See, there are multiple scriptures this morning in your bulletin we’re looking through. We consider advent, and we remind ourselves that advent is not simply a countdown to Christmas. It is not a reenactment. It is first and foremost, a celebration and a reminder of the person and work of Jesus Christ in his full gospel power and glory. His first coming is to remind us of the pledge and the promise of his second. As we look to the reading of God’s word, if you please join me in prayer. Christ our God, we ask you set our hearts on fire with love through your word, that in his flame we would love you with all of our hearts, with our minds, with all of our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, so that by keeping your Commandments, we might glorify you who are the giver of every good and perfect gift. Amen. Continuing in Genesis 3, I will put emity between you and the woman between your offspring and her offspring. He shall crush your head and you shall strike his heel. Genesis 12, Now the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred in your father’s house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation.
I will bless you and make your name great, so that you’ll be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Luke 1. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, and you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. Finally, Galatians 4. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to regime those who were under the law so that we Might warn you to buckle up because we’re going to go through a few thousand years of history all at once.
In the Book of Galatians, the apostle Paul, he makes an extended argument as to why the law of Moses was meant only to be a guardian until Jesus came. And he tells us that all who belong to Jesus belong to the promise given to Abraham before the law. And he writes, even as we just read, When the fullness of time had come, God has sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And he’s speaking to Jews and Gentiles. The fullness time. In other places, speaking of this coming of Jesus, Paul also says, first Timothy 2, the testimony given at the proper time. And in Titus 1, he says, At the proper time, God manifested his word. He’s speaking of the coming of Jesus. And then in Ephesians 1, there’s this extended prayer that Paul gives that the Lord has done according to his plan, that he predestined before for the foundation of the world. And then he says this, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.
You see, Our Triune God has had a plan of redemption from the very beginning. And in Jesus, it culminates. And to see this, we need to step back from that large angle view to see all these pieces fit into this masterful scene of the Lord’s redemptive work for his people. How all of these things connect. There are wonderful covenantal dots that we see throughout thousands of years of history, and Jesus brings them all together. And of course, the struggle for us, just like the people in the Bible, is that we live in the immediate present. It’s hard to step back and gain a perspective when awful things are right now. Waiting on the Lord sometimes seems like a slow development in these moments that test our own faith. At times, it feels like he takes us to the very breaking point. And yet the Lord is not unresponsive. He sees our struggles and he comes to us at the right time. Even when it feels we are at our breaking point, we must put our trust in him and continue to faithfully follow Jesus. As we wait between between the advance of Jesus coming, it’s easy to get impatient.
Along the way, there have always been those who said, Now is the time. Jesus’s return is imminent. May it be. But in the meantime, we are called to do what Jesus has called us to, whether he comes back now or he tarries longer. Taking a look at this big picture, it may help us in our waiting now to see the fullness of time, how it got there. From our perspective, indeed, it’s a slow march of redemptive history. Going back to Genesis 3, paradise is lost. We get two good chapters, and then from there, it all falls apart. Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord. Sin and death enter into God’s good creation. And yet the Lord speaks hope, even as the ruin of Adam and Eve’s sin starts to reverberate through his creation. In Genesis 3:15, the Lord says, I will put enmity between you, speaking of the serpent, and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall crush your head and you shall strike his heel. It’s not much. It’s a cryptic statement, to be sure. But we can see it is the seed of redemption being planted in the soil of our sin.
And the next few chapters of Genesis looks like the opening scene of some dystopia movie. Cain murders his brother Abel. It’s followed by total wickedness and sin throughout the world. And finally, in judgment, God brings a flood to have a new start. There’s a covenantal promise of a rainbow pointing to better things that are yet ahead. But this new start, it doesn’t go very well. Fresh off the boat, the first thing that Noah does after he plants a vineyard is he gets drunk. We see a sexual sin enters in at the same time. Then we go forward to the Tower of Babel and the nations trying to work against God, the rise of all these nations across the Earth. If you had to sum up humanity at this point, it would just simply be meh. That’s all it is. Meh. It doesn’t look very promising. But the Lord was advancing his redempted plan between chapters 3 and chapters 11 of Genesis. His saving covenant was declared and now slowly starting to take shape. There’s this godly lineage of Seth, and there we hear this refrain for the first time in chapter 4. At that time, people began to call upon the Lord.
At that time, there’s hope. Then Genesis 12 comes. This seed that the Lord planted back in In chapter 3, if you had one of those slow motion cameras, you’d start to see it wiggle in the soil. It’s just starting to germinate. From the fall to Abraham, I have no idea how much time that took. It was a while. It’s just a little movement in the soil. Finally, after all this, we hear God speak again. He says to Abraham, Go from your country, from your kindred, your father’s house, to the land I will show you. And to him, the Lord makes this great promise, the promise of land, the promise of people, the promise of rule. And he says, I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who you bless, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Something new happens now in chapter 12. There’s something different taking place, but it’s still part of the same story. A man is called and a promise is given.
From Genesis 12 to Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, we get the unfolding of this promise to Abraham. God enters into a covenant with Abraham, and it takes roughly 2,000 years for it to develop. If you fail to see the continuity of the Bible and the history of redemption, you’re left only with a bunch of seemingly random events that make for interesting stories, but a little more. No, these are not random events. They’re not a bunch of loose pearls rolling around in the box called the Bible that you just take one out and look at it from time to time and put them back in the box. There’s a redemptive thread that ties all of them together in this beautiful necklace of salvation and redemption. From the man Abraham, we get a whole family And this turns into a large clan that enters into Egypt for 400 years. Out of Egypt, God miraculously calls this new nation, Israel. The Lord reveals to them his law to them his covenants. He says, I will be your God and you will be my people. It’s not a new covenant. It’s the one that he spoke of back in Genesis 3:15.
The seed has grown into a sapling. And through many trials and setbacks, Israel comes into the promised land. The covenant unfolds further with the coming of a king. David is shown as a type of God’s king who would rule forever. And along with the king, arises the prophets at the same time in this prophetic ministry of Kings and prophets. God’s people are unable to keep their end of the covenant. And through the prophets, he calls them back to faithfulness time and time again, and they can’t do it for very long. Finally, the people whom God has called by name, they’re cast out of the promised land, they’re sent into exile, just as God had said. And when the time was right, he brings them back. And from the very last Book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, it comes a statement. Behold, I send my messenger, and he’ll prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of Host. The messenger and the Messiah are coming. From this moment, there’s 400 more years of silence.
The messenger and the Messiah coming. And what we see is the very slow reveal of this redeemer. And into this silence comes a flurry of angelic visits. You hardly hear of any angels really in the Old Testament over this whole time period, a little bit here and there. And suddenly they’re everywhere. They’re coming to Mary, they’re coming to Zechariah, and they’re announcing to shepherds. Let’s look at Zechariah and the Coming of John the Baptist. In the Book of Luke, in the first couple of verses, he lists through seven rulers from the Emperor down to the high priest. God’s promises that comes in the context of real human history. It’s not a bunch of religious thoughts and ideas, real people in real time and places. John will be situated right in the middle of a social Social, political, and religious turmoil. And the angel says to Zechariah, his father, Don’t be afraid. Your prayer has been heard. Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness. Many will rejoice at his birth, or he’ll be great before the Lord. And then we see this Nazerite from birth issues.
No wine or strong drink. The Holy spirit is upon him. He will turn many of his children visual to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the Father to the children, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people preparing. Prepared. So that question, how does he, John the Baptist, fit in this story of redemption? Everyone is like, What’s the big deal about John the Baptist? He’s the last of the Old Testament prophets. A life long Nazareth, dedicated to the Lord from his birth, he prepares Israel for the Messiah. Everything will be recentered upon Jesus. John goes out and he baptizes people, and this is new. Even while it connects the dots to what the Lord has been doing all along, the cleansing blood of bowls gives way to a water rite, a baptism. It comes to Israel as a new ceremony. It will replace the bloody ceremony of circumcision. And in Luke 3, it goes on, and he says, As is written in the Book of the Words of the Isaiah, the prophet, speaking of John, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill will be made low, and the cricket shall become straight. The rough places shall be level, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. By quoting Isaiah, Luke places the ministry of John within Israel’s larger prophetic ministry. The image is one of road construction, but he’s speaking of the human heart and what work needs done there. Far from being seeker sensitive, John, he lays people out. The Lord’s great drama of redemption is moving forward, and he’s one of the prophets of old. A new time has arrived and there’s a renewed call to repentance, it’s not what people were expecting at all. This is not what they were praying for. They were expecting the Lord to come and to fix their problems, get rid of Rome being the first one, not call on them to a Ministry of Penance, to wash themselves like Gentiles would if they had been converted to Judaism. And then John ratches up this prophetic message. He said to the crowds who came to be baptized, he said, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming raft? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
And things like this, John spoke. He spoke a lot about coming of judgment, this call to repentance, to reorient your life on the Lord, to refocus, to change your priorities, your direction. Why? Because the Son of Promise is coming. It is now the fullness of time. The proper time had come. The first covenantal thought all the way back in Genesis 3:15, I will put emity between you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. And then it shifts to the singular, he shall crush your head and you will strike his heel. Throughout all of redemptive history, now the last dot, Jesus is connected. And John tells us that Jesus is the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. In this amazing redemptive display, Jesus comes to be baptized by John, and John says, No, no, I should be baptized by you. And what What does Jesus tell him? Let it be so for now, for thus it’s fitting to fulfill all righteousness. The sinless Jesus is baptized so that he can identify with his people. It’s a national duty that Jesus performs. He becomes the Israel of God in order to fulfill in himself the covenant that Israel failed to do.
One of the flock can now suffer for the whole flock, the Lamb of God. That question of why John? He’s part of the great connection between all what God has been doing now to this new transition. Thousands of years to set this up. Finally, the time has arrived. We’ve gone from a seed down to a full tree. We’ve watched over these thousands of years as this covenant develops and grows and matures. And this seems so slow. From the promise of messenger and Messiah, even when it first came by these angels, it took 30 more years for these two babies to grow up. Think about that. You hear this proclamation and deliverance is finally here, and it’s 30 more years of your life added to the 2,000 years that have already been given, added to the time before that. Half of you are under 30. Haven’t even lived that long, 30 more years. It’s finally here. That was so 1990. The fullness of time. Whose time? It’s God’s time. And after all this, we now still wait for Christ’s return. It’s fair to say that his soon is not ours. In raising children, it’s often said the days are long, but the time is short.
You’re exhausted and all your days are filled to the brim, and yet you blink a couple of times and they’re out of the house. Where did the time go? Our lives are but a breath. But when we’re struggling, the clock can drag and just go into slow motion. But what we see is the Lord is neither late nor is he early. He comes to each of us at the proper time. Like Abraham so long ago, he called you and I to come out to follow him where he tells us to go. And in doing so, he does not point us to a set of religious beliefs, to some philosophical abstractions. He points us to his son of promise. He comes to us who live in real time in history, and he connects us into this redemptive story. Because everything that Jesus has done to bring all of this together, he now incorporates us into the same story. What the Lord brought in the fullness of time, nobody saw coming. Even John the Baptist, when he was locked away in in prison, he doubted. He sent messengers to Jesus saying, Are you the one? Are we to look for someone else?
Because it didn’t quite look like what anyone thought. And in the moments of waiting, that’s where it’s easy to give up hope, where we can either change the Lord’s message to fit our own agenda or despair. Can you imagine some Jewish young man looking at a Roman soldier and he says out loud or maybe to himself, Oh, you just wait. Your time’s coming. When the Messiah gets here, you’ll get sorted. And when the Messiah came, We did see a centurion got sorted. How? Because the Messiah died for him. A suffering Messiah, the king of the Covenant, has come. He took took our judgment upon himself in order to crush the head of the servant. Nobody saw that. Nobody anticipated that was the way it was going to be. And then you look through from Genesis to Revelation, and you see this unfolding work of God, and that he has now included you and I in, because we are connected to his words of promise. We are connected to the fullness of time. And this Jesus sends us out into the world as his ambassadors at this time, at this place. And he instructs us to go in his way, in his manner.
And we ask that question, Whose head are you trying to crush? It’s the head of the serpent. The Lord continues to crush him through the church, through the body of Christ. Even as Paul reminds us, we war not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. And one of the things that we can struggle with, especially when we’re waiting in real time, in real history, when things are really falling apart, is we look, usually, to human adversaries to crush. It Reflected in our attitude, it’s reflected in our language. Oh, wait till you get sorted. God will sort you out. No. God sorted us out by sending his son to die. Who? For his enemies while we were still sinners. And that heart and that attitude that we have now is to reflect the Son of glory. And when we think of that again, whose hand are you trying to crush? What part do you have now in this redemptive work of salvation that while Jesus tarries, more men, women, and children are coming to the good news of Jesus? One of the reasons of the slowness of God is because of his great patience and forbearance.
We see that throughout scripture, calling people to repentance. We are here because the Lord tarried. And in all of that, in the struggles we have, in the moments that we find things as falling apart, because that happens in this life, to be sure, we know and can rest that nothing is happening outside of God’s appointed time. We’re waiting for him to complete not only that further promise of his son’s return, but in the meantime, to complete the work he started enough that he’s faithful and he will complete it because he is the author and the perfector of it. So that empowers us to go forth in boldness, in proclamation, even as we looked at last week. The King is here, and we get to go and tell people about him, and we get to go and reorient our lives and ourselves in repentance and focus on him. That the enemies of the kingdom, we now are praying that God will advance in their hearts the purposes of Christ to turn them towards the Son. And we are a part of that as well. And where our vision is not lining up with his, the call is first and foremost, always to repentance.
It’s always to repent of sin, to say, Father, I am not seeing with your vision. I am not connecting the dots in this way. Forgive me. And then to move forward in fresh and new obedience. That the Son of God would be glorified in the lives of his people. That the proclamation of Jesus would be sweet on our lips as we explain and give that to others around us. That is the good news of Jesus. That’s why it’s called the gospel. We’re not play acting at Christmas time. It’s not a step back into nostalgia. It is a step forward into the hope of glory. That God at this time is bringing forth his message and proclamation of Jesus into the world around us, which is in desperate need. It doesn’t need nostalgia. It doesn’t need sentimentality. It needs the person and work of Jesus. And you and I have been sent to go forth with that message, not only lived out in our lives, but fresh on our lips. Say, yes, God will sort you out. Through the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Pray with me. Father, as we come before you this day, we thank you.
We bless you. Lord, your timing is never our timing, and we confess we struggle with it as creatures dust. And Father, we ask then that you would continue in your forbearance and patience with us. Father, to use us in this proclamation of Jesus. Father, that you would continue to realign our hearts in repentance. Father, that we would go forth and improve upon our baptism in the power and the might of your spirit, which you have freely given to us. To fill us with new boldness, new joy. And Lord, I pray, Father, for those who are struggling in circumstances beyond their control. I pray, Father, that you would not only encourage them, but Father, that you would strengthen them with a fresh and new resolve for this time that you have given to them. And we pray and ask this all in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.