Merredin Uniting Church

Texts: Isaiah 49:1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-34

Life is an interesting journey, it is filled with all kinds of apparent anomalies and yet it is perfectly balanced … if we could only see beyond the immediately apparent situation into the greater vistas of God. 

Much of life, particularly when we are caught up in its pain and struggle, is filled with us calling out to God for His help  and yet, in a kind of paradox of the faith, His help only comes when we respond to the call that He has already placed on us.

I remember when I first understood God’s call to me to enter the ministry – I was 27 years old and a brand new Christian. I was struggling with a lot of things in my life – I suppose it was that time when you finally have to shrug off the vestiges of bachelordom and accept the fact that with two children in the house you have to settle down, be more careful of your money and look beyond the immediate satisfaction of your desires. I looked at my life thus far and found it wanting … but I didn’t know what it needed.

I called out to God in the nights, when everyone was asleep …. “what is my life? what must I do? where must I go?”

I had not yet accepted Jesus as Saviour and Lord of my life and yet I knew that there was God. I had been to a church boarding school and knew all the jargon and ceremony .. But I did not yet know Jesus ..

And in my calling out to this unknown God, I discovered that He had been calling out to me for a long time already.

He spoke to me one night …. Clear as anything, I heard His words, “Many times I have longed to come to you but I have been prevented from doing so until now ….” I later discovered that these are the words of Romans 1:13 and these words were clear and powerful enough to wrench me out of my own struggle to understand life, and to put meaning to it …

It would be another 16 years before I would be ordained into fulltime ministry but it set a revelation in my heart that when we call out to God we will discover that He has already called us.

This is no anomaly of life, this is reality in the spiritual dimension – God is focussed on us,

He is intent on restoring us back into relationship with Him. I don’t know why that is, but that’s what the Bible is all about – God’s pursuit of intimacy with that part of His creation made in His own image.

We are presently in the season of Epiphany – that period in the church calendar which comes after Christmas and in which we begin to explore the incredible purpose of the incarnation of Christ. Why did God become Immanuel? God with us!

Epiphany is a hard word to explain – it is a state of sudden and unexpected realisation of an eternal truth. Paul Cannon defined it in our first combined service two weeks ago as an “a-ha moment”.

It’s a flash of the revelation of glory – in this instance, the realisation that Jesus came amongst us as part of the eternal plan of God to restore the lost relationship between God and that part of His creation made in His image.

And the dawning realisation that this is not just about us who think that we have already found the way, but perhaps especially for those who are lost on the way: the strugglers and stragglers and ragamuffins who grab at hope in so many wrong places.

Our text from Isaiah sums up this spiritual reality in a most profound way …

God calls out to creation ….             “Listen to me, you islands ;             Hear this, you distant nations …”

And then we have a prophetic pre-incarnate word from Jesus, of how the Father called Him to His task in incarnation …             “Before I was born, the LORD called me … He said to me, ‘You are my servant and in You will I display my splendour’ …

He formed me in the womb … TO BE HIS SERVANT .. ….TO BRING JACOB BACK TO HIM AND GATHER ISRAEL TO HIMSELF.”

Before Jesus was born … when He was in unity with the Father in the heavenlies, He was called to bring Jacob back to God ….and Israel to Himself …

NOW LETS JUST PAUSE HERE A MOMENT … Follow this with me….

Jacob and Israel are the same person … the son of Isaac.

The name is also used interchangeably to speak of God’s people – the sons of Abraham.

In the physical realm we see this nation as representing Judaism, but in the spiritual realm Israel and Jacob represent all of God’s people – EVERYONE : believers and surprisingly, also those who are not yet believers.

“Jacob” was the name given by Isaac to his son. It means deceiver or grabber. It is used frequently to refer to those who still doubt, those who have not yet fully come to faith in Christ Jesus.

“Israel” was the name that God gave to Jacob after wrestling with him through the night at Peniel on the Jabbok river.

That night Jacob became a believer and God changed his name from “Jacob the deceiver” to “Israel, the one who struggles with God.”

Interestingly though, God most often continues to identify Himself as the God of Jacob … He longs for the deceivers and grabbers to come home to Him.

Most of us are on a journey to God but we have not yet arrived ..

Its true that we all want to be there, even those who are still very far from God – deeply lost in sin and transgression – but its also true that we are confronted by many obstacles. Just living in this world is one of them.

The point though is that God is focussed on restoring us all back to Him … the believers (Israel) and the world (Jacob).

The church is an important part of this as the prophecy from Isaiah continues to tell us.

“I will make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth ….”

We are called also to follow in the way of Christ, as servants to also “restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back those of Israel that I have kept.”

We have the same task as Jesus and yet the church has often been slothful in its fulfilment of the task. Perhaps its pride … that’s what God seems to imply.

He remarks in the text from Isaiah that while Jesus was formed in the womb to be a servant to bring back Jacob, we might consider it too small a thing to be God’s servant in this task

And that is true. Often the church is so full of pomp and ceremony that one wonders if she really has a servant heart at all.

And the servant heart is not so much about talking about social awareness as being hands on in the task of bringing backslidden Israel and reluctant Jacob back to God ..

This is the task of Jesus and it is the task of the church.

The Son of God was revealed (born of the flesh, son of the Virgin Mary, Immanuel – God with us) to take away the sin of the world. He is revealed by the Holy Spirit to Israel – to those who believe – that we might be strengthened and encouraged to fulfil the task to which we are called.

And so, lets go back to where we started …

God has called us into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord … long before we had called out to Him .. Paul says that he was called … that the church of God is called -  to be holy … and that all those everywhere who call on the name of Jesus … are given grace in Him .. are enriched in Him, in speaking and in knowledge .. and that they do not lack any spiritual gifts ..

Why? For what reason are we given grace and knowledge and spiritual gifts?

Because this is our task and we have been equipped for it.

He who is faithful and true has called the church to fulfil the task of restoring the lost back to God … We call out to God.. often with selfish intentions but He has already called us to a task – to minister His grace to Israel and to Jacob – to the church and to the world.

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