This Changes Everything: The Second Advent Series

“I love it when a plan comes together.” Those of you who are older than dirt probably remember this phrase being used by Hannibal Smith in the A-Team. It was first used in the pilot of the show on January 23, 1983. That will be forty years ago in two months. Forty years before that Canada was in the middle of the second world war and it would be ten more years before the general public would even know what television was.

But that was just an aside.

Paul said something very similar when he wrote Galatians 4:4 But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law.

Not just anytime, but when the right time came.

This is the first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of our “This Changes Everything” series, which will take us through to Christmas Day.

For more than four hundred years the people of Israel had been waiting in expectation for their coming Messiah. They looked at the prophecies of Isaiah, Micah and David with anticipation of their coming king and deliverer. And then it seemed as if everything had come together.

The advent candle that was lit this morning was the prophet’s Candle and it directs us to Old Testament Prophecies that point to the coming Messiah.

And throughout the Gospels we see those Prophecies being fulfilled. Not just in the birth of Jesus, but in his ministry and ultimately in his death and resurrection.

And that brings us to the scripture that was read this morning, not your usual Advent scripture.

I’m sure that as the Apostles stood on that hilltop listening to Jesus as he told them about the power that they would receive, and how they would become witnesses to the power of Christ across the known world, they must have been thinking, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

And then, everything changed when Christ ascended. There he was, and there he was gone. Just like that he disappeared. That wasn’t part of the plan. The plan was for Jesus to establish his Kingdom and to send the Romans packing.

For Israel to become great again, and for the apostles to be appointed leaders in the new Kingdom.

But the prophecies of the Old Testament and even the advent announcements of the New Testament point beyond the Christmas Story.

We often see the Christmas story as all of the story, or at least the beginning of a story that lasted until the death and resurrection of Jesus. But it was the beginning of a much larger story.

It was during what we refer to as the Last Supper that Jesus said this to his apostles, John 14:1–3 “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.

This of course is Jesus’ promise of his return.

Now at this point, you are probably expecting me to break out the charts and the timetables that will pinpoint all of the appropriate events and happenings with appropriate guesses as to when it may happen.

Now there was a time that I would have done that. Oh, did I have charts and timetables.

But the older I get; I don’t know if I become smarter or simply more aware of my ignorance. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t want to be identified with the chart and timetable people. This popped up on my Facebook feed the other day.

(Church curmudgeon quote)

So, we aren’t going there.

Through the years I’ve come to understand the truth of the statement that William Barclay made about the study of the end times when he said “The result is that it . . . has sometimes become the playground of religious eccentrics, who use it to map out celestial time-tables of what is to come or find in it evidence for their own eccentricities.”

So, let’s start this morning with what we Don’t Know

Matthew 24:36 Jesus said “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.”

We Don’t know The When

There is a natural curiosity as to when Jesus is coming back. For the past two thousand years Christians have been wondering, and the apostles themselves wondered that same thing.

In the book of Mark Jesus had been talking about the end times and the apostles demanded an answer to the question in Mark 13:4 “Tell us, when will all this happen? What sign will show us that these things are about to be fulfilled?”