Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Waiting Well

530 years.

Five centuries is difficult to quantify:
530 years ago Johann Gutenberg completed the first Bible.
The Turks conquered Constantinople.  
Columbus sailed on the Santa Maria.  
Ivan the Great became the first czar.  
By the year 2306 our nation will be 530 years old.  

No matter who you look at it, 530 years is a long time to wait.  

By roughly 530 BC, Israel's 70 year captivity was finally over.  The Persian king Cyrus had secured the nation's physical redemption and now the faithful Jews anticipated that a Servant-King would rise and restore the Golden Age of Israel (Isaiah 2:1-4; 9:1-7; 10:20-12:6; 24:1-27:13; 34:1-35:10; 52:1-12; 54:1-17). 

Nationalistic expectations understandably soared.  The prophet Isaiah had textually woven together the destinies of Cyrus and the Servant-King.  Chapters 40-54 build upon one another in that Persian king would allow the exiles to gain their land and then the Jewish Servant-King would liberate the nation from sin.  One would bring physical redemption, the other spiritual.

While textually these two men are intertwined, would the unfolding of history have them chronologically linked?  Would the Jewish King immediately follow the Persian king?

Eventually reality set in.
Cyrus had come but where was this Servant-King?
Where was this Immanuel Child?
Where were the restored fortunes of Zion?

For 530 years the nation waited, carrying questions and crafting solutions.
Intending to establish the kingdom, certain ideologies took root.

The Pharisees stressed renewal through personal righteousness.
The Zealots stressed renewal through militancy.
The Essences stressed renewal through extreme isolation.
The Sadducees stressed renewal through political positioning.

Unbeknownst to most, things had already changed.
The Servant-King had entered our world.

But on that particular day, he would go public.
On that particular Sabbath, during the normal routine,
the created order was turned upside down.
An unassuming man took the Isaiah scroll and began to read:
The Spirit of God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bing up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (61:1-3; Luke 4:16-30).     
Rolling up the document he turned to those in attendance:
Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing
The Servant-King slipped unto the scene as the answer to 530 years of questions, struggle, and disillusionment.  Please sit with this.  We simply turn a few pages in our Bibles, from Isaiah to Luke, and five centuries of Jewish angst is quickly alleviated when we see Jesus.  May we not be so quick to short-circuit the 530 years in which the post-exilic faithful waited and wrestled.  May we slow down and appreciate those who refused to allow nagging questions to dampen their faith.    

To those who seek to wait well, Isaiah cultivates a gritty mindset built upon three distinct messages that are woven throughout 56:1-66:24:  

Persevere in obedience, find delight in the Lord
“Keep justice and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed.  Blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it and keeps his hand from doing any evil” (56:1-2)
“If you turn back your foot on the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day…then you shall take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father”  (58:13-14)
"But you who forsake the lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune, and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny, I will destine you to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter because when I called you did not answer; when I spoke you did not listen, but you did what was evil in my eyes and chose what I did not delight in.  Therefore says the Lord God: behold my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold my servants shall drink but you shall be thirsty; behold my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame; behold my servants shall sing for gladness of heart, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and shall wait for breaking spirits.  You shall leave your name to my chosen for a curse and the Lord God will put you to death, but his servants he will call by another name.  (65:11-15) 
Persevere in truth, God has promised to act

The day will come when...
God will establish Mount Zion for all nations:  
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people...I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off...these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer...for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.  (56:3-8)
The nations respond to Israel's revelation: 
For behold darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples but the lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.  And the nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.  (60:1-14) 
The Servant-King announces liberation:  
The Lord has anointed me to bring goo news to the poor...to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...to grant those who mourn in Zion - to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes (61:1-4) 
All things are made new: 
For behold I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or com into mind.  But be glad a rejoice forever in that which I create for behold I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness.  I will rejoice in Jerusalem... (65:17-25) 
Persevere in prayer, seek the fulfillment of God's promise  
“On your walls I have put watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent.  You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth”    (62:6-7)
As in the 6th century BC so the 21st century AD: the faithful wait.  We wait, we hope, we endure. Waiting for the return of the Servant-King, let us delight in the Lord and discern between good and evil, let us hold fast to truth, let us pray fervently for the kingdom to come.

The Servant-King left to prepare a place for us, we need not pine as those who have no hope.  Indeed we will forever be united and reigning with our King.  And though the trials mount, we understand that all things work toward the good of God’s children and that suffering will produce in us an unfading hope (John 14:1-3; I Thess 4:13-18; 2 Timothy 2:12; Romans 8:28; 5:1-6).

In the words of the apostle John, “Come Lord Jesus.”

May we be found faithful on that day. 
“From the new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me.  And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me.  For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh”  Isaiah 66:23-24