December 13 2009    Reading:  Matthew 28.16-20

Third Sunday in Advent

 Theme: ‘Hope.........in Christ’s coming......’

The Pacific islands of Tuvalu are beautiful. They look just like an advert from a glossy holiday brochure. Palm trees, white sands, crystal clear waters, and of course unlimited sunshine. This past week, however, there were pictures on the television of a most extraordinary thing. When the spring tides come, now waters almost cover the islands. Because sea levels are rising, due to global warming, sea water now floods in beneath the houses of the islanders of Tuvalu.

Here in the UK former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern issued a report this past week. He warns that if we do nothing, there may be a 20 per cent shrinking of the global economy, and some 200 million people, like the islanders of Tuvalu, could become refugees through rising sea waters, flood or drought.

Global warming is with us. Hardly a day goes by but there is a reference to the changes in the earth’s climate somewhere in the news, TV, radio, or the papers…………

One striking thing about global warming, is the way that it has fixed attention in various ways, on the past the present and the future….. of the earth

During the season of Advent, the Church looks back to the coming of Jesus, looks to His presence with us in the present, and looks to the future when He will come again.

You see, as to the past, we have been redeemed at the Cross, once and for all, through Jesus Christ. Our sin is laid on Him, the burden of our guilt, all that weighs us down is lifted there at the Cross. At the Cross we are forgiven once and for all and forever.

And as we journey on, the living God, having done this great thing for us in Jesus Christ at the Cross , does not forget the little things, our daily needs, our daily lives. In God’s care we are sustained, nourished, with all the rich treasures of the gospel of Jesus, the bread of life for each day. Sometimes the way forward might seem closed. But then it is, that our Father in heaven breaks in, and opens a new way for us where there was none.

But faith has always looked far further than our salvation in Jesus, and our being sustained each day by Him. Faith has always looked to the future, to His coming again.

Here are the words of the Lord Jesus, the last words spoken to His disciples in Matthew’s gospel.

His words are these: “ I am with you, I will be with you always, to the very end of the age............”

Now here is the foundation, the solid ground of wonderful hope for us ! Why ?

First, Jesus says to the disciples........”I am... with you” Here Jesus, risen from the dead declares that He is present with the disciples. And He will not leave the disciples as they set out into the world. Just as had known Him and had spoken with Him in those quiet moments by the shore in Galilee, on the sun filled hillsides, in the shaded olive groves over 3 long years - He is still with them. “I am with you........” says Jesus.

How poignant it is to remember that when the risen Lord Jesus said these words, the disciples did not know what was ahead, they did not know the situations they would face. But they did know that the Lord was with them, they could turn to Him at any point, and know Him close at hand. “I am with you”.  They knew that He was with them - whatever happened. They knew that He had the present, and the future in His care. And so their lives were founded and grounded in firm, enduring, unshakeable hope in Jesus Christ !

And His word to us from the gospel is,

I am with you, I will be with you...........always, to the very end of the age............”

So, then, through all the seasons and changes of life, right to the very end of life itself........... for the word of Jesus is “Lo, I am with you always”.

And it is not the strength of your faith or mine that matters, this is Christ’s unshakeable promise to us. He who is Lord of all says: I am with you always, I will be with you always to the very end of the age.

He walks with us through the present, through this life, and right to the conclusion of all things, to the very end of the age.

What of the future........ the end of the age ?

William Miller was a great revival preacher in the United States. After 14 years of studying the Bible, he announced to his hearers that the end of the age was very near.

It would be April 3 1843. As the spring weather brightened on the first day of April some folks headed for the mountaintops. Others were in various spots they thought might offer a good view, Society ladies in Philadelphia got together outside the city, we are told, to avoid the common crowds on the last day, April the 3rd. April 4th. dawned as usual. Some were disillusioned. But not to worry. William Miller had a range of dates. The next one was March 21, 1844. And after that October 22, 1844. The crowds were a lot less at that one..... I suppose we can say this, however, that at least sincere, ordinary people were moved by the thought of the end of the age...............

By contrast, at the present, the Church is not in general moved by that great sense of the end of the age, by Christ’s coming.

But the prophets, the whole of the New Testament and the early believers were !

Peter tells us – that the prophets of old, searched intently, and with the greatest care,

with the deepest longing, for the day of Christ’s coming, as the Spirit of Christ in them

pointed them, lifted their gaze, strengthened their hope, to the day when the Lord would come, and all the glories that would follow……….

That looking to the future; that keen sense of longing is to be found right throughout the New Testament, and the Early Church was immersed in it………

a keen sense of the future looking for the return of Jesus Christ……

The New Testament declares on almost every second page,

that Jesus Christ is coming again.

This was the air that the apostles breathed, and the Early Church,

the early believers lived, looking towards the horizons with expectation,

looking each dawn to see if this was the day.

if this was the last day, dawning………

They, the believers, the Church lived in the light of that day, when Christ would return…..

In almost all the books of the New Testament, we find this keen sense, an expectation, that Jesus Christ is coming, a keen sense of His return, an enduring hope in Jesus.

At the funeral of the former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev nearly twenty years ago, an extraordinary thing happened. His wife stood motionless by the coffin. Then, just as the soldiers were about to lift it, Brezhnev's wife reached over and with a simple gesture made the sign of the cross over her husband.

Remember, this was in the Kremlin, at the very centre of communist, materialist power. That simple sign of the cross, spoke of a hope, even there, even in that place, for another life, of a hope not in vast earthly power, but in the Saviour Jesus Christ, a hope that Jesus might have mercy on her husband.

What we find when we look at the history of the Christian Church is that Christian hope is found at its brightest, purest, most enduring not in the great times, but in the hardest times of greatest difficulties, it is then that enduring hope in Jesus Christ can be seen most clearly. Shining brightest in the deepest darkness. It is that hope in Jesus Christ the Church needs today.

That is precisely what Paul speaks about in the letter to the Romans……..

“our salvation” he says, “is nearer now than when we first believed,

the night is nearly over, the day is almost here……… Christ is coming !”

there we read of the deepest hope for Christ’s coming,

the deepest longing for the day of His return,

when He will bring justice, light to the nations,

the day of everlasting joy and gladness

It is as our life in Jesus deepens, as His Spirit works within us,

so deep within us, there wells up that longing for His coming again,

and for all that day will mean for us.

May it be so, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus..............

AMEN.