When He Appears

Advent  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  20:56
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Introduction

One of the things that I love most about Advent is that it gives me a chance to remind all of you about the story that the New Testament is actually telling. You will here again and again something like “God chose Israel to redeem the world through them, and when that didn’t work, he promised them a Messiah, and Jesus was the fulfillment of those promises.” If that’s the story of the Bible in your mind, you’ve working with the wrong story. It’s not your fault, so don’t worry. The church has done a terrible job of telling the actual story of the Bible.
In short form, that story goes like this. God created the world and called it good. When Adam sinned, sin entered the world and humanity was cut off from the tree of life. The world descended even deeper into sin, and God tried wiping out most of humanity with a flood to deal with the problem of sin. God promised not to destroy humanity again, and instead chose one man and one family to be the means through which he would fix the world. But that man and that family were also children of Adam, and so despite all that God did for them, they were still sinners, and like their forefather, God kicked them out of the land where he had placed them and in fact he himself left too. This is the exile, and so what the people of God were waiting for was not merely a Messiah, although some were waiting for an Anointed figure, but even more importantly, they were waiting for the end of the exile and the return of YHWH to Zion.
One of the principal OT texts where we see this promise is Isaiah 40, so I’m going to read the first three verses.
Isaiah 40:1–3 ESV
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
To make this case clear, I’m going to show you that all four Gospels point to this specific text to set the context for the story they are telling.
For Mark, it’s the very first words that he writes.
Mark 1:1–3 ESV
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”
Matthew and Luke both go immediately to this text as they transition to describing John and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
Matthew 3:3 ESV
For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ”
Luke 3:4 ESV
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
In John, we find the same thing.
John 1:23 ESV
He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
This is the story of the Gospels. This is the story the Bible is telling. At long last God is coming back to be with his people, and the Christian claim is radical because we do not claim that God returned as a disembodied spirit to dwell in one building in one country amongst one people, but rather we claimed that God has returned in the person of Jesus Christ who died, rose again, and ascended to God’s right hand from which he has poured his Holy Spirit, who has taken up his residence in his new Temple, the bodies of those who are in Christ from every nation, tongue, tribe, and people in the world, and he will come again to restore heaven and earth, make all things new, and resurrect the dead back to eternal life.
What I hope you hear in there is that the first Advent in which the people were waiting for YHWH to return to Zion and the second Advent in which the people of God are waiting for Jesus Christ to return to earth are strikingly similar. In both cases, we are waiting for the return of our God.
And there is a tendency, I’d call it a dangerous tendency, within the visible people of God, to assume that when God acts, he is going to act for us, on our behalf, and for our good. Something like that is happening in the perpetual singing of Psalm 126. This Psalm was probably written during the time of the return from Babylon and it describes the people’s joy that the exile (at least in part) has ended.
Psalm 126:1–3 ESV
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.
But as the people continued to be under foreign rule and conquered, it became prophetic, which probably explains the shift in verse 4.
Psalm 126:4–6 ESV
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
When the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, we need God to act because when he does, it will be for our good.
But standing right alongside this tradition is the tradition of Malachi that we also heard this morning. The section actually starts two verses earlier, so I’ll begin at Malachi 2:17.
Malachi 2:17–3:2 ESV
You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?” “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.
Then verse 5.
Malachi 3:5 ESV
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
The people think that when God acts it will be for their good, but the prophet says, “Not so fast,” because when he comes he comes for blessing and for judgment. And since today is the day that we are collecting pledge cards for next year, I can’t help but keep reading a few move verses in Malachi 3.
Malachi 3:8–10 ESV
Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
God invites you with your giving to put him to the test. He wants to open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need, but too many of his people rob God by what they give back him. We don’t trust him to provide, but if we did, he would bless us even more abundantly than we could imagine.
This is the prophets final indictment against the people, and it leads directly into the last chapter where it says:
Malachi 4:1 ESV
“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
Malachi 4:5 ESV
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
And it’s not just in Malachi that the people of God presume that when God acts it will be on their behalf. We’ll hear this next week in our Gospel reading, but note for now what John says to the people:
Luke 3:7–9 ESV
He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
John’s message is as applicable today as it it was then, and we will look at it more in depth next week. For now, the point is simple enough. Advent is a season of waiting. We are waiting for our God. But waiting must be mixed with repentance and self-examination. God is coming. That is not up for debate. But the question is: Are you ready?
Examine your own heart. Are you storing up treasures on earth or in heaven? Are you robbing God? Are you bearing fruit in keeping with repentance? Do you think “I go to church” as if that’s enough? Even now, the axe is laid at the foot of the tree, so can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? Those are the questions Malachi put to the people, and they are the same questions we should be asking ourselves this morning.
Amen.
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