For Unto US a Savior is Born!

Text: Isaiah 64:1-10

Focus: Our need for The Savior

Function: The gospel message.

Form: Storytelling

Intro:

I love the Messiah by Handel. The way God inspired Handel to weave together all those voices in different parts into such a beautiful harmony with, at 2:26 seconds into it, every thing stops very briefly for the trumpet. And then, in the last chord, if you are singing bass, you get to match the sopranos with this really deep bass note. But right before that, one preacher friend of mine describes it as “the pregnant pause” at the end of the Hallelujah chorus, where for one beat; everyone is silent and then the climax at the end. It is beautiful. The Hallelujah chorus is the most popular piece of the Messiah, but I also love the song, “For Unto Us a Child is Born.” It is a song describing the mystery of God’s plan to come to earth as a baby.

Today, we are going to look at that plan, but I want to change the title of the song that describes the mystery and say: (SHOW) “For unto US a Savior is born.”

Keeping with the theme of music, the scripture this morning is actually a song written by Isaiah. God inspired him to write these words and they are exactly what God intended to be written. But the inspiration of the Scripture is not some sort of automatic writing. The author’s personality, his human condition is also expressed in a genuine way through the writings of the scriptures.

Isaiah is writing this as he is asking God a question. He seems desperate for some help and some wisdom about the future. He is wrestling with his own theology, his own understanding of God. God answers him.

So, he begins this part of the song which actually starts in chapter 63 with a suggestion for God as a possible means to increase God’s popularity.

Imagine that: “God I got an idea for you!”

God’s people have turned their back on God. Isaiah figures that if God just “shows up” then they will believe and repent

He suggests that God demonstrates His power in an awesome way: Fire, Earthquake, Thunder. He wants God to “prove Himself.”

As if!

He doesn’t get an answer from God so: He comes to the conclusion that God will only show up on behalf of good people.

(SHOW) Does God only prove Himself on behalf of good people?

There is a problem with his theology at this point. The people need hope and they figure that God is too angry with them to give aid.

Here is the scripture from the text: (SHOW) “You meet those who happily do what is right, who keep a good memory of the way you work.”

The implication is that God ONLY meets…

This theology is a big part of the book of Job. Job’s friends believed that God couldn’t be “just being God” and allowing this to happen to Job. They have these rules, this set of regulations that God must follow. In that set of rules, only the wicked get punished and only the good are fortunate and prosper.

They have convinced themselves that the spectacular destruction of Job was divine intervention given to prove that he was evil.

So, almost the whole book is them explaining this to Job with the intention of wrestling a confession out of him.

(SHOW) By faith, we believe that the Good (God) will ultimately triumph over evil.

So, to these friends, their conclusions about God seem to make sense. It seems to be fair. People need that to be true to feel secure.

But we also know that the rain and the sun fall on both evil and good people.

And in the song, Isaiah comes around to a more accurate conclusion about God.

(SHOW) But how angry you've been with us! We've sinned and kept at it so long! Is there any hope for us? Can we be saved? We're all sin-infected, sin-contaminated. Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.

This passage is repeated several times in the New Testament.

So, Isaiah concludes that the problem must be that there is not a single righteous person in Jerusalem.

He says, every one of us has gone astray, all of us have sinned.

But then, it seems as if his understanding gets bigger.

He begins to think about the terrible power of God expressed in the first few verses and he comes to an important conclusion: Every one actually is a sinner. All have sinned. Even good people, compared to God’s perfection, even their best deeds and most noble accomplishments pale in contradiction to God’s purity.

In theology we say, it isn’t that God doesn’t want sinners in His presence, but His majesty is so great, sin must flee away.

Job finally experiences this. He is innocent of what his friends have accused him of. But when God finally does answer him, and HE sees God’s glory, he, the innocent man, says that compared to God, he is but a worm.

So here we are: People who are in trouble. And the prophet, God’s messenger is thinking to himself, if only God would pull off one of His mighty stunts to demonstrate His glorious power, things would be set to right.

The prophet thinks that if God does something fantastic, people will be awestruck, repent, and the nation will be saved.

But then he realizes that he too, even though he is the prophet of the only True God is a man full of sin. He points the finger back at himself.

His theology isn’t like Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

(SHOW) Isaiah never sees God as merely an angry dictator of the celestial highways.

He knows who God really is. He knows that God is the God of mercy and that His mercy always wins out over His judgment.

He knows that He is the kind of God that people can serve and love.

No. Isaiah 55, one of my most favorite passages, (SHOW) “1-2 "Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway—buy and eat! Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money—everything's free!

He has this image of God, opening up His hands and giving it all away.

It’s a Christmas image.

So, Isaiah wants God to show up in a mighty powerful way and save His people.

But he realizes that it isn’t going to happen that way. He is aware of his sin and the sin of his fellow countrymen.

And so, (SHOW) he asks God this question: Can anyone be saved?

Now, let us flash forward 530 or so years to the nativity.

The people of Israel are still holding on to these promises God made through the prophet Isaiah.

And the prophet Daniel comes along 25 to 30 or so years after Isaiah and God also gives him a message and it is very specific. He tells them that in 483 years, God will indeed come again and establish His kingdom.

The Jewish people are holding on to this prophecy and it is fulfilled one lonely night, on a hillside, in a cattle barn, in a little village, with two simple people, a few poor shepherds and a whole chorus of angels.

Remember Isaiah desiring that God would show up with fantastic, majestic, glorious power to prove Himself to people who had abandoned faith in Him?

There are no flashes of lightning, no peals of thunder, no earthquakes or violent winds.

This is a glorious event though, the only time it has ever been reported and probably the only time it has ever occurred in the history of humanity. The Angels make a chorus and they proclaim Jesus birth.

But the fanfare, the “wow stuff” that God did when He brought the nation Israel out of Egypt is missing from the nativity.

Isaiah’s desire for a powerful show is missing from the nativity.

God does come to humanity. But instead of coming in that kind of power and might, He chooses to come as a baby in a manger.

Isaiah loves God and is His witness to a people who have forgotten to worship God anymore.

But Isaiah’s plan for God to reveal Himself in awesome power doesn’t come to pass.

Even at the actual coming of the Savior, the whole event is clouded in relative obscurity.

(SHOW) The only ones who witnessed the “wow stuff” that God can do are a few shepherds, and Joseph and Mary.

Why the contrast? We know from prophecy that Jesus is coming again. We know that then He will flash across the whole earth in a moment and that every eye will see Him.

We know that when that happens, the last trumpet of God will sound out. Everyone will hear it. God is going to do it.

His second coming will be like the one Isaiah hoped the first coming would be.

Why the contrast? Why a baby? Why not show off His awesome might?

Look at the text, I think we see why here (SHOW): ^8-9Still, God, you are our Father. We're the clay and you're our potter: All of us are what you made us. Don't be too angry with us, O God. Don't keep a permanent account of wrongdoing. Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us.

God, you are our Father. And, since He is the potter and we are the clay, He is sovereign.

All the way through this poem, the prophet under divine revelation from God pleads the case of humanity’s brokenness.

And He suggests how God could prove Himself.

God hears his prayer, but God answers in a much better way.

(SHOW) God does come. God does show up. But God doesn’t show off.

It is a momentous event. I have a friend who converted from being a minister in the Jehovah Witness’s church to receive Jesus as God, the Savior.

I am not going to bash Jehovah Witnesses here. As a Jehovah Witness, he was a good man. He was well disciplined, hard working and sincere about his faith.

He was like the people that Isaiah first talks about, when Isaiah said, “God only comes to good people.”

There are a lot of ways that Christianity has been mixed with something different than the gospel.

Most of those ways involve a religious system where humanity has to earn their salvation by their own works instead of the mercy of God.

So, upon the leaving of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses and joining the Beech Grove Church of the Brethren, he got to celebrate Christmas for the first time.

At first, he struggled with it because he had been told that it was merely a mutation of the pagan festival of winter solstice and it had its origins in witchcraft. He said: “It isn’t commanded anywhere in the bible.”

Technically he’s right. But, (SHOW) When Jesus comes on the scene, when Jesus comes into a heart; His promise is to re-create everything. When He saves us, He makes us new.

Jesus was making everything new for him. He was leery at first, and as the one who brought Him to believing in Jesus as God the Savior, I pointed to the nativity. I showed him that this indeed was a celebration worthy of a chorus of Angels. As far as we know, it is the only time God has done that. So, since it isn’t commanded not to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and the first Christmas was heralded by a band of angels, our Christmas celebrations, when focused on Jesus are genuine acts of worship.

And the guy responds by directing our Christmas play. He wept for joy at the meaning of the nativity and God’s plan to come to earth as a baby instead of coming in fearful majesty.

This man went through exactly what Isaiah does in this song. He first believed that God was hard, unsympathetic to human sinfulness and brokenness. His believed that God was indeed an angry God. And this man wept for joy when he understood that grace shown in the nativity.

(SHOW) We need a savior. We cannot save ourselves.

The best of us are nothing compared to God.

Isaiah makes it clear: We need salvation.

We need God to come and save us.

We need our hope restored.

And God didn’t come in terror, but He came as a baby. He didn’t want to scare us away!

That last verse: “God you are our Father” is so well illustrated in the nativity. God’s family is expressed. God’s humility is expressed. God’s mercy is expressed. God’s honor and love for humanity is expressed. God’s ability to understand just how hard it is for us to struggle against sin, disappointment, disease and oppression is proven in the nativity.

Isaiah begs for a Savior. And God gives him just what he begs for.

Only, God does it in a way that proves His mercy, love, compassion and willingness to heal and forgive us.

(SHOW) God remembers us. 500 or so years after Isaiah’s song is written, Christ is born!

And He saved us. Do you trust in Him?