Second Sunday in Advent—Lift Up Your Heads: Redemption Draws Near
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars, and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:25–28).
There is a way that the unbelieving world interprets and reacts to the circumstances of this life.
And there is a way, completely different, that the believer interprets and reacts to the circumstances of this life.
By circumstances of this life, I mean everything—the good and the bad. But I want to think about the bad in particular right now.
The world deals with tragedy, injustice, natural disasters, wars, strife, sin, shame, guilt, and everything else that falls upon us in this world in an altogether different way than the believer.
“Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:34–35).
Those are the words that come out of Jesus’ mouth right after the Gospel you heard this morning. I’ll say it again:
“Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:34–35).
The world experiences the temptations, afflictions, and sin of this life in ways that only lead to self-righteousness, complacency, apathy, despair, or even anger at God—claiming to be atheists, even maybe, but sounding pretty angry at this being they claim they do not believe exists.
They overindulge in all manner of things.
Jesus mentions drunkenness and carousing and cares of this life, as these things are drunkenness and dissipation—overindulgence. He talks about drunkenness and carousing here in particular, but there are all sorts of things this unbelieving world overindulges in that weigh their hearts down.
All sorts of things that believers could be deceived into overindulging in, and then having their hearts weighed down in despair, in apathy, in complacency, or some other shame and vice.
The world overindulges in all sorts of things—drink, drugs, food, sports, worldly politics, the general burdens and false pressures put on us in this life to be busy with all sorts of activities.
The world overindulges in anger, grief, shame, and guilt as well. They grieve as those without hope (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13).
When a person they love dies, they wallow in that grief, or they choose to grow cold and apathetic toward that loss. They get angry at God and detach from other people in this life in a grief that just does not go away. Or they are like a Buddhist monk and see utter detachment from everything—even people in this life—as some great good, to not really ultimately be bothered by it, to forget about them.
The world is unforgiving, never allowing for actual repentance and restoration.
They overindulge in anger—an anger that might be justified at first. Maybe it is wrong for, like, the Canadian prime minister to have been in blackface like thirty years ago. Yeah, maybe.
But can he not say, “I’m sorry, will you forgive me,” and move on and be restored? Are there really things that we cannot come back to people we have wronged and be forgiven and have a good, right relationship with them?
The world would say, no. There are certain things—once you are canceled, you are canceled—especially if you do not assent to the particular creed of the age or the particular worldview of that age.
The Christian reacts to temptations, afflictions, sudden and evil death, natural disaster, shame, guilt, and grief in a completely different way than this—in a completely different way.
Paul says about death, “We do not grieve as those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13), because we know the Lord is going to return and He is going to raise up all the dead—not just the Christians that you have lost, all the dead.
So we do not grieve as those without hope, because we know He is going to come with a great trumpet (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16).
We know He is going to come, and He is going to raise all the dead, and all the Christians that are still alive when He returns are going to be changed (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:51–52).
So we do not grieve as those without hope. We do not despair.
We do not detach ourselves from the life that God has given us to live when people we love have left this life. We do not do that. That is what the world does.
The believer does not do such things.
We do not grieve as those who have no hope when a beloved person dies.
Also, Paul talks about godly grief when it comes to sin and repentance (cf. 2 Corinthians 7:10).
Ungodly grief would be to wallow and overindulge in shame and guilt from sin. We should experience shame and guilt when we sin—especially when we sin intentionally and against conscience. We should feel shame and guilt.
We must feel it.
But the world overindulges in it because they do not believe in the forgiveness of sins. They do believe there are certain things you can do that are beyond the pale. They just do.
But we do believe that Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). Every single sin—no matter how evil and how intentional it was—every single sin.
And so, when we experience grief over our falling into sin, our occasion to sin, when we feel grief over the fact that we have walked in intentional sin against our own conscience and the Law has been working on us—the Holy Spirit working on us to work contrition in us—we will feel grief in that.
But the Christian feels a godly grief that leads them to the second part of repentance after contrition: saving faith in the blood of Jesus to wash away all those sins, washed in the blood of the Lamb, like I was telling you (cf. Acts 20:28; Revelation 1:5; 7:14).
So godly grief when it comes to those we lose in this life—not overindulging in grief and wallowing in it—and godly grief that leads to repentance. We do not wallow in the shame and guilt over our sins, but trust that Christ has paid the debt we owed (cf. Colossians 2:13–14).
I want to think about this image of the Son of Man coming down in glory. It is going to be a dreadful thing to unbelievers, just like when they look at tragedy in this life and they see it as a dreadful thing.
There are these Oxford Union addresses, and there was a series of “there is no God” or “God doesn’t exist.” And there was a Baptist preacher that is now an atheist who was presenting there. And it is really easy to get to go talk at the Oxford Union if you are an unbeliever. They really love it.
You have got to be the cream of the crop if you are going to be a Christian to go there and argue for the existence of God. But, you know, any Joe Schmo that happened to be a street preacher that decided he was going to become an atheist and then write a book can go do that.
So anyway, this guy—he was a Christian, a Baptist preacher, a fundamentalist street preacher. And one of the things he said in his address that made me think, I do not think you are an atheist. I think you are just angry at God.
You see, what he does in this life as a dreadful thing—he said, “If you want a sure and certain proof that God doesn’t exist, just walk into the burn unit in a children’s hospital.”
He believes in God. He just does not know how to react to and interpret the afflictions that fall upon human beings in this life by God’s hand, by His will. He cannot grapple with it.
So he goes to his self-righteousness—that he is better than God, that God is in the dock and he is the judge, judging God.
May it never be for us. May it never be for us.
Instead, we know we are not going to look at the Lord coming down in glory with great dread. It is not a dreadful thing, because we know that everything we suffer in this life is for our good. God, who loves us, sends it for our good—when He takes away someone you love, when He gives you a sickness that does not go away, when you have to deal with the heartache of seeing your adult children abandon the faith, when sudden and evil death falls upon someone you care about.
These are things that the Lord is working good in your life through. All of it. There is no exception.
He is working the ultimate good of those He chose before the foundation of the world (cf. Ephesians 1:4), even in the burn unit in a children’s hospital. Even there.
And so what do we do? How do we interpret and react to these afflictions in this life—be it those tragedies, the sudden and evil death, or our own shame and guilt?
We interpret it and we react to it like we are a bride married to the perfect Husband.
Listen to the Old Testament again for today:
“The voice of my beloved!
Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains,
Skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Behold, he stands behind our wall;
He is looking through the windows,
Gazing through the lattice.
My beloved spoke, and said to me:
‘Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grapes
Give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret places of the cliff,
Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your face is lovely’”
(Song of Solomon 2:8–14).
When something terrible happens in this life, you need to interpret it as if you are the betrothed, seeing your beloved Bridegroom peeking through the lattice the night before your wedding night, saying, “It is time. I am coming. We are going to marry.
“It is not going to be long now, and you are going to see it. And I cannot wait to be with you.”
“Savior, rend the heavens wide.” We are saying, rip it apart. This creation is a veil. And, Lord, I want You to rip it away and come be with me forever.
I want to see Your face. So tear it all away. Take it all away. I want to see You.
And every time you see something terrible in this life, it is the Lord reminding you of that.
That is why He says, “When you see these things begin to happen”—when someone dies, when there is a shooting, when your rights are taken away, or someone is not elected into office that you think should be, when a pastor is taken away from you, whatever terrible thing it might be—do not be like the world and despair and detach and dissociate.
Do not do that.
When you see these things, you need to remember it is your Lord peeking through the lattice at you, saying, “It will not be long now.”
“When you see these things begin to happen, look up and lift your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28).
That is our reaction. That is our interpretation of these things.
Every time I see this picture—I will try to hold it together—every time I see this one picture in our feed, when we are looking back, like when it comes up and it is like ten years ago, I see this picture of me and Payton on a pier in Fairhope.
And I remember exactly how I felt. It was the night before we got married, and we were taking a walk with my parents and her parents on the pier down there in Fairhope, Alabama. And I just could barely hold it in, how excited I was for that next day.
And I am sure many of you who are married have some similar memory.
Now, I look at that and I think—I am evil—but I did feel that, and I still do. And I look at that picture and I still now think, I cannot believe I am married to this person, that I get to be married to her.
How much more Jesus feels that for you?
That suffering is just a reminder to you that He loves you dearly, and He cannot wait for it all to be out of the way so He can embrace you.
Like we sang in that hymn—we sang that in this hymn—“Our Father, rich in blessing, will give us crowns of gold, and to His bosom pressing, in part of bliss untold.” That—that is what we have.
If we can feel it as earthly, evil, sinful husbands, how much more is it an image of how our Lord Jesus feels about us?
And even now—think about the reception. You cannot really wait for it to be over. I had like half of a Corona and a little bit of barbecue. I could not really even think about that. I danced a lot, but I could not wait for us to be on our own together—married, really married.
And think about this life like that, too. We are just in a wedding reception.
He has made us His bride. He has made us spotless and holy by Baptism (cf. Ephesians 5:25–27; Galatians 3:27). We have got the white garment, and we are at the wedding reception.
That is a reason to rejoice.
And soon that reception will be over, and we will have that whole life to live together—just Christ and His Bride.
And then one last thing that I have not gotten to experience all the way to, like, forty and fifty years or more of being married to Payton—but we have suffered in our marriage. And in those sufferings, we learned how important our relationship was, how much trust there needed to be there.
So that she can now, in a moment of suffering, look back on our history and say, “I know this is going to work out because God is in control.” But also, “I am married to a godly man,” because she has that evidence.
Think about the Epistle today: “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
It is not just a history of ten years like Payton and I have. It is a history of over six thousand years where our Husband has been faithful to us, where He has never lied to us.
Imagine being married—you women out there—imagine being married to a husband who has never lied to you, never been harsh with you, has always and only been gentle with you, even when you were sinning and being unfaithful.
Like when God is trying to show us, “Though you are an unfaithful bride,” and like Hosea, “I love you, and you are Mine” (cf. Hosea 2:19–20).
Imagine being married to a man like that your whole life, who had never lied to you, always was gentle, always nourished and cherished you, never faltered once.
That is the Bridegroom we have in our Lord Jesus (cf. Ephesians 5:29–32).
If you can look at your husband and have any sort of affection for him because of what you have been through together, imagine how much more trust and love you can have for your Bridegroom—and that you can know, even in the worst moments, He has never led you to a place that you did not need to be for your good (cf. Romans 8:28).
And so you can trust Him.
He wants to rip it all away to be with you forever. And He will—very soon.
And every time something bad happens, you need to remember that.
“Lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28).
He is telling us with these things that it is time.
“Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near” (Luke 21:29–31).
“Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away” (Luke 21:32–33).
He has never lied to you and will never lie to you, and He has never done anything for you except your perfect good.
“Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36).
And you will stand before Him if you keep coming to behold His face, if you keep having conversation with Him—because He is trying to drive you to prayer and trust in Him in these sufferings too. Because that is what a marriage needs: conversation with one another.
Abide in His Word and teaching. Abide in His congregation. Hear your beloved Bridegroom speak to you and have conversation with you and show you His face in this life, and you will stand in that Day and you will rejoice. You will not look at it with dread—saved.
This is from the hymn for Matins during the season of Advent:
“Saved from the whirling black abyss,
Forevermore to us be given
To share the feast of saintly bliss
And see the face of God in heaven.”
That is what we have to look forward to. That is what we need to think of ourselves when we read the Song of Solomon, when it says:
“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret places of the cliff,
Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your face is lovely”
(Song of Solomon 2:14).
You see His face now hidden through the lattice. You will see Him in glory—face to face—sooner than you think.
Let us pray. We poor, miserable sinners confess ourselves to be guilty today, O Lord Jesus, before Your divine majesty, in that until now our hearts have been more occupied with eating, drinking, and worrying about sustenance and temporal goods than with Your Word and Holy Spirit. Therefore, we are well deserving that You should utterly drive us out from Your kingdom. But because You still call and beckon us to repentance today through Your holy Word and offer us eternal life, we miserable hearts call to You as our only Savior. And we ask for the forgiveness of our great guilt and sin, and that from this time forth You would rescue our hearts from the power of the devil, from his shame and from blasphemy, and grant that they may constantly taste You—Your holy Word, Spirit, and comfort—and honor, extol, praise, recognize, and long for You alone. So that Your coming does not overtake us suddenly, rather grant that we may be found awake and praying in faith, and thus escape all that shall take place and be on the side of Your grace with joy, and enter into the eternal fatherland among all the blessed of Your kingdom, where You live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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