Wait of the World
Open your Bibles to Luke 4:
I would love to see this scene on videotape.
Maybe when we get to heaven ,the Lord will replay some of the great scenes we missed.
- See creation unfold
- See the children of Israel cross the Red Sea on dry land
- See the face of the reaction of the widow of Nain (Luke 7). She is accompanying her only son who has died to his burial place. Jesus comes up, touches the casket, and the boy sits up. I would have loved to have seen that mother’s face.
- Would love to hear on videotape some of Jesus’ words, my favorite of all time. In John 4 he talks to this Samaritan woman at the well. We then come to the end of their long conversation, and then Jesus says, “I who speak to you am he.”
But you know, when we get to heaven, I doubt we will really want to see any of earth’s scenes re-played or even the highlights. We will just be so thrilled to be there, in the presence of God himself.
At this time in my life, I would have loved to have seen the crowd’s faces in Luke chapter 4. They are at the synagogue at Nazareth. Lk 4:16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.
17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him,
21 and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Today!
You’d think they would be clapping, singing praises to God. The time they had been waiting for is finally here. Instead, “Who do you think he is? Isn’t he Mary’s boy? Joseph his dad?”
Luke tells us they take him to a cliff right outside the city and they are about to throw him off, and Jesus disappears into the crowd. I would have loved to have seen how he did that.
They have been looking for a Messiah for 700 years. But not one like this. They are looking for one that is more like Judas. Not the one we are thinking of - another Judas that was about 200 years earlier. The King of Syria, thought he was Zeus in the flesh. He conquered Palestine, demanded the people make a sacrifice of a pig to his image inside the holy of Holies in the Temple. We know how they felt about pigs; how they felt about offering a sacrifice to anyone but God. They did it. Then he issued another command that all the cities sacrifice a pig to the new Zeus of Antioch, himself. In the village of Modin, not far from Jerusalem, Mattathias, a retired priest, said, “We will not do this!” He saw this young Jew about to do it, so he took a knife and killed that young man. But Mattathias was too old to lead a full resistance movement. His son is not too old. His son’s name in Aramaic, “Juda”; in the Gentile language, “Judas” and he is given a nickname, “Maccabee” (the hammer). He is about to bring down the hammer on the head of this government that has invaded Israel. It took him 3 years to finish the job and drive that king back home. And when the king of Syria is back in Syria, Judas marches into Jerusalem to cleanse the Temple, and offer an official sacrifice to the true God of Israel. The Jews have celebrated this occasion ever since in their holiday, Hanukkah. You may know it.
And so 200 years later, the Romans are now the new invaders. The Jews are thinking, “We need a Messiah like Judas to drive these Romans out of here! Then we can be free and independent Israel once again.”
Jesus says, “Today this is fulfilled.” You would expect them to explode in excitement!
How tragic it is when these people who have been waiting for him for centuries – miss him. They miss him even when he stood among them.
But there were others who didn’t miss him. Turn back just 2 chapters earlier, and we are in the Temple in Jerusalem. And an old man Simeon is there, and the Spirit has promised him that he would not die until he saw the Messiah. Luke 2:25. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
He is there when Mary and Joseph bring 8 day old Jesus to the Temple. And Simeon sees him and knows he is the one. He takes the child into his arms and prays this wonderful prayer. Luke 2:29-30. “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.
He is saying, “Now I can die! Kill me now! Take me home! What else can my old eyes see that would be better than this? This is what I have been waiting to see my whole life.”
Then there is the female, Anna, in the next story, verse 38. She is 84 years old. Only been married for 7 years, and has been a widow the rest of her life. She never left the Temple, but worshipped, fasted and prayed night and day. She came up to them and spoke about the child to all who were looking “for the redemption of Jerusalem.” This is a symbolic phrase for “the Messiah.” We are looking for him. We know that God is going to send him. I have a question. How does she know the ones who are looking for the Messiah, and the ones who don’t care very much? She must have talked with them, with lots of people, for many years. And the ones who are really looking, like she is, are the ones she really talks to
You see, sometimes it is whole groups of people. Turn to the book of Acts. Acts 16 on Paul’s second missionary journey. I would have liked to have scene this on video tape too. The Holy Spirit keeps saying, “Don’t go here, go there” and keeps sending him on his way. Paul finally ends up in Troas, and has this experience we call the “Macedonian call.” It is a dream where a man dressed in Macedonian clothes appears and says to Paul, “Come over here, we need you.” Then Luke says in Acts 16:12, “we concluded that God wanted us to go to Macedonia.” Isn’t that an interesting word? We “concluded.” That means that Luke and Paul talked about it. They tried to figure out what it meant. We think that apostles, because they were apostles, always got clear messages from God. We think God speaks in a loud voice says, “Paul, I want you to go to Troas, tomorrow at 9:30. Catch the #137 boat.” No! They were trying to figure it out. Finally, on faith, they “concluded” this must be what God wants. This was the famous “Macedonian call.”
Do you ever think about how that call went? Acts 16 tells us about the first stop, Philippi. They find Lydia and some women down by the river. Then they encounter a slave girl with a demon who is helping her owners get rich. Paul casts it out of her. And then the owners have Paul and Silas put in jail. There is the earthquake, they convert the jailer that night. Then the next morning, the city officials escort Paul and Silas to the edge of the city and tell them, “Goodbye,” and “Don’t ever come back here again!”
So far, Macedonia is not going that well. The next stop is Thessalonica. Acts 17. Paul is there for 3 weekends. Response is small to moderate and Jews there stir up trouble again. Paul leaves Thessalonica.
Then the next stop is at Berea, and there are some good people there who compare their scriptures with what Paul is saying to see if his message is true. But soon come some people down from Philippi and they stir up a riot and Paul leaves that city. Most scholars believe that he is put on a boat, and sails to Southern Greece – we call it the province of “Achaia.” Not Macedonia. And so Paul stands on Mars Hill and preaches a wonderful sermon to the Athenians. It is a great message to a very different culture. A model sermon. But the reaction is tiny. Two people believe, and they are named. There may have been others, but you have never read Paul’s “Letter to the Athenians.” Paul must have scratched his head, wondering what that “Macedonian call” was all about, because “Here I am in Achaia - not Macedonia!”
Paul pushes on to Corinth. It was the “Sin city of the Middle East.” Something like Las Vegas. Going through Paul’s mind had to have been, “What am I doing here? I am supposed to be in Macedonia. Up there!” But he goes there to Corinth and some local Jews from the synagogue stir up opposition, and it looks like we are about to see a re-run of the Macedonia experience. Then, the vision comes Acts 18:9-10. “Don’t be afraid Paul, for I have many people in this city.” This does not mean, “If you look harder, or get out the phone book, you’ll find where the Christians are meeting.” No, the Lord means, “I have some people here whose hearts are looking for me. They will respond positively to the message, when they hear it spoken by my messenger, Paul.”
Could it be that God is guiding this messenger, through all these experiences on his second missionary journey, on all his journeys? On all your journeys too? Is God trying to put this messenger in the path of people He knows have a heart for him? People who are looking for him? I believe that God is looking down on this planet, looking for people who are looking for people who are looking for Him. It just seems that the Lord is trying to position the messengers in the paths of those who are seeking. I believe this is still happening.
I think that sometimes they gather together in whole groups of people. One of my favorite stories from writer, Don Richardson, in the book Eternity in their Hearts, is the story of the “Wa” people of Myanmar. They live in the hills of Burma (Myanmar), and they cling to monotheism (belief in one god) despite the fact that most people in the country are Buddhists, who believe in no god, or a very different kind of god. But for some reason, these hill people still believe there is one true, god behind it all. And this one god revealed Himself in a book. But the book had disappeared a long time ago. This book, they believed, told them something about the one true god. But the book was gone. You see the elders were responsible for guarding it. It was written in another language. Unfortunately, it was written down on rice cakes. And one year there was a bad famine, so the elders ate it. But these hill people said, “If we are faithful to what we remember, this god will help us. Surely he will send us a messenger one day to remind us, to tell us the rest of the story about himself.” In was in the late 1800s, and there was a man they knew as “Puchan.” They called him a prophet. He woke up one morning, and said, “God appeared to me in a dream last night. He told me to saddle this donkey, and take 3 of my disciples – you, you and you. And we are to release the donkey and the donkey will lead us to a white skinned brother.” And these people in the hill country had never seen a white skinned man before. “That donkey will guide you to a white skinned brother who has a copy of the book.” Well, they are faithful to the vision. Puchan does what he is told. He releases the donkey and he saddles the donkey. This is not for any of them to ride it, but so the messenger can ride it when they find him, and he can ride it back to these people. They start to follow it; they think – maybe a morning, or an afternoon. But the donkey walks for a week (over 200 miles). They travel to an unknown place, a city they had never been to before, Kengtung, Burma. And the donkey enters the city, walks over to a well and stops. They think he is just wanting a drink. But then they hear sounds coming from inside the well. Someone is still digging it. So they look over and see for the first time in their lives a white skinned person. They say, “Do you have a copy of the book?” He says, “Hello.” And they say, “Hello. Do you have a copy of the book?” And he says, “What book?” And they say, “The book about the creator, the one true God.” William Marcus Young didn’t know Him by the Wa name, “SiYiex” but he knew Him. So he crawled up out of the well. He had this long flowing beard. He had been in Burma for 7 years and had preached to Buddhists with almost no response. So he opens the book and begins to tell them orally. They can’t read. He tells them the message about this “Word who became flesh and lived among us.” He is an old man by then. He’d had a wife, but she died. All of their children are full grown. But he married again a second time, to a younger wife and now he is has some young children. One was named Vincent. Vincent was 9 years old when Puchan, his donkey and his disciples show up at the well. And because William Marcus Young thought he was told old to make the long trip into the mountains, he would teach them a few things, send them home. They would teach what he had taught them, and they’d come back for more teaching. Then they’d return home again. Did this for so long that Vincent who was 9 years old, grew up hearing the Wa language, became fluent in it and when he was in his early 20s translated the New Testament into the Wa tongue. And in the years that followed, thousands of Wa people came to know the real God, and were immersed into Christ. You see, they were a whole group of people who were ready and just waiting. Do you believe this? Are you a little skeptical about it?
Let me finish this story. Don Richardson was telling this story in the 1970s, to a church in California. After he finished, a lady walked up to him and said, “Hi, my name is Nelda. But before I got married, my name was Nelda Young. My father is named Vincent - not was, but is Vincent Young. Would you like to meet him?” Richardson said, “Do you mean he’s still alive?” “Yes, he lives in a nursing home about a hour from here. I’ll take you to him.” So together they travel to the nursing home, walk into the room of the old man, Vincent Young. When he finds out why the author is there, he reaches over to the bedside table and pulls up this old photo album. He opens the front cover, and there on the first page is a picture, yellowed and fading through the years. And in the picture Don Richardson could see the 3 disciples of Puchan, Puchan, William Marcus Young, with his long beard standing next to little 9 year old Vincent, beside that donkey, beside that well. And Don Richardson says, “Does anyone doubt that the same God who used a star to guide the wise men to a manger in Bethlehem, could use a donkey to find those people who had been looking for him so faithfully, for so long?” Does anyone doubt that? I don’t. You see, that’s the God we serve. He is a God who everyday is looking for people who look for people who are looking for Him. Maybe today, you are that one. You have been looking. You are seeking this God who has done so much to come and find you. If we can help you in your response to follow Jesus, won’t you come while we stand and sing?
(With thanks to Monte Cox, WS Cof C, 2/15/09)