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Your redemption is drawing near. The day is coming. The Sun of Righteousness shall rise. Christ has come. Christ is coming. Christ will come again. Advent is not just a churchly way of renaming the month of December to “get us ready for Christmas”. It is a way of preparing us to rightly celebrate the Lord's coming both then, now, and in the future.
We first prepare by looking back at what Jesus has accomplished. When you join the church of all times and places in the yearly remembrance of Jesus' first coming in the flesh as the humble babe of Bethlehem this Advent and Christmastide, you hear the story of God acting to save you, humbling Himself to get down and dirty and bloody here in the trenches of this earth for your sake, in order to enact His salvation plan for you. Through this story, repentance and faith in Christ is wrought in you.
However, that there is a salvation story means, first and foremost, that you needed saving in the first place. You are sinners in need of a Savior. In sin did your mother conceive you. From the beginning, every inclination of your heart has been to rebel against God, to buck His will for you. You daily sin much against God and neighbor.
Advent is a time of repentance. To “stir up the heart” and to “prepare the way of the Lord”, as our Collect today called for, means to humble one's self in repentance. You need to repent of your cold hearts towards God and neighbor. You need to repent. Be alert, beware, Jesus says, unless your hearts might be burdened in the misbehavior and drunkenness and anxiousness of this daily life.
This is important, this repentance, this alertness, this need to beware. The day of the Lord is not just December 25th from 2000 years ago, nor December 25th of every year. Your redemption is drawing near! December 25th merely points to a greater truth and a more important one by far. The day of the Lord's return is near, nearer than ever. Do not be deceived. He may give us one more day. He may give us 10,000 more days. But with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day.
There are signs of the imminence of Christ's coming for judgment. Sun and moon and stars will be disturbed. Upon the earth, distress, anguish, affliction of nations in perplexity and doubt by the more sound of the sea and the swelling of the waves. Men separated from their minds by fear and apprehensive expectation of that which is oncoming to the whole world because the powers of the heavens will be shaken by God.
The recent movie “2012” predicts the end of this earth will happen by the destruction of the world by water — by flood. The movie even shows the seas eating up Washington, D.C. and a wall of water overcoming the Himalayan Mountains. A former vice–president of this country believes this as well — the ice caps will melt by global warming, and our coast lands will be swamped, and Manhattan will turn into a new Venice, and then we'll all need a godless socialism to save us more than ever.
These sorts of false fears and apprehensions, however, are the sorts of signs Jesus is talking about today. Men are being separated from their rational minds. They have no faith in the one, true God. The trailer for the movie “2012” goes out of its way to show the Sistine Chapel busting apart and the Vatican crashing to a heap and the statue of Christ on the top of Rio De Janeiro crumbling. No surprise there. They're all wrong, these Hollywood types and leftist politicians. They're all godless and faithless.
The great flood has already happened. The rainbow is God's sign of promise. He'll never destroy this world again by such means. It will be destroyed at the end of time by fire. In Noah and the faithful on the ark, we see the Gospel. We see God's salvation story. The flood is judgment to the godless and unbelievers. But to those of us in Christ, it is life and salvation. Likewise, the Passover. Likewise, the crossing of the Red Sea. Likewise, Christmas. Likewise, Good Friday. Likewise, Easter Sunday.
All of us are moving forward in time to the great day when we shall meet the Lord. Either we live each day in repentance and readiness of His return, or we live each day in cold rejection of Christ and callous indifference for our eternal destiny and that of our neighbors.
This world becomes more and more evil, more and more anti–Christian. The battle of evil becomes more bitter against Christ and His Kingdom as time marches forward. Wars, catastrophes, and disasters — they all become more brutal and destructive.
But Scripture is clear. Things are not going to get better, despite the opposite appearance of technological and scientific and cultural progress that mask so much evil below their surfaces. People do not wish to repent of their sin. They continue in their former foolishness and sin. Jesus says that “because wickedness is multiplied [as the end approaches], most men's love will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12). This is a truly realistic view of world history and events — outside, that is, of a history, present and future, that is devoid of that same Jesus Christ.
Men mean things for evil. God intends them for good in Jesus Christ. Even the evil of human history is woven into God's good plans for His people. The world ignored — even worked against — the incarnation and birth of our Lord Jesus. There was no room for them in the inn. Herod sought to kill the Child. The Jews and the Romans meant Jesus' crucifixion for evil. God meant it all for our eternal good.
Likewise, all the events of past, present, and future in Jesus Christ culminate for us in a new world — a new heaven and a new earth where there is no sorrow or crying or tears, thanks to the atoning blood of Jesus Christ and His glorious resurrection that leads our way out of the grave.
The day of the Lord is coming. Do not despair of the signs. Do not despair of the godlessness and unbelief around us. Do not despair of your own sinfulness, your own failures, your own shortcomings. Read the signs that God gives in light of His promises in Jesus Christ, in light of the salvation He has already won for you in Jesus Christ. See these signs just as you see the trees blooming as summer approaches. It is not the winter of our discontent that approaches. The summer of God's great day is coming. So do not despair. Do not become gloomy and depressed.
Instead, Jesus says, straighten up and raise up your heads. Look forward with repentance and humble and glad anticipation. You have much to be glad and thankful for, much to anticipate and look forward to. Remember that your redemption is drawing near even as you have already seen and heard and believed in God's saving action for you in the past. Your redemption draws near again today in remembering your baptism into Christ, repenting and killing the Old Adam and, by faith, seeing the New Man arise in Christ. Your redemption draws near today in receiving the resurrected and ascended Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Your redemption into God's eternal Kingdom draws near, one day, one hour, one minute at a time.
Remain in Christ: in His ark, the Church; in His Word and Sacraments. Here is your redemption, in Christ, for now and for the future. In Christ, remain awake and persevering at all times, in both calm and in storm, in happy times and in catastrophic times. Lift up your heads and lift up your hearts. Nothing more is occurring then we have been told will happen. Heaven and earth will pass away. But never God's Word, never God's Word made flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ. Planted firmly in His Body, never will you ever pass away — His baptized children who believe in Him and hold fast unto Him in repentant faith.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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