Isa. 54:7-8
Christmas hope is grounded both in the reality of Christ’s first advent and also in the reality that he will come again to fully establish the peace his princely rule has promised. In an article on Advent the writer noted the need to wait in hope for his Second Advent.
“An Advent that focuses entirely on the [birth of Jesus] is impoverished. It turns out that Christmas without the Second Coming is meaningless. A Messiah who merely takes on flesh and shares in our sufferings is a comfort—but not a cure. We need a Messiah who comes in power to empty the graveyards and to recreate the cosmos. We need a Messiah who will ‘break the bow and the chariot’ and ‘make wars cease to the end of the earth’ (Psalm 46).”
This year we are thinking about the four last things – death, judgment, heaven, and hell. They used to be traditional themes preached on the four Sundays of Advent to help Christians prepare for the truth that Christ has come, and Christ is coming. Last week, we were thinking about death, and this week we’re going to think about judgment.
The theme of judgment makes most of us uneasy. We’ve devised all sorts of strategies to avoid this subject. All the same, there it is. The Scriptures contain a great many passages about judgment. In fact, a major theme of the Bible is the righteousness of God and his judgment upon unrighteousness.
One of the hymns of the early church (written by Ambrose in the 4th century) closes with the words: ‘We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.’ Everything depends on what we know of Jesus Christ and his second coming in glory as ruler of all things. What sort of Judge will he be? When we consider Christ in majesty, we understand that he is the Almighty, the Sovereign Ruler of all.
Judgment is an Advent question. The coming of the Lord will be accompanied by the final judgment over all things. The overall testimony of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is “God will save us from judgment, but he will not save us without judgment.” As one theologian wrote, “God being who he is, he cannot allow evil to exist forever. Something has to be done about the human heart, which constantly misleads and deceives. Something has to be done about the rule of Sin and Death in the world that God made, the world that God still loves in spite of everything.”
The secret of being a faithful follower of the Lord Jesus is that we know that He is the one who will judge the living and the dead, and that we will be saved from ourselves by the one who has loved us to the last breath of his own life. This is the beauty of Advent. This is why true peace is ours. This is why Christians have confessed, in the words of the Nicene Creed, that we ‘look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’”
Join us this second week of Advent as we look at the God who judges and how we can face both this life and the life to come with peace.
A wonderful way to delight in this week of Advent is to come back Sunday night as we take part in the Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols at 6:00. Indeed, it would be a great way to minister to family and friends by inviting them to join you as we hear the gospel story in nine brief readings mixed with the celebration of carols.
Peace to you,
Pastor Wayne
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