1.
Please
pray with me. May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock
and our Redeemer. Amen. As the Prophet Isaiah had written, John the
Baptist in our Gospel lesson for today is the messenger of our Lord Jesus, sent
before Him to prepare His way. To this
day, the ministry of John continues in the preaching of the Law and the Gospel,
and in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. By
these means of grace your Good Shepherd Jesus “will gather you into His arms” (Is. 40:11). The Lord Jesus comforts you by forgiving all
of your sins (Is. 40:1–2). So during
this Advent season take time to repent and humble yourself as you wait for His
coming in peace (2 Pet. 3:14), because He “is
patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should
reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). And
that’s the message that we want to talk about today, the fact that God is
patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but that all may receive
eternal life through His Son Jesus. The
message is entitled, “Our Patient God,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Waiting is never easy. In our day of
high speed internet, instant messaging, and fast food, waiting for anything
seems like forever. Do you remember your days as a child? When the season of Advent came closer and
closer to the day of Christmas. How
difficult was it for you and your siblings to wait to open your presents? Maybe
you had such a hard time waiting that you would often coax your parents into
allowing you to open some, or maybe all of your presents on Christmas Eve. You
probably remember some years where you couldn’t wait any longer, and your parents
couldn’t stand your whining and begging either, so they finally gave in and let
you open all of your presents before Christmas Day.
3.
The season of Advent begins a season
of waiting. It marks the beginning of the church year and asks us to wait for
the coming of Christ, the King. Each new Advent season raises our
expectations as we wait. Will we see the return of the Lord in this Advent
season? But, it also leads us to a time of reflection concerning how we
wait because waiting, by its nature, is difficult for all of us. Like
children getting up on Christmas Day to open their presents early because they can’t
wait any longer, we often wait impatiently, rather than with expectant hope.
4.
Waiting for God is difficult enough,
but, waiting in the wilderness can make the calmest soul waver. The whole
history of Israel is a history of waiting, waiting in the wilderness
to enter the Promised Land, waiting for a king, waiting in exile for
return to the land of Israel, and waiting for God to deliver them from their enemies.
Imagine, then, how their hearts moved with hope when they heard of the promise
of the Lord once more from Isaiah. We can feel the hope rise as the prophet
Isaiah cries out: “Clear the way for the
Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let
every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low...Then the
glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together”
(Isaiah 40:3-5). And yet, generations came and went and the years passed by
with no sign of the promised one. Israel went into exile, and the voice of the
prophets became silent. Would there be a way in the wilderness, and a smooth
path cut through the desert? Or would God leave his people as exiles in the
wastelands?
5.
For over 2000 years, we’ve seen
Advent season come and go, each year raising our hopes for Christ’s return. Unfortunately,
as happens to so many, we lose hope and heart in waiting. You grow tired and
weary, and you, like the false prophets of old ask, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell
asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” (2
Peter 3:4). Your temptation in the exile of waiting is to lose hope, to grow
weary and faint. Your temptation is to give up rather than hold on. Rather than
fill you with expectation, waiting can dull your hope and dry out your hunger
for God. Yet the Advent season calls you back to watch and to wait in anxious
expectation for the return of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
6.
But, have we every considered how
much God the Father waits patiently on us?
Jesus says in
Mark 7:21-22, “From within, out of men’s
hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed,
malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these
evils come from inside.” When God sees anger in our hearts, He sees
sin. God
does wait patiently on us. We fail to
worship Him as we ought. Our bed is so
much more comfortable to sleep in on Sunday morning, than to have to sit in an
uncomfortable pew in worship. Don’t
forget the fact that maybe you despise having to hear God’s Word preached and
taught, because of some sin you’re unwilling to repent of. Maybe you’re living in the same house as your
boyfriend or girlfriend and both of you keep putting off getting married. As a Christian you know that God says don’t
commit adultery, but you figure that God will just turn a blind eye to your
adulterous way of living and forget about the fact that you’re living with
someone else outside of marriage. Or,
maybe you just can’t stop talking about someone behind their back. Each moment you get the chance you have to
share that jaw dropping story to the next person who comes into your
midst. For all of these things God is
very patient with you. Remember, He
tells you through 2 Peter 3 that He’s patient with you, not wanting anyone to
perish, but that all come to repentance to receive the forgiveness of sins you
need through Jesus Christ your Savior.
7.
So Isaiah
the Prophet says to us from Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God.”
The Lord Jesus our burden and sin bearer has come, He is the One who
later on will fulfill everything that Isaiah said about Him. He will be the One
to give the invitation, “Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt.
11:28). The Lord Jesus Christ lifts our burdens.
8.
Isaiah continues in 40:2, “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry
unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for
she hath received of the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.” It’s
been suggested that when there was an indebtedness on a house in Israel, the
fact was written on a legal document, and put on the doorpost so that all their
neighbors and friends would know that they had a mortgage on their place.
Another copy was kept by the one who held the mortgage. When the debt was paid,
the second copy, the carbon copy, was nailed over the other doorpost so that
all might see that the debt was paid. This is the meaning of “she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”
The sins of Jerusalem were paid for by the One who suffered outside her gates,
Jesus Christ the crucified.
9.
This is the difference between the
dealings of God with His people in the Old Testament and with us in our day.
This actually separates Christianity from all pagan religions and from the
Mosaic Law. The difference is all wrapped up in that little word propitiation.
In the heathen religions the people bring an offering to their gods to appease
them, and that is what propitiation means. Many people think that that
is what it means in the Bible, that they have to “do” something—because God is angry—to win Him over. The people in
heathen religions are always doing that because their gods are always angry and
difficult to get along with. Their feelings are easily hurt, and they aren’t
very friendly. The fact is that sin, your sin, has alienated you from God, but
it is God who did something for you.
10.
And today God is propitious. You
don’t have to do anything to win Him over. Propitiation is toward God,
and reconciliation is toward us. God has done everything that needs to
be done. For He is patient with you, not
wanting you to perish in your trespasses and sins, but for you to come to the
forgiveness of your sins through your Savior Jesus Christ. Today you are
asked to be reconciled to God, not to do something to win Him over. God is
already won over; that is what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. You need
only to receive what Christ has done for You through the hearing of the Word
that Your sins are forgiving, remembering that You are a baptized child of God,
and that He gives You of His body and blood to forgive You of your sins. So
today do not harden your hearts, but hear the voice of our patient God speak to
You through His Word, repent of your sins, turn to Christ and live. Amen.
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