[Machine transcription]
As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
You may be seated.
Dear Novak, the baptized, and to all the Lord’s baptized children, we rejoice that our Lord
Jesus Christ tells us that he is coming in glory to judge the living and the dead.
But why do we have that text today?
the first Sunday of the church year, the first day of the church year, the first
Sunday in Advent. Liturgically, Advent is the season of prepping for Christmas.
It’s a repentant season. It’s hard to suppress the joy and the expectation,
but it’s a time of fasting as we prepare for the Lord to celebrate how
the Lord came into our flesh to be our brother and our Savior and our friend. So
So we have these four weeks leading up to the Feast of Christmas to get ready.
But theologically, Advent is doing quite a bit more than that.
In fact, Advent is the⦠it sort of sets the mark of what Christianity does.
We’ll remember just as an example that when we consider how we are creatures and God is
the Creator or how we are sinners and God is holy, when we consider this gap or this
distance between us and God, something happens in us and humanity and we think that we have
to bridge the gap, that we’ve got to climb into heaven, that we’ve got to clamber up
to find God.
And so we have all the religions of the world, all the philosophies of the world, all the
moral structures of the world, trying to appear before God to be ready, to try to find Him,
to see Him, to get a glimpse of His glory.
But Christianity comes entirely differently.
It says that man is not ascending to God, but rather God is descending to us.
God comes to us.
God comes to you.
That is the theme of Advent. The coming of God to humanity. To be our brother and
to be our Savior and to be our friend and Redeemer. And in fact the coming of
Jesus to us happens both in the past and present and in the future. In the past we
remember Christmas, the humiliation of Jesus, how he’s born of the Virgin Mary,
suffers under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. And
present that Jesus continues to come to us in his church. That’s why he gathers
us so that He can be in our midst and He can bless us with His Word and His forgiveness
and His promises, and in the future we know that Jesus will come again.
Of all of the unclear things about the future, of all of the unknowns, of all of the great
mysteries, of all the cloudiness as we try to think what will happen next, one thing
stands out like a light in the darkness.
One thing is unmoving, and that is the promise that the Lord Jesus will return in glory,
that He will stand on the earth, He will call us out of the grave, that He will divide the
sheep and the goats, that He will bring us into the new heaven and the new earth.
When is that going to happen?
When will it be?
We don’t know.
In fact, that’s the point of the text today, that this day, this hour, is unknown.
The disciples want to know, Lord, when is this going to happen?
And Jesus not only tells the disciples that not only can they not know, but Jesus says
that the angels don’t even know, and then Jesus says, I don’t even know, only the Father.
Now, that’s an amazing thing to say, but that this day is not only unknown, but it’s unknowable
and it’s that way on purpose.
I was trying to imagine this week if it was different, if the day was known.
Could youâ¦
Okay, so how would things be different, do you think, in the church and maybe even in
your own life, if Jesus would have said, I’m going to come back on June 5, 2027 at 420,
423 central time.
How would things be different?
In fact, not only would a little bit be different, but everything would be different.
It becomes the mark or the characteristic of the church of Jesus.
the church of the New Testament,
that we’re waiting for him to come
at a time that is unknown to us.
I was reading Alfred Edersheim on this this week.
Alfred Edersheim, remember, from Bible class,
is for you husbands wanting to score points for your wives,
this is what you need to get her for Christmas.
Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.
I think it was originally published in 1899.
The version I have is 1901.
It is a beautiful text.
This is what he says about this, the wind, so I’m going to give you a couple of paragraphs,
so stick with me.
The wind, the day and the hour of His coming was to remain hidden from men and angels,
even from the Son Himself.
It formed no part of His present messianic mission, nor was it subject of His messianic
teaching.
Had it done so?
If that day was known and preached, had it done so, all the teaching that follows from
Jesus concerning the need of constant watchfulness or the pressing duty of working for Christ
in faith, hope and love with purity and self-denial and endurance, all of this would have been
lost.
The peculiar attitude of the church, with loins girt for work since the time was short
and the Lord might come at any moment, with her hands busy, with her mind faithful, her
bearings self-denying and devoted, her heart full of love and expectancy, her face upturned
toward the sun that was so soon to rise, and her ears straining to catch the first notes
of heaven’s song of triumph, all this would have been lost if the Lord would have told
us the day He was coming back.
What has sustained the church during the night of sorrow these many centuries, what has nerved
her with courage for the battle, with steadfastness to bear, with love to work, with patience
and joy in disappointments, all of this would have been lost.
The church would not have been that of the New Testament had she known the mystery of
that day and hour, and if she was not waiting for the immediate coming of her Lord and Bridegroom.
So the church, so you and I, our minds and our hearts and our families are marked by
this patient readiness, or maybe it’s the other way, I couldn’t figure it out, this
ready patience for the Lord to return in glory. We’re ready if the Lord returns
next week, or next month, or next year, or in ten years, or in a hundred, or in a
thousand years. We’re ready, we’re patient and waiting for that, but we’re also
ready if the Lord would come back, may he grant it, before the end of the sermon.
We are ready at any moment, we are ready to stand before Him in judgment, and we are ready
to live our lives in this world.
Now that two-fold readiness, ready for the end and ready for the not end, this becomes
the mark of the church in the New Testament, but it becomes difficult for the world.
That is what Jesus is talking about.
Here’s Edersheim, and this gets us to the days of Noah stuff in the text.
Edersheim says,
What the church of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament has been and is, what her Lord and
Master Jesus made her, and by no agency more effectually than by leaving undetermined the
precise time of His return, this to the world would indeed become an occasion for carelessness
and practical disbelief of the coming judgment, just as in the days of Noah.
That’s how Jesus says it. He says, just as in the days of Noah so will be the
time before the coming of the Son of Man. And Jesus tells us what the days of
Noah were. People were eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage.
Now this is not the problem because Noah and his wife and his three sons and
And their three wives were also eating and drinking and apparently marrying and giving
and marriage.
That’s not the problem.
The problem with the people in the day of Noah is not what they were doing, it was what
they were not doing, namely they were not building arks.
They were not listening to Noah preach.
Remember how Noah is described as the preacher of righteousness.
He was building this.
The Lord came to Noah and He warned him, hey, the flood is coming and it’s going to wipe
out humanity. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult texts in all the Scripture when
we read how the Lord looked upon this world filled with people and He regretted it. He
regretted that He had made man. So He’s going to come in judgment. But He goes and warns
Noah of the coming judgment and He sets him to build an ark and Noah works and builds
and preaches for 120 years, 120 years.
And after all of that preaching, his church has eight members in it.
You would think that probably the voters meeting in like the 78th year of that church, they
would say, maybe we need a different preacher, or they would call in one of these church growth
consultants and he’d say, alright, you need better lights in the parking lot and you need
to fancy or something in this, and also you probably need to stop mentioning the flood
so much.
But after 120 years, and not just the unbelief of the people, but the mockery.
Can you imagine the disdain that Noah’s neighbors had for him?
Where is this flood, Noah?
You’ve been preaching about this flood for 139 years and 11 months and 30 days.
Where is it?
You have a boat, I’ve never seen it rain before, Noah.”
Luther says, when he’s talking about the martyrs, he says that Noah was the greatest martyr,
the greatest martyr.
Why?
Because all the other martyrs had to suffer for a couple of hours, the flames or the sword
or the animals or whatever, but Noah had to suffer the mockery of the unbelieving generation
for 120 years.
He preached, and he built, and the people ignored his warning.
Just as in the days of Noah, so will be the days of the coming of the Son of Man.
People are eating and drinking, they’re marrying and giving in marriage, and ignoring the fact
that judgment is on the way.
Ignoring the warning of the flood.
God, ignoring the warning of the Lord’s return to judge the living and the dead.
But this is why the Lord Jesus has us here today, so that we would hear this preaching
of Noah, the warning of the end, the preaching of repentance, and so we would be ready.
Now there’s another passage in Scripture that I just want to very briefly point your attention
to, because when Jesus is talking about the days of Noah, He’s talking about what the
people are doing, eating and drinking and getting married.
But there’s a beautiful passage in 1 Peter chapter 3 that talks about what God is doing
in the days of Noah.
And what is He doing?
It says that He is, in His divine forbearance, long-suffering.
In other words, while the Lord is waiting to send the floods, He is suffering and patiently
waiting.
And why?
Because he desires for people to come to repentance, for people to be saved, for Novak to be baptized.
That’s why he’s waiting.
So that we would turn from our trust in ourselves and turn to trust in him so that hearts would
be turned from the idolatry of the ages to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and to be found
in him and found ready.
And this is what we are now.
By the Lord’s mercy, by the forgiveness of sins, by the white robe of Christ’s righteousness
which he placed on you when you were baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, you are ready.
You’re ready to stand before the Lord in judgment, and you’re ready to eat and drink and to marry
and be given in marriage if the Lord’s judgment doesn’t come.
Because you are a child of God, because your sins are forgiven.
So may God grant us this confidence, this peace and this courage to know that Jesus
has given us His Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of all of our sins so that if we wait for
five more minutes or five more centuries, we are found ready to stand before Him in
In the name of Jesus, amen.
And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Please stand.
