Isaiah 35,3-10. Ad te Levavi

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever 

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Isaiah 35,3-10     0219 

Ad te Levavi; Unto You, I lift up my soul; 2. Sonntag im Advent  02

Joachim, father of the Virgin Mary 

Gorgonia, Widow, ✠ 369 

9. Dezember 2018 

1. O Ever-faithful and Merciful God, we render praise and thanksgiving unto You, that, by Your beloved Prophets You have promised to the Patriarchs of old the gift of Your Beloved Son, whom You did send into the world in the fullness of time, so that, by Him, Your holy will and counsel might be fully revealed unto us. He crushed the Serpent’s head and has redeemed us from sin and death. All generations wait upon Him, and in Him are all the nations of the earth blessed. Prepare us, Good Lord, so that we may serve Him with undefiled hearts; and, when He arrives, to receive Him with joy; and, for this, we will thank You eternally in heaven (Löhe 443-44).  Amen. 

2. »Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart: „Be strong, and do not be afraid! Behold, your God arrives with His  justice and compensation. God arrives and saves you.“ Then the eyes of the blind are opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame man leaps like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sings for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand becomes a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass becomes reeds and rushes. And a highway is there, and it is called the Way of Holiness; the unclean do not pass over it. It belongs to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they do not go astray. No lion is there, nor any ravenous beast arrives up on it; they are not found there, but the redeemed walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord return and go to Zion with singing; everlasting joy is upon their heads; they obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing flee away«  

3. The Prophet Isaiah pens his words of comfort at a time when Israel was being oppressed by Assyria, the super-power of that era. Assyria had perfected a method of empire building. 1. Conquer a city or territory; 2. Kill any leader who might rally a rebellion; 3. Cart off all the wealth to Nineveh; 4. Deport the local population deep inside Assyrian territory and have the soldiers responsible for taking the land marry the local women with the goal of imposing Assyrian values on both the deported and the local population. 

4. Israel saw this happen to their more numerous and powerful neighbors, and now Assyria had set its sights on the Promised Land with its beauty, wealth and strategic location from which to conquer the real prize: Egypt. The Israelites rightly trembled with fear. They saw sin, rebellion and evil personified in the Assyria; however, the Lord saw the same personified in Israel. He tells Isaiah: »Write it before My people on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time that is approaching as a witness forever. For Israel is a rebellious people, lying children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord. I will arrive with vengeance and recompense« (Isaiah 30,8-9; 35,4). 

5. Israel thus longed for the Day of Yahweh when He would free them from their Assyrian foes. First, Israel had to experience that Day upon themselves and their sin; they needed to hear the call of Isaiah to repent and turn away from their sin and trust again in the Lord. In the 8. century bc, all Israel could do was wait and trust in the Lord’s faithfulness. Isaiah assures them: »For thus said the Lord who is the Lord, the Holy One of Israel: in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall you be given strength« (Isaiah 30,15). On that Day, the Lord will consummate His Heilsgeschichte (salvation history). Isaiah told Israel that Day will be a distant day, but when it does arrive it will be a Day of judgment when wrongs are righted, the wicked punished and the righteous rewarded by the Messiah. 

6. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel pericope: »When you will see the Son of Man arriving in a cloud with power and great glory, then straighten up and raise your head because your redemption is drawing near« (Luke 21,27-28). Jesus teaches that the Day of Yahweh is the advent of the Son of Man. Great portents in the heavens heralded that day. Angels sang in the sky when Jesus was born in Bethlehem; the Father spoke at His Son’s baptism; Jesus’ appearance became dazzling at His transfiguration or Mount Tabor; darkness enveloped the land from 12 noon to 3 pm when Jesus was crucified. Jesus fulfilled what the Prophet Isaiah had proclaimed: »Behold, our God arrives with His justice and compensation to save us.« 

7. Isaiah describes this redemption on 3 levels: psychological [intellectual], historical and cosmological (Hummel 213). 1. Anxious hearts will be set at ease; the blind will see and the deaf hear; the lame will leap and the mute will speak. The Lord’s redemption effects the entire human being: mind, body and spirit. Jesus performed such healing upon the people during His ministry as proof that He is the Messiah promised on the Day of Yahweh. 2. God will arrive with vengeance and save you. [The ransomed of the Lord will return from Exile.] This is an historical promise that was fulfilled by the Lord. In Isaiah’s day in Judah was facing conquest at the hands of the Assyrian Empire. Judah was outmanned and overwhelmed by the might of the Assyrian army, and then in 1 night in 701 bc God sent an angel who wiped out 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (2. Kings 19; 2. Chronicles 32). The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce [1] described the event this way: „Like Xerxes in Greece, Sennacherib never recovered from the shock of the disaster in Judah. He made no more expeditions against the Southern Levant or Egypt“ (Sayce 134). 3. The Lord will restore all of creation. Streams will break forth in the desert; the burning sand will become a pool; the haunt of jackals will become a safe land. The Apostle Paul tells us that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and a pain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8,21). 

8. And so like 8. century Israel we wait for the arrival of the Christ. As we continue our Advent preparation for the birth of Jesus, we do so with the hope and joy that creation will be liberated, mankind will be restored in purity and that our sins have been forgiven, solely by Christ Jesus our Advent Lord.  Amen. 

9. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the world in Your righteousness and the people in Your faithfulness; You counsel us with the promise that Your words are more certain than the very heavens and earth, so that we may endure the trials and tribulations of this fallen creation knowing that You will return and usher us into everlasting glory.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. 

Löhe, Wilhelm. Seed-Grains of Prayer: A Manual for Evangelical Christians. Wartburg Publishing House, Chicago circa 1912. Concordia Publishing House; Concordia on Demand. 

Sayce, Archibald Henry. The Ancient Empires of the East. Copyright © 1884 Macmillan and Co. 

[1] Sayce was a British Professor of Assyriology and linguist at Oxford from 1891-1919.