Thanks for joining me for our Advent series: Expectation.
We will be working our way through portions of Isaiah, focusing on the expectation of the Messiah. In our final week before Christmas we will also explore Psalm 22. Invite a friend to join you as you connect with your expectations this Christmas.
Isaiah 7:13-16
“Then Isaiah said, “Listen well, you royal family of David! Isn’t it enough to exhaust human patience? Must you exhaust the patience of my God as well? All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’). By the time this child is old enough to choose what is right and reject what is wrong, he will be eating yogurt and honey. For before the child is that old, the lands of the two kings you fear so much will both be deserted.”
This Christmas season, I am reminded of the feeling of expectation and longing that the Jewish people had in waiting for their promised Messiah. Waiting is hard in general, but when you have something specific you are waiting for it can be excruciating. As Christians we live in a waiting, longing state as we hold the expectation of Jesus’ return. And while we have some clues as to what this final return might look like, the restoration of heaven and earth is not nearly as clear as some might believe.
In today’s passage, we look at some signs that God promised that would help his people identify the Messiah. The first clue is a virgin giving birth to a child. That must have been a pretty big head-scratcher before the fact… A second clue that God gives his people is that the Messiah will be called Immanuel, meaning “God is with us.” And when he arrives on the scene, your precious kingdoms will be long gone.
We tend to fill in information when we are given bits and pieces, so the Jewish people had filled in a lot of gaps in the prophecies with information and expectation that was not true. When we cling to our own expectations based on the things we have “figured out,” we might miss what God is actually doing. Many Jews at the time of Jesus expected him to be a political leader. Only a bunch of rowdy shepherds would believe he was a baby in a stable. God’s work is always greater than what we can imagine, and his plans out-do our expectations every time. But we must remember to hold loosely to the things our minds expect as we continue to hope in the goodness of God far above any circumstance.