First Sunday of Advent: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

As we celebrate this season of Advent, I am inviting you to look towards the Lord’s Coming this year. Advent is a season of anticipation. During this season, we march towards Christmas with the celebration of all that the Birth of Christ means, but we also travel this path in anticipation of that great and glorious return of the Lord Jesus. During this year we are looking ahead to the arrival of our Lord. But as we look ahead we must ask ourselves:

What Difference Does The Lord Jesus’ Coming Make For My Life Today?

What Difference Does The Lord Jesus’ Coming Make For My Life Today?

This is not simply a rhetorical question but one that is a focal point of the New Testament. The season of Advent was brought forth within the church as a tool to disciple believers and to hit on key themes of the Christian faith and life. The value and impact of the Lord’s Second Coming then is of such great value that an entire season has been carved into our calendar to bring our focus to it.

One of the most difficult churches Paul addresses in the New Testament is the church at Corinth. The Corinthians were riddled with sin. They were carnal, they were worldly minded, they were immoral, and they were filled with pride. Often we look at the Corinthians when we read the Scriptures and we see a people and a church we do not want to be part of and yet so often within our lives we allow the same sinful plagues to settle into our lives and set up shop. We allow pride, divisiveness, and carnality to have rule over our lives and to reign over our church.

As a result, we often look much more like the Corinthians that we would like to admit. Our lives are prioritized around the things their lives were prioritized around. Our words are not all that different than their words. Our actions not all that different than their actions. We celebrate spiritual superiority while turning a blind eye to the lack of personal holiness. We rejoice at the blessings of God we experience while rejecting the practice of Godliness in our day to day lives. We take pride in our knowledge of biblical trivia while refusing to allow the Word of God to take root in our lives and produce change through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what are we to do? How are we to address these failings that so often fill our hearts, our homes, and our churches? Let us look to the Scriptures today and let us find our answer from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians as we read this passage together today.

God's Faithfulness to His Purpose is Demonstrated through His Grace Revealed in the Lord Jesus to His People.

When we read these words from the Apostle Paul we cannot help but find value in the main idea of these words. God’s faithfulness to His purpose is demonstrated through His grace revealed in the Lord Jesus to his people.

God has a purpose for all of creation. From the rising sun to the cricket in the evening. God has purposed and destined his Creation and the day of that purpose’s fulfillment is closer than it has ever been. Those who claim to be God’s people then ought not forget God’s faithfulness as we face the circumstances of our day-to-day. Corinth was riddled with issues but Paul points the Corinthians towards God’s faithfulness in the grace he has poured out upon them and uses that previous grace as the promise of God’s continued and future faithfulness.

Through the Lord Jesus Christ we have both been adopted into the family of God and we have surrendered ourselves to Jesus Christ as Lord over every part of our life.

When we look at the words of Paul we are reminded that through the Lord Jesus Christ we have both been adopted into the family and we have surrendered ourselves to Jesus Christ as Lord over every part of our life. We are his both relationally and intimately. We are the work of his hands and we are his possession. When Paul extends grace and peace in verse three he extends it from God who is our Father and Jesus Christ who is our Lord.

The peace of God extended is not inner peace. We are not talking about oriental tranquility. In this peace extended we find the ceasing of hostilities between parties that are at war. By God’s grace the Corinthians have been brought to the end of hostilities with God himself. In his greeting, Paul reminds those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ that they are not God’s enemies but rather his children. They are not rebels to the kingdom of God but subjects of the Lord Jesus himself. In the same way, to the one who has trusted in the person and work of the Lord Jesus grace and peace defines the foundation from which our relationship with God as Father and Jesus Christ as Lord is built upon. His grace is the basis of our peace and the fact that there is now peace with God is evidence of his grace upon our lives.

Then Paul begins to express Thanksgiving. The grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ then enriches us out of the glorious riches of God himself. We are enriched in everything. Yes the Corinthians were far from what God desired for them to be, but they were also far from where God had found them and extended his glorious grace to them. No matter where you are today in your walk with the Lord Jesus, think back to where you started. Think of that place where the grace of God brought an end of hostilities to your relationship with the sovereign of eternity. Think of all that God has done in you to take you from where you may have begun.

The journey you have traveled is the evidence of the work of the Lord Jesus within your life.

The journey you have traveled is the evidence of the ever present grace of God, the soul saving work of the Lord Jesus, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit within you. Every time that you look back upon your life and witness the work of the divine within you, you have testimony of God’s grace on display.

I have been watching the television show Becker during the last couple of weeks. The main character is a man named John Becker and part of his character is that he is a atheist. So at various parts of the show he allows his atheism to become a part of the storyline. And yet every time I see that I think to myself that this is part of a larger story that has been put together by writers with a purpose in their work. Even in those moments when Becker is sure that there is no God, his character is a slave to the writers of his program. When we look back over our lives in so many instances we are witnesses of how God has been working in us and through us for his purposes in ways we could not begin to understand as we traveled down that path. Yet now as we look back we see the work of the divine sovereign in even our most difficult trials and struggles.

The story of your life is the evidence of God’s grace within you. The history of this church is the evidence of the God’s Grace in the Lord Jesus Christ at work within our community. Through the Lord Jesus Christ there is no spiritual gift that we need for the journey that we have been called to take that is absent from us. All that we need God has graciously supplied through the Lord Jesus Christ. Though we have not arrived yet, we are assured that the day of his revealing is ahead of us and all that we need to be there on that day has been provided for us by God himself.

As we live each day of our life, let us remember that it is one day, one hour, one moment closer to the day of the Lord Jesus’ revealing and everything we need to live within that day, that hour, and that moment God has provided for us from his grace. We have an inexhaustible supply of God’s grace for us to draw from for each moment that we live in anticipation of that great revealing.

But Paul emphasizes the grace of God even further. The strength that we need has not be withheld either. As I battled Covid these last three weeks, the greatest obstacle that I faced was the constant fatigue. I struggled to breathe, walk, talk, read, focus, and pray. The absence of energy and strength was so difficult for me. I would start to do something only to find myself wheezing like an old goat and having to give up my efforts. So often in our struggle with sin though, don’t we feel the same way? We seem so overwhelmed by the power and presence of sin that we just want to give up the fight? We feel so weak in the face of our temptation and our the desires of our flesh that we just want to submit?

Paul calls us to remember that the same God that saved you is the same God that strengthens you and will keep you even on the day of the Lord Jesus’ return.

Paul calls us to remember that the same God that saved you is the same God that strengthens you and will keep you even on the day of the Lord Jesus’ return. God’s grace is the evidence of his faithfulness. If God has called you, if God has brought you into fellowship with the Lord Jesus, if God has brought you from where you were to where you are, then God is faithful to bring you the rest of the way. God is faithful to bring us collectively the rest of the way.

Dr. Ken Chafin, the late professor of Evangelism and Preaching at Southern Seminary shared this story in relation to these verses: “My grandmother lived in our home for a couple of years while I was a high school student. She was a mountain woman who had been born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but had spent most of her adult life in the hills of Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma. Grandmother and I spent many hours together. She loved to read, and often I would find some author she enjoyed and check a book out of the school library for her. But every time I brought her a book she would open it to the last chapter and read that first. This both amazed and upset me because it seemed to me that would take all the fun out of reading the book. One day I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I asked her why she always read the last chapter first. Without a moment of hesitation she said, “If I don’t like the way a book ends, I don’t see any sense wasting my time reading it.”

Dr. Chafin continued, “As I have reflected on that since, I’ve come to believe that many Christians today need to take a page out of Grandmother’s book. But the difference is that we already know how things are going to turn out; we know what’s in our last chapter, and this means that we can live in the present with confidence. I believe Paul was wanting to assure his Corinthian friends right in the beginning that their future was as secure as the promises of God.”

We are not simply tossed about by the circumstances of life as they come toward us. The promises Paul emphasizes to the Corinthians remain the promises of God to us as well. No matter what we face, no matter our circumstances, and no matter what forces of evil that may come: we are assured that the Lord Jesus is coming and there is no kingdom of this present evil age that can stand against the glorious kingdom of God.

Where you are is evidence of God's Grace thus far and encouragement for us as we keep going towards the day of the Lord Jesus' Return

As we celebrate this Advent Season, we look towards the day of our Lord’s Return. Yet as we look forward to that day let us look firmly at God’s faithfulness and his grace. He has been faithful in all of his gracious actions towards you. He has extended salvation to all who will trust in the person and work of the Lord Jesus. He has brought you from where he found you to where you are today. He has walked with you through the ups and downs of life. He has used you as part of his saving work here and around the world. God’s grace has reached to you at your lowest and his grace continues with us each day as we go forward with him. Where you are is evidence of God's Grace thus far and encouragement for us as we keep going towards the day of the Lord Jesus' Return.

Let us reach out to him. Let us recommit ourselves to Him. Let us be found faithful trusting him as we look towards the day of the Lord Jesus’ return.

Today as we come to our time of invitation, you are invited to respond to the glorious gift of the Lord’s grace and peace. You are invited to turn from your sin and trust in the savior. You are invited to recommit yourself to all that God has called you to be. Cast yourself upon the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ and look towards the glorious day of the Lord Jesus’ return as a part of God’s glorious family and as part of God’s glorious church.

In just a moment, I am going to invite you to respond to the Lord’s call upon your life. Momentarily I am going to lead us in a time of prayer...

Today you are invited to embrace the grace of God extended to you in the Lord Jesus. Let us respond to the Lord’s call then at this time.