His Coming... Again
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this week, friends, as we've looked at how to keep our Christmas Christian by being filled with the Holy Spirit, not just the festive Spirit; by having a stable faith; by being wise men and women, and by bringing choirs of angels to earth and not just in the heaven.
Let's remember today that if we really want to have a Christian Christmas, we need to remember not only Christ's first coming, but look forward to his second coming.
We're in the middle of these two events. We look back at when he first came as a child and then grew up into a man and then died in our place, rose again and ascended to heaven. And at a point in the future, he's going to return and we look forward to that day.
Remembering His Coming
I think every Christmas we need to keep both of these things in mind. Of course, our focus is on his birth, his first coming, and all that that meant. But you can't separate these two. You can't separate his first coming from his coming again.
In fact, some of you would have gotten my classic hymn last week Friday, and it was Joy to the World, which was actually written more about the second coming. Isaac Watts who wrote the hymn was saying “joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her King.” And he was looking ahead to a time when Jesus would come back and the joy that the earth would find when he comes to make all things right.
Can we keep these two things in our minds this Christmas? Can we look back and marvel at how God chose to come to the earth in the form of a child and all the wonderful things that accompanied that? But can we also look ahead and look forward to the day that he arrives here again?
Remembering that he's coming back soon gives us a certain seriousness about our faith and focus to our faith that balances the great excitement that comes out of Christmas. It needs to be both excited at the wonder of the child born in a manger, but soberly waiting his return when he will come for those who believe in him.
Ready for His Coming
You know, the people weren't ready for him when he first came. They thought they were. They thought they'd read the Scriptures correctly, but it turns out they'd misinterpreted it and the Scriptures pointed to something different. And sometimes I wonder if the same is going to happen for the second coming. We've got this idea of what's going to happen and it's going to happen and we're going to go, oh, that's not how we thought it was going to happen.
And so I hope that we aren't caught by surprise when he comes. He even warned us and said, “be ready. You know I'm going to come like a thief in the night when you least expect it.”
Let's remember this Christmas the joy of his coming for the first time and look forward to the joy of his coming the second time and be ready for it so that when he comes, he finds us with the Christmas spirit, and with a stable faith, and with wisdom, and praise in our hearts.
It'll be a happy day if he finds us in that state when he does come again.
