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Matthew 24:36-44
A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
Happy New Year everyone. Today is the first Sunday of a new church year. As we begin the church new year, we don’t make new resolutions, as many may do in January of a new year.
But here in the church what we do at the beginning of a new year is take a new look at things, take a look both back and to the future, take a look at the whole picture and ask: What is God doing? What’s it all about.
One of the things people mention, is that God has a plan, and then the question is: What’s the problem? Doesn’t God’s plan work? Did God have a plan A and that didn’t work so he had to get a plan B?
In the early church there was a leader who said about the fall into sin: “O, happy sin!” because that is what led to the coming of Christ.
The idea was that God’s plan A didn’t work so he came up with Plan B. That perspective is a problem.
Let’s think about what the Bible says about these things. As you know, it says in Exodus and Deuteronomy that when the people fell down and worshipped the golden calf, the Lord said: “I am going to destroy these people and start over.”
Moses begged him and prayed to him, and it says the Lord repented. He changed his mind. That’s a very important kind of thing that we have to think about. We find that astonishing. From our way of thinking, God is eternal and unchanging, always the same.
In the New Testament in Hebrews 13:8 it says: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever.” What happened is God changed. It blows our minds, blows our categories to pieces. God came to be part of this place in space and time and all the categories we have for thinking about this don’t work, can’t comprehend it. He truly was one of us and truly was among us.
There are a couple of things we should think about from that. The first one is: All attempts to talk about proofs for God are idols. We have a hard time swallowing that because well, how can we know? How can we be sure?
We want to bolster our faith, prove that it’s logical, reasonable to believe, so we set up proofs for God, and what we really do is set up a god above God, that is, whatever we are using to prove it by. It might be a certain philosophy, or our feelings of spirituality, proofs from history, science, whatever. All these things are idols, ways we are trying to make God conform, control God, and manipulate God so he is the way we think he has to be.
That comes out in this text in Isaiah 2:1-5: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks.” There is a parallel to that in Isaiah 11: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid . . . and a little child shall lead them.” And another parallel in Isaiah 65:25: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . . They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.”
The ancient Hebrews were trying to figure out: How is God doing this? In their own limited way they had the picture like what it was going to be in Eden, and they thought the end would be the same, like a return to the beginning, except they know about the problem of evil, of “nature red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson calls it. How is this going to work?
The lion is going to eat straw, become a vegetarian? What’s that about?
Our categories, our ways of thinking aren’t adequate. They simply can’t make it, except we think it has to be that way. It has to be something we figure out, understand, and the like.
We turn then to the great place in the New Testament that deals with these things, that is, in Ephesians 1. There in verse 4 it says: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” In other words, he chose you and me before the world was created.
In verse 10 it talks about God’s purpose “which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” From eternity he the plan to do what he’s doing, and there’s no way of talking about Plan B for God because he is above planning, and he is above space and time.
Think of what astronomers say about “singularity.” They talk about the Big Bang. It’s always capitalized because there’s nothing like it. It’s singular. God created that, too. He’s above it all. He is the one who is above all things and through all things and to all things, and he became one of us as a little baby to save us from sin and death.
With that we come to this season of Advent. There are three colors for the season of Advent: Purple symbolizes repentance and royalty, and blue and pink are colors of hope and expectation.
We looking at the fact that God is providing hope, and we’re looking forward to Christmas, but really through Christmas to Good Friday and Easter, and we’re also looking to the fact that this is serious business so the prayers this season start with “Stir up!” and “Wake up!”
The text in Matthew 24 talks about Noah. Remember how he built that boat on the prairie, on the flat dry land, and everybody laughed at him. There’s no water around here to float even a little boat, much less a big boat. And it says the people didn’t pay attention. They ate and they drank, and they married, and they worked and they slept, and then BANG! Out of nowhere, the end came. What in the world!
Even though we are made aware of the fact that the Lord is Lord, and he is Lord of history and our lives, we go on in denial. It’s like that snooze button. We hit it and go back to sleep. At the end of this text, it talks about the thief in the night.
As you may know, there are five different places in the New Testament where it talks about how the end will come like a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 2 Peter 3:10, and Revelation 3:3, 16:15). Obviously, if you know the thief is coming, you’re ready and can lock your door. But we live in denial, with our heads in the sand because we want to live life our way.
And the word of the Lord says: “Be ready.” There is one mediator, not many. Well, we put that off. We think we’ll deal with that later, but like closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, then it’s too late.
The second way we avoid this is to do what St. Augustine did. In his book, Confessions, he says: “Lord, make me your own, but not yet. I want to be your own, but later.”
This is like the one before him, Constantine, the Great Emperor, who called the Council of Nicaea. It’s probable that Constantine postponed his Baptism until just before he died, because, of course, Baptism wipes out all your sins, so he figured he could live and rule as Emperor as he thought he should, and then be forgiven all his sins right before he died.
Aside from the fact that none of knows the moment when we might die, it’s also not truly having the Lord as Lord. It’s another way of thinking we can manipulate God.
And the third way we think we can avoid this is seen in the German poet, Heinrich Heine, who said: “God has to forgive me. It’s his job.” In other words, you don’t have to worry about judgment and wrath. It’s the nature of love and the nature of God, so I can do whatever. We fall into that trap of thinking I can live however I want. God has to forgive no matter what. But, of course, he doesn’t. He is not sentimental love; he is holy love.
The problem is that none of these three ways work.
It’s scary because the Lord will be Lord no matter what. That’s what the text in Romans 13 says. It says it’s time for you to wake up. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. The Lord is coming. He’s coming in his time in his way. That’s something that is the center of the universe, more important than the Big Bang, more important than whatever you might talk about in terms of events in history, or in all the cosmos.
More important than anything is the fact that he came to be Lord among us, and he comes to you and me in his Word. He came first of all as the Word made flesh, the Word of God as Jesus Christ.
He comes second in his Word as proclaimed in his promises. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Psalm 130: 4). “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he has lavished upon us” (Ephesians 1:7-8).
In the promises of God is salvation. Outside of that, nobody has anything to hang on to.
But in him, in the Lord who is Lord, is that certainty which gives us hope and salvation. Amen