Isaiah was given the tasks of announcing both the Lord’s
judgment against the nation and His favor.
For that reason, many scholars believe that there was more than one
prophet who wrote as Isaiah. Here, the prophet has the blessing of announcing
that the time judgment has finished and
that a new day is here, a day when the Lord Himself is coming to His people and
His glory will be revealed to all. The
people must be prepared in righteousness to greet Him but when He comes all
will be well again. What a beautiful
promise of restoration and yet, hidden in that picture is judgment for those
who have oppressed His people. We are
called to be those who prepare not just the ones who have fallen or lapsed in
faith but all people the Lord is calling to be part of the kingdom. The Good News isn’t just for the church, it
is for those not yet part of the church.
John had only one message, the time has come for the Lord to
return to His people. His mission was
given to his father, Zechariah, that day in the temple when Gabriel appeared to
announce John’s birth, and it seems he never wavered in his devotion to that
mission. We know relatively little about
John but he was in many ways the last Old Testament prophet and the first to
preach the Gospel. He knew his own role
and even though it seems he attracted devoted disciples he always pointed away
from himself. He didn’t see himself as
an important person, he was only looking for the one who was to fulfill God’s
promise concerning a Messiah. When
asked, John said he wasn’t the Elijah promised in Malachi, but Jesus said he
was and Gabriel, in describing John’s mission, used language that was
unmistakably fulfillment of that prophecy.
John didn’t spend the time sorting all that out, his only business was
first looking for the one promised and then, having received the sign, pointing
all to Jesus. He may not have
understood the Good News about just how Jesus was the Lamb of God and would take
away the sins of the world, he only knew it was so.
John, Paul, and the writer of Hebrews all tell us something
important about Jesus. The world was
created through Him. He is the Word of God and the world was created by the
Word of God, He spoke and it was so. If
Jesus was the agency through which God created, then isn’t the world then
created in grace and love? Our mission
is to restore that to a world in sin and rebellion against Him? The world of “dog eat dog” is a world we
created. The writer says Jesus is the
exact imprint of the nature of God, whatever God is, Jesus is, nothing more,
nothing less. He is unique in history,
not as a great teacher or a man with a higher God-consciousness, but as God
incarnate. If we would know the Father,
we must know the Son and if we would make a single proclamation about God, it
must be in light of what the Son has revealed about Him. Our proclamation of Jesus stretches back to
creation and all that has happened in the history of God’s dealings with
humanity are interpreted through that filter.
He is full of grace and truth.
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