The Advent Kingdom - Prophecies for the Journey Home

Preached on Sunday, December 3, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 44:6-23; Revelation 14:13-15:4

A seminary student was taking a class on the Book of Revelation. He had a paper to write on the judgement. He was wrestling with all the images of monsters, and dragons, and plagues, and fires.

It was due soon. He spent one whole weekend on it, and Sunday night he phoned home. His dad answered, and asked his son how things were going.

Driving and walking around Priest Rapids Lake,
Columbia River, With Friend,
November 2017

The son confessed, “Dad, I’m having an awful time with the wrath of God.” There was a pause on the other side, and his dad said: “Don’t we all?”

Over the Sundays of Advent, we are going to take a look at the Old Testament Book of Isaiah and the New Testament Book of Revelation. They are both books that we call prophecy. They both have horrific descriptions of wrath and judgement. They both have wonderful descriptions of love and hope.

Prophecy has two main elements. We call the most obvious element “foretelling”. Foretelling is about time and the future. Its message is that God has a plan, and that God’s side will win. This is very important for our faith and hope.

The other element of prophecy is even more important for our life with God. We can call that element “forth-telling”. In forth-telling, God speaks forth his mind about the issues of the world, and his concerns about his people, and how they are to go on living by faith, hope, and love in such a world as this. What about their need to change and grow? What grace, and power, and faith do they need from God?

Some people compare the Bible to a map. It’s true that the Bible is a kind of map of history of the world under the rule of God; past, present, and future. That’s foretelling. That’s the future.

But the Bible is also a map of our pilgrimage in life with God. It’s a map showing how we left home, and how God takes us home again. That’s forth-telling: What do we need to give to God? What do we need to receive from God?

The map of our pilgrimage also shows how this journey will test us in order to change our hearts, and minds, and souls by the way we live with God, and by the way we live with others in this world. It guides us how to shape our lives by faith, and hope, and love. The map shows us the crossroads where we must decide how to live and how to commit ourselves.

Both of the passages we’ve read from Isaiah and Revelation present us with a crucial test of where our hearts are truly focused. Each test requires a commitment, in a world that tries to squeeze us into its mold: a commitment to stand out, and in some ways a commitment to stand apart, in our priorities, and in the whole direction of our lives.

Paul addresses this in Romans. He writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove (or test) what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

When we are faithful, when we meet the test, when we take the good road, when we overcome; then we test and prove and show that God is right. We show that God’s way of love and compassion are right. We show that God’s design for our relationships with him, and with others, and with the world is the design that achieves God’s greatest goals for us. God’s design makes us what he created us, and saved us, to be, through the cross.

This is designed to show how beautiful the goodness and love of God are. This glorifies God.

There is fear in this. But Biblical fear is made of wonder, and out of tender and courageous love. The song of those who overcome says this: “Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name?” (Revelation 15:4)

Isaiah also has a song that creation will sing about us when we overcome this world: “Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, he displays his glory in Israel.” (Isaiah 44:23) This applies to all God’s people: to you, and me, and everyone who hears and follows.

It’s a question of what we will value, what we will hold onto, what we will choose, and what we will pass on to others. It’s the question of a choice between faithfulness and idolatry.

Idolatry may lead us to think of statues and paintings that are worshiped as sources of spiritual and divine power: statues and pictures of beings, or such, that have names and stories told about them. Their names and the stories told about what they could control, and about what they could do for you, in order to give you what you wanted.

Idols were not usually considered to be actual gods. Idols are only representations of gods; but you can (so they claim) make the representation into a real connection. The claim is that you can make that connection work for you. Whatever power these images connected with claimed to be the power that were in charge of things you needed for success.

The ocean for a successful voyage, the soil and the rain and the seeds to successfully grow good harvests. These were all so-called gods. Gold had its god. The sun had its god. The cupboards in your house had a god. And so did your doors: the door god guarded who might come in or not. It’s why a groom carries his bride over the threshold.

If you worked these connections properly, then you were in charge. You became responsible for seeing to the success of your family, your community, your tribe and nation. When you served your idols well, you were serving your own interests and benefits. That was what we call the pagan world.

The strange thing is that, even in America today, we have a religion that teaches you to serve your own interests and benefits, and not care so much about others, or about the world around us. The church might not teach this, but the world of business does, and certainly the world of politics does. People of power, people of success set this example, even if they don’t say it in words.

The Bible shows us that God’s own people make God into an idol by making him smaller than he is. In the Old Testament, this often involved making a picture or a statue of God (for instance, in the shape of a studly calf) and saying that this is what God is about.

God’s people, in the Old Testament, usually only turned away from God by making him smaller and so making room for their own interests and benefits. The Temple in Jerusalem was the house of the God of Israel, but often, when the people and the kings were not faithful, they made all kinds of extra rooms, around the main building, that had other gods in them.

Sometimes it was worse than that, but God’s people excused themselves by saying: “We’re still giving God the sacrifices he listed for us in his law.”

They did this, but they didn’t give God their whole heart. They thought that if they offered what the law required that they simply had a bigger crowd of spiritual powers at their back. Just like them, we want our success to come from many different directions, and techniques, and disciplines.

In Revelation, there is a major idol that is called many things: the beast, the multiple beasts, Babylon the Great, the Great Harlot. They’re all a part of the same thing. They all serve the dragon. They all serve the devil. Like every idol, they want worship, and they want to be our god.

They are very tricky. They pretend to be at our service. They promise to serve our interests. They promise that we will receive the benefits.

We see this in the Garden of Eden. The serpent didn’t ask for worship, but he asked for attention, he asked for Eve and Adam to trust him, to have faith in him. He promised them that he could lead them to success. He promised that success would come to them if they moved into God’s territory, in order to be like God. What would make them most like God was knowledge: knowledge of good and evil: and that really meant the knowledge and understanding of everything under the sun.

By being attracted to knowledge, they followed their new idol, and they also made God’s claim upon them smaller in their hearts.

They chose to forget that they were made by God. They belonged to God. God provided them with everything they needed, and with the knowledge of the world around them which they needed if they were going to join God in taking care of the world. God’s design was for them to be God’s partners, and that is why God made them in his image. This was love. But, they didn’t seek the love they needed to be partners. They sought the knowledge they needed for independence.

God made them in his image, so that they had something in common, and they could be in relationship with God himself. They experienced the love of God, and they were discovering how to love God and each other. This was so important because they were learning that God is love.

But they were tempted, by their self-interests and self-benefits, to make God smaller. They made God into the image of knowledge instead of the everlasting fountain of all love.

The place we have read from Revelation is an odd place between the Beast of the number 666, and the Great Harlot, which are both the power of Babylon.

Babylon is the world we know so well. It’s the world that worships the power of self-serving.

In Revelation it’s a system that rules the world. It rules business, and trade, and food, and clothing, and money, and property, and survival. This power has always been at work. It was at work long ago in the tower of Babel. It is at work now. It is the cause of most of the news.

This power has had its ups and downs. It will certainly get worse.

Isaiah gives us the secret of overcoming this tribulation in the world. The Lord says: “You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one…. All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless…. Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, you are my servant; O Israel, I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.” (Isaiah 44:8,9,21,22)

When the Lord talks to the people of Israel about idols, he tells us why he hates idols. He doesn’t hate them because they are beings other than him who have names, and personalities and interests. The Lord hates idols because they are nothing. They are a lie. (Isaiah 44:20)

God’s reasoning is that when you worship what’s false, you make yourself false. If you serve interests that won’t make you what you are created and redeemed to be, then you won’t be anything.

God is life. If you focus somewhere else, you go outside of life, at least you go outside as far as you can. I’ve known people who ruined themselves by devoting themselves to things outside the love of God. I hated that. You do too, and so does God.

When you harvest wheat, you can separate it from everything else and it still has life in itself. A grain of wheat contains a new life ready to grow and thrive. The grains of wheat have a future because, at least, you can plant them for another harvest.

When you harvest grapes in a world without refrigeration, they really aren’t good for anything unless you crush them. Winepresses became symbols of judgment because grapes were only good for stomping on. And then it has no power to come to life again.

Don’t try pressing this too far!

So, Revelation has a wheat harvest and a grape harvest, but they’re really the same harvest. They are like the harvest of the wheat and the weeds that Jesus tells a story about. (Matthew 13:24-30) The wheat has life and the power to overcome. The grapes have no more power or life within them.

The Book of Revelation is very interested in forth-telling, or telling forth, the way to make the journey home. It’s by remembering who God is; not making God smaller than he is; not by scattering the life in you by attaching yourself to things and to power, and influence, and success. These are empty things and they will empty your heart and your soul.

The Beast and Babylon are always around. Even now, in order to overcome, we have to remember who God is, and what that Beast and Babylon are (idols which will only grow bigger, and bigger, and more threatening, and more persuasive).

Sometimes we may suffer because we don’t choose what the world chooses. In some times and places, God’s people have had to give their lives in order to stay free for God and overcome the world.

John tells forth our need, however small or hard it seems. He says: “This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

If the choice is very hard, the voice of God says this: “Write! Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes, says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.” (Revelation 14:13,14)

In the Bible, rest is the ability to put yourself in God’s hands and enjoy everything.

Your deeds following you means that what you do, in faithfulness, lasts forever, and what you do may even become part of your eternal purpose as God created you to be, in love. The service you give will be gifts that keep on giving.

This is life, and this is you, when you remember, and choose, and endure.

We use the season of Advent to remember what it means to be ready for the coming of God in his Son Jesus. Jesus came long ago in Bethlehem and he truly changed the world by changing those who received him. His birth, his life, his word, his sacrifice on the cross, and his rising from the dead changed people so that they could make the choices they needed to make to be prepared for life with God, life in God’s kingdom.

If you will, it shapes us into the spirit of Christmas. It also shapes us for heaven, and for the coming return of Jesus, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will fit that new creation. We will fit it and thrive forever, because it will be a new creation made for those who have overcome and found the way to life, through Jesus.