The Way of Holiness

Was anybody excited they woke up to eight degrees this morning, single digits? You were. You were excited it wasn’t the the KCK Outreach Day. Winter brings a different sense.

Sometimes it can be cloudy for days and we can get down and stuff, but what if it’s, what if the darkness lasts longer? Randall, you want to come up here? The Showbers lived in Alaska. Where exactly in Alaska did you live? I was stationed in the Air Force in Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, 20 miles south of Fairbanks. 20 miles south of Fairbanks.

And did it ever get dark in the winter there? Yeah, occasionally. No, it Fairbanks is not across the Arctic Circle, so it doesn’t get to total darkness 24 hours, but it gets to like 21 hours of darkness, so it would get light at 11 a.m. And by 2 p.m. It was already, the sun had gone down. So you only had to work three hours a day? Yeah.

Yeah, that’s awesome. What did you do during, while you were there so you didn’t get down? I mean people get down when they don’t see the sun very much. I don’t know, with Lisa and me it didn’t really affect us, but we were there in our early 20s and everything was an adventure, and we were excited to be there.

There were some other people that didn’t look at it as an adventure, but more of a hardship. How can I get through this? And it’s the struggle of if you, if you, I should say, are aware of the daylight only being three hours and start to meditate on that, and how am I going to get through this in a negative, it could become a real hardship. But if you don’t feel like it’s a hardship, then it’s an adventure.

An adventure, that’s a good way to look at it. Thank you. The, speaking of the Arctic Circle, Life 88.5, the radio station, connects with a town in Alaska that is in the Arctic Circle, and they are, they’re known as Barrow and and let me see if I can get this, their, their new name of the town is actually Utkiotkivik.

I got to say it with some sort of German or Swedish accent, or it can’t even come out. Utkiotkivik. And they are a town in the Arctic Circle, and they are in the middle of 64 days of no sun.

Next vacation, who’s there? 64 days of no sun, and they won’t see the sun until January 22nd. This is called Polar Nights, which means it’s all polar nights. And what the radio station does is they get people together to volunteer and send a lot of cards and letters and words of encouragement to this town, because they really do have a high rate of depression without the sunlight.

In, for 64 days. What’s the longest you’ve endured with cloudy day? Three days, four days, five days, 64 days. Fairbanks still doesn’t sound great, I’m sorry.

Three hours, two months, all of that. A lot of times around Christmas time, with the winter and the isolation that winter can cause, there is still a sense of depression that can come up in people, and with that, even though it’s Christmas, and it’s exciting, and we’re excited, I’m excited for Christmas, sometimes those thoughts creep up and those things happen. Now imagine, even beyond life in Alaska, that if you were in ancient Israel, and we’ve talked about how during this time with Isaiah the prophet in the 700s, 700 to 750 or 750 to 700 BC, that there was destruction all around them.

The Babylonians, the Assyrians, were just destroying countries left and right, and it seemed like only a matter of time until that would happen to Israel, and they would have this sense of desolation and loss. And prophesying that because of their lack of holiness, that God would allow the countries to come in and drag them off to Babylon, where they would try to be assimilated into the Babylonian culture, when their life was all about being separate as God’s chosen people in Israel. And the thought of that was overwhelming and devastating, and not only sad, but a lot of despair, and a lot of hurt, and a lot of pain.

So if you’ve ever felt those things, you might be able to relate a little bit to the people who Isaiah is talking to. As we continue in this Advent series today, we’re going to go to the 35th chapter of Isaiah, and look at verses 1 through 10. Will you stand as you are able? The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.

The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of the Lord shall be given to it.

The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance and with recompense of God. He will come and save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. And shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth from the wilderness and streams in the desert.

The burning sand shall become a pool, and thirsty ground springs of water. In the haunt of jackals where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes, and the highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it.

It shall belong to those who walk in the way. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up upon it.

They shall be found there. They shall not be found there. But the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and the come to Zion with singing.

Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and singing shall, and sighing shall flee away. The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.

In here, there’s kind of a theme, and that theme, according to Gary V. Smith, who is a biblical scholar, is transformation. There is transformation that takes place. Transformation of nature, transformation of the weak and blind, transformation of the people.

And with that, there comes something that is just a recurring theme in all of this. What does all this transformation have in common? Did anybody listen and memorize it when I read it? What does it all have in common? What does it say over and over? Joy. What does all this transformation have in common? It’s joy.

I went through, and I read, and I found joy or rejoice one, two, three, four, five times. And then it talked about being the opposite of not being sad, or not being gloomy, or not being afraid, but to experience that joy. Joy is a word we often, we talk about it more at Christmas than at other times, but joy is a word we use at all times of year.

It’s one of our, the lighting of the Advent candles. Love, joy, peace, hope. Those kind of things.

And at Christmas, we know that when the Messiah came, the people were expectant with joy. The angels would say it. We sang about how the angels sang about the joy that would come when the Messiah came, and it would change everything.

They would, the prophecies say they would experience hardship, and the people of Israel were drug away from their homeland. They were drug away to a foreign place. They were drug to a place where it was hard to practice their faith.

But Isaiah said, there will come a day when you can come back, and with that, there will be joy. Now, we, to some extent, in our lives, in different times, and in different ways, experience a little bit of what the Israelites had. Maybe a little bit of what the residents of Alaska experience, where we have darkness, where we have hurt, and pain, and doubt, and insecurity.

And it’s hard to see how we will experience joy. But the promise is, with the onset of Jesus, we could all have joy. We could be, have the sense of joy.

Now, joy to separate it, when we’re thinking about how we feel, I’m not talking about joy. How we feel is circumstantial, like happiness, or being glad is mentioned in here, too. And in here, that they’re closely related.

But the sense of joy is a sense that comes from the Holy Spirit. It’s not just something we feel on a given day. Hey, I had a good day.

I have joy in my heart. It could say, I had a terrible day. I got stuck in traffic.

My coffee was cold, and it was eight degrees outside. That didn’t happen to me. I had a problem at work that I had so much difficulty overcoming.

It almost ruined the whole project. But then, if we have Jesus, we still have joy, no matter what the circumstance is, and that He works within us by the power of God to give us that joy that is not subject to how our day went, or how we expected it to go, but it didn’t go that way. Because no matter how our day went, we have someone walking with us who can give us joy.

That peace that passes all understanding, and when God is on our side, and it’s the most joyous thing in the world to walk with God. Now, when we look at what they faced, when it talks about nature and being transformed, it says the dry land will be glad. Doesn’t seem like much reason if you’re dry land to be glad.

Now, some of you are thinking because it doesn’t have a personality. But it’s just proletarian language saying dryness will be filled and restored. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus, like a flower, that in the desert you wouldn’t expect to see a flower amongst all the sand.

It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and sing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it the majesty of Carmel and Sharon, and the glory of the Lord and the majesty of our Lord, that there is a sense here that that Paul carries on when in the book of Romans, when he talks about when Jesus comes again, that there is a transformation of all creation. That it’s not just about you and me.

It’s not just about people. It’s not just about humans, but it’s all of nature. With the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, it also was a fall for animals and for the earth.

And the earth suffers from so much. And we see that with all the difficulties that happen with tornadoes. See, Alaska has darkness, but we have tornadoes.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, all these natural disasters that occur are in a fallen world. When they are fallen, like in the sense of us being in Babylon, then there is a sense of fear that comes with that. But Isaiah says the time will come when all of creation will experience this transformation.

And then he talks about the blind and the lame and those who need help. Their eyes shall be open, the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. But God is going to do so many things for people who need help for us in our lives.

Jesus tells John to it like this in the book of Revelation, where he says, I will reach down and wipe every tear. There’ll be no pain, no sickness, no hurt. And with the Messiah, that is very, that will happen in our lives, too.

And here’s the part that it all leads up to. That at first seems a little odd. In verse 8, it is the way of holiness.

Now, how many of you, when you’re rocking, walking in your life, and you’re experiencing joy, and you’re experiencing this heightened sense of things being great, thinking joy means let’s be holy. Holy gets a bad rap these days. Holy makes it sound like, as we heard about with the candle lighting, holy sounds legalistic, or a joy killer, or taken all the fun of way.

But the way of holiness with God is something amazing. In that point, that’s where God, when we walk with God on this path of holiness, on the way back to Mount Zion, or for us, we walk with the Holy Spirit on the way through life and experience hardship that we will be protected from so many things, because God can give us the joy we need to face everything in life, the peace we need to know that even though we experience difficulty, that he will never leave us. He will never forsake us.

He will be there through thick and thin. Everything we face, God will be there, and we will have that joy. So this way of holiness in just to explain it a little bit from how the early Wesleyans explained it, how John and Charles and all of them talked about.

First of all, John, the way of, oh, the way of holiness. And you know the way to where I’m going. When Jesus was at the Last Supper, and he was talking with the disciples, he was sharing with them about next steps.

And they’re going, what? What are you talking about? And he said, and you know the way I have to go away. I’m gonna go to the Father, so you should rejoice. But you know the way there.

And they’re like going, you haven’t pinged me the map. I don’t know where to go. How are we supposed to know? And he says, you know the way.

And he goes on, do you guys know what he says? What’s the way? I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.

And the way of holiness is living a life with Jesus Christ. And it’s the most amazing thing that we can imagine. And that holiness comes from, starts with God, who nudges us and guides us and wants to bring us into relationship with him, that when we have that, that’s God’s pervenient grace in our life.

That’s the grace of God that goes out before us, the grace of God that is moving and working and living even outside the church, outside of people, that God himself is bringing people to a relationship. And justifying grace is when people are made right with God, when we repent and we accept Christ as our Savior. Now remember in Isaiah 35, it says, the ones who are found on the road are the redeemed and the ransomed.

Those who have been bought and made new and made clean. And on this way of holiness, we see that it’s safe and it’s clear and that all the things that can attack us, I don’t know if you guys have ever noticed when you leave church, are there any temptations out in the world today? Are there any temptations online? Are there any temptations that could say, well, hey, I could do this, but it might or might not be of God. That we, on the way of holiness, are protected just like Isaiah says, that he will keep us and give us strength to overcome.

And Jesus even said that we will die to our sin, that we will be set free from our sins so we can overcome whatever that world tries to do with us. On this way of holiness, that is one of the reasons we can experience so much joy. Because on the way of holiness, who do we walk with? Jesus.

We walk with Jesus, we walk with one another in the faith, and we strengthen one another and we point one another to Jesus. And Jesus himself guides us. And when we face anything in life, he will say, hey, let’s go this way and guide us in a different direction, if we just trust in God.

And we see that. And when we walk in this way of holiness, there it is. Holiness of heart and life.

Holiness of heart and life, meaning that it’s a holiness on our heart. It’s a holiness that is internal. It’s a holiness that says, yeah, I’m going to walk in the ways of Jesus and be like Jesus, but it’s a way of life.

It’s not just saying no to things. It’s also saying, this is what I’m gonna do. This is what God is calling me to do.

This is how God is calling me to live. Sharing our faith with others, inviting others on the way of holiness, and helping out those who are in need, whenever and wherever we can. Even if we would have to serve today out in the… It was up to 14, so no big deal, right? It’s not always easy, and it’s not meant to be a road of ease.

When I was growing up, I remember my dad told me that I always had to keep two things, because I could fix everything with these two things. One was duct tape. Anybody you learn that lesson to? And the other was bailing wire.

And so we had, speaking about a journey, one of the joyous things is when you go on a road trip, and you’re excited, and you get to go with your friends or your families on a vacation or whatever. When I was in high school, the first car I had was, they gave me this. This was the third car.

This was the extra car. My brother had driven it. It was a 1965 Chevrolet Malibu.

And it did not seem to have a lot of life in it. I had to learn how to fix a carburetor, driving that car. I had to… The back door stopped latching, and so my dad said, let me show you what I can do with bailing wire.

And he did it, and it was held together by bailing wire. And the defrost didn’t work. So on a day like this, I was the oldest one of my friends, so when we would go out driving, I would station each one with a rag to wipe off the windows as they iced up as we were driving.

And we still had fun, even though it was work, even though it wasn’t just comfort. I think of that because the way of holiness, the way that Christ calls us to walk, is not just about easy street, but it’s about walking with God. The joy comes from the presence of God.

The joy doesn’t come from having nothing to do, but out of that faith, we serve, and we give, and we love, and we experience more joy. In case you don’t know, sometimes helping someone else out can really bring us a sense of joy. Imagine having a way of life where you invite people into a relationship with Jesus so they can have that kind of joy.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much. Thank you that you call us into your arms.

Thank you for calling others. Thank you for, even though we are imperfect, for working with us. So that we can share you with others.

So that we can walk this way of holiness and experience the joy of your love, and your grace, and your peace, as we walk amongst the others who have been forgiven, who have been redeemed, who have been washed clean, and who walk this way of holiness with joy. Because you’re there with us. We pray this in your holy name.

Amen.