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First Sunday of Advent
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, December 1, 2013


Make Yourself Ready


Text: Matthew 23:37-44

In two days, our mission team will leave for Mityana, Uganda. Next Thursday and Friday, Jim Conley, Sandi Ward and I will be leading a retreat for three men who are being ordained to the priesthood. On the Sundays we are there, we will travel with Bishop Kaziimba to different congregations, where he will be confirming young Christians. And on December 9–13, we will be speakers in a conference for youth, ages 13–25. They are expecting 1500 young people for this event.

A trip like this requires a great deal of preparation. It started last winter when I was praying for discernment as to who should go on this mission. Then, once I had asked Jim and Sandi, they had things to do in their professional and family lives to make way for this. We have met several times since August. We have gotten our visas and shots and airline tickets. We have assembled teams of intercessors. We have purchased gifts. We have worked on our speeches and testimonies and sermons. Sandi has even written a skit. I, for one, have been packing for a week. I think we are ready to go.

When we undertake something important, preparation is a huge part of it. And in our lives as Christians, preparation is key to our being ready for the coming of Christ. We enter the season of Advent today. This is the season when we prepare for the coming of Christ. Our Gospel reading tells us to be ready at all times, because we do not know the day or hour when He will come.

Jesus' warning begins by saying,

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. [Matthew 24:37–39]

Jesus has given us a pretty sobering image. The end of the world was coming upon these people in the time of Noah, and they didn't know it. Well, they could have known, if they had believed Noah when he told them why he was building the ark and collecting all the different animals. But they didn't believe it. They just went on with all the normal activities of life, "eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage." And then one day, without warning, the skies opened, and the flood came and swept them all away.

Jesus chose the days of Noah as His illustration, because He wanted that to be sobering. The end of days is coming upon us. The Son of Man will come at an hour no one knows. It could be before we sing the next hymn this morning. Or it could be long after we are gone. But whenever it comes, we want to be prepared. As we look around us, we see how much like the days of Noah these days are. People by the millions are simply oblivious that Jesus, the Savior of the world, has already come once. They are oblivious that He is here in our midst among those who believe in Him and love Him and serve Him and are called according to His purpose. And they are oblivious that He is coming again to judge the world.

There are millions of others who are not oblivious, but they are not ready because they have questions about God for which they have never found answers that satisfied them. Others are not ready because they are running away from Him. They have heard the Good News, but they prefer to indulge in wishful thinking about such things as God and eternity and judgment.

But He is coming, and He says that when that day comes, "Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." (Matthew 24:40–41)

Let's talk a bit about what it means to be prepared this morning. The first thing is to get our ducks in a row. As we have looked forward to the mission trip, Jim and Sandi and I have had to anticipate all the things we are going to want to be in place when that Boeing 777 lifts off from Dulles Airport. We have had to anticipate all the things we are going to want to say in our teaching, preaching and witnessing. We want to be sure we have something to give to people whose homes we visit for a meal. We want to be sure that we are covered in prayer. I want to be sure that everything back home will go as smoothly as possible in my absence. Those are the ducks we have been lining up.

Last Thursday, St. Stephen's and First Baptist held a joint service of thanksgiving on the eve of the holiday. Again, because it was an important event for us and for our community, a lot of planning went into it — the order of service, the music, the prayers, the offering. Dr. Fountaine prepared a marvelous sermon on the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers, only one of whom came back to say "thank you." The message was based on the words of Jesus, "Where are the nine?" That hit me hard as I looked out at the 56 people who showed up that night: fifty-six people, representing our two congregations. Why did so few come to give thanks?

It suggests to me something else we need to do to prepare for the return of the Son of Man. We want to get our priorities straight. Our Christian faith is not just a hobby for us. It is not just one of many things we sandwich in among the things we like to do or have to do in this life. I don't mean to lecture you about not coming to the Thanksgiving service. But each of us does need to seriously evaluate our priorities:

Are they things that reflect the belief that we proclaim? We have turned to Jesus and said, "I am yours." Do our priorities reflect that? Those are questions we should ask ourselves as we go through this season of Advent. For it is a time of preparation.

Another way we prepare is to confess our sins and repent. What have we done that we ought not to have done? What have we left undone that we ought to have done? The Apostle Paul spoke God's Word to us this morning in Chapter 13 of the Book of Romans:

...understand the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. [Romans 13:11–12]

There is an old expression for someone who came to faith and gave his life to Christ but has fallen away. It's called "backsliding." Typically, a backslider is a person whose life looks nothing like the fruits of the Spirit, but looks more like the rest of the world that doesn't know or care about God. Some Christians say that unless the backslider gets his act together and repents and returns to God, he is lost. Others believe that once you are saved by confessing Jesus as your savior, you are always saved and cannot lose your salvation. They present compelling arguments on both sides. But let me ask you this: why would you want to take the risk? And why would you want to live the pagan life anyway?

Understand the present time. Let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Or as Jesus said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of God has come near." (Mark 1:15)

Preparing for the coming of Jesus is a matter of getting our priorities straight, getting our ducks in a row, and repenting of our sins.

The second part of preparing for the coming of the Son of Man is to be expectant—to anticipate His coming. Jesus used the expression, "Keep watch." "Keep watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day the Lord will come." (Matthew 24:42) All of us have experienced the phenomenon of "keeping watch" for Christmas. It is the biggest day in the life of most children each year. They look forward to Christmas for weeks, and there is an excruciating joy in visualizing all the good things that will come true on that day—the presents, the feast, the grandparents, who show up with more presents.

We have a few military wives here today. How many of you have kept watch for your husbands to come back from a deployment? Your focus narrows down to tunnel vision, because all you can see in your mind's eye is how it is going to feel welcoming your warrior home and being together once again. That is very much what it means to keep watch for the coming of the Son of Man. It is something that should excite us. It should narrow our focus down to Him and our life in Him.

And that expectancy translates into our worship. As we come together here in the name of Jesus to worship Him, we ought to be expecting big things.

He has told us to expect His presence with us in our worship. Expectant worship is never humdrum or dry. It becomes all about Him and not about us. It becomes joyful, just like those wives expecting their husbands' return—just like those children counting the days until Christmas. God is here today. I came here expecting Him, didn't you? I feel Him here, don't you?

And it is not just our worship that comes to life in our living expectantly.

The Bible says that "The Holy Spirit working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine." (Ephesians 3:20) If you live as if you are always expecting the Holy Spirit to show up and do great things, He will do it. And you will be keeping watch for Christ's coming.

The final thing I want to say about preparing for the coming of the Son of Man is very closely related to living expectantly. And that is to live in the Christian hope. The Christian hope is that there is a good and loving God who created this awesome universe. And He is busy perfecting this world to restore it from the place to which this world has fallen because of sin. Our hope is that when we commit our lives to Jesus, He will make us whole, and we will spend eternity with Him. The Christian hope is nothing like the hope you have when you buy a lottery ticket. Our hope is the sure and certain knowledge that the promises of God are true. And we have those promises in His Word. And they are for everyone who will put their trust in Him. It doesn't matter how many bad things they have done. It doesn't matter how far they have wandered from Him. He is waiting with open arms for us to repent and turn to Him and accept His gift of salvation.

Perhaps you have heard the idea of the "scarlet thread running through the Bible." It was the theme of a sermon preached on New Year's Eve 1961 by W. A. Criswell. He pointed to events from Genesis to the Cross in which we see God's work of redemption. Ann Voskamp has written a book of Advent reflections, called "The Greatest Gift." Chapter 11 of this book picks up on this theme. It is a reflection called, "A Scarlet Lifeline of Hope." It is based on the story of Rahab in Joshua chapter 2. You will recall Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp to scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River near Jericho. They came to the house of Rahab. She was a prostitute, and a pagan. But she hid them and promised to help them. She said, "I know that the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below." She asked only that the Israelites would spare her and her family when they came back to conquer Jericho.

The two Hebrew spies agreed. They gave her a scarlet cord and told her to hang it from her window so that their soldiers would recognize it and spare that house. A scarlet cord. How can you not think of the blood of the Passover Lamb painted on the doorposts to keep away the angel of death? How can you not think of the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross for our redemption? Voskamp points out that the scarlet cord in Hebrew was called a "Tikvah." Tikvah means hope. Here is what Voskamp says:

Rahab, the scarlet woman, flings a scarlet cord out her window—that one thread everything's hanging on. Rahab is delivered by that singular scarlet cord and tied into the Jewish family.  And God makes the former woman of the night into a woman of the court—a princess and a wife of a Jewish prince. ...the great-grandmother of the great King David is this Rahab. This Rahab, who is one of the women named in Scripture in the line that leads straight to Jesus—that one thread everything's hanging on.

* * *

The God who can reveal Himself, wherever, whenever, to whomever; the God who is never limited by lack or restricted to the expected; the God who is no respecter of persons but the relentless rescuer of prodigals; the God who gives the gift of faith in the places you'd most doubt. That is always the secret to the abundant life: to believe that God is where you doubt He can be. * * * There's only a singular cord in this knotted mess of a world worth reaching for. It's dangling right there from our impossible tangle, and it's the one hope you need to reach for this Advent.

God promised He would send a Savior; and He did! Jesus promised He would rise from the dead; and He did! He promised He would send His Holy Spirit; and He did! And He promised to come again. His promises are true. And that's the Christian hope. Let us wear that hope like a glorious crown. And let us be ready when He comes.

© The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2013

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