal the week he was arrested and crucified. He demonstrated for us the life of obedience by walking to Jerusalem to where he knew he would die a painful death. He was obedient unto death.

The glory of the Lord was revealed most powerfully in these steps of obedience of Jesus.

This morning, as we share in the Lord’s Supper, we need to examine ourselves. We need to take time to reflect before remembering Jesus’ death in the eating of the bread and drinking from the cup.

Are we living a servant life?
Are we living an obedient life?

In my interactions with people, in my daily life, am I most often conscious of my own interests or am I thinking of the interests of others. Do I evaluate the situations in my life in terms of how they benefit me, first and foremost, or do I think of the needs of others and sacrifice my own interests for the interests of others?

A lord and master thinks only of himself. A servant thinks of the needs of others. A lord and master sacrifices others for his benefit. A servant sacrifices himself for the needs of others. Are you this morning, a lord and master in your relationships with others or a servant?

Am I living an obedient life?

It is easy to see the disobedience in another person’s life. It is more difficult to see disobedience in my own life. A lord and master sees the disobedience in another person’s life and makes sure the other person knows about it. A servant looks at his own life and works to have an obedient life.

If we are not living a servant life and if we are not living an obedient life, nothing else we do has much value as Christians.

If I lead a church and hide under the surface a life of disobedience, how will God bless what I do? If my concern is always what people think of me and making sure people meet my needs, how can God bless me?

We can sing praise songs and offer fervent prayers but of what value are they if we persist in disobedience?

We reflect God’s glory not so much as when we praise him as when we obey him

In Luke 6, Jesus talks about people who praise him and pray to him but continue in disobedience.

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?  47 I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice.  48 He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.  49 But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

I plead with you this morning to prepare room in your heart for God this morning by resolving to live a servant life and to live a life of obedience.

I plead with you this morning to go deep in your relationship with Jesus. Don’t be satisfied with the superficial spiritual life that praises and prays but does not go deep in obedience and being a servant.

We will stay seated in the pews for communion and the elements of bread and juice will be brought to us to reflect the message of Christmas, that God came to us.

As you sit in your pew and await the communion elements, examine your life. Examine your heart and listen to what God has to say to you.

Prepare him room in your heart and let the glory of the Lord be revealed in your life.