The Second Sunday in Advent 2016
Today we lit the Second Advent candle. Yesterday, in a holiday mood, I pulled out our Christmas music, about twenty-five CD’s, several almost that old. Once again I thought, “This year maybe I’ll play them all and separate the duds from the keepers.”
We listen to our family’s favorites over and over again; it’s an eclectic enough selection to keep everyone happy, ranging from old carols, der Bingle and Elvis through Country and Western to Mahalia Jackson’s holiday album, a Christmas Brass and Handel’s Messiah.
Keeping my resolution, I put on a rarely played disc of Christmas Strings. Anticipating something sappy and sentimental, I jumped a bit when surprising volume sent glorious “Glorias” ringing throughout our home.
Perfect! It was a bit of perfection invading the kitchen. Weaving through the praise, a Scripture took hold of my mind.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things, [with all the imperfections] all have passed away; behold, all things have become new [made perfect in Him]. 2 Corinthians 5:17
Uplifted on rising music and thoughts of Christ’s perfection, my own small hemisphere seemed to soar out beyond time and space into a vast, expanding universe. From afar I saw one starry night, outside of Jerusalem where a few shepherds were blinded by the light of heralding angels singing Glory to God. It was The Advent.
Advent, from the Latin adventus, originally meant arrival, and now according to Merriam Webster one meaning is “coming into being”; a second meaning is the season of preparation before Christmas.
One night, once, the Heavenly Host praised God for the birth of a baby boy. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, had arrived into earth’s realm as a human child. Now, at Advent, Christians remember and look forward to celebrating the birth of the only One who will ever sum up all perfection in Himself, the One who also saves us from all our own imperfections and failings. As the Bible says in Hebrew 5:9
. . . having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,
During Advent, believers look to the Holy Spirit for the will of God. We reread the ancient history of Jesus’ conception and of Mary, His mother. When the Angel Gabriel told her that she would conceive a Son by the Holy Spirit, she replied,
Let it be to me according to your word. Luke 1:38
This reminds us that Advent is a time to bring our lives into greater agreement with God. His will and His word are one. And His will and His word always direct us to love, the love of God, for
whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. 1 John 2:5
God’s love directs us in love to one another. During Advent, Christians express our love for God and one another as we bake cookies, prepare holiday menus, shop for gifts and wrap them with ribbons and bows. We decorate our homes with lights. Some of us may incorporate pine trees and pixies, snowmen and Santa, Yule logs, Glug and mistletoe and holly. But our celebrations don’t major on mulled wine and food, presents, any pagan-spirited counterfeit rituals or Father Christmas. Instead they recall the lasting and the true love of God in the birth of His Son, Jesus Christ, the light of the world. We’ve a spiritual certainty that
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17
During Advent, twenty-first century Christians take their historical place in the ancient lineage of those who, beginning with Adam, have looked to God and waited in anticipation for the Messiah. (See The First Sunday in Advent at givenword.com)
The Seed of our faith that was promised from the beginning to Adam was confirmed about four thousand years ago by Abraham when the Lord told him that
. . . in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3
Remember Father Abraham? He waited for Jesus too. That episode in his life is often over looked in retelling the Advent history. The ancient beginnings of expecting Jesus birth come alive for me when I read about how God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.
When God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham agreed. The idea of both animal and human sacrifice was neither new nor strange to him. It was a common practice in the pagan worship of the cultures he lived among. Most likely he hadn’t learned that his God, the God who was his friend, who talked with him and who had called him to leave the impersonal moon worship and fertility practices of the Chaldeans, hated child sacrifice. He certainly didn’t know that his willingness to obey his God was about to change the story of mankind. He didn’t know that his own faith and obedience would change history. That he was part of his God’s on-going work to stop child sacrifice forever, a work that continues today through God;s chosen men and women. Looking back, it’s no wonder that at Christmas our world celebrates the birth of a child.
But back to the beginnings of the story—
Abraham had already laid the wood for the fire and held the knife to sacrifice his son in his hand when Isaac asked a natural question,
“Look the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham answered in faith,
“My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” Genesis 22 6-7
Whether he was consciously aware of it or not, Abraham, seized by his devotion to God and his determination to obey Him, was prophesying Jesus. He was waiting for Jesus. For Jesus alone is the Lamb whom God has provided as a burnt offering for all humankind.
Can we relive the alert expectancy in those minutes when Abraham, the earthly father of those who live by faith, stood before the altar offering his son to God. Pause with him at that awful moment— with his son bound on the altar, not knowing what the next moment might bring, when suddenly he hears a voice,
The Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham. . . Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God . . . for you have not withheld your son, your only son from Me. Genesis 22:11-12
What relief for Abraham! He knew that Isaac was his heir. A dead son can receive no earthly inheritance. As Abraham moved forward on the sharp and unknown edge of faith, he didn’t know if God would provide a sacrifice or if He would raise Isaac from the dead.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. Hebrews 11:17-19
Did Abraham know, either then or later, that one day God would give His only Son, the babe whose birth we celebrate at Christmas time, as a sacrifice for all mankind? The man of whom his cousin, John said,
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! John 1:29
Might Abraham have known that death could not hold Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, the sinless Lamb of God? Did He know that one day the Holy Spirit would raise his God’s own Son from death?
The ram God provided as a substitute sacrifice for Isaac was a for-runner. In time, hundreds of thousands of rams that would eventually be sacrificed by Abraham’s own blood descendants. The custom of expiation of sins by animal sacrifice, of the substitutionary death of a ram, heifer, dove or other animal to atone for the deathly separation from God that humans bring upon themselves by their inability to love God and one another continued for two thousand years, until the death of Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, who died once and for all for who live, would finally put an end to it all. But that gets ahead of the Advent Story, the birth Jesus. How much of the future did Abraham know?
It was five hundred or so years later before Moses came and gave the law to Abraham’s descendants. In His law, God stipulated that the trespass offering required sacrificing a ram for atonement from sin and for cleansing from defilement. Each sacrifice foreshadowed the advent of the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. Jesus knew this as He offered the communion cup to His disciples and said,
For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Matthew 26:28
How much of this did Moses understand? I think he knew a lot, a lot more than he ever wrote down. Let’s skip over how the Passover and the feasts and the tabernacle and the sacrifices all point to Jesus and look at the end of Deuteronomy. Moses is speaking his closing words to Abraham’s descendants on the plains of Moab before they crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land.
After he has reminded the Israelites of God’s laws and history, confirmed their covenant with God, urged them to obedience, and warned them of the horrible consequences of disobedience, there’s an Advent promise. God has told Moses to write a song, and to “put it in the mouths of the children of Israel” to be a witness to God. (Deut. 31:19)
The song reviews and previews their history with God. The words in Deuteronomy 32 come just before God tells Moses to go up on Mount Nebo to view the land of Caanan and just ahead of his final blessing to the children of Israel before his death. In the very last line of the song God says,
He [God] will provide atonement for His land and His people. Deuteronomy 32:43
And with that anticipation of the advent of Jesus, Moses, like Abraham, joins the expectant train of all who have awaited Jesus’ birth.
Although how much Moses knew of his coming Savior is hidden from us, in Chapter 18 of his final address Moses reveals that he knew something about Jesus advent years before reaching the Jordan, all the way back when God descended with smoke and fire upon Mount Horeb and the generation who died in the wilderness were afraid. At that time, they didn’t want to speak with God directly and asked Moses to be an intermediary between them and God. Now, shortly before the journey to the Promised Land is over, Moses tells the people,
The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.
. . . the LORD said to me [Moses]: . . . I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. 18:15-18
Did Moses know that one day the Israelites would throng to hear the voice of Jesus. Did he see ahead to how each and every animal sacrifice the law God gave to Israel through him looked back to Abraham’s obedience and looked ahead to foretell the sacrifice of God’s own Son? Jesus?
The New Testament suggests so—
And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be spoken afterward Hebrews 3:5
Moses foresaw the inability of the Israelites to keep God’s law. No man can fully keep the law. It’s impossible.
For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. Hebrews 10:1
Surely Moses anticipated that one day God’s own Son would fulfill the law and give His life to bring forgiveness for sin. When Moses spoke with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration surely he recalled that his life on earth was a part of God’s historical plan to unite men with His own Holy Spirit and write His love upon all willing hearts.
For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, Hebrews 7:28
For the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. Hebrews 7:19
because
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, Hebrews 1:1-3
Glory! It burst into my kitchen yesterday morning on the unexpected sound of Christmas strings ringing out Glorias! Glory! It infuses this Advent as believers join with Adam, Abraham, and Moses and all the saints and prophets who have anticipated Jesus’ birth.
May we alive on earth today, we who continue to watch through history, receive encouragement from those who have believed, anticipated, and walked in faith before us. A great cloud of heavenly witnesses looks through the dimensions into our world. During Advent, we join them in anticipating the coming of Jesus. Let us celebrate and welcome the commemoration of His birth, both into our hearts and souls with redemptive joy and into the history of the human race, as we wait and prepare for His final return to earth. Come Lord, Jesus. This Advent we are waiting and preparing for You.
