The Promise of His Coming

First Sunday in Advent

November 28, 1993

O That Thou wouldest rend the heavens... Isaiah 64:1

INTRODUCTION

THE CHURCH EXISTS ON THE STRENGTH OF A PROMISE.

Jesus said, "If I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also." The ability to believe that promise is a gift of God's grace. We call that gift "hope."

We cannot live apart from God. St. Augustine's most famous words: "You have made us for Yourself, O God- and our souls are restless until they find their rest in You!" are anticipated here as Isaiah cries for his people: "Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down!" But sometimes it is hard to believe that Almighty God cares for our little world, let alone individual people like you and me. Hope tells us that it is true, God does care.

I. THE WONDER OF SUCH A PROMISE

[God is so great; we are so small]

David spent many lonely nights on the dark hills watching the sheep under what we call the Milky Way, and he said, "When I consider the heavens, the works of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of Him!" (Psalm 8:1)

And from time to time that fact of our finiteness, our insignificance in the great scope of Creation becomes almost inescapable, and makes the wonder of Hope, the Promise, even more precious.

We Are Small on the Vast Scale of Earth

Much earlier in our ministry Helen and I led a delegation from Akron to International Institute in Colorado. There after leading a seminar each morning we drove up into Rocky Mountain National Park, to an overlook about 12,000 feet in altitude, where we parked and walked across the road and sat down on a precipice to a mountain view of 100 miles or more of range after range, peak after peak to the south. Now after more than 30 years the vividness of detail has faded, but I shall never get over the sheer majesty of what I could see and still not grasp of wonder and beauty and sheer size. To say we felt "small" hardly begins to express the scale. For example it was the second or even the third day before we noticed in the valleys below seven mountain lakes— there was just so very much to see, to take in, to absorb. When I consider the snow-capped mountains and the deep wooded valleys stretching on and on, what am I but an insignificant speck? And yet I also remember the thrill that I knew the God who made these things.

It is easy to see how people, apart from living HOPE, could wonder how God could ever find them on this big planet if He ever did come searching.

We are Individuals in a Vast Number of Humanity

Later that same year, 1962, Helen and I packed our four small children into that same beautiful aqua colored big Mercury and moved from a tiny Ohio rural town to the outskirts of the metropolitan New York City community and the corrupt influence of the liberal east. When I saw superhighways sixteen lanes wide moving at 65 miles an hour, or miles of traffic backed up and standing still, or when I walked the streets of Manhattan and saw people lying on the sidewalks with humanity streaming all around them; when I drove for miles and miles through dense population another kind of insignificance suggested itself. Among so many millions, what was one person more, or one person less?

It is easy for me to see how people, unless they know for themselves what Jesus said, could wonder how God would ever sort out which one they were among all the millions of earth.

We are a Tiny Planet in a Vast Universe

People who look through telescopes tell us that we are inhabitants of a planet circling a small-to-average star in an average galaxy in our Universe. There are, they tell us, about 200 billion such galaxies. That is the number two (2) followed by eleven zeroes, two hundred billion galaxies, or 30 or 40 for every man, woman, boy and girl on our tiny little planet!

Then, in our Milky Way there are, we are asked to believe, 500,000,000,000 stars like our own sun. That means if stars like our sun were being handed out from just our own galaxy there are enough for every man, woman, boy and girl to have almost 100 stars of their own.

So— when the prophet cries out to Jehovah "Oh that You would rend the heavens and come down!" he is asking quite a lot of God just to be able to sort out which galaxy and which star, to find him among the intricate and complex systems and dimensions of time and space that this great God has created.

It is not hard to see, apart from God's gift of HOPE, when we consider how great is this Creation, the heavens and the earth how that it is beyond our comprehension how or why God would care to come to us.

We Have Met Jesus: We Choose to Believe His Word

But Jesus has promised! He is with God in whatever dimensions of reality that lie beyond our present understanding. But Jesus is also WITH US even NOW in TIME and SPACE by the Holy Spirit. He is very NEAR! And Jesus is as good as His word. We can depend on his PROMISE. He will come again, we will see Him, and we will be like He is.

If we know Him NOW by His WORD, and by His SPIRIT'S PRESENCE, then this HOPE will keep us spiritually alive.

Remember: The church exists on the strength of one promise.

II. THE JOY OF SUCH A PROMISE

[The centrality of HOPE in Christian living]

This HOPE is not only WONDERFUL, but it is central to our Christian faith and life, It is much more important than we may realize.

It is HOPE that holds us safe in the storms of life. (Hebrews 6:19.) "Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both steadfast and sure."
It is HOPE that gives us comfort in any trial. (2 Thessalonians 2:16) "God has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace."
Hope is a force motivating us to purity (1 John 3:3) "He that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as He is pure."
It is HOPE that gives us BOLDNESS to witness to God's goodness and to give Him praise (2 Corinthians 3:12) "Having such a HOPE we use great boldness in our speech"

Hope begets hope.

III. THIS PROMISE - OF GOD'S COMING- HAS BEEN USED AS A THREAT MORE THAN A SOURCE OF JOY AND HOPE.

The coming of God the Son in glory is not a happy prospect to those who do not love Him. His coming will be an embarrassment to those who profess to love Him but do not live for Him. This is what Jesus is saying in our Gospel lesson.

It is true that when Jesus comes HE WILL SET THINGS RIGHT. There will be VINDICATION and JUSTICE. There will be A HOLY DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG, GOOD AND EVIL, LOVE AND HATE, SHEEP AND GOATS. But the Second Coming has been used as some kind of Sword of Damocles to threaten us into good behavior:

You better watch out, you better not cry— better not pout I'm telling you why— He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness" sake!

It depends on how we think of God, what our relationship, our fellowship with Him is, how we think of the prospect of Him coming to seek us out!

Adam and Eve dreaded meeting God: They had disobeyed, and in their disobedience they had "become as gods to know good and evil" in a partial response to Serpent's lie. They knew they were evil, and they knew they were naked and they knew that they did NOT want to see God face to face. So they hid themselves, with their fig leaf covers. The Presence of God was a source of fear and dread where it had been a comfort and companionship.

But Job did not dread meeting God. In all his distress he knew that he had not been perfect, he had spoken foolish words— but he also knew that he trusted God, and that he had been perfectly true and faithful— that he had lived for God and loved him. So Job did not dread seeing God, but wanted Him to come— even to show him (Job) where he had done wrong so he could confess it; Job was OPEN before God, and sought God's love and grace:

Job: O that I knew where I might find him! But HE knoweth that way that I take, and when I am tried I shall come forth as gold.

It is impossible for me to understand how Christ's people can be anything but happy at the prospect of being with the One they love the most! If we love Jesus why wouldn't we want to see Him?

IV. THE CHURCH MUST REFLECT THIS HOPE TO A HOPELESS WORLD

Can you imagine what it would be like to NOT have this HOPE? Can you imagine how people who do not know God's LOVE and His PROMISE may well feel lost in time and space and the crush of humanity?

If our total concern about Christ's Second Coming is worrying about how much or how little faith we need to be ready when He comes then perhaps we have missed the point altogether. Millions of people don't even know God cares, that He has sent His Son to love us, and die for us, and that He is coming again for those who love Him.

If we truly have this HOPE, then we, God's people, together become the means whereby a world in darkness and chaos can hear the story of Jesus and come to believe His Promise that He has conquered sin and death and that He is alive forevermore and that He will come and find us where we are so that we may be where He is for ever. How did YOU come to have hope? Who showed YOU the way?

—The total helplessness of being befogged in a calm at sea; and the trip we took (Bud, Bernie, Bill Taylor, I) from Kingston river around the Gurnet to Green Harbor in a pea soup fog... coming on channel markers, dead reckoning, looming in on Duxbury beach, sounds, magnified and distorted— joy of finding harbor...

If we have this hope, somehow we not only are finding that way ourselves, but we ourselves somehow become dependable. We show others the channel, the way through the mists, to hope, buoys or lower lights to bring others to this haven of hope.

Prayer

Song for the Nations #699