Where Are We Going?

Sermon from December 5, 2004

1. Good morning. Let's Pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. Opening Comments. Well today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent - just 2 more weeks to go! What does our Lord want to say to us this morning?

Last Sunday we heard the Lord remind us that He is the "Prince of Peace" and that you and I are to be His "peace bringers" to this earth.

Today we lit the "Peace" candle and after reading and reflecting upon our readings for today I'm convinced that our Lord wants to speak more to us about His peace but this time He wants to give us a "vision" of this peace - a vision of the peace of our ultimate home in Paradise.

It's a delightful vision and it's a vision that all human beings yearn for - whether they know it or not.

We're therefore going to be focusing our attention on the passage from Isaiah - Isaiah 11:1-10.

To focus our reflections I'm going to ask us a framing question. Here we go: "If you were asked by God to design Paradise - the place where all of us who know and love Him are heading - what would it look like?"

Let me ask us another question that may help us zero in a little bit further:

"Where were you when you thought you were as about as close to Paradise as you have ever been?"

Some of us might be thinking about a vacation we once took - a cruise, a trip to the beach or perhaps the mountains.

Are scenes beginning to form in your mind? Remember that wonderful vacation you took with your family when you were quite young? Or what about that weekend at the lake in the mountains? I think many of us are remembering all sorts of wonderful times we had when we perhaps felt that we were about as close to Paradise as we had ever been before. The overwhelming feeling that we felt at times like this was an all consuming sense of well-being and utter peace wasn't it? Close your eyes and try to envision your scene of Paradise. . . .

Now what could you add to that so that it most closely approximated what the real Paradise which God is preparing for each and every one of us!

Really let your mind think about this. I'll tell you why - Advent is a time for deep reflection not only on our Lord's first coming but also upon His final coming when all of this will be transformed into it's most perfect image and God will restore us to His Paradise - to a place of infinite peace!

This will be the time when the devastation of the Fall will be reversed and Eden will be reestablished upon the earth!

Please make no mistake, this time is coming. All of history has been heading towards this point from the very beginning.

And so this morning we're going to reconnect with our most primal dream. The dream that is, as it were a part of our very DNA as beings made in the image of the immortal God who is inexorably leading all of history to this glorious point.

Will it come in our life time? I don't know but I hope and pray so. But if it doesn't I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is coming and I, by God's grace, am going to be a part of it! How about you?

It seems then very very appropriate that in this Season of Advent we should spend some time in remembering where all of this is ultimately leading when our Lord comes the Second time.

Now back to your vision of what the real Paradise will actually look like.

Each of us then has a hint, a scent, a feeling that connects us in some way with what will be a reality one day.

This sense of Paradise is very much a part of our humanity and when we deny it or, by our very lives, work to destroy it or ensure that it will never come to fruition we're fundamentally working against our very selves - our deepest dreams and desires.

Now please hold that vision of Paradise in your heads for a moment.

O, by the way, this dream is in your hearts also isn't it? Yes, you and I connect with it much more with our hearts than with our heads don't we?

Something in those scenes that you're now remembering touched your heart in a most wonderful way. So much so that an indelible memory was created and it has stayed with you ever since!

For me it was a mountain top meadow on Orchas Island in the SanJuans on a Summer day. I had an almost 360 degree view. There was a gentle breeze. There was a clean spring swept scent there and I could hear in the silence the movement of a bumble bee close by. I found myself thinking "O Lord don't let this moment pass - I want it to last forever." And it was as if He said to me - "It will in your memory. You can come here any time you want but Robert I have so much more than this waiting for you. You're going to love it. It will most perfectly express the depth of my love for you. I can't wait to see your expression and feel the joy of your heart when you see and experience it. But until that time I have given you this memory as a reminder of it."

3. Turning to God's vision of Paradise. Well now it's time to turn to God's vision for His Paradise and lets make no mistake that this is coming sooner or later - it's most assuredly coming and it's important that you and I have it's memory enkindled in our minds and hearts. It's most important that we yearn for this vision - this great reward that will - in part - empower our lives for mission and ministry today!

Please turn with me to Isaiah chapter 11 verses 1 through 10.

Now as I read this vision of Paradise try to see yourself in it. What will you be doing? What will you be feeling? Are you ready? OK, let's begin:

"1. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 2. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, 4. but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. OK ARE YOU READY? HE"S GOD'S VISION FOR PARADISE.

6. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. 7. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 9. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. 10. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples - of him shall the nations (the gentiles) inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious." Amen and Amen!

Did you hear that? "And His resting place shall be glorious!" - Yes, it's a place of rest and it is glorious! A place where "delight" seems to be the resident feeling. This is a place of delight, of rest, or peace and ultimate well being - This is Paradise! And this is where we're heading!

This is an image - a vision - of where we're ultimately heading! This is the culmination of all of God's efforts to return us to Eden. This is what the Kingdom of God looks like on earth!

Ah! But are all of us heading in this direction?

Are we all heading towards Paradise?

The fact is that many of us aren't! Many of us have decided that this - what we have here on earth - is it and that we're going to do whatever it takes to find Paradise right here and now!

But our Lord tells us that for these people whatever they find on earth that approximates Paradise pales in comparison to the real thing and that what they're ultimately heading towards is the quintessential opposite of Paradise - what they're heading towards is in fact - Hell.

Now there's a happy Advent thought! When this thought remains a "theological musing" it's relatively benign, but when it becomes real - when a person is standing at the edge of this life and is looking into the lake of fire or into Paradise it's a very very different issue isn't it?

Now God is calling you and me to remember the Paradise that awaits us at the end of all of this, but He's also reminding us by inference what awaits those who don't believe - who don't know Him - who haven't experienced His love and don't have a vision for His Paradise!

Hell or Paradise! Make no mistake Jesus Himself was very very explicit about Hell!

The man in Luke 16:24 cries: ". . .I am tormented in this FLAME."

In Matthew 13:42, Jesus says: "And shall cast them into a FURNACE OF FIRE: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."

In Matthew 25:41, Jesus says: "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting FIRE,. . ."

Revelation 20:15 says, " And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the LAKE OF FIRE."

Why G12 - And this brings me to what I and few others have been doing for the last week! Jessica Coleman and Suzanne Topping and Jimmy and Chase Miller and I have been learning more about the G12 Model of Discipleship and we realized that at the end of the day what we all need is an impartation of God's heart of compassion for those who don't know Him and His heart's love for them.

What we all need is His heart that wants more than anything else to draw everyone into His Kingdom which will one day come to it's ultimate consummation and on that grand day Paradise will be established forever - the old fallen world will be consumed in the fire of God's infinite love.

But the bad news is that on that day all of those who don't know our Lord and His love will have condemned themselves to an eternity in hell.

Now it's God's desire that each and every one of us gathered here this morning would experience His heart of compassion and love for the lost so that we could be driven by His love for those people around us who are most assuredly destined for hell if we don't seek with all of our hearts to reveal God's love for them and His desire that they enter His Kingdom and ultimately His Paradise!

• O, my brothers and sisters - could this be the time when God gives you and me His heart for the lost?

· Could this be the time that you and I begin as never before to draw people around us into the Kingdom of God?

· Could this be the time when we will be used to usher some of those around us into the Kingdom of God?

God's dream of Paradise for us gives us a peek into the very heart of God - this is what He has in store for us. He wants to bring everyone of us into it but we have the gift of free will. We can choose this world over His world! And in so doing to destine ourselves to an eternity in hell.

Do you believe that the stakes are that high? They are!

And God's answer for the lost is us!

Not us alone but us, filled with the Holy Spirit and filled with the compassion of Jesus Christ for the lost.

It really is our choice - we can drift into heaven or hell or we can become very intentional Christian pilgrims on the road to Paradise.

But a big part of becoming such a Pilgrim is to agree that a primary purpose on this earth is to love our God and each other enough to work with all of our hearts to draw more and more into the Kingdom of God!

Business cards - use them this week. I'm going to take a dozen with me and I'm going to give one to everyone I get a chance to meet - the checkout person at Wegmans, the waitress at my luncheon meetings and so on. And do you know what, I'm not going to stop this for the rest of my life regardless of the harvest.

I'm going to believe that the harvest is in God's hands but I'm going to be faithful in dropping down the net.

It's up to God to catch them. I'll reel them in when they come on Sunday! O Lord that's going to be interesting! Lord have mercy - amen and amen!

Let's Pray.