In The Waiting
There’s one thing that is almost universally true for most people. And maybe you
here today do not struggle with this; and that is…waiting. We do not like to
wait…for anything! Somehow it is ingrained in us, this desire to attain our wants or
even needs as soon as we possibly can. I’ve seen expedited shipping options that
allow you to get whatever is in your online shopping cart delivered to your house
sooner if you pay a little extra money. And I remember being blown away at the
fact that Amazon began making it possible to receive your item in just two days if
you pay for their prime membership. And then a couple years later, receiving an
item the same day has also become possible.
Somewhat similarly related, our country has a debt problem. The reason is that
we have normalized buying things before we have the money to do so. It’s
because we simply cannot wait. And credit card companies love that about our
human nature and, in my opinion are predatory in their marketing strategies.
We not only live in a society that can be defined as a “Mine, mine, mine” society,
but also one that wants everything, “Now, now, now.” Even if the things we desire
are noble and beneficial, we still lean towards this mindset. Instead of working
through things logically and methodically, we tend to want to rush into things
merely because it’s a good idea. We simply do not like to wait.
Many of you can recall the story of Abram and Hagar. God promised Abram
offspring through whom the world would be blessed. But Abram was old. Abram
was starting to get the sense that maybe he ought to take matters into his own
hands. First he tries to make a man named Eliezer his heir.
Genesis 15:2-6
2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and
the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you
have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir;
your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said,
“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.”
Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Turn to the next chapter and you see Abram doubting again.
Genesis 16:1-4a
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian
servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord
has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall
obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram
had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the
Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he
went in to Hagar, and she conceived.
And their son Ishmael was born. Now Ishmael, was in fact Abram’s first son, but
he was not the son of the promise given by God. As a result, through Ishmael
came the religion we now know as Islam. For through Ishmael’s offspring came
Islam’s prophet Muhammed. It is quite an interesting prospect to think about how
the world would be different today if Abram hadn’t taken matters into his own
hands all those years ago. If he had but only waited on God.
It's Christmas season now, and many of us are counting down the days. That’s
something that had been engrained in me since early childhood. In elementary
school we used to make paper chains usually using Christmas themed colors like
Red and Green (or if you’re adventurous sometime blue). And you would start out
with 25 of those paper chain links and you would take one away every day until it
was Christmas day. And so every day as the paper chain got shorter and shorter,
the greater the anticipation and excitement became.
Christmas is my favorite time of year. Here’s the reason. As a kid, it was all about
the presents and Santa Claus and family gatherings and paper chains which are all
good and decent things in their proper place. However, as I got older, I realized
that Christmas is all about hope. Hope despite our darkest nights. Hope, despiteour deepest losses. Hope that gives us a sense of warmth and peace in a world
that seems so busy and cold. And that hope is not found in anything or anyone
except for a baby born in a manger. God’s only Son who came to save us from our
sins. This is the hope that we hang on to when everything seems to be falling
apart.
I love the song we sing here called Promises. The bridge of this song goes like this.
“I put my faith in Jesus, my anchor to the ground, my hope and firm foundation,
he’ll never let me down.”
And I know for some of you, you may find it very difficult to sing these words
because, if you’re going through a trial, you may not feel like these words are true.
But thanks be to God, that his truth reigns regardless of our feelings that are so
prone to lead the heart astray. And worship songs differ from secular songs in
that, we sing them not based on if we feel they connect to us in a certain way
based on life circumstance, but we sing them because we are singing truth
regardless of our present circumstance. In the good times, we praise God for his
goodness, steadfastness and faithfulness. In the bad, we praise God for his
goodness, steadfastness and faithfulness.
As we take this journey together to the manger (name of our series), we must
place ourselves in the shoes of the Israelites who had been waiting for and
anticipating Jesus’ coming many years. As many of us know, the last book of the
Old Testament is the book of Malachi. Malachi was one of the last prophets if not
the last prophet to directly speak God’s revelation to his people prior to Jesus’
birth. Here’s some of the last words he spoke to the people of Israel.
Malachi 4:4-6
4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I
commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of
the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the
hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of
utter destruction.”Malachi is speaking about the coming of Jesus. Some biblical scholars disagree
with this conclusion, but I am convinced that The Elijah spoken of here is symbolic
and points to the greater reality of Jesus. Remember when people were convinced
that John the Baptist was the second coming of Elijah, or the prophet or the
Christ? They’re all talking about the same thing whether they knew it or not. And
what did he say?
John 1:26-27
John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not
know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy
to untie.”
And so, the Israelites waited for their Elijah, their prophet who was to be greater
than Moses, their Savior. And after the last words of Malachi were spoken, there
was a period of 400 years that went by without revelation from God. What does
that mean? Well first off, this was a very long time to wait. Last week, I mentioned
that for Josiah, 4 minutes was a long time to sit in timeout. For the Israelites
wandering in the wilderness, 40 years seemed like a long wait. And now after
hearing the words of God through the prophet Malachi, they would experience a
waiting period of over 400 years. 400 years of silence.
Don’t simply skip over this fact. Today, some of us get anxiety if our spouse or
friend or child doesn’t respond to our texts right away. But the people of Israel
received their promise and it wasn’t fulfilled for over 400 years. If you were living
in this time, you would see generation after generation praying to God for their
Messiah, for him to come to the earth to establish his kingdom and make what
has been wrong for so many years right. The words of the prophet Isaiah would
have made its dwelling in your thoughts and in your hearts for he prophesied,
Isaiah 9:6-7
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon
his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of
peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, toestablish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time
forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
But one generation after the other, living, praying, hoping, dying never to witness
the fulfillment of God’s promise (at least not here on earth). Would your faith
waver? Would your trust in God fade as the years went by? Would your hope burn
out? I’m sure many during these 400 years of silence began to doubt. Yet, even in
the midst of that doubt, they held on to those promises. And it’s not like the life of
an Israelite was ever easy.
For around the years 600 B.C. – 538 B.C. the Israelites were scattered and were
under Babylonian rule. Then the Persians came and occupied Israel. Then after
them, came Greek occupation and after the Greeks came the Romans who didn’t
care too much for the Jews. Through taxes and their negligence to the corrupt
practices of the Jewish tax collectors, many Jews were taken advantage of. In any
case, the Jewish nation was, for a long time, ruled by Governments that did not
see eye to eye with them. This only exacerbated their deep longing for their
Messiah to come.
Have you ever prayed to God and it felt like your prayers were simply bouncing off
the walls or going out into the void where God could not hear them? Let me
encourage you with this. God hears your prayers.
Peter echoes the words of King Solomon in 1 Peter 3:12.
“For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
and his ears are open to their prayer.”
1 John 5:14-15
14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything
according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever
we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
What I’ve learned over the years is that God answers prayers in at least three
different ways. Yes, No, and Not Yet. It is in these “not yet” answers where we find
it the most difficult. We can deal with a yes or no because they’re definite. There’sno question to timing or the circumstances that would bring about a particular
outome. It’s just a straightforward yes or no and we can live with that. But with a
“not yet” answer, that leaves us in a place of wholly leaning on God being
suspended in uncertainty. Well when God? It reminds me the classic road trip
question where kids asks their parents, “Are we there yet?” Come on God, is today
the day I meet my future spouse? Is today the day I get accepted into that college
I’ve been desperately trying to get into? Is today the day I hear back from a
potential employer to see if I got the job? The list of questions go on and on.
For the Israelites, the question would be, is today the day that our Messiah will
finally arrive, our Prince of Peace our Mighty Counselor, the prophet who is to be
greater than Moses. Is today the day? If not, when God? I’ve got young children.
My parents, they’ve been waiting for years. My grandparents have been waiting
for even longer. Is today the day? And God did not speak through a prophet for
400 years.
And it’s so easy for us to look back and just tell them, hey it’s going to be okay.
Jesus is coming. But they didn’t know when that would be. That must have been
very difficult. When we think our prayers aren’t being heard by God, I want to
assure you that they are. God hears our prayers. Let us be patient and on the Lord
through any and all circumstances.
I think sometimes it’s difficult for us to understand how to wait. Or how to wait
well. Is there a bad way to wait for something? I would argue there is. There is a
kind of waiting that doesn’t involve any activity. I would call this passive waiting.
It’s a kind of waiting without a purpose. The other kind of waiting which I will
argue is the way we ought to wait is a kind of waiting that involves
preparation…activity, purpose.
This time of year is called by many Advent. This word Advent simply means
“arrival”. It is a time of anticipating the arrival of something or someone. This time
of year is a time to not only look backward in history to the event of Jesus’ birth,
but also to look ahead at Jesus’ second coming. And in this season, we prepare in
a sense. Many of us have many Christmas traditions that vary from family to
family. Some of you may decorate your house with Christmas decorations and
maybe put up a Christmas tree or put lights on the outside of your houses. Some
may do the paper chains I spoke about earlier or maybe an advent calendar. Someof you may put out cookies and milk for Santa. Now even though most of these
things don’t inherently have very much to do with the birth of Jesus, it is a perfect
illustration for us to see how, in the waiting, there is preparation. There is work to
be done. We don’t just wait passively for that which we are looking ahead to and
hoping for. We are not a people dead to the world but very much alive in the hope
we have. As we get closer to Christmas day, how are you preparing your hearts to
be centered on the person of Jesus? How are you preparing your children and
teaching them about the real reason we celebrate Christmas? That’s looking back.
And looking ahead, how are we preparing for Christ’s second coming? A worthy
question to ask ourselves.
In the way that we prepare, are we putting our hope in the right things? 2024 has
been a difficult year for many people. Some may be placing their hope in
government, or their doctors, or their teachers, or their parents or their spouses.
But these things are not worthy of our ultimate hope. Why is that? Because no
matter what we place our hope in, if it is not in God who is our provider and
sustainer, we will be disappointed at one time or another.
Piano to play here.
Susannah Spurgeon
“The Lord has strewn the pages of of God’s Word with promises of blessedness to
those who wait for Him. And remember, His slightest Word stands fast and sure; it
can never fail you. So, my soul, see that you have a promise underneath thee, for
then your waiting will be resting and a firm foothold for your hope will give you
confidence in Him who has said, ‘They shall not be ashamed that wait for Me.’”
I love this next quote.
“Waiting is not the same as inactivity. Waiting is a commitment to continue in
obedience until God speaks.”
And we see that throughout the Old Testament. We see God’s chosen people of
Israel, although they faltered and turned away from God many times, they still
strived to be obedient to God through the keeping of the Law. They knew
something better was yet to come and this “something better” wasn’t fullyrealized until the birth or even perhaps the resurrection of Jesus. Sadly today,
many Jews still do not believe Jesus was the Messiah, but that’s a topic for
another day.
During this season, as you go home and perhaps enjoy your hot chocolate or your
favorite Christmas movie, just remember that Jesus’ birth changed the course of
human history forever. This problem of sin that we talked about a couple weeks
ago was the catalyst for this question, What’s God’s plan for reconciling us back to
Himself? What’s God’s answer to the problem of sin? God’s response, although
many years went by, was answered by the picture of a manger under a starry sky
that beheld the only begotten son of God, Jesus.
Isaiah 40:31
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.