A Sermon from December 2022
Readings: Galatians 4.4-7 Luke 2.15-21
Not all waiting is annoying. But we live in an instant world. Information’s at our fingertips in fractions of seconds thanks to the Internet. Amazon Prime makes next day delivery normal and expected. Credit cards mean you can buy things you can’t afford - NOW! How did people manage in the distant past (by which I mean the 1980s)? Waiting was just what you did.
In the Bible, God makes people wait. We’ve just started Advent Season, waiting for Christ to be born. But a month of liturgical waiting for us, was at least 4000 years of actual waiting for humanity. Advent is also waiting for the Second Coming. This is almost 2000 years and counting.
1) The Waiting Is Over (Sort of)
The church year is a funny old thing. We await something which has, in reality, already happened. We anticipate Christ’s birth, but Advent reminds us that His birth isn’t the beginning of His story. We treat birth as day one of a new existence. However, before we get out of the womb, we have to get in and spend nine months there. Each person has a pre-birth, pre-conception history. Our parents met one another rather than someone else. And their parents, and so on. If any combination of ancestors met a different person, or even if a different sperm got to the egg first, we wouldn’t be as we are today. The DNA of different individuals combined to eventually make us as we actually are. This is also true of Jesus. Humanly speaking. On His mother’s side.
Mary had to wait for her nine months of pregnancy to end. Maybe nine months seems like a long time to those of you who’ve had children. But it’s a short wait compared to the waiting of Israel and of humanity.
700 years before Mary, Isaiah prophesied this. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14, NIV). Also, “A child is born to us! A son is given to us! And he will be our ruler. He will be called, “Wonderful Counsellor,” “Mighty God,” “Eternal Father,” “Prince of Peace.” His royal power will continue to grow; his kingdom will always be at peace. He will rule as King David's successor, basing his power on right and justice, from now until the end of time” (Isaiah 9:6-7). 700 years for this to start happening - a long wait.
Isaiah mentioned this son will rule as King David's successor. God told David about this. “When you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will make one of your sons king and will keep his kingdom strong. He will be the one to build a temple for me, and I will make sure that his dynasty continues forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13). Seemingly fulfilled in Solomon, fully fulfilled in Jesus. The Temple Jesus built is us, the church, the living stones, which cannot be destroyed. David lived 1000 years before Christ - another long wait.
In Deuteronomy 18:15 Moses told the Israelites, “he [God] will send you a prophet like me from among your own people, and you are to obey him.” In Acts 3, Peter confirms this is Jesus, even though it seemed like the Israelites Moses addressed would be the ones to meet him. Prophecy can be a bit funny like that. No immediate coming - the Israelites had to wait 1400 years.
Just one more. God told the serpent in Eden, “I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel” (Genesis 3:15). We see this fulfilled specifically in the cross. The author of Hebrews wrote, “Since the children, as he calls them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared their human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil, who has the power over death” (Hebrews 2:14). The coming of Christ as a human destroys the serpent, the Devil.It took at least 4000 years for the crucifixion to happen. God is patient - and willing
to make humanity wait.
2) The Coming of Christ
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “But when the right time finally came, God sent his own Son. He came as the son of a human mother and lived under the Jewish Law” (4:4) It was no accident that Jesus was born when He was. God didn’t think, “I’ve made ‘em wait long enough. This Mary chick is a nice girl. She’ll do.” No. He manoeuvred history to get the circumstances just right. But what if He hadn’t and Christ never came? What might we all be worshipping in the UK now? Probably different gods for different occasions. Maybe ancient British or Celtic gods, or Roman or Greek or Saxon or Norse gods? Plenty of those. Many are just variations on the themes of war, harvest, earth, and water. Or maybe we’d directly worship the sun, moon, stars, trees, animals?
Many people think the story of Jesus’ birth is fanciful nonsense. What about the birth stories of some Roman gods and goddesses? Exhibit 1: The Roman god Saturn devoured his children by his wife Ops as soon as they were born because of a prophecy that one would overthrow him. After chomping through 5 children, Ops hid the child Jupiter and offered Saturn a large stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead, which so upset his stomach he was forced to vomit out all the other children. Exhibit 2: Venus, born of the seafoam. Saturn castrated his father and threw his bits into the sea. As they drifted over the water, the blood mixed with it to foment the growth of Venus. Exhibit 3: Bacchus, who was born twice. The first time fathered by Jupiter, who assumed the form of a snake, slithered into the underworld and got one Proserpina pregnant. Later on, Bacchus was killed, his body torn to pieces. Jupiter gathered the pieces up, placed Bacchus’ heart into a potion which was drunk by Semele, a mortal, who became pregnant. She was murdered, so Jupiter ripped the baby from the womb and sowed him into his own thigh to nourish him until he was born.
Contrast these strange stories with the birth of Jesus, which we’ll be revisiting again in the coming weeks - the difference is immediately obvious. Yes, there are angels, a virgin birth, a wandering star, but the birth of Christ still comes across as a very human story. The Bible accounts are supernatural, not unnatural and silly. We’re privileged this is our story and God hasn’t given us over to depraved gods and practices.
3) The Wait Goes On
God sent His Son. What does this mean for those who believe in Him? He adopts us as His children and heirs. The Holy Spirit is in our hearts.
God chose us. God is our Father because He wants to be. It pleases Him. We’re God’s children now, but the wait goes on for the second coming of Christ - and what a time that will be! As Paul wrote, “This is how it will be when the dead are raised to life. When the body is buried, it is mortal; when raised, it will be immortal. When buried, it is ugly and weak; when raised, it will be beautiful and strong. When buried, it is a physical body; when raised, it will be a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). As John wrote, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1).
The Holy Spirit lives within Christians, the guarantee of our inheritance, a deposit of what is to come. Our inheritance is to share in the glory of Jesus. It’s knowing God. It’s eternal life. The wait goes on for the fulness of this promise.
God has “blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” It “can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:4-5, NIV). Moth and rust cannot destroy it. Thieves cannot break in and steal it. But the wait goes on. God kept mankind waiting at least 4000 years for the first coming of Christ. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that we’ve waited almost 2000 for the Second Coming. He’ll come when the time is right. God will keep His promise as He did before.
CONCLUSION
We’re all waiting for things. Some are waiting for a husband or wife; some are waiting for a diagnosis from the hospital; some are waiting for visas to stay in the UK; some are ill, old, tired or depressed, and are waiting to die; some are waiting for the evil regimes in their homelands to be overthrown; some are waiting for the persecution to end; some are waiting for Christmas day, anxious to see what presents they will get. Most of these things we have little or no control over. These can be scary, horrible waits. And the outcomes are uncertain. But we all wait for Christ to return. We have no control over when this will happen. But through faith we are certain that it will. And we anticipate the day when we no longer sing, “O come, O come, Immanuel” because the kingdoms of the earth will have become the kingdoms of our God.
Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/portrait-woman-watch-watching-tv-5907490/
