For the Second Sunday in Advent, also known as Bible Sunday, we look at the Good News, how we should seek to be overflowing in it, and how we should be spreading it.
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Good Morning. In addition to our focus on Peace this morning, and the peace which brings Good News on the mountain tops, as Isaiah says, actually equipping YOU to be the voice of peace on the mountain tops to be clear, the Second Sunday in Advent is also known as Bible Sunday. I’m going to try to fit this all together, our theme of peace, and our need to read and meditate on the Good News, so we can pronounce God’s Peace, and proclaim His news of Happiness. So our goal this morning is to look at our lessons, and hopefully see how good it is to be constantly seeking to fill ourselves with God’s Word.
Two Stories, 1-You are the Feet on the Mountain Top. – Ancient world
2nd Story – A city man moved to a farm and bought a cow. Shortly after, the cow went dry. The farmer who sold it went to find out what happened. The city man said he was surprised. “I can’t understand it, for if a person ever was considerate of an animal, I was of that cow. If I didn’t need any milk, I didn’t milk her. If I only needed a quart, I took only a quart.”
The farmer then had to explain that the only way to keep milk flowing is not to take as little as possible from the cow, but to take as much as possible.
That’s the picture we should have in our heads on how to approach God and His Word. Paul sums up our need to fill ourselves in the next verse after the lesson,…: May the God of all hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may overflow in hope.
I think I am safe in saying that no one here this morning always overflows in hope. If you do, feel free to nap the rest of the sermon.
For the rest of us, we frequently lose sight of our hope, (which was last weeks theme) and therefore our peace, because everything around us tries to push hope as far away as possible.
This world will constantly pull us into being disappointed and agitated. It is the result of taking only a portion of what God has prepared for us, when our need is to continually fill ourselves from God’s Word for abundant hope.
Often the world gives us other sources of hope. It tells us hope will come when wars end; when the right politician is elected, when we get healthier. Other times, it suggests not waiting for anything but running yourself ragged until you achieve what the world says is good, which is impossible.
Luther ties this passage on hope to the story from Luke 8 of the woman who went from doctor to doctor for 12 years, spending all she had until she met Jesus. She perfectly models us when we run here and there with troubled minds, now consult these guys, then consult those, now do this, then do that, and try everything in order to quiet our heart. The problem isn’t whether we work hard, but our labor is in vain if we don’t seek the hope which gives Peace to the soul.
Our hope is NOT to be found in running from place to place and …it is NOT found in simply accepting the evils we find in the world. Both are mistakes. Our hope is found in belief and trust in God’s Word.
Paul says at the beginning of this reading: Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Our lesson from Luke 21 gives us a glimpse of this hope. A surface reading shows how Jesus teaching about his second coming on the clouds with great glory.
But there is more beneath the surface. The prophet Zechariah, who lived at the time of Daniel 5 and a half centuries earlier, tells us how in the Messiah’s coming he will be standing here on the Mount of Olives before His great day. And on that day rivers of living water will flow out from Jerusalem, and all nations will be called to worship God.
Jesus gives his address on the Mount of Olives quite intentionally, to fulfill prophecy, and to assure us that His claims are true, just as He rode in on the donkey in last week’s Gospel, which also fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.
Luke describes a number of things that on the one hand are simply true, but also show God’s truth as laid out from centuries earlier, so we can know He is true, and His Word is trustworthy.
Christianity is based above all on God’s word. Above people, sermons, even Pastors, is what God has told us himself — what he has revealed. And the Bible itself is not the product of the wisest thoughts about God the wisest men ever thought. The raw material of Christianity — and the standard of what Christians believe and do -- is in what God reveals to us through his Word.
The Scriptures contain all things necessary for Salvation, and also give us wisdom to live in this fallen world. Paul shows this by demonstrating in today's epistle a teaching that he specifically would never have thought up on his own. The lesson illustrates why we need God’s revelation of himself.
He uses a series of texts from the Old Testament (Isaiah, Deut, 2 Sam) to show that God intends to use Jesus to bring all of humanity together into one body. But Paul never makes any assertions of what he thinks, but in teaching the Christians in Rome, Paul tells them what the Bible says! Here’s what I mean.
As a believing Jew, Paul saw the hand of God in the history of his people — How God’s people were chosen, they were delivered from slavery in Egypt, how they returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple, and how God continued to watch over them. The Jews were God’s chosen people.
And as a Pharisee, Paul would have seen the importance to separate from Gentiles, to keep away from them. But Paul reveals that despite what he thought, God called him, and all believers to bring the Gentiles to God’s throne as well. Just as the Old Testament said, but was often hard for many to see.
St. Paul knew that the Messiah would be the savior of all of God’s people, but now God has revealed that God’s people is more than just descendants of Abraham, but that Gentiles are part of God's chosen people too. God revealed to Paul this great and ultimate vision of the purpose of history, and he reveals it to us through His Word, in Paul’s message on the Old Testament. When the angels pronounce Peace on Earth, Good Will to All, they mean the Gospel is open to all people, not just the natural children of Abraham. We are all now children of Abraham.
Study and devotion to the Bible is one of the most significant obligations and joys a Christian has. We have an obligation to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures as our collect says. And, the end purpose of Bible study is to draw us better in worship before God, and equip us as messengers with fast feet ready to spread God’s message of Peace and Good News to a world that needs to hear it.
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