Good morning,
Welcome to the Blue Lake Presbyterian Church on this third Sunday of advent
The message this morning is titled “The Messiah” and is based on John 1: verse 5-9 and 19-28.
But I like to kick it off with something funny.
It was Christmas Eve and three men were driving on a road zigzagging through the mountains. They were trying to make it back home on time, and were driving a little too fast. There were spots where the road was covered with black ice, and in a sharp corner they lost control, and went off a steep cliff into a ravine. Before they knew it, the three men find themselves in front of the pearly gates.
St Peter greets them and says: in the spirit of Christmas, in order to make it to heaven you need to show something that symbolizes Christmas.
The first man searches and comes up with a lighter, the man says, this like a Christmas candle and it represents the light of the World. He instantly is led through the gates into Heaven.
The next guy goes through his pockets and pulls out a bunch of keys, he shakes them loudly, and says these keys depict Christmas bells and represent the joy of Christmas. St Peter says you also may pass through the pearly gates.
Then the third fellow looks around nervously and searches through his coat pockets and pulls out a set of women’s glasses.
St Peter looks at the man with raised eyebrows, appears to be perplexed and he asks: how can these glasses possibly represent anything to do with Christmas?
The man replied: they are Carol’s…………….
Speaking of Carols, our opening hymn this morning was the Christmas classic: Come thou long expected Jesus. This hymn was written in 1744, by Charles Wesley.
Nine years earlier in 1737, Charles together with his brother John Wesley traveled to America as Anglican Missionaries. The ship carried mostly English passengers, but also a group of Moravian immigrants from Germany. A terrible storm developed in the middle of the Atlantic and they were in danger of being ship-wrecked.
The Moravians were in the midst of a worship service and praising God with much intensity. The Wesley brothers were terrified.
The water broke over the ship, split the main-sail in pieces, covered the ship and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed them up. A terrible screaming broke out among the English passengers.
But the Moravians calmly kept singing Psalms. John Wesley asked them afterwards; ‘Were you and your families not afraid?’ they answered, ‘I thank God, no.’ we are not afraid to die.’” In the darkness of this powerful storm, they kept praising God.
The Wesley brothers experience on board that ship, with the Moravians, made an unshakable impression on their lives and permanently influenced, not only their teaching, but the way they handled times of trial and tribulation. John and Charles Wesley were founders of what would eventually become the Methodist Church.
Charles also wrote thousands of hymns, including a number of Christmas carols, like “Hark the Heralds angels sing” and many others, but this morning’s opening hymn “Come they long expected Jesus” is the theme of today’s message. The song was based upon and a published prayer with the words:
Born your people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now your gracious Kingdom bring.
By Your own eternal Spirit,
Rule in all, our hearts alone;
By your all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Your glorious throne.
Wesley adapted this prayer into a hymn in 1744.
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus is the ultimate depiction of waiting for the savior to arrive.
For centuries the Jewish people were long expecting and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, but what does “Messiah” stand for, what does it mean?
The literal translation of “Messiah” or the Hebrew word Mashiach, means “anointed”, which refers to a ritual of blessing someone by putting holy oil upon it. It is used throughout the Hebrew bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals; like Jewish kings, priests and prophets.
You may ask, what prompted the Jewish people to be waiting for a “Messiah? In Jewish doctrine, the term came to refer to a future Jewish King from the line of David, which would be “anointed” and was taken from Psalm 2:2.
This term was applied in a special sense to the future ruler who would be sent from God to sit on the throne of David forever. He is the one that God distinctly identified many years ahead of his arrival.
The Old Testament is full of prophesies about the coming of the Messiah, some predictions are more specific than others, and many books have been written on this subject.
In his Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, J. Barton Payne itemized 127 Messianic predictions involving more than 3,000 Bible verses.
Author Paul Humber in his book Prophesies, Appearances, or foreshadowing of Christ in the Tanakh (Old testament) lists 414 passages from The Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures from the Garden of Eden in Genesis to Malachi predicting the Messiah’s arrival.
Bill read this morning from the book of Isaiah the 8th century BC prophet. The messianic predictions in the book of Isaiah are profound, memorable, and familiar to many. The tenor aria we heard a moment ago from Handel’s Messiah is straight from Isaiah 40 verse 4.
700 years later John the Baptist, quoted from Isaiah 40 when confronted by priests and Levites who were sent from Jerusalem to the place were John was baptizing in the Jordan River.
The people at the time of John the Baptist, were living in darkness and were yearning for a deliverer, they were seeking the light. They had a hunger and thirst of the soul.
John was called by God to be the forerunner of the Messiah, the one leading the way, the one making a path straight in the desert. This is what brings us to today’s reading in John 1:5-9 and then 19-28 which can we found on page…………
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
Verse 19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”[g] 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”
22 Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said. 24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.
25 They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah,[h] nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, 27 the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” 28 This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
A few weeks ago, the Ferndale community choir traveled the New Yok City and performed Handel’s Messiah in Carnegie Hall. They were invited by an organization called Distinguished Concerts International New York, this organization selects choirs from all around the world to come to New York City. Collectively 400 singers performed Handel’s Messiah this year on November 26.
The Ferndale Choir was selected based on videos of past performances, posted on their website. It was a great honor for the Ferndale choir to represent Northern California.
I sing in the Eureka Presbyterian church choir, and some of our choir members also sing in the Ferndale choir. Last week I was talking to them about their trip to New York, and they shared, that this was the highlight of their lives. One singer actually fainted during practice, only to be helped back up by members of a French Choir.
She said performing the “Messiah” in Carnegie Hall was an experience so surreal, that she labeled as a forerunner of what Heaven must be like.
In America, Handel’s Messiah is the Christmas oratory of choice; it is performed in concert halls throughout the country during the Holiday season.
But what exactly are they singing?
In 1740, Charles Jennens, a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interests, compiled scriptural text from the King James Bible, and put together a chronicle of the life of Christ in what Jennens called: a great scriptures collection.
He sent it to his friend, George Frederick Handel and asked that he “would lay out his whole genius and skill, that the composition, may excel all his previous works, he called it “ Messiah!”
Handel, received Jennens’s text sometime in July 1741, he began work on it on August 22d, and had it completed by September 14, 24 days later. Handel was truly moved by the selection of verses, and wrote with breathtaking intensity the soaring and moving musical notes that today is his best known work.
At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters “SDG” Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone the glory”. This inscription, and the incredible speed, at which Handel wrote Messiah, would suggest, that Handel wrote the music in fervor of divine inspiration, in which as he wrote the “Hallelujah” chorus, “he saw all heaven before him”.
The Messiah is made up of 55 movements, quoting scripture verbatim with the majority of the verses coming from the Old Testament, including: Psalms, Malachi, Zachariah, and 17 verses coming from Isaiah.
Handel’s Messiah starts out with 3 prophetic passages from Isaiah.
The second movement is from Isiah 40 1-3, and this is the same scripture, John the Baptist quotes to the priests and Levites: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’
The music that played a few minutes ago was from the 3d movement, from Isaiah 40:4: every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain.
This aria, takes your imagination to the banks of the River Jordan, as if hearing it straight from the lips of John the Baptist.
A few weeks ago I was listening to a program called ‘In the Market” with Janet Parshal, she interviewed Michael Rydelnik, professor of Jewish studies at Moody Bible Institute, regarding passages in Handel’s Messiah and about Messianic prophesies in the Old Testament. He talked about the oracle of darkness and light in Isaiah 9:2
In the 11th movement, Charles Jennens selected Isaiah 9:2 as the foreshadowing of light after darkness. Jennens dark night of the soul in his own life was driven by grief of his brother’s death.
The bible says in Isaiah 9:2 the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.
See these lilies in front here they are called Candy Cane lilies. They are grown in greenhouses in Arcata, but in the winter, there isn’t enough light.
So we give those lilies additional light with grow lights. In darkness of winter these lilies wouldn’t perform without the light.
At the farm in Oxnard, we grow a crop called Matricaria, or Chamomile. They are mixed in with the red tulips here this morning. Matricaria is a plant that needs long days to flower. Since we grow this crop year-round, it requires additional light once the days get shorter, in the winter time.
When we started growing this crop many years ago, we didn’t give enough light in the winter. I vividly remember a crop we had planted for Valentine’s Day and the plants kept getting taller and taller, but no flowers. In the darkness of winter there will be no flowers without the light.
So it is with us, in our lives. Without light, we live in darkness.
Jesus said in John 8:12: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me, will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Let the light of Jesus Christ shine and overcome:
The darkness of depression,
The darkness of violence and mass killings in our country,
The darkness of a troubling medical condition,
The darkness of the opioid crisis in America,
The darkness of drug and alcohol abuse in families, in the work place in society in general,
The darkness of escalating mortgage or student loan debts,
Let his light shine and overcome the darkness of the soul,
We are craving, and seeking light in our lives.
In the middle of that storm in the Atlantic Ocean in 1737, Charles and John Wesley saw darkness, they were terrified, but the light of Jesus Christ was shining in the hearts and souls of those Moravians.
John wrote: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John the Baptist came to testify to the light, so that all may believe through him. The true light of Jesus Christ which enlightens everyone was coming into the World.
Folks, this is the beauty of the Gospel, God so loved the world that he send his only begotten son so that everyone who believes in him, shall not perish and have eternal life.
Jesus, The messiah, our Savior, King of Kings, Lord of Lords came into a dark world to bring light, hope and salvation.
Many folks are thirsty and hungry of the soul, they are longing for light in the darkness, just like this Matricaria would not flower without light, we need the light and we can find it, in Jesus Christ.
Are you lost in a dark world?
Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and savior?
Make a decision today,
Ask Jesus, to come into your heart, let him bring light into the darkness and accept him as Lord and Savior.
Jesus offers to everyone, the possibility of eternal life, a free gift to all.
Friends, let the good news of the Gospel fill our hearts, and enrich our souls.
Let our cups be filled, with the Grace and Glory of God.
Believe, and the light will shine.
Thank you,
God Bless you,
Amen
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