This is kind of an unusual year. Most of
the time, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the first Sunday of Advent.
But this year, just because of the way the calendar falls, we have a
Sunday in between Thanksgiving and Advent. It’s kind of strange.
Thanksgiving is over, but Advent is not here yet. So, while we
might like to start celebrating the coming of the Savior, we have to wait.
As I thought about that, I thought about how long the
people of Israel waited for the Savior to come. Old Testament prophecies
about the coming of the Messiah go back at least to seven hundred B. C., maybe
earlier. That means the people of Israel had been waiting for the Savior
to come for at least seven hundred years.
And we’ve talked about this before, but sometimes, when we
look back this far into history, we lose sight of how long a time seven hundred
years is. In our minds, it all kinds of falls into the category of “a long
time ago”. We don’t think about how long it was between seven hundred B.
C. and the coming of Christ.
Think of it this way. Seven hundred years ago was
1317. Seven hundred years ago most people thought the world was flat.
Seven hundred years ago there were no gasoline-powered engines, no steam
engines, no power of any kind, really, other than human power and horse power.
And I mean actual power from horses, or donkeys, or oxen, or whatever
animal you might have. Seven hundred years ago there was no such thing as
the printing press. Anything that was written was written by hand.
Seven hundred years ago Europeans had no idea that there was such a thing
as the Americas. That’s how long seven hundred years is.
And that’s how long the people of Israel had been waiting
for the Savior to come. And of course, during that time, there were lots
of false Saviors. There were lots of people who claimed to be the Savior
who were not. There were lots of people in whom the people of Israel invested
their hope, only to be disappointed.
I’m sure some people probably gave up. I mean, seven
hundred years is a very long time to wait for something. We think seven
years is a long time to wait. In fact, sometimes we think seven months or
seven weeks or even seven days is a long time to wait. Waiting for seven
hundred years--I don’t think you and I can even imagine what that’s like, to
wait that long for the promise of God to be fulfilled.
And even after Jesus came, a lot of people had a hard time
believing it. And if we think about it, we can understand why. I
mean, have you ever really, really wanted something to happen, and you kept
waiting and hoping for it to happen, and then it finally did, and you had
trouble believing it? You had to pinch yourself. You had to keep
reminding yourself. You just could not believe that this thing you had
wanted for so long was actually real.
That’s the position some of the people of Israel were in.
They wanted to believe Jesus was the Savior, but--could it really be
true? After all this time--seven hundred years--could he really be the
one we’ve been waiting for? After all the disappointments, all the false
Saviors we put our hope in only to find out it was not true--could Jesus really
be the one we’ve been waiting for at last?
That’s the context the apostle John was dealing with when
he wrote his gospel. Yes, there were some who already believed, but there
were a lot who did not. They could not believe that, after seven hundred
years, the one they had waited for had finally come.
And so, John starts his gospel by trying to explain to
people who Jesus was. And what does he say? Well, we’ll get to it
in a minute, but first, we need to deal with how John refers to Jesus. He
calls Jesus “the Word” and later calls him “the Word made flesh”. In
other words, Jesus was sent to earth as God’s message, God’s truth, God’s word
to us. So in that Bible reading, when you hear the phrase “the Word”, know
that he’s referring to Jesus.
So what does John say?
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things
were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was
life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Jesus existed from the
beginning. In other words, when Genesis says “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth”, Jesus was there. And it’s not that
Jesus was there with God, it’s that Jesus is God, God the Son. Jesus is
not some guy who was born two thousand years ago. Jesus is eternal,
because God is eternal. Jesus existed before this world was ever created.
Jesus will exist after this world is gone. Jesus always was, always
is, and always will be. That’s who Jesus is.
And the reason that’s
important, or at least one of the reasons why it’s important, is to explain why
they had to wait seven hundred years for the Savior to come. As we said,
seven hundred years is an incredibly long time for us. When your life
span is, at best, a hundred years or so, seven hundred years seems like a
really long time. But when you’re eternal, seven hundred years is
nothing. It’s the blink of an eye. Psalm Ninety tells us that a
thousand years are like a day that has just gone by to God. So seven
hundred years, to God, is really no big deal.
There are a lot of other things
John said in our Bible reading today. Jesus is the true light. As
John puts it, “the true light that gives light to everything was coming into
the world.” “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his
name, he gave the right to become children of God--children...born of God.”
There are a lot of good sermons in that passage we read this morning.
But I want to keep the focus on
that time of waiting. Seven hundred years, at least, from the time of the
first prophecy of the Savior to the time Jesus came. And let me tell you
why.
The Bible tells us some things
about the second coming of Jesus. Not as much as we’d like to know, but
some things. And one of the things it tells us is that, in its own words,
Jesus second coming will be “soon”.
Now, it does not define “soon”.
But most of us would think it means sometime before two thousand years
have gone by. And so, people wonder about that statement. If Jesus
was supposed to come again “soon”, where is he? Why has he not come yet?
And when we look around at the
world right now, we see a lot of things that make us think maybe it’s about
time. Look at all the disasters we’ve had in the world. For a while
there, it seemed like there was not a week that went by without a hurricane, or
an earthquake, or a big forest fire, or a devastating mudslide, or something.
And look at all the threats of war. Look at all the accusations of
immorality about our elected leaders. We see all that, and sometimes we think
“If Jesus is going to come again and set things right, maybe it’s about time he
did it.” We wonder why God has, for so long, allowed so many things to
happen that just do not seem right. We wonder why God does not step in
and do something about it. We wonder what God could be waiting for.
But the thing to remember is
that we have no idea what “soon” may mean to God. Two thousand years?
Two thousand years is nothing to God. Two thousand years is the day
before yesterday, or the day after tomorrow. Two thousand years is an
incredibly long time on a human scale, but it’s nothing on God’s eternal scale.
We don’t know how much longer
it will be. It could be another two thousand years. It could be
another two hundred thousand years. Or it could be two hours. We
don’t know.
And so, we wait. We don’t
know how long we’ll be waiting, just like the people waiting for the first
coming did not know how long they’d be waiting. We wonder if it’ll come
in our lifetime, just like the people waiting for the first coming wondered if
it would happen in their lifetime. And sometimes we’re tempted to give
up, just like people waiting for the first coming were tempted to give up.
But don’t give up.
Because Jesus is coming again. And we need to be ready. Even
if Jesus does not come in our lifetimes, we still need to be ready.
Because if Jesus does not come to earth in our lifetimes, we will go to
meet him. And we need to be ready for that, too. Because we don’t
know when that day is going to come, either. But we know it is going to
come.
In human terms, it took a long time for the Savior to come.
Seven hundred years or more after the first prophecy. People did
not understand why it took so long. Some of them gave up. But the
Savior did come, and the world changed forever because of it.
In human terms, it’s taking a long time for Jesus to come
again. Two thousand years since the first mention of it. Some
people don’t understand why it’s taking so long. Some people are tempted
to give up. But the Savior will come again, and again the world will
change forever.
May we all be ready for that day when it comes.
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