The Bethany Bullet - Week of December 4, 2016

“It Shall Come to Pass…Paradise”

Text: Isaiah 11:1-10

Josephine Marcus, in the movie Tombstone, envisions heaven as “room service.”  At this point in the story her character is spoiled and self-absorbed. 

Is our character any less? 

Paradise was lost because Adam and Eve gave into self-absorbed temptation and sought to take that which was reserved for God alone and make it their own.  From that moment, as a result of that fall, all are by nature spoiled and self-absorbed; all but One!  

V  He whose Advent Isaiah heralds

V  The Shoot from Jesse’s stump

V  The One who sought to serve rather than to be served and who gave Himself for the sins of the world!

As He hung on the cross the thief crucified by Jesus’ side begged Him, “Lord, remember me, when you come into your kingdom” and the Christ countered with words, you know so well, “Today you will be with me in …………paradise.” 

Paradise, immediately after Jesus so promised paradise we find Him in peril; horror is rolling over His visage and He cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  At that moment on the tree Jesus was bereft of the presence of the Father, condemned by God as He suffered hell on the cross; that through Him we might inherit paradise, where Isaiah’s vision becomes our sight. 

The twofold promise of the prophet (Isaiah) on the second Sunday of Advent is that until we are with Christ in paradise, He who is paradise is with us in each and every situation.  For in its ultimate sense, in its deepest reality, in the pinnacle of its experience paradise is a person, the one whose Advent Isaiah heralds…the Lord Jesus Christ.

-Pastor Kevin Kritzer