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. Here we are already in the 3rd
Sunday of Advent, which has traditionally been called by the Latin word, Gaudete,
meaning “Rejoice!” Since this Sunday is a theme for rejoicing we
light the pink candle on the Advent wreath. For as you’re called to repentance
of your sins, so also are you urged to rejoice
in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. By His Cross, Jesus has accomplished
salvation for you. This 3rd
Sunday in Advent continues to focus us on the coming of the Christ through the ministry
of John the Baptist. In our Old Testament reading today, Zephaniah leads his people to rejoice
in the Lord for the salvation he brings. In Philippians, St. Paul leads us to rejoice because the “Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:4–5). But for
John the Baptist, locked in a dungeon, the message of joy escapes him, and he
wonders whether Jesus is “the one who is
to come” (Lk 7:19). Is Advent joy possible in such suffering? Yes, when
Jesus is identified as the fulfillment of all God has promised. Then we can
rejoice in his salvation, whatever our situation in life. The message is taken from Psalm 85 and is
entitled, “Restore Us Again, O God Our
Savior.” Dear brothers and sisters
in Christ.
2. Have
you ever been discouraged because the life you’re living now doesn’t seem to be
as real or as joyful as your life was after you first became a Christian? Maybe in the middle of this Advent season you
feel like John the Baptist in our Gospel reading for today, wondering if Jesus
is really the Savior that God sent to save us from our sins. Well, John Wesley,
the Methodist preacher, knew times like this too and wrote about them
poetically, asking, “Where is the joy I
knew, When first I saw the Lord?” It’s a good question. In such times we
long for the spiritual vitality of earlier days. And if we’re not too
discouraged to pray about it, our prayer is often that God might restore us to
what we once knew. Psalm 85 is this kind of prayer.
3. Psalm
85:1–3 begins by saying, “1Lord, you were favorable to your land; you
restored the fortunes of Jacob. 2You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. 3You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot
anger.” Some commentators have suggested that the past restoration referred
to in this psalm is the return from the exile in Babylon and that the present
distress refers to the troubles the people of Judah experienced during the time
of Ezra and Nehemiah. But, one way to translate the beginning of Psalm 85 is, “You restored the fortunes of Jacob,” this
psalm could refer to almost any time of distress during Israel’s history.
4. Whichever
faithlessness and restoration this was, the point is this: God has been
gracious to his people in the past. Psalm 85 could refer to any of God’s
ancient rescues. God rescued Israel from Egypt. He rescued Judah from Babylon.
He rescued the entire people of God, you and me, from sin, death and the devil
by the perfect life and innocent death of His Son on the cross. We, the people
of God today, can look back on all of these great occurrences of salvation in
the past and be assured that we have hope for being restored again.
5. Psalm
85:4-7 continues saying, “4Restore
us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us! 5Will you be
angry with us forever? Will
you prolong your anger to all generations? 6Will you not revive us
again, that your
people may rejoice in you? 7Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.” On the basis of the Lord’s past acts of
salvation we as Christians continue to ask for God’s forgiveness of our sins
and a continued, on–going restoration into a right relationship with God. The
first of Martin Luther’s Ninety–five Theses says, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he
willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” In our own age there’s a tendency to want
to eliminate the confession of sins from worship services and to reduce the
talk about sin in worship. This shows a weak understanding of the depth of
human depravity and of God’s anger over sin.
But, why do we do it? We point out the depth of our depravity and God’s
anger toward our sins in order to marvel all the more at the tremendous extent
of His grace in our Savior Jesus. In the midst of all this talk about sin, the
psalmist begins to accent the saving characteristics of our God: “Restore us again, O God our Savior.”
6. Then
in verse 6 he asks, “Will you not revive
us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” Do you hear the gospel in
this question? Our God doesn’t encourage us to try harder to obey His law so
that we can feel better about ourselves. Our God has accomplished something we
couldn’t begin to accomplish. Through the substitutionary life and death of His
Son on our behalf, He won salvation for us. In response to His amazing
salvation, we rejoice in Him. We
don’t just rejoice because of what has happened to us. Our worship is focused on Him and on His amazing acts of
grace. Our worship isn’t focused on us and our inflated notions of our self-worth.
That’s why in worship believers aren’t hesitant to speak of their sins. Worship
that consists of continual repentance isn’t a “downer.” It isn’t a defeatist
kind of worship in which worshipers say they’re bound to sin—they just can’t
help it. True worship expresses an honest assessment of our human weakness and
an unshakable confidence in God’s power and mercy.
7. Psalm
85: 8-9 says, “8Let me hear
what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to
his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. 9Surely
his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.” Although the law of God has convicted us
of our sins, it’s the gospel that causes us to turn to the Lord for forgiveness
and peace. It’s the promise of peace in our Lord Jesus Christ that we as
Christians listen for. It is the thing that our soul longs for and is drawn
to—not the law. But, the law and gospel
appear in their perfect relationship here. The author follows up this beautiful
expression of the gospel with a reminder from the law: “but let them [God’s people] not return to folly.” God’s salvation exists wherever His people
fear him. We carry around His salvation in our hearts and reflect it in our
lives.
8. Psalm
85 concludes by saying, “10Steadfast
love and faithfulness meet; righteousness
and peace kiss each other. 11Faithfulness springs up from the
ground, and
righteousness looks down from the sky. 12Yes, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its
increase. 13Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way.” The end
of this Psalm expresses the peace that God establishes between Himself and His
people through his salvation. Verse 11 brings to mind how, in the judgment of
the flood in Noah’s day, God brought the waters up from the springs of the
earth and down from the heavens. What a contrast it is to say here that God’s “faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and [his] righteousness looks down from heaven.” Just as judgment and
condemnation are from the Lord, so righteousness and salvation are also from
the Lord. Salvation is completely from
the Lord. He gives it, and the earth responds.
9. John
the Baptist in our Gospel reading for today may have been feeling the judgment
of God having landed himself in jail for his faithfulness to God in pointing
people to Jesus as the Messiah. That’s
why John asks, “Are you the one who is to
come, or shall we look for another?” Did John finally come to terms with
his questions and doubts? We can assume so, because his faith was searching for
reasons to believe, and Jesus gave him plenty of reasons for believing that He
was the Christ, sent from God. When our
expectations about our Lord are contradicted by our experience, leaving us in a
spiritual crisis with our questions and doubts, we, too, like John and the
psalmist here in Psalm 85, bring our questions to Jesus: Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? And Jesus answers us: Go and tell what you
have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and
the poor have good news preached to them. Through Jesus our Savior we have been
restored with His forgiveness, life and salvation. Amen.
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