Your Savior Comes
Isaiah 62:10-12
A man is dining in a fancy restaurant one night, and there is a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. He’s been checking her out ever since she sat down, but he lacks the nerve to talk with her. Suddenly she sneezes, and her glass eye comes flying out of its socket towards the man. He instinctively reaches out, grabs it out of the air, and hands it back to her. “Oh my, I am so sorry,” the woman says as she pops her eye back in place. “Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you.” They enjoy a wonderful dinner together, and afterwards the woman invites him to the theater, followed by drinks, all of which she pays for. They talk, they laugh, she shares her deepest dreams, and he shares his. And She listens attentively. The man is amazed! Everything has been incredible! “You know,” he says. “You are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every man you meet?” “No,” she replies. “You just happened to catch my eye.”
I know that’s pretty bad, but in a strange way it reminds us of the love of God. You see, long ago you and I caught God’s eye – not because of anything within us, but simply because of His grace. The Bible tells us that before the foundation of the world, He chose us to be His very own beloved children. But because of the Fall into sin, He had to send someone to rescue us and adopt us back into His family. That’s what happened on that very first Christmas, when love came down from heaven to earth. God sent His only Son to be our Savior, and all because we caught His eye.
We catch a wonderful glimpse of that love of God in our text for today. In our text, the people of Judah were languishing in Babylonian exile, because of their sinful idolatry. They had been unfaithful to God, and as a result they had wound up banished from their home. But throughout that entire time, God had His watchful, loving eye upon them. And when the time was just right, He came to their rescue. In His compassion He raised up His servant, Cyrus, the king of Persia, who issued a decree, declaring that the people of Judah could return to their homeland. It’s like that popular song, “I’ll be Home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” But this was not a dream. They were actually going home. They were free men once again.
Now, you’d think they would’ve been so overjoyed by their newfound freedom, that they would leap at the chance to return from exile. But amazingly enough, not all of the people wanted that. Some of them had become so comfortable in their new home and grown so accustomed to their new way of life in Babylon, that they decided to stay there! Some preferred to remain in exile because they had done so well financially. The historian Josephus states that some of the exiles did not return home “because they were not willing to leave their possessions.”
What a striking parallel that holds to our own daily living. We too can easily become comfortable with the way things are, especially with our nasty sinful habits: like using foul language when something goes wrong, or telling a lie to get out of something, or skipping our morning Bible reading when we're too busy, or giving in to a favorite secret sin because we don’t have enough willpower. Yes, we too can grow accustomed to making our home side by side with evil, and thinking nothing of it.
Take, for example, the little boy who was caught by his teacher saying a most unsuitable word. “Jeffrey! You shouldn’t use that word. Where did you hear it?” “My daddy said it,” Jeffrey replied. “Well that doesn’t matter,” the teacher explained, “you still shouldn’t use it. Why, you don’t even know what it means.” “I do too,” Jeffrey replied. “It means that the car won’t start!”
How sad but true! Too often you and I become so accustomed to our sinful habits, so complacent with our unrighteous words and deeds, that even our children think it's just a natural part of life. And that can even happen at Christmas time. Like the people of Judah, that’s when our sinful idolatry often rears its ugly head the most. We can get so wrapped up in the packages and presents, the tinsel and the trimmings, the glitter and the gifts, that we forget what it’s all about. That it’s about Jesus and His love for us. We can get so fascinated with our new toys, that we fail to take time to worship God and study His Word, to praise and thank Him for His goodness. We make things our God, instead of letting Jesus be our God. And the end result of all our sin is the captivity of guilt and shame, the exile of death and hell, where we are banished from our Heavenly Home forever!
Fortunately for us, God does not want that to happen. Because we have caught His loving eye, He has something much better planned for us, which is why when the time was just right, God sent Jesus to issue the edict to bring us back Home. Jesus was born in that manger of Bethlehem to release us from our bondage to sin and guilt, and set us gloriously free. A number of years ago, I saw a rather clever sign. It said: “There is a Way in the manger.” How true that is! Jesus Christ is that Way – the only way back into God’s loving, forgiving arms.
In a sense, that’s what Isaiah was talking about in our text, when he said: “PASS THROUGH, PASS THROUGH THE GATES!” He was encouraging the exiles to pass through the gates of Babylon and head back home. As the CSSB puts it: “In order to benefit from the proffered salvation, the liberated slaves must believe that they are free to escape through the opened prison doors.” As a matter of fact, the term Isaiah used there means: ‘to split wide open or to crash through.’ It signifies the saving power of our God and reminds us of what happened at Christmas time. Just as God destroyed the power of Babylon, and let His people come through the gates to freedom. So at Christmas, Jesus split the prison doors of our sin wide open, and crashed right through the barriers of our guilt, and brought us His love. In fact, you’ll note that Isaiah repeats the phrase twice for emphasis. It’s his way of showing us that this is the most gracious invitation our God has for you and me. To come out of the gates of our captivity into the freedom of His forgiveness, and to leave our sin and pain behind.
And why can we do that? Because, as Isaiah declares: “YOUR SALVATION HAS COME!” And it came in the person of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Appropriately enough then, the Hebrew word salvation is the word YESHA. It’s related to the name YESHUA, which is the name of Jesus. Literally, YESHA means: ‘to make wide.’ It is used in contrast to that which is narrow and causes distress. So it is, that when we feel the condemning taunts of our heart closing in on us, Jesus shoves them away. He opens wide the tunnel of love that leads from His heart to ours and escorts out us of the narrow distress of our shame and into God’s good graces once again. Indeed, our salvation has come. It came to us on that first Christmas Day, in the most wonderful package of all – a tiny infant born in a cattle stall, wrapped up not in ribbons and fancy paper, but wrapped up in swaddling clothes. That’s the day our Savior came. And He came, in order to wrap us up in the arms of God’s love and adopt us back into His family!
That’s what Isaiah meant, when he said: “HIS REWARD IS WITH HIM AND HIS RECOMPENSE ACCOMPANIES HIM.” Jesus came to bring us the best reward of all – the free gift of forgiveness, life and salvation. As a matter of fact, in Hebrew the word ‘reward’ can be translated as ‘fee or passage money.’ In other words, by His death on the cross Jesus paid the toll for us so that we can enter into our Heavenly Home. And that’s why in the words of our text, we are now called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord, those who are Sought After, because Jesus sought us out in His love and saved us. We caught His eye and He Redeemed us!
Recently I saw a rather cute cartoon. Two children are gathered around a Nativity scene and are staring at it intently. The little boy says to the little girl: “I dunno… I’m kinda confused myself, but it can best be explained scientifically…The baby in the manger is the Son of the Intelligent Designer.”
Of course, it cannot be explained scientifically. It’s a miracle of God’s love, the mystery of the Virgin Birth, that Jesus was born by the power of the Holy Spirit to be True Man our substitute and True God our Savior. In that way, our Savior has come, to release us from our bondage to sin and death, and to open wide the gates to our Heavenly Home. For those infant hands and feet that kicked and played in the manger, are the same hands and feet that were nailed to the cross to bring us forgiveness and salvation. And our Savior still comes to us in the Word and Sacraments to bring us that forgiveness and salvation. May that fill us with such utter joy and gratitude, that we worship our newborn King and give Him all the glory and praise! For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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12/30/2005