Psalm 71:1–6, 17–21 Isaiah 11:1–10 Romans 15:4–9 Matthew 3:1–12
Standing Between Two Advents
“Blessed Lord, you caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”
The Christian Calendar has not always begun with Advent. In the earliest centuries of the Church, the liturgical year naturally centred around Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, the East still reflects this orientation: the Pascha cycle, the great journey from Lent to Easter, remains the heart from which the other seasons radiate.
In the West, however, by about the fourth to fifth century, the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord began to take on a central role. Western churches came to view the Incarnation as the dramatic starting point of God’s redeeming revelation, the moment when the eternal Word became flesh, the dawning of our salvation.
Still, the shape of the season we now call Advent took some time to develop. In parts of Spain and Gaul, because baptisms were often administered at Epiphany on January 6, churches instituted a period of penitential preparation beforehand. It began originally on St. Martin’s Day, November 11, and lasted roughly forty days, for obvious reasons. Advent was therefore not merely about preparing for Christmas, but it was also about preparing for baptism, it was about repentance, and it was about being ready for covenant entry into the body of Christ.
Later, Advent was shortened to the four weeks we observe today, beginning on the Sunday nearest St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, creating a season that stretched from the first Sunday of Advent to Christmas. The Feast of the Nativity now became the liturgical threshold between the first and second halves of the year, between Jesus’ coming into the world and his ongoing ministry in the world, until his second coming.
A trace of the older and longer Advent season is preserved in the historic Collect for the Sunday next before Advent, which uses the Latin word excita, translated as “stir up.” Just as an aside, in England, “Stir-up Sunday” eventually acquired a domestic meaning, especially in the 17th–19th centuries. Families would traditionally begin preparing their Christmas puddings that same day. Because the pudding mixture needed to be “stirred up” well in advance and take weeks to mature, the Collect was ironically a helpful reminder. Children and parents would gather around the mixing bowl and each person would take a turn stirring the pudding, while making a private wish or prayer. This practice made the Collect not just a church prayer, but a cultural memory, linking the rhythms of faith to the rhythms of family and, indeed, to the rhythms of a community.
Nevertheless, that same word excita, appears in the Collect for the fourth Sunday in Advent, translated as “raise up,” as if to summon the people of God toward heightened readiness, deeper longing, and more urgent holiness.
The other three historic Advent Collects are products of the sixteenth-century Reformation, where the emphasis is clearly upon the Word of God, its proclamation, its authority, and our need to be shaped by it. For this reason, on this Second Sunday in Advent, we still pray:
“Blessed Lord, you caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”
That prayer situates us perfectly: between the First Advent and the Second Advent; between Jesus who came to save and Jesus who will come to judge; between the grace already given and the glory not yet fully revealed.
As believers before the incarnation were called upon by the prophets to prepare themselves for the coming of their King and for the commencement of his kingdom, so too are we called upon by the prophetic teaching of the Word to be prepared for his return and for the consummation of his kingdom. Throughout the Scriptures, the people of God were expected to live holy lives in constant readiness to meet their holy God, yet we who stand between the two Advents, have more than all believers prior to the incarnation. At his first advent Jesus came to purify his people so that they might offer to him an offering in righteousness. This he accomplished by dying in our stead on the cross. He was born so that he might die. He died so that we might be born again. We have been born again in him so that we might die to self and live for him.
A good example of this process of self-mortification, if you will, is seen in Psalm 71. The Psalm is not the prayer of a young and untried believer, but of one who has lived long with God. It is the voice of a saint who has known deliverance and trouble, hope and fear:
“In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me! Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.”
The psalmist was not merely seeking protection from enemies; he was seeking identity in God. In like manner, Advent reminds us who we are; not people anchored in culture, politics, or prosperity, but people anchored in God’s covenant promises.
Notice: “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you….O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and grey hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.”
This is not generic spirituality. This is a relationship, enlarged by time and deepened by trials. Advent presses upon us the same question:
Where do we place our hope while we wait?
Because Advent is waiting. It is a holy restlessness. It is the acknowledgement that the world, as it is, cannot satisfy, and that the church, as she is, cannot rest. We wait not because God is delayed, but because God is preparing us and working in and through us.
And so the psalmist prayed in his older years, “You shall revive me again… You will bring me up again” (71:20). Advent is a season of reviving hope…of reviving certainty…of reviving faith. Perhaps the elderly believer understands this better than the young: God’s future work is not less certain than his past work, in fact, it is more certain because of his past work.
The First Advent is proof that our hope is not imaginary. The Second Advent is assurance that our hope is not yet fulfilled.
Now, if Psalm 71 expresses the longing of the believer, Isaiah 11 presents the answer to that longing. “A shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse,” Isaiah wrote.
At the time, Israel seemed cut down to a stump, politically shattered, spiritually compromised, exiled under judgment. Yet God promised new growth, not from David’s glory, but from his father Jesse’s roots, for in humble origins lay hidden power.
This is how God works:
Salvation always begins in obscurity. Hope begins in weakness. Redemption begins in humility. The Messiah would come in the fullness of the Spirit with wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord.
Every political slogan, every cultural promise, every new human reform pales in comparison, because the Messiah is not merely a ruler with good ideas; he is a ruler with God’s Spirit, ruling in righteousness and in graciousness and in power.
Isaiah said: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see.”
His justice is not based on optics, popularity, or polls. He sees the heart. He sees truth. He sees falsehood. He corrects the proud. He lifts the poor. And with a breath of his lips…one word from the Word…he strikes wickedness.
And then the prophet gives us that magnificent, impossible image: a wolf with a lamb, a leopard with a goat, a child with a serpent. Not because nature is improved… but because creation is redeemed and restored. The Messiah does not simply fix us. He remakes the world.
Dearest beloved brethren, Advent is the season when we recall that as the Messiah has come as promised, he will surely come again as promised. The realisation of the first coming proves that the second is inevitable.
In Romans 15, Paul tied the imagery of Psalm 71 and Isaiah 11 together and applied them directly to our lives as he so frequently did with other Old Testament Scriptures.
“Whatever was written in former days,” he said, “was written for our instruction.”
For Paul, the Old Testament was not a museum of religious artifacts. No, for him it was the living voice of God, feeding hope into weary hearts. Paul said we receive “patience and comfort” from the holy Word. That means waiting is not an accident. It is a discipline.
And what is the fruit of this discipline? Well, Paul said it was “…that we might have hope.” Not optimism, not sentiment, not pious feelings, but hope…hope rooted in the historical acts of God.
Just as the first Advent of Jesus fulfilled the promises God made to Israel, so his first Advent extended mercy to the Gentiles. Quoting from Isaiah, the Psalms, Deuteronomy, and again from Isaiah, Paul made it clear that the result of the first Advent was that the Gentiles might rejoice with his people.
Jew and Gentile together, not two peoples but one united body, singing the same song of redemption…because Advent is not tribal hope. It is universal hope. The Messiah is the desire of the nations.
Listen again to Paul’s prayer: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing…” Not after he returns, mind you, but right now. This is the posture of the Church between the Advents: our eyes ever looking toward heaven, our feet firmly positioned in the Word, our hands on the Gospel plough, our hearts fixed on his promises.
But approaching the first Advent, Israel first heard the cry of John the Baptist…a dusty, wild, uncompromising man, standing at the edge of history announcing the imminent arrival of the King.
John’s words were not soft words. They were pointed and direct: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
You see, Advent is not merely comfort. It is also confrontation. The King is coming and we need to be prepared.
John called Israel to repentance because the presence of God demands purity. We cannot enter the kingdom with unexamined hearts. Nor should we stroll into Advent with sentimentality or complacency.
John’s message was violent in its honesty: Trees without fruit will be cut down. Chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire. False religion will not survive.
But in all this fire and brimstone preaching, do not miss his humility: “I am not worthy to carry his sandals,” he said.
The greatest prophet willingly stepped aside because the King himself was near…the lesser made way for the greater for though John baptized with water, an outward sign of repentance, Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire, the inward transformation of the heart.
At his first Advent Jesus purified a people for himself. At his second he will perfect them. He was born so that he might die. He died so that we might be born again. We were born again so that we might die to self and live for him.
And so we stand, dearest beloved brethren, between two Advents: The Advent of mercy, and the Advent of majesty. The first was in humility. The second will be in glory. The first was the Kingdom inaugurated. The second will be the Kingdom consummated.
So what do we do while we wait?
In the Collect for this Second Sunday in Advent we pray with genuine hearts: “Grant that we may hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures…”
If we allow the Word to shape our hope, purify our loves, and transform our lives, we will live as people prepared; not panic-stricken, but holy; not frantic with news cycles, but rooted in God’s promises; not naive about evil, but confident in the King who defeats it.
In Jesus we have confidence, vision, purity, but also an urgency. He is coming. But of that day and that hour no one knows. So, we must be prepared.
This is the message of Advent: a people longing, a people waiting, a people ready.
And as the saints before the Incarnation were called by the prophets to prepare for the coming King, so we who live between two Advents stand under the same divine summons:
“Prepare the way of the Lord.”
Shall we pray?
© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2025