Advent 01: Hope

You know the word of the true and living God, Second Peter three, eight through thirteen.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Since all these th all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.

But according to his promise, we are awaiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks, Fashion.

Good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

Thanks for joining us.

Hey, how about these wreaths?

Yeah, wreaths.

And also the trees in the front porch have lights on them, and there's more wreaths downstairs and garland and wreaths.

That's what the season is all about.

And check this out.

My podium is decorated.

Which is very cool.

Welcome to church this morning.

This is the, as you can tell by the wreaths, this is the first Sunday in our Advent series.

So we're going to be moving through the next four Sundays, and we're going to be looking at sort of Advent from these two different angles.

We're looking at taking that word Advent, we're seeing what does this word really mean?

While we're talking about upcoming Sundays, next Sunday, we'll actually be having a guest speaker who is brought to us courtesy of John Kushnroff.

John, can you wave?

He's in the back waving.

You can tell that guy can bring in a speaker just by that wave.

A friend of his uh who actually was his youth pastor, is that right?

Yeah, uh wrote this book called Neighboring, and he's a local guy, and uh it's a book that I read a a while back about uh really taking seriously Jesus' command to love our neighbors.

And he even takes that literally, saying, like, look at the people who are actually living next to you.

Do you even know their names?

And I was like reading the book, and he has this diagram, and he's like, fill out the houses and write in the names of the people who live around you, and I was like, oh no, I don't know any of their names.

Um and so I actually set the book down and walked over to my neighbor who was also on her front porch, and I was like, Hi, your name is Um, and then uh she said, You asked me your name, and she uh was baptized in the Holy Spirit and converted to Christ and ended up converting the entire uh neighborhood.

That's not true.

The last part's not true.

But uh anyway, the importance of loving our neighbors.

So his name's Dave Runyon.

He'll be joining us next weekend, um which means I have the week off.

Woo! I'm gonna party, Advent party.

Um so uh we uh Advent is about a return.

Advent is about an arrival, it's it's a coming.

It literally uh is a simple word that just means to to return, to come back, or to arrive on the scene.

You we don't use it this way, but you'd like Advent somewhere.

And it's become sort of this technical term to refer to the first coming of Christ.

But also, carried in church tradition, the celebration of the Advent season has always been about our looking forward, just as much as it is about our looking back to Christ's first coming.

And so that's what we're going to be doing through this Advent series.

We're going to be looking back to Jesus' first coming and what that means to us.

But first, we're going to be looking forward.

What is the advent of Jesus' second coming that we are looking forward to now?

And how can the Christmas season carry not just an enjoyment of what we've seen Christ do at his first coming, but an expectation of what he will do at his second coming?

That's why for our series graphic, it's just like you just arrived at a party and somebody hands you a drink.

Because you it's like an arrival thing.

It was either that or the movie arrival about aliens and linguistics, which are two of my favorite things.

Um, so Advent.

That's better than the original opening that I had.

The original opening was Advent is a Latinization of the Greek word parousia.

Arausia pay is a pig Latinization of the Greek word parousia.

That was the original opening that I wrote.

If you have the notes pulled up on your phone, I I still included that in a footnote.

The way that we view the end has radical implications for how we live in the present.

Huge implications.

And we often ignore the second coming of Christ because it's become just so uh, it's almost been taken over by like pop cultural theology that isn't grounded in scripture at all, or it's been taken over by some like overheard scientific theory of the way that the world is going to end.

Neither of which seem to foster much hope in our hearts and drive us towards the way that the biblical authors talk about the second coming as this object of inspiration that motivates us to live these present lives now with godliness and holiness and a dependence on Christ and His first coming.

We've we've lost that.

And so I know my wife has a funny story of when she was a little girl and she walked in to her kitchen and there was athletic clothes on the floor, and so she was like, Well, rapture happened.

Now I have to make breakfast myself.

Uh, which is a terrifying thing for a little kid, and that's where most of our theology comes from, is those sorts of images like that.

It always has that subtle little hope of well, I probably won't have to do my homework now, uh, which is a hopeful thing as a kid who thinks they experience the rapture.

But uh it's not really informed biblically what our expectation of the second coming is.

Another one of my favorite examples of our view of the end informing how we live currently is in the movie Annie Hall.

Anyone?

Uh I think it's on uh DVD.

There uh it was a straight to DVD release from Woody Allen.

And there's this great scene where a young Woody Allen, he's nine years old, is taken to a psychologist by his mother, and she's like, he's he's just so depressed.

I think it's from some article that he read.

And the doctor's like, what article did you read?

And he's like, I read an article that the universe is expanding.

And if the universe is expanding, that means the well, the universe is everything, so eventually everything is going to expand, and then it'll all just break apart, and none of this will matter.

And his mother has the best line.

She says, Well, why is that your business?

And then and then she says, besides, Doc, he stopped doing his homework.

So it all has to do with homework.

The uh way that we view the end times has incredible implications for the way that we approach our homework.

And not just that, but our just lives generally.

You know, if we take seriously what the young Woody Allen saw as this all just ends in nothingness, then that really is a devastating claim that, if taken seriously, would reach back to our present experience of the world and paint it as meaningless if we were to take it seriously.

Likewise, with a pop culturally informed sort of theology, I think what's happened is a lot of us have just distanced ourselves from that way of thinking, from and rightfully so.

Uh, there's so much to say about this, I'm realizing in real time.

But we've been so informed by this sort of pop cultural end times theology that many of us have just said, like, oh, you're talking about the end times.

I'm gonna not listen to that because you're probably a very strange person.

Well, what we're going to look at is the way that Peter, writing to encourage a church towards dependence on Christ and current living in godliness and holiness, he brings that church's attention right to the end times, right to the second coming of Christ.

And he says, let's look clearly at this thing that we're all moving towards.

And then once we really get that, then you'll be motivated to lead these lives that Christ is talking about.

Once you get the way the end actually looks, this meaning will flow back into your life.

In the same way that if you think it all just blinks out into nothingness, that meaninglessness would flow back into your life.

So we are going to look at Peter's view here.

We're going to join him in hoping in the second coming of Christ, that we might lead lives that are deeply influenced by that hope.

So, my first point is uh titled, This is taking a while.

So, in the this is in out of 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 4, he's describing what the scoffers, he titles them, will say to you when you are hoping in Christ's second coming.

2 Peter 3:4

He says, they'll say things like this.

They will say, Where is the promise of his coming?

For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.

You see, he anticipates that the attacks that we will hear when saying, like, yeah, you know, you know, Jesus is gonna come back, he can come back at any minute, and he's going to redeem all these things and judge all of the evil in the world.

The main attack that Peter says that we'll experience is, well, look, since the beginning of creation, everything has been about like this.

And everything's continuing on about like this.

So probably we're able to just deduce from the facts that we have at hand and this immediate experience, and we're able to tell that the future is probably just gonna be normal.

This whole second coming thing, like just shake it out of your mind, this supernatural intervention at the end of time that doesn't look anything like the evidence that we see when we just look at the world.

Now, I don't think many of us have actually faced this critique.

And the reason is I think because in history it's been so successful.

In our Western culture, it is obvious to us that the way to see how things are is not to be told from an observer, but to observe ourselves and then deduce from the facts in front of us what the universe holds.

And if we can't deduce from these facts in front of us, then it's not real or it's not worth believing in at all.

But that's a profound assumption to make about the nature of reality and what it means to know it and come to know it.

An improvable one at that.

And so that claim has sunk so deeply into our consciousness that we really have just written off this whole second-coming hope.

And what we've done is we've reduced the hope of Christianity to one that just has to do with you and what happens to you when you die.

That's our whole narrative, it's our whole explanation, our whole uh the scope of the gospel as we understand it can be found in that narrow framework, which is just where are you going to go when you die?

And we see the whole gospel through that lens.

But the way that Peter describes it is much different than that.

He sees the story not as circling around us as individuals, but as a story that us as individuals are actually transcended by and then caught up in.

So he's seeing this hope not just one that's personal for you, but as a hope for all of creation.

That we're arcing towards a redemption that is bigger than us.

And the good news is this redemption is happening and can include us.

So this reductionist gospel that centers things on us, I think is a reflection of just this.

See, everything's going on normal, normal, normal.

It's just gonna continue that way forever.

Forget this second coming nonsense.

Because we've forgotten where the narrative we're in is heading.

We've made the narrative that we're in just about us and what happens to us when we die.

There's a lot that's dangerous about that, but the main thing is that we rob God of the glory that He's really working in the world.

Because for our lives to have any meaning, we have to be a part of something that transcends us, not something that just centers on us.

So this reduced hope means that we have no more cosmic concerns.

We have we have nothing that we are truly concerned about that uh transcends ourselves.

But our hope, as we see Peter describe, is much bigger than we think.

And the story that we're a part of is much bigger than just our personal salvation.

So Peter moves us into God's perspective on that critique, which is what's taking so long?

He says this.

He says, 2 Peter 3, 8 to 9, he says, But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So Peter steps back and he puts us in this godlike perspective of time that we're in.

And he hears this argument that says that could it much more be levied against us now than it could have been towards the apostles, who we're talking just a matter of decades.

Look, it's been 2,000 years since Jesus said, I will be coming back.

You know, since he promised his return.

Since the apostles stood and watched Jesus ascend, and the angels stood next to them and said, Why do you look up?

He'll come back in the same way that you saw him go.

2,000 years is a really long time.

And yet Peter anticipates a moment, just like ours, when he says, the length of time that passes is no argument against whether or not Jesus is truly coming back.

What you're thinking in terms of is a story that's just about you.

Not a story of redemption that is primarily about God and the glory that He is demonstrating in the world.

And so consider now 2,000 years, not as you would consider 2,000 years.

Consider 2,000 years as God considers 2,000 years.

To him, a thousand years is like a day, and a day is like a thousand years.

Sounds like the DMV.

What, what?

All right.

I'm gonna retire.

I'll see you guys, I'm sorry.

Enjoy the new name of your church.

When you consider it from his perspective, then all of a sudden the time is not much of a factor.

But there's something else here that's uh that's even better.

And that's the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, but he's patient towards you.

You see, his waiting to return is not that he's just getting held up by other things, it's not that he's ignoring the pain and suffering in the world, it's an endurance, it's a long suffering that God is entering into because he's being patient, because all who Jesus died to save, he will save.

And he won't miss any of them.

And more likely than not, millions and millions haven't even been born yet.

We can hear this, he is patient towards you so personally.

Your very existence.

He allowed to happen because he continues enduring this present age.

This age where Christ's opportunity for salvation has been extended to us, and we have an opportunity in this moment to repent towards him, and so Jesus stays his return, demonstrating a patience that you can encounter, that you can enjoy.

So this brings a lot of clarity to just an expectation that I think we would have, which is well, why is there just so much evil in the world?

Why do we see so much pain and suffering?

Why doesn't God just come back now and fix this?

Because things are out of control.

Can't we just be taken away now?

Can't Jesus just return right now?

And I think if we were to ask Jesus that, he'd say, just wait.

There's more coming.

There's more people that I that I died to save.

They're on their way.

This should compel us as a church, a church that is like repopulating the earth right now with young children, that the generational type of hope that the Bible calls us to, we can experience in God's patience and his delayed coming.

Perhaps it's because you just had a newborn, and perhaps Jesus is waiting because he died to save your grandchildren.

Do you feel that patience towards you?

This is not slowness, as some count slowness.

Consider what he is enduring in the world, the pain that he sees, that he desperately wants to bring judgment against.

He waits, because those whom he died to save, he will get.

They will be his.

But then Peter moves in and he reminds us that as long as it takes, there will come a day.

Says this, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

And then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

You see, the wait will end.

A final judgment will come.

And it won't be one of those things where you'll wonder if it's happening.

You know, the church age that we find ourselves in, it's easy to wonder: is the progress of the gospel really taking place in the world in the way that Jesus promised that it would?

You know, God works in such gradual ways, it's like the growth of a tree.

If you stand in front of it, you can't witness it.

And so we can often start to doubt that it's even happening.

But the day of the Lord, when Christ returns again, it won't be like that.

We won't stand in front of it and wonder what's happening.

The dead giveaway is the roar that the heavens will make when they disappear.

When you hear that roar, you're not going to be wondering.

Because, you know, sometimes the heavens disappear and it's like, I didn't hear anything.

Not this time.

The heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved.

Stars made of fire will burn up.

The earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

See, it's this incredible, incredible moment.

We know that it doesn't mean a destruction of the earth.

It can't.

Because it describes the works of the earth as being exposed, being laid bare for what they really are.

So we see this incredible moment of the day of the Lord coming.

And we realize that this moment will be dramatic and uh inescapable.

We will all be exposed.

Our works will truly be laid bare.

So then what do we look to to anticipate that second coming?

How do we know when it's approaching?

I hear a lot of times in conversation, I'll talk to people, and it's kind of become just like a saying, like a trope that we use.

Like, man, the way things are going in the world now, I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus came back any minute.

Howdy, cowboy.

I don't know why I said it like that.

But if the it we use it as kind of an expression, like if the things are so bad that that must mean Jesus is going to come back any minute.

But that's not actually the way that the Bible instructs us to look forward to the second coming.

In many texts, what we're called to expect, this is actually what we're gonna be moving into next week, what we're called to expect is this incredible glory that's demonstrated before Christ's coming by the church operating in the world.

But even more than that, definitely more mundane than that, is what Peter uses here, which is borrowing language from Jesus, which is the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

That's the very way that Jesus explained it.

It'll come like a like a thief in the night.

And uh, do you know how thieves come?

No, you don't.

That's the whole point.

You don't know if this if you knew the thief was coming, then you would be like n at your house.

I would have locked my garage and then I wouldn't have lost my mountain bike.

True story.

Uh if you go to redemptiondenver.com and click on give.

So if you knew when the thief was coming, you would have been prepared.

But what that means is that a symbol of Jesus' second coming isn't some dramatic, terrible event.

It's actually normalcy.

You know, thieves come at times that you thought were just normal.

You didn't think anything was really coming.

You were marrying and giving in marriage, and you were stressed about work, and then you got to a better place about it, and you were stressed again, and your marriage was something you were working through as this puzzle you're figuring out, and then you're trying to raise kids, and uh normal life things you're moving through, and then bam, that's when you should expect it to happen.

So that puts us in a particular type of posture.

When we know that normalcy is evidence that it might happen, and we know that it is an event so dramatic that it will affect all of the created order, and it will lay our very hearts to bear before the Lord.

That puts us in a different posture about the way we go about our normal days, especially our normal days.

And so that's where Peter moves next.

Peter moves into a description of, so then how should we live if we know that this day of the Lord really is coming?

Peter says this: he says, Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.

You see, he makes a moral claim for how you ought to live based on what he says the future will be like.

He says, we know that the day of the Lord is coming, so that means we need to live this way.

We need to live lives of holiness and godliness, and in doing so, we are both waiting for the day of the Lord, and we are hastening the day of the Lord.

So there's something about the way that we live in lives of holiness and godliness that is actually bringing forth, or or it's hastening, it's quickening, it's it's accelerating the pace of the arrival of the day of the Lord.

So, how could that be?

It actually makes sense when we consider what it is that is staying Jesus' arrival.

It's exactly what he said he was being patient for.

He said, being patient because I desire that all who I died for, all who I desire to see saved, would be.

And how does that take place in the world?

It takes place by our lives of holiness and godliness bearing witness in the world that Jesus has come once and he will come again.

So take this moment, seize this opportunity, and repent.

And when that repentance happens, it's like this glorious future that we're looking forward to gets pulled back into our present moment so that Jesus can say crazy things like the kingdom of heaven is in your midst.

And that Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, can say, of you now, saved person, you are a new creation.

You're one that's designed, you're fit, you're designed to live in the new heavens and the new earth that are coming.

So we hasten the day of the Lord.

So it's when we're not frustrated by the delay because we understand the patience that God is demonstrating in his delay.

We don't look at the world and say, God, just take me out of it.

Would you please just take me out of this pain and suffering that I'm in now?

I don't want to have to move through this anymore.

Instead, we aren't frustrated by it, but we get it.

And we join in with his patience, considering, Lord, you delayed a little longer that I might enjoy you.

I understand your delay.

Could I be a part of seeing others enjoy you as well?

Do you see what happened there with that type of a thought?

All of a sudden, you aren't the center of the story anymore.

But you're caught up in a story that's bigger than you.

Your life has meaning and purpose.

You've actually engaged with transcendence now.

So this is exactly the type of language that Paul uses in Romans 2.

He says this: he says, Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

You see, Paul has the same perspective that Jesus will come again as a judge, and there will come a time where our deeds will truly be laid bare before him.

And we think, well, he must not be relevant to this moment because I don't see a lot of judgment taking place.

I don't see a lot of evidence of a holy and just God.

Do you forget that it's the kindness that you're experiencing now?

The kindness, the patience, the forbearance that he shows you now, that you sin so often and yet experience so little punishment for it, that that kindness is meant to draw you to him.

The kindness and the patience that we experience now is meant to move us towards God.

This is what colors our present moment.

Christ has come once to rescue those who would turn to him.

And at this time, we have an opportunity to repent and to see his kindness as this thing that is irresistible to us.

But he will come again.

And there will be a day when it's too late to experience that kindness of the Lord.

So he says this.

Peter continues on.

The power that Christ comes with at his second coming.

And we see the stars in heaven melting because they're burning.

Do you think you can survive that type of judgment?

And then he says, but, but according to his promise, we, those of us who have put our hope in Christ, we aren't awaiting that type of judgment.

We are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

In Christ, we wait not just the judgment of the evil things, but the redemption of creation.

So that we will see a new heavens and a new earth.

It's like a new Eden, but better.

A new Eden in which there's no opportunity for a fall to take place.

Because that story has happened.

And in the story where humans were given the opportunity for a fall to take place, a fall took place.

And what we saw demonstrated is this glorious picture of a God who is not only just and will punish wrongdoing as it deserves, he will avenge those who have been persecuted.

But one who is gracious, such that he will not count our sins against us, but he will make a way for us to know him by rescuing us in Christ.

That's where we are now, awaiting this new heavens and new earth, according to Jesus' promise.

That phrase, new heavens and new earth, is something that we'll be exploring all of next Sunday.

For the time that you're here.

We'll be exploring that phrase new heavens and new earth, which comes from this section in Isaiah 65, which is a prophecy, not about Jesus' second coming, but about the church age, about what the age of the church will look like after Christ's first coming, which is our moment now.

And it paints this picture that is so glorious, it's almost incomprehensibly glorious to look at.

And we'll see that really our best picture of what we have to hope for, of what the new heavens and the new earth will look like.

In Scripture, we don't really get a clear picture of here's what the new heavens and the new earth are going to be like.

And that's because it's too glorious for us right now.

But what we're given are expressions of the church age that then allow us to look into, sort of peer around the corner, into after Jesus' second coming, to see a hope that Paul says will make the sufferings of this present time like nothing.

That's what we're going to be looking at next week.

But before I close out, I know that some of you are thinking, okay, uh, Jesus' second coming still seems mostly terrifying.

And for a sermon called Hope, this wasn't super hopeful.

It was mostly about planets burning.

That was the main thing that stuck in my head and my works being exposed.

Besides, this had nothing to do with Christmas.

Here's the thing: the second coming is only hopeful when we get what happened at the first coming.

Jesus' advent that we are looking forward to, we can only look forward to in hope when we see that the Advent that we've already seen worked.

So this is what Peter says.

He says, You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care, this being this whole second coming thing that we're talking about, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.

It's like, don't get taken captive by these ideas that the second coming won't happen, and that this isn't a real part of the narrative arc of existence.

But instead, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity.

Amen.

You see, our hope in the second coming is that Jesus at his first coming showed himself to be both our Lord and our Savior.

So that our hope in the second coming is not that our works will be laid bare and that they will be found in and of themselves to demonstrate our righteousness so that we won't melt like the sun, but instead our works will be made as righteous as Jesus' works.

Because Christ united himself to us.

That Jesus didn't look at the sin in the world and think, I'm just gonna finally get my justice on that, but he actually laid himself under the justice that was deserved, so that we, sinners before him, can look forward to God's justice being demonstrated in creation.

Because we know that he has paid whatever punishment we deserved, and that he has granted to us a hope that stretches into eternity of a new heavens and a new earth where we enjoy Him.

Think of what it means for sinners like us to be able to look forward to the second coming.

Because of the first coming, we can.

It's an amazing thing.

It's an amazing thing.

This Advent season fill your heart and your mind with both.

Both the glory that we celebrate at Christmas and his first coming.

And how that changes the whole shape of history and turns something that should be just terrifying into something that's beautifully hopeful.

We're gonna look more particularly at that beauty next week in Isaiah 65.

So with that, I'll take one question, and then after the service, I'll be down front.

And if you want to come and usually get a small group and we'll talk about further questions if you'd like.

Yes.

We see evidence for that in Scripture.

Consider the thief on the cross who Jesus turns to and says, Today you will be with me in paradise.

And that's not one of those days a thousand years things.

That's like today you're gonna be with me in paradise.

Or Paul, who says, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

I'd rather die and go be with Christ now, because that would be better by far, emphasis mine.

The we we know that our hope as Christians now is that when we die, we would go and be immediately with the Father.

And when you die apart from Christ, we have evidence that you enter into a place of deep suffering.

Where Jesus describes that outside there there's weeping and there's gnashing of teeth, full of regret and pain and suffering.

But we're still moving towards the second coming of Christ and this judgment day where there will be a resurrection of everyone, a resurrection of the just and the unjust alike, of those who are in Christ and those who are in Adam.

They will all be resurrected.

And stand before Jesus on a great white throne, which demonstrates his judgment.

And at that resurrection, some will be resurrected to life, and some will be resurrected only to experience an eternal death and damnation.

In what's described as a lake of fire which had been prepared for the fallen angels.

Hell, colloquially.

So remember, N.

T.

Wright has this great phrase for Christian hope.

It says, we don't just hope in life after death.

We hope in life after life after death.

That's the hope of the Christian.

And that's why next week we're going to be looking at the new heavens and the new earth, which is that place where we will dwell eternally, physically.

The world's not getting thrown away.

The world's getting redeemed.

And we don't go up to heaven to live eternally, but God makes his dwelling place with man here on earth.

Us, physical beings.

The type of this is Jesus.

Remember, we share in his resurrection.

And he walked around and ate fish.

So heaven will probably be a bit like that.

There's no good place to be a fish.

All right.

Thanks for that question.

That's an excellent question and a huge blind spot in many of our faiths.

Before we take communion, I want you to consider how the second coming as a reality can shift the way that you experience the normal parts of your life?

What would it give you patience for that you wouldn't otherwise have it?

What would it give you a motivation to pursue in goodness and holiness where you would otherwise leave it alone?

And I want you to consider the kindness that we experience from the Lord in his delay.

That kindness is evidence of who he is.

And it's designed for you to see it and move towards him.

So consider this Advent.

Could you seize this time of his kindness?

That you might enjoy him forever in a future that is otherwise terrifying or meaningless could be spent with your creator in joy.

Consider those things in the thirty seconds before you walk up and take communion.

Let's pray.

Jesus, I pray that you would fill us with a deep hope that we can look forward to a time where there's a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

That we might be at peace with you and before you.

Father, lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.