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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Sunday Next before Advent |
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Psalm
103, Isaiah 25:1-9, St. John 5:17-29 As we move into
Advent, our daily Bible readings will concentrate on the Book of the
Prophet Isaiah. I invite you
to join Anglicans across the world in these readings. Surely, if anyone in this world will put “Christ back in
Christmas” it will be Christians, and these readings are a wonderful
help and aid to us. The
Advent sermons will also be based on Isaiah, for the Sunday readings come
from the more familiar passages of the prophet’s work.
If you don’t have a 1928 prayer book, please feel free to borrow
one of ours. You will find
the Psalms and Lessons for the Christian Year beginning on page x.
They are divided into the readings for Morning Prayer and Evening
Prayer. Morning Prayer is on
page x; Evening Prayer is on page xi.
You can also find the Prayer Book online at the Anglican Orthodox
Church web site, which you can find as a link from our web page.
We have the entire Bible on our Holy Trinity web site, so you can
find everything you need there to join us in prayer and Bible readings.
To find the readings for the day, simply look up the Sunday
immediately past. Then look
at the day of the week and find the reading for morning or evening,
according to the time of day. Thus,
the readings for Morning Prayer on Monday after the First Sunday of Advent
are Psalms 1 and 3, Isaiah 1:1-9, and Mark 1:1-13. Today
I will preach from Isaiah 25:109. In
a way this passage summarizes the entire message of Isaiah, and the Season
of Advent. It tells us of the
great victory of God for which we wait in need and anticipation. God
Will Defeat the Worldly Enemies of Jerusalem. Chapter
25 begins with a hymn of praise to God for delivering Jerusalem from her
worldly enemies. I am sure
you are aware that Isaiah wrote during a time of grave danger for the
people of God. The Assyrian
Empire was on the rise, threatening every nation around it with military
conquest. Yet, bad as that
was, the worst danger for the Jews was that, once conquered, they would be
forced to worship the Assyrian idols. The Jews, also known as Judeans, though deep in sin
themselves, were the only people remotely keeping a semblance of the
worship and knowledge of God. To
be conquered by the Assyrians would have required them to abandon their
religion and Scriptures, and be incorporated into the Assyrian paganism.
It was vital, therefore, that Judah be saved. Unfortunately, the Judeans were almost as deep in sin as the
Assyrians, and were not concerned about the loss of their religion.
They were concerned about the loss of their worldly security, and
their existence as a nation. There
are many parallels between them and our own nation, and, perhaps, even
between them and the Church as it exists in various forms across the world
today. But I will save those
parallels for another sermon. Judah
lay between Egypt and Assyria. Assyria
was rising to power as Egypt was decaying, and the king of Assyria had
induced the king of Israel to join him in an attempt to break free of
Egypt. You may remember that
the people of Israel have split into two nations by this time; one calling
itself Israel, the other named Judah, of which Jerusalem was the capitol. Israel had joined with Assyria, and it was their desire to
have Judah join them and form a three nation front united against Egypt.
But Ahaz, king of Judah did not join them.
He was afraid Egypt was still too powerful, even for the three of
them together. He was afraid
they would all be killed and their countries ravaged.
Israel and Assyria, however, were determined to go to war, and if
Judah would not fight on their side they would fight against Judah.
That was the fear that gripped Ahaz in Isaiah 7, where we read
about the child Immanuel. To
make a long story short, the war against Judah failed, and Isaiah
proclaimed that this was the mercy of God saving His people. Chapter 25, especially verses 1-5, is a celebration and
thanksgiving to God for delivering them from the Assyrians.
God
Will Defeat the Spiritual Enemies of His People.
Isaiah
cannot help seeing that the real salvation has not been from physical
enemies, but from spiritual enemies.
Had the Assyrian-Israelite coalition been strong enough to defeat
Judah, there would have been much suffering and great loss of life. That is a terrible thing, and thanks be to God it did not
happen. But much worse would
have been the spiritual domination of Judah by pagans, and the infliction
of pagan idolatry upon the chosen people of God.
The Jews would have faced a dangerous choice.
They would have had to worship the pagan gods, or be executed.
Given the spiritual decay into which they had fallen at that time,
most of them would have chosen paganism.
So they were saved from great spiritual danger.
They were delivered from the enemies of their souls. We,
too, were delivered from spiritual enemies by God’s protection of the
Jews. Think of the dire
consequences for us if Judah had been conquered.
The faith of Israel might have died out.
The Old Testament would be gone forever. There would have been no seed of Abraham left through which
the Savior was to be born, and the Christian faith, which has brought so
much of the world out of barbarianism and into civilization, would never
have been revealed. Worst of
all are all those souls who never would have found peace with God, if
Christ had not come into the world and died for our sins according to the
promise of God. God
Will Defeat All His and Our Enemies. Yet,
Isaiah sees there is still more to their deliverance than even the
immediate spiritual “salvation” of Judah.
Isaiah sees that God is going to extend His grace to all nations,
and that, one day His salvation will overcome all enemies of all God’s
peoples. Verses 6-9
especially convey this great message of hope.
God will destroy the “face of the covering cast over all
people,” and the “vail that is spread over the nations.”
The covering and the vail are grave clothes.
It is a tradition to cover the face of the dead, and so all nations
are covered with the vail of death, for all are dead in their trespasses
and sins. By their own choice they live in darkness and despair and
spiritual death. But, the day
is coming when the Light of God will shine forth in this world in an
unmistakable manner that will call all nations into Him and His Kingdom. He
will feed them with fat things and wines on the lees well refined.
This refers to the great blessings and the spiritual plenty poured
out on those in God’s Kingdom. In
a land of want, as Judah often was, such food and abundance was known only
by the very wealthiest few. But
in God’s new Kingdom such rich spiritual food is for all people.
The Lord of hosts will make this feast and give freely to all his
children. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this
is our God; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His
salvation. Isaiah
and the people of his day looked forward to the “Advent” of that
salvation.
In This Mountain The
Christian cannot help noticing that the salvation of which Isaiah wrote is
accomplished “in this mountain.”
Originally the phrase refers to Mt. Zion, site of the Temple, but,
in a broader sense, it symbolizes Jerusalem and the Jewish people. It
symbolizes what we often call, “the Jewish Church.”
The salvation, of which Isaiah wrote, refers to God’s
mighty deliverance of Jerusalem, and to His bountiful blessings upon her.
But that cannot exhaust the meaning of this text.
It reaches out to the work of Christ in Zion seven hundred years in
Isaiah’s future. It will be “in this mountain” that the Savior comes
to teach the way of life and truth. It
will be “in this mountain” that He suffers and dies to defeat the
enemies of His people, and delivers them from the spiritual bonds of sin
and death. And it will
be “in this mountain that the Savior’s work continues in the world
throughout all ages. Just as
Zion represents the people of God in the Old Testament, so it also
represent the people of God in the New Testament, the Christian Church,
the New Israel, the spiritual Mount Zion, which is the spiritual Kingdom
of God. The message of hope,
the message that God is with us, of a new and better life made possible by
the gift of God, of hell’s fires quenched and Heaven’s Gates opened as
wide as the Savior’s arms on the cross are still preached “in this
mountain” as the Church fulfills her Great Commission: Go ye therefore and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,
(St. Matthew 28:19-20). The
promises of God to the Israel of the Old Testament are being fulfilled in
the Israel of the New Testament. And
yet, they are not fulfilled completely even now.
We still wait for the Messiah to complete His work.
We still wait for that day when finally He will swallow even
physical death in victory, and will dry every tear, and there will be no
more suffering, and no more sorrow, and no more sin, forever and forever
and forever. We await His
Second Advent as eagerly as the Old Testament Zion awaited His First
Advent. Even so, come, Lord Jesus, (Rev. 22:20). In
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
The Anglican Orthodox Church P.O. Box 128 Statesville, NC 28687 The Most Rev. Jerry Ogles, Bishop Metropolitan The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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