A Time Worth Waiting For!

Today I am using the Lectionary readings meant for this year’s Advent. I didn’t chose them. Coincidentally, like last year, today’s Advent passages look forward to Jesus Second Coming, rather then backward at His first - at the Christmas time we are about to celebrate. But in the times we’re living now, I don’t think its out of place to have back-to-back annual Advent themes of looking forward.

It does mean, however, that we’ve got to forego the usually festive pre-Christmas feel, with The Holly and the Ivy, Bing Crosby’s “Silent Night,” or a Burl Ives Christmas album until another Sunday. But is that so bad? If you need that this Christmas, then, wait a week.

I think we should be spiritually limber enough to be stretched to look the opposite direction for at least one week this year.

Rather go back 2,000 years to the Birth of our divine Savior King, the perfect messenger of the truth of God’s full nature, as a humble baby, we, today, get to consider what may happen tomorrow. Or maybe in 5-10 years, or maybe somewhere outside of our lifetimes: who? ...Knows? And that is going to be one of the points from this morning’s readings.

But that is not the main point today.

This morning we receive the challenge of looking forward to that great and terrible day - terrible for many - but not us - which we know as Jesus’ promised triumphal return to the earth - specifically to the city of Jerusalem, from where He will once and for all finally judge all who have ever been in the world.

Today we God encourages us to steel our hearts. Prepare our minds. And ask Him to remain with us, for just a little longer, in this broken down world - and until either He calls us home as faithful servants, having run the race of our lives without losing our faith in Him and His Son who conducts the greatest rescue mission in history; either that, or, we see Him coming in the clouds as He makes His way to establish His throne in Jerusalem and had best be ready for judgment.

This will be Paul’s message to us as well. Today we are going to hear Jesus briefly tell us to stay on course and then Paul warn us to stay awake.

We no longer live in regular times. So many of the prophecies Jesus gace about the signs that the end is near have already been fulfilled. And others God spoke through the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel and others have no longer been hidden in the world. They are being revealed in history too.

We all know these have been heady times these past five years - with COVID, the enemies of Israel attempting to rain destruction on Jerusalem. And if you are reading the news - Larry… Homer… not the comics, the news, then you will know that weirdness - the upside downness is encroaching right back into America again, even while we have a President who might seem favorable to Israel. No President can fight our spiritual enemies fallen from heaven. At least not like Jesus can - and will.

Soon it will be His day of days, when He comes to judge the quick and the dead. And as we may see on that Day, or, as we see that Day approaching, God does not want us to be afraid, or lose our focus. That is, despite all of the legitimately scarry events that will take place all around us. Today God wants us, as we thin about this Advent, to know those scary events are not directed at us but ar meant to jar those final few people who are asleep - so that they too might still have the chance to awaken their spirits and say, “wait I don;t really want any of this garbage the world has to offer me - give me Jesus and His promises. And that has us orientating ourselves today to not just the second advent. But to the Advent of advents, if you think about it.

Nonetheless, with Christmas just under four weeks I want us to both acknowledging Jesus first coming, along His second. Because they two were always meant to go hand-in-hand.

And at Jesus’ first coming, as a frail baby born in a stable, who King Herod sought the death of, He then grew up and demonstrated to all that he was not just fully human and but fully God. And He performed the single greatest act in Salvation History at His first coming: Jesus gave us Himself, to save us from sin and the permanent sting of death by taking all the sins of mankind on His human shoulders as He lay on the cross being crucified in an excruciating and ignoble death. Yet there also, to the disbelief of Satan He, fully God, serving as the perfect sacrifice to cover the very real cost of all our sins, and then was shown righteous before God by being resurrected in a way that we are promised to be too. All of this Jesus did the first time He walked on the earth.

And no one in heaven or on earth other than our mysteriously triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has since received more grateful praise, and worship, the commitment of more acts of love to fellow human beings in the imitation of Christ’s love for us, the commissioning of masterpieces commemorating the life and ministry of the Son of God, our LORD Jesus Christ, or most specially to me Handel’s incomparably sweeping and moving Oratorio, “The Messiah”! along with a whole section in our hymnals of beloved Advent and Christmas Hymns.

Friends we still all of these great enough reasons to sing familiar Hymns, go home today, drink some eggnog, stoke up the fire, and watch a sentimental Christmas movie? I know that Sarah has the 2025 Romantic Christmas comedy, “Christmas in Scotland” already queued.

But today we look forward. Not back. So, with that being said, today concentrate on the most beautiful Advent in our lives - the one yet to come.

First, would you join me in beginning with a prayer?

Holy Spirit work on our minds and our hearts - and inside each of our spirit’s today revealing to us what God, our Father in heaven, means for each of us specifically to hear from heaven today about our futures with Him, Jesus our Savior and Brother, and You Holy Spirit, our Advocate before Him, our Comforter, and our Guide.

And now in the Words of the Psalmist, David, in Ps 25:4–5 “Make me - make us all LORD - to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you (,) I wait (,) all the day long.” Amen.

(Beat)

This morning’s main Advent passage comes from not the prophets, but the Gospel of Mt 24:36-44. This is where Jesus responded to the disciples question asked earlier in Vs 3. Here God reveals His sovereignty over our futures and in the plan for our ultimate restoration in Him

English Standard Version Chapter 24

“Tell us,” they ask, “when (will the Temple be destroyed), and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

What is the setting here: They do not yet fully understand that when Jesus talked about the temple being destroyed and raised three days later He was talking about His body. Or that, in the death and resurrection of His body, the living Temple of God, if we too die in the relationship where we have put our faith in Christ, as Paul explains famously, that we too will be raised like Him from the dead and will find ourselves in our resurrection bodies. (woo hoo! and it is better than this wearing out thing)

But at this time His disciples did know the purpose of His Kingdom, as Jesus taught them this well: to drawn men and women into that life-long relationship of faith in God that yields a protections from God’s judgement at “the end of age.” That’s a code word from the OT prophets of the judgement day when Jesus separates the faithful from the faithless to God.

I’m not trying to get woo woo, here, but just as they also knew about Adam and Eve’s fall at the hands of Satan, the Devil, they also knew what OT scholars increasingly describe is found by directly reading our OTs, two other falls of angels. In both cases they continued mucking things up for humanity like Satan did in the Garden. Gen 6:4; and then Deuteronomy 32:7-8 read alongside Gen 10-11 and Psalm 82, 89, among other OT passages as well as and some new testament ones like 2 Peter and Jude discuss these moments.

I am now prepared to get fully woo woo with you about fallen angels found in the OT and what being that has on the last days next year.

The bottom line is: when the disciples asked Jesus about the timing of these last days they already see that ONLY God can clean the world in the messy state that it is: from top to bottom - from the heavenly realms where these fallen angels lurk to every human government, wicked ruler, and human stuck in their sin of wanting “to live their best lives,” that is only by what their flesh feels - apart from God.

And since His disciples recognized that He, Jesus, came from heaven to earth, as the Son of God, to serve as their Savior and the Savior of all mankind they knew that He was going to be their Messiah to fulfill all the final judgments.

(beat)

But do you know what impresses me here about the disciples?

It’s that they accepted the message when He said was going to leave them for a little while first. This they already understood from Jesus interactions in the Temple. Later of course Jesus clarifies He must leave else the Holy Spirit that He will send from God would not be available to minister in and through them.

And all of THAT is the Biblical and theological background for this morning’s Advent reading.

Matthew 24:36–44 ““But concerning that day and hour no one knows (beat), not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ...(skipping ahead to vs 42) Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. (beat) But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

This is the Word of the LORD. (Thanks be to God.)

This was Jesus response, eventually. Remember they asked Him in vs 3. And then 30 vss later he gets to the point where he feels He has put everything else in its proper place first - the warnings to them, which we’ll look at, and then the signs of the times. Only after all of this does Jesus directly respond.

And we knows this famously as the litmus test for any prophet.

If they try telling you to day or the hour - and I cannot believe that so-called Christian leaders have tried doing so throughout history, which only showed their pride and foolishness of trusting in their so called prophetic gifts, even apart from God. Because God in Heaven does not speak through such people.

So Jesus, when will the end of the age happen, when you return set everything right?

His reply seems anticlimactic

Mt 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows (beat), not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

Thus like all the people who were on the earth immediately before the flood were going about their daily lives when wham the heavens and bowels of the earth open up and torrents of water pour all over the land, so will the tumultuous last days be when Jesus returns. This is the end of the age or the Day of the LORD.

What does this mean?

We must be vigilant. And not only looking out for the signs on the earth around us that His return comes soon, but inside ourselves too. We must not become so caught up in the scary events.

Before Jesus even responds with the words of our Advent reading, directly - he first ushered important thoughts into their minds. Jesus warned them that the struggle awaiting all those who will be on the earth when He returns will cause some - many even to turn away. That is, if they were not careful. Vigilant. Tenaciously clinging to the Hope of God.

Notice that Jesus responded initially to their “when” question with the answer to the how question that He knows they should be asking, “How should we prepare ourselves so that we can be ready for the time when you return?”

Back in Matthew 24:4–5 “Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.”

Paul adds to this warning in his letter to the Roman church. At the time they were facing many of the kinds of adversity that Christians will face again in the last days: the Roman government and the people were turning on them. Paul says this in Ro 13 where we opened worship with our call to worship, this morning:

Romans 13:11–14 “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

“Wake up from sleep,” He warns them. Keep your heart and your mind on guard.

Didn’t Jesus also teach about the bridesmaids keeping their lamps full of oil and their wicks trimmed in the event their bride groom, Jesus the Messiah, came in the night to take them off to heaven for the great marriage supper?

On this Advent looking forward to the end of the age, Paul and Jesus both warn us to stay focused. But not to scare us as much as to remind us that this is God’s sovereign plan. He alone set it. And that train, once it gets started - nobody can stop it.

But also, because this is God's Sovereign plan we can trust that it is good. And we can trust that it's good because... He's already shown it to us across the Bible. 

Everywhere we see Him rescuing people from their captors. From evil rulers. And so while we know in his second coming, Jesus fulfills the parts of the prophesies promised but not yet fulfilled. that is, the day of the Lord, should we be alive at that time we should we have Nothing to fear. 

There's a simple proof for us, a simple test. And here it is church, as you have read through the Bible or listened to all of the stories of when and How God’s chosen people repeatedly got themselves in trouble, “But God,” He saved them, fulfilling His covenant promise with them to do so.

So you, when you engage these truths, do you find yourself grieving with those who grieve. and Feeling righteously anger at those who helped lead Israel astray?

If so then you are on the right side of God’s judgment.

We know God has written His laws in all of our hearts as He declared through the mouths of the prophets Ezekial in Eze 36:26 and Jeremiah 31:13.

And if you are aware of his law, and have clung to His Son Jesus’ teachings with all of your mind, heart and strength and prcolaimed that Christ is your savior, then you have nothing to worry about. Because Jesus is not coming for you - to judge you and expect to find anything in you wanting.

If all of those were the reactions of your hearts, then you were reacting like the very heart of God did.  This is the proof that you know the difference between the divine right and the unholy wrong, and chose not to stand with God, not the wicked.

And so you like Christ want Him to come in and usher the new age to come, even though He must come judging the world first.

If you can't stand living in this sin-sick world - with all of its pain and illness and suffering and therefore ready for him to take You home with him then you are ready to receive Him on this Advent.

If we can stay focused on the work God is doing through, in, and around us, then we cannot be distracted away from Him, our Rock and our Redeemer. Friends this is a time worth waiting for. An Advent worth focusing on now in this world.

Amen?