Resurrection Restoration

“Resurrection Restoration”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – EASTER Sunday, March 27, 2016
Text: Isaiah 35 // Series: Isaiah: New Day Dawning

Good morning, friends.  There is a long-standing tradition in the Christian movement where on Easter Sunday, the liturgist or worship leader or pastor says from the front “He is risen!” and the people respond with “He is Risen indeed!”  So let’s try that this morning.  (He is risen / He is risen indeed!) 

Well, it’s spring time (though you’d might not think so today with the volume of rain we’re getting – March has come in like a lion and pretty much with around 4-5 days of exceptions, the month has stayed pretty lion-like, as the saying goes! 

But hey, it could be worse!  This past week, we had a visitor from the East Coast.  Meg’s aunt from Halifax and so we took her out and walked a section the Ft. to Ft. trail and she marveled at every green bud and every cherry blossom and every flower.  Every little green shoot seemed to be poking up and Meg’s aunt just LOVED it.  The reason?  It was snowing & minus 2 where she lived so we’ll take what we have, rain and all.

Easter is that time of year where we celebrate new life. As a culture, we have a long history of looking to the natural world for signs that point us to that aspect of Easter.  That’s why you’ll see bunnies and chicks and eggs…. All designed to get us to think about new life and hope.  As Christians we believe that on that first Easter morning, Jesus Christ rose to new life from the grave and promises an abundant new life to those who place their hope and trust in Him.  Life that begins now and goes on forever which is made possible and demonstrated for us because of Christ’s life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension.     

That’s why there is perhaps no better image of Easter and this celebration of new life than the humble seed. You plant a seed in the ground, and then what happens?  [shout it out] Ah, before that what happens?  The seed dies, and THEN after a period of time, it bursts forth up through the soil to new life! 

The New Testament uses this picture of a seed to summarize the message of the cross and the empty tomb and the resurrection.  In the book of I Corinthians 15:36, it says “When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t grow into a plant unless it dies first.”   (I Corinthians 15:36).  And here’s the thing to remember: there is always a time between the planting of the seed and the time when it springs forth with new life.  The hard part is that we live in that period of time right now.  It’s a time-between-times.  A time of the already and the not yet.  It’s a hard time to live in because even though we look back on the resurrection of Christ, we still live looking forward to the resurrection at the end the age.   

To me, this is the hardest part of gardening…  The waiting.  Because in order to wait, you need patience.  And that’s something I’m still working on.  But we had some experience with this over past year – we got a garden plot in our neighbourhood park in Yorkson and we set to work planting seeds.  I’m not a plant specialist by any stretch of the imagination. My thumb is not green nor brown.  It’s just a thumb – I mostly use it for texting!  But one of the things that I experienced in a fresh way was the challenge of planting seeds and then waiting for them to come up.  Especially the carrots.  They seemed to take FOREVER.  We would go down to the garden and look – still no little carrot tops.  Wait a week.  Other stuff spouting.  Still no carrots.  Finally, teensy, tiny carrot tops poked up. I learned that it takes longer than sometimes you think it will or should. 

Friends, to me this is kind of a picture of our lives.  Sometimes we kinda loose hope that life will spring from those dark places.  Sometimes even though it’s Easter Sunday, some of us still live with circumstances in our lives that make it still feel like Good Friday.  One of the things that we need (other than patience) is reminders that new life is coming.  Despite what we see around us on the news or what we experience, that because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, He is at working making all things new.  But sometimes we need a reminder of that. 

So come with me into my potting shed – let’s do some planting.  Kids, do you want to plant something?  If your adult says it’s OK, you can come down here to the front and we’ll plant something together.  You have beautiful Easter dresses – lets’ get them all grubby! J    Take a cup…  Put in some dirt….  Put in a seed.  Now let me ask you a question.  After we do all this, what do we need to do?  After we give it water and sunlight and all that stuff, what do we do?  That’s right - We wait.  Because it’s not going to happen right away is it?  Why?  Remember: The seed hasn’t died yet.  Something can’t rise up and poke through this dirt until something else dies. But it will happen… and only AFTER that, can something good spring to life.  So for now, put your name on it, take that home and water it and put it in a sunny place and once your seed dies, wait.  Shortly after that you’ll see some new life spring up.  This’ll be your reminder to be patient. [back 2 seats]

We all need reminders of the possibility of new life because we lose heart.  We get weary of doing well.  We get over-burdened and sick and tired and people around us die and circumstance don’t seem to improve and we wait and we watch and we wonder.  We ask “will anything ever change or will I always feel overwhelmed by life?”  Well this spring here at Jericho, we’ve been studying the book of Isaiah from the Old Testament.  There’s so much in here about new beginnings and new life.  And today we’re going to look at Isaiah 35 and we’ll see 3 pictures that help us understand that transformation from death to life.  From Good Friday to Easter Sunday.  But like the seeds that we just planted, they don’t often happen overnight.  Yet sometimes, if we let Him, God can surprise us! 

Look with me at Isaiah 35:1-2.  I’ll be reading from the New Living translation

Here we see this first picture of Resurrection Restoration…  Of a promise that God makes to people to whom He will display His radiant glory.

It’s described as a movement.  A transformation from desolation to flourishing.  From a desert-like place where it is cracked and dry and devoid of life to a place of verdant green and an abundance of flowers!  Now, I’m not a big desert guy.  Give me the ocean over the Palm Desert any day but I have seen a few flowers in the dessert, mostly on cacti.  But do you know that some desserts can flower?

I mentioned earlier how much rain we’ve gotten.  Well take a look at this picture.  This is the Atacama Desert in Chile, South America.  It is the one of the driest places on earth.  The average rainfall for an entire year is 15 mm – to put that into perspective, we often get this in a single day!  It is so dry, that some weather monitoring stations in the Atacama have NEVER registered a drop of rain.  Still other regions of this desert go for 4-5 years without any rain.  But then in 2015, something unusual happened.  They received 23 mm of rain.  That’s like less than an inch.  BUT It was so much rain for them that there was massive flooding.  But the really interesting thing was that that this water found its way into cracks and crevices that it hadn’t been in before and found seeds that had been lying dormant, some of them botanists estimate since around 1997.  And guess what happened? POOF! The Atacama desert flowered!  As far as the eye could see – flowers on the desert floor, flowers in the mountains!  It was a spectacular sight to behold.  It’s a beautiful picture of that which was dead coming to life.

And that’s what Isaiah is saying can happen in your life when God chooses to get involved and display His glory and His supernatural power.  Even the wilderness places the places where we feel like all is lost where things are cracked and broken, can experience a super-natural turn around.  This is what so shocked the early disciples.  Think of their experience of Friday when Jesus was crucified.  Then his body carted off into a borrowed tomb. He is laid to rest and it seems like all of their hopes and dreams for the future died with Him.  It was about as desert-like of a feeling as you could imagine.  But then, on that first Easter Sunday, the tomb becomes the scene of the most radical restoration event in history: God’s divine power bringing that which was dead, back to LIFE!  As the disciples became aware of this hope, they go from desolation to flourishing. 

Friend, you might be here today feeling like there are things in your life that are absolute wastelands.  Things that feel and seem impossible.  Hurts from your past.  Broken relationships.  The message of the resurrection is that the power of God can restore and redeem even the most desolate of places and people.  And this is only possible because of the resurrection. 

Listen to Ephesians 1:19 describes this desolation to flourishing event

“I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead.” (Ephesians 1:19-20a)

In other words, because of power of God demonstrated at the resurrection, God can take those places of desolation and turn them into places of flourishing. He can make the wilderness turn into wildflowers. 

Let’s keep reading and see the second picture. Look with me at Isaiah 35:3-4.  Here’s our second word picture… Resurrection Restoration Image #2

Not only can God take places of desolation and make them flourish, but he can transform From FEAR to HOPE.  The resurrection transformed fear into hope.  

I don’t know if you are anything like me, but sometimes when someone read the Bible to me about hope and a future and God’s wonderful plans and wilderness places flourishing, I think about the circumstances of my life that are not flourishing and I can get discouraged.  It can have the opposite effect on me!  Because like I said earlier, just because it can happen doesn’t mean it always does happen.  At least not in the here and now.  And so I get impatient.  And in my impatience, I can get discouraged.  Why does cancer still strike unexpectedly? Why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? I can grow tired and my faith and get weak and I can begin to get fearful that maybe God isn’t as powerful to keep His promises as verses 1-2 said.  Here’s the intriguing thing about verses 3-4…     

• It isn’t a list of suggestions; it’s a string of commands!
  • Tired hands… BE STRONG!
  • Weak knees… BE ENCOURAGED!
  • Fearful heart… DO NOT FEAR!

In Isiah’s day, people were very afraid of a coming military invasion.  The Great army of Assyrian was sweeping down on them.  Their hearts melted like wax.  Theirs knees were shaking.  We talked two weeks about how fear grips your heart when you look at circumstances.  They certainly had lots of potentially legitimate things to be afraid of.  But here’s the thing: God had promised them that He would deliver them.  God promised His people that He would come to save them.  This promise was partially fulfilled in their lifetime when God supernaturally routed the Assyrian army for a time.  Then it was fulfilled again in God sending Jesus, to live on the earth, to die and to rise from the grave.  But it will only find ultimate and total fulfillment in heaven, friends.  This is what makes it hard because we live between the resurrection and eternity.  even though we live looking back at the resurrection, we live looking forward to eternity.  

And on this side of eternity, we live with the events of Brussels this week.  We live with stock markets plummeting and good people losing their jobs or their health.  We live not getting into the colleges we apply for and with live with mean kids in our class or people who tease us on the playground or sicknesses that won’t go away no matter how hard we pray or how many doctors appoints we make.  So here’s the question that we have to wrestle with…   

• What grips your heart with fear?  Makes your knees shake?  Makes your hands grow weak? 

If you ask many people, one the biggest fears in life is the unknown.  And for many, the ultimate unknown is death. It’s not popular to think about it or talk about it, especially with happy spring all around us.  But friends, here’s what I want you to hear today if you live with a deep sense of fear.  The message of Easter is that you do not have to live with fear ruling your life.  Ruining your present and your future.  Why?  Because there is someone who is stronger than your biggest fear.  There is someone who has defeated the ultimate enemy.  You see, my friend, when you know God, when you have given your life to Him – your future is certain and secure.  The resurrection is a foretaste, an amuse buche of things to come for you! You do not have to be afraid because when Jesus rose to life on the third day…

• “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (I Corinthians 15:55)

Death doesn’t get to have the last word.  Fear doesn’t get to have the word in your life, friends.  But it is so easy to forget this.  This is partly why we need community around us.  To help encourage us when our hands are tired of holding on to hope that seems to be fading.  To send us an e-mail when we are getting weak-kneed and tempted to give in or give up.  To say to us when we are afraid “it’s OK.  God is with you because he is faithful to His promise never to leave or forsake you and I am here with you, too.”      

Resurrection faith is not some kind of glib “crutch” for those who can’t handle the harsh vicissitudes of life - no!  Faith that is rooted in the resurrection is reminding ourselves and others that the promises of God have not yet all been fulfilled. 

That while my hands and knees and heart may fail, though my body may decay there is coming a day where the fullness of God’s power and presence will be unleashed and all that is sad will come untrue. All that is wrong will be made right.  All that is unjust and evil will be reckoned for.  All the sickness and death and pain in our world will be no more!  Listen to Isaiah 35:5-10 [2 slides]

Here we find our final Resurrection Restoration Image #3

At the end of the story, the final movement is From Sorrow & Mourning to Joy & Gladness

Look at verse 5: when is this happening?  And when HE comes”  He being God.  What begins to happen when God comes on the scene? 

• Those who cannot speak begin to sing for joy
• Those who cannot walk begin to dance
• Those who cannot see have their eyes opened

Those who cannot hear have their ears unplugged. 

Miraculous healing &       transformation!  We also see again the return to the natural imagery… pools in desert.  Streams of water…  The picture of restoration all things. When Jesus comes.  I am reminded of the movie the Chronicles of Narnia how it is always winter and never spring. Until Aslan, the Lion comes.  And then it is declared [picture] “Wrong will be right / when Aslan comes in sight / At the sound of His roar / Sorrows will be no more / When He bares his teeth / winter meets it death / And when He shakes His mane / we shall have spring again”. 

The image that the chapter finishes with is a celebration.  Because as much of a celebration as this morning is, Easter is not the end of the story…   That’s still to come.  But until that day, we wait, we hope, we work, we pray, we partner with God is His work of encouraging, strengthening, restoring.  And we do this because we are people of hope.  People who have the wonderful and sometimes deeply challenging privilege of asking God where He wants us to partner with him to bring springtime to places where it feels like winter. 

For you, maybe this is in your school.  Maybe when you go back on Wed, you can be the one who speaks words of encouragement and life and blessing to those around you.  Sow some seeds of kindness and see what takes root and grows.  There are weak knees to strengthen there.  Keep at it until He comes. 

Maybe for you it’s in your own life.  You know there are places that are cracked and dry and barren and you’ve been hiding them away hoping that nobody notices.  God knows.  And He’s brought you here to this community this morning so that we can stand with you in your journey.  We will do that as God gives us strength until He comes.  But you have to open yourself up to those around you and let them in.  Tell somewhat that can be trusted what you struggle with and what you are afraid about. Let them prop up those week hands. Until He comes.     

And when He comes, winter turns to spring.  Sorrow and mourning will disappear.  In the resurrection, Jesus has given us a foretaste of what is to come.  But we still live looking back on the resurrection and forward to eternity. And so we live filled with faith, longing, hope and love and immense gratitude for the immensity of both His sacrifice but also His victory.  The prayer team is coming –Let’s pray together as we respond in song.  Feel free to stand, sit, dance, pray.