The Voices of the Prophets

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Advent Service, December 2, 2009

There are all kinds of voices out there in the world today. What voices do you listen to? Maybe it’s the voice of a spouse yelling from across the house. Maybe it’s your parents yelling at you for something you did wrong this time. There are voices of desperation. There are voices of want. There are voices of need. What’s the voice we listen to?

In the Advent season, we have a lot of different voices. We hear a lot of different voices. And we start hearing from newspapers and commercials on TV and the voice says “Buy here. Shop here. We’ll give you some kind of benefit or something to go along with that, so come here and shop.” You have the voices from your kids maybe, as I have from mine. “I want an American Girl doll.” “I want a DSI.” “I want something.” “I want and I want and I want.” What are the voices there? The voice of my lovely wife who says, “When are the lights going to go up on the house?” “When are you going to get this done? When are you going to get that done?” There’s always another voice that we hear in this season of Advent. Whose shall we listen to?

There are other voices. There are other voices we can also see and hear today. Tonight in this service, we hear the voice of the prophet. We hear the voice of the angels and we hear the voice of shepherds. Because as we focus this Advent season, we want to take those other outside voices and cut them off and listen to what it is that God has for us this year. The voices are not anything new. The prophets have always spoken. The angels have always spoken and the shepherds have always spoken.

But through this Advent season, we want to focus particularly upon these voices because there’s so much going on around us. To be ready to prepare our hearts for this Advent season, we listen to the voice of the prophet here tonight. The prophet has two particular things that he wants us to hear. He has two particular voices. He says he has a voice of hope, hope that there’s grace for us. And he also says that there’s a voice of hope for this coming season as we think about the Messiah being in that manger.

So let’s look at the prophet, Isaiah, here tonight as you’ve already heard, “Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem; proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” The prophet speaks two words: Comfort, comfort. This is the message that he has for the people. This is the message that we hear tonight. “Comfort, comfort, my people.”

Isaiah was particularly talking to a people who are in captivity. They were taken away to be into this land of Babylonians and while they were in this land, they were apart from their homeland. They were not able to worship in their own place. But here comes the prophet and he says, “Comfort, comfort, my people.” He’s telling them this because they were abandoned. They felt abandoned. They were living in this land that was not their home. They were living in this land that was apart from everything they’d ever known and so they felt abandoned. “God has left us,” and that’s why the message is so sweet for them to hear. “Comfort, comfort, my people, because I am your God. I have not left you but I’ve come now to take you out of that land of slavery, out of that land that was foreign to you and bring you back home. This is a voice of grace. This is a voice that the prophet continues to say as he says, “Her sin has been paid for.” You know, God didn’t say, “Guess what, you’ve kind of stuck it out there and now I’m going to bring you home because you did such a good job.” He doesn’t say that. He just says, “I’m bringing you back because you are my people. I’m bringing you back home and, guess what, all your sins have been paid for.”

This is why it’s a comfort. It’s a comfort knowing that it was nothing these people did but it was all the act of grace that brought these people out of captivity and back home once more. And that’s the voice of grace we can hear this evening, as this verse points to one who will forgive the sins of all. And that’s what the voice of the prophets are telling you tonight, that your sins are forgiven. They’re taking you out of that captivity of the bonds of sin and death and the devil and they’re bringing you back into the light. This child that we will see born on Christmas Day is the child who will die and forgive you of all your sins. It’s nothing that we deserved. But God saw us in a state, in the place where we were and He said, “I’m coming to save you.” “Comfort, comfort, my people, because He is our God.”

The next word we hear from the prophet this evening is a word of hope. The Lord provides. And this is what it continues as Isaiah continues with Verse 3, “There’s a voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low, the rough ground shall become level and rugged places a plain.” This gives us hope. Why does it give us hope? Because the Lord is coming.

It was often, in the ancient world, a tradition when the king was setting out to go across the country on some visits that he would send out a messenger before him telling the people to prepare the way for this king to come. And so what the people would do is they would fix their roads. They would take the rough patches and they would smooth them out. They would take the valleys and they’d make them plains. They’d remove all the rocks and all the brush along the way so the road would be made straight for the king to come.

This is what the prophet tells you tonight. We need to prepare that way for our coming Savior. We prepare our hearts, we prepare our minds in this Advent season as we prepare for the coming Savior into the world.

So how do we prepare? How do we prepare our hearts this Advent season as we think about the coming Savior? The path was already made straight. So what do we do to pave that way for our Savior to come into the world? We hear the voice of the prophets. We know that we’re saved by grace. He saved us from that captivity. He saved us from the bonds of sin. And now we prepare our hearts. We make them clean. We come to Him in repentance. We repent of our sin and we make that place a clean place, as we talked about already in our confession for this evening. We make that place a clean place so when we see our Savior, we fall down and we worship Him, just as the shepherds and the wise men fell down and worshipped their Lord and their Savior.

So how will you prepare this season? Hearing God’s Word, listening to the voices of the prophets, listening to the voices of God as He speaks through His Word? This is how you can prepare. Hear the voices and shut off all the other ones that are going on around us and hear the voice of God as He speaks to you. Let the voice of the prophets ring in your ears and in your hearts this evening. “Comfort, comfort, my people.” Make that path straight. Prepare the way. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church