All you can do is sit in the dust and weep and look on in despair. The streets strewn with rubble and dust and blood and the unburied dead. Smoke hangs in the air. Every important, every beautiful building in the city is a blackened smouldering shell; the King’s palace a plundered wreck. The King himself well rumour has it they have killed his sons no more Kings will issue from his line and him they have blinded and led off into captivity. The city is now deserted You the only living being. Her walls broken Her people all gone. Rounded up and marched off, with every one of any note or influence, to a far foreign land.

Coming in from the country you are alone in wandering the empty broken streets. Once the capital of your people. Once the city of great King David. It’s all gone. A history and a people wiped out. Just eerie silence where once stood Jerusalem. Only you – and a few subsistence farmers like you are left to scratch a living from the surrounding earth. But worst worst of all the temple. Smouldering. Blackened. Desecrated. Everything of beauty touched and handled and stolen by foreign soldiers who know nothing of the sacred worth of what they touch. And the Holy of holies, the very heart of the temple the place where God Himself touches earth the symbol of His presence with your people torn open and defiled. Empty.

Where is God? What about His promises? All your hopes are turned to dust. No temple. Nowhere to worship. Abandoned. For generation after generation you took Him for granted. Flirted with other gods. And now that you long for Him it’s too late and your people are abandoned. The promised land flowing with milk and honey? Not any more. A wilderness more like. It’s as if you live in a desert of burning sand where no green shoot of hope can survive. A parched wilderness where a thirsting people stagger weak-kneed and defenceless at the mercy of ravenous beasts. Crying out, ‘Please God be our God again. Give us back life and hope.’

Such is the background to Isaiah 35 which we had read for us earlier. The writer of Isaiah offers the people of God people who – after the destruction of Jerusalem live metaphorically and perhaps literally in ‘a desert and the parched land’ words from God. In 587BC God’s people seem to face utter destruction and extinction. The mighty army of Babylon has destroyed their capital city, exiled all the country’s most able people, and wiped out the royal family. They are people without a future and a hope. Where is God? What about His promises? Life has turned to a wilderness. The future is bleak. Worship dry and dead. They thirst for God in a parched and barren land. Crying out, ‘please be our God again. Give us back life and hope.’

I wonder how many here today can identify with those thoughts? The Christian life has become a struggle worship has become dry the future seems bleak and God far away. Well what does God say to His broken thirsting people? Before we answer that question a little story. When I was a little boy when I was 5 my family lived in northern Kenya in a little town called Marsabit. To get to Marsabit from Nairobi you had to travel on a rough deeply corrugated bumpy track across the barren wilderness of the Kaisut desert. 170 miles through the baking heat across a dry rocky moonscape. Rain an ancient memory. Black volcanic rocks. Brittle desiccated bushes, dry burnt-up grasses, arid waterless river beds of burning sand. Lifeless. A parched and thirsting land. Relentless burning sun.

But… But… a time would come… once every five years or so… when after countless barren months a bank of plump bursting clouds from the coast hundreds of miles to the east would sweep in. And a drop of fresh life-giving water would fall in the barren dust. And then another and another until heaven opened and the land was drenched with beautiful refreshing rain. The burning sand of once dead rivers transformed into torrents. Streams of water in the desert. And… and within hours the whole desert, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of barren wilderness was transformed into a vast garden of flowers. The desiccated bushes covered in blossom. Fields of African daisies and morning glory stretching from horizon to horizon. Life where once was only death.

God’s people in Isaiah 35. Hopeless. Broken. Thirsting for God in a barren wilderness. What does God say to His broken people? The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy… Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. The vision is of the Judean desert coming to resemble the lush coastal land of Carmel and Sharon. Of the wilderness being covered in verdant forests like Lebanon. Of water flowing and flowers blooming where once was only burning sand. Of hope and refreshment coming to a people parched and thirsting for God. Of God coming to His crushed and weakened people to put right all that’s wrong.

Strengthen the feeble hands, says verse 3 steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts ,"Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance; with divine retribution He will come to save you." Vengeance. Retribution. Uncomfortable words. But the commentaries assure me that the Hebrew carries with it not so much the idea of revenge as justice. Beautiful justice. Beautiful justice for a people suffering all the horrors of invasion, defeat and exile. The vision is of a day when He will come and answer the deepest cry of their hearts. A day when He will come and put all things right.

"Be strong, do not fear;’ says the writer, ‘your God will come… He will come to save you ."And then, says the writer, the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. The vision is of a wide broad high way described from verse 8 onwards A highway right through the middle of what was once a bleak and dangerous wilderness. A straight highway full of people. With people streaming back from exile towards Jerusalem. The redeemed will walk there, and those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Broken, despised Jerusalem once again full of life - a place of worship – a meeting place for God and His people.

And who are these people who sing and laugh with joy? Who are the ‘redeemed’? Who are the clean people who walk on this highway? Just Jewish people? Not according to the book of Isaiah. Chapter 2 foresees the day when ‘all nations will stream up to the mountain of God in Jerusalem.’ Who are the redeemed? Who are the clean? “Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord in Isaiah chapter 1 "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;’ Who are the clean? Who are the redeemed? They are those whom God has forgiven Those whom He has cleansed of all their wrong doing.

'You may feel like you are withering in the desert' God says to His broken people in Isaiah 35 'you may feel like this is the end - but the day will come when I will come to You and put all things right. The eyes of the blind will be opened, the lame will leap for joy and the mute tongue shout. Those who feel unclean will be forgiven. Sorrow and sighing will flee away and people of all nations will stream to worship God.'

Well were these words just wishful thinking? Or did this ever happen? And do they have anything to say to us this Advent? Well in 537BC probably in the lifetime of the man who put together Isaiah the exiles did begin to return and remarkably the Jewish nation and Jewish people survived. They eventually rebuilt the city walls and the temple. But Jerusalem never quite regained its former glory. And gladness and joy and singing don’t seem to have filled the lives of the returnees. The return didn’t banish all sorrow and sighing.

No Isaiah 35 is looking forward beyond the return from exile to something even better and more amazing. He is looking forward to a day when God will come and dwell with His people. A day when the eyes of the blind will be opened, the lame will leap for joy and the mute tongue shout. The unclean will be made clean and the guilty forgiven. "Be strong, do not fear;’ says the writer, ‘your God will come… He will come to save you. "

In our gospel reading today, Jesus is asked, ‘Are you the one who is to come?’ Are you the one long promised in scripture. And Jesus says, just look around you and see what’s happening: ‘the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ’What Isaiah foretold is happening in the life of Jesus. Throughout the gospels we hear of Jesus restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf- of Jesus making the unclean clean and enabling the lame to walk. In Jesus God has come to His people. He is the living water spoken of in Isaiah who can bring life in the desert; who can cause flowers of hope to blossom in the burning wilderness. He is the one whose death on a cross, and whose resurrection, allows the water of forgiveness and new life to flow into parched lives.

And one day a day that for us still lies in the future the promise of Isaiah is that peoples from all nations - the forgiven and the cleansed of every land - will stream to a new Jerusalem where God will dwell with them and make them His people and He will wipe away every tear and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

I wonder if today you identify with the defeated exiled people of God the ones Isaiah writes about? God seems far away. Life has turned to a wilderness. Worship seems dry and dead. You are thirsting for God in a parched and barren land. You long for sorrow and sighing to flee away. You long for God to come. Then this Advent may your longing and your waiting be answered. May you know Jesus the living water refreshing everything that’s dry and parched in your life. May you know Him giving new life and new hope. May He bring streams of water where now there is only burning sand and flowers where now are only barren rocks.

Hear the words of Isaiah: 'Say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come… the burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs… Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. "’

As this morning you come to His table to receive bread and wine bring your longing to God. Ask Him that even today heaven might open and drenching life-giving rain fall.