Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
**Pastor Dennis Tuuri**
**Second Sunday in Advent**

Uh, sermon text for today is from the Gospel of Mark, the second gospel, verses 1:1-5. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Mark 1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea and those from Jerusalem went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River confessing their sins.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this particular gospel. Help us, Father, to be transformed by these first few verses, that we might hear the wondrous message of the coming of Christ to establish his kingdom and that we might also see the proper way to prepare for his coming on a regular basis to us is repentance.

We bless your holy name, Lord God, for this time of year and season and for a consideration and a renewed sense of the effects of the coming of our Savior. Bless us, Lord God, as we meditate upon these things, come to peace and joy and a renewed sense of commitment to him in this season. In Jesus’ name we ask it for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

What time is it? We were waiting for the Sunday school class to become available, for the singing group to leave, to get here this morning and we were wondering if it was 10:00, 9:58, or 9:59.

This is a conversation that is a modern conversation. For most of the history of the world, there were no exact hours or times. It wasn’t 9:59. It was something else completely different. It would have been a thousand years ago. The time would have been the second Sunday in Advent. And it is today, still, I guess, to a certain degree in our way of thinking about things.

Even the idea of hours—the Benedictine monks had seven hours in their day. So the whole day was comprised of seven hours and there were names to these hours. We often use a prayer of confession from the order of Compline. Compline was the seventh hour; Vesper is the sixth hour. They weren’t hours—they were two and a half, two and a quarter hours long. But it was a day of taking the monk’s day and breaking it into seven periods, seven hours. And in doing that, what they would do is sort of move through all of the week in one day, sevenfold.

The week, and the week was seen as a creation week. So they’re really kind of moving through the creation week itself in one day and in a sense throughout all time in one day. Every two weeks, by the way, the 150 psalms would be sung or recited in this as well. So there was a comprehensiveness to it in a way.

Advent is that for us. It’s a recapitulation of the church year. Rather, beginning with Advent, it’s a recapitulation of the entire flow of history. All from the beginning of time, waiting for Christ after Adam’s sin. Adam lay abounded 4,000 winters—thought he not too long—he was bounded in a bond and waited 4,000 years. Mankind did for the promise to be fulfilled, that he would be redeemed. And that happened. And that’s what we remember at Advent.

We also focus on the second coming, that we have this long period of time. So every year we sort of reflect on the entirety of human history: pre-redemption, the redemption of Christ, the kingdom being established, and then his final coming at the end. And so time is that kind of thing.

I’m going to talk this Advent season about the cross of life. The cross is a common symbol to us as Christians. Jesus Christ died on the cross. We have an empty cross in front of us here in this church every Lord’s Day. Many of them throughout the architecture of the building. And it’s a reminder of what Christ accomplished and who he calls us to be as Christians.

Did we successfully get these lit? It took a great deal of planning and effort to make our past—extinguish several times this morning. Not really, but to you—this is the timeline.

So we’re celebrating the past. We commemorate what Jesus did. Last week in the Gospel of Matthew, we talked about the theme of fulfillment. That word is used more in Matthew’s gospel than any other. And we saw that the birth of Jesus Christ was related to its genealogy. The word Genesis—this is at the beginning of Matthew. So the past: Jesus comes, and on the cross, he’s dying for the past. He’s doing his work for the past. But he’s creating a future. And so as the timeline proceeds, there’s future.

We as Christians are called to walk in a context of the past, remembering the past, being tied to traditions. And yet being different from pagan tribes that always focus on the past and there’s no development. The world has developed because there is a future perspective to Advent as well.

Jesus Christ came to fulfill the past, but he came to initiate a kingdom, and Mark’s gospel shows us that quite well.

Now, next week we’ll talk about the in as opposed to the out of the cross of life. Jesus Christ came to produce a people, a body, a community. And we’ll talk about our community here at Reformation Covenant Church as we light this candle. And then as we leave here, we’ll have a missional perspective to who we are as well. Jesus Christ—the cross is sort of a picture of the rivers of life going out to water the whole world. And so there’s a missional aspect to us.

This morning, some of our young people are gone. The King’s Academy choir was asked at the pastor’s meeting—they sang for the pastors. One of the pastors from River of Life—I think it used to be Assembly of God Church in Oregon City—asked them to come and sing. And so they’re ministering this morning and being ministered in that worship service.

Our community life isn’t just this church. It is that, but it’s the extended community in Oregon City. And there’s a sense in which our missional perspective drives us to increasing community with the other churches in Oregon City.

Now, all this stuff is not easy. It’s difficult doing these things. Having a proper sense of when we focus on the past, when we focus on the future, when we focus on developing strong community, and when we focus on extending the community out to bring others into the worship of God. We found out Thursday that in addition to the pastor’s sermon this morning at River of Life, there’s a short sermon by a woman, an intern.

So what do we do about this? Well, you know, if we’re going to serve other churches and if we’re going to kind of cooperate as the church in Oregon City, we have to understand that’s the sort of things we’re going to find ourselves dealing with as we become missional and community oriented toward the broader community as well.

So this Advent season, we’re focusing—we focus on the Gospel of Matthew and the past, and the Gospel of Mark: Jesus coming. No description of his birth, but rather his coming to initiate his kingdom and being a man of action. And so there is this flow to life.

What time is it? Well, it’s the second Sunday in Advent. And this Lord’s year, we’re using the second Sunday in Advent to talk about the time of Advent. When we think about the future, the future, young people—the coloring sheet for the little children is an odd-looking thing, I suppose. But in a way, we have this cross. Again, this is a stylized version of what’s called the Chi Rho—the Chi and the Rho. That’s the X, or it looks like a T here, but it’s the Greek letter X. And this is the Rho (R)—we could say. And Rho has been a symbol for Christianity since the early church because the Chi and the Rho are the first two Greek letters in the name Christ, the designation Christ. So the Chi Rho—the cross of Jesus Christ.

And this is the alpha representation of alpha and omega, the beginning and end. And so we focused on the past. That candle was lit. And now we’re focusing on the future. And so to remind our children of that, we’re having this as the coloring sheet today. That’s our perspective today, then, is on the future.

So the four dimensions, the four points of the cross of life so-called: the past on the left—usually that’s associated with the past. The right—we’re moving toward the future. The top candle represents in, community. And the last bottom candle, out. In and out, past and future.

Jesus Christ—Revelation says that he is the one who is, who was, and who is to come. And it’s an odd presentation. It says that three times. There’s one verse where it says was, is, to come. But Jesus is designated as the one who is in the present, who was fulfilling the past, and who is to come, the second coming. And so Jesus Christ is portrayed in this designation three times in the book of Revelation, helping us to understand the present in relationship to the past and the future.

This is living in Jesus Christ.

Now our families—you know, Christmas is a time remembering the past. There are family traditions that happen. And some have commented upon the fact that if then the family—for instance, this focus on the past is usually fulfilled by the mothers. We talked last week about the priests and the priests maintain the traditions of the past. They sort of point to the future but they maintain the traditions of the past. And today we’ll talk about the office of king, which moves us forward into the future.

Well, in a sense, in the home, the wife typically—not always, but typically—is the one who is responsible for organizing what happens at Christmas, the rituals of the family. The wife is a little more focused on the past and on the interior community. The husband is focused on the exterior life. He goes out to work, usually, or at least is focused outward, facing outward, and he’s faced toward the future.

And so there’s this tension, and the point of bringing this up is that there is a wonderful dependence that wife and husband have in this arrangement. And in the context of the church, we must have people who look to the future primarily. And we’ll also have people that look to try to preserve the traditions of the past. And that’s good. You know, we don’t want to make everybody the same thing. People have different roles.

We talked from Ephesians 4 that God gave apostles. Apostles were preserving the doctrine of the past, but he also gave us prophets to the church to mature us, and they look toward the future. And so within the family at Christmas time, as you go about your Christmas traditions—we had St. Nicholas Day at our house last Thursday, looking to the past, but also looking to the future and developing children who will have that same sense of benevolence that St. Nicholas had. And it’s a tradition of our family, and traditions preserve the past even as they look to the future.

And I’m sure you’re involved in many of those this holiday season.

Another aspect of the past and the future presenting them both before us this morning by going from Matthew to Mark is that a group of people—see, how do I want to say this—us older ones here are preserving the past for the younger ones. The younger generation wants to look toward the future. They want to change things. And the older generation is not as amenable to change. We get stiffer. Old trees don’t move around the way young trees do in the wind. And there’s advantage to that, but there’s also disadvantage.

And what can happen in a culture is you can become all tradition and no missional forward-looking perspective. And that is a church that becomes then a place where the young people tend to leave eventually because there’s no opportunity for them to express and try to see the truths—the once-for-all truths of the gospel—applied in new and different ways.

And you know, we have to be careful. We are conservative Christians, I suppose, in a sense. We do conserve the traditions of the past—recitation of the creeds, etc. But you know, the Pharisees were very conservative. They didn’t want to move into the future. To them, the Sabbath was all about preserving the past and not about moving ahead into the future. Jesus isn’t just come to fulfill the past. He comes to initiate a changed world, to change the way the world is. And in churches where you have primarily old people or primarily young people, you can become—this is not a balanced and mature church. Typically, it’s either privileging the past and ignoring the future or ignoring the past and trying to privilege the future.

Here at Reformation Covenant Church, this is why families are so important. Young people and old people dwelling together with an emphasis on both poles of past and future and their implications, which we’ll talk about next week, for community.

You know, there are people that want to preserve the past, and they tend more to be tight about community rules. There are those who want to work outward and look to the future, and they tend to be less concerned about the present community and wanting to build an extended community, bringing new people in, going out to other people.

You know, we see this. We come together in Lord’s Day worship and celebrate the past and look to the future, and God changes us and transforms us to move into the future. And as a church—a group of people—we’re called to have that kind of perspective: a past and a future orientation. We want old people and young people together. And there’s a value to that.

One of the valuable things that’s been initiated by the deacons with the advice of the elders this last year, this year, is the deacon assistant thing, trying to move young people into working directly with older people. And you see, this is life on the cross. This is properly fulfilling what our Savior accomplished on the cross—fulfilling the past but moving toward the future, creating a community but being outward focused as well.

We’ve had discussions of what to do in the next few years if we become too crowded. Should we have two services? Well, if you have two services, you probably end up with two churches because a church—a community of people—are people who come together in a particular time, in a particular place, rehearse, re-memorialize the past, look toward the future of what they’re doing as a church. And so two services is dangerous because it tends to be already forming into two churches, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And maybe it’s good to have those two churches share the common building. But that’s what you have to think about.

And this came up particularly in my thinking because of many churches that go to two services—liturgical churches particularly—they’ll have a traditional service and then they’ll have a contemporary service. And you see, the traditional service is all past-oriented and sort of cuts off the future, and the contemporary service becomes all future-oriented and cuts off the past.

What we’re trying to say during this season is that Advent is about remembering the past but also looking toward the future. And it’ll prevent us from making some of these kind of problems.

God’s people must look toward the future.

It’s interesting. Rosenzweig, who taught at Dartmouth for many years in the mid-20th century, relates all of this to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. The generation gap—we always hear about that. Well, the Bible has lots of things to say about it. And it says that when Jesus comes, he’ll turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the children to the fathers. And to think broadly about that—we always have this problem in the Old Testament. The kings: a good king followed by a wicked king. And there’s this problem of the generational split or division—generation gap, so-called.

Well, the generation gap does not exist for the Father and the Son in the Godhead. The Spirit in the church doesn’t want that generational gap either because the Spirit—and in Western churches, we think correctly—focus in our historical creeds, the Nicene Creed particularly, on the procession of the Holy Spirit from Father and Son. And so the Spirit comes both in terms of the past and in terms of the future, and that can be seen in the very Godhead itself.

So that’s what we want to focus on today: moving from the past last week to the future this week.

What’s more important, the past or the future? Well, we would say neither is more important. They’re both. You know, at particular times you want to focus more on the past, particular times in the future. And at all times you want to see both things as reflected on the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s not easy to do this—to know when to lean toward the past or lean toward the future. But it’s what God calls us to do.

All right. So this is reflected in Advent and the four gospels. Then I’ve given you a chart on your outlines today, page two, which has the four gospels. And just very briefly on this, there’s, I think, a sense—we talked about this last week, and it’s on the children’s outline again this week for filling in the blanks—you can see where we—I think that the gospels, the four gospels, are presented to us in the canonical scriptures in their order in the scriptures. And actually, the periods of time in which they were written, they’re actually chronological: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

And we could go into a lot more detail on that, but we don’t want to. But so what we have here is a decade. Matthew was written in the 30s, right after Jesus’s work. They needed a gospel. Mark probably in the 40s, Luke in the 50s, and John in the 60s. And these line up with the four faces of the cherubim in Ezekiel and Revelation: ox, lion, eagle, man.

We talked about that last week. The ox is an animal that was used in the sacrifices of the church. The ox represents the servant priest, as it were. Jesus is the servant king, but the servant priest. And the ox represents the priestly office. The lion, the kingly office. And so we move from a consideration in Matthew of the past, to the fulfillment by the priest of the past, and then the establishment of the new future by a king.

And as we’ll see next week, when we talk about community, we’ll talk about eagle and empire. And different periods are stressed: the tribal period and the kingdom period and then the empire period of the Old Testament—different covenants: the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant.

Last week we saw in Matthew’s gospel strong connections to Moses. He preaches a sermon on the mount—five sermons like the five books of the Pentateuch. Jesus goes down to Egypt, comes back out. All kind of connections to Exodus and the time of Moses. This is in the Mosaic covenant.

In Mark, the kingly work of Jesus and his work establishing the kingdom—immediately, in the verses we read—and his working out the kingdom work. The stress is upon the Davidic covenant. Remember last week we said that the word fulfilled is used over and over again in Matthew’s gospel. And a word that’s repeatedly used in Mark’s gospel is immediately. Immediately. Immediately. You see, we’re moving to the future. We’re going ahead. Going ahead. Going ahead. A king does that.

And this word immediately is used more times in Mark’s short gospel than all the rest of the gospels. And so that’s what its focus is: on the action, the kingly work of Jesus Christ.

And then there’s some connections to New Testament epistles on that chart as well. But the point is: four gospels. We’re moving to the second today. Next week we’ll talk about Luke. And then finally, on the fourth Sunday in Advent, the Gospel of John.

So there’s four gospels. The faces are man, eagle, ox, and lion. And on the way I’ve described it on the handout for the young people, the fill-in-the-blank outline: ox and lion. Ox on the left-hand side associated with the past, lion on the right-hand side associated with the future. And then man going outward and eagle—we’ll see the presentation of the family of Jesus Christ in a wonderful picturesque way that we all think about at Christmas—in the Gospel of Luke.

The face that I think matches up with the Gospel of Mark’s lion—that represents the office of king, the kingdom, the kingship of Jesus Christ.

And so let’s now talk about Advent and the Gospel of Mark by looking briefly at these opening verses.

So you know it’s quite different, right? Matthew opens up with the genealogy and Jesus bringing the people out of captivity. They’ve waited and waited and waited and waited, and he comes now to fulfill all things. But in Mark’s gospel, there’s no designation of the birth of Jesus Christ. Instead, we have the beginning. Now, that’s a different word. In Matthew’s gospel, it was the Genesis. This is the arche, the beginning, the first of the gospel and the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

And then there’s a preparation for the coming of Jesus through the ministry of John the Baptist.

Well, this language is kingly language. The first verse is sort of shot full of it. On your outlines, I’ve got immediately. I’ve already talked about that. Then I’ve got gospel. What’s gospel? Gospel is good news. What is the good news? Well, a gospel in the contemporary setting that the Gospel of Mark was written was the good news of the ascension of a king to the throne.

So Augustus Caesar had a gospel that was proclaimed throughout all of his empire. He’s bringing salvation. The gospel we tend to think in terms of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And we immediately associate that with forgiveness of sins—that the gospel is Jesus can save you.

Well, there’s that in it. We saw last week there’s certainly he’s named Jesus because he’s going to save us from our sins. But the gospel has to be new. And God was saving people in the Old Testament. And so the thing that happens in the New Testament—I think the emphasis of gospel, the good news—is salvation’s been accomplished. It’ll be accomplished now. But more than that, King Jesus has come, and the world won’t be the same anymore.

We were listening in the young adult Sunday school class this morning to the beginning of the Dostoevsky debate that I’ve mentioned here several times. And Dostoevsky begins by saying, “Well, you know, the very things that the atheists want—you know, freedom, democracy, women’s rights—and you know, are things that Christianity has brought to the world.” We think of this coming from Greece, but Greeks—the Greeks had lots of slaves. All cultures did. When Jesus comes, he says it’s the end of enslaving other people. It’s the end of the kind of horrific things that would go on people to people in the past.

Now, we still had some with us for the last 2,000 years, but the history of the last 2,000 years is the manifestation of the kingdom of Christ. The gospel is being worked out. The world is being put to rights. Slavery is being ended. Democracy—in terms of a little word, people having representative government—is being established. A proper sense of women’s fullness of their humanity has been established.

The only way women’s liberation comes about is in the context of the Christian gospel that brings women back to a full joint heir of Jesus Christ sort of perspective. In the history of mankind, women have primarily—almost totally—been dominated because of the physical aspects of the two sexes. It’s Christianity. This is gospel. This is the gospel. Jesus Christ has come. The second person of the Trinity has taken on human flesh. Mankind has ascended to the right hand of the Father—a man, Jesus, now as king of kings, Lord of lords. And he reigns. And the gospel is that good news.

In Isaiah 40, this gospel is spoken of somewhat. John quotes there are two quotes in this text: one from Malachi and one from Isaiah 40. And Isaiah 40 is quoted here. Let me read just a little bit of the context. Verses 1 and 2 say:

“Comfort, yes, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

So it’s a prediction they’ll come out of exile. So it picks up the same theme as Matthew’s gospel did. We’re coming out of exile. It links it to the forgiveness of sins, but it doesn’t stop there. We then have the direct quote in verse 3:

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted. Every mountain shall be brought low. The crooked places shall be made straight. The rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

So all flesh will see together what is being described in Mark’s gospel. The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ reigns, and it is a kingly proclamation. It’s not about personal salvation exclusively or even primarily. The good news is the world will never be the same again. The human structures of mankind has been unalterably changed.

History will definitively show the progress of the preaching of the gospel of Christ. That good news will make the world a better place to live, progressively.

So that is the gospel.

Isaiah 49:10 brings up this same word in that context. Then, oh Zion, you who bring good tidings—gospel—up into the high mountains, oh Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings—gospel—lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid, say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God. Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him.

So Isaiah 40, which is referenced in by direct citation by Mark in his gospel, is the message that the arm of God will now rule. That’s the good news. And so gospel is a kingly term.

The term Jesus Christ is also a kingly term. His name is Jesus. Christ is not his last name. Christ is his office. His name is Jesus. We saw from Matthew: he’ll save their people from their sins. Yes. But he’s also Christ. Christ means the anointed one, the Messiah, the anointed king that the Old Testament predicted would come and rule.

So Jesus is Christ. The resurrection, the ascension of Jesus Christ—we have referred to it sometimes as the ascension of the savior king to the throne. Jesus means savior. Christ means anointed king. And the king goes to the right hand of God the Father and he reigns there. Jesus Christ.

So this is the gospel—the good news of the kingdom. This is a kingdom ruled over by the anointed king, Jesus Christ, and this is the son of God.

Now, again, here we take this verse to be an indication of the divinity of Jesus Christ. And some of us may be aware that Adam is referred to as a son of God. And it might bother you a little bit, but let me just, you know, bring it out there. Son of God here—I don’t think is a designation of divinity. Now, he does that because it is Yahweh that the way is being prepared for in the quotes from Isaiah 40 and in Malachi 3. So those are good proof texts. The next couple of verses are good proof texts in context for the divinity of Jesus Christ.

But when he says here that the gospel of the savior king—this is the beginning of that gospel—and then refers to him as the son of God—I think that is primarily a designation of the kingship, again, of Jesus Christ. Adam was to be the son of God in the sense of ruling over the created order.

You know, in the Old Testament, there’s a guy named Ben-Hadad. Well, it isn’t a guy. It’s a royal title. We read our Bibles and we don’t understand why there’s so many Ben-Hadads. Well, it’s the royal title of the ruler of Syria. Their god was Hadad, and the son of Hadad was the ruler. Whoever his name might have been, he was always referred to as Ben-Hadad. And whoever the ruler of God’s kingdom is, it’s son of God.

First, Adam was to rule the world. Not divine—just a man. He sins. He fails in his responsibilities. He’s dethroned, as it were. He falls. And 4,000 years later, a second man becomes the son of God. “Thou art my son. Today have I begotten thee.” What does it mean in Psalm 2? It means that at the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Jesus now brings humanity into the throne room of God. He becomes son of God, ruler of the world. It is a kingly phrase.

So: king, king, king. The gospel of the king, the savior king, the son of God—the specific designation of Jesus Christ as the king. And then the preparation for this king is described. John the Baptist comes to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah 40, to prepare the way, prepare the king’s highway.

And at the time of Augustus Caesar, this is what they would do. The emperor would come, and they would go out. They don’t want him to have a bumpy ride or a, you know, a bad ride. So they make the road sort of straight. It’s the king’s highway. He’s supposed to be prepared for that so he can come through in glory and pomp.

Well, so the point of this is certainly it applies to our personal preparation. But beyond that, it’s primarily a designation, again, that the true emperor of the world, the true son of God—not Julius, not Augustus Caesar, but Jesus Christ—has come. And so Mark’s gospel begins with point after point after point that Jesus Christ has come to establish the kingdom.

This is the beginning of the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of the savior king, who is son of God, ruler over all things in the created order. And for him, the world will be prepared by the coming of John the Baptist. And the world will see then the manifestation of the coming king, the Lord Jesus Christ, son of God—a royal title. The king’s highway is being prepared. And so these are royal titles.

The Gospel of Mark stresses the coming of the king.

Now, that’s not—it is fulfillment of the past. But the point of the king is he’s going to change the future. Now the true ruler happens. Now slavery will be done away with. Now the sins of the people be forgiven, but they’ll also be rescued from those that would oppress them.

The gospel is not good news for everybody. The gospel is not good news for everybody. To tyrants, to radical rebels—those who refuse to repent of their sins—it is bad news. It’s the worst possible news. And Paul tells in his missionary journeys, he tells the pagans this: In the times gone by, God winked at your sin, but no more. It’s not easier in the gospel era for pagan people. It’s harder. It’s harder. It’s not an age of grace as opposed to law. It’s the gracious law of God now being enforced in a way that it was not for 4,000 years. It is harder.

What do we read in Hebrews? We come to Mount Zion. Is that an easier place to go to and worship than Sinai? Sinai was so frightening. But you know, the writer of Hebrews says, “No, Zion is even worse. Now we come to one who speaks from heaven, not one who speaks from earth.” And this is because the gospel is this kingdom that will be established and bad people will be punished and destroyed if they don’t repent. And God’s people will be brought to repentance and established in peace in the context of the world. And that’s the history of the world for the last 2,000 years.

Long term, we know Christian people—and over the course of their life—they become mature, but we know also they have ups and downs. They have times of difficulty. Well, the world’s the same way. It’s not a straight line upward, but it is an upward nonetheless. And just a simple looking at history and what Christianity has done for the progress of the world is an indication of that.

So the gospel of Matthew is about God’s people being brought into the future by a king. A king takes us into the future. The future changes. Jesus came to begin his kingdom. The gospel is the good news of the kingdom. And in fact, it’s actually called that in Mark’s gospel and in other gospel accounts. It says they came preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

Uh, Brad Hagerdner wrote a paper on this many years ago. I still remember it—excellent paper. What’s the gospel? It’s the gospel of the kingdom. And certainly forgiveness of sins is part of that. But that’s not the extent of the gospel. It’s the gospel of the kingdom.

The term son of God sometimes—and I think here—refers to king. A king is the son of God, and that’s who Jesus is.

That’s why one reason why we have so much Christmas music. Praise God for the wonderful prelude music this morning. Last week we’ll have more musicians involved on the 23rd. I hear—I didn’t, I can’t see much—but I hear there was a cello last week. Such an appropriate time. And that’s what our church has done as we’ve kind of ramped up the musical side of our worship. It’s happened in the context of the Christmas season.

Now, we didn’t really plan it, but it’s kind of what—how we move naturally in the spirit—because it’s the Advent of the king. The result of that are the hills breaking forth into singing, right? So it’s the king coming. It was the Advent of the presence of God and the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem that produced the production of the Psalter, the sung music at the tabernacle of David, and the musical choirs and also the musical orchestras of the Levites being established by David.

It’s the Advent of the king. Psalm 98: when Jesus comes, the whole world will break into song. And so Advent is tightly connected to music. It’s a wonderful thing that God has led us at this church—people like Brad and Louis Kingman and others—to mature us musically and particularly to focus in on this period of Christmas, a celebration of the Advent of the king and its relationship to music.

So now the next comment I want to make is about the church calendar. Again, I know we’ve talked about it a little bit, but here’s kind of the point of the future here.

Advent has become in modern day a preparation for the first coming, a remembrance of Christmas. It’s not always been like that. In the early church, Advent had a focal point of the second coming. Advent was a celebration, actually. Advent began at the end of the liturgical year as a celebration of, or a looking forward and anticipation of, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The historic church began Advent with a consideration of second coming, and in liturgical churches even now it remains an important part of Advent. Here’s a typical Advent blessing in the Western Syrian church:

“May he whose second coming in power and great glory we await make you steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, and constant in love. Amen.”

Or another:

“May you who rejoice in the first advent of our redeemer at his second advent be rewarded with unending life. Amen.”

So these are some benedictions from the Advent season of the Western Syrian church. And church maintain this tradition. And so Advent today—Christmas is sort of eating up everything else in the celebration time. But Advent should, I think, also have a proper context, remembering what the historic church has taught us, remembering the past of our own history. We don’t come into our time full birth with neutrality. We come based on a historical church. And that church tells us that Advent is also a commemoration of the second coming of Jesus.

So we focused on the past. We look to the future. Jesus has established a kingdom. And we look ultimately to the future when Jesus Christ will return at his second coming and bring this phase of history to a conclusion or to an end. So the historic church has said that we want to do that today.

So then Advent in the future: The Increase of His Government.

That’s kind of the title for today: The Increase of His Government. This, of course, is taken from Isaiah. The son will be born, and the government will be upon his shoulders. And in fact, it says, “Of the increase of his government there shall be no end.”

So when Jesus Christ is born, it’s the beginning of government. In fact, you could say properly that prediction from Isaiah in Isaiah 9 says that the purpose of the birth of Jesus—the purpose of Christmas time—is the establishment of good government. That’s what it is.

Now, government is much more extensive. We think of civil government, and it has that implication, but government in the family, government in the church, government in the community—all kinds of governments. Jesus Christ is king of kings and Lord of Lords. Every power is overseen by him. And Christmas is about the coming of the one who would begin a government, a reign, a kingdom, a gospel—savior king, son of God. He’d begin all of this. And of the expansion and increase of his government there shall be no end.

History will be marked. That prophecy said the increase of Christ’s government.

In the O Antiphons, we celebrate Emmanuel, God with us. And we remember that, O Emmanuel—the citation in Isaiah—connects to the defeat of our enemies. Right, we celebrate the coming of the stock of Jesse, the root of Jesse. What does that mean? He’s the root and he’s the branch. Well, it means that the meaning of all history—past and future—is found in Jesus Christ. He is the one who is, who was, and is to come. All history—that O Antiphon teaches us—is focused, and it can only be understood by Jesus Christ.

But not just that. It’s kind of an abstract concept because we also in the O Antiphons celebrate the coming of the key of David, the one who can open and no man can shut and shut and no man can open. The key of David means that not only is Jesus the meaning and purpose of history, he affects providentially his decree through that history so that in the kingdom period now the government will be ever growing and ever expanding because Jesus is the meaning and purpose—the past and the future—but he brings that to pass with particular events using his key.

The O Antiphon of Rex gentium—king of nations—is another reminder in the historic church that Jesus Christ comes to establish his rule and reign over all the nations of the world.

The increase of his government there shall be no end. Isaiah and Micah—identical pieces of scripture: all the nations will flow up to Mount Zion. All the nations will be converted. This is what the gospel clearly says. It is only a newspaper exegesis—looking at the Bible by looking at the front page of the Oregonian—that leads us to a sense of despair or that this isn’t going to work out somehow.

The Bible, I think, is quite clear from the proto-evangelium, the beginning evangelistic notion in Genesis after the fall: Satan will have his head crushed by Jesus Christ. From the beginning to the end, the Bible portrays human history as redeemed in the coming of Christ. We do not celebrate Christmas aright if we do not celebrate it with the optimism as we look toward the future. Yes, a hope built upon the sure fulfillment of the promises of God in the past. But that this will establish then a growing kingdom over all nations of the earth—of the increase of his government there shall be no end.

The future is a future where God will establish his people and God will bring all the nations of the world to him in gospel presentation.

There’s an odd verse in Isaiah 19, verses 24 and 25. In that day—predicting, of course, the coming of Christ ultimately—Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria. Ooh, old enemy, old haters of Israel, torturers, etc., enslavers. A blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”

Who are God’s people? If I ask you that in the Old Testament, who is God’s people declared to be? Israel? Well, yeah, but he says, “Egypt is my people.” Who’s the work of God’s hands? Particular work of God’s hands. We’d say Israel. And yet Isaiah 19 tells us that Assyria is the work of his hands. These nations shall be redeemed. The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ will result in all men coming together in worship.

The maturation, the increase of his government, there shall be no end.

Ephesians 4 talks about becoming perfect men. The church will come to a sense of perfection. Not ultimate perfection, but a growing sense. We can call it perfect. There’s a process. What is that process? To many people today, the process is God returning and rapturing us out. That’s how unity of the church comes. It can’t come any other way. We’ve seen too much division in the church. We’ve seen too much lack of maturity in the church. We’ve seen churches that are all past and no future, or all future—some of the emerging churches—and no sense of connection to the past. We’ve seen churches that are tight little monastic communities in themselves but no wanting to bring anybody else in. We’ve seen churches that bring everybody in and all the doctrine gets washed away. We’ve seen it too often. We’ve seen the disunity. We’ve seen the immaturity of failing to live life on the cross of Jesus Christ where he portrays to us past and present, in and out.

We’ve seen it. It will end. God says it’s going to come to an end. That God says that we’ll come to a perfect man. But he doesn’t say we’ll do it by the rapture.

What does Ephesians 4:11 say? “He himself gave some to be apostles—past—prophets—future—evangelists—outside—pastors and teachers—interior to the church—for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature and the fullness of Christ.”

What’s the mechanism clearly taught here in Ephesians for bringing about maturation and perfection? It’s the church and the office in the particular gifts he gives to the church.

The blessings of the gospel—of the increase of his government there shall be no end. And it’s not just numbers. It’s maturation and sanctification. The world is getting better. That’s what it clearly says. We cannot postpone this until the second coming of Jesus Christ. The world won’t just continue on the way it has. Well, actually it will, but our sense of history fails to show us what has been wonderful in terms of the progress of the Christian social sphere for the last 2,000 years.

So it’s not the second coming. There is a growing expansion. Romans 16:20 says, “The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.”

Well, let’s see. So God was going to crush Satan under Christ’s feet in Genesis. That comes, he definitively brings that to pass. And Paul says, “The history of the church is the history of God crushing the head of Satan under the feet of his people.”

Of the increase of his government—that government being exercised by his people under his headship—there shall be no end. History for Paul was the crushing of the various heads of the serpent by the church.

By the way, I’ll talk about this more next week, but if you look at those last two chapters of Romans, this is sort of stuck in there, but it’s stuck in there amongst a whole bunch of names and greetings. The only way to touch the head of the serpent is in community. Is in community, my friends. We’ll talk more about that next week. But that’s the context for this. But that’s a tremendous promise to us that Satan crushes—God is crushing Satan’s head under our feet.

Revelation 2 has an even more astonishing statement in it. “He who overcomes and keeps my words into the end—to him. This is to believers who are doing well and going to overcome. They’re going to a particular church. They’re going to listen to his reproofs and accept the transforming power of his spirit. I will give power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron. They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessel.”—Quote from Psalm 2 again of Jesus.

But what does he say? He says that is the inheritance of the saints as they remain faithful to him in the face of persecution, trials, and temptations. God says that you and I, dearly beloved, are the ones who have power over the nations. A rod of iron is now exercised by his church. Ultimately, Jesus, of course, but we’re not called Christians for no reason. We’re called Christians because we are kings under the King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of the increase of his government, there should be no end. And in large part, that comes about through the work of the church. Jesus chooses to work through his church. God will crush Satan under our feet. The world is being saved.

John 3:16—we love to quote it. “For God so loved you the individual person that he gave his only begotten son.” No. “For God so loved the world.” The world is covenantally elect in Christ, and God is bringing it to salvation. The world will demonstrate this. That’s all beginning of the Bible to the end. This is what history is—the maturation of the government of Christ.

Now, there is a consummation. As much as we want to talk about the importance of understanding that the increase of his government there should be no end, that doesn’t mean the second coming is done away with. We must address the heresy of what’s known as hyper preterism.

Hyper preterism—a movement in the last 20 or 30 years—that says there is no second coming. All the verses about the second coming are really about the coming of Christ in AD 70 and the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant. That’s a heresy.

We are tied to the past as well as looking toward the future. And our past documents tell us that we celebrate in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We read in the Apostles’ Creed of Jesus that he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And we also assert the resurrection of the body, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body—is part of the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed.

He—that is, Jesus—shall come again with glory. The Bible is replete with references to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of our bodies.

Where is someone—was at the funeral of Wally Courter yesterday. Where is Wally? Is he asleep in the grave? Is he in his final rest? No, he’s not in his final rest. He’s in an intermediate state until the second coming of Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us that when Jesus returns, the resurrection of all bodies will occur. And at that time, Wally will be raised up out of the grave too and be given his new body and serve Jesus Christ in that body.

In the meantime, Wally is not asleep in the grave. Wally is absent from the body. And what does Paul say? He’s present with the Lord. Now, he’s present as a disembodied spirit. That is not our eternal state. That is the intermediate state. The eternal state happens at the consummation of all history at the second coming.

The historic church, the traditions of the church preserve in us a focal point of Advent—waiting for the coming of Christ and longing for its manifestation. Now, we don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon because the world will become better and better and the church will be united and all that stuff, but it will come.

Let me read some scriptures. John 5: “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the grave will hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.”

Everybody will be raised up. The time will come.

1 Corinthians 15:51—”I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed.”

Well, not all will sleep. He says, what does it mean? Well, Jesus—when Jesus returns, there’ll be people who have not died in the body. That’s what sleep refers to here—the death of the body. And not all will sleep, but all will be changed.

The rapture is true, but it happens at the end of time. It happens at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This body—this corruptible—Paul says—will put on incorruption. And this mortal must put on immortality. That’s something to anticipate. For me, my health problems are great. I want a new body. Jesus is going to give me a new body. When I die, I don’t get the new body yet. Not until the second coming of Jesus Christ. I’m still anticipating that even in death—present with Jesus, but not a new body.

Verse 54: “So when the incorruptible is put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”

There’s a past aspect. Jesus has swallowed up death on the cross. But there’s a future manifestation of that, which is the resurrection of our bodies at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 describes our bodies now as tents—things that are temporary, passing away—whereas our new body are described as a building, an edifice that won’t pass away. And it’s something we should long for and anticipate.

Philippians 3:20—”Our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body.”

Clearly, what’s going on in that verse is the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of our fleshly bodies, as it were, and given a new spiritual body through the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus—the Sadducees were like the preterists. They don’t believe in the resurrection, or the hyper preterist rather—the people that are heretical. The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection, a future resurrection of the dead. Jesus told them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven.”

Not sure what all that means, but I do know that it means that things will be changed and there is a resurrection. Those who deny it, or who deny the second coming, are heretics according to the church and according to the scriptures.

Paul said it’s better to depart and be with Christ, which is better. He said, to depart our bodies to in the bodies is to be with Jesus Christ. “To be at home in the body,” he said, “is to be absent from the Lord, but we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident”—pleased rather—”to be absent from the body and thus to be present with God.”

So we are to anticipate the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that second coming will mean the change of our bodies.

Cemeteries and graveyards: Why did I put a deathbed scene on the front of an Advent Christmas order of worship? Because that’s the way most of us are going to experience the next phase of our existence, the coming of Christ. He will come to take us home to be with him through our death.

There are cemeteries and graveyards. Graveyards were Puritan places of burial. And they wanted you to know you too will be here. And it would say that in many of the tombs: “This is where you’re going.” They wanted a sense of gravity about our impending death.

Then there were the Unitarians. They put up cemeteries. Cemetery comes from the word sleep—and it’s a place of sleep or rest. They wanted people to be assured that they didn’t have to fear death. They would be laid down, brought up to meet Jesus. I mentioned this several weeks ago. Bunny pajamas is the idea. I mean, not literally, but the idea is you’re supposed to be peaceful, resting. You’re not afraid in the cemetery. You’re going to be raised up to be with Jesus. Now, you probably want to have nice clothes on, as somebody pointed out to me afterwards, but that’s the idea.

Cemeteries and graveyards—which do we like? Well, we like both.

George Schaeffer was down at the memorial service for his brother, and he said, “Well, I don’t know, you know, why God does these sorts of things and his timing. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.” And he points to his brother’s coffin—his brother’s body, I guess, there—and says, “But I know this: all of us are going to be there. All of us are going to be there.”

Advent is a reminder of the coming of Jesus Christ, the consummation of history. But it’s a reminder too that we have an end point and there should be a gravity as we consider meeting the Lord Jesus Christ at our death. There should be a gravity to it. We should look at the front order of our orders of worship and say that’s where I’m going to be. I’m going to be in a coffin in some state of death with other people around me that I’m not connected to anymore. We should be anticipating that.

We should not have fear, though. We should have a sense—as the New Testament uses the imagery of sleep for death—we like cemeteries too—a sense of gravity, but a sense of rest and confidence that the Lord Jesus who gave us all these scriptures, and more, that I just read will surely raise our bodies up. We will not be disembodied spirits forever without bodies. Jesus will raise our bodies up.

We do sleep, and you know at the cemeteries, a lot of them they’d be oriented toward the east because when Jesus would arrive, they would rise up to meet Jesus like the sun comes up. We should have that kind of confidence.

Advent’s a time of preparation—preparation for the second coming, preparation for the coming of Christ in our lives in terms of our death. Advent’s a time of hope. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is a knowing that God fulfills his promises.

Those of us that were at Wally’s service, we heard over and over again that as Wally lay on his deathbed and pastor goes to visit him and pastor wants to talk about his family and stuff, and Wally points. Wally can’t talk very well, but he points upward. He wants the pastor to talk to him about heaven. That’s where Wally’s going. Wally is being prepared by God for going to heaven.

We don’t like funerals. We don’t like death in our culture. We try to get rid of it. Unfortunately, at Ultimate Memorial Services, it’s old people. Our young people should see and hear stories of the faithful dying in Christ without fear—pointing upward. I’m going there—having assurance of that knowledge based upon a meditation and a confidence in the Lord God who brings to pass the promises that he makes in the scriptures.

He is a God of fulfillment, and he will bring our bodies up. We shall be with Jesus as soon as we die, and we shall eventually, after this intermediate state, be given bodies in heaven as well. God wants us prepared for that with a sense of gravity and a sense of peacefulness.

We had a men’s meeting a year or so ago at Don’s house, and you know it was brought up: What are you doing to prepare for your funeral? I think it’s a good thing. We probably ought to have a little workshop, maybe as we get into the new year, for men to get—make sure their wills are ready—but then also make sure: How do you want this presented to your family, your death? What kind of memorial service do you want? What songs do you want sung? What verses do you want read?

Not all of us have the luxury of Wally as God took him slowly to be home and could make some of those preparations ahead of time and convey his wishes. But we all can do that now. And it’d be a useful exercise in Advent to think about preparing for our own death.

Preparing in that way also—preparing—Malachi 3 is the other quotation that Mark’s gospel uses. “Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord when you seek will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, like launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.”

So it’s good: forgiveness of sins. But it is prefaced by a repentance from sins. Part of our preparation for a meditation of the second coming of Christ, and the coming of Christ, our death must include not just an appropriation of the promises of God but a renewed commitment to live lives of holiness for this king whom we shall meet upon our death.

That’s what Mark’s gospel says. The king is coming. You better be ready. He doesn’t just wink at what you’re doing and does what’s wrong. You should be repenting. And the preparation for that was that people would go and repent of their sins and seek forgiveness from Christ.

God says, “Who are you to be in this day of my coming? Will it be a day of light for you? Or will you be terrified upon your death because you lived all wrong?”

Now, hopefully some pastor will point you to forgiveness and repentance. But part of the preparation of Advent that Advent calls us to is a working out of who we are. What sort of people must we be?

We read in 2 Peter in light of these truths. And the answer is a purified people, a committed people.

Titus 2:11 says, “This the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Well, that says it. Personal salvation, the world, the maturation of the government of Christ, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify himself, his own special people, zealous for good works. Speak these things, exhort, rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.”

Paul tells Titus, “And I speak to you and I speak to myself that the gospel, the grace of God has appeared to take away sin, and it’s come to all men. The increase of his government, there shall be no end.” And I tell you that Jesus Christ indeed gives us this blessed hope that we can look to—looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ—in the second coming, or his coming for us at our death.

But those two truths of Advent are brackets or bookends to the central message of application. Then is this: teaches us that to deny—to—that we are to deny ungodliness and worldly lust and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. That’s the sort of people we are to be. That’s what the Advent season calls us to prepare for. Not just a commemoration of the blessedness of the past fulfillment of promises, but a recognition, a thanksgiving for the kingdom that will move and mature throughout history culminating in the second coming, but also then a sense of preparation for him coming for us and our own death.

That death may have aspects of gravity and peacefulness to it both because we’re a people that have been purified by him.

Mark’s gospel says the king has come. The future is the expansion of the kingdom. The future is the king will meet you upon your death. For either one of those events, may the Lord God give us grace to repent of sins, to confess ungodliness, to live soberly and righteously in our present age that God has called us to witness. And the end result of that will be the discipling of the nations.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we praise your holy name for this time of year. We thank you for the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his second coming, for the transformation of our bodies, for our resurrection of our bodies. We thank you, Lord God, that until that happens—when we die, we’re with you.

Prepare us, Father, for the increasing government of the Lord Jesus Christ, for his second coming, and for his coming for us in our own deaths, through making us a people prepared, Lord God, by your spirit. As we come forward to commit ourselves afresh to you, may we do so with a renewed commitment to put off godly lust and worldliness and to live soberly and righteously in this day. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.