Advent 2 December 4, 2016
Advent 2
Luke 21:25-36
December 4, 2016
“Lighten the Load While You’re Waiting”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Everybody knows that you can get so engrossed in the Christmas season that you forget all about the real reason that we even celebrate Christmas. Well, the same is true about this world. You can get so engrossed in this world that you forget Jesus has promised to come back and there will be a life of the world to come. That’s what Jesus warns against today—being weighed down with the wrong stuff of this world and not lifted up with the good promises of God. As you wait for Jesus to return, He wants your hearts to be lifted up by His promise.
What is this promise? In the Gospel reading today, Jesus says He will come back. Of course, you know that. You’ve heard it many times. In fact, some of you have maybe heard it so many times that you begin to wonder if it will really ever happen. I know we all at times begin to have our doubts or wonders. But I’d like to remind you this morning that we’re not the only ones who have had to wait. We so quickly forget that the people of the Old Testament waited much longer for the Messiah to come than we have waited for Him to come back.
Paul says in our second reading today that whatever was written in former days (that’s in the Old Testament) was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. You and I need some endurance and encouragement as we wait for Jesus to return and take us to heaven. We need our hearts lifted up. Well, that’s just what we find in the Old Testament. Lots of endurance. And lots of encouragement.
In Genesis chapter 3, verse 19, God promised to send the Messiah. He said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” That was the first promise. But God promised the Messiah many other times after that. So they were always waiting. Always waiting. For thousands of years they were waiting.
Consider old Noah. He had already waited 600 years, that’s how old he was, and still no Messiah. And then God tells him, at 600 years old, to build an ark for the coming flood. And Noah did it. Even though he had waited 600 years and God still hadn’t sent the Messiah. He still believed God. Even though it wasn’t raining and Noah would have to spend a lot of time building that boat. All those years waiting, and he still believed and trusted God’s promise. And yet we know that the Messiah still wouldn’t come for another 4,000 years or so after Noah’s day.
What about Abraham and Sarah? God had promised that it would be through his seed that the Messiah would come. But he was nearly a hundred years old and he still didn’t have a son. Do you think he had doubts and wonders? Do you think he was tired of waiting? But He believed and trusted God’s promise that He would send the Messiah. Even though it wouldn’t be until some two thousand years after Abraham that Jesus was born.
They waited. Waited, waited, waited. And trusted God’s promise even when it seemed to be taking a long time.
Or go back to Methusaleh. The oldest man in the Bible. He lived to be 969 years old. All those years the Messiah didn’t come. For 969 years he waited for the Messiah to come and it didn’t happen all during Methusaleh’s lifetime. Do you think he had moments when he doubted during those 969 years?
Move on further to Moses. He was 80 years old when God called him to go back to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of there. 80 years old. Maybe Moses might’ve thought, “Why doesn’t God just send the Messiah already? I’ve been living on this earth 80 years and he still hasn’t come. He could just send Him to take care of this Egypt problem.” But God didn’t. He sent Moses. And Moses had to wait for that promised Messiah. It would be another fifteen hundred years after Moses before Jesus was born. Moses and all of them had to wait. And trust God’s promise.
They all waited. Through famines, through wars, through plagues, through captivity, through exile, through bad kings and good kings, through years and years of trouble—they waited. And believed God’s promise to send the Messiah.
Joshua, Samuel, Gideon, Samson, Ruth, Saul, Jesse, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel—all of them waited. Waited. Waited. And we sit here in 2016 and get impatient, don’t we? Yeah, we sit here and say, “Pffft, Jesus still hasn’t come back. Maybe He’s never coming back.” We get lazy and we say, “Ah, it doesn’t really matter if I go to church or not, if I pray or not, if I sin or not, if I read the Scriptures or not. It really doesn’t matter because He’s obviously not coming back anytime soon.”
Well, He did come. He did come. He was born. Born in a stable in Bethlehem just over 2,000 years ago. He came. God kept His promise. Because, well, God always keeps His promises. Everything else in this world will pass away, but God’s word will never pass away. It’s stronger than anything else in this entire world. Stronger than gold, stronger than diamonds, stronger that you—God’s Word will never be broken.
Jesus did come. And He lived among us and everybody was so full of their doubts that most people didn’t even recognize that He was the Messiah. But He showed us. By miracles, by His Word, by His Baptism, by His Transfiguration, by His power over demons, and most importantly, by His resurrection from the dead—He showed us He was the Messiah. That God kept His Word. That our sins truly are forgiven in Him and that God truly does love us. God’s Word will never be broken.
And this same Jesus now has promised that He will come back. He will keep His Word. Yes, we’ve waited a long time. Yes, it’s been almost 2,000 years and He hasn’t returned yet. Big deal. God always keeps His Word. We haven’t waited as long as Noah did or Methusaleh did or Abraham did. He will come again.
So as you wait for Him to come again, Jesus warns you to watch your heart. Watch your hearts lest they be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. Now that’s interesting. He uses two words there that both have something to do with drinking too much alcohol. Dissipation is a Greek word that seems to do specifically with the losing your head that happens when you drink too much. The other Greek word is just plain drunkenness and it’s related to the Greek word for wine. So Jesus is definitely making a point here about losing your head and yourself getting drunk in the world.
You can do that with alcohol but you can also do that with any number of other things. We can get drunk on political concerns. We can lose our heads and get drunk on social things like fitting in, having friends, local gossip, etc,, etc. We can get drunk on material things—buying, buying, buying. We can get drunk on sports and, in particular, our kids and grandkids sports. We can get drunk on success—wanting to be better and better and better. Anytime we lose our heads and forget about Jesus Christ—our hearts have been dissipated and weighed down.
The other thing Jesus specifically mentions is the cares or anxieties of the world. If we fret and fret so much after our few years here on this earth as if it were the only thing that mattered—then the cares of this world have weighed down our hearts. If we cannot make time to be in Church every Sunday, to read God’s Word every day, and to pray every day—all because we say that we’ve got too much else to do—than the cares of this world have weighed down our hearts.
Repent. All of us. Repent and believe Jesus’ promise. He is coming back. Stay awake at all times, He says. Don’t get weighed down getting drunk and over-worried about the cares of this world. Lighten your hearts by keeping Jesus’ promise right in front of you at all times. He will come again. He has promised.
Let your worries fade away and let the drunkenness cease. Lift up your hearts to Jesus Christ. Here He comes to you today in His Word and in His body and blood here in the Lord’s Supper to make good on His promise to forgive your sins and to remind you that He will keep all His promises—including His promise to come back again. He won’t let you down.
Yes, the cares of this world and the temptations of this world are hard. Many days we want to get drunk on something and forget it all. But the only Word that you can truly trust is the Word of Jesus Christ. Lighten your hearts by trusting Him. Trust Him. He is coming again. He is the God of endurance and encouragement. And just like all those Old Testament saints waited and endured and were encouraged—you will be too. We wait because we know His Word is good. Jesus is coming and coming soon. In His name. Amen.