Isaiah 63:16-17; 64:1-8 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
First Sunday in Advent Sunday, November 29, 2020 “The Promise: Our Father and Redeemer”
How long does it take to keep a promise? I suppose the answer to that question depends on which and what sort of promise is being considered. If a dad promises a child that he will take time to do something together when his work is done, it may take a few hours to get to that point when he will hopefully keep his promise. On the other hand, if mom has promised that the family will make a trip to Disneyland, it could take weeks, months, or maybe even years of saving and planning to make it happen. Without even concerning ourselves about the promises that we end up unable to keep—and perhaps this year we experienced a few more of those, since we couldn’t always plan the way that we once did—apart from those, some promises just take longer for us to accomplish and keep. Sometimes a promise has a timeframe that is longer than even our lifetimes. That’s not the sort of promise we should be in the business of making, since that makes it an unkept promise for us. But God can make a promise and he can keep it even if the making and the keeping of the promise are lifetimes apart. In fact, for some of God’s greatest promises, that is exactly the case. Today and in the next two weeks, we are looking at sections of Isaiah’s prophecy in our sermons. And Isaiah stands at an interesting point in salvation history. He prophesied right around 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. In other words, some of the promises we will hear from that prophet took around 700 years to be kept. The reality, though, is that many promises of God took much longer. All of salvation history really hinges on one promise: the promise of a Savior from sin. That promise was first given to Adam and Eve when they first sinned, and it wasn’t kept, it wasn’t fulfilled, until thousands of years later. And in the meantime, God expanded on the promise. He shared details about it. He shared it with other people and with specific people groups. He used different imagery and color to drive the point home in different circumstances. And he made other promises that were either supporting the promise of the Savior or were resulting from the promise of a Savior. One example of what I mean by a promise resulting from the promise of the Savior is the promise that the Savior, having completed his work, would come back to bring this world to its conclusion. He will come back to judge. He will come back on the Last Day and will usher in the eternal kingdom. That’s the other big promise of Scripture, one that has already taken lifetimes before being fulfilled, and we have no idea when that promise will be kept. But we know it will. Isaiah knew it would, too. The section from his prophecy that is before us today is not so much a specific expression of God’s promise, but the prophet’s Spirit-moved commentary about promises that God had made and the track record that God had established. Isaiah tells us plainly that God has a track record of both destruction and salvation. He says, “You did amazing things that we did not expect. You came down. Mountains quaked because of your presence.” God had put on all sorts of incredible displays of his power. He inflicted the Egyptians with ten plagues. He parted the Red Sea and brought it back into its place again. He rained hailstones on his people’s enemies. He made the walls of Jericho fall. He brought down fire from heaven to consume an offering while rebuking the prophets of Baal. And in instance after instance, his mighty acts did two things: they saved his people, those people who held to his promises, the people who trusted him, the people who listened to his voice and humbled themselves before him. And the other thing those powerful acts did was destroy the people who opposed him. The Israelites walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, a wall of water to the right and a wall of water to the left. And after them came the Egyptians, Pharaoh and his army, and on them the waters crashed down. They were buried and drowned. Isaiah’s plea is that God would act again. “Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down. Mountains then would quake because of your presence. As fire ignites stubble and as fire makes water