We Believe in the Second Advent

The other day I was leisurely reading the Prophet Isaiah, when suddenly words I read many times, which I know from memory, suddenly leapt out at me from the biblical page and became alive. By the way, I suggest that you rarely have an experience like this reading any other book. The verse that excited me so was the one in our Old Testament lesson Isaiah 40 verse 3.

“A voice cries in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert the highway for our God.”

The great insight that suddenly startled me was this: This beautiful literature, these great prophetic insights of Isaiah are words from wilderness. The prophet’s big job is to inspire the Hebrew people in the desert experience.

What is the significance of this? Why was Israel in the wilderness? The answer is that Israel, the people of God, become disobedient people. They had been sentenced to the wilderness of Babylon because they succumbed to the evil around them. In fact, they committed spiritual adultery by worshipping the gods of Babylon’s fertility cult.

To understand this story, we must look at the two contrasting biblical stories from the ancient Hebrew. In the story of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve were driven from the inhabited land, the garden of Eden, into the wilderness or desert land. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel and was driven from the habitual homeland into the desert, away from man. Interestingly, Cain built the first city there in the desert, where urban life was looked upon as desert life.

Now, the urban land was the living land of milk and honey, the habitable land where values abide, righteousness rules, laws are kept, and God’s order prevails. The desert land is the evil place. There is no seed, no grapes, no figs, no vines, and no water to drink. For Israel the desert was the terrible place, the land of drought, the land of serpents and scorpions. The desert was the land of nettles, thorns, and thistles? In the Genesis story, the land of nettles, thorns, and thistles is the land of the curse, where the blessing is lacking. Whoever wanders there is led astray for there is no highway there?

In the life of Jesus, he goes out to into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. In the wilderness, he is tempted to misuse his power to turn bread into stone. He is also tempted to bow down to Satan and succumb to evil and gain the world. He is tempted to gain the world by making a name for himself by putting on a big show and jumping off the pinnacle of the temple.

In Isaiah, Israel is in the same wilderness of the curse in a lonely exile in Babylon. But it is here the great servant Messiah is going to come to transform the desert into a habitable place. A voice cries in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The voice the tells how the desert is to be transformed. Every valley shall be lifted, and every mountain shall be made low. The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And all the flash shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

With this background, let us look at the New Testament lesson about what happens in the respect to the Christmas story. Jesus, the son of God, leaves the inhabited land, emptied himself, and comes to the land of the curse. In Galatians 3 verse 13, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us.” Jesus ministers too those who are under the curse with broken lives, the sinners. Christ goes into the wilderness to do battle with the devil. He works in the world to prepare the way for God. He makes his way straight into the desert, a highway for our God. He goes all the way to taking the curse upon himself.

What are the implications for us? Christ sends us as his disciples out into the world, into the desert place. This is in a real sense the second advent, the people of God following the second Adam, who is Christ, to transform the desert into a habitable place.

The first Adam went out into the desert place, the place of the curse, in disgrace and under a curse. The second Adam went out into the desert, the place of the curse, where he gloriously opened the door of life in the resurrection. The first people of God were banished to the wilderness in Babylon like their father the first Adam. The second people of God, the church, followed their champion into the wellness of the world, to redeem it from the curse and make it habitable place.

Now what does the Christmas story mean to us? A voice cries in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert the highway for our God.” We go to church to meet with Christ and live in discipleship. We study and worship to prepare ourselves to go out into the desert of the world.

Remember, Cain built the first city in the world. In our city, we serve Thanksgiving dinner at the to so many people, victims of automation, victims of our urban way of life. We serve to the homeless, the poor, the tax collectors, and the prostitutes. We can no longer afford to only associate with only the nice people.

Christ came to save the lost and to transform the wilderness. We must go where we cross the different ways of life, where sound the cries of race and clan, above the sound selfish strife, we hear the voice of the Son of Man. We must go in haunts of wretchedness and need, and on shadow thresholds dark with fears, from paths where hide the lures of greed, we catch the vision of thy tears.

Advent says, Christ came into this world to save sinners and to transform the wilderness into a habitable place. Israel was called to transform the dirty land of the Canaanites and the desert into the city of our God.

For the salesman, what does it mean to turn the jungle of double talk into the habitable land of integrity? For young people lost in the desert, the dropouts who are lost in the world of automation, the beat down what does it mean to be lost in darkness without God? We must go into the desert to help them. We must go to the desert of politics like our Representative John Dellenback who is a committed Christian laymen. The work he is doing in our House of Representatives to talk with President Eisenhauer about the petty politics of the machine shop at Boeing. Howard Steward’s Office of Economic Opportunities is addressing the pockets of priorities in our community to make the desert of poverty a habitable place.

A voice cries in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”