Dennis Tuuri

Diverse times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sin, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

For unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be unto me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we rejoice at this time of the season in the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you, Father, for your bringing into the world your firstbegotten, his incarnation two thousand years ago, his life, his death on the cross, his resurrection and ascension.

We thank you, Lord God, that you have called us, indeed commanded us to worship him this day and always. And indeed, the entire created order will also be led by us into worship and praise for you, for the Son, and for the Holy Spirit. We thank you, Father, for this day a special convocation of worship. And we pray as we come before your presence that we do so understanding that our righteousness is not in and of ourselves, but we have imputed to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

That he through his work on the cross has made atonement for our sins and so cleansed us that we might come before your presence and given us the robes of his righteousness to wear as we come before your face now in worship. Bless this Lord’s day, Father, that we may worship him and you and the Holy Spirit in truth, as well as indeed throughout this day and the rest of our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things with his right hand, and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory. The Lord hath made known his salvation. His righteousness have he openly showed in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel. All the earth have seen the salvation of our Lord. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth. Make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. For he hath thundered upon the seas. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands, who has not lifted up his soul into vanity, he shall receive a blessing from the Lord. This is the generation of them that seek him. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the King of glory shall come in, the King of glory.

The Lord, strong and mighty. Lift up your heads, O ye gates. And the King of Glory shall come in. The Lord of hosts.

This service will be a little different than our normal service. We’ll be having three fairly short sermons, and so we won’t be having Sunday school this day for the children. The first sermon scripture that we’ll read is Matthew 6, verses 9–13.

I had intended when the service began to make that announcement, but most of you weren’t here. We just read Psalm 24 responsively, and we talked last week about entrance liturgies and about how Jesus Christ is the one who gives us entrance into the holy place. And we come together in communicative worship. That’s what we do—come into God’s presence in a special way, in a special fashion to give him worship.

And I was also going to exhort you at the beginning of the service that as we enter church and enter special worship on Sundays, we should reflect upon the three requirements that we talked about last week: to do justly, to love mercy—not just to do acts of mercy, but actually to love acts of mercy—and to walk humbly before God. We all should think about those things every week when we come together and ask whether or not our lives have been characterized by doing justly according to God’s law, by acts of kindness shown to one another, particularly in the covenant community, then extending out into the church and into the unsaved community as well.

And if we’re walking humbly before God, recognizing our righteousness is in Jesus Christ. Part of justice, I suppose, is meeting God at the times appointed.

Matthew 6, verses 9–13. After this manner therefore pray ye. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

Let’s pray. Almighty, Merciful Father, we thank you for allowing us to come into your presence in worship. We thank you, Father, that we can pray this prayer confidently, expectantly, and continually throughout our lives. We thank you, Father, for your kingdom. And we thank you for this time of year in which we celebrate the coming of the king to his earth to bring in that kingdom of righteousness and to cause the growth of that kingdom throughout the history.

Father, help us to be part of that kingdom and to anticipate, long for, pray for, and work for its inception and continuing growth. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

We’re going to talk about Advent this morning. And I was thinking these past few weeks, as I always think in December, about my youth and what Christmas was for myself as a child. And I suppose one way to characterize the Advent season that a child experiences as they look forward to Christmas—most children in this country—is one might characterize it as a humanistic vestigial Advent season, in that the things they look forward to really are not directly seen in relationship to God.

Christmas was probably, I guess as it was for most children in my youth, one of the high points of the year, and there was much anticipation for the coming of Christmas. And the gifts were part of it, of course, but it wasn’t all of it. I enjoyed the shopping. I enjoyed being able to have money to spend upon my brothers and sisters and other people and friends. I enjoyed the fact that when you went to the stores, there was a brightness to them at Christmas time that wasn’t there the rest of the year.

And there was a sense of thankfulness on the part of people. There was more joy than normally is exhibited during the other eleven months of the year on the faces of people. They brighten up as it were. And I suppose if we wanted to be real cynical, we could say that’s primarily due to money. But I think that is certainly a humanistic approach toward Christmas and the Advent season. But I think it’s also vestigial to a certain extent.

In other words, Christianity once permeated this country and formed the basis for the Christmas season as well as all other things. And so there’s still remnants of that. There’s still remnants. We watch the lighting of the Christmas tree in Portland, for instance, every year, and they sing hymns about our Savior and about the coming of the kingdom with the coming of Jesus Christ to his world. And so certainly those things are not all to be seen in a bad sense.

I think several of you are going to have over the next few weeks the opportunity to watch a movie called “The Story of Christmas,” which is kind of that humanistic vestigial Advent as it were, as people prepare for the coming of Christmas. And I identified with that when I was a child. I worried about whether or not I’d get a BB gun one Christmas. I worried so much I got hives. So my humanistic vestigial Advent season was filled with anticipation of the coming of that day and hopefully the coming of that BB gun.

And we’re going to consider this morning really what we should be in anticipation of during the Advent season. I guess what I’m saying is that anticipation isn’t wrong, but it’s undoubtedly misdirected in too many of our lives and certainly in the bulk of the nation today.

The Advent season has been celebrated in the historic church for nearly two thousand years. And Advent has been celebrated in different groups and denominations. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates primarily Epiphany, but again that is an Advent sort of celebration. We’ll mention that again in a minute. The Catholic Church obviously has an Advent season. The Lutheran book of services has an Advent preparation. There’s a liturgical year that’s followed in these churches. Same thing can be said for the Book of Common Prayer. And so major strands of Christianity over the last two thousand years have celebrated the anticipation of the coming—the time when we remember the birth of our Savior—and that is not necessarily a wrong thing to do.

Most all of those services have been geared to a yearly cycle. In other words, nature goes through a cycle, the world goes through a cycle according to God’s providence, and the liturgical structures were to correlate to those cycles. And so you had primarily two great peaks of that liturgical year: Christmas and Easter. And those were to remind people of the coming of light and the coming of life.

When Jesus Christ came into the world, he was the light of men. And of course, that’s celebrated at a time when light is in short supply. And around the time when light begins to get longer into the year, the sun begins to come up, as it were, in the church year. That’s the beginning of the church year: movement from darkness into light, which was accomplished with the coming of the Savior in his first advent two thousand years ago, anticipated by the long shadowy nightly period of the Old Testament.

And then that night, that light came forward in an epiphany. We celebrate in February—usually, or January 6th rather—January 6th. On that day, that light was seen to be coming in full glory because the Epiphany marked the coming of the Lord in terms of his presentation to the Gentile world, and usually that’s celebrated as the feast of the three magi—kings who came and worshiped Jesus—and it was a manifestation to the Gentiles now of the light of God.

And then Easter, of course, is what these things pointed forward to: the coming of life. From death to life people move with the resurrection and ascension of our Savior. And so Easter marked that period. And again it’s in the springtime because that’s when life comes up out of the ground. The snow melts in most parts of the earth—towards the northern half of the earth anyway. Life comes forward and buds.

Well, I guess what I’m saying is, if we’ve talked about this before, these things don’t happen as a natural order of things. The world moving through these cycles, nature moving through seasons—it’s God’s expressed command. I was listening to a song the other day called “Ancient of Days,” and the person singing the song talked about seeing God and seeing the Ancient of Days and the sunshine and the sun rising.

And as I was listening to that song, I was driving down the road, and the sun was very bright that day. And I flipped down the visor, and I realized that all too often we look at the sun as something to be dealt with—sunglasses, visors, whatever. But very infrequently do we make the connection to the rising of Jesus Christ, the brightness of his glory. But Psalm 19 tells us specifically that correlation: the bridegroom, Jesus Christ, is likened to the sun coming out of his place.

So it’s good to have these cycles and it’s good to see them connected to the seasons, because God gave us the seasons to express spiritual truth—the spiritual truth of Christ’s brightness in terms of the sun, and the spiritual truth of God’s illumining the earth at this time of year as we move into darkness and then move back after the solstice into days of increasing light. Advent was seen as the dawning of that light. Christmas is the sunrise, and as I said, Epiphany is a bright noonday.

Now the word Advent comes from the Latin word meaning “to come”—ad and venit, meaning “coming.” And so Advent means a celebration of the coming. We mentioned Epiphany—that, as I said, was held later, January 6th, to indicate the separateness from the birth and then the appearance to the Gentile world. But they both really celebrate the same things.

As I said, these things don’t have to scare us. I think that for so many of us, celebrations of these holidays, church holidays that have been associated with Rome—and certainly Rome’s understanding of salvation, with man’s totally wrong view—and there’s totally too much of an emphasis these days on lack of emphasis on justification by faith. And I’m not advocating Romanish theology. It is, as Greg Bahnsen said when he was here several years ago, soul damning.

But the church wasn’t always that way. The Roman Catholic Church has a deep history to it that is not necessarily bad. It’s kind of like Santa Claus. And we’ve talked to several of you about how in our family we remember the day of St. Nicholas. And you know, earlier in the month—December 6th or 7th, is it? December 7th. Now people think Santa Claus is a terribly humanistic figure.

But you’ve got to realize that Santa Claus originally came from St. Nicholas, and the contraction of those words into Santa Claus. And St. Nicholas was an actual person who lived—the bishop of Myra in the 300s AD. And what he did was he did good things for people. He was known as the gift bearer. He would help people celebrate the goodness of God. And specifically, one thing he was said to have done—and whether or not this is actually what happened is really quite disputable—but the understanding is that there were three daughters who couldn’t get married because they had no dowry. And although the dowry was not being practiced correctly, there was a dowry system, and the father of the three daughters was supposed to provide it. He didn’t have any. And so St. Nicholas came along, knew about this situation, and one night threw three bags of gold into their window. And legend has it that they landed in these three stockings that these girls had set up to dry by the fireplace.

And so we have gifts in the stockings, and we have stockings now to celebrate at Christmas time. And I guess what I’m trying to get you to see is that certainly there’s a bad way to do this, but there’s also a good way—to remind ourselves, for instance, that saints like St. Nicholas are supposed to do deeds of kindness and mercy toward one another. And that’s what he did originally. It’s a reminder, also. It can be a reminder—the celebration of St. Nicholas day—of real money, gold coins. And we actually give our children gold and silver coins at Christmas time. Blue ones, but we try to give them at least one. So that’s a reminder, and it can teach your children about the dowry system and how the right dowry system should work. And with our boys, we’re encouraging them to use that St. Nicholas money to save for their dowry eventually for when they get married.

Well, Advent’s the same sort of thing. Advent and celebrating the coming of our Savior is a good thing. And so it’s a good thing to take a week out of this season now to look a little bit at what Advent means and what is it in anticipation of.

We sang “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” a few weeks ago, probably the best known Advent song among us. We’re going to sing it again this morning. Why do we sing, “O come, O come Emmanuel”? Do we just focus on the coming of Christ in his birth? Is that it? And if that’s it, then what we’re doing every year is kind of a little funny because what we’re trying to say is he hasn’t really been born yet. We sort of look with anticipation to him being born, but he’s already been born. See? And so if that’s all we’re doing, then it’s kind of some sort of imagination on our part to try to remember what it was like before he came.

And certainly that is one element of the Advent season. We remember what that first coming was about. But the church has not always been, I guess, for want of a better word, reductionist in its approach. The historic church has seen Advent and the celebration of the coming of our Lord, not just at pointing to his first coming, but also, of course, pointing to his second coming. And if we’re going to celebrate the coming of our Lord today, as we are going to do, then we want to look also at the coming of our Lord in his final coming as well.

Revelation 22, the last two verses of that book—verses 20 and 21—refer to the coming of the Advent of the Lord. They read, “He which testified these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” And that verse really gives us a key as to how the historic churches understood Advent. The historic church understood that Advent celebrated the birth of our Savior. But the birth of our Savior also pointed forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of history. And also, that coming is associated with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even so, come Lord Jesus, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

The early church actually, in its Advent season readings from the scriptures, primarily focused upon the last coming—this what we call the second coming as opposed to the first coming. And if you look through the liturgical readings of any of these denominations, you’ll see that emphasis.

The collect of the vigil of Christmas, for instance, says the following: “Grant that we who now joyfully receive thine only begotten Son as our redeemer may also without fear behold him coming as our judge.” See the emphasis? First coming, aware of his last coming, and ask that we may behold that last coming without fear.

The Book of Common Prayer, in the opening collect for the first week of Advent, prays about the preparation for the last days. And it looks to John the Baptist as preparing the people for the first coming of Jesus Christ and prays that the ministers of the church might be effective heralds of the second coming of Jesus Christ, and so prepare the world for his final coming. The Gospel reading for the second week of Advent in the Book of Common Prayer is Luke 21:25, specifically referencing his second coming.

In the third Sunday, the collect reads again this emphasis of being good heralds of the second coming. And then the epistle for that Sunday is 1 Corinthians 4, which says that the second coming of the Lord will illumine all deeds. And so moving from a consideration of the last coming of our Lord, there’s an exhortation to a righteousness of action and preparation for that last coming.

And that really takes us to the third element of Advent. The Advent and the historic church looked at the past. It looked to the future, but it also looked to the present—as preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ in our lives in grace. And throughout the scriptures, if you look at the coming of the Lord and what those words refer to, you’ll see that same threefold aspect. There was a past coming, that was the coming of our Savior. There’s the future coming, the second coming, and there’s also a present coming of Jesus Christ in grace to his people.

And so the Advent season of these different groups I have mentioned had those three component elements: past, future, and also present. Now, we would add to that a necessary reminder to us who don’t always necessarily associate grace with its elements—through which God brings it to pass. Hopefully, having gone through the book of Micah now for some weeks, we recognize that the grace of God is brought in through the secondary means frequently of judgment upon those people that reject him and reject the Savior.

And the coming of God is spoken of throughout the Old Testament prophets in a sense before the first coming as well—a coming in judgment upon ungodly men and nations that suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, work that out in a society, and then are judged by God for it. And so in Micah, we see God raising up the Assyrians to punish his people as a judgment, as a coming of him to the people of Micah. Isaiah, the same thing. And so the Old Testament prophets pointed to a present coming as well.

Eschatology is associated usually to the last coming. But eschatology also refers to end points or end times of people’s lives, of cultures, and of nations. And certainly we can see in the judgment that the book of Revelation also looked forward to—the judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70. We can see there also a coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Come quickly, Lord Jesus”—certainly pointing to the second Advent, also pointing however to his coming in judgment against Jerusalem in AD 70 and bringing an end, as it were, to that apostate nation. We can look later at a coming of God in judgment against Rome and see there also the end point of a nation—a nation that had wrought tremendous violence and ungodliness and unholiness in the world—and God judged them.

John 14:23 is frequently used in Advent season to talk about the coming of God in grace. Jesus says, “If a man love me, he will keep my word. So my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” Jesus comes in grace to those who, in the words of Jesus here, keep his words. And so the keeping of God’s law, doing justly and also extending mercy—the royal virtue of grace that we’ve received from God—to others also as a precondition, as it were, to God’s coming to us in grace and in nurturing us and sanctifying us progressively throughout our lives.

So this threefold Advent of past, future, and present is taught throughout the scriptures, and it’s also contained, as I said, in the liturgies of the early church. And there’s one other way in which we should remember this. When we speak about the coming of Jesus Christ, certainly when we come together for communicative worship and we hear the word preached, and then in the second half of the service downstairs we have communion together, we also should, of course, recognize the special presence of Christ there.

In one of our communion liturgies, we read from the book of Revelation: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me.” And so Jesus Christ promises to come to us in communion. And we’re actually sitting at his banqueting table.

And communion has that same aspect of looking back at the coming of Jesus Christ and his life and what he accomplished on the cross and his resurrection and ascension. It looks to the present—that he has promised to come with us and nourish us through the sacrament—and that, as an emblem of all of our lives, is his coming to us in grace as we move in obedience to the covenant. And it also points forward, of course, to the great consummative wedding feast of the future to come when Christ returns finally.

And so it also has that threefold element in it and is a symbol of all three. Passover, on which, of course, communion is certainly based in part, also had that aspect to it. Passover reminded the people that preparation for the coming of the Lord was necessary. Reverend Rushdoony, in his latest tape dealing with the Passover passage from the book of Exodus, talks about how they were to gird themselves up—gird their loins up for action. They were to have their feet shod, as it were, staff in their hands, ready to act, ready to move in terms of the coming of God to deliver them and of their movement into victory and deliverance as well.

And we’ll speak more about that next week when we speak of Christmas and the adornments of Christmas. But in any event, I want us to recognize this morning that if all these things are true—that the scriptures speak of these comings not just as past and the birth of Christ in the nativity, not just as the future, the second coming of our Lord, but also presently God coming upon this nation in judgment, for instance, and upon us in either grace or judgment as we move in obedience or disobedience to his law—that all this means that this should be a time of both anticipation and preparation for the comings.

So Advent being a time of anticipation and preparation reminds us that our lives are to be lived with that sort of anticipation and preparation. It seems odd to us at first reading that John the Baptist figures so preeminently in many of the Advent liturgies. But what did John the Baptist come to do? He came to prepare the people for the first coming of the Savior, to make straight the paths, as it were. And so today also we should remind ourselves and are reminded, as we read in some of the Advent liturgy material you might have in our individual homes, of John the Baptist, of the need to prepare our hearts for the coming of God to this nation and to our lives as well.

Romans 13:8 is used in the Book of Common Prayer as one of the epistles for Advent, and it reads that the day is at hand, and therefore to cast off the deeds of wickedness and to put on the armor of light. Right? They had a recognition—the early church did—of Christ coming in judgment upon men and nations. And that is an exhortation to reformation of one’s life.

Advent then should remind us of our spiritual need for deliverance, our need for grace from God, our need of the Holy Spirit, and our need of the coming of Jesus Christ to sustain us and also to deliver us from those people that would seek to oppress us. Now, hopefully in this church, again, having gone through the book of Micah, we have a recognition of the need for deliverance. And certainly that’s an important part of all this.

After all, a Christian might ask today, how are we to await the Lord when he’s been with us and in us so long? How can we long for him whom we daily have received into our hearts? How can we look forward with anticipation to this coming of the Lord?

But you see, that’s why I read for the scripture passage this morning the Lord’s Prayer, because God tells us this is the model prayer which is to model our lives, our prayer, and all that we do. And that prayer includes a request of God that his kingdom come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s what we’re to pray for.

And some have seen a correlation between that Advent prayer, as it were, the Lord’s Prayer—he gives us to pray in the Advent season. The Advent season is really a reminder to us again of the necessity to pray the Lord’s Prayer, to pray that his kingdom come. The coming of Jesus Christ is the coming of the king. And with the king comes the establishment and extension of his kingdom. And so the Advent season, pointing to the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas, remembering that it has a threefold aspect, is a reminder also that we’re to pray that prayer and expect the coming of the kingdom.

As we look at these three Advents: Jesus initiated the kingdom. Jesus will consummate the kingdom. And even now, Jesus, when he comes in judgment and governing, comes in judgment against men and nations temporally in man’s history, establishes and extends the boundaries of that kingdom so that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so the Advent season is to be marked by that prayer, and it’s to be marked by an understanding and a longing on our behalf to see the kingdom of God manifested around us—in our families, in our church, and in our community.

And it’s to be a longing for the extension of that kingdom, both quantitatively (the conversion of souls) and qualitatively (people becoming more and more obedient to Jesus Christ).

We had a meeting Friday night. We talked about Operation Rescue. And I think that, if nothing else—and I think that I would echo most of the sentiment of the men that were there—that is not a good thing to be doing. It may well be against God’s word, and certainly it may not be the best tactic to use.

But in any event, the fact is that God has used that to rekindle in us a desire to end the slaughter of the innocent—in the sense of them having done nothing wrong to make them subject to man’s death penalty. Certainly not innocent before God. But the murder of pre-born infants—I think one of the things that happened that night is some of us realized again the longing that we should have, that this slaughter stop.

Robert Jones, I think, used the illustration that if the silent scream was put on an amplifier and broadcast throughout the city, it would keep us mindful of the fact that children are being killed. Now, you know, there’s a balance to all that and God’s sovereignty. There’s nothing we can do about this ultimately right now. We can work for long-term solutions, but the point is we should be working.

And the point I’m making this morning is that we should be longing for the elimination of that particular sin. But it doesn’t stop there. There’s all kinds of sins and wickedness in the world around us because the nation has rejected God. An Advent season is a preparation for the coming of our Lord and his kingdom. And it should reawaken in us a desire, a longing, a great urge for the coming of Jesus Christ in judgment as well as in grace in our nation.

God’s judgments are not something to be feared by us. If we walk in obedience to the covenant stipulations, it’s something to be wanted for and longed for. And certainly Micah’s prophecies and the correlation to what’s going on in our nation has hopefully produced that correlation in us as well—the longing for the manifestation of God’s kingdom in terms of the judgments against ungodly men and nations today.

I was teaching my daughter every other week. I’m giving her a lecture on world history, going through Reverend Rushdoony’s world history notes. And this week—last week we were talking about Assyria and Babylon. And we’ve talked about this before, but it is interesting to see the correlations of those two empires. The Assyrians and then the Babylonian Empire became the world empire, and then the Persians. But the Assyrians and the Babylonians were very similar in that they both wanted control, extension of their kingdom, as it were.

The Assyrians extended that kingdom through military might. The Babylonians primarily through the use of debt, demoralizing people that way. The Assyrians used terror as a tactic. The Babylonians used easy credit. And both of them were used by God to discipline the church, as it were, of Israel in the southern and northern kingdoms at that time. The northern kingdom being dispersed by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom being dispersed by the Babylonians.

Well, one would have to be almost blind to miss the correlation to our day and age. We have two world powers. One world power that uses military strength and oppresses the church of God that way. Another world power that uses primarily economic indebtedness and the pleasures it can bring one to get the church off the track that way and to oppress it. And those two powers, of course, are Russia and the United States.

Well, in the days of Micah, if there were men then who longed for the manifestation of righteousness in the land, then today the church should be characterized—and certainly at the Advent season—for a longing of the revelation of God and judgment upon the nations, these ungodly nations that he has raised up to bring, as it were, a coming to the church in judgment. And so these times should be great times of anticipation for us as well.

John the Baptist, his coming and preparing the people, was in the context of an Idumean king—an Edomite king, one of the enemies of God. And so people were to long for the manifestation of God’s coming and also to prepare themselves for that.

Romans 13:9 brings this all together—verses 9 and following: “For this, thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet. And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awaken out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.

Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envies. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

The night is almost over. The day is at hand. That’s what Advent celebrates. And indeed, in this coming week, the days turn longer and brighter again. And that to be a reminder to us that the day quickly approaches—of judgment upon this nation, the coming of God in grace or in judgment. And we then should be encouraged at this Advent season to remind ourselves, as the book of Romans tells us, to reform our lives, to make preparations for that coming, to have great anticipation of it and joy of it as we see it approaching, but to prepare ourselves for it soundly and earnestly and according to the scriptures and the commands that God has given to us, recognizing that Jesus Christ stands at the door.

We should learn to pray then as God taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come. Thy kingdom come, thy kingdom come.” Our lives should be characterized by a desire for that and a preparation for that—that his will might be done in our lives and in the lives of the nations around us as well, as they bring upon themselves the judgment of God for their sinfulness and for their wickedness.

We must live our lives in anticipation of the coming of that kingdom now and forever and in preparation for it.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the seasons. We thank you, Father, for the picture that they are to us of the true spiritual truths that your scriptures tell us—that we must be alert and in an awakeful state, awaiting the coming of our Savior, certainly finally at the end of time, but also temporally in the present as well in judgment. Help us, Father, when he comes in judgment upon this nation to be found in obedience to you and in celebrating the joy of salvation that you’ve given to us in all that we do and say. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Let’s stand as we sing a song in response to this. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” And certainly God’s will be done in the earth. And so Advent is to build our anticipation and longing for the present day coming of our Lord and Savior in his kingdom. It surely also then is meant to bolster us in our confidence of his coming and to lead us to praise God for his coming.

The first coming of Christmas—which is the primary purpose of Christmas, of course—is in its first application a guarantee of the following comings of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ’s first coming is when, at the end of his period of ministry on earth, he sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, as a down payment, as it were, as a guarantee of continuing comings in history and then finally the great coming at the end of all time. And communion, of course, also is a guarantee to us, based upon Christ’s past work, that his coming is in history and in time and also looked forward to at the end of time.

In addition then to preparation, a correct response to an understanding of the biblical teachings on the comings of our Lord: we should also be confident and be moved to praise God for what he has accomplished in and what he will bring to pass on earth as it is in heaven. And we need to be bolstered in that confidence because we’re in a similar situation with John the Baptist—a situation where oppression is the rule of the day and where that oppression is expressed in a very visible form in the Soviet Union and other Marxist dictatorships, where the oppression of the church continues to become an increasing reality in our world as well.

And so we need bolstering and encouragement to recognize that Christ will come in judgment in our nation and at the end of time as well.

Isaiah 42 says that he will show his judgments on the earth. The isles will await his teaching.

Psalm 85, starting with verse 7, the section we’re going to read: “Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation.” And that should be our call as well, recognizing that salvation, certainly accomplished once for all through Jesus Christ’s work and applied to us, is also a continuing manifestation in our lives. We’ve seen, when we gone through the book of Micah, that salvation is holistic. It involves victory over sin and death—certainly definitively in the work of Christ, but also then worked out in our lives as well. Salvation means a wide open space, as it were. And the church is definitely not in a wide open space in America today because of her sin. And so she’s judged. So we can also say, “Grant thy salvation.”

Verse 8: “I will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace unto his people and to his saints, but let them not turn again to folly. Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring forth out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

Heaven and earth, seen as one in Jesus Christ. Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good, and our land shall yield your increase. Righteousness shall go before him and shall set us in the way of his steps.”

Isaiah 35: “The wilderness and the solitary place will be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong. Fear not. Behold, your God will come. He’ll come with vengeance. Even God with a recompense. He will come and save you.’”

That’s one of the primary messages of Advent—the bolstering in that confidence and awareness. Even as the Advent statements at the end of Revelation are given to the church in persecution, that she might know that God will come and deliver her. The apostate nation of Jerusalem, the idolatrous nation of Rome, would fall, would be judged by God, and that quickly.

Continuing in Isaiah 35: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be open, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as in heart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For in the wilderness shall waters break out, in streams in the desert. Return to Eden, as it were, from the howling wilderness.

And recognize that Jesus Christ, when John the Baptist sent messages back to him saying, ‘Are you the one or I look for somebody else?’—Jesus said, ‘The lame walk, the blind see.’ And he assured John that, as he saw these signs, the kingdom would continue to grow and flourish. And what John longed for, anticipated, and got a little bit impatient for, would come to him. And so we should also recognize that these things have happened definitively once for all in Jesus Christ as a guarantee that the springs will continue then to go out over the entire face of the earth.

And highway shall be there and a way, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness.”

Isaiah 62: “Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, ‘Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation cometh. Behold, his reward is with him and his work before him.’”

Isaiah 2, starting at verse 3: “And many people shall go and say, ‘Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord, from Jerusalem.”

And you remember we talked about that prophecy in the book of Micah—how that was to take place in the last days, the days in which Messiah would come. And he guaranteed us, in the first few verses of Micah 4 here in Isaiah 2, that meant the establishment of the kingdom and the going forth of the word of God into all the world. And that word has its predictive elements—blessing and cursing—and are manifested in the world as the word goes forward.

And so the first coming of Jesus Christ is a reminder that the mountain is being built, and it’s a call to the church—waiting through the dark days of Advent, as it were, for the bright sun of Christmas and then the Epiphany—that the church should remember that indeed God will come in salvation. He has come definitively, and he will come progressively in history as well.

Psalm 62, to the chief musicians: “Truly my soul waiteth upon God. From him cometh my salvation.”

And so we should wait anticipatorily for that full manifestation of the salvation in Jesus Christ. And indeed, Psalm 50:3: “Our God shall come and shall not keep silence. A fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.”

Psalm 69:6: “Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel.”

The Psalms are replete with requests to God that let us not be ashamed to wait on God. But then also the assurances that, as we wait on God and as we pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” indeed it shall come to pass.

Let’s stand then and sing a song remembering that Advent is also a time of confidence and great praise to God for what he shall bring to pass.

If we’re emboldened in our confidence that Christ will come now, as well as in the future in his final coming, that should lead us to great joy before God. 2 Timothy 4:8 says, “Therefore, he has laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all of them also that love his appearing.”

And we should be characterized as those that have this anticipation and love for the appearing of Jesus Christ, certainly at the end of time, but also now, also temporally, in judgment against the nations and against apostate churches as well.

Our communion service is characterized by the joy that the Advent of Christ brings to us, and which we remember as we celebrate communion and the coming of Christ in history, the beginning of the church age, and also at the end of time as well, anticipated.

I thought about the correlations between communion and another coming talked about in the scripture with great anticipation and joy, and that being the marriage celebration. Certainly, if you’ve ever—I’m sure most of you have been in wedding ceremonies—it’s hard to think of joy in a more full sense than the bride as she prepares for her wedding day. A great sense of anticipation, a great sense of joy when the day finally comes. And I’ve seen women literally glow on that day.

Well, the scriptures also draw that correlation out. And as we look at the coming of Jesus Christ, as I said before, Psalm 19 talks about that in terms of the sun. But it also talks about the coming of the Bridegroom. Psalm 85, which we just read, has that implication as well when it says that “mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

Isaiah 45:8 says, “Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation. Let righteousness spring up together.” The fruitfulness, as it were, as God’s will done in heaven comes to earth as well.

The Song of Solomon speaks about the coming of the one, which really is another type or illustration of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of his wedding feast. Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 2, says, “I sleep and my heart waketh. It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.’”

And then in verse 4, “My beloved put his hand by the opening of the door, and my bowels were moved for him, and