Advent 1 – “Waiting for our Redeemer from of old.”

Advent 1 – “Waiting for our Redeemer from of old.” – Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:1-8
11/27/05 – Vicar Matthew Peters – St. Paul’s, Union Grove

Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Happy New Year!
It is a New Year indeed. It is not a New Year in the sense that the ball dropped in Times Square last night, not quite in the January 1st sense of the New Year, but it is a New Year all the same.
This is the first Sunday of a New Church Year, the 1st Sunday in Advent. We’ve come full circle once again, we’re starting Advent in preparation of Christmas, Christmas leads to Epiphany, Epiphany goes toward Lent, Lent becomes Easter, Easter becomes Pentecost… and then we start all over again.
And today, we do indeed start all over again. It is a New Year, it is Advent – the weeks that we eagerly look forward to the ‘coming’ of Christ. But let me tell you from personal experience, and I would think that you children would agree with me wholeheartedly (as well as many adults too), that once this Advent wreath and its candles appear in church – time seems to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. As we anticipate the coming of Christmas, the waiting can become almost unbearable.

Waiting…
In our Old Testament lesson for this morning, the prophet Isaiah writes with eagerness all about that wonderful day when the Lord will come.
“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!
“As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
“For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
”Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.
“You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.”

Isaiah and the people of Israel long awaited the coming of Jesus. They had the promise of the Messiah who would save them, they trusted in God that He would send the Savior – all they could do was wait. They awaited the Advent of Jesus.
The problem with awaiting the Savior, is that it just reminds you of how badly you need a Savior. Listen as Isaiah goes on to describe the condition of God’s people:
“You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.
“But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?”

Isaiah goes on to describe the attributes of fallen mankind: Like someone ‘unclean’ – like filthy rags – like a shriveled leaf – swept away by the wind.
“No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you…
“for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.”

God hides his face from sin. God cannot stand any imperfection in His people. God made the world, and it was ‘good’ – not ‘good enough’ – it was ‘good’! There should be nothing bad or wrong with anything that God loves. If we are to be people of God, we have to be perfect! We should, as Isaiah says, “gladly do right” and “remember [his] ways”.
…
But we don’t.

The world that we live in is no longer ‘good’ in the sense that God had originally intended. Adam and Eve sinned and imperfection now is everywhere. We sin each and every day – and even if we think that we are ‘good enough’, we are never truly ‘good’. You are a fallen creature, you are imperfect, each one of us deserves nothing but for God to hide his face from us – and allow us to shrivel up like a leaf.
We know this, we confessed ourselves ‘sinner’ at the beginning of this service. Adam and Eve knew this, and they needed a savior – Isaiah knew this, and looked forward to the promise. He wrote, “You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.”
Isaiah was confidently awaiting his Redeemer, promised of old…
Waiting…
…
He is coming…
…
Soon…
…
This is the hope of the Gospel that the Old Testament Patriarchs and Prophets held to. They knew that the Messiah would come. They knew that salvation was theirs because of God’s chosen one. It takes a lot of faith to wait…
Isaiah ended our lesson for today with words that reflect this confidence: “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are the work of your hand.”
We are clay, and He forms us. We are dirt, and He makes us worth something. We are sinners, and He makes us his holy children.

And it is now His Advent that we begin to celebrate today. The long-expected coming of Jesus Christ is what we are here to get ready for.
You see, our waiting is different than the waiting of Isaiah in the Old Testament. Our waiting has something to point back toward, as we look ahead to Jesus’ second-coming.

We look back and we have confidence that God Himself – because He promised, and as Paul writes to the Corinthians in our Epistle lesson, “God… is faithful.” We have seen this Messiah, we know the name of Jesus. We have heard of what He has done for us, and we rejoice!
We rejoice because the waiting is about to be over… indeed it is over! Jesus Christ, as we say in the Creed, “was conceived of the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried.” This baby Jesus, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate in just a few weeks time, is our Savior! This Jesus would live to be the perfect sacrifice, and die to gain the complete forgiveness of the sins of the entire world. His life, His blood, His death… all for you.
“The third day He rose again from the dead.” Jesus rose from the dead to give us the confident guarantee that He is indeed the Son of God. He is God Himself – and His crucifixion is not just ‘good enough’ it is ‘good’ – He died to save you, and He died to save me.
And as we await His second-coming, we can do nothing to earn anything better than what all believers of all time have been waiting for. Through Christ we are given complete forgiveness – simply because we believe.
As Isaiah says, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are the work of your hand.” All that we have is God’s, all of our hope is because of God, even our ability to trust in this promise of a Savior is of God.
For, “You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.”

We rejoice in our Savior’s coming – we praise God for the Advent of the Christ! And thanks be to God that we need no longer await the forgiveness from above – The waiting is over, God is Faithful, we are the work of His hand.

Amen.