Isaiah 62:1-5

  Revelation 19:1-9, 21:1-4

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

I.        There is an array of rich images for the Messiah in the last 10 chapters of Isaiah, all relating to the remnant who have  returned to Jerusalem. It is unfortunate that the church has not explored these images.

A.       One of these is in Isaiah 62: God announces that Zion’s (Jerusalem’s) going forth shall be with “a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD.”

1.       “you shall be called ‘My Delight Is In Her, and your land ‘Married.’”

2.       The Lord’s coming in will be at a marriage feast,

a.       “like a bridegroom rejoices over the bride,                                            so shall your God rejoice over you...for the LORD delights in you!” 

3.       During December we use many different descriptions for the coming of Jesus, or for his second coming; but we do not use the picture of a wedding, or of waiting for the bridegroom!

4.       This is exactly the picture in Revelation 21, where in his vision John sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven... prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

a.       We are all invited to have a good time and exult, not only because God our Lord reigns in triumph,

b.       but because we have been invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb. This is our Holy Communion on this first Sunday of our New Year the glorious marriage feast of the Lamb.

c.       His Bride “made ready” is our church!

5.       Have you ever gone to a Christmas wedding?

a.       We have 5 or 6 couples who were married Christmas week, including Jim and Madie Westbrook (December 20).

b.       We have one “Christmas baby,” Nathalie Wetzel. (Three babies in our church family were given birth the day after Christmas).

c.       Those experiences gave you a different look at Christmas, I am sure, a different meaning to Advent as a time of expectant waiting.

6.       In my research on Advent and Christmas carols, I have accumulated 75 pages of songs, but I have only found two with the theme of “marriage.”

a.       I found a beautiful Amy Grant song, some of the lyrics we are using as our prayer of confession this morning...

(1)      “I’ve awakened early to say                                              
I will wait for my bridegroom,

...I will give to him my impatience,                                                                                        I will give him all of my fear,                                                                                                 I will make my heart very quiet,

                                                I will wait for him here.”

 

                                                          b.       I also found a story by M K Wolfe that has been made into a musical by Noel Katz.  This story, “The Christmas Bride,” is based on a Charles Dickens short story.

                                                                             (i)       By the way, Dickens, among other things, is credited for resurrecting, the Christmas carol in medieval England.

c.       “‘The Christmas Bride’ is a joyous holiday tale of love lost and found, family and faith,” everything one could want” at Christmas.

                                                          d.       A spirited young girl Marion Jedler is engaged to her father’s ward but she falls in love with a flighty gambler. Rather than marry on Christmas Day, Marion runs away with the love of her life, only to have him leave her abandoned on the London docks as the police

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close in.  She struggles to make sense of her world, she learns about what forgiveness is all about and discovers another meaning to finding love at home. [PAUSE]

 

II.       Says, Dr. Paul D Hanson from St. Andrews’ Seminary in Scotland, “More painful than (imprisonment) or losing one’s way is the mental anguish caused by the thought that those...” you love who may have completely abandoned you.

                        A.         Left waiting at the altar. That is precisely the role in which Israel’s suffering remnant sees herself.

                                      1.       As a pastor I had one wedding where we had to wait, not for the bride or groom but for the father of the bride. It was a small wedding at a small church on New Year’s Eve. The organist had started the wedding march, one of the bridesmaids had entered.  But we had to stop and wait. The father of the bride arrived 10 minutes late.

                                                                                                a.       In 40 years of ministry I am truly grateful I have never been faced

with such a tragedy of someone being left waiting at the altar.

                                      2.       Is God a runaway bridegroom, who has made a promise but never shows up?  There is a hint of that, of a vacillating God in the chapters of Isaiah.

In Isaiah 54:6, God promises that he will be there, that he will never abandon his people. But in the next breath, Yahweh allows them to be taken into captivity, God is punishing them for their own apostasy, for being the bride who abandoned their God, and God’s own heart is broken.

                                                          a.       Israel in her bondage is like a desolate woman in childbirth,

                                                                             (i)       like a widow who is ashamed,

                                                                                                                             (ii)      a youthful wife who is refused. 

                                      3.       In the film,  “Castaway,” starring Tom Hank, Helen Hunt and a Wilson volleyball, Tom Hanks plays Chuck Nolan, a FedEx executive who lives in Memphis. He is engaged to Kelly Frears, played by Helen Hunt. Kelly wants to get married, but  something at FedEx always gets in his way. Chuck is ready for Christmas when an emergency in another country demands  he fly there immediately. His jet goes down in the South Pacific. Four years later he escapes the island where he was washed ashore and is eventually rescued.

a.       Chuck, who is now a different person, leaner with a beard, goes back to Helen’s home. She still is in love with him, but she is now married with a daughter. Chuck had waited too long, even before the 4 years of being a castaway.

                                                          b.       What of the thousands of wives and young women, husbands, children-- who waited and waited, often for years, in the wake of the Vietnam War, the War in Iraq never knowing... how long does hope last before before giving in to despair and heartbreak! [PAUSE]

 

 

 

                   B.       Was Israel a Christmas bride?  If we hear ALL of Isaiah’s words, especially in these last 10 chapters, there is wonderful redeeming news!

                                                1.       From Isaiah 40 on, this book has been called “The Good News” in the Old Testament. It is like a gospel.

                                      2.       Isaiah 54 continues on:

                                                          a.       “’For a mere moment I have forsaken you,

                                                but with great mercies I will gather you

                                                With a little wrath I hid my face from you for a moment;     (page 2)

                                                But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you.’

                                                Says the LORD, your redeemer.’”

b.       The word “moment” is mentioned twice here.

                                                          c.       The psalmist tells us that a moment in the sight of God is but as yesterday, or as a thousand years.

                                                          d.       (This was only 70 years, a micro-moment in divine time.)

                                      3.       This new betrothal, this renewed engagement, will be as different in quality and experience as that split moment in God’s sight!

                                                          a.       God as a bridegroom will bring his gifts of

                                                                             (i)       forgiveness and mercy

                                                                             (ii)      a perpetual covenant of peace - divorce is not possible

                                                                             (iii)     one in which the bridegroom’s face is never hidden,

                                                                             (iv)     no anger or rebuke,

                                                                             (v)      “‘All your children shall be taught by the LORD, 

                                                            And great shall be the peace of your children.’”

                                                          b.       What a wonderful, a perfect covenant of marriage this would make for any of us who have lived in marriage!

                                      4.       These words of Isaiah provide a background then for that new and totally different covenant that are spoken of by other prophets...

                                                          a.       Jeremiah: God says, I shall write my new covenant not on a tablet or scroll but on your hearts. In those days no one will ask, Where is our God?

                                                          b        Micah: the day is coming that on the mountain of the LORD, all nations shall gather to the house of the LORD, and swords shall be beat into plowshares... no one shall be afraid, and nations shall not learn war any more.

                                      5.       Says songwriter Jennie Lee Riddel, who composed a contemporary expression of Mary’s “Magnificat” found in Luke 1:45-55:

                                                          a.       “It is a victorious passage... a climactic and tenacious exultation of trust at the point where mercy and judgment kissed. Heaven embraced earth from the inside out... ‘Set against the prophetic backdrop of Isaiah, The Light of the World fully dawned from the womb of this little virgin bride at one of the darkest times in history and broke the 400-year silence of God’s wrath.’”

                                      5.       In the Old Testament, the bride however, remained Israel, or Zion, the rebuilt city of Jerusalem.

                                                          a.       It remained exclusionary, hope for one people only.

                                                          b.       And it never went beyond that limitation. [PAUSE]

 

III.      IT IS THE CHRISTMAS CHILD WHO GREW UP AND UNDERSTOOD HIMSELF AS THE BRIDE- GROOM, NOT ZION NOT THE REMNANT, A BRIDEGROOM WHO NEVER MARRIED.

                   A.       The prophecy of Isaiah, both chapter 7 and here in chapter 63, is fulfilled in our Christmas narrative.          

                        1.         For the LORD delights in you, And your land shall be married,

                                    For as a young man marries a virgin, So shall his sons marry you...”

                                      2.       Isaac Watts in his hymn, “Joy to World,” gives it to us correctly in a cosmically ecological scope!  The birth of the bridegroom must involve all of nature, floods, rocks, hills and trees, for in the desert shall be made a highway, and hills made straight!  (page 3)

                                                          a.       all of the animal world as well, and all nations, for this is the creation of the father of the bridegroom.

                                                          b.       So we get all these creative, fanciful stories about the fir tree who can think and talk, and the animals who bring gifts to the manger.

 

                   B.       Secondly, we have the warning of the bridegroom to not be late to the wedding feast– it is not to the bride, but to the guests, to you and me.

                                      1.       And to the bridesmaids, as those in the parable who let their oil burn low and had to go out and wake up the lamp oil salesman to replenish their supply. They never made it back in time.

                                                          a.       One Christmas Eve, 1970, I was working as a student minister in a large Pennsylvania Dutch congregation of 1300 in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. After the Christmas Eve service I was driving back to the home where I was staying. It was 11 PM; I noticed my gas gauge was on “Empty.”  Early the next morning I had to drive 70 miles to the Philadelphia airport to fly to spend the Christmas with my parents in California.  I drove down the road past the city limits into Allentown, several miles. The first gas station I came to was open.  I tipped the attendant $5.00, I was so happy.  And I went to bed that night thanking God for his blessing.

                                      2.       There is a hard-to-understand addition to another parable in Matthew 22. The king throws a wedding party for his son. When the invited guests don’t come, the street people are rounded up and brought in. One unlucky man among them gets bounced for not having the proper attire.

                                                          a.       The point is, this one is singled out as a scapegoat for not being ready for the arrival of the groom

                                                          b.       The triumphal entry into Jerusalem has already happened.  The time is very late, you should be ready, your gas tank filled.

 

                   C.       Finally, we have the wonderful ending of God’s Word, in Revelation.

                                      1.       That great scene where the banquet table is spread in God’s Kingdom, and the bridegroom is not a no-show.  Christ the Victorious Lamb is already there at the table with all of his guests.

                                                          a.       You and I, we are there also.

                                                          b.       This time “the bride” is the NEW Jerusalem, the holy city, she is prepared with a garland and the oil of gladness.

                                                                             (i)       On earth, in our time, the church is the bride of Christ, says Paul, in his sermon on marriage and love and mutual submission in Ephesians 5.

                                      2.       “Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory,

                                    for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

                                                                                                                 and His wife has made herself ready.”