Advent Expectations

We count four advent Sundays in the church year. The preaching directs itself in those weeks to the four thousand years when the Lord’s church looked for and hoped for the coming of Christ in the flesh. In this article we want to make four remarks about this advent expectation.

In the first place, it must have our attention that the advent expectation of God’s church was a founded expectation. In the Old Testament God’s children had a sure foundation for their expecting, hoping, and looking. Never can the most holy faith be there if God has not first laid the foundation for that faith. Faith must have an object. Comrie explained in his explanation of the catechism that there is mention of a twofold object of faith; Christ Himself is the immediate object of faith and the Word of God is the mediate object of faith. In this way the faith of the devout of olden days was directed to the promised Christ, who had been promised in the Word spoken by God.

Wherever the Lord does not speak, faith cannot obtain a firm hold. The fallen pair of mankind would never have been allowed to exercise advent expectation if God had given no ground for this in the mother promise. After all, from man’s side, after the breaking of the covenant in Paradise, all expectation was cut off; the state of death, our debt reaching unto heaven, and our loss of God’s image gave only a view of eternal death! However, God opened a way where there was no way. He revealed to the fallen pair of mankind the covenant of grace, which went back to the eternal council of peace. As in summary, all the benefits of that covenant were comprehended in that mother promise.

“I will put enmity.” That is the mother promise. That is what Genesis 3:15 is called, not because it had been spoken to Eve, the mother of all (in essence it was spoken to the serpent!), but because out of it, as out of a mother, all the following promises of the covenant have come forth.

In the second place, we want to point out that the first advent promise has been renewed countless times. It is the golden thread which runs through the Scriptures of the Old Testament. God’s servants should really not have to run short in advent weeks if the issue is the choice of a text; there is no book in the Old Testament in which the advent thought is missing. Luther sought in every book of the Bible for that which was Christum treibet, that is, that which speaks emphatically about Christ, and he found it in every book of the Bible.

It has to strike us, indeed, that the Lord in the course of forty centuries between creation and Bethlehem did not just repeat the advent promise, but that He renewed it with steadily greater accuracy and precision. If there was at first but mention of the seed of the woman, after the flood it became evident that the holy line would run through the generation of Shem. Then the Lord promised the seed to Abraham, which was approximately the twentieth century before Christ. On his death-bed, the old patriarch Jacob spoke, “Judah, thou art he!” Moses made mention in the plains of Moab ofthat Prophet from among Israel’s brethren. At about the same time (in the fifteenth century before Christ’s birth) Balaam, in spite of himself, spoke of a Star that shall come out of Jacob.

What else shall we say about the renewing of the advent promise throughout the centuries? It can be summarized with the words of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 6, “From the holy gospel, which God Himself first revealed in Paradise; and afterwards published by the patriarchs and prophets, and represented by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and lastly, has fulfilled by His only begotten Son.”

Regarding the precision of the advent promise, we can add the following: In the eighth century before Christ, it was Micah who was the spokesman of the Lord in pointing out the place of birth of Him that would be a Ruler in Israel, namely, Bethlehem Ephratah. In that same century Isaiah spoke of the incomprehensible sign of Immanuel: a virgin would conceive and bear a Son. Two centuries later and over five centuries before that night of Christmas, Daniel spoke in veiled words about the time of Christ’s birth and dying. Seventy weeks were determined to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.

In the third place, when viewing the advent promise in the Old Testament, the way in which God has fulfilled this promise strikes us. To be brief, it has been a way of impossibility. Time and again it seemed as if God had brought His own work to naught. At the flood, the whole human race seemed to perish, and the advent promise ran through the narrow door of Noah’s ark. In Abram’s tent Sarai seemed to be past age. Twenty years did Isaac and Rebekah have to wait before the Lord again extended the golden thread. In Egypt, Satan, by way of the Pharaohs, seemed to win the battle for good. When David fell in the abominable sin with Bathsheba, all advent expectations seemed to be cut off. Athaliah seemed to bring the golden thread to naught by her murders. The low point came in the year 586 B.C. when city and temple were burning and Judah was being taken captive to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. “There we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). After the anxious night of captivity, God caused the hope to dawn again; the temple was rebuilt, the city arose again.

Zechariah prophesied around the year 500 B.C. about the coming BRANCH, who would build the temple of the Lord. Again a century later Malachi spoke of the Angel of the covenant who would suddenly come to His temple, and of the Sun of righteousness who would arise. But then it became dark again, so dark as it had never been before. The royal house of David became a cutoff trunk, robbed of stem, branches, and crown, in which no life seemed to be present. Then, really, the church rightly entered the night of impossibility.

That which had never happened before then took place; the voice of the prophets was silent for four full centuries. The scepter seemed to be departing from Judah, for an Edomite mounted the throne. The Romans ruled with a harsh hand. There was reason for the lamentation of Psalm 77, “Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will He be favourable no more? Is His mercy clean gone for ever? doth His promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Selah.” The well-known Professor G. Wisse remarks about this time period, “It was as if the night would always remain. Thus it also happens in the soul. When it is light, they think it will never become dark again; and when it is dark, they fear it will never become light again. It is, among others, so that you will learn and understand well that darkness is from us and light from God.”

This brings us to our fourth remark. All these matters that we mentioned have not only had their meaning in the history of salvation, but they also have much to say concerning the order of salvation. After all, in this world God still has an advent church. It is not as if Christ would have to be born anew in Bethlehem. The events of salvation are one time events, and do not repeat themselves. God’s children know that. However, they so look for the subjective application of the fruit of the events of salvation in their hearts. With a theoretical knowledge of the Christmas gospel, either according to their mind or their feeling, they cannot help themselves. The matter which the advent church is after is that the Mediator as Person must be revealed to their soul and must come to their soul.

This people lives a missing life. They know an expectation. And as it went in the history of salvation, so it also goes in the life of the soul. A foundation was laid for that expectation. God has spoken to them. This people, worthy of damnation, guilty of death, miserable, and having no hope anymore, He has refreshed by His promise. Oh, how that Word of God at times did refresh them exceedingly! Then they walked in the light. They could still be saved. And as it went objectively, so it went subjectively; at times the Lord renewed His promise! Sometimes He came back to His own work. His comfortings have quickened their soul. Sometimes, through the lattice of the Word, they saw the Mediator, whom they could not miss, as they so keenly felt. As the Old Testament church, they sometimes saw the promise afar off, believed it, and embraced it. Yet it was to them as if the Person of the Mediator still remained covered with a veil. It did go as far as an embracing of the promise, but not yet to that full embracing of the Christ Himself. Yet they thought to be near salvation.

But again we must say, God’s ways in the history of salvation determine His ways in the life of the soul. Also subjectively the way with God’s church leads into the night. And not only once, but time and again. Being saved shall become a wonder. And only there where it becomes impossible from our side, and where nothing is left but a cutoff stem of the whole house of our conversions and of the tree of our advent expectations, does the Rod come forth. How important it is to continue to keep these matters in view during a time in which the world and religion sing of the Child, without ever a place having been made for this Child.

May the Lord teach us in our life, in a Scriptural way, to know that mystery of salvation, so that, by the applying power of the Holy Ghost, the Person ofthat blessed Child might be laid in our arms, and that we might embrace Him as the One given of the Father.

Speak The Truth

When you’ve been guilty of a fault,
Oh, lie not to conceal it;
For it will happen soon or late
That something will reveal it.

And then, whate’er the deed has been,
However great your trouble,
The faults, the sorrows, and the sin
Will all be rendered double.

But when at once the truth you’ve told,
Away with all your sadness;
The sense of having done what’s right
Will fill your heart with gladness.

Gospel Gleanings for Young People

(Rev. Moerkerken serves the congregation of Gouda in the Netherlands.)

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