Sermon for Advent 1

Romans 13:11-14  +  Matthew 21:1-9

As always, we start out the Church Year and the Advent season with the Gospel of the King’s Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem. That Sunday ride, which led up to Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday, was the culmination of Jesus’ first Advent. And you know what I mean when I say “first Advent,” because, as you know very well, there will be a second Advent, a second coming of the King at the end of the age. You and I have been blessed with an understanding of that in the New Testament Church, because, in the Old Testament Church, the prophecies of the Messiah’s coming often lumped together His first Advent with His second Advent, leaving the Old Testament still shrouded in mystery, to some degree. But that mystery has been clarified for us. We now understand that Jesus had to come a first time, in a certain way, to accomplish certain purposes, and that He has to come again, a second time, in a different way, to accomplish different purposes. So let’s take a moment this morning to compare the two Advents of our King.

When Jesus was getting ready to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He sent two of His disciples to go fetch the donkey and her colt. He told them exactly where they would find them and prepared them with exactly what to say if they were confronted. The King allowed some of His disciples to help prepare for His first advent.

So, too, for His second advent, the King has sent out His disciples to prepare the world for His coming. Some have been sent out into the world to preach His Gospel, to teach His Word, to administer His Sacraments. The Lord, through His Church, sends them exactly where He wants them to go. All of Christ’s followers have been placed where He wants them, to walk decently, to be lights in the world, to prepare the world for His second Advent by telling them about His first Advent.

And what are we to tell? It’s summarized in Jesus’ Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem, and in the prophecy from the book of Zechariah that foretold it.

In His first Advent, the King came humbly and meekly. He was born in a stable, after all, and laid in a manger. He spent His 33 years walking obediently according to God’s commandments, from the heart, ministering to people’s needs, teaching them the truth. A bruised reed He did not break, a smoldering wick He did not snuff out. He comforted the penitent and associated with sinners who recognized that they needed saving. He rebuked the wicked, but only with His word, not with His fists or with a sword or by calling down lightning from heaven on them. And when it came time for the King to enter the city that would crucify Him by the end of that Holy Week, He came not in judgment, or in violence, but, as the prophet Zechariah foretold, “humble, riding on a donkey, righteous, and having salvation.” The King came at His first advent to bear the sins of the world, to suffer mankind’s hatred, to suffer God’s wrath against sinners, to shed His blood for us, so that we sinners might take refuge in Him and receive from God the reward that He deserved, that He earned. He earned salvation for us, and then He ascended into heaven, and sat down on His throne to rule invisibly over the events of world history. He gave the world 2,000 years to listen to the preaching of His ministers, to repent and to be baptized and to come into His Holy Church, without wiping sinners off the face of the earth. And as part of that unfathomable patience with the world, He has allowed the world to mistreat His beloved Church, even as He was mistreated during His first Advent.

But the King’s second Advent will be much different. He won’t come in humility. He won’t lie in a manger or sit on a donkey, but will come in glory, riding on a cloud, sitting on His throne of judgment. He won’t come in meekness, but as a Warrior, with His cloak stained in crimson, not with His own blood this time, but with the blood of His enemies. He’ll come, not in tolerance, but in vengeance. When He comes, He won’t allow His beloved Christians to suffer one more day or one more hour, but will come with perfect salvation, to redeem His Church, to rescue us from every evil, and to reign forever on His glorious throne.

Let’s make just one more comparison between the King’s first and second Advent. When the King rode into Jerusalem for the culmination of His first Advent, He was greeted by a joyous procession of His followers, who sang His praises as He entered Jerusalem. Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! It was an impressive crowd, for tiny Israel, but still relatively small, made up only of Jewish followers of Jesus, who didn’t yet know the extent of Jesus’ love, who hadn’t yet seen the sacrifice He was going to make for them on the cross, who didn’t yet comprehend that this man who was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was also the eternal God.

At the King’s second Advent, everyone will know exactly who Jesus is. And everyone will know that He was crucified for the world’s sins and raised again from the dead. Everyone will know that this Man is God, and that He is the King of all. And while most of the world will come to that realization with horror, the whole Church in heaven and on earth, a countless host of people from every nation, tribe, language, and people, will meet the King on that day with even more joy than the crowds outside Jerusalem did, because, even though we’ve never seen Him, we know Jesus better than those crowds did, because we’ve heard the whole story of His salvation. We’ve been receiving our King’s body and blood for much of our lives, singing Sunday after Sunday, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest! And finally we’ll get to meet Him in person!

Now, since that’s true, since we know all that Jesus accomplished for us during His first Advent, and since we know that He’s coming again, and that His second Advent could happen at any time, what kind of people should we be? What kind of lives should we live?

Of course, unbelievers need to repent and be baptized immediately, and the baptized who have since fallen away from the faith must return at once. Believers should live humbly, as even our King lived humbly during His first Advent, and He wasn’t even a sinner, like we are. We have all the more reason to be humble before God and man, and to stay close to the Word of God, and to keep looking to Him for forgiveness and strength. And in light of our King’s second Advent, which could happen at any time, St. Paul tells us how we should live in today’s Epistle: The night is almost over; the day is almost here. Therefore, let us take off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk decently, as in the daytime, not with debauchery and drunkenness, not with sexual immorality and indecency, not with discord and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its desires.

So keep the King’s two advents in view, not only as you sit here in church, but as you go out from here and go about your day-to-day routine. Humble yourselves now, while the King still deals with sinners humbly. Serve Him now and walk decently now, as children of the light. Give thanks to the King for His humble ride into Jerusalem and for the salvation He earned for you then. But set your heart on the next ride of the King, when He will come down from heaven to save you from every evil in this world. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Sermon for Advent 1

Romans 13:11-14  +  Matthew 21:1-9

The King is coming! That was the Advent preaching of all the Old Testament prophets, from the Garden of Eden onward. Christ, the King, Christ, the Seed of the woman, the Seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Son of David, is coming! But prophecies are rarely simple and straightforward. The prophecies about the coming Christ were all over the map. Some foretold His humanity, others foretold His divinity, and many foretold both at the same time. Some foretold Him coming in humility, others in glory; some pictured Him being despised and rejected, others pictured Him being loved and worshiped; some pictured Him as a King coming on a donkey, others on a cloud; some foretold that He would come to save, others that He would come to judge; sometimes He’s pictured establishing peace and prosperity on earth, sometimes bringing war and destruction.

Which is it, dear Prophets? It’s all true! But many of the prophecies mix together literal events and spiritual events, literal truth combined with spiritual truth. Many of the prophecies mix together both literal and figurative references to Israel and Judah and Jerusalem. And one of the biggest things we have to understand about the prophecies of Christ’s coming is that they throw all of this information together in a future heap, from the prophets’ perspective. Only after Christ came and suffered and died and rose again and commissioned His apostles and ascended into heaven do we finally grasp this essential truth of Old Testament prophecy: There are two distinct, separate advents of Christ, with different things being done to Him and by Him at each one, and with a long period of time separating His two advents—the time during which His Holy Christian Church is to be built throughout the world.

This morning our Gospel from Matthew 21 points us to a prophecy made through the prophet Zechariah, some 500 years before Jesus was born, a prophecy about a King riding on a donkey. It’s a prophecy that was already fulfilled literally in some ways on Palm Sunday; but other parts of the prophecy are still being and will be fulfilled in other ways figuratively or spiritually. May God grant us His Holy Spirit to teach us to understand this and all prophecies rightly.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is righteous and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim And the horse from Jerusalem; The battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth.’

If you look up those verses in Zechariah chapter 9, you’ll see that they’re sandwiched between other prophecies about judgment and salvation. But verses 9 and 10 are specifically about the coming Christ, and we have the Holy Spirit’s own interpretation of those verses as applying directly to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

All this happened in order that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘See, your King comes to you, meek and riding on a donkey, and on a colt the foal of a donkey.’”

God refers to His Old Testament people as “daughter of Zion” and “daughter of Jerusalem.” It’s a tender way for God the Father to refer to His people, as His beloved daughter, as the Bride who is being prepared for His Son, for Christ, the Bridegroom. 500 years before Jesus was born, God spoke through the prophet Zechariah, announcing the coming of His Son, Jerusalem’s King, to Jerusalem, “meek and riding on a donkey.” This prophecy doesn’t include anything about judgment, nor does it include anything about the King’s glory. On the contrary, He’s called “meek.” Nothing is mentioned about war or destruction. A donkey wasn’t an animal fit for war; it was a farming animal, a sign of the King’s humility in this advent.

And that’s exactly how Christ came to Jerusalem at His first advent: meek, lowly, and humble, “righteous and having salvation,” as Zechariah added. Later that week, the Christ would meekly allow Himself to be betrayed, and arrested, and beaten, and judged, and condemned, and tortured, and crucified, with no hint of refusal or of retribution. Zechariah doesn’t mention that in chapter 9, but he does mention it in chapter 11. That’s where we hear about the handsome price of 30 pieces of silver for which the Christ would be sold by one of His disciples. And in chapter 12, where we hear of the Christ’s crucifixion and death.

Why did He come the first time in such humility, to endure shame and suffering and death? Because that was the price of salvation for Jerusalem—and for the world! As Jesus says in John chapter 3, God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Mankind’s biggest problem isn’t the injustice in the world, and the violence that men do to one another. Mankind’s biggest problem isn’t the climate. Mankind’s biggest problem isn’t sickness or even death. Our biggest problem is that our sins had alienated us from the God who gives life. And because of that, there was no hope of anything better, even in the future—no hope of fixing the world, no hope of fixing ourselves, no hope of life beyond death. So the Christ had to come, the first time, to take our sins upon Himself and suffer for them and die for them. He had to come, the first time, to call sinners to repentance and faith, to send out His apostles into the world to preach the Gospel, to use this time in between His first and second comings to gather a Church from all the nations, to bring His salvation to the ends of the earth.

That’s what Zechariah was talking about in the rest of his prophecy in chapter 9: I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim And the horse from Jerusalem; The battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth. That prophecy, the next verse after the prophecy about Jesus’ Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, was never fulfilled in a literal way. Never has war been cut off from Jerusalem and from the land of Israel. It has always been a place of fighting and contention. Never has Christ spoken peace to the nations literally. He never even went, in person, to the nations of the world. Never has Christ had earthly, visible, literal dominion over the whole earth. So what is Zechariah talking about?

He’s talking, first and foremost, about the atonement that Christ would make through His death. He’s talking about the proclamation of the Gospel of peace which Christ sent out into all the world, to be preached to all the nations. He’s talking about the dominion, the reign of Christ over the whole earth, that He would carry out, not visibly, but invisibly, as He sits as the right hand of God the Father. Even now, the King continues to bring that message of peace and reconciliation with God to all nations through the preaching of the Gospel, through the work of His Spirit, through the ministry of His Church.

But, as so often is the case with those Old Testament prophecies, there is another fulfillment of it coming further down the line at Christ’s second coming at the end of the age. Then the chariot will be cut off from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be cut off—no longer talking about the literal land of Israel, but about the Church of Christ throughout the world. Then He’ll bring perfect peace to His whole Church, and He will reign over all things in a new heaven and a new earth.

Next Sunday, we’ll focus on Christ’s second coming in glory, and on the signs leading up to that advent. That’s the advent we’re waiting for, preparing ourselves for. But for today, rejoice in the first advent of Christ the King. To those in Israel who had been eagerly waiting for the King to come to Jerusalem, it was a day of fulfillment, a day to wave palm branches and sing, Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! —a quote from Psalm 118, tying Jesus’ arrival together with other prophecies of the coming Christ.

As for us, we live in the age in between advents. The King has already come, and yet He is still coming again. Atonement has already been made for the sins of the world. The Gospel of peace is going out right at this very moment, calling sinners to repentance while there’s still time. The King hasn’t yet come to judge. He hasn’t yet come to destroy. He hasn’t yet come to end our time of grace. Right now, in this moment, there is still time, for anyone and everyone, to be saved. The King first came to save the world, and that is still His desire, that all men should come to repentance, that all should come to Christ’s beloved Christian Church during this time between His advents, and that those who come to His Church should remain in His Church, with a steadfast faith, with purity and works of love, with a readiness to suffer for His name, and always with an eye toward His second coming. The King first came to save the world. The King is coming again to save the Church from the world. So celebrate His first advent, and prepare for His second, so that you may always be found within His Holy Christian Church, prepared to worship the King when He comes. Amen.

Source: Sermons