The First Sunday in Advent – 28 November 2021
Jeremiah 33:14-16 Psalm 25:1-10 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36
The True Master and Commander
When I was a lot younger, I believed I could be the master and commander of my own ship…that somehow through hard work, sweat equity, and dogged determination, I could shape my own destiny. But if there is one lesson our ever-gentle Lord has taught me through the passing years it is that there is really only one true master and commander in life and that is Him.
Perhaps our desire for control…our desire to know all things, even what is hidden…is a holdover from the ridiculous notion of our first parents…that somehow through our own doing, and in their case, disobedient doing, we could make ourselves like God…knowing all things, both good and evil…when, in actual fact, He has already made us like Him. He made humanity, both male and female, in His image so that together we might reflect, not a prideful independence, but a loving, surrendered dependence on Him who knows what we do not need to know…a dependence on Him who alone does all things well.
I have always felt uncomfortable when it comes to prophetic predictions regarding the Second Coming of Jesus. It is a topic that has consumed the time of many good and bad scholars alike, but it is not necessarily a topic that has brought harmony or peace or, dare I say, growth in the church…it is a topic that divides, polarises, and, as a consequence, stifles or even smothers growth. I much prefer to follow the words of Jesus in Acts 1:7 – “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority.”
You see, we have to learn that there is only one master and commander in life, and we would do well to trust Him to deal with the unknown in His time.
Now, Jesus’ statement in the opening chapter of the book of Acts was, no doubt, as disappointing for His first century followers as it is for His modern want-to-know-the-signs-of-the-times followers, but He quickly added what ought to be our priority. “You will receive power,” He said, “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We are not called to be speculators…even expert ones…no, we are called to be witnesses. His timeless message is simple: we are not to speculate but to participate…to participate in His work to seek and to save the lost.
Speculating on the signs of the times is nothing new. Even in the first century there were all sorts of rumours doing the rounds…rumours and challenges. Some of the non-believing Jews were openly mocking the believers…where is the sign of his coming, they taunted. Jesus had predicted that the vestiges of the old order would be destroyed, but 30 odd years later, Jerusalem and the Temple were both still standing, and the unbelieving Jews had power to persecute the Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Jesus.
Now, 30 odd years is a long time to wait for the fulfilment of a prophetic promise, don’t you think? So, we can be generous in our judgment of the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews and, indeed, the recipients of other New Testament letters, when we read that some Jewish believers were wondering if somehow, they had made a mistake in following Jesus. Where was the sign of His coming? Little did they know that in a very short space of time, the words of Jesus would be fulfilled in horrific detail…by AD 70 Jerusalem would be surrounded by Roman armies, the Temple would be burned to the ground, every stone would be prised off the other to get the melted gold out from between the cracks, and by AD 135, the Romans would rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman City, by the name of Aelia Capitolonia.
Our impatient first century brethren were to learn that there is only one true master and commander in life…and He has His own timetable.
You see, the first century believers had His promises…just like we have His promises. And they, like some of us, were tempted to think that they could figure out His schedule…speculate on His timing…or worse, try to manipulate Him through brilliant rhetoric or imaginative mathematical or astronomical calculations.
When Jesus spoke out His judgement on Jerusalem, He was quoting liberally from Scriptures His followers knew all too well. Remember, every Jew knew the Torah and the Psalms by heart before the age of ten, and most of the other Scriptures too, especially the messianic prophecies, as they belonged to an oral society where everything was committed to memory.
And because messiah fever was alive and well before, during, and after the time of Jesus, prophecies such as the one we read from Jeremiah, and the prophecy from Daniel quoted by Jesus in our Gospel reading, were the talk of the day. In fact, quite a few Jews tried to take matters into their own hands, claiming the title messiah for themselves, leading bands of misguided men in revolt against the monolith of Rome, only to be dispatched mercilessly as only the Romans could…wholesale slaughter and crucifixion for the survivors.
So, we need to learn a lesson from our first century brethren. We would do well to remember that there is only one true master and commander in life and he holds all time in His hands. If He says the days are coming when he will fulfil a promise he has made, they are coming and they will come, but not necessarily when we want them to or how we want them to.
The Psalms teach us a few things about crying out to God for the fulfilment of His promises and then waiting for Him to answer in due course. Notice the words the Psalmist uses in our Psalm for today. In you I put my trust…do not let those who wait on you be put to shame…lead me…teach me…for on you I wait all day long. The Psalmist teaches us that we can wait because our God is merciful, forgiving, upright, good, loving, and faithful.
I know, waiting is not easy…not even for the stoically patient…of which I am not one. We want to know…because we think that somehow knowing will make us feel better…more prepared…more in control…
Now, today is the first day in the short season of Advent, and for the first two Sundays in Advent we focus our attention on our Lord’s Second Coming. But Advent is not a time for speculation…it is a time for preparation for participation. Like the prophets in the Old Testament, we too are heralds of our God’s present and coming rule and reign. They looked forward to His first coming…we look forward to His second coming. But like them, we too do not know the day and the hour, because it is not for us to know…it is for us to trust and it is for us to obey.
There is only one master and commander in life…we are only sailors and deckhands on His ship. We live to serve Him and to do what He asks us to do…to be witnesses to His love, His care, His power, His mercy, His grace, His kindness, His compassion, His forgiveness and His redemption. We live to stand firm in the Lord…we live by faith, even in the midst of distress and persecution…we live to love…to love God with all our being and to love our neighbour as ourselves. If we concentrate on obeying the great commandments, we simply will not have time for idle speculation or for debates or conspiracy theories. There is a good reason why fortune telling is forbidden in Scripture…it is contrary to faith.
God alone knows what lies ahead…He alone knows the future…and who better to lead us on into the future than the one who holds that future in his hands?
Now, this does not mean that we are to be fatalists. No, we of all people ought to look to the future…to actively participate on bringing the blessed reality of that future to bear on our present…to yearn for the time when our Lord will bring an end to all suffering and pain and struggle and hardship and hatred and sin. We ought to work toward that end because we are the ones who have His light so that we might shine out that light in the present darkness…we are the salt of the earth…to be fatalistically idle would be akin to losing our saltiness.
So we pray, we petition the Lord of the harvest to send more labourers into His harvest field, we press onward and upward to attain the promise that is ours in Jesus, we strive to walk in His truth, we learn, we trust, we wait…but we do not direct, we do not dictate, we do not presume, we do not speculate…because there is only one master and commander in life, and we live to serve Him.
Of course, this does not make us puppets in the hands of a divine puppeteer. Not at all! The Apostle Paul did not hesitate to express desires for things that were outside of his control, and so we too have the freedom to express ourselves in petitions and prayers. And often we need to persist in prayer for days, weeks, months, or even years…but we persist in faith that He who knows what is best for us, He whose thoughts toward us are for good only, He whose plans for us are to prosper us and to give us a future, He who alone has the ability to work all things together for the good of those who love Him…we persist in faith that He knows the when and the where and the what and the how and the why in all matters. And we rest in that…
© Johannes W H van der Bijl November 2021