Putting Things Back to Normal

Reference Isaiah 35:5-8

This passage from Isaiah seems to me to be a calling back to creation as it was when it was first created. It describes a time when things will be back to “normal” back to perfection. The eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf opened, the lame shall leap like a deer, water in the desert and nobody can go astray. This is what Jesus does when he comes into our world. His healing miracles are about putting things back to the way they were in creation.

Jesus himself speaks of this in Matthew 11 “Now when John (that is John the Baptist) heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?” And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. All those magnificent acts of healing done by our Lord and Savior when he walked this earth, restoring God’s creation bit by bit to how it was created to be, perfect.

Now certainly God is not the one who screwed up creation, we did, and we could not and cannot fix it, so God interceded with Jesus to fix it.

Have you ever screwed up and tried to fix it. I’m immediately brought back to my childhood when my brothers and I ruined countless things, the record player, the lawn mower, the camera, and probably dozens of light bulbs, yes I learned very early on how to change a light bulb in order to stay out of trouble. Sometimes things worked sometimes they didn’t. Once when my brother threw a baseball through a hall closet door, we simply taped a picture over it, thinking our parents would never think to look under it. They’d appreciate the new found art, yeah, that lasted about 4 minutes.

Trying to fix problems beyond our ability reminded me of this clip from Dennis the Menace…

Watch Dennis the Menace from 36:40-39:20

Dennis screwed up. He ruined Mr. Wilson’s dentures and he did the best he could to fix the problem, but Chicklets just didn’t cut it and he ended up getting caught and in trouble.

We see this in humanity every day. When Adam and Eve first sinned, they hid and sewed fig leaves to hide their nakedness. When we sin, we hide our face from God hoping he won’t notice how we screwed up this time. When we forget something for our spouse, friends, or family we do our best to cover our mistake, but when it comes to salvation, we cannot fix the problem. We’re stuck like Dennis, needing teeth when all we have is Chicklets and who are we going to fool? Certainly not God.

But God knows how stuck we are. He knows we are blind, deaf, lame, and mute and he comes into our world with His own Son and relieves all those shortcomings. Not only does he relieve them, he makes them perfect, knowing full well that we can’t do it ourselves. More than that, he dies for us, because he knows that because of our sin we will die some day and by ourselves, we’d never be able to attain the resurrection from the dead, but through Christ and his resurrection eternal life is ours through our risen Lord and Savior.

God fixes the problems in our world that we have caused knowing we can’t fix them, knowing the mess we create when we try to fix the problems. And he cleans up the mess for us in one fell swoop by sending His Son Jesus to die for us.

Ask me the Questions Bridge Keeper, I'm Not Afraid

All of us are amazing at something. Something we can take pride in. Whether it be something useful or ridiculous, all of us has some talent or skill that very few other people have. I for instance could tell you almost everything there is to know about Seinfeld. That indeed is not very useful. Many of you undoubtedly have talents such as teaching, learning Hebrew vocabulary, knowing every statistic there is to know about the 1991 World Series champion Minnesota Twins, knowing every episode of Grey’s Anatomy like the back or your hand, or an uncanny skill for memorizing Bible passages, all of us has something rare that we are good at.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he lets them know how amazing he is at certain things. Here is the text…

Philippians 3:4b-6

Paul shows them how he is better than all people at these things, but his point is not how great he is, but rather how much greater Christ is as he continues…

Philippians 3:7-14

All of the skill and talent and work that Paul has put in himself is worthless, rubbish, filth, garbage compared to what he has in his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What Paul and all of us have in Jesus Christ is the assurance that after death we will be raised from the dead just as Christ was raised from the dead. What we have is forgiveness of sins in our Savior and Lord. What we have is eternal life because of what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection.

But oftentimes, many of us forget that we need a Savior, we think we can do it alone, we forget due to pride that we aren’t capable of perfection, we aren’t capable of being blameless. For an example of this today, we’re going to watch a short clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’ll explain things after you watch the scene.

Watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail

So who are you acting like? Are you like Lancelot, thinking you can take paradise by force? Are you like Robin, thinking it’s easy to obtain paradise then realizing you can’t do it by yourself? Are you like Galahad, answering even the simplest of questions incorrectly, or are you like Bedivere, waiting for your King to answer the questions, because you know he’ll not only answer for himself, but will answer so well that it will allow you to cross into paradise with him?

Obviously, this is not a perfect analogy to our lives and God’s Kingdom, but it shows how our attitude should be in pressing on toward reaching salvation. We should not think it is easy, we should not think we can obtain it by force or alone. We should seek to follow our living Lord and Savior because he casts down those who try to keep us from salvation. Jesus accomplishes what we can’t accomplish in living a perfect life. He dies on our behalf to save us from eternal death. And he rises to life again, to assure us of our own resurrection from death.