The First & Second Coming Of Christ
This morning, let me be the first to wish you an official Floridian, post-Thanksgiving MERRY CHRISTMAS. As I understand it and refamiliarize myself with Florida traditions and practices, it is illegal in the state of Florida to celebrate Christmas in any way, shape or form before Thanksgiving… But I find this odd because we give thanks for living in a country where we have the freedom to celebrate it whenever we want. We even preach at our Christmas services that we should be celebrating Jesus’ birth and resurrection every day. So let me also be the first to also say: I don’t care about what the Florida law or expectation is. I changed my personal opinions and beliefs on this matter while living in Tennessee and I am bringing the gospel of early Christmas cheer with me to the sunshine state. I don’t start putting up my Christmas decorations and begin listening to Amy Grant in September. I am not Wal-Mart for crying out loud. But an appropriate time to begin celebrating is post Halloween. I’m gonna quote Pastor Louis here but if you have any issue with that, you can email me at Seth@cityawakening.org.
Now that we are all settled in and I’ve put everyone in a cheerful and jolly mood… I am very excited and honored to be kicking off our advent series this morning. I love Christmas. The music, the traditions, the gift giving, the memories, the movies, Santa and Buddy the Elf, Clark Griswald and George Bailey. It is truly the most wonderful time of the year. And while all of those things mentioned are a part of it, the real reason we are here this morning is because of Jesus Christ. We celebrate the advent or the arrival of our King. This is why I take no issue with decorating and starting the season early: We can and should be celebrating our Savior all year long. That, and I’m the one who has to climb up into the attic twice a year and having everything out for only 25 days is absolutely not worth it.
This morning, we’re starting our Advent teaching series and we will be focusing on the King who has come and will come again. The word ADVENT means to arrive or to come, which is exactly what the Christmas season is about. The Christmas season is about celebrating the fact that Jesus has already arrived with his 1st coming, but it’s also about us waiting with great anticipation for his arrival with his 2nd coming at the end of history. So, in this series we’re going to explore some of the gifts King Jesus brought us when he arrived with his 1st coming, and what it means for our lives today as we wait for his arrival with his 2nd coming. What does it mean for our lives today, that the King has come and will come again? The text we are studying today is found in the book of Isaiah. The title of today’s message is The 1st and 2nd Coming of Jesus and the big idea this morning is the work completed by the first advent of Christ fills us with hope as we wait for the second advent of Christ.
Let’s turn to Isaiah 9. You’ll find Isaiah in the middle of your Bible in the Old Testament amongst the prophets. After Psalms and if you get to Malachi, you’ve gone too far. The words will be on the screen for us as well. We will be in the first seven verses of chapter 9 this morning.
Verse 1 will give us some context as we begin this morning and it says: “Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former time when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations.”
Here’s our context. The book of Isaiah was written by the prophet Isaiah who was sent by God about 700 years before the birth of Jesus. He was sent to warn King Ahaz, the king of Judah, the southern Kingdom, about the impending Assyrian invasion. Assyria was a rising power in this time and there was a group of nations who came together to stop them. Those nations wanted King Ahaz to be part of their alliance against Assyria and the Assyrian king wanted Ahaz to join him. God sends Isaiah to tell Ahaz, “There is no need to join either side; trust in me and I will protect you.” But King Ahaz was one of those kings in the Old Testament that has the little caveat next to his name, “who did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” So, he gets nervous, and Isaiah tries to tell him not to be nervous, God is going to send you a sign. But Ahaz doesn’t want a sign because a sign means he is expected to obey. How many of us have asked God for a sign but when we don’t like what that sign or instruction asks of us we don’t want it anymore? Isaiah gives him the sign anyways and this is the prophecy we find in Isaiah 7-9. I’d encourage you to go read chapters 7 and 8 over the next couple weeks and get the history of what’s happening here. In short, Ahaz agrees to side with the Assyrians and then it backfires on him. They invade Israel! Now, in a panic, Ahaz tries to make amends but instead of turning back to God who he rejected, he begins sacrificing to other gods and idols trying to get them to respond and protect them. Spoiler alert: none of them work. Which is where we find ourselves in the beginning of Chapter 9, the gloom of a distressed land. Thankfully, it doesn’t end there and Isaiah promises it will not always be this way and prophesies the advent of a child and king.
Let’s continue in Verse 2: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.”
There are two advents in the Bible. The first is the advent of Jesus’ birth and the second is the advent of Jesus’ second coming. Advent is the anticipation of God fulfilling his promises and defeating death and Satan through the coming of Christ and the hope we have in his return. Advent is preparing our hearts for Jesus to return.
Many of us here this morning have heard these verses before and we can immediately begin to see the parallels between Israel’s situation and our own situation. Many of us who are skeptics gathered here this morning also may look at the story of Jesus and wondering and questioning the validity. Let me share some facts this morning. Almost 25% of the Old Testament is prophesy. There are over 322 detailed prophesies about Jesus and Isaiah 9 gives us one of the most detailed accounts of Jesus we can read about. If you’re here this morning searching for proof, I would invite you to look at some of these prophesies in the Old Testament. We don’t have time to cover them all today obviously but we can see that our situation is similar. Like the Israelites who were wondering how the promise of a child solves the issue of an amassing Assyrian army outside their gates, many of us are probably wondering this morning how the promise of a returning King solves the problem of the enemies surrounding our hearts this morning.
The good news this morning and the promise we can look to is that a light is dawning. One of my favorite scenes in any film is in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. At the end of the movie, the heroes are trapped in the fortress of Helm’s Deep. They’ve battled through the night and the rain against their enemies that vastly outnumbered them and they are cornered in the keep awaiting their seemingly imminent demise. In a last ditch, suicidal effort to let the women and children escape they ride out to meet their foes head on and the words that the wizard Gandalf spoke to Aragorn ring out “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the east.” And as those words ring out, Gandalf and the riders of the rohirrim assemble at the top of the hill and as the dawn rises behind them, they ride down the hill and annihilate the enemies.
As epic as this scene is, the return of Jesus will be that much more epic. We’ve spent the past 10 months studying the book of Revelation and what his return will be like and how we can find peace in the chaos of the world we live in today. The light is dawning for God’s people just as it was in these times for the Israelites. However, we may be asking ourselves, “Weren’t there 700 more years until Jesus’ return?” Yes. And we are currently in the middle of a 2000 year wait for Christ to ultimately return and rescue his people. However, God offered help to his people and to Ahaz. And he offers us help today. He offers us help through prayer and also helps us with an eternal solution. But Ahaz denied him. He went somewhere else to look for help. Ahaz’s response would have been like the heroes of Helm’s Deep looking at Gandalf and saying, “Hey guys, we’re good. We don’t need your help. In fact, we are gonna go get the women and children and have them help us out. Y’all can head home.” A light is dawning church. Let’s look to it for our hope and salvation.
Verse 3 continues: “You have enlarged this nation and increased its joy. The people have rejoiced before you as they rejoice when dividing spoils. For you have shattered their oppressive yoke and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor, just as you did on the day of Midian. For every trampling boot of battle and the bloodied garments of war will be burned as fuel for the fire.”
Verses 3 through 5 give us a message of hope but also remind us of something awful. Verse 3 says “You have enlarged the nation and increased its joy. The people have rejoiced as they do when dividing the spoils of war.” He shows us the celebration that is to come. But then the prophet points out and reminds the Israelites of where they’ve been: the oppressive yoke, the rod on their shoulders, and the staff of their oppressor. These verses serve as a reminder of a relief that is to come. Almost like viewing our lives from the future. There is a great line in the show the Office in the very last episode where one of the characters, Andy Bernard says, “I wish there was a way to know we were living in the good ole days when we were actually in them.” Here, Isaiah is showing us that the good ole days are coming. We are in a similar season as the Israelites. We wait for the return of the King. And let’s be honest and all get on the same page this morning: waiting stinks. It is not fun. Nobody enjoys waiting for a great meal to be served – how many of you heard the phrase “how much longer until dinner/lunch?” this week or “are we almost there?” That resonates with a few I know. Our kids don’t care about or understand the process of making food, the prep that goes into the delicious meals we eat for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They don’t care about the details – they just want to eat! Or waiting to open presents Christmas morning or for a birthday. My wife tortured me a little bit last week. It was my birthday on Monday and the entire week leading up to my birthday, she had my presents waiting on the kitchen counter. Just out in the open. It was awful and torturous. Many of us are in a struggle or have struggled waiting for marriage and not just the physical excitement that comes with that but the companionship and partnership of doing life with someone every day. On a more serious note, many of us are afflicted and tortured by the oppressive yoke, rod and staff of the oppression of sin. And we are longing for the day where Jesus will wipe every tear from our eyes and we will no longer battle with the enemy and struggle with sin. I have wrestled with this in my own life. I have mourned and grieved over continued sin in my life, sin that I thought I should’ve been rid of long ago. Sin that I have pleaded for God to take away. I’ve felt like Paul begging God to remove the thorn from my side, pleading with him to take it away 3 times. 30 times. 300 times. And yet, that thorn in my side (those thorns in my sides) have reminded me over and over that God’s grace is sufficient for me in my weakness. My weaknesses constantly point to yes, what a failure I am but in different words, what a need I have for my Savior. And his grace is perfected in my weakness. Waiting does stink. But waiting ultimately reminds us that life for the believer is in a posture of waiting for ultimate redemption. And don’t forget this: while we may not care for the process of how the final feast is made, God does. He is intricately involved in the process. And he cares about what he is doing in you to prepare you. We may have an idea of how quickly we want things to happen, but we must remember that God is never late. Don’t replace God with something else in the waiting like Ahaz did. JD Greer says: “The greatest threat to your spiritual life is not rejecting God, but supplementing God.” Don’t supplement God with something else. Go straight to the source. We don’t take vitamin D supplements in Florida because we have almost year-round access to the source. CS Lewis says, “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” He will deliver. He will show his faithfulness. And he is about to prove it.
Verse 6: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders.”
This is one of the most famous passages in scripture when prophesying about Jesus. It is one of the most famous verses read at Christmas. And yet, as I was studying this week, I caught something that seemed odd to me. Israel is on the brink of a disastrous invasion. The powerful Assyrians are invading and the allies around them have abandoned them. Isaiah comes in and shares that God’s promised redemption for Israel is… a child? The government will be on his shoulders. Really? This would be the equivalent of someone coming to me and telling me not to worry about the prospect of World War 3. Why? Oh, your 8-year-old Ava Grace is gonna end the fighting. It’ll all be okay. Now, for those of you who know our sweet Ava Grace, it is not a hard thing to imagine her ruling the world someday. That girl is large and in charge. But I find it odd that Isaiah is prophesying about a child, a son, being the redeemer of Israel and solving all of their problems. We are met with the same confusion today as we watch the world implode on itself while we wait for Jesus’ second coming. We know and believe he will be coming as a conquering king, but when? We can understand the confusion that the Israelites may have felt when Isaiah said a child would be coming for their redemption and as a gift. A child would’ve also meant that they needed to wait for that child to grow up. Their problems would not be solved with the child’s birth. Even if he was going to rule as a child, like King Josiah, the Israelites would’ve needed to wait another 9 years. The agony of waiting would’ve continued. But we only need to read a bit further to discover what kind of child and what kind of gift this child would be.
Verse 6: “He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever. The seal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this.”
The waiting will be hard and is hard. But thanks to the first advent of Jesus’ birth and life and death and resurrection, what we receive while we wait is Jesus. The calming presence of his Holy Spirit. The power to overcome sin by the power of the cross. These names listed define and describe his nature and dominion over all things. Wonderful Counselor: he is our awesome guide. When we are in the thick smoke and the fog of war in our sin, he helps us through these problems by allowing us to see how wonderous and awesome he is. By focusing on Him and his glory. A writer and worship leader, Matt Papa wrote a book where he described something called scattered beams. These are the beams of light we see refracting off the moments in life. They’re the moments that, as we battle temptation and frustrations and persecution in life, we see and instead focus on the moments of God’s faithfulness, the beauty of his creation, the promises in his word.
The next title for Jesus is Mighty God. This one doesn’t need much explaining but I do want us to remember the story of Jesus stopping the waves of the storm with his disciples that caused them to say: “Surely, this is the son of God.” We worship the God who is mighty enough to create the universe and hold it together. We worship the God who intricately creates life in a womb and knows us by name. And we worship a God who with his might and power controls the wind and waves. Doesn’t just control them, he rebukes them. He stops them. Rebuke is something you do to something beneath you. As we wait for the second advent of Jesus, we have the power of the mighty, storm-stopping Jesus within us and can’t rebuke anything beneath him. This includes our sin. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a sermon about Jesus rebuking the devil after he tempts him three times and Jesus says, “Get thee hence.” Which is another way of saying “Get out of here. You are not welcome here. Let me show you the door.” When we are tempted and tried, depend on the Mighty God title of Jesus and tell the devil “Let me show you the door.”
Eternal Father is the next title we encounter. Again, not much explanation needed here. But I want to share a quote from JD Greer again and then a story. Greer says: “In Christ, you have the presence and the promise of the God who holds the universe in his hands and the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion really matters.” Is there anyone in our lives whose opinion matters more to us than our fathers? Sometimes this is an awful thing. Our fathers may have been abusive and used their words to cut down and destroy. As a father, I know I have not always been gracious with my words to my daughters. My father, is a great father. And he had a practice after I started driving and was in my early years of adulthood where I would be late getting home, sometimes breaking curfew or sometimes just being out late after I didn’t have a curfew. Whenever I got home, no matter the time, my dad would be sitting in his chair by the front door. Sometimes asleep, sometimes still awake watching an old war movie. But he’d get up, give me a hug, tell me he loved me and was proud of me and was thankful I made it home. And then he’d go to bed. No questions as to where I’d been or what I had been doing. Church, just knowing my father’s opinion of me being proud, thankful for my safety and loving me was enough to keep me from doing too many stupid things through those years. And while I am thankful my father shared those opinions, my Eternal Father’s opinion is so much more valuable and important and really the only one whose opinion matters in the grand scheme of eternity.
Finally, we get to the Prince of Peace. I’m not sure there is a better way to begin our final sermon series of the year than by reminding us what the 2nd advent of our King brings us: Peace in a world of chaos. Looking ahead to 2025, there is a lot of uncertainty. Some are excited about the results of the election, some are fearful. Many think World War 3 will officially begin in 2025. Stock markets and the economy are volatile and unstable. Our country is more at odds with itself than it has been in over a century. Truth is still largely being attacked in classrooms, cubicles and everywhere else. And there is a God who offers us peace. Peace that reaches beyond our understanding of it. Peace that doesn’t make sense. We gather together this morning to worship the Prince of peace in the midst of chaos. And while we won’t be singing the Hallelujah chorus this morning, the words of that wonderful and beautiful song echo through our minds all throughout this season: And He shall reign for ever and ever. This reign of peace will be forever and ever more.
The big idea of the message is the work completed by the first advent of Christ fills us with hope as we wait for the second advent of Christ. We are in the middle of waiting again Church. I saw a tweet this week that said: “Don’t sanitize advent. There were 400 years of longing and lament after Malachi prophesied about forthcoming justice in the arrival of the Messiah. There are no easy answers as to why God makes us wait.” There are no easy answers. And from the time Isaiah wrote these words to the time of Jesus’ first advent, there were nearly 750 years. Now we are in the in-between of his first advent and his second and that waiting period has nearly tripled. Many generations have come and gone believing they would see the light dawning and the return of the Prince of Peace. And our generation will most likely not be the last. No one knows the hour. But I kinda disagree with this tweet. It doesn’t sanitize advent to remember that waiting is hard and we’ve still got an undisclosed amount of time to wait… I think it rather enhances the hope we can have. The peace we can have. We do not come to this place on Sunday mornings and sing songs and listen to a message without hope. We trust in the work of Jesus on the cross and know that his first advent brought about salvation for us so that we may face death and life after it filled with peace and hope and expectancy that he is coming again to redeem us and save us. It is because of this hope that we can have peace. Peace as we face the storms. Peace as we face the trials and the persecution. Peace because we know who is in control. Peace because we know who is coming. Peace in a world of chaos. Let not your hearts be troubled City Awakening. Our King is coming soon. Pray.