Waiting for Salvation (1st Sunday of Advent)

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Most of Israelite history during the divided kingdom period was a continual round of lawlessness, injustice and idolatry interspersed with brief periods of godly rule. The Lord warned the people back when they were still wanderers that if they persisted in wickedness, they would inevitably be removed from the land (Deuteronomy 28). Here, Isaiah projects forward hundreds of years after his time to when God made good on that promise, and the people were exiled in Babylon.

Here, the prophet, giving voice to the thoughts of the people, talks about how all of them have become unclean due to sin, and even their good deeds are soiled by hypocrisy, making them unacceptable to God. The Jews even have the audacity to accuse God of causing them to wander from His ways, when in fact it was their own hardness of heart that led them to do that.

Despite this, they do not lose hope that God would eventually grant them salvation. Eventually, their period of exile would end. However, they would never recover the old glory. Their exile from Babylon was just their lesser exile. Their greater exile was their exile in sin, which persisted even after they returned to their land. We see this in the post-Exilic prophets, who complain of injustices that persist in Israel long after they’ve returned. The people’s hearts have not changed, and something needed to be done about that.

This would only be remedied hundreds of years later when the Messiah would come. He would provide the deliverance from that greater exile, not just for the people of Israel, but for the whole world. And as we begin the season of Advent, we thinking about how God was preparing the world for the Saviour, and how we look forward to His coming again to save us from sin.

J. Luis Dizon