The Dark Before The Dawn | Isaiah 2:1-5

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Beautiful.

Welcome friends. My name’s Alex. I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here at South and this week get the privilege of introducing us to our advent season which will last up until Christmas. We begin our advent journey. Now, if you’re new to following Jesus perhaps new to South.

That, that word may be familiar, unfamiliar to you. And so now I’m gonna do something rather dangerous. I’m going to try and introduce an unfamiliar concept with another unfamiliar concept, which rarely works well, but we’ll see how it goes. This is the church calendar, just like a regular world. Our regular life has seasons.

We move through different cycles. We feel the change in different parts of the year. How many of you know that Friday was different to Saturday, Friday, I was up on the roof putting lights up. The doors were open, the windows were open shorts, birken stocks, all those different things. Saturday the doors were closed, the fire was on, everyone was wrapped up warm, and it’s Colorado, so there was still Birkenstocks, but that’s like a universal thing for us.

That cycle changes. We feel it. It’s important. A, as much as it might be nice to imagine San Diego with perpetual 72, in actual fact, do we really want that? Who wants to spend Christmas in a tropical climate as Kevin McAllister wants wisely told us? There’s some hands all over the place, eh? Appreciate that, but you’re in Denver, so get used to it.

The, just as there’s this cycle here, there’s this cycle that works for the church as well. We move through different seasons. A long time ago, around the fifth century, some very wise people began to put this rhythm together for us so we could feel. The different elements to the story that they might impact us specifically.

I, I love this particular picture ’cause it gives us a little bit more detail. The church calendar begins with advent right now. Today we are in a new year. We begin as we move towards Christmas with this idea. That God is with us. That’s what Emmanuel means. God came to join us, be present with us, live the life that we live and as we move out of that cycle into the new year in the Gregorian calendar, we get to lent an Easter.

We start to focus on this idea that God did things for us. That in Jesus, he came and gave his life, that we now have new life because. Of him, but it gets even better. As we push from Easter to Pentecost, about 50 days later, we get to this idea that not only did God do incredible things for us, he now dwells within us.

You as a follower of Jesus are a different person because of that experience. And then as we move outta that cycling to a period called ordinary time that runs back through to advent, we focus on this idea that now. We get to be the part of the story. God now does things through us. That’s the gift that this cycle offers to us.

Advent is where it all starts, and so if you came expecting Christmas today. You don’t get it today. You can go home, you can decorate trees. You can watch home alone for the sixth or seventh time as Arby doing. You can read a Christmas Carol. You can do all of the things that feel Christmasy there.

But here in this space, it’s not Christmas yet. It’s advent. Now, some people, someone once said, to help us determine the difference between Advent and Christmas, that it looks something like this. Christmas is the presence of God. God is with us. Now, advent isn’t that Advent is the absence of God, not absence in terms of completely gone, but in Advent we get to focus on some questions that looks something like this.

Where is it that you see perhaps personally. In your life, perhaps in a relationship, perhaps in the wider world, where you would say, I would love to see God move into that space, but he’s not there yet. We don’t rush towards Christmas. We yet to spend time right there wondering why God hasn’t filled all of those spaces.

That means. That Advent becomes a very different season here than it might in other places. That you’ve been and we won’t spend the next four weeks talking about the Christmas idea. We’ll spend four weeks waiting for it. We’ll spend four weeks waiting for it. Andrew Williams said that Christmas is the most wonderful that of the year, and yet actually waiting for it brings out something.

Extra, it adds to the concept to make Christmas different. Here’s some things that I’d like to call out that you may already have felt, but maybe this will help you get a greater understanding of it. Some things that will change the service. We’ll change a little bit. Maybe you already felt it this morning.

The first two songs were advent like songs. They were a little bit heavier Come Divine Messiah, come. They were songs of longing that God would move into this world, that we would see that kind of transformation. And then somewhere around. The halfway point we began to turn the corner, I hope, is that every week in Advent you get the whole of that.

Advent Christmas season that you come at the start and get advent, and then as we turn the corner halfway through the worship, you start to feel the beauty of Christmas offered to you. So as we think through what the service looks like, hopefully you catch that. We also do sermons a different way. We use something called the Lectionary.

It’s a document that wa walks through scripture over a three year cycle. That means that the passages that you get to hear today that we get to look at together are being studied by around a million churches all over the world. It’s a different kind of feel. We’re not just pulling them out, selecting them.

We’re entering into them with a whole bunch of other people, which leads to my favorite part of Advent. I don’t get to be in control. I don’t get to pick what we look at now, if it was up to me, I’m fairly positive in this kind of like kitschy kind of way. I like Upbeatness. I generally hold that demeanor wherever I am.

If it was up to me, South would be on this never ending upward trajectory. Everything would be happy and joyful all the time, but that isn’t the world that we live in. Advent pushes us into this space that’s a little bit more contemplative, a little, I’m gonna say this carefully, darker, a little bit more full of those difficult questions.

In Advent, we don’t just stay jolly, we actually enter into that space on purpose. Why is that important? I’ll tell you why. For some people, Christmas is an easy experience. We get there and it’s brilliant, but that’s not everyone’s experience. Some years ago I was working at a church in New York and it got to the Christmas season and suddenly I started fielding all of these really unusual calls.

People would call me with some of the most sort of bizarre statements. Production direct director called the day before Christmas and said, I’m leaving the church. And I said, tell me more. I wanted to hold an openness to the conversation. And he’d fallen out with the worship pastor, and so he said, I’m done.

I’m just off. I was new to pastoring, so I immediately picked up the phone and called a friend who knew much more than I did, and he said, oh, that makes total sense to me. Christmas is what he called a force multiplier. If you’ve had an amazing year, perhaps life is good. Maybe you got a promotion, maybe you had a baby, grand baby, something like that.

Some kind of gift. Maybe life just feels like it’s in a really good place. Christmas comes along and it makes it even better. But if this year has been hard, if you’re in a difficult space, if there’s been a loss, if the struggle, pain or Christmas can come along and it can make it harder. When we sit in the space of advent, we get to embrace the fact that sometimes life doesn’t appear.

What it as we want it to Christmas becomes this force multiplayer that they can actually make it hard. So in Advent, we actually take time and ask some of those more difficult questions. And today I want to give you just one. And it looks like this. Where do you need the light? Of Christ this season.

I’m gonna delve too much into it now. We’ll get back to it later. Just hold it for a moment. See if there’s anything that jumps out to you. Give some space for it. But that’s where I want us to land. Where do you need the light of Christ this season? What part of your life or the world around you do you say, oh my goodness, if only God would move into that?

Space. Advent said Fleming, Rutledge years ago begins in the dark. It begins in that space where we say, man, maybe this world isn’t what it should be. In case you missed it, filling in the blanks. I’m gonna turn it into a statement so you can catch it. Advent, it begins in the dark. Every year I drive with my family up to Northern Minnesota.

We go fishing. I’ve talked to you about that before. I drive about 2000 miles during that time of the year. It’s about a thousand miles, 1100 miles there. And we drive that together. And then coming back, I drive it alone. I drop them off at the airport and I do the rest of the 14 hours by myself. So four hours to the airport, sorry, 14 hours all the way home.

Every year it means that I drive through Nebraska. Now I think Nebraska gets a harsh deal. It is not the easiest state to drive through. And I know some of you, you’re Nebraska rights, and so you’re already feeling some of the tension about the things people say about your state. It’s boring. It’s all these different things.

I actually think the real villain of the story is Eastern Colorado. You get a lot. It feels like a different state, to be honest. I’m like, it’s not. It’s not Colorado. Colorado’s the mountain part. Eastern Colorado’s this part where you get out there and there’s just. Nothing around you, and every year I come back, I usually get about 16 hours into this journey, 15 hours into this journey.

I say, I’m gonna stop somewhere in Nebraska. I’m gonna grab a hotel somewhere around Grand Island. I’m gonna refresh for a few hours. Then I get back in the car and I’ll do the rest of the journey. But this year I got to somewhere towards the end of Nebraska, wherever that might be and I started to think, I actually feel pretty good.

I’m just gonna carry on. I’m gonna get home tonight. Surprise everybody, all the people that flew home and had a nice, easy journey. And so I carried on driving. It was about 11:00 PM went across the border from Nebraska into Eastern Colorado. And suddenly everywhere looks like this. It’s just dark. My imagination starts to work over time.

I start to imagine all of the things that might be out there somewhere. Start to wonder what happens if you break down in Eastern Colorado? How long does it take for a tow truck to get to you? Do you sit in your car and hope that no one crashes into you? Do you stand in a field and hope that whatever’s out there doesn’t find you start to think, if this was a decent sort of place, there’d be light, or at least a rest stop.

And the words of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings come back to me. We aren’t in decent places in Eastern Colorado. Finally. As I start to get towards home, my physical exhaustion doesn’t even compare to the mental exhaustion of this journey. I actually just long for the light of home. As human beings, we actually struggle with darkness.

We enjoy darkness When it’s controlled by light. We can stand and look at the sky and appreciate the stars. We can sit outside in the dark around a campfire, but it’s actually the light. The small parts flex of light in those stories that compel us. We don’t like darkness, and yet if you’ve experienced part of life that suggests that God might be absent, maybe a struggle with a relationship, maybe a struggle personally, maybe a struggle.

With the way that the world looks, you’re not a lone. Two thirds of Christians experience doubt this kind of spiritual darkness. One third of Christians lied on this survey,

over 50%. Said, working through doubt made their faith stronger. I think 28%, if I remember rightly, said it stayed the same. Only 12% said they may help them lose their faith. For the most part, doubt has been a positive experience on the other side, and 80% of people long to see the world change. If you look at the world and say there’s parts of it that seem like God is missing.

You are not alone in that at all. And that means, while advent is also about dark, it’s also about waiting. When we acknowledge where light is needed, advent becomes a waiting season. We can’t rush it. Can’t move it along quicker. We wait and long for God to move into the spaces that right now seem like darkness.

Dick Bonhoeffer in his commentary on Advent said, waiting is an art that our impatient age is forgotten. This was in the 1940s, if only you could see today. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it is hardly finished Planting. The shoot, Psalm 130 verse six. One of my favorite parts of scripture says this, I wait for the Lord more than Watchman.

Wait for the morning more than Watchman wait for the morning. Advent is about waiting in the dark. We wait for the dawn to come. That’s what this season is. The passage that we heard in Isaiah has this similar tenor to it. Isaiah writes in the dark. When you first hear the passage that was read, you might question that.

You might ask whether it really is awfully heavy at all. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains. It will be exalted above the hills and all nations will come to it. The passage actually seems to start upbeat, but the context in Isaiah tells a very different story.

It’s a different story when we look behind the scenes. In actual fact, we’re already clued into the fact that there may be a different context. Isaiah begins in the last days. He too is waiting for something to come, waiting for light in the midst of darkness. And this is what chapter one has told us about his days.

Your country, verse seven is desolate. Your city’s burned with fire. Your fields. Fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you laid waste as when overthrown by strangers. Isaiah’s world does not look as he would long for it to look. In actual fact, when we look at the history of Judah and Israel, we see some of this story.

A book called Second Kings provides that history. At the same time, Isaiah is writing. Say to Hezekiah, king of Judah. This is a king called Creb, the king of the Assyrians, the most powerful nation of his day. Do not let the God you depend on deceive you when he says Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries destroying them completely. Will you be delivered? The voice of Creb mirrors a voice that we may hear at times. Will darkness really give way to light? Will this world ever look different to how it looks now? Will I ever be changed?

I don’t know about you, but advent leaves me feeling vulnerable at times. When I take time to look around at what I see in the world, I see places that I long for God to be more visible in. I look at my own life in this places where I would love God to become more visible too. Isaiah seems to agree with that sentiment as we press into this story in their context specifically.

There’s some places it seems they might be at fault for what they’re going through. Verse 15, when you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. God says to them, even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. But as with God, always, there’s an invitation. A promise says the end of Isaiah chapter one, come let us settle.

The matter says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they will be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land, but if you resist and rebel, you’ll be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah one presents this context that seems to present some of the world as it shouldn’t be. Hezekiah actually does what we would hope he would do in this situation. He receives a letter and then he went to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, the God of Israel, and thrown between the Cher, you will alone our God over all the kingdoms of the earth you have made heaven and earth give ear Lord.

And here, open your eyes, Lord, and see, listen to the words. C crib is sent to ridicule the living God. It is true, Lord, the Assyrian kings have laid waste. These nations and their lands, they have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them for they were not Gods only word and stone fashioned by human hands.

Now, Lord are God, deliver us from his hand so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord our God. Move the darkness, bring forth the light. Change what we see in the world around us. Isaiah writes in the dark, he sees the light coming and he waits for it with longing. Many peoples will come and say, he says in verse in, in chapter two, verse three, come let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his path. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Isaiah sees a world one day where God will be king of all. He sees a world where God will rule over everyone with justice. As he goes on into verse four, he says he would judge.

Between the nations will settle disputes. For many people, he pictures justice. A world where no one has to be afraid of another. No nation has to be afraid of another. That’s his image. Something as life changing as that’s not the world that we live in, this is risk. A terrible game to play on Thanksgiving.

It’s a game where only one person can win. The purpose of risk is to wipe everyone out. To defeat all if you sit still and just try to survive. Other nations fight. They become stronger and then eventually they come and they wipe you out too. To quote a famous TV show you win or you die in risk.

That’s how serious the game is. I played with a friend once who is deeply competitive. He got so frustrated with this game, that mid game, he just. Tipped the whole thing over like a small child. It just, it was really quite embarrassing. But this is the world we know. Really, it’s about winning.

It’s about losing, it’s about competition. That’s not what Isaiah pictures. If God is king of all in his mind, there is nothing to fear from anyone else. Each person lives. Under the rule and justice of the guard of the universe, he goes even further in his picture of a different world, his bold picture of a different world.

They will beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they trained for war anymore. You imagine having the confidence to see a world this different. Imagine what it takes to pull this into our context today. This is a nuclear explosion.

Some of you remember from your duck and cover exercises in the fifties. Nuclear weapons dominate the world in some ways. Nuclear worldwide. Annual spending on nuclear weapons reached a hundred billion dollars per year this year. Incredible amount of money when you consider that by most estimates, to wipe out hunger would take about $40 billion a year.

It’s hard to imagine that world that and yet Isaiah Pictures a world where people take the Spears, turn them into pruning hooks, take what they spend on war and turn them into. Feeding those that need it. His picture of a new world is really quite stark. His confidence in it. Incredible. I find it much harder than him to picture a new world, harder to picture God stepping into the spaces where I would lung him to lung for him to step.

But that’s what Advent is about. This is how he finishes in verse five. Come descendants of Jacob. Let us walk in the light of the Lord, let us walk in confidence that he will do what needs to be done, that he will bring history to where it needs to go. Isaiah brings a message of hope even though he lives right now within the dark, but his message is distinctly hopeful.

Isaiah Longs for Jesus, really. Although Jesus doesn’t look like, I might imagine Isaiah thinking he would look. Jesus too in his season is born in the dark Roman rule over the nation of Israel. In Isaiah’s time center crib was just on the doorstep. Just there. Trying to conquer a city in Jesus’ time. The Romans have ravaged the whole of Israel.

Roman rule is inescapable, and yet Jesus doesn’t just see the light coming. He brings light to the world. That’s what he does. We’ve been working our way through the Book of John, and we paused here intentionally right before Advent. When Jesus says these words to a listening group of religious leaders, I am the light of the world.

I am the bringer of light. No, I am the light. Think about that for a moment. When Jesus is trying to help people understand him, he says this. When you need to understand me, think of the sun, think of the thing that rises and brings light to everything. Think of the thing that produces food for people to eat.

Think of the thing without which the would be no light, no day, no joy, no laughter. This is who I am. The one who brings light and he adds to it. This equally startling cry. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. He always wonder what he means by that. Many of his disciples would be killed of his first 12 disciples.

11 of them die. One had his own hand, but 10 at the hands of others for the next years. Many disciples would be persecuted. Many of them would eventually be killed by the Romans in later eras. But he says this, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life somewhere. It seems that Jesus understands following him in this way, that however dark the world seems.

It’s never really dark that his story undergirds. Every single part of this world is the thing that stays light when all of the lights go out. This is how he sees his gift to us as his. Followers. Paul would pick up on this theme, one of the early writers that unpacked the work of Jesus. He said, the night is nearly over.

The day is almost here. Let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Which leads us back to our question, where do you long to see the light of Christ show up in this season? What part of this world of your story would you say that right now seems to me like darkness. And yet I believe that Jesus is the one who said, no one who follows me will ever really walk in darkness, but they have the light of life.

We are still people who wait in hope. And maybe you might say something like this. My story has too much darkness in it. There’s too much that is broken, too much that is painful. I can’t be like Isaiah, I can’t believe for that kind of change. The statement Jesus just made follows the story. That Aaron shared with us last week, one of a woman dragged outta some room, some house somewhere accused of adultery crime that required stoning in her culture, surrounded by religious leaders who are quite willing to sacrifice her to prove a point.

She has no one to protect her. The darkness is real until in steps. Jesus. The one who steps into the most broken of situations, the deepest darkness, and brings light. This is what he does. This is who he is, and this is what we wait for In Advent for the one who brings light in what seems like the deepest of darkness, where do you need the light of Christ this season?

We’re gonna conclude this first week of Advent a little differently. If you picked up a sheet of paper, you’ll be able to see a question at the bottom of it. I think I have mine right here

at the very bottom. It just says this, may the light of Christ shine on blank. You get to fill that in. Where do you long to see the light of Christ this season? What can you be hopeful for and what can we pray for you for? If you are willing, we’d like as a team of elders, team of pastors, prayer team watchmen to pray over every single person in the room.

If you’re uncomfortable with that, just feel free to stay where you are. We understand that’s not. Always easy, but we’re gonna treat this like we treat communion. There’ll be people dotted around the room. You can share with them what you wrote if you like, but it may be far too personal. But we’d love to simply pray over you this season.

May the light of Christ shine on you this advent. May the light of Christ shine on you this advent. May the light of Christ shine on you. This advent on you, all of the interior process that goes on, all of the things that you are working through, all of the struggles, the fears, may the light of Christ shine on you and your relationships, friendships, marriages, community.

May the light of Christ shine on you this advent and where you see God missing, absent in the world, may the light of Christ shine. This advent. This is what he does, friends. He brings light to the world. This is who he is. So I’m gonna invite you to stand as the team come. I’m gonna invite Aldos prayer us to dot around.

Maybe at the front, maybe at the side,

we’re gonna hear the first part of this song and you have space to write something in if you want, hold it in your heart if you don’t have anything to write on. And then I’m just gonna come back up and we’ll just begin. We guess it will take about eight minutes about the same time as communion. But we would love to pray for you.

And when God starts to bring the light that he promises, we’d love to hear the stories of what he does. Jesus, thank you for your bold and beautiful statement. I am the light of the world in a season that begins with darkness. That is what we need as you were for a woman 2000 years ago. In the darkest of moments, be light to us.

Please Jesus. Amen.