[AI translation] On this third Sunday in Advent, I want to talk about the Advent season in which the church of Christ has been consciously - and the whole world unconsciously - actually living in for nearly 2,000 years! For the word Advent can be taken in three senses: it was the time of the Old Testament, the waiting for the coming of the promised Saviour, the birth of the Saviour. It is also the time of Advent when a human soul prepares to receive Christ, when it waits for God to come to it in Christ, for the new and greater gifts of the Lord. And since the ascension of Jesus, the whole of Christendom has been living in Advent expectation, waiting for the fulfilment of the great promise, the return of the Lord.The first, the Advent of the Old Testament, has already been fulfilled, the One they were waiting for has come, for Jesus Christ has been born. The second, the Advent of the individual believing soul, will be fulfilled as soon as the heart is opened to the Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ is ready to be born in it. The third, the Advent of the Church, the actual Advent, is the expectation of the return of Jesus Christ, because the state in which, in the words of Jesus Christ, His followers are "like men who wait for their Lord, when He will come, so that as soon as He comes and knocks, they may open to Him" is still continuing.
This third sense of Advent receives the least attention in the historic churches, it is the most neglected, yet it is the most important expectation of our Christian faith. It is no wonder that certain sects have then taken the very idea of the return of Jesus Christ from the Bible and made it the focus of all their attention. For the sect is always an exaggeration of a biblical truth that the historic churches have neglected. The Bible's announcement that the Lord Jesus will return to earth once more in glory and power is not just a possibly negligible fact of the Christian faith, but its summit, its fulfillment. The whole of the Christian life is oriented, inscribed, and oriented towards this glorious, great future, the very essence of the Christian life is that of waiting for and preparing for the return of Jesus Christ. It cannot be said, therefore, that we should not engage with this truly fantastic faith in the modern age, for then we would have to skip most of the Bible. Most of the teachings of Jesus Christ refer to this great future, the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. In the very first minutes after the ascension of Jesus Christ, God's very first statement to the astonished disciples was that Jesus Christ would come from heaven in the same way that they had seen Him ascend into heaven. Most of the apostles' main teaching, most of the Bible's revelations and greatest promises are for this time, the time of Jesus Christ's return. Almost three hundred times in the 280 chapters of the New Testament there is a promise of the return of the Lord Jesus, an urgency to prepare for it... It is then, at the time of the return of Jesus Christ, that the dead will rise, that the great judgment will take place between the living and the dead, that what Christians have been praying for for 2,000 years will be fulfilled: "Thy kingdom come". It is then, in the glory of the return of Jesus Christ, that the reign of Satan, of sin, of death, will end; it is then, in the great joy of the return of Jesus Christ, that all tears and suffering will be wiped away from the world; it is then, in the light of the return of Jesus Christ, that the celebration of that 'great supper', also spoken of by the Lord Jesus, will begin. Then, in the great triumph of Jesus Christ's return, the whole work of redemption will be completed; then, in the joy of Jesus Christ's return, all the good, good, true, pure happiness that we have believed and hoped for will be fulfilled. Well, then, it is in such a happy Advent expectation and preparation that the church of Jesus Christ lives today.
Perhaps we can define our situation even more accurately if we express it by this apparent contradiction: we live in the presence of Jesus Christ and yet in the expectation of His coming. In the usual analogy: the decisive battle has already been won by the Lord there on Calvary and in the Easter resurrection, but the war is still going on, until the final victory. What has already happened on Good Friday and Easter is the certain guarantee of what is yet to happen, that He will come again to strike and to restore. God will not leave His redemptive work, begun with great sacrifice, unfinished. So we live today in the tension between a great beginning and a great ending. The time we are in is stretched between a great yesterday and a great tomorrow. We have a glorious yesterday behind us and a glorious tomorrow ahead of us. Behind us is the yesterday of Calvary and the open tomb and before us is the tomorrow of the return of Jesus Christ.
Do you know how different things and events are seen in this light?! How good it is to know that, though the night is still falling, this darkness is no longer the hopeless night of death, in which all is over, but a night that is moving towards the coming day, the eternal happy day of eternity. How good it is to know that this globe, with all its historical crises, earthquakes, small joys and great tragedies, is not plunging into space like a burning aeroplane into the infinite abyss, but is, against its will, on a pilgrimage to somewhere, and onwards towards the great day of the Lord. Do you know how good it is not to see our life, as someone said the other day, as working, eating, drinking, sleeping, then working again, eating, drinking, sleeping, then the whole cycle starts all over again, until finally, once no longer working, eating, drinking or sleeping, but ceasing to exist. No, life is not such a dreary, meaningless cycle, the servants in the parable who wait for their Lord do not just clean up after themselves, to the point of breaking, they do not just toil, work, vegetate without purpose or meaning, but they are preparing for something, waiting for someone, doing their work on someone's behalf and for someone's pleasure, working for someone's worthy reception. It gives purpose and meaning to all their work, their whole existence, that they are waiting for their Lord... We do not live and work in nothingness, but in a happy future, and by the light of that glory to come our present is already illuminated.
Servants who wait for their Lord can do all their work with hope. And this, this is the greatest thing in the world today! There are many who have already lost all hope for this world. There are many discouraged, sad people, because many are still looking backwards, pondering the past. Someone has rightly observed that looking into the past inevitably leads to a certain obsolescence. Well, the man who waits for the Lord Jesus must necessarily be a progressive, modern-minded man, because he looks to the future, he builds the future, he works for the future. How great it would be if the sons of the world would look up to you as people who can truly rejoice, because in spite of all that is and sometimes happens, you have hope. Indeed: let us try to live into this expectation, certain that, in the light of the great, happy future that is to come, we will see life differently: with more serenity, more confidence, more patience, more peace, more hope! And with greater responsibility!
A believer in Jesus Christ can be nothing but a person who welcomes Jesus Christ back. If he is not, it shows! By his sadness, his powerlessness, his lethargy, his despondency! The last words of the Bible encourage us to wait! The last word of Jesus Christ, on the last page of the Bible, to his followers on this earth, is this great encouragement: "Surely I am coming quickly!" And it is also the last prayer of the church: "Surely, Lord Jesus, He is coming!" The first Christians, when they met in the street, in the marketplace, greeted each other thus: 'Maran atha! That is: the Lord is coming! The whole of Christianity is a movement in a state of great expectation.
Of course, we must also wait in the right way! Because you can do it wrong! I once visited someone who had been bedridden for three years. - 'Then he has lost three precious years of his life,' I answered him, 'because that time was not for him to wait until it was over, but to learn many things that he would not have time to learn at other times: perhaps patience, or gratitude, or humility, or forgiveness of sins, or helping those who were suffering beside him, or deep prayer, in other words, something good and useful. And then the suffering is easier to bear, because one not only waits for it to pass, but it has a meaning, the time spent is not wasted time. The attitude of this patient, who was just waiting for his illness to pass, was like a student sitting in the same class for three years, not learning anything, just waiting for the classes to end. Brethren, perhaps the reason God always refers us back to repeating classes is because we too have always been waiting, waiting for time to pass and not learning what we should have learned.
There are two kinds of waiting, then: one that is directed towards the future while missing the present. This is not the Christian Advent expectation. The other is one that makes good, conscious use of the present precisely with a view to the future. This is the Christian Advent expectation. So it is not an idle and fruitless time of waiting, but a very active and fruitful time. There is a big difference between waiting for a train for three hours, for example, and knowing that I have three hours, precious time, before the train leaves, which I can still use... So it is with waiting for Christ. The Scripture we have read does not speak of a quiet and idle waiting, but of a waiting filled with feverish activity, of servants who wait for their Lord with their waists cinched, with diligent work, in full readiness. Their Lord has gone, he has said he will return, but not when. But there is much to be done before then. The whole house must be ready, so that when he comes he will find no mess.
We have a Lord like that, Who when He went away, He told us He would come back, but He didn't say when. But He left very definite instructions for all that His people must do in the meantime. I often think to myself: What if the signal were to sound now: "Here comes the Bridegroom! I wonder what state he would find me in? Wouldn't you be embarrassed with me? Would he find me as he has commanded, with his waist girded and his clothes on fire, as one who is busy in the work he has entrusted to us? Or even: do we really believe that Jesus will come back at all?! I could not tell you how it will happen, but in any case, the essence of the many descriptions of it in the Bible is that there will be a great encounter with Jesus, a great reckoning, a reckoning, a test, for this world and for all of us in it. God speaks of this in Scripture as a fact, just as He speaks of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Well, shall we wait for it, shall we prepare for it, are we ready?!
Let me just give you a few concrete examples of the right way to prepare, to wait. First of all, examine within yourself, but very seriously, whether you are even in the service of the Lord who is to return? That is, are you a relative or an enemy? For only those who have already met Him at Calvary, who have already knelt at His cross, who have already won His forgiveness, can look for Him with joy. Is this how you also belong to His household?! First make this clear, and be sure of it. Then be very careful to keep clean, tolerate no rubbish, and do the work of cleaning inside and out thoroughly every day. Carry all the sin you find in yourself to where it belongs: to Golgotha, so that you may count up in yourself all the mess, all the disorder - as in a house where someone very dear is waiting for you. But even that is not all. Examine also within yourself: are you really doing what the Lord Jesus has entrusted to you? For many of us are willing to do God's work, God's business, but not God's will! "Be ready at all times!" says Jesus to His servants. Well, I am ready to the extent that Jesus Christ rules my will, my actions! When you can say: Lord, at Your word I will do this or that, then you are in the right Advent expectation.
All that you do in obedience to Jesus Christ, that is, all that you do truly out of love, prepares for the Lord's return, adds something to the beauty of what is to come, is built into what will last forever.
Can you feel the activity that would be inspired if we were truly Christians waiting for Jesus Christ? If we took seriously what the Lord Jesus said, "In the hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh". Oh, that we would wake up, get excited, clean up, hurry to forgive, apologize, get ready while we have time. May the Lord call someone out of work before he comes back. Even then, to prepare and get ready for that great day can only be done while the time of earthly existence lasts. Therefore there is no more urgent word of Jesus Christ to us today than, "Be ye always ready"!
Amen
Date: 13 December 1959. Advent.
Lesson
Mal 4