Hope in Action | Hope is Dawning | December 8, 2024
Hope in Action | Hope is Dawning | December 8, 2024
Well, last week I recounted a story. If you weren't here, you can go back on the app and you can check it out. I recounted a story last week of how I came home after I was living in Sydney, Australia, Hawaii. I came home early from Australia and a picture of what it looks like to move from a place of hoping for something to actually hoping in something. And again, that might seem like a really small difference to you where you're sitting.
And yet I think it's important for us to understand some of the differences. Because when we hope for something, largely what we end up talking about is that we're referring to kind of wishful thinking about a better future, a better day sometime in the future. But when we hope in something, we're really believing in that and trusting in something that happens. So much so that really we take different action, we live differently because of that hope. I've got a few examples of the difference here because the difference is like it's between buying a gym membership and actually showing up to the gym.
Like one you're hoping for, you're buying a little certain way. The other one you're actually hoping in, you're actually doing something about it. It's the difference between planting seeds in the ground and actually going out and weeding and watering and all the other stuff that has to be done in pictures of the garden is the difference between downloading the Duolingo app and expecting that somehow you're going to all of a sudden become a savant in Spanish or French or whatever it is, and actually finding a friend who speaks that language and going and having actual conversations with that person. There's a difference between what we hope for something and when we're really hoping in something. Now when I got home from my time in Australia, I quickly realized that God was calling me into ministry.
And after a few months of me running away from that and saying that's a great idea for future Brian to do, I finally surrendered to that call and ended up enrolling in seminary. At my very first step into this call into full time ministry, that was step one, but it certainly was not the end of the steps. Step one of the plan was seminary. Step two was I was going to go to seminary and then I was going to go get a job somewhere in some church environment or ministry environment so that I could take the things that I'm learning and actually apply them in real time and that would be this great life situation. And so I started to submit my resume to countless different job postings.
I didn't really grow up in a specific theological tradition or denomination. So I cast a really wide net, all sorts of different churches and backgrounds, and I ended up countless job postings in churches that were within an hour or so commute of where I was living. And let me tell you, it was such an encouraging thing. There were zero offers, not even zero offers. There were zero interest, no takers, not even an interview to speak of. No one even looked at the interview, the resume, and was like, let's give him a shot, maybe an outside shot. We'll bring that guy in. No, not a single nibble at all. And a plan that started out with such hope and excitement really ended up in a place of frustration really quickly because it didn't pan out the way I wanted it to. I had a plan, it didn't pan out the way that I thought it should go.
And my hope for a future in ministry that I felt God was even calling me into just really wasn't happening as quickly or in a way that I thought it should happen. And I think we've all been in that kind of a place at some point in time for that in between spot, right? That place where we've been in between something we're in between, the mess has already occurred. It's getting messy in life, and yet the miracle has not yet shown up. Yet.
The in between time between the diagnosis happening and the healing coming, the in between time between the brokenness occurring and the being made whole on the other side of that happening. In between time between the heartbreaking moments and the heart mending places. And even though we almost always wish, and if you don't wish this, I think something's wrong with you, you probably need to go to counseling or something like that. But almost all of us wish that our hope would be realized quickly. The mess would get over really fast.
We get to the good stuff on their side, almost every one of us, the truth is, finds out that it often takes a whole lot longer than we ever thought it was going to take. We end up spending a whole lot more of our lives in the in between space than we ever really thought that we would ever spend in that space. And the question starts to become, what do you do in the place between the mess and the miracle? What do you do while you wait for hope to actually arrive? How do we live or act or engage in the midst of those agonizing moments in between?
Right? Those agonizing places that we don't even like to talk about. So this morning, what we're going to do is we're actually going to go back into the book of the prophet Isaiah where we were last week, where we're going to encounter people who find themselves in the midst of their own in between time, their own in between the mess that they've been in and the miracle that will come in the future at some point in. And we're going to be in Isaiah. And the book of Isaiah is typically split up depending on who you talk to and what scholars live.
It's usually split up into either two or three chunks there that based off of their different themes and different ideas that tend to show up in these different areas of Isaiah. And So the first 39 chapters, chapters one through 39, are largely, not 100%, but largely are about the infidelity, the unfaithfulness of the people of God to worship God wholeheartedly and then to commit to themselves to be a people of justice and of mercy and of true love toward one another and toward the world all around them. And it talks about then what God is going to do in light of or because of that infidelity in order to help draw or bring or correct those people back into a life of fidelity toward the way that God has always called them to engage in, to be. And then chapter 40 shows up and 40, really to the end of the book. Chapters 40 through 66 take on a completely different flavor.
In fact, if you're reading it all the way through, it kind of feels like whiplash all of a sudden. If you read it like 39, it's all kind of doomy and gloomy and really kind of rough stuff to get through. And all of a sudden 40 comes and you're like, wait, wait a second. What's going on here? And we'll read that at the beginning of chapter 40.
And the words start off with comfort. That's a strange thing to say. Comfort. All right. That means it's proclaiming.
And all of a sudden it changes take on this different flavor of the eventual ending of the suffering that the people of God have been experiencing. The restoration of the people of God to a different way of being and the good things that God has for his people moving forward into the future. So today we're going to be in Isaiah, chapter 40. If you have your Bible with, you can turn there. If you don't, you can pull it up on your screen.
Or it could be up on the screen up here as well. But in this passage, it's written to a people who've been dealing with an immensely difficult circumstance and situation that they've been dealing with for quite some time. They are people who have endured tragic hurt and pain. They've endured tragic hurt and pain. They've watched foreign empires come into their land and their land in absolute ruin.
They've watched this all take place. They've seen their family members die of starvation and hunger and all sorts of awful things all around them. There are people who have then been, many of them exiled, fellowed out of the land that was originally promised to them by God to their forefather Abraham. There are people who have endured famine and hardship and death and destruction. And they are people where comfort has not been something that they have experienced at all.
There's been no peace, no comfort, nothing like that at all for them for years on end. And then arise the words of God through the prophet Isaiah And Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 1 through 5, which say, comfort my people, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.
But listen, it's the voice of someone shouting. Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord. Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God. Fill in the valleys and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken. Would you pray with me? And then we're going to jump into this and try to figure out what the world Isaiah 40 might have to say to those of us who are walking in the midst of places, between the messes and the miracles that happen in life. So Lord, we ask that you would just move in these moments, that your scripture would speak freely and openly to the power of your spirit into the hearts and minds of each one of us this morning.
May the words be your words that we hear, Lord. May everything else fall to deaf ears, Lord, so that you may get all the honor and the glory in everything. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So the passage begins with God speaking to a people who find themselves between this mess that they've been dealing with for so long, this deep dark mess, and the miracle that will eventually come with the restoration of the people of God by saying the words, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned. God is saying to these people, these people who have no real hope going on, and I feel like restoration and the transformation that they long to see is taking way too long to take place, just like so many of us find ourselves in. And he's telling them that there is still some hope to be found, that one day the sad days will be gone, that God speaks to a day that when hurt and pain will be no more, will be over. In other words, there's hope.
And we see this theme reiterated throughout scripture. We get the revelation. We see this as a picture of what God has said that will ultimately come and happen in the future. That the sad day will be no more and pain and hurt will be gone. But God doesn't stop just by saying, hey, by the way, there's nothing to look for in the future.
Nice little picture. Enjoy that wishful thinking. And it felt good in the dead because it just says that there's hope. But he continues in verses three and four of this, saying to them, listen, it's the voice of someone shouting to clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord to make a straight highway for the wasteland, for our God to fill in the valleys and to level the mountains and the hills, to straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places. I don't know about you, but it seemed like an interesting thing to say right after his words of, hey, comfort and no more sadness, and the sad days are over and there's going to be pain and all this stuff will eventually be gone, all these kind of things to hope for.
And then he turns around and says there's some work to be done. These verses get picked up actually in the New Testament by the gospel writers as they are talking about the person John the Baptist, which we're going to get to, actually in a few minutes. But I think what's amazing to me about this is that he's speaking to people who are in exile, who are in the midst of deep mess, and he tells them that it isn't just the work of God. It is that. But isn't just the work of God that the people of God are supposed to.
It's not just his work. And the people of God are supposed to sit back and go, cool, thanks, God, for doing that. That's awesome. Thanks for doing that. I'm going to be on my Chase Lounge watching the super bowl, and you do your thing.
And I'm just going to hang out and chill while you do your thing. And I'm just going to sit back. But actually, what God is saying that, yes, there's this beautiful day in the future that we are all hoping for, but I'M asking you not just to hope for it, but I want you to hope in it. I want you to be a participant. I want you to live differently in light of it.
It's an invitation by God with a peaceful people of God who are in the midst of the mess, to be active participants as they await the fulfillment of their hope. The people are given a call to be about the work of helping to clear a pathway through the wilderness, to make paths straight, to make a straight highway, to fill in valleys, to level mountains and hills, to strengthen, to straighten the curve and smooth out the rough places. In other words, what's interesting is that all these pictures are things that the people of God are to do as they await the fulfillment of their hope. As they sit in that time between the mess and the miracle, they are called to these things. And what's interesting is that almost all of these things, and I like to make a piece of all of them, are about getting rid of the hinges, the difficulties, the things that get in the way of things moving freely and openly and evenly and equitably among God's people.
That it's about leveling the playing field in so many different ways. This is why, actually, I think this is what he's calling them to, is just as seeking wholeness, making kinds of work in the midst of the moments that they're in their mess, waiting for their miracle, that if they wake up, the fulfillment of that which we hope for, that we're supposed to work toward. And the word is not in this actual passage, but it's an image that is used throughout the Old Testament all the time of what they look like when the sad days are no more and the things that the people of God are supposed to work towards, which is the word shalom. Shalom is always translated. It's always translated as peace in your Bibles, which is a good translation, really.
I mean, it's a good. The right translation for it, but it's a piece that it's really more nuanced, deeper really in many ways than what most of us think of peace. Because the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, contains so much more than simply a lack of conflict. It's not just that two sides are no longer fighting with one another, but instead it brings about the ideas of fullness and wholeness and completeness and justice in the midst of that peace. It's a peace that's born out of when everything is the way it spoke to be in the world, you know, those few fleeting moments you've experienced before where you just kind of sit back and go like, this is.
This is the way it's supposed to be. And there are full moments, there's a wholeness of those moments, there's a completeness of those moments. That's the type of peace that he's talking, that the Old Testament constantly is calling the people of God to. And that I believe God is saying here that we're supposed to be a people that clear ways through wilderness and make straight highways and fill in valleys and level mountains and straight curves and smooth out the ruffling, that we're supposed to be about that same kind of justice seeking and wholeness making and shalom making work in the world while we wait for God to bring about the miracle in our midst. And as the people of God engage in this shalom making work of justice in the world while they wait for God to move the rest of the way and bring about the miracle, God continues then to say, then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken. Did you catch it here? That it's actually going to be through the justice works, through the shalom making, works through the peacemaking work, through the straightening of the highways and the making, the leveling of the mountains and the building up of the valleys and the strengthening of the turns, that it's through that work. He says then, or because of, or because of these things, that is how the glory of the Lord will be revealed, that because of those things happening, people will see the wholeness and the shalom and the peace, that the glory of the Lord will then be revealed through that. And seen by all people that these things, this justice making stuff, this shalom making, this wholeness making ministry, this way of working so that we kind of leveling out the plaintiff and making a path for the Lord to move in power actually becomes the greatest evangelistic tool at our disposal.
Because it becomes a living demonstration of what God's presence at work among his people actually looks like.
As I noted earlier, Isaiah chapter 40 is a passage that gets picked up in the New Testament by the Gospel writers and attributed to the person of John the Baptist. It's attributed to and directed towards the ministry of the person of John the Baptist. And in Mark, chapter one, the Gospel of Mark begins with these words. It says, this is the good news about Jesus, the prophet of the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah said, look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you and you will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the Wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord's coming. Clear the road for him. And they said this messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they have repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. This is going to be a strange statement to make, but I just want you to go with me on it because I'm going to try to try to make you believe what I believe at the end of this week.
But here's what I say. I think John the Baptist is one of the most hope filled people in the entirety of the New Testament. In many ways, I think he's the picture of what it looks like would be someone that hopes in the Lord, not just hopes for a better day sometimes in the future, but actually live differently in light of that hope that he is given. And I say that not because John's story is really all like sunshine, unicorns and lollipops. It's not a picture of the most hopeful thing on the surface, to be completely honest.
John's life, he lives his entire life dirt poor, living almost his entire adult life out in the wilderness. Which is not like he's hanging out in the woods, hunting deer in the wilderness. This is him. He's in the middle of the hot sun of the desert without a tree in sight, just being beat on by the sun day after day after day after day. He eats locusts and honey, most likely not because they were the most appetizing thing that he could find around, but they were probably the thing that he could afford and find to be able to survive. He wears itchy camel's hair for clothing. Again, not probably because he woke up that morning and was like, you know what I want to wear for the rest of my life? As the itchiest purr I could possibly find, but probably because that's what he could get his hands on. And beggars can't be choosers when it comes to what you're wearing. He has no cultural, no political, no economic power to speak of to the religious leaders he's seen as a threat. He ends up being arrested by the Romans because he deemed and seemed to be an agitator. He's messing things up, he's agitated, so let's throw him in prison where he can't agitate things. And then finally, the end of this story, the glorious, beautiful end of the story is that he is beheaded while in prison as a gift to a girl because she danced real good at a party.
That's literally the end of the story. She danced for life. And the guy asked her, what do you want for, you know, the thank you for dancing all night. And she goes, I'll take the head of John the Baptist on the platter. And that's the end of the story.
Hopeful, right? The picture of hope, right? It's not. It's not the picture of what a hopeful life or hopeful end looks like. I doubt there's a person here that sits there and goes, you know what?
Give me the John the Baptist treatment, God, I'll take that. That's what I want out of my life. And yet, in all those circumstances, John still lives and preaches and ministers out of an immense hope. He still speaks in the midst of the circumstances to a day coming in the future when all things are going to be made new. Even though everything around him is old and messed up and not ran.
He still points to a future where God will ultimately reign. Even though his life is literally being directed by all sorts of other people who seem to be reigning over him. He still points to a hope in a day when sin, evil will finally be vanquished. Even though he is the recipient of so much sin and evil in the world. He still points people to Jesus and prepares the way of the Lord even though he finds himself in the midst of those deep valleys more than almost anyone else.
You see, it is this hope that I think leads him to live as a minister out of the reality of what his hope actually is in instead of what his current circumstances are. And that's the real differences between are we hoping for this pie in the sky future or are we hoping in something? You see, John believed that hope really truly was dawning. And because of that he got to work preparing the way of the Lord. True hope, gritty, down to earth hope, hope that meets us in the midst of the mess calls us to work toward that which we have put our hope in while we sit in that space between the mess and the mirror.
Even though the world around us and the reality of many of our situations may look very different than the picture of hope that is found in Jesus Christ and will ultimately be realized in Jesus Christ. We get the opportunity to engage now in the midst of the message in God's kingdom, revealing and justice working vision of the future out of our hopes in who God is and what he has done through Jesus death and his resurrection.
This week, it's not the easiest week at the Remsch family. I'm not going to get into specifics or details or anything, but just Suffice it to say that the week has been a week that has led me to personally know in many ways what it means to find yourself in a space between messes and miracles. In all honesty, I didn't start out this week with a great attitude of wanting to live with a great hope in something. I wasn't really a John the Baptist. Let's go continue to do this whole thing.
In fact, I spend more time than I want to admit this week sulking a little bit, dodging phone calls. My old person does that. Sometimes when you get down, you're like, I probably need to talk to that person. I don't want to talk to that person. You know, dodging text messages, right?
Like someone not returning a text. With someone texting, they're like, that's why the person I need to text back. I don't want to talk to them. All right, they're going to tell me the thing I probably need to hear but don't want to hear. So that's not going to return the text.
Feeling discouraged and on Wednesday morning, I came back to the prophet Isaiah again. Read Isaiah chapter 40 yet again. And the words of the prophet Isaiah to the people of his day very clearly became the words of the Lord for me as well as I will remind us the comfort of God's promises and also the call to be about God's kingdom, work in the world as a way of living out faith in our hope in the world, in the world. Sorry, it's no secret. I shared earlier that our congregation as a whole is going through a time of hurt, of pain, of disease, of struggle, of difficulty.
It's rampant. The mess is extremely real for many of us. And the reality of the difficulties of in between times, like, it's a little too close to home for a lot of us. It's like, oh, I don't want to talk about this, Pastor. Leave the hospital probably is why I gave like the sermon description in an email this week.
Shouldn't have done that. I think that's why maybe you people are like, yeah, probably not going to church. I don't really do Psalm 23 next week or something, make it a little easier on everybody. But. And in these moments, can we just be honest that it's really easy to get discouraged.
It's really easy to feel like everything, excuse the phrase, it's gone to hell in a handbasket. We're not really sure what to do. And it can be tempting, maybe more than tempting, to sulk a little bit, to move away from community instead of toward it to develop maybe a little bit of woe is me or woe is our situation mentality diverse for everybody else. But I think it's in those hard moments that we also get a decision that's put before us. I didn't do well the first couple days figuring out what the answer to that decision was going to be, but we got a decision.
Are we going to live in light of the current circumstance, or are we going to live out of our hope in the Lord and get to work preparing the way of the Lord in our world? So the question then becomes, how do we do that? How do you live out of our hope in the Lord and prepare for the way of the Lord today? Especially when we find ourselves in those in between times, between the mess and the miracle. Let me just offer you these are not the end all be all type of suggestions at all.
But let me just offer you maybe a couple of tangible actions, a spiritual formational practice maybe to pick up and to engage with, and a prayer prompt to pray even this morning and ask for God to make his way known to us and make his will known to us. So first of all, the tangible action, I think we can all ask the question how we can commit to shalom, work, justice, work, wholeness, work within our spheres of influence. How can we make a mountain just a little bit lower? How can we raise the valley just a little bit up? How can we straighten the road just a little bit for someone else and help to make the way of the Lord that much easier through that work.
There's a bunch of different organizations locally that you can serve with a way of doing this. The Frederick Rescue Mission is one Christmas Alive Garb tuning house in Frederick. There's a whole bunch of different groups that really at the heart what they do is they seek to make the mountains low, build the valleys up, straighten the pathway and make a highway for the Lord to be able to work among the people in this area. And there's multiple ways to get involved and with people that are already doing this work and doing great jobs to add. I think in addition to that, we also can find ways to give to others in their need at this time of year.
Especially, especially if you're one who has maybe a little bit excess yourself at this time of year. I know whatever it feels like when we have excess, but a lot of us have excess if we were to be objectively honest about where our situation in the world versus where maybe some others find this place so that we can give to others in Their need. Christmas Alive is a great way to do that. And there's still some families that need to be adopted. That's a fantastic way to do that.
If you're like, I can't do the distribution on the 14th, but I'm happy to help with it, or I can't make contacts, because if you're like, our family, we've got like eight concerts in four days this week or something like that that's going on. Can't get to the grocery store, up the items to go do this. I'd like you to be a part of it. Like, we can get creative. We can partner with someone else.
You've got the money, someone else has got the time. If you got the time, someone else probably have the money. All right. We can make this work and figure out a way to bless others and give to others in their need as a way of tangibly living into our hope in the Lord and to make straighter pathways for the Lord to move forward. I think in addition to those tangible steps, I think that there may be some formational practices, some habits that we can adopt that are going to help us, that might reinforce to us our hope that we have and what the end point of this whole Christian story is all about.
Because the end point is that one day that hope will be realized. One day the sad days are all gone. One day every tear will be wiped away and disease will be gone, and all the hurts will be gone and all the issues will be gone, and everything will be made whole again. Shalom again. And I think one of the ways that we can do that is start just the daily, simple formational practice of reading scripture on a daily basis.
I don't know if you realize this, but this time of year is like, if you're looking for a study or a reading plan to get into. This is like the. Like this is like the super bowl time of year. To be able to do that, like the lead up to Christmas, this time period, like, everybody's got a reading plan that they're trying to. Trying to offer out.
Everybody's got something to be able to help us to engage with the story of Christmas. Why not just start? There doesn't have to be that you read five chapters or 12 chapters or anything. Indeed. It can simply be that you read the verse of the day on the Bible app every day.
Start small. The point is not about whether we're starting in the middle of something or that we, you know, it's the. If the aids already. I missed the first seven days of the adhesive meeting program. The point is not about where you could check the marks off.
The point is about let's get started immersing ourselves, being in the story and being formed by. And then. And maybe most importantly, I think we need to pray. It seems so simple, and yet it's so easy to overlook it. To pray and to ask God to show us, how can we be about your kingdom revealing and justice making work in the world?
How can we go about doing that in a tangible way in our lives this week? Even. Even in the midst of our busyness or in the midst of our own needs, how can we be about that in a little way? It's amazing. When you ask the question of God and give some space for him to answer and attune yourself and open yourself up to.
To have. Maybe your first response be to say yes to the Lord instead of saying no is he'll show himself. He'll give brick opportunities. Doors will start to open, Conversations will start to take place. Things will open up, and they might be just different for you than it is for the person next to you than the person that's across the pew for you.
And so as our worship team starts to make their way back up here into the front, I figured that this morning maybe we just make space to do just that. Like, what if we just took some time this morning and we just prayed, but not prayed with our laundry list of guys, and here's what I need you to do. But what if we did the listening type of prayer where we just asked a question and this is crazy, but then we just listen?
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that when God listens to my pray, there's a couple times he just wants to go, be quiet. Shh, shh, shh. I'd like to say something, too. You just keep talking. Like, you don't let me get a word in any lives.
You just keep. You got stuff to say, that's great. I want to hear from you, but, like, I want to say something. I want to speak into your life. I've got something I want you to do.
Why don't we just create a space to listen to the Lord and hear what he has to say for us this morning?
And yet I think it's important for us to understand some of the differences. Because when we hope for something, largely what we end up talking about is that we're referring to kind of wishful thinking about a better future, a better day sometime in the future. But when we hope in something, we're really believing in that and trusting in something that happens. So much so that really we take different action, we live differently because of that hope. I've got a few examples of the difference here because the difference is like it's between buying a gym membership and actually showing up to the gym.
Like one you're hoping for, you're buying a little certain way. The other one you're actually hoping in, you're actually doing something about it. It's the difference between planting seeds in the ground and actually going out and weeding and watering and all the other stuff that has to be done in pictures of the garden is the difference between downloading the Duolingo app and expecting that somehow you're going to all of a sudden become a savant in Spanish or French or whatever it is, and actually finding a friend who speaks that language and going and having actual conversations with that person. There's a difference between what we hope for something and when we're really hoping in something. Now when I got home from my time in Australia, I quickly realized that God was calling me into ministry.
And after a few months of me running away from that and saying that's a great idea for future Brian to do, I finally surrendered to that call and ended up enrolling in seminary. At my very first step into this call into full time ministry, that was step one, but it certainly was not the end of the steps. Step one of the plan was seminary. Step two was I was going to go to seminary and then I was going to go get a job somewhere in some church environment or ministry environment so that I could take the things that I'm learning and actually apply them in real time and that would be this great life situation. And so I started to submit my resume to countless different job postings.
I didn't really grow up in a specific theological tradition or denomination. So I cast a really wide net, all sorts of different churches and backgrounds, and I ended up countless job postings in churches that were within an hour or so commute of where I was living. And let me tell you, it was such an encouraging thing. There were zero offers, not even zero offers. There were zero interest, no takers, not even an interview to speak of. No one even looked at the interview, the resume, and was like, let's give him a shot, maybe an outside shot. We'll bring that guy in. No, not a single nibble at all. And a plan that started out with such hope and excitement really ended up in a place of frustration really quickly because it didn't pan out the way I wanted it to. I had a plan, it didn't pan out the way that I thought it should go.
And my hope for a future in ministry that I felt God was even calling me into just really wasn't happening as quickly or in a way that I thought it should happen. And I think we've all been in that kind of a place at some point in time for that in between spot, right? That place where we've been in between something we're in between, the mess has already occurred. It's getting messy in life, and yet the miracle has not yet shown up. Yet.
The in between time between the diagnosis happening and the healing coming, the in between time between the brokenness occurring and the being made whole on the other side of that happening. In between time between the heartbreaking moments and the heart mending places. And even though we almost always wish, and if you don't wish this, I think something's wrong with you, you probably need to go to counseling or something like that. But almost all of us wish that our hope would be realized quickly. The mess would get over really fast.
We get to the good stuff on their side, almost every one of us, the truth is, finds out that it often takes a whole lot longer than we ever thought it was going to take. We end up spending a whole lot more of our lives in the in between space than we ever really thought that we would ever spend in that space. And the question starts to become, what do you do in the place between the mess and the miracle? What do you do while you wait for hope to actually arrive? How do we live or act or engage in the midst of those agonizing moments in between?
Right? Those agonizing places that we don't even like to talk about. So this morning, what we're going to do is we're actually going to go back into the book of the prophet Isaiah where we were last week, where we're going to encounter people who find themselves in the midst of their own in between time, their own in between the mess that they've been in and the miracle that will come in the future at some point in. And we're going to be in Isaiah. And the book of Isaiah is typically split up depending on who you talk to and what scholars live.
It's usually split up into either two or three chunks there that based off of their different themes and different ideas that tend to show up in these different areas of Isaiah. And So the first 39 chapters, chapters one through 39, are largely, not 100%, but largely are about the infidelity, the unfaithfulness of the people of God to worship God wholeheartedly and then to commit to themselves to be a people of justice and of mercy and of true love toward one another and toward the world all around them. And it talks about then what God is going to do in light of or because of that infidelity in order to help draw or bring or correct those people back into a life of fidelity toward the way that God has always called them to engage in, to be. And then chapter 40 shows up and 40, really to the end of the book. Chapters 40 through 66 take on a completely different flavor.
In fact, if you're reading it all the way through, it kind of feels like whiplash all of a sudden. If you read it like 39, it's all kind of doomy and gloomy and really kind of rough stuff to get through. And all of a sudden 40 comes and you're like, wait, wait a second. What's going on here? And we'll read that at the beginning of chapter 40.
And the words start off with comfort. That's a strange thing to say. Comfort. All right. That means it's proclaiming.
And all of a sudden it changes take on this different flavor of the eventual ending of the suffering that the people of God have been experiencing. The restoration of the people of God to a different way of being and the good things that God has for his people moving forward into the future. So today we're going to be in Isaiah, chapter 40. If you have your Bible with, you can turn there. If you don't, you can pull it up on your screen.
Or it could be up on the screen up here as well. But in this passage, it's written to a people who've been dealing with an immensely difficult circumstance and situation that they've been dealing with for quite some time. They are people who have endured tragic hurt and pain. They've endured tragic hurt and pain. They've watched foreign empires come into their land and their land in absolute ruin.
They've watched this all take place. They've seen their family members die of starvation and hunger and all sorts of awful things all around them. There are people who have then been, many of them exiled, fellowed out of the land that was originally promised to them by God to their forefather Abraham. There are people who have endured famine and hardship and death and destruction. And they are people where comfort has not been something that they have experienced at all.
There's been no peace, no comfort, nothing like that at all for them for years on end. And then arise the words of God through the prophet Isaiah And Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 1 through 5, which say, comfort my people, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.
But listen, it's the voice of someone shouting. Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord. Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God. Fill in the valleys and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken. Would you pray with me? And then we're going to jump into this and try to figure out what the world Isaiah 40 might have to say to those of us who are walking in the midst of places, between the messes and the miracles that happen in life. So Lord, we ask that you would just move in these moments, that your scripture would speak freely and openly to the power of your spirit into the hearts and minds of each one of us this morning.
May the words be your words that we hear, Lord. May everything else fall to deaf ears, Lord, so that you may get all the honor and the glory in everything. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So the passage begins with God speaking to a people who find themselves between this mess that they've been dealing with for so long, this deep dark mess, and the miracle that will eventually come with the restoration of the people of God by saying the words, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned. God is saying to these people, these people who have no real hope going on, and I feel like restoration and the transformation that they long to see is taking way too long to take place, just like so many of us find ourselves in. And he's telling them that there is still some hope to be found, that one day the sad days will be gone, that God speaks to a day that when hurt and pain will be no more, will be over. In other words, there's hope.
And we see this theme reiterated throughout scripture. We get the revelation. We see this as a picture of what God has said that will ultimately come and happen in the future. That the sad day will be no more and pain and hurt will be gone. But God doesn't stop just by saying, hey, by the way, there's nothing to look for in the future.
Nice little picture. Enjoy that wishful thinking. And it felt good in the dead because it just says that there's hope. But he continues in verses three and four of this, saying to them, listen, it's the voice of someone shouting to clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord to make a straight highway for the wasteland, for our God to fill in the valleys and to level the mountains and the hills, to straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places. I don't know about you, but it seemed like an interesting thing to say right after his words of, hey, comfort and no more sadness, and the sad days are over and there's going to be pain and all this stuff will eventually be gone, all these kind of things to hope for.
And then he turns around and says there's some work to be done. These verses get picked up actually in the New Testament by the gospel writers as they are talking about the person John the Baptist, which we're going to get to, actually in a few minutes. But I think what's amazing to me about this is that he's speaking to people who are in exile, who are in the midst of deep mess, and he tells them that it isn't just the work of God. It is that. But isn't just the work of God that the people of God are supposed to.
It's not just his work. And the people of God are supposed to sit back and go, cool, thanks, God, for doing that. That's awesome. Thanks for doing that. I'm going to be on my Chase Lounge watching the super bowl, and you do your thing.
And I'm just going to hang out and chill while you do your thing. And I'm just going to sit back. But actually, what God is saying that, yes, there's this beautiful day in the future that we are all hoping for, but I'M asking you not just to hope for it, but I want you to hope in it. I want you to be a participant. I want you to live differently in light of it.
It's an invitation by God with a peaceful people of God who are in the midst of the mess, to be active participants as they await the fulfillment of their hope. The people are given a call to be about the work of helping to clear a pathway through the wilderness, to make paths straight, to make a straight highway, to fill in valleys, to level mountains and hills, to strengthen, to straighten the curve and smooth out the rough places. In other words, what's interesting is that all these pictures are things that the people of God are to do as they await the fulfillment of their hope. As they sit in that time between the mess and the miracle, they are called to these things. And what's interesting is that almost all of these things, and I like to make a piece of all of them, are about getting rid of the hinges, the difficulties, the things that get in the way of things moving freely and openly and evenly and equitably among God's people.
That it's about leveling the playing field in so many different ways. This is why, actually, I think this is what he's calling them to, is just as seeking wholeness, making kinds of work in the midst of the moments that they're in their mess, waiting for their miracle, that if they wake up, the fulfillment of that which we hope for, that we're supposed to work toward. And the word is not in this actual passage, but it's an image that is used throughout the Old Testament all the time of what they look like when the sad days are no more and the things that the people of God are supposed to work towards, which is the word shalom. Shalom is always translated. It's always translated as peace in your Bibles, which is a good translation, really.
I mean, it's a good. The right translation for it, but it's a piece that it's really more nuanced, deeper really in many ways than what most of us think of peace. Because the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, contains so much more than simply a lack of conflict. It's not just that two sides are no longer fighting with one another, but instead it brings about the ideas of fullness and wholeness and completeness and justice in the midst of that peace. It's a peace that's born out of when everything is the way it spoke to be in the world, you know, those few fleeting moments you've experienced before where you just kind of sit back and go like, this is.
This is the way it's supposed to be. And there are full moments, there's a wholeness of those moments, there's a completeness of those moments. That's the type of peace that he's talking, that the Old Testament constantly is calling the people of God to. And that I believe God is saying here that we're supposed to be a people that clear ways through wilderness and make straight highways and fill in valleys and level mountains and straight curves and smooth out the ruffling, that we're supposed to be about that same kind of justice seeking and wholeness making and shalom making work in the world while we wait for God to bring about the miracle in our midst. And as the people of God engage in this shalom making work of justice in the world while they wait for God to move the rest of the way and bring about the miracle, God continues then to say, then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken. Did you catch it here? That it's actually going to be through the justice works, through the shalom making, works through the peacemaking work, through the straightening of the highways and the making, the leveling of the mountains and the building up of the valleys and the strengthening of the turns, that it's through that work. He says then, or because of, or because of these things, that is how the glory of the Lord will be revealed, that because of those things happening, people will see the wholeness and the shalom and the peace, that the glory of the Lord will then be revealed through that. And seen by all people that these things, this justice making stuff, this shalom making, this wholeness making ministry, this way of working so that we kind of leveling out the plaintiff and making a path for the Lord to move in power actually becomes the greatest evangelistic tool at our disposal.
Because it becomes a living demonstration of what God's presence at work among his people actually looks like.
As I noted earlier, Isaiah chapter 40 is a passage that gets picked up in the New Testament by the Gospel writers and attributed to the person of John the Baptist. It's attributed to and directed towards the ministry of the person of John the Baptist. And in Mark, chapter one, the Gospel of Mark begins with these words. It says, this is the good news about Jesus, the prophet of the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah said, look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you and you will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the Wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord's coming. Clear the road for him. And they said this messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they have repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. This is going to be a strange statement to make, but I just want you to go with me on it because I'm going to try to try to make you believe what I believe at the end of this week.
But here's what I say. I think John the Baptist is one of the most hope filled people in the entirety of the New Testament. In many ways, I think he's the picture of what it looks like would be someone that hopes in the Lord, not just hopes for a better day sometimes in the future, but actually live differently in light of that hope that he is given. And I say that not because John's story is really all like sunshine, unicorns and lollipops. It's not a picture of the most hopeful thing on the surface, to be completely honest.
John's life, he lives his entire life dirt poor, living almost his entire adult life out in the wilderness. Which is not like he's hanging out in the woods, hunting deer in the wilderness. This is him. He's in the middle of the hot sun of the desert without a tree in sight, just being beat on by the sun day after day after day after day. He eats locusts and honey, most likely not because they were the most appetizing thing that he could find around, but they were probably the thing that he could afford and find to be able to survive. He wears itchy camel's hair for clothing. Again, not probably because he woke up that morning and was like, you know what I want to wear for the rest of my life? As the itchiest purr I could possibly find, but probably because that's what he could get his hands on. And beggars can't be choosers when it comes to what you're wearing. He has no cultural, no political, no economic power to speak of to the religious leaders he's seen as a threat. He ends up being arrested by the Romans because he deemed and seemed to be an agitator. He's messing things up, he's agitated, so let's throw him in prison where he can't agitate things. And then finally, the end of this story, the glorious, beautiful end of the story is that he is beheaded while in prison as a gift to a girl because she danced real good at a party.
That's literally the end of the story. She danced for life. And the guy asked her, what do you want for, you know, the thank you for dancing all night. And she goes, I'll take the head of John the Baptist on the platter. And that's the end of the story.
Hopeful, right? The picture of hope, right? It's not. It's not the picture of what a hopeful life or hopeful end looks like. I doubt there's a person here that sits there and goes, you know what?
Give me the John the Baptist treatment, God, I'll take that. That's what I want out of my life. And yet, in all those circumstances, John still lives and preaches and ministers out of an immense hope. He still speaks in the midst of the circumstances to a day coming in the future when all things are going to be made new. Even though everything around him is old and messed up and not ran.
He still points to a future where God will ultimately reign. Even though his life is literally being directed by all sorts of other people who seem to be reigning over him. He still points to a hope in a day when sin, evil will finally be vanquished. Even though he is the recipient of so much sin and evil in the world. He still points people to Jesus and prepares the way of the Lord even though he finds himself in the midst of those deep valleys more than almost anyone else.
You see, it is this hope that I think leads him to live as a minister out of the reality of what his hope actually is in instead of what his current circumstances are. And that's the real differences between are we hoping for this pie in the sky future or are we hoping in something? You see, John believed that hope really truly was dawning. And because of that he got to work preparing the way of the Lord. True hope, gritty, down to earth hope, hope that meets us in the midst of the mess calls us to work toward that which we have put our hope in while we sit in that space between the mess and the mirror.
Even though the world around us and the reality of many of our situations may look very different than the picture of hope that is found in Jesus Christ and will ultimately be realized in Jesus Christ. We get the opportunity to engage now in the midst of the message in God's kingdom, revealing and justice working vision of the future out of our hopes in who God is and what he has done through Jesus death and his resurrection.
This week, it's not the easiest week at the Remsch family. I'm not going to get into specifics or details or anything, but just Suffice it to say that the week has been a week that has led me to personally know in many ways what it means to find yourself in a space between messes and miracles. In all honesty, I didn't start out this week with a great attitude of wanting to live with a great hope in something. I wasn't really a John the Baptist. Let's go continue to do this whole thing.
In fact, I spend more time than I want to admit this week sulking a little bit, dodging phone calls. My old person does that. Sometimes when you get down, you're like, I probably need to talk to that person. I don't want to talk to that person. You know, dodging text messages, right?
Like someone not returning a text. With someone texting, they're like, that's why the person I need to text back. I don't want to talk to them. All right, they're going to tell me the thing I probably need to hear but don't want to hear. So that's not going to return the text.
Feeling discouraged and on Wednesday morning, I came back to the prophet Isaiah again. Read Isaiah chapter 40 yet again. And the words of the prophet Isaiah to the people of his day very clearly became the words of the Lord for me as well as I will remind us the comfort of God's promises and also the call to be about God's kingdom, work in the world as a way of living out faith in our hope in the world, in the world. Sorry, it's no secret. I shared earlier that our congregation as a whole is going through a time of hurt, of pain, of disease, of struggle, of difficulty.
It's rampant. The mess is extremely real for many of us. And the reality of the difficulties of in between times, like, it's a little too close to home for a lot of us. It's like, oh, I don't want to talk about this, Pastor. Leave the hospital probably is why I gave like the sermon description in an email this week.
Shouldn't have done that. I think that's why maybe you people are like, yeah, probably not going to church. I don't really do Psalm 23 next week or something, make it a little easier on everybody. But. And in these moments, can we just be honest that it's really easy to get discouraged.
It's really easy to feel like everything, excuse the phrase, it's gone to hell in a handbasket. We're not really sure what to do. And it can be tempting, maybe more than tempting, to sulk a little bit, to move away from community instead of toward it to develop maybe a little bit of woe is me or woe is our situation mentality diverse for everybody else. But I think it's in those hard moments that we also get a decision that's put before us. I didn't do well the first couple days figuring out what the answer to that decision was going to be, but we got a decision.
Are we going to live in light of the current circumstance, or are we going to live out of our hope in the Lord and get to work preparing the way of the Lord in our world? So the question then becomes, how do we do that? How do you live out of our hope in the Lord and prepare for the way of the Lord today? Especially when we find ourselves in those in between times, between the mess and the miracle. Let me just offer you these are not the end all be all type of suggestions at all.
But let me just offer you maybe a couple of tangible actions, a spiritual formational practice maybe to pick up and to engage with, and a prayer prompt to pray even this morning and ask for God to make his way known to us and make his will known to us. So first of all, the tangible action, I think we can all ask the question how we can commit to shalom, work, justice, work, wholeness, work within our spheres of influence. How can we make a mountain just a little bit lower? How can we raise the valley just a little bit up? How can we straighten the road just a little bit for someone else and help to make the way of the Lord that much easier through that work.
There's a bunch of different organizations locally that you can serve with a way of doing this. The Frederick Rescue Mission is one Christmas Alive Garb tuning house in Frederick. There's a whole bunch of different groups that really at the heart what they do is they seek to make the mountains low, build the valleys up, straighten the pathway and make a highway for the Lord to be able to work among the people in this area. And there's multiple ways to get involved and with people that are already doing this work and doing great jobs to add. I think in addition to that, we also can find ways to give to others in their need at this time of year.
Especially, especially if you're one who has maybe a little bit excess yourself at this time of year. I know whatever it feels like when we have excess, but a lot of us have excess if we were to be objectively honest about where our situation in the world versus where maybe some others find this place so that we can give to others in Their need. Christmas Alive is a great way to do that. And there's still some families that need to be adopted. That's a fantastic way to do that.
If you're like, I can't do the distribution on the 14th, but I'm happy to help with it, or I can't make contacts, because if you're like, our family, we've got like eight concerts in four days this week or something like that that's going on. Can't get to the grocery store, up the items to go do this. I'd like you to be a part of it. Like, we can get creative. We can partner with someone else.
You've got the money, someone else has got the time. If you got the time, someone else probably have the money. All right. We can make this work and figure out a way to bless others and give to others in their need as a way of tangibly living into our hope in the Lord and to make straighter pathways for the Lord to move forward. I think in addition to those tangible steps, I think that there may be some formational practices, some habits that we can adopt that are going to help us, that might reinforce to us our hope that we have and what the end point of this whole Christian story is all about.
Because the end point is that one day that hope will be realized. One day the sad days are all gone. One day every tear will be wiped away and disease will be gone, and all the hurts will be gone and all the issues will be gone, and everything will be made whole again. Shalom again. And I think one of the ways that we can do that is start just the daily, simple formational practice of reading scripture on a daily basis.
I don't know if you realize this, but this time of year is like, if you're looking for a study or a reading plan to get into. This is like the. Like this is like the super bowl time of year. To be able to do that, like the lead up to Christmas, this time period, like, everybody's got a reading plan that they're trying to. Trying to offer out.
Everybody's got something to be able to help us to engage with the story of Christmas. Why not just start? There doesn't have to be that you read five chapters or 12 chapters or anything. Indeed. It can simply be that you read the verse of the day on the Bible app every day.
Start small. The point is not about whether we're starting in the middle of something or that we, you know, it's the. If the aids already. I missed the first seven days of the adhesive meeting program. The point is not about where you could check the marks off.
The point is about let's get started immersing ourselves, being in the story and being formed by. And then. And maybe most importantly, I think we need to pray. It seems so simple, and yet it's so easy to overlook it. To pray and to ask God to show us, how can we be about your kingdom revealing and justice making work in the world?
How can we go about doing that in a tangible way in our lives this week? Even. Even in the midst of our busyness or in the midst of our own needs, how can we be about that in a little way? It's amazing. When you ask the question of God and give some space for him to answer and attune yourself and open yourself up to.
To have. Maybe your first response be to say yes to the Lord instead of saying no is he'll show himself. He'll give brick opportunities. Doors will start to open, Conversations will start to take place. Things will open up, and they might be just different for you than it is for the person next to you than the person that's across the pew for you.
And so as our worship team starts to make their way back up here into the front, I figured that this morning maybe we just make space to do just that. Like, what if we just took some time this morning and we just prayed, but not prayed with our laundry list of guys, and here's what I need you to do. But what if we did the listening type of prayer where we just asked a question and this is crazy, but then we just listen?
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that when God listens to my pray, there's a couple times he just wants to go, be quiet. Shh, shh, shh. I'd like to say something, too. You just keep talking. Like, you don't let me get a word in any lives.
You just keep. You got stuff to say, that's great. I want to hear from you, but, like, I want to say something. I want to speak into your life. I've got something I want you to do.
Why don't we just create a space to listen to the Lord and hear what he has to say for us this morning?
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Posted in advent, restoration church, frederick, frederick maryland, hope, difficulty, hope in action, restoration frederick
Posted in advent, restoration church, frederick, frederick maryland, hope, difficulty, hope in action, restoration frederick