The Messenger is the Message
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
My friends Christmas will soon be upon us. Since before Thanksgiving the stores have been leading us toward Christmas and the radio stations have been playing all manner of Christmas songs. We have been deluged with Christmas special after Christmas special on television. Everybody is trying to bring their own version of the Christmas message into our lives. You need this and you need that. You must do this, and you must do that. You must believe this, and you must believe that.
The world wants you to listen up or you will miss their important message about Christmas. But we as Christians know there a divine message that is delivered to mankind at Christmas. During the first two weeks of our Advent series, we’ve already seen that Jesus is sent to claim His crown as rightful King and He is sent to comfort His people from exile. Today we will see how Jesus is sent to proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom of God. God will send a Messenger
Last week we read Isaiah say
A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord
“Prepare the way of the Lord” and we assume that Isaiah was prophesying about the ministry of John the Baptist. John was the preparer, the forerunner of our Lord. John came proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the people came confessing their sins to the Jordan River.
But was the John the Baptist the Messenger of God, was he the bringer of Good News to the oppressed of whom Isaiah wrote? During his ministry there were many who believed that he was the divine messenger. In fact, if you remember Jesus asks the Disciples who people believed that Jesus was, they said that some believed he was the Baptizer. So, the suspicious Jews sent priests and scholars out to talk to John.
The Pharisees sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” John confessed “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” John said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. This interaction between John and the Pharisees tells us more about who John wasn’t than about who he was: he wasn’t the light; he wasn’t the Messiah; he wasn’t Elijah; he wasn’t the prophet. Who, then, was he?
The Apostle tells us that he was a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. He was a voice telling people to prepare for someone else, someone whose sandal throng John was unworthy to untie. So, who was Isaiah referring to as the anointed messenger of the Good News? We find the answer in Luke 4:
After His time in being tempted in the Desert, Jesus came to Nazareth and he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.
He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then Jesus rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. Everyone in the synagogue was looking at him and they were perplexed as to why he had stopped reading and simply sat down. Knowing that the time was right to begin his ministry, he said to them,
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
God is promising to send a messenger to His people about redemption, forgiveness and salvation for all and Isaiah tells us that the Messenger is the Messiah.
In our OT lesson today, Isaiah establishes that the Messenger foreshadowed in this passage will speak from a place of power and authority derived from being “anointed.” A person anointed by God was for a special purpose, to be a king, to be a prophet, in this case to be the Messenger of the Good News of redemption, forgiveness and salvation found in a person, the Messenger is the Message.
Isaiah tells us that the coming Messenger will be God’s anointed one, empowered by the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord. He will be greater than any of the voices and seers that came before or after for Him. The Coming Messenger is the Messiah. He is sent by God on a mission to proclaim the Kingdom’s arrival.
What does it look like when the Kingdom of God comes to Earth? Well, the broken are healed, the mourning find comfort, the prisoner is set free, and the captive leaves her chains. We saw this in our Bible Study this week, the Israelites were set free from their captivity and servanthood in Egypt by the powerful works of the Lord. It is one of many times throughout history that God has manifested in awesome authority to free to His people.
The Messenger proclaims the good news to the poor: God has heard your cries for help, and He is here to heal you. Who among us doesn’t need that? To the broken hearted among us, Jesus has come to bind you up. He is here to draw you close and take your pain upon himself. He is here to walk beside you and lead in this long but beautiful journey toward righteous perfection.
To the prisoners and the captives, freedom has come. Jesus proclaims that under His reign in His Kingdom, you are released from the chains and the cell block of disobedience. Even as His Spirit speaks to your heart right now, this moment, the doors are unlocking and opening and coming off their hinges, at the very sound of His voice.
To those in mourning and despair, He trades your ashes for crowns of beauty, your tears for the oil of gladness. To the cut off, uprooted, and rotted out, He calls you oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.
To those whose lives resemble a city in ruins, He has come to rebuild what has been torn down and restore what was once abandoned. Stone by stone He reconstructs and renovates what time and tragedy destroyed.
The places long devastated will become filled with life again. Lights will burn in the homes and the streets will be full of joy. That’s what good news looks like. That’s what happens when the Kingdom comes. That is what the message is when the Messenger IS the Message.
Despite the thrill of hope in these verses read so far today, the most stunning truth is yet to come, because what we experience in Advent is more than powerful words. We experience the Word made flesh. The one who is to come down at Christmas is the truth of God. The Messenger is the Message.
God did not simply commission another prophet to tell us about the Kingdom. He sent his son Jesus to show us the Kingdom, lived out before our very eyes. In every way, Jesus takes this passage and transforms it from future prophecy into present reality. He drags it into the realm of right here, right now. In Jesus, God becomes what He wants to say, what He needs to say to His lost and broken people. He models the culture of the Kingdom and proclaims, “With my Son coming the Kingdom has come.”
The message of Jesus himself is more powerful than any that came before Him. His words are the word of God; his actions, an incarnation of that word, bringing Good News and salvation for all of us.
Jesus is sent to proclaim the Kingdom of God. What was once a far-off hope is now a present reality, fulfilled in the arrival of Jesus. He is the Messenger and the Message.
Hear the Good News my friends……..
As God plants the righteousness in our hearts, we share this good news with others. God does wonders. That’s ultimately what Christmas is about. From the tiny acorn our faith grows into a righteous oak, from the faith the size of a mustard seed, it grows to a large tree. When God begins, he seems to start out small. But before you know it, big things happen.
Our faith is like that too. It begins with a few words, and a little water. God starts small and ends big! Not too unlike the humble babe in a manger, who as a man dies in shame on a Roman cross, and by doing so pays for the sins of the world. God takes the small, the humble, the lowly, and he works wonders.
And of course, as always, God does the doing. As we have seen today God anointed Christ through the Holy Spirit to bring us the Good News. We also know that after Christ left the earth, He gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit to remain with us. Now all Christians are anointed, chosen for a specific purpose in furthering God’s Kingdom.
On this Third Sunday of Advent, we have a unique opportunity to fulfill our role within the fellowship of all persons of faith who are called to by God. Each one of us who has heard the words of the scripture have seen the importance of John’s witness about the truth and light that is Jesus.
Therefore, like John, God commissions us all to bear witness to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the one who has come in the flesh, the one who remains with us here through the Spirit and the one who will come again in his reign as Lord of all. In this, there is no greater witness to the truth of God’s work of salvation through the coming Messenger of the Good News. We too, like Jesus can be the Messenger that is the Message. Amen.