Love Meets Us

I remember the moment I got the call that my Grandma had fallen and was in the hospital. Then later finding out she had had a stroke and was going to pass away.

We were at the World Trade Center Museum just this past Wednesday, and I remember sitting in my carpentry class as the news of the first plane crash was being reported on the news, and then watching the second plane hit the South Tower.

There is a decent amount of research on why we remember bad things more vividly than the good, and though interesting, I think the theories given miss a very important theological reality.

The good things we experience in life are bright spots in the middle of a perpetually broken world.

We can’t hide from the reality that the good news we hear in our world is refreshing because there is so much bad news all around us.

Interesting way to start off a sermon about Love right?

Here’s where I want to focus our attention this morning:

the beauty and significance of Christmas can only really be seen and appreciated when we understand the desperate condition of the world Jesus was born into and why His birth was the greatest news ever.

It is only when we recognize the bad news of our story that we are able see and embrace the good news of His coming.

Love has come to meet us where we are, and that’s really good news.

We are looking at the prophet Isaiah throughout this Advent season and his prophesies of the coming Messiah. Today we are in Isaiah 61.

Isaiah 61 CSB

1 The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of our God’s vengeance; to comfort all who mourn, 3 to provide for those who mourn in Zion; to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, festive oil instead of mourning, and splendid clothes instead of despair. And they will be called righteous trees, planted by the Lord to glorify him. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore the former devastations; they will renew the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5 Strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners will be your plowmen and vinedressers. 6 But you will be called the Lord’s priests; they will speak of you as ministers of our God; you will eat the wealth of the nations, and you will boast in their riches. 7 In place of your shame, you will have a double portion; in place of disgrace, they will rejoice over their share. So they will possess double in their land, and eternal joy will be theirs. 8 For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and injustice; I will faithfully reward my people and make a permanent covenant with them. 9 Their descendants will be known among the nations, and their posterity among the peoples. All who see them will recognize that they are a people the Lord has blessed. 10 I rejoice greatly in the Lord, I exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a groom wears a turban and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth produces its growth, and as a garden enables what is sown to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

It is only when we understand the bad news of our story that we are able to grasp the Good news of God's love for us at Christmas.

Isaiah 61 is a pronouncement of good news, the good news that Love has come to meet us in our bad news world.

He has come to meet us in three ways according to Isaiah 61

Good news of PROMISED RESCUE. (1-3)

Isaiah 61 was written some 500 years before the birth of Jesus.

He is writing to the people of Judah whose homes have been destroyed and who are now being forced out of their homeland and into Babylon.

Imagine America being conquered by a power from the Middle East. First they destroy our homes and our communities.

And then they force us to leave and move to a place we don’t know the language or the culture. We would be aliens in a foreign land. The bottom of society.

It was into this situation Isaiah speaks.

It would have been hard for them to visualize these promises coming true.

But the message was powerful…

There was no denying their neediness as a people.

Everything they owned had been taken from them. They were helpless and hopeless.

They had lost loved ones, had experienced horrible abuse, and were living in disease ridden slums.

They were a broken and hurting people.

They had become prisoners of the Babylonians, but even before that, they had become slaves to their sinful rebellion against God. They had gotten themselves into this awful situation.

And to this God speaks through Isaiah, announcing

A RESCUER is coming and He is bringing good news to those who are physically and spiritually poor.

He is coming to heal their broken hearts, ravaged by sickness, suffering, and death.

And He is coming to free them from the bondage and devastation of sin in and around them.

There is no way for them to ignore the pain and hopelessness of their current situation, no way to minimize their pain.

And that is why Isaiah’s message is such incredibility GOOD NEWS, because it comes to people who understand their need.

We are reading Paul David Tripp’s Advent Devotional “Come Let us Adore Him” as a family this season.

Tripp writes for December 12th: “The birth of Jesus was bad news.”

That probably sounds crazy considering all we know about the Christmas story and the birth of our Savior, but Tripp makes the case throughout the devotional that the good news of the Christmas story is good only because of the bad news.

He argues “The bad news part of the Christmas story is “God has to invade our world in the person of Jesus be- cause there was simply no other way. There was no other way because our big problem in life is not familial or historical or societal or political or relational or ecclesiastical or financial. The biggest, darkest thing that all of us have to face, and that somehow, someway influences everything we think, say, and do, isn’t outside us; it’s inside.”

“You can run from a bad relationship, you can quit a bad job, you can move from a dangerous neighborhood, and you can leave a dysfunctional church, but you have no ability whatsoever to escape yourself. You and I simply have no ability to rescue ourselves from the greatest danger in our lives.”

The Love of God at Christmas can only be understood and embraced when we see our need for a rescuer.

He comes as our rescuer, when we couldn’t rescue ourselves.

Good News of PROMISED RESTORATION. (4-7)

Imagine the land of Judah after the Babylonian seige

There homes had been destroyed, the walls and building of the city torn down, and their flock scattered or killed.

What once was powerful, productive, and prominent, was now in ruin.

We all remember just over 3 years ago when a tornado basically wiped out the city of Mayfield, KY.

I follow the pastor of FBC Mayfield on Facebook and his pictures and videos of the devastation were heartbreaking.

Entire city blocks we flattened, homes were thrown from their foundations, and trees that used to be tall and full were just twigs sticking out of the ground.

That was then, but over the past 3 years, a lot of what was destroyed has been, or is in the the process of being rebuilt, restored.

The city is starting to look like a new city, a restored city.

This pictures we see of Mayfield now are the pictures Isaiah is describing in verses 4-7.

Pictures of homes being rebuilt, important building in the city being restored, and the prosperity they had once known being reestablished.

But the true work the Messiah is coming to accomplish isn’t the restoration of the physical structures alone, it is the restoration of the people.

The shame of destruction and the disgrace of defeat is the true focus of the coming Messiah.

Isaiah says “In place of your shame” He will restore what they had lost twofold.

And “In place of disgrace” He will give them reason to “Rejoice”.

Randall Goodgame is a Christian song writer in Nashville, and he wrote a song called “God Makes Messy Things Beautiful.

He said his inspiration for the song came from recognizing and admitting his own messiness.

“The Kingdom of God is made up of messy people, and I’ve found hope and deep joy acknowledging my own messiness (selfishness, double-mindedness, faithlessness, etc.) before God and experiencing the real freedom of his forgiveness in Christ in my day-to-day life of relationships and responsibilities.” — Randall Goodgame

The destruction we deal with in our lives can often be traced back to us.

Leaving behind a sense of shame and guilt that we have to do something with.

Unfortunately, we often just ignore our shame, camouflage behind some good deeds and churchy words.

But the message of Isaiah is that a restorer will come to turn our shame and guilt upside down.

God shows His Love for us at Christmas in coming to restore what seems to be broken beyond repair.

Good News of PROMISED RECONCILIATION. (8-11)

It probably didn’t seem fair to the Israelite in Judah as they looked around at the destruction and despair of their situation.

How could an evil, God-hating people like the Babylonians destroy the land God has supposedly blessed?

Where is the justice? Why is God being so quiet?

Those are questions I have asked, and I assume many of you have asked as well.

Isaiah has already spent the first half of this book going over all the reasons God was going to bring judgement on His people.

They had turned their back on Him, worshipped pagan gods, and didn’t live the way He had called them to live.

There was a reason behind their situation.

- God was just to punish them, just to allow the Babylonians to destroy them. - and yet He is the one who steps in - he is the one who restores his covenant with them.

And that is what makes Isaiah’s words all the more profound in verse 8-11.

It was the people’s sin that lead to their punishment, and yet it is God’s grace and faithfulness that will reconcile all that had been destroyed.

It isn’t dependent on them to fix the very thing they destroyed.

And that is the profound truth of Christmas.

Jesus came to reconcile sinners to a relationship with their loving creator.

Jesus was born into a world that had no hope of fixing itself.

Listen to Isaiah’s words in verse 10-11

Isaiah 61:10–11 CSB

10 I rejoice greatly in the Lord, I exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a groom wears a turban and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth produces its growth, and as a garden enables what is sown to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

That is the kind of love Sally Lloyd-Jones describes as "Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love". This means that God's love is larger than space and longer than time.

John 3:16–17 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Luke 4:16–21 CSB

16 He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written: 18 The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 20 He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”

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