Avent 2016 1

Jesus: Eternal Lord and Savior

(The Coming Messiah - John 1.1-18)

It’s December! The lights are up, the decorations are up (for some of us anyway): we have officially entered into the holiday season leading up to Christmas. For Christians, the Christmas season is a particular season. There’s Christmas day itself, on which we celebrate the birth of Christ (even if we all know December 25th is not his actual birthday); but then there are also the weeks which precede Christmas, which is a period that in Christianity we call “Advent.” The word “advent” simply means “coming”—that is, the Christmas season is the time in which Christians remember the coming of Christ. So in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we are going to try to look over some important aspects of the biblical narrative so that, when we finally arrive at Luke 2 and the birth of Christ at the end of the month, we’ll be able to better appreciate the immensity of what happened when this baby was born.

So for our first week in this series, let’s set the scene. We are Christians at Église Connexion. And many people who are not Christians find it strange that we are. And one of the reasons people find Christianity difficult to stomach is because we base our entire lives and everything we believe on the life and work of one man, who lived 2,000 years ago. And it’s even more surprising to notice that we do this with no innovation. Unlike, say, yoga enthusiasts who’ve taken principles from Buddhism and Hinduism and shaped them into a whole new thing, Christians do not add to or expand on what Jesus started. We build our entire lives on Jesus’s work and ministry as they are described to us in the Bible. We will find new ways to explain what he did, but our conviction is that we must never add to message itself—this message has not changed since Jesus’s lifetime. Why is this strange? Simply because Jesus lived so long ago; from a historical perspective, he was far removed from our modern, Western culture, so presumably it should be erroneous to base our lives in the modern, Western world entirely on that foundation. And yet, this is precisely what we do.

So if you are a Christian, I hope you can see why non-Christians find this difficult to stomach. I hope you can see why they might want to accept some of what Jesus said (many people accept that Jesus was a good moral teacher), but refuse to accept that the work of Jesus as recorded in Scripture should be the basis of our lives in 21st-century Paris. If you’re an unbeliever here today, we’re very happy you’re here, and please be reassured that we understand the difficulty. But on the flipside, I also hope you see (or will come to see) why we as Christians insist that this is precisely what we must do. 

It is so that we might see this that we are going to begin our series in the first chapter of John’s gospel. John’s gospel tells us about the life of Jesus Christ (as do the other three synoptic gospels). But John does not begin with Jesus’s birth; he doesn’t begin with Jesus’s parents; he doesn’t even begin with Jesus’s grandparents. John goes even further back than Matthew does to begin his gospel: John begins before the world was ever created, to show us that Jesus Christ is not just a man who lived and ministered 2,000 years ago, but rather already lived an eternity before the world ever existed. So this is where we’re going today: we’re going to try to show from Scripture that building our lives on this man who lived 2,000 years ago is not erroneous, because he is not ancient, but eternal—he existed before the world began; he was Lord before the world began; and he was Savior before the world began.

1) Jesus has always existed.

Look at v. 1-2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. Really quickly, we need to define this word “Word.” John is writing to Jews and to Gentiles, so he frequently takes the time to explain or translate common Hebrew words or ideas into Greek, sometimes even adopting their language to get his point across more easily. In Greek philosophy the “Word” (or logos in Greek) referred to the elemental principle by which everything exists. So John takes this well-known idea and uses it for his own purposes—and he can do this because it actually fits quite well. In the Old Testament, which John frequently quotes in his gospel, the word of God is connected to God’s power in creation (Gen. 1.3ff., Ps. 33.6), in revelation (Jer. 1.4, 1s. 9.8, Ez. 33.7, Am. 3.1-8), and in the deliverance of his people (Ps. 107.20, Is. 55.11). Later in v. 14, John will tell us, 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Then in v. 17 he tells us explicitly who he’s talking about, who this “Word” is: 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

So there are a couple of things to notice here. First of all, we have to see that John is telling his Greek readers that this elemental force they’ve always believed in as the source of all things is not a force at all, but a person—Jesus Christ. John’s not encouraging his readers to worship the wind, or the sun, or an unnamed mystical energy; he’s telling them that in speaking about the source of all things, they’ve only got it half right. There is a source of all things, but he is a person, and he has a name—Jesus Christ.

Secondly, he wants us to see that Jesus, although he was a man, was not merely a man, but actually God himself. V. 1: the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And in v. 18: 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. And in v. 14: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only SON from the Father… Even if you don’t understand these admittedly confusing sentences, you can see the correlations—“No one has ever seen GOD; the only GOD, the Word, the Son who is at the Father’s side, HE has made him known.” So there is a God, the Father, and there is also God, the Word, the Son of God, who is at the Father’s side.

Now this causes some problems for us, doesn’t it? How can this “Word,” Jesus, be both God and with God? In v. 14, John refers to Jesus as the Son of the Father—how can a man be the Son of God and God, all at once? Well, we have to recognize that when the Bible says Jesus is the Son of God, it doesn’t mean he is God’s son like Jack is my son. Jack came from me (and his mom, yes, but for the sake of the image, let’s just stick with me for now); he came from me, but he is not me. But with the God the Father and God the Son, it’s different. The Bible affirms that when we speak of God, we can truthfully say that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father; but we can also truthfully say that the Father is God, and the Son is God. And this is not like saying someone is French or American or British; when we say that the Father is God and the Son is God, we mean to say they are one and the same God. How can this be? We have absolutely no idea! And that’s precisely the point. 

This week I saw a trailer for a film that’s coming out next year, based on a book called The Shack, in which a man meets the three persons of God in a cabin in the woods. I remember when this book came out; there were a lot of people who said after reading the book, “Now, finally, I understand God.” And I’m sorry, but that’s completely wrong—even if there are some things in the book that aren’t too bad, I suppose, the very premise of the book goes against the way the Bible talks about God. The Bible never attempts to explain the complexity of the three persons of God because God is by definition unexplainable. But what it says about God, it says truly.

And it says that although Jesus Christ is a man—a man that the Jewish and Greek readers of John’s gospel would have heard of and known about—he is not a man like any other. When we speak about Jesus Christ, we have to allow that he falls into an entirely different category of being—a being who can be both distinct from his Father, and yet the same as his Father. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father; and yet they are both one God.

Thirdly, he wants us to see that Jesus, who is both God and man, did not start existing at the time of his birth in Bethlehem, but has always existed (v. 1): In the beginning was the Word. Can you hear the echo there? Even if you’re not a Christian you’ve probably heard the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1.1, which reads, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So when John uses this same language to refer to Jesus, and then explicitly says that All things were made through him, John is telling us that not only is Jesus not just a man, but God; not only has he always existed; but the God who created all things is in fact this man Jesus Christ. Jesus is not an afterthought; when John refers to Jesus as “the Son of God” in chapter 3, he doesn’t mean to say that first there was God, and then Jesus came afterward. No—in the beginning, Jesus already existed, and he was God. This was John’s point for his original readers.

But we, coming at this text from the 21st century, get even more out of it. And I say that because if we are convinced of this simple fact—that Jesus Christ is God himself, and has always existed, and is in fact our Creator—then the fact that we base our lives on what he did 2,000 years ago in the Middle East is not a problem. We’re not basing our lives on the teachings of a mere human being, but on the grand, eternal plan of our eternal Creator himself. If you’ve been here any length of time you’ve heard me say before that no one is better suited to tell us how we have been created, and how we are designed to function as human beings, than the One who created us. In basing our lives on what Jesus Christ did 2,000 years ago, we are simply following the instructions set for us by our Creator; the Creator has given us the instruction manual for humanity, and all we’re doing is following the instructions given to us by the One who knows us better than we know ourselves, because he has always existed and he created us.

Jesus is God; he is our Creator; he has always existed. But John goes further—not only has Jesus always been; he has always been Lord.

2) Jesus has always been Lord.

It’s not enough to know that Jesus existed before the world began. It’s not enough to know he is God and has always been God. And it not enough, because God came into the world. If the eternal God came into the world as a human being, we need to know how he did it—that is, we need to know in what capacity he came into the world. Did he come into the world as an observer? As a tyrant? John tells us that it’s neither one nor the other: in the person of Jesus Christ, God came into the world as Lord. 

10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he GAVE THE RIGHT to become children of God. This implies two very important things. Firstly, it implies that none of us, on our own, have the right to become children of God. This is something none of us are good enough to be. And we know this because the only one who ever had the right to be called the Son of God is God himself—Jesus Christ. 

Secondly, it implies that Jesus Christ has the authority to grant the right to become children of God, despite the fact that we don’t deserve it. In France, the president has the right to grant amnesty to certain people who have been condemned for a crime—his amnesty effectively erases the person’s condemnation from the record. This privilege is given to the president because he is the president—only he has the authority to grant amnesty. This is essentially the right John is attributing to Jesus, but on a much larger scale. Jesus grants to all who receive him, who believe in his name, the right to become children of God. Now, we’ll come back to this in a moment, but first we need to see that as the president can grant amnesty because he is the president, Jesus can give people the right to become children of God because he is Lord—he has the authority to give people this opportunity.

And he has always had this authority. Although Jesus became a human being 2,000 years ago, he didn’t suddenly gain the status as Lord; he didn’t receive his authority at that time. He has always been Lord—in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God. 

This can be confusing, because in John’s gospel, on several occasions Jesus says that God has granted him authority because he is his Son (cf. Jn 5.27). But this shouldn’t cause us to believe that Jesus didn’t have this authority before he became a man. Theologians have a term called “progressive revelation,” which speaks of the way God has chosen to reveal himself over time. It basically means that God has always been the same; Father, Son and Spirit have always lived in communion with one another as God; he has never changed. 

And yet, God didn’t reveal everything about himself all at once; he did it progressively, revealing more and more of himself over the course of human history. Which makes total sense—it’s the same way for all of us, isn’t it? I’ve been married to Loanne nearly fourteen years; I know much more about her now than I did fourteen years ago. But she’s not a different person—what she went through before I met her hasn’t changed; I’ve just learned about her progressively. Same thing with God—what we know about him now has always been true of him, but he chose not to show us everything all at once. And so one of the ways in which he chose reveal himself more fully was in the person of Jesus Christ. Although Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13.8), God chose to show us the radiance of his glory and the perfect image of his nature through the incarnation (Hebrews 1.3)—when Jesus became a man, he showed humanity what God was like.

All that to say that Jesus’s authority to give us the right to become children of God was not a new thing; he always had this authority because he has always been Lord. In 1 Corinthians 8.6, the apostle Paul says that there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and ONE LORD, Jesus Christ—and isn’t it interesting what he does next?—through whom are all things and through whom we exist. In speaking of Christ’s lordship, he refers to his role as Creator. The Creator always has authority over his creation. Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has always been Lord. As John (the author of this gospel) quotes John the Baptist in v. 15: John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ” Although Jesus came after John, Jesus was Lord long before John ever came on the scene.

But if you’ve spent any time in the church you know that that sentence “Jesus Christ is Lord” is usually followed by a second title, which our passage in John also affirms: not only has Jesus always been Lord; he has always been Savior.

3) Jesus has always been Savior.

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 

It’s wonderful that John does not stop by saying that Jesus gives people the right to become children of God; he goes further. And that’s vitally important, because it helps us see that Jesus does not give people the right to become children of God in precisely the same way the president grants amnesty. When the president grants amnesty, both the crime and the punishment are simply cancelled—the slate is wiped clean; the crime is swept under the rug.

But this is not how Jesus saves us. Jesus saves us in the fullness of God’s glory; he comes full of grace AND truth. Grace allows us to not be punished for our rebellion against God; but truth tells us we all deserve punishment, because we have all sinned; and it also tells us that God is just. So if God is just, he must punish sin. Do you see the problem? God cannot simply grant amnesty, because if he did, he wouldn’t be just. Sin must be punished; it cannot be simply swept under the rug.

Jesus Christ is the solution to that problem: he became flesh and dwelt among us, living the perfect life we should have lived, taking all of our sins on himself and dying the death we all deserved. Christ effectively absorbed the wrath that God had against us, so that we wouldn’t have to endure it. Now, obviously John doesn’t give us all of this information in this passage, but he is setting us up for it—he is getting us ready to see the immensity of Christ’s sacrifice for us, so that when we finally reach it later on in the gospel, we might realize, Wait—this was the plan all along!

And that realization is exactly right: this was the plan all along. Paul writes this amazing sentence to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1.9: [God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus BEFORE THE AGES BEGAN… What he’s saying, essentially, and what John is saying in this passage, is that Jesus is not a band-aid. He is not a last-minute solution tacked on to solve the problem of sin. Rather, the Son of God becoming a man and living a perfect life and taking on our sins and dying in our place and giving us his righteousness… This was the plan all along. The purpose of Christ’s coming was established before the ages began; and the grace that we have received in Christ was given to us before the ages began. 

But people simply weren’t aware of it before; they didn’t see it coming, or at least they didn’t see it coming in this way. As we said before, God revealed himself progressively. Imagine being a Jew 2,000 years ago. The Jews had received the Law of Moses, the revelation of God’s character to them; and for centuries they had been trying their hardest to obey God’s Law. Most of them found themselves unable to do so; and those who kept the Law scrupulously ended up doing so with prideful hearts which kept the letter of the Law, but completely missed the point! Anyone who saw clearly would see that the Law revealed God’s perfect character, but no one was able to meet that standard! It’s a rather desperate situation that would lead to either denial on one side (like the Pharisees), or to desperation on the other (like everyone else). 

So imagine hearing someone say, “God did reveal himself through the Law, yes—but that’s not the end of the story. Not only did he reveal his perfect character, his perfect standard of righteousness…but he also prepared the way for that Law to be fulfilled. We can’t do it, and God knows that; the only one who could fulfill it is God himself. So get this: God has come. He has fulfilled the Law for you. He has done what you couldn’t do, he has become a man, he lived a perfectly righteous life, he died in your place, and he is granting to you all the benefits of his righteousness.” To which you ask, “How has he done this?” The answer? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God—he has always been the all-powerful, all-perfect God. Jesus is Lord—he has always been the Lord who deserves your allegiance. And Jesus is Savior—from the beginning of time it was planned for the Son of God to live your life and to die your death, so that you might live.

Conclusion

So the call of God to us, as we begin to contemplate the coming of Christ this season, is this: we must respond to Jesus. We must respond to Jesus as God—Jesus is no mere teacher or miracle worker; he is God himself, and deserves to be worshiped as God himself. We must respond to Jesus as Lord—Jesus is our Creator, and thus has the right to demand our allegiance. And we must respond to Jesus as Savior—what kind of a Lord must he be, to pay the penalty for our rebellion, and grant us everything we needed to obey him as Lord? Is it hard to obey a Lord like that? Of course not—if Jesus was only Lord, he could conceivably be a tyrant; but by revealing himself to us as our Savior, he has shown us that he is not a tyrant; he is not a hard slavedriver; he is gracious and good and loving and only demands of us those things which will be the best for us.

God calls me, and he calls you, saying, Worship Jesus as God. Acknowledge his power; be amazed at his eternity. Obey Jesus as Lord—give him the obedience that he deserves, in every area of your life. And run to Jesus as Savior—do you not see that if you are a sinner, if you have rebelled against God in your life, then the Savior is the only safe place for you to go? How crazy is it for someone in danger to run away from the one refuge he has? Worship him as God; obey him as Lord; run to him as Savior.

Avent 2016 3

Jesus: Messiah and King

Isaiah 9.1-7

Jason Procopio

We are in our third week in this Advent series, looking forward to the birth of Christ. The first week we spoke of the fact that Jesus has always existed as Lord and Savior; and last week Etienne brought to us the lineage of Jesus Christ, showing us how Jesus was born into a long line of people stuck in sin, in order to save them from their sin. And the amazing thing is that this perfect Savior—for them and for us—was foretold long before his coming. So today we’re going to look at just one of these prophecies, to see what exactly first-century Jews would have been looking for in their coming Messiah.

So in order to do that we need some context. Turn if you would to the book of Isaiah, in chapter 8. Isaiah was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem about seven centuries before the birth of Christ, and he brought a message to God’s people in Israel and Judah. God had given promises to the people of Israel that they would be his people and he would be their God; but God’s people, as usual, had rebelled against God.

So God tells them that their rebellion against him came at a cost; they have been disciplined for rebelling against God. God’s discipline in this context had taken the form of occupation from foreign powers: in this case, Assyria. If you know the Bible, you know how it often works with God’s people: they rebel against him, he gives them over to a foreign nation, then they come to their senses and call upon him, and he rescues them. That doesn’t happen this time: the people’s reaction to God’s discipline is not repentance and humility, but rather anger which leads to more despair. We see in chapter 8, v. 21: 21 They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. 22 And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.

This is a situation we can all identify with. Even if we’ve never lived under foreign occupation, even if we don’t live in a war-torn country, we can identify with the feeling of being thrust into thick darkness, a gloom of anguish over the state of things. A pastor friend of mine introduced me to the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell. And he did it by commenting on Russell in the context of Christmas. Russell wrote, “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment and then nothing.” And here’s what my friend said: without Christmas, he is absolutely right to say that there is only darkness without and darkness within. Without Christmas, all people look at the earth, and see that it is broken; we see distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, thick darkness all around. Which is why the first verse in chapter 9 begins with the word “But.”

9.1 But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. Now this is fascinating. It’s fascinating because the darkness that Israel is feeling is darkness that has come upon them because of their sin. It is their fault; they are being judged for their sin. It is God who delivered his people into the hands of Assyria, and later on, of Babylon. Now when we think of judgment, we always think of it in absolute terms—if we are judged by God, that is his final word on the subject. And sometimes that is the case: when we die and stand before a holy God and are judged for our rebellion against him apart from faith in Christ, his judgment condemns us. But for God’s people, his judgment is not final. Their just punishment is not the final word in the matter. The God who brought the judgment upon them is the same God who intervenes to free them from that judgment.

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. (Galilee is, incidentally, where Jesus began his ministry.) You see the parallel? He brought the land into contempt for their sin; and he would bring them out of it. He made the land a byword among the nations, and he would make the land a glorious blessing. The question is, how will he do it? 

Isaiah explains this to us in three basic sections, which work backwards. He gives us the end result first; then he gives us the means by which he’ll bring that result about; then he gives us his motivation for doing what he does.

1) The Great Light (v. 2-5)

2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. So this is the end result of what God would do; this is where he is bringing his people. Yes, there is darkness without and darkness within. Yes, you have been thrust into the gloom of despair. But you who once walked in darkness will see a great light, and I am so faithful to my promises that I’ll talk about it in the past tense, as if it’s already happened. The people who walked in darkness HAVE SEEN a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. 

Think of what it must feel like for a blind person to get their sight back. I don’t know if you’ve ever imagined what it must have been like for the blind man whom Jesus healed in the gospel of John—where he had lived in total blackness all his life, being suddenly able to see…it changed his life. That’s part of what’s going on here—light shining on a once dark place—but that’s not all of it. Because the light comes in the context of guilt: what they were going through was the fulfillment of what God had warned would happen if they didn’t turn back to him in obedience. 

There’s a great film that came out of Norway last year called The Wave. In the film a mountain collapses into a lake, and the falling rocks send a tidal wave onto a small town nearby, completely engulfing it. Near the end of the film, when the waters start to recede, one of the characters looks out and sees what’s left of his home. The water came, buried everything, and when it was gone, left complete ruin in its wake.

So it’s not just a question of being blind and suddenly being able to see. When you’re living in darkness, you’re suffering immeasurably, but you can’t really see your situation for all it is. But when the light dawns, after the immense relief of being able to see, you look around and you take stock of your situation…and you see the ruins you’ve created by your sin. 

And that is why God doesn’t stop at the image of a light shining on the darkness, wonderful as it is. The light comes; it opens our eyes; and it exposes everything our sin has broken. So God comes and says, “Yes, you are in ruins because of your sin…but don’t be afraid. I haven’t only come to shine a light on you; I’ve also come to fix what you’ve broken.”

So Isaiah continues, and for a couple verses actually turns his attention to God, speaking to him directly. 4 For the yoke of his burden [Israel’s burden], and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5 For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. 

In other words, Lord, thank you, because the war is over! Our oppressors have been defeated; those who have worked violence against us have been brought low; their instruments of war have been broken and there is nothing left to threaten. Again, when Isaiah wrote this none of it had happened yet; Israel was still under oppression. But the promise is so sure that Isaiah writes in the past tense—it’s such a dependable promise that it’s as if it has already come to pass.

This is the great promise—the end of darkness, the end of war, the end of oppression. On the darkness a great light will shine, illuminating what we can not see. The enemy will not surrender; he will be beaten. The war will end; oppression will end; peace will reign. That’s the promise. And now Isaiah will tell us how it will happen: what the means of light and peace will look like.

2) The Son’s Coming (v. 6)

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. It’s hard for us to grasp the impact of this promise to Isaiah’s first readers. In this text, God is promising a king. A child who will be born, and who will inherit his government. The people of Israel had long since had a king, but every king they had was more disappointing than the last. They constantly looked back to the glory days of King David, when the kingdom was prosperous and the king was righteous.

Isaiah is talking about a king like this, but infinitely better; and we know this from the names he predicts this child, this future king, will have. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor… Israel had long since been led astray by their foolish leaders. Even Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, ended up an idolator whose son caused the dividing of the kingdom in two. This king would not be that way: the counsel he would offer, the guidance he would provide, would go far beyond that which an ordinary human king could give. Imagine if, by some miracle, you were able to see exactly what a new president would do before he took office. What would it be like to know before the term of a new president that every decision he made would be a good one; every law he would set up would be exactly what is best for his people? Can you imagine how reassuring that would be? The kind of peace of mind that would offer? This is exactly what the Wonderful Counselor will provide.

Next, he will be called Mighty God. So the king that is promised is God himself. In other words, God is not saying, “I’ll GIVE you a king.” God is saying, “I’ll come and BE your king!” Talk about reassurance and peace of mind! What would our country be like if God himself were the president? The perfect justice we would see! The kind of injustice we’d never see again! The child who will be born, upon whose shoulders the government will rest, will be God himself.

He will be called Everlasting Father. He’s not talking about the Trinitarian title of “Father” here, as in “God the Father.” He’s talking about the character of the king to come. A father is a protector, someone who cares for his children and provides for their needs. This king will not be tyrannical; he will not be cold or distant. He will love his people, and provide for them, and protect them. And his protection will be everlasting. Which of course makes his next title very logical.

He will be called Prince of Peace. His reign will bring complete and perfect peace, because all nations will depend on his counsel and bow to his authority. What would it be like for a war-torn people to hear that a child was coming, a king who would reign with perfect wisdom, with divine authority, with everlasting love, and would establish perfect peace?

This is the child God is promising through Isaiah; this is the Son who would be born, and this is what he would do (v. 7): Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. In other words, he will do exactly what his various names suggest. The Wonderful Counselor will know how to make his government prosper; the Prince of Peace will bring about eternal peace; the Mighty God, both God and man, born of the line of David, would establish his kingdom; and the Everlasting Father would uphold it with justice and righteousness forevermore.

3) The Lord’s Zeal for His Kingdom (v. 7b)

Now, there’s one tiny sentence at the end of verse 7 that should not be overlooked, because it is the final nail in the proverbial coffin—the final statement of why this promise is trustworthy and true: The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. This is perhaps the most significant sentence in this whole passage, because it gives us the reason to believe that this promise is absolutely trustworthy—what God has promised, he will bring about. And here’s why: the Lord’s own zeal will drive him to do what he has said he would do.

This word zeal in Hebrew speaks of passion—and it’s not passion like we usually speak of it, like the excitement I felt this week before the opening credits rolled for the new Star Wars movie, because I’m passionate about Star Wars (even if I am passionate about it, and even if I was really excited). It’s the word used for a husband’s jealousy for his wife’s affections (Prov. 6.34), the thing that drives someone to work harder than he ever has because he cares so intensely for what he’s doing (Ecc. 4.4), the love a husband and his new bride have for one another on the day of their wedding (Song 8.6), the intensity of a just man fighting to protect those whom he loves (Is. 42.13). So think of this kind of burning, white-hot passion, applied to God. When God sees his people threatened, he is capable of frightening zeal: The Lord goes out like a mighty man, like a man of war he stirs up his zeal (Is. 42.13). He revs himself up like a race car about to take off at a green light.

Do you remember that one time Jesus got angry? The one time in the gospels we see him lose it? He’s in the temple, and he sees people in the threshold of the temple itself shamelessly bartering and offering payment for sacrificial animals. John tells us that he makes a whip out of cords and goes nuts on them—turning over tables, whipping all the animals out of their pens. He basically causes mass hysteria in the temple, because he sees his Father’s house being dishonored. And do you remember the Scripture that John says came to the disciples minds at that time? John 2.17: His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will CONSUME me.”

We rarely think of God as being intensely passionate, but he is. The Bible tells us that the thing which causes God’s passion to rise up and direct him is his zeal for his own glory. I hope you follow a Bible reading plan to read through the Bible in a year. If you do, I have a challenge for you: as you read through the Bible next year, make a note of every time God talks about doing something for his glory. Every time the Bible says, “for my name’s sake,” or “for the sake of my praise,” or “for my glory,” it is affirming God’s zeal for his own glory. And it is everywhere. God’s zeal for his glory is more predominant in the Bible than any other motivation he has.

Now at first glance this seems like bad news, because we’ve become so conditioned to think that the most important thing in God’s mind is us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” right? Yes…but why did he love the world to such a great extent? Because of his zeal for his glory. Later on in the book of Isaiah, in chapter 48, God says very clearly why he saves his people from his own righteous anger (v. 9, 11): 9 For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off… 11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. 

Now there’s a lot of good news to be drawn from the truth that God does all things for his glory, but here’s the most fundamental: if God’s glory is the most important thing in the world to him, then nothing will ever cause him to waver in making his glory seen. In this text God speaks of incredible promises he is giving to his people: the end of war, the establishing of peace, the reign of a king who will love his people with a father’s paternal affection. And he says, The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. God’s people can count on his fulfilling his promises because he is driven by an unimaginable passion for his kingdom: that all might see his glory and know the joy of being his children, and worship him for his goodness forever… This is what drives our God. Which means that he will surely do it. 

And he will do it through this child who is to be born, Jesus Christ, the king upon whose shoulders the government would rest, this light to the world, this Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

4) Living Under the Son’s Reign

Now let’s look at it from our end. We know whom Isaiah is speaking of: this child he is promising is Jesus Christ, who was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. This child is Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life and took on himself all of our sins and was punished in our place, in order for us to be reconciled to God. Isaiah’s prophecy is not meant to merely encourage those who hadn’t yet seen Christ; it is also meant to show us today how to live under Christ’s reign. He is the Savior we need, so how do we live under the reign of our Savior?

First of all, we remember that Christ is our light. Light does not only illuminate darkness, so we can see where we’re going; it also exposes that which is hidden. If you shine a light into the corner of a room, you can see all the dust and grit that has gotten stuck there. Jesus came not only to illuminate what is there (but may be fine), but also to expose what needs fixing. In John’s gospel, Jesus says a lot about the light, but makes the surprising observation that although the promised light has come, people have run away from it because they don’t want their evil works to be exposed. He said in John 3.20-21, Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. God calls us to come to the light; see that you are a sinner; confess that you are a sinner. It’s painful, yes; but it is the only way to be free from that sin which is keeping us from God. If you are in the presence of the only one who can cleanse you of your sin, which will kill you, there is no safer place. Come to your Light.

Secondly, Christ is our Wonderful Counselor. Christ isn’t just a trustworthy counselor because he is wise; he is a trustworthy counselor because he created us. Who is better equipped to tell us how we might flourish than the one who created us as we are? No one. So listen to your Wonderful Counselor. Go where he tells you; come to him when he calls you. There is no safer place. Come to your Counselor.

Thirdly, Christ is our Mighty God. He is our God; he is our King. The government is on his shoulders. We are his subjects. He deserves our absolute obedience and allegiance, and none of us have obeyed him as he deserves. And this, despite the fact that being God, he created us—and thus no one is better suited to tell us what will make us happiest. So know that your obedience will be your joy. Christ our God and King has given himself to save us from our disobedience and to enable us to obey him and rejoice in him forever. No one else could have offered such a firm salvation. There is no safer place. Come to your God.

Fourthly, Christ is our Everlasting Father. A good father takes care of his children; he provides for them and loves them. But he can’t do it forever. Eventually nature takes its course and he dies; eventually children grow up and don’t need their parents anymore. But he is a Father whom we will always need, and who will always be there to take care of us. There is no safer place. Come to your Father.

Lastly, Christ is our Prince of Peace. We are war-torn people. Most of us haven’t gone through the ravages of political warfare, but we all wage a battle for our hearts—every minute of every day. And it’s exhausting, isn’t it? It’s exhausting to be torn in two different directions, torn between the things we want on one hand and what God calls us to do on the other. And the only way to have peace from that battle is by faith in the Prince of Peace. The battle will not be over; but peace will reign, for we will no longer live under the assumption that we can lose. Christ is the victorious King, who has brought peace, and who one day will establish his peace in our hearts and on this earth, forever. We cannot lose the war for our hearts, for he cannot lose the war for our hearts. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

So come to your King. Come to your Light. Come to the only safe place. You can get there, for the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Advent 2022 2

Peace on Earth

(Colossians 1.15-23)

Last week we were together in Luke chapter 2. We heard the angels’ announcement to the shepherds—Jesus was born, and the angels came and told the shepherds the essence of the “good news of great joy”:

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord…“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Even unbelievers like this verse, because it describes what we all want: peace on earth. This picture of a sleeping baby, who came to bring peace, fills us with warmth. But most of the time, it’s the kind of warmth that makes us sleepy and soporific: it makes us feel good enough that for at least a little while, we forget what the world is actually like.

Christ was born to bring real peace, not greeting-card peace. And in today’s text, Colossians 1.15-23, we have both a description of the peace Jesus was born to bring, and the means by which he will bring it.

There is one very specific thing we have to examine closely, in order to see what and how “peace on earth” can occur—and that is, of course, Jesus Christ himself.

So let’s look at Jesus himself first.

Jesus, Creator and Sustainer (v. 15-17)

Jesus is God.

Colossians 1.15:

15 [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

How many of you are sometimes frustrated by the fact that you can’t see God? Sometimes I wish for nothing more than to be able to open my eyes and see God physically in front of me.

But God has always showed himself to his people. First he showed himself to them in the things he did (like rescuing them from slavery in Egypt); and he showed himself to them by the things he said, by the law he gave to his people, that told them what he was like. But it’s still not quite the same, is it? I live far away from my parents and my brothers; I can send them letters and talk to them on the phone—and now I can talk to them on the computer, which is pretty great. But it’s still not the same as having them in the same room with me.

So at the right time, God became a man—a man named Jesus. And the apostle Paul tells us that this man Jesus was the perfect image of the invisible God. When you looked at this man, what you saw was God.

Now, we haven’t seen Jesus with our eyes—he came a long time ago, and in a different place—but plenty of people did see him, and wrote down what they saw. The people who knew him best told other people about Jesus, and they recorded these stories for us. This is why we read the Bible: when we read in the pages of Scripture descriptions of who Jesus is and what he did while he was on earth, we are seeing Jesus every bit as clearly as his disciples did.

It may not seem that way, but here’s what we know: the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of Scripture to write what they wrote, and he works in us when we read Scripture. He lives inside of us, so that when we read the Bible, when we read about Jesus, we actually see him clearly.

And when we see Jesus, we see a perfect picture of God himself. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Jesus created everything.

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

We play a game with Zadie, which we played with Jack when he was little too. Whenever she gets really excited about something real—strawberries or chocolate or the color pink—we ask her, “Who created strawberries? Who created chocolate (or at least the beans it comes from)? Who created pink?” And she’ll say, “God.”

I try to do the same exercise when I’m enjoying something I love, like a good cup of coffee—because this is how we glorify God in all we do. We can drink coffee to the glory of God when we take a drink, and enjoy it, and thank God for creating it.

All that is true, but Paul is even more explicit. He doesn’t just say that God created all things; he says that Jesus created all things.

Everything that exists, Jesus created. The Son of God wasn’t sitting up in heaven with his arms crossed, watching while the Father created the earth. When we read in the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” he’s talking about Christ. Everything that exists, Christ created.

And he didn’t created these things primarily for us.

All things were created THROUGH him and FOR him.

I don’t know why it’s comforting to know that all the things I love that are good, Jesus loves them too. Jesus loves coffee, because he created it and knows it’s good. Jesus loves the mountains, because he created them and knows they are good. Even those things that someone else made, like a good story, whether we realize it or not, these things were created for him as well, because in making these things, human beings reflect the image of God in them. Jesus put that ability in us to make new things, and when we do it well, he is pleased.

Jesus holds everything together.

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is just as beautiful—the things that Jesus created, Jesus sustains. We’ve had a lot of babies born in our church over the last few years. When babies are conceived, and their hearts are beating, and they’re growing in their mothers’ wombs—think about this—Jesus created that little baby; he created that little heart. And from the second the mother’s DNA joins with the father’s DNA to create the DNA of a whole new person, Jesus keeps that DNA intact. From the second that baby’s molecules start forming, Jesus keeps those molecules together and keeps them forming new ones. From the second that baby’s heart begins to beat, Jesus keeps that heart beating.

And when that baby is born and starts to grow, Jesus keeps that baby growing. And if that baby should grow and live to be a hundred years old, every beat of that hundred-year lifespan will be sustained by Jesus.

Kids, you probably will have an easier time with this idea than the adults will. Adults have been disappointed a lot in their lives. Things don’t always go the way we want them to. And so it’s easy for adults to get the feeling that even if God created the world, he’s detached from it—like he created it and then took his hands off and said, “Well, good luck!”

But it’s not true. In Jesus all things hold together. There is not a heartbeat that he does not hold up. There is not a breath that he does not ordain. The bonds that hold our molecules together are governed by him. If you feel like God is distant, if you feel like Jesus is absent, you’re wrong. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is the Savior we serve—Jesus is God, he created everything, and he holds everything together.

Jesus, Head of the Church (v. 18)

So Jesus created all things, and holds everything together. And among that creation, he ordained something very special, and very particular—a special kind of creation within creation—and that is the church. But like everything else, the church is not a separate thing: Jesus’s own person is so inextricably linked to the church that it is often called “the body of Christ”—and, Paul says in v. 18 that Christ is the head of this body.

18 And he is the head of the body, the church.

We remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, where he described what it looks like to be the body of Christ. If we have faith in Christ, we are all members of his body, and none of us is insignificant. As he said in v. 21, The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’

If you’re a kid in here, please listen to me. It’s easy for kids to think they’re small, and that there’s a lot they can’t do. But we need you. The grown-ups in the church need you. Your parents need you. Very often, you guys see things more clearly than we do. It’s easier for you to believe that you need Jesus; for adults this is hard—we think we’re so smart! But no one is so smart that they don’t need Jesus anymore. And you guys help us remember that.

So we are the body of Christ, and we function as the body—we each have something very important to do, and all of us are necessary. But what Paul says here is important: if we are members of Jesus’s body, Jesus is the head. The head is where the brain is. The head is the thing that controls where the members go; how the arms and legs move; when we eat and when we work and when we sleep. The pastor of a church is not the “head” of the church. Jesus is the head of the church.

And we need to remember that is because of what Paul says next.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

What does that mean—“preeminent”?

“Preeminent” means simply that Jesus is the most important person who exists. He’s the most important thing that exists. If you make a list of all the things in the world that are the most important, Jesus would top that list. Which makes sense, right? Because all things were created through him and for him.

So if Jesus is the most important, and if Jesus is the head of the church, then we need to know that the most important thing we do, as members of his body, the most important thing we do as the church, is make much of Jesus. The church doesn’t exist for us to have a nice time on Sundays. It doesn’t exist so that we can have someone to talk to when we’re afraid or upset. The church exists to show to the whole world that Jesus is preeminent, by the transformed lives that we live together as his body.

That’s why we remember that he is our head; he is our Lord; he is our King. He is the most important thing to us, and our goal is to make sure the whole world knows that.

Jesus, the Means of Peace (v. 19-22)

Now, we said before that Jesus is the most important thing—that he is “preeminent.” Why is he preeminent?

19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

He is preeminent, first of all, because in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Like we saw before: when you look at Jesus, you see God. You don’t need anything else. As hard as that is for us to understand, in this ordinary human being, everything God is—all of his power and might and goodness—was contained and made visible for everyone.

Secondly, Jesus is preeminent because through him, God reconciled the world to himself, making peace by the blood of the cross.

We asked this question at the beginning—what is the “peace on earth” that Christ came to bring? (And this is where our warm and fuzzy ideas of Christmas can twist the truth.)

For those of us who have placed our faith in Christ, the “peace” that he has brought is reconciliation to God (we’ll look at that in a minute). For those who refuse to place their faith in Christ, and for Satan and his demons, God’s peace will be imposed on them.

We talked briefly about this last week—Jesus Christ is the conquering King who, through his death on the cross, earned the authority to rule over all creation. And one day, at his return, Christ’s universal reign will be enforced on all creation: those who refuse him will be judged for their sin, and punished forever; and Satan and his demons will be permanently and totally robbed of their power.

There will be peace on earth, because no power that could harm God’s creation will remain.

But the “peace on earth” for those who place their faith in Christ will be different.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him...

Kids, you know what it means to reconcile with someone. If you’re disobedient against Mom or Dad, and they’re mad because of that disobedience, what happens? They show you grace and forgive you—and what happens when they forgive you? If your family is anything like mine, they crouch down, and they open their arms, and they wrap you up in a big hug.

Now, adults, I know you want to roll your eyes at all of this sentimental nonsense—it’s not nonsense. Because in this context, a hug like that means a lot more than “It’s okay.”

That hug means reconciliation—when Daddy takes you in his arms and hugs you, what that means is, “I was mad before, and I was right to be mad. But I’m not mad anymore. I forgive you. I love you. I am for you.”

This is what God did for us in Jesus. Because we are sinful and disobedient, God has every right to be angry at us. Disobedience deserves punishment. But because Jesus was punished in our place, God isn’t angry at us anymore. God poured out all his anger against our sin on Jesus, and there’s no anger left for us. And because of that, he opens his arms, and he pulls us in, and he never lets us go.

Before, we were disobedient and separated from God; but now, because of Jesus’s sacrifice, we are reconciled to God. And he did it in order to present us holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Do you know what this means? It means that when we are cruel to someone, and they love us and forgive us anyway, that love changes us. Children who are forgiven quickly and often, children who see their parents asking for forgiveness when they make mistakes, are noticeably less apt to lash out in anger; they are less likely to do those things which require forgiveness; they are less likely to hold onto anger. Because they know what it is to forgive, and they know what it is to be forgiven.

When God reconciles us to himself in Jesus, he helps us see how good he is; and seeing how good he is changes our desires. The sinful things we liked before, we don’t like so much anymore. The evil things we wanted to do, we don’t want to do them anymore. He sent his Son to live and die and rise for us, to reconcile us to himself; and he did it all so that he might make us more like him.

Our Hope in Jesus (v. 23)

So we’ve seen that Jesus is God; he created all things; he holds everything together; he has reconciled us to God in his life, death and resurrection; and he is the head of the church. That’s who Jesus is; that’s what Jesus did.

So what do we do? He tells us here in v. 23—all these things are true for us,

23 ...if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

So here’s what we have to do: when we know all that Jesus is for us and did for us, our job is to remember that. Our call is to continue in the faith. To remember the hope of the gospel.

At Christmas, we celebrate the hope of the gospel. This baby who was born in a stable and laid in a manger, this baby Jesus is God. This baby created all things. This baby holds everything together. This baby will one day grow up and reconcile us all to God through his life, death and resurrection. This baby is now the head of the church. And this baby—the first human being to die and raise again, never to die again—will come again, and restore all of creation, and raise us as he himself was raised, never to die again. He will dwell with us, and we will be his people, and God himself will be with them as our God. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21.3-4).

We celebrate Christmas because Christmas helps us to remember the hope of the gospel.

So to close today I want to give all of us something to do for the rest of this week, as we celebrate Christmas.

First of all, adults: remember that this is no mere bank holiday. There are those who will talk about the origins of Christmas—how the church reappropriated a pagan holiday and made it their own… Who cares? In many ways it’s become a pagan holiday once again—a holiday which celebrates our consumerism and avarice and greed. So let’s keep on reappropriating it. Make the most of this opportunity to remind one another of the hope that we have in Christ.

Don’t let yourselves get distracted by the trappings of Christmas, and don’t let yourselves become jaded. Make the most of this opportunity to remind each other, and to tell others, about who Jesus is and what he did. Be open; be available; encourage one another to look beyond the corporate holiday and to see Jesus.

We’ll probably get presents or give presents this week, and it’ll be fun. But let’s not forget that we give presents to help us remember THE present—the best gift God ever gave us: Jesus Christ. That little baby was God; he created all things; and in him all things hold together; he is the head of the church; and he is always the most important thing. So our job today and tomorrow—and really, all the time—is to help each other remember that.

Advent 2022 1

The Trial of a Long Wait

(Psalm 13)

NOTE: The French numeration of verses—mostly in the wisdom literature and the prophets of the Old Testament—is slightly different in most English translations, including the Christian Standard Bible, which I’ve used here. The French Segond 21 counts the “title” of the psalm (“For the choir director, a psalm of David”) as verse 1, whereas the CSB begins verse 1 immediately following the title. In addition, just to keep things interesting, verses 5-6 in the CSB are treated as one verse (v. 6) in the French.

Consequently, if you are following along with what we project on the screen at the front of the room, always look for the verse number that is one lower than the one you see up front: verse 2 in French will be verse 1 in English, and so on.

I didn’t discover the word “Advent”, in the religious sense, until I was an adult. I grew up in America in the 80s and 90s, so we didn’t celebrate Advent—we celebrated Christmas. The decorations at the church were insane, there was a play every year in which we kids played shepherds or wise men with itchy, fake beards, and we made jokes about the kids playing Mary and Joseph being in love and having a baby. We sang traditional Christmas carols (like “Silent Night”) and not-so-traditional Christmas songs (like “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”).

This was a lot of fun, and there were definitely some things that stuck with me later in life. It’s made me very sentimental about Christmas; the minute I see Christmas decorations or hear a Christmas carol, I’m happy. (I was having a rough day a few weeks ago and Loanne was picking the music in the car, and even though she despises Christmas music when it’s not the month of December, to make me feel better she put on a Christmas album. I’ve rarely felt so loved.)

But for as good as a lot of that was, for all the legitimately good memories it gave me, we were missing something.

What we were missing was the feeling that we were missing something.

Advent, contrary to Christmas, is a holiday seasons that is specifically designed to make us impatient. Its main goal is to put us back into the story of our people—how the people of Israel waited, literally for centuries, for God to send the Messiah, the King he had promised to them. We do this to help us remember God’s faithfulness in the past, so that we can trust in God’s faithfulness in the future. This is a vital exercise for our faith, because very often we pray that God might act…and then we wait. And the wait for God to act can feel incredibly long. If we don’t have the spiritual muscles we need, then we will definitely lose heart in those times.

Advent helps us strengthen those spiritual muscles.

We’re going to be in Psalm 13 today. It’s kind of a strange Advent text (when I told Joe I wanted to preach on it for this Sunday, he said, “This is for Advent, right?”). But at least in my opinion, this psalm gives us the tonality, the flavor, of the season of Advent, in a beautiful way.

In this psalm, David gives us a model to follow by doing three things: first, we see him lament; next we see him pray; and lastly, we see him worship.

Lamentation (v. 1-2)

We don’t know exactly which circumstances led David to write this psalm, nor exactly when he wrote it. We know only that he has been unjustly pursued by his “enemy” for a long time. We don’t really need to know more. We find David in a situation which has led him to the brink of despair. He has persevered for so long that now he feels he can’t go on any longer. And his main refrain at the beginning of this psalm is simple: “How long?”

David repeats this four times in the first two verses.

V. 1-2:

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me

forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me,

agony in my mind every day?

How long will my enemy dominate me?

David’s an intelligent guy. He knows God well enough to know that God hasn’t literally forgotten him.

But that’s definitely what it feels like.

And we know the feeling, don’t we? We live in a society that has conditioned us to be allergic to suffering. It’s one of my big problems, and it comes in large part from my upbringing (my dad would say as much): the moment I see suffering even on the horizon, I start to lose it. I reach for the Doliprane before the headache comes, because I’m anticipating it. I know I’ve got a difficult conversation coming, so I start running through all the worst-case scenarios in my head: I want to be ready.

We self-medicate, we seek to distract ourselves through entertainment… Anything to feel what we’re feeling just a little less.

And most of the time, it works. Most of the time we find means to cope, and we’re able to tough it out and work through it.

But sometimes, it doesn’t work as well. Sometimes our efforts to self-anesthetize are ineffective. Sometimes we feel it, and we keep feeling it, until there seems to be no end in sight.

It’s shocking how long suffering can last without respite.

A couple years ago I was in a bike accident, during which I suffered a ruptured spleen. I was in the hospital for nearly three weeks. They operated on me and thankfully, they were able to save the spleen. (I say “thankfully,” but I’m still not 100% sure what the spleen does.)

The twenty-four hours after that operation ranks with the worst nights of my life. The pain was intense despite the medication, and it wouldn’t stop. Every minute felt like an hour. It was that feeling that time had crawled almost to a stop, and this would never be over.

That was one day of pain. Eventually, the pain dulled significantly, and I was still sore (I had four broken ribs), but the constant pain was over.

Some people suffer this kind of pain for years. How can you even think about anything else in such a situation?

It’s true for physical pain; it’s also true for relational pain. We’ve all had difficult relationships, but difficult relationships within the church are among the worst, because you can’t just bail. We are brothers and sisters in Christ; we’re members of God’s family together, called to bear with one another and forgive one another.

And yet it does happen that sometimes, the people you are called to bear with and forgive turn against you. You try to resolve it, you try to do the right thing, and it doesn’t work—the attacks keep coming. And there seems to be no end in sight.

This is also true—and even more frequent than the other two—of emotional or mental suffering. This is one area people are ashamed to talk about, and the modern church has typically done a bad job at responding to it.

But we should recognize that any time our emotions are engaged, something happens to us at a biological level.

I read a great book this summer called The Logic of the Body: Retrieving Theological Psychology by Matthew A. LaPine. It’s a difficult read, but well worth your time. In this book, LaPine argues that modern theology is strangely detached from what we know about the human body and how emotions function on a biological level, whereas many ancient saints (he goes into great detail on Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin) actually had a better grasp on these things, despite being centuries behind the science. The goal of the book is to show that what the Bible says about our spiritual lives, and what science tells us about the biological functions of our bodies, actually complement one another, although much of Christian thought today pits the two against one another.

Let me give you an example. Someone who was abused as a child struggles with significant social anxiety as an adult. Very often, what they will hear from the church is, You are free of your past. You are loved in Christ. So place your faith in him, let these things go, and dive into the body of Christ.

The problem is, it’s not always that simple. This person wants to be fully engaged in the church, but finds his body fighting against him: when he’s around large groups of people, he physically cannot function as he should. The result is that on top of his social anxiety, he deals with almost crippling guilt over the fact that he struggles with social anxiety, because clearly his faith isn’t strong enough to get over it.

LaPine’s argument is that the Bible recognizes these kinds of struggles, and provides grace for them. It not only has a lot to say about how this person might deal with his problem; it also has a lot to say about how the church should welcome this person, and help him through it.

To put it simply, our experiences shape us. Over time, experiences create neural pathways that cause the body to undergo changes at a biological level. These neural pathways create automatic reactions in the body in the face of certain stimuli. Through repetition, through habit, or through trauma, our brains learn to tell our bodies that something dangerous is happening (even when it’s not). This is the famous “fight or flight” reflex: the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and you feel anxiety, or you have a panic attack—over nothing. It’s not logical, but it’s not sinful either: it’s a bodily response over which we have very little control, as automatic as breathing.

When that happens once, it’s scary. When it happens over and over, over the course of years, it can become so heavy that all you want to do, ever, is to stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head.

This may sound like a stretch, but look at how David laments—this is what he is describing. How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day?

David is tormented by a situation that is not letting up, and he is at the brink of giving in: How long, Lord, is this going to last? I can’t take it anymore!

This is a depressing sermon, I know. But this is the reality of the world we’re living in. And if we don’t know what to do when suffering lasts, we won’t last through the suffering.

So the first lesson David teaches us is honesty with God. We mustn’t be afraid to tell God that we’re on the brink of collapse. We mustn’t be afraid to tell God that it feels like we’re losing our minds. We mustn’t be ashamed to be in pain. God knows what we’re feeling; he’s not afraid of hearing it from us.

Why is this kind of lament important? Because it places us in a position of humility. When we verbalize our own pain, we express to our God that we don’t have what we need to get through this. We cannot do this on our own.

We need his help.

Prayer (v. 3-4)

And that is the second thing David teaches us: he teaches us to pray.

3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God.

Restore brightness to my eyes;

otherwise, I will sleep in death.

4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,”

and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

I love that David is so incredibly unspecific in his prayer. He tells God what will happen if God doesn’t intervene: “If you don’t do something, I’ll die. My enemies will have won, and they’ll rejoice.” But the only thing he actually asks for is that God “restore brightness to my eyes,” or as the ESV translate it, “light up my eyes.”

We’ve all seen someone who is exhausted. Think about their eyes. You look at someone who is exhausted, you look them in the eyes…and there’s just nothing there. They’re gone. It’s only with great effort that they can actually focus on anything.

What happens after that person gets a really good night’s sleep? Their eyes are bright.

David is asking that God renew his strength. He has already lamented that he is mentally and emotionally exhausted, to the point where he doesn’t even know what to ask for, except to say, “make me strong again”.

The lack of specificity in this prayer is a huge encouragement for me. Because very often, I have no idea what to pray for. It’s sometimes difficult to even articulate what’s wrong, much less know how to fix it.

All David can say is, “God, help me. Give me what I need.” This is a posture of deep humility. He is recognizing his weakness in his current situation, his utter lack of resources, and he is turning to God because he knows that God is not weak, that God has all the resources David needs.

Up to this point, most of us can probably identify with David, because we’ve been there. We’ve been forlorn, we’ve been exhausted, we’ve felt helpless, so we’ve asked God for help. And sometimes, God answers our prayers when we pray them.

But there is often a period after our prayer, while we’re waiting for the answer to come. And sometimes this period of waiting can feel just as long as the period of suffering that led us to pray in the first place. Sometimes, our reflex after we pray is to return to lament, and go back to saying, How long, o Lord, how long?

But something keeps us from doing that: our knowledge that God will always do what he says. John Piper writes: “For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.” His promises are so sure, so solid, that we always have a very good reason to not simply return to our heartache, but to lift our eyes toward him, and to tell the truth.

Worship (v. 5-6)

That is what David does. Rather than going back to his lament, rather than turning back to his suffering…he worships.

5 But I have trusted in your faithful love;

my heart will rejoice in your deliverance.

6 I will sing to the Lord

because he has treated me generously.

“But” is one of the most useful words in the Christian’s vocabulary. It can be unhelpful (“I know you tell me to do this, God, but…), but it is also the key to suffering without sinking.

After David is honest about his despair and prays for God’s help, he makes a conscious decision to turn away from the legitimate reasons he has to despair, and to turn toward the legitimate reasons he has to trust.

The things he says in his worship seems totally incongruous with what has come before.

He says that he has trusted in God’s faithful love—although he’s just asked God how long he’ll forget him. David knows, even if he doesn’t feel, that God still loves him, and that God will remain faithful.

His heart rejoices in God’s deliverance—even though he’s just expressed his anxious concerns and his agony. David forces himself to remember that he has reasons to rejoice, because God’s salvation is sure, despite all evidence to the contrary.

And on the basis of that reminder, he sings.

V. 6 is particularly telling. David makes the decision to sing to the Lord. Singing is not what you do when you’re in despair. You sing when you’re celebrating—when it’s someone’s birthday, or at the New Year, or at a football game. We’ve all heard people sing to themselves. They do it when they’re happy—it’s unlikely any of us have heard someone singing to themselves while they’re depressed. David makes the decision to do this, even though he’s not feeling it: he forces himself to do what he would do if he was filled with joy.

Why does he do this? Why does he persist in acting joyful when he’s not feeling joyful? Because God has treated him generously.

Despite the situation in which David currently finds himself, he remembers God’s kindness to him in the past. He remembers God taking him as a shepherd boy, and empowering him to kill the giant for the armies of Israel. He remembers God giving him strength as a warrior, and choosing him as king. Most of all, he remembers that despite the obvious flaws in his own character, God has still shown him grace.

What David does here is incredibly hard to do. But it is essential.

There are three reasons why it is essential.

The first reason is very simply that God deserves it. No matter what we’re going through, no matter how we feel, God is still deserving of our praise. That’s why David mentions aspects of God’s character that have not changed despite David’s current circumstances: his faithful love, his deliverance, his generosity toward his people.

The second reason is because God does a spiritual work in us when we worship. Many pastors have spoken of the spiritual benefits of worship. They’ll quote passages like Ephesians 5.19, saying that the Spirit fills us as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Or they’ll quote David himself, in Psalm 22.3: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”

These things are absolutely true. We worship every time we gather—that is, we stand up together and we sing songs together—because worship is one of the ways God shapes our hearts through his Holy Spirit. It’s one of the ways that he consoles us when we need consoling, that he strengthens us when we need strength, that he teaches us who he is and how he works within us. When we worship, God works mysteriously in our hearts to draw us closer to himself.

If you’ve spent any time in church, you’ve probably given a good bit of thought to these first two reasons. But the third reason, while the least important, is also the most neglected.

The third reason worship is essential in times of suffering is because God has created us in such a way that repeated exercises, like worship, train our bodies to react differently.

We talked before about the sympathetic nervous system; God created this system in us. He created us in such a way that experiences cause neural pathways to form, so that faced with certain stimuli, the brain tells the body that something dangerous is coming, and the body reacts. But our bodies are under the curse of sin, so now this reaction doesn’t always happen the way it should. One of the goals of therapy for anxiety is to retrain our bodies to react appropriately.

I’m taking a calculated risk in saying this: worship is much more than therapy, but it’s not less. When we worship, God does a mysterious work in us to model us after Christ. But when we worship, God also does a work in us that is perfectly ordinary and scientific: he retrains our minds and our bodies to react appropriately—not according to what we perceive, but according to what is true.  Worship, over time, teaches us to react differently to problems.

It does this by pushing us to persevere in celebration, to persevere in joy, despite everything in us that says it’s ridiculous to celebrate in such a situation.

God is the one who created our bodies this way. He knows how he made us, so he knows the result he hopes to bring about in us when he commands us to pray and celebrate and worship him. Matthew LaPine says it this way: “It may not be the case that prayer and thanksgiving will immediately banish every anxiety, but that the practice of prayer and thanksgiving is like watering the garden of our [bodies and spirits] toward the sort of maturity that enables Paul to say, ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Phil. 1.21)”.

What does this have to do with Advent?

Now it might be easy to wonder, once again, why I’m even talking about this for Advent—Psalm 13 is great as far as it goes, but what does it have to do with Advent?

Psalm 13 is a perfect Advent passage because the season of Advent is a reminder of the unbelievably long wait of the people of Israel, between the time that God brought them into exile, and the time when Jesus came. That’s about six hundred years.
All this time, they were waiting. Waiting for the King that God had promised, who would save them and deliver them. Six hundred years, waiting for a Messiah who hadn’t yet come.

All this time, the people of Israel are waiting, with no end in sight. All this time—for six hundred years—they are praying, How long, Lord? How long will you forget us? How long will you hide your face from us?

But through this wait, the faithful among God’s people had developed the habit of practicing what David models for them in Psalm 13.

So it’s no surprise, then, that Simeon and Anna rejoice when Jesus’s parents bring him to the temple in Luke 2—they have been waiting so long, but they have been waiting faithfully: they have not become stuck in despair, but have prayed and worshipped. So when their deliverance finally came in the form of this little baby, they were able to recognize him for who he was.

God calls us to develop this same readiness in ourselves, and he shows us how.

I know for a fact that some of you are desperately tired. Some of you read David’s words in v. 1-2 and you are there. That is what you’re feeling. That is what’s going on in your heart right now. And if you’re not feeling that now, you will.

And that’s okay. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed; it’s okay to feel like you’ve been waiting forever.

So what do we do if that’s the case?

We lament—we are honest with God about our struggles and what we’re feeling.

We pray—we humble ourselves and recognize that we do not have what we need, and ask him to provide for us.

We worship—we lift our eyes toward God, and remind ourselves of why he is worthy of being joyfully celebrated.

Let’s be clear: doing this won’t solve all our problems, and it may not even make us feel better. Sometimes it will, but often it won’t. It’s likely that sometimes we’ll go through this cycle of lamentation, prayer and worship several times in the same day.

But that’s okay, because we don’t do it in order to feel better. We don’t do it to get relief.

We’re playing the long game, like God’s people as they waited for his deliverance. We’re doing the work we can do, counting on God to work in our hearts and change us over time—to make us ready to recognize and rejoice in his help when it finally comes.

Advent is the season that is specifically intended to help us learn to do this work.

In light of God’s promises, sent to us in the brokenness of a sinful world, we lament when we must; we pray without ceasing; and we rejoice in his deliverance, because his deliverance has come, and it will come again.

Anticipating

Anticipating Christ’s Return

(2 Peter 3.8-13)

Jason Procopio

This month we have been looking at what it means to be the family of God as we look forward to celebrating the birth of Christ. We saw what it is to belong to the family of God, to live as the family, to multiply as the family, and last week, we arrived at what it is to cherish Christ as the family—we arrived at the coming of Christ: his birth, his life, his death and his resurrection. So what is there left to do?

Well, it is fortuitous that there is one Sunday left in December—this gives us the opportunity to look forward, to anticipate what comes next. And as we anticipate what comes next in the story, my prayer is that this will set us up for the year to come. Because living in anticipation of Christ’s return is what characterizes the Christian life today: it’s not just about love, or a healthy sense of what Jesus gives us today. It’s about what’s coming.

Revelation 21.1-4:  

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 

This is what’s coming—it is just a short glimpse into what awaits us. But it is a remarkably complete glimpse. 

A new heavens and a new earth—the renewal of all things. The eternal presence of God—God who dwells with his people as their God. Eternal life and eternal joy—no more crying, no more pain, no more death. Everything we hope for that actually matters finds its culmination in this picture—eternal happiness, eternal joy, eternal life.

This is what we have to look forward to. Jesus promised that one day he would return to renew the earth, to establish the new heavens and the new earth, and to bring all those who have faith in him to live with him there for all eternity.

I could go on about this for hours—you could do an entire series of sermons on this one passage alone. But today we want to ask ourselves one pressing question: what difference does it make? Really, why does it matter where we’re going if right now, we’re here? What does it matter if we know that one day we will be with Jesus in the New Heavens and the New Earth? Does knowing where I’m going really actually change anything about my life today?

Of course the answer isn’t just that it changes something: it changes everything. We don’t have time today to get into the multitude of different reasons why this is true—all the things that change when we understand where we are going—so today I’d simply like to conclude this series with a handful of these changes, which we see in 2 Peter 3.8-13. 

What does it mean to anticipate Christ’s return as a body? It means:

• a greater desire for evangelism.

• a greater awareness of what is temporary

• a greater desire for holiness

• a greater thirst for heaven.

A Greater Drive for Evangelism

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 

There’s an old expression in the Southern U.S. when someone is moving too slowly: “Man, you’re slower than the second coming of Christ!” 

It does feel this way, right? Jesus promised that he would come again—the next-to-last verse of the Bible has Jesus saying,  “Surely I am coming soon” (Rev. 22.20). Soon? It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like he’s taking his sweet time—John wrote his Revelation around the end of the first century A.D. So it’s been more or less 1,900 years since Jesus said that: I am coming soon. 

This is why Peter takes the time to tell us that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. I’m going to digress for a moment, because I know what some of you are thinking. I know some people use this verse to suggest that because God created time, he is “outside of time” somehow, that he is simultaneously in the past and in the present—and they use this to defend or refute all kinds of doctrines. Now, it could be: that might be true. But it’s pure speculation—there’s nothing in the Bible that affirms that God is “outside of time.” What Peter says here is that with the Lord one day is AS a thousand years, and a thousand years AS one day.

Let me put it this way: you go on a vacation with your kids, and you get in the car, and you have five hours to drive. A five-hour drive is relatively easy for adults. But if you’ve got young kids, you know that to them, it feels forever long. Why does it feel so long for them, and not so long for us? Because we’re adults, and we’ve gotten used to waiting for things. 

God is eternal. If you’ve lived eternally, how long do you think a few thousand years is going to feel for you? Not so long.

Here’s Peter’s point. He knows that Jesus’s return won’t feel like it’s coming “soon.” It will feel long to us, because we’re human. But all that time—these nearly two thousand years so far—seen in the perspective of eternity, is the blink of an eye. 

As Peter says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness. It feels slow, but it’s not slow. He’s waiting, because he is patient toward you. He could have come back whenever he wanted. But he’s waiting. So why is he waiting? V. 9 again:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 

God is waiting because he is making more time for repentance. He is waiting so that more may not perish.

People have this idea that the God of the Bible is harsh and unfair, ready to pounce on the smallest sin and punish the slightest indiscretion. It is true that God is a holy God, and does not—can not—excuse sin or act as if rebellion against his glory is not worthy of the greatest punishment. But harsh? Unfair? Absolutely not. Already God sent Jesus to live our life and to die our death, in our place, in order that we might live. And if that were not enough, he shows us patience we can’t even begin to fathom—a patience that has already waited thousands of years, and which will wait only he knows how many more—in order that more may come to Christ, and know him, and love him, and be saved.

So then the question is, if God is waiting to send Christ back in order that more might be saved, and if we know that, what should that knowledge produce in us? The desire that motivates God’s patience should be our desire as well. If we know that God is waiting to fulfill his promise in order that more may be saved, then we will feel the drive to accomplish our mission all the more acutely.

Christ gave us a mission:   

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

He has given us a mission, and he has given us time to accomplish it. Living in anticipation of Christ’s return, as a body, means firstly a greater drive to fulfill that mission—to spread the gospel, to speak of Jesus to others, to pray for the salvation of our friends and neighbors and loved ones, to see more and more people come to know Christ and love him and be like him. This is the first thing.

A Greater Awareness of What Is Temporary

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. 

When Peter talks about the heavenly bodies being “burned up and dissolved,” and the earth and the works that are done on it “being exposed,” he’s not saying the earth will be totally destroyed. Rather, he means to say that much of what happens on this earth is only temporary. Not everything—we see that when Jesus was resurrected, he was raised in a physical body which was changed, but still noticeably Jesus, and that he ascended to heaven in that body. Romans 8.21 speaks of the earth waiting for the day it will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So some things will remain. But much of what happens on this earth will be burned up—will pass away—will give way to something entirely new and entirely pure.

Living in anticipation of Christ’s return as a body will mean that as a body, we become more and more aware of what things are temporary and what things are eternal, and we will adjust our priorities, our loves and our aspirations accordingly.

Let me give you some examples. I know that some of you were probably upset at my insistence these last few weeks on being present when the church gathers—some of you probably thought I was being a bit too extreme. But I’ll quote Nathan Rose again: 

"What we spend our time on shows what we truly value. If you miss church in order to sleep in or to attend a sporting activity, what does this say about the worth you ascribe to God? Replacing your church’s regularly scheduled worship time with some other activity demonstrates that God is not actually worthy of our worship; something else is… God created us to worship him. That’s the primary reason you exist. This is why the church was redeemed and this is what God’s people will do when Jesus returns and restores our fallen world." 

Or, if you don’t want to take his word for it, look at what we see in Revelation 22.3, which gives us a picture of the final state of things after Christ returns and renews the earth and establishes his kingdom here:  

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

Worshiping God together is one of the main things we do as a body, and it will be one of the main things we do throughout all eternity. If we know that one of the main things we do today is not temporary, but eternal, will we not see that there must be immense value to it? If we know that we will be doing this thing which God considers beautiful enough and important enough to preserve for all eternity, will we not want to invest ourselves as much as possible in it today?

Or think of the things we like to do in our free time—whether it’s entertainment or sports or board games… Some of those things will probably still be around in the new heavens and the new earth. Entertainment, almost definitely, in some form or another. Sports…probably? Why not? 

But even if entertainment is present, it will not be the central focus of life on the new creation. The central focus of life on the new creation will be the glory of God, the beauty of God, the perfection of God; everything else that happens will be a means to help us enjoy God’s glory more fully. 

So when we think about the things we spend our time on, the things that are important for us, I think we can safely say that most of us give ourselves over to a lot of things that don’t really matter—that are not eternal, but temporary. That doesn’t mean there should be no place for them, but that they should be in their proper place. They should be means by which we’re enabled to see Christ more clearly and love him more fully. And if they are ever getting in the way of our seeing and loving Christ, then it should be an easy choice to simply cut them out, because they’re temporary.

Or say someone in the church gets sick. Say someone has cancer. Early in the church, when there were only fifteen or twenty of us, there was a man named Nor who was homeless. Not many people knew he was homeless; he wanted to simply be a brother in Christ and so didn’t want to draw attention to his living situation. In addition to his homelessness, a few months after he joined the church he found out he had very advanced stomach cancer. There was nothing to be done. He underwent treatment for it, but died fairly quickly after his diagnosis. 

When we were planting a church filled with young people in an area which is filled with young people, I thought that the first “big event” we’d have as a church would be a wedding, or the birth of a baby. I never thought it would be a funeral. But that’s what happened. I and many other people in the church who knew Nor at the time (you know who you are, you’ll remember) had a lot of conversations with him toward the end about his life, and about his situation. And his only comfort at the end was the knowledge that his present suffering—his poverty, his cancer—was temporary. His only comfort was knowing that all of these things which worried him enormously during his life weren’t going to last. 

It wasn’t just his only comfort; it was a good comfort. It was a full comfort. 

Living in anticipation of Christ’s return will produce in us a greater awareness of what it temporary, and it will show us what is worth spending our time on, investing ourselves in, as a body.

A Greater Desire for Holiness

11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 

It would be a mistake to miss the sense of urgency Peter expresses here. The day of the Lord is coming; Christ is returning; and everything we know will be radically changed at his coming. So how do we hope he finds us on that day? What sort of people ought we to be in lives of holiness and godliness? 

You see, Peter is encouraging us to trade in things that are temporary for something that is permanent:

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness… 

The majority of the things people do in this life are not done for the sake of holiness; they are not done for the glory of God. Now, they can be—anything can be. You can enjoy a cup of coffee, or an evening with your family, or write a book, or have a conversation, for the glory of God. We do this by being aware of the good things we have as a gift and thanking him and worshiping him for them; by praying that he would use this conversation or this evening with our family to help us love Christ more deeply; by seeking to edify and exhort to holiness our brothers and sisters through the writing of this book. 

But the truth is that most of the time, most Christians don’t think to go about their business in this way, and unbelievers never do it. They may reflect the image of God without being aware they’re doing it, but they never willingly do anything for God’s glory.

Here’s Peter’s point: the things of this earth—the sky, the land and the works that are done on them—will be dissolved and renewed at Christ’s coming, like a bit of silver ore that’s melted down to make pure, refined silver. And the only things that will last—the only things that will still be around afterwards—are works of holiness and godliness. 

So the church that knows this, that lives in anticipation of Christ’s return, will manifest a greater desire for holiness. And if you think about it, all of us want this, even if we don’t realize it. What has driven the entire human race throughout the course of history has been the desire to build something that will last. We want to do this as societies, and we want to do this as individuals. We want to build something that won’t be just “here today, gone tomorrow.” 

And Peter tells us how to do that. If we want to build something that will last, then we will build our lives—as individuals and as the body of Christ—on holiness and godliness. If we truly anticipate Christ’s return as a body, then we will encourage and exhort one another to follow hard after Christ. We will brutally reject sin, and protect ourselves and one another from it. We will watch one another carefully—not in order to judge one another, but so that we might come quickly alongside each other to help one another grow in holiness.

We will recognize what is temporary, and what is permanent, and we will exhort one another to always go in that direction. As the old poem says, “Only one life, 'twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last.”

So this anticipation of Christ’s return will produce in us a greater drive for evangelism, a greater awareness of what is temporary, a greater desire for holiness, and—lastly—a greater thirst for heaven.

A Greater Thirst for Heaven

13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 

The idea that the world and its works will be burned up and renewed—that much of what we do is at best temporary—seems like a let-down; it seems like if this is true, then when Christ comes back we’ll lose everything. And that’s why Peter ends here—rather than looking at what we may lose at his coming, we are called to consider all that we will gain. 

And what we will gain is the fulfillment of God’s promise: new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. The reason why it’s not bad news that certain things will be lost is because if we lose it, it wasn’t worth keeping to begin with. The only thing that will ultimately satisfy us—that will truly complete us—is knowing and loving and being like Christ. And that is what we gain at the end of all this. 

But how many of us really think this way? How often do we actually think about heaven? Not that often. The idea of heaven seems vague and fuzzy to us—we think of Tom and Jerry sitting on clouds playing harps for all eternity. No wonder people feel like Christianity isn’t worth buying into, if at the end of it all, the whole point is that we have to wear white robes and sit around just generally contemplating things—for all time! 

But many Christians still think this way too. They know they don’t want to go to hell, but they’re not all that excited about heaven. They’re excited about their career, or building a family, or decorating their home. They’re not nearly as excited about heaven as they are about whatever life they’re trying to build for themselves here. 

And that is a big problem.

Think about the week you’ve just had. There is a lot of anticipation leading into the Christmas holidays: we decorate, we plan parties, we buy presents and wrap them and put them under the tree… Kids are practically beside themselves with anticipation. And then the day comes, and you have a great time—you enjoy your family, you open the presents, you hug each other and laugh and say thank you… 

And then what? Usually, if we’re honest, the week after Christmas is kind of a let-down. You’ve seen it particularly if you have kids—it’s something I remember from my own childhood. Jack got two huge Lego sets for Christmas—one from his grandparents and one from his aunt and uncle—and he was so excited. So he went to work building them, and he finished both within a couple days. And then, he sat back and he looked at what he’d built, and he was like… “Now what?” He doesn’t want to play with what he’s built, because they’re Legos, and they fall apart. So now he’s sort of left wondering what to do with all this free time.

I’m exaggerating, of course—he’s not bored. My point is that the payoff is always less impressive than the anticipation, isn’t it? 

Of course it is—it’s inevitable that that would be the case, because most of the time, what we’re anticipating at Christmas are temporary, fleeting pleasures. Even if the Christmas we had was the perfect Christmas, it would still be a letdown, because all the gifts and the lights and the songs and the decorations are a pale imitation of what we’re really celebrating when we celebrate Christmas. We’re celebrating the birth of Christ, who came and lived and died and was raised to reconcile us to God and secure for us an eternal life of joy with him when we die, or when he returns… 

But we’re not dead yet. Jesus hasn’t come back yet. There is a huge part of this story we’re still waiting for. So we work ourselves up and try to give ourselves other things to anticipate…but these “other things,” even if they’re good, are nothing compared to the real thing—the return of Christ, the renewal of the earth, and the beginning of our glorious eternity with him.

Jesus has already secured our salvation. He has already come and lived and died and resurrected. We are already counted righteous in Christ.

But he hasn’t yet returned. We are not yet home. 

I want to insist on this because in this church we talk a lot about finding our joy in Christ, being content in Christ, being satisfied in Christ. And recently we’ve had to have a lot of conversations with people about what exactly that means. 

Being satisfied in Christ does not mean being fully satisfied now—because the only place we’re going to be fully satisfied is the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Finding our joy in Christ does not mean never being sad, never weeping, never mourning—because the only place we’ll no longer weep or mourn is the New Heavens and the New Earth.

It means, as Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4.13, “mourning as those who have hope.” It means remembering in our weeping that our joy is still intact. It means being thirsty for more of what we have already tasted.

We live in the already and the not yet. Christ has already reconciled us to God, but we are not yet with God in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We are already rejoicing in Christ, but we have not yet reached the culmination of our joy. We are already content in Christ, but we have not yet reached our full satisfaction in him. 

The only way this kind of language will make any sense to you, the only way this kind of life will make any sense to you, is if you fix your eyes regularly and faithfully on heaven—on the renewed earth where we will spend eternity with Jesus. Let me show you two ways this plays out in our lives.

Firstly, fixing our eyes on heaven gives us hope in suffering. I’ll give you just one example. Several couples in the church, including Loanne and me, have had miscarriages this year—in some cases more than one. We were broken because of this, we mourned the loss of these children. It was a difficult year for many of us. But because we know where we are going, because our eyes are fixed on heaven, this pain does not have the power to break us. Our ultimate hope is not in our children; it is not in the lives or the families we are building for ourselves here. Our hope is in our eternity with Christ, which Lord willing we’ll spend with those children we’ve lost.

Secondly, fixing our eyes on heaven protects us in happiness. It is our protection against idolatry. As you know, this church is practically exploding with babies. We’ve had four babies born so far this year, and Lord willing, five more will arrive between now and June. Some of the women who are pregnant right now are the same women  who had miscarriages earlier. It is an incredibly tempting thing for parents (especially new parents) to let their children become the center of their world—parents are happy, as they should be, and the anticipation of seeing these babies born is considerable. 

But just as the loss of our children should not have the power to rob us of our joy in this life, the promise of new children must not become our hope for joy in this life. Our ultimate hope is not in our children. Our ultimate hope is not in the lives that we’re trying to build for ourselves here and now. Because even if all goes perfectly well, and our children are born healthy and they grow to be happy and well-adjusted adults, our lives and the lives of our children on this earth are temporary and fleeting and wildly imperfect. Nothing on this earth can be our ultimate hope for joy, because if it’s on this earth, it will disappoint us. 

The only protection we have against idolatry is knowing who our God is, and what he has done for us, and where he is bringing us.

According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

We must dwell on heaven often, brothers and sisters, for heaven is our home; heaven is where we will see God most clearly; heaven is where we will enjoy God most fully. 

And we’ll find that, sort of surprisingly, if we dwell much on heaven, we’ll be more useful for God on this earth, because our priorities will always be kept in check. No project, no endeavor, no ministry, will ever be too important for us; and no soul will ever be unimportant for us. 

We must anticipate the New Heavens and the New Earth, brothers and sisters. We must let the knowledge of Christ’s impending return produce in us a greater desire for evangelism; a greater awareness of what is temporary; a greater desire for holiness; and a greater thirst for heaven.

And if you don’t know Christ this morning, my prayer is that you would feel uneasy right now at the possibility of missing this. The only way to inherit this eternal life we are promised is faith in Christ. I want you to realize that if today you haven’t placed your faith in Christ, and repented of your sins, you will miss out on this. You won’t be there with us. You will be judged based on your sin, not on Christ’s righteousness. 

The good news is that God never turns away those who come to him in faith; he never turns away those who accept the gift of his Son. So if you want to enjoy God forever on the new heavens and the new earth, all you have to do is ask. Repent of your sins, turn from them, and trust Jesus for your salvation. The promise of heaven, which all of us will enjoy and which shapes our lives today, is only a prayer away.