Today’s passages from Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37 remind Jim Somerville, pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church and Co-Founder of A Sermon for Every Sunday, of the time that he accidentally toppled over the Chrismon tree in his church’s sanctuary. Somerville says, “To this day when I think of salvation I think of Elaine and Andrea Austin coming to my rescue and mopping up a mess bigger than my capacity to clean.” In Isaiah 64, “God’s people have made a colossal mess of things…They have been carried off to exile in Babylon as punishment. And now he wishes—he prays!—that God would ‘tear open the heavens and come down’ to rescue them.” Somerville says, “What is obvious in all of this is the truth that human beings are capable of making a bigger mess than they can clean up, that they all need help from God, and that truth may have never been more obvious than it is right now.”
Manuscript available: click HERE