The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Over the next three Sundays we’re going to be reading three separate Epistle lessons, but all joined together with one common theme. This morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 1; next week, 2 Peter chapter 3; and the third Sunday in Advent, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. This morning we begin with this verse: “as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Next week, 2 Peter: “but the day of the Lord will come like a thief… waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God… we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth.” On the third: 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Three readings from three Epistles, all tied together by this one common theme: the day of the Lord is coming. The coming and the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ will happen and take place. He is coming on the last day.
We think, because of the culture in which we live, of Advent as primarily a preparation for Christmas. But three out of four Sundays in Advent are primarily devoted to Christ’s second coming, when He will return in all of His glory to judge both the quick and the dead. While the world spends its time — and we ourselves as well — and our energy and our resources getting ready for the celebration of Christmas, the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, we’re busy with Christmas trees and Christmas decorations and church and school activities, Christmas presents and much more. And all that is well and good. After all, it’s only the birth of the Christ Child that could produce such great activity. It’s unavoidable, as modern Christians living in a modern world, to go about ignoring the common use of Advent these days. But it makes no difference to God whatsoever whether we’re focusing on the Son of God being born as the Babe in Bethlehem, or the second coming when our King of kings and Lord of lords comes back with all of His glory and His might and His heavenly host to judge the quick and the dead, to separate the sheep from the goats. In either case, it’s a season of repentance. It’s a season of constancy. It’s a season of getting ready to meet the Lord our God.
That’s why John the Baptist shows up every Advent, usually the second week in Advent, and calls us to prepare the way for the Lord, to make straight His path. Repentance is the proper preparation and response to the coming of the Christ, whether it be as the Babe or the great King. As to the first coming, the Son of God took on flesh, was born of the Virgin Mary there in Bethlehem, in order to win for us our salvation, to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This salvation will be revealed in all of its fullness in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The theme for this morning, that phrase “the day of the Lord,” did not come out of the blue. It’s not a creation of New Testament writers. The phrase “the day of the Lord” has a long and rich history in the Old Testament. The prophets use that phrase, or a version of it, regularly in their prophetic writings. The prophets used it many, many times. For example, Joel: “Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.” Not a very happy Advent verse, is it? But that’s the Old Testament version of the day of the Lord. Isaiah used it as well: “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come.” The prophet Amos: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him.” In other words, you can’t escape the day of the Lord — the judgment, the darkness, the doom and gloom. The day of the Lord is darkness and not light, gloom with no brightness in it.
In the Old Testament, the day of the Lord is something to be dreaded and feared. It was an awesome and terrifying day. It’s a day of judgment and a day of punishment. It’s a day when God’s wrath comes down on sinful humanity, which begins in the church and works its way out to the rest of the world. The prophets were sent to preach the day of the Lord, a day of judgment, and they were to call people to repentance in an effort to avert the coming doom. If they repented, Israel would be spared. But rarely did Israel repent.
For Old Testament Israel, the day of the Lord would come in the form of particular historic events. The prophets would foretell of a specific day when the Lord would visit destruction upon the nation Israel — that is, upon His church, upon His very own children. He did this first through the Assyrian Empire, who conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. The day of the Lord came: Jerusalem and the temple fell, and the people were taken off into captivity as hostages — not unlike today. Second, the day of the Lord came about through the use of the Babylonian Empire, who overran Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and destroyed the temple and the city in 597 BC. That was their day of the Lord. It was a historical event that God had sent as a judgment upon the unfaithfulness of His children, and for the purpose to break them and bring them back to repentance and to be restored in the land of the promise.
The day of the Lord also pointed to something bigger, something more long-term, something much, much more powerful and much, much more permanent. The historical judgments on Israel and Judah, Jerusalem and the temple, were a type — that is, a smaller version — of the judgment to come to the whole world on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we saw in the last three sermons on Sunday, Jesus taught in the closing week of His life here in His ministry, before His crucifixion, He taught about the end times. He told one parable after another, chapters 24 and 25 in Matthew. In one of those sermons Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple, and that happened some 40 years later after the prophecy had been given.
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, in the midst of all their problems, he wrote to a people and said to them that they were eagerly waiting for the revealing of the Lord. He wrote: “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus… so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” According to Paul, the Corinthians were living in anticipation of the return of Christ Jesus. They were living in anticipation of the final day of the Lord. To live in the anticipation of the return of Christ means they were looking forward to the last day when Jesus would come as King of kings and Lord of lords. On that day, all wrongs would be righted; sickness and death would become a thing of the past. The Corinthian congregation would see their Lord face to face for themselves.
It’s kind of a weird way to begin, by the way, an epistle to the Corinthian congregation, given the rest of what the epistle says. It’s strange. A quick reading of First Corinthians indicates the exact opposite: they weren’t waiting at all. When you read it, it doesn’t seem like Jesus’ return was at the heart and center of anybody’s thought or actions or deeds in the congregation. We learn in First Corinthians that they had formed factions and groups, cliques within the congregation. They were fighting with one another. There was sexual immorality going on openly that the congregation actually celebrated. Some were practicing idolatry. They were exalting themselves and their gifts over others. They were putting themselves first at the expense of the poor. There’s a distinct lack of concern and love among the members. They were even abusing the Lord’s Supper, ranking in order of importance who could receive it and who would not. First Corinthians indicates that the children of God at Corinth were not eagerly awaiting the revealing of the Lord on the last day. They were living for the here and now. Quite frankly, they were thinking, acting, and living like their pagan neighbors, the Greeks.
So how could Paul say of a congregation like that, that they were waiting for the revealing of Christ the Lord on the last day, Judgment Day, when the rest of his epistle indicates otherwise? Was Paul simply ignoring the facts on the ground in order to smooth them over and try to win from them good behavior? It wasn’t that Paul was unaware of the problem sins and beliefs of the congregation. He writes extensively about every one of those problems and every one of those sins. He chides and instructs the Corinthian congregation as to what it means to be a Christian — one who is Christlike, a son or daughter of God the Father, a brother or sister to Christ their Lord. And we ought not act as if Lutheran congregations don’t have the same problems today, or that we ourselves don’t suffer from some of these maladies. Our lives, and the lives of all Christians, often find themselves in direct contradiction to the Bible’s teachings — to what the Bible says we are to believe and how we are to live and how we are to treat one another and our neighbors. What would Paul say if he looked over the average congregation today? What would he say if he looked over our congregation today? More importantly, how does God see our congregation?
You know, we worry a lot about that — how do people perceive us? We have that little internal voice: if I say this and I do that, how is that going to turn out? Is it helpful or isn’t it helpful? Is it true or is it false? Is it gracious or is it cruel? How should we treat one another, behave with one another? More importantly, what does God finally render in these judgments? Are we really ready for the day of the Lord? Will it be for us a day of celebration and great glory, or will it be a day of dread and fear? Like the Corinthians, we get frustrated with each other from time to time. I know I probably frustrate a lot of you on a regular basis — I’ve made a career out of it, as a matter of fact. We fall into the them-and-us category, don’t we — that kind of thinking? We have two or three different groups within the congregation, and one group thinks the other group is a little less important. Sometimes we look over, we look at the others, and we go along with our cultural norms — cohabitation, marriage, family. We fall prey to the leftist fads here and there, or what makes a good and righteous citizen in the eyes of the left or the right. We sometimes worry more about what people see in us than we worry about what God sees in us. In short, our lives are often in conflict with what we are to believe and how we are to live. It doesn’t look as if we are eagerly waiting for the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So what would Paul say? How would he see us? What would he write to us? More importantly, what does God see? What does God say? What will God have written about us? The answer is in the text itself this morning. Seven verses — notice how many times Paul refers to Jesus in these seven verses. Verse three: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Verse four: grace is given to the Corinthians “in Christ Jesus.” Verse five: “in Him,” that is in Jesus Christ, all the Corinthian Christians are enriched. Paul says that the Corinthians will be sustained, “guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” — that’s verse eight. They are in fellowship with Christ Jesus the Lord, as long as they believe and trust in Him. In seven verses, Paul refers to Jesus doing something for and in and with the Corinthian Christians seven times. He mentions Christ more than he mentions the Corinthians in those seven verses. They are the people who are in Christ.
Paul sees Christians in Corinth through a lens of Christ. He sees the congregation with eyes of faith. He sees people who have been washed clean in the water and the Word. As Paul speaks of Jesus’ work among the Corinthians, Paul does not see a people who stand on their own, who stand apart from Christ, who stand outside of Christ. He sees the Corinthians as God the Father sees them: as sons and daughters of the King. Paul is not waiting for them to get their act together, to do something in order to qualify for the adoption of sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. As Jesus Himself said, He did not come to cure the healthy; He came to save the sick and the lost. Even though the congregation of Corinth consisted of foolish, shortsighted, arrogant, and troublesome people — exactly like the Hebrews under Moses, who were a stiff-necked people, who were quick to turn back to the gods of Egypt — yet He had adopted them, called and set them apart. God was not waiting for them to get their act together. He knew they never could and never would. He doesn’t wait for you to get your act together either.
Paul understands that God has already done something for the Christians in the congregations in the city of Corinth. He has washed them clean with the blood of the Lamb. In regard to the day of the Lord, Judgment Day, Paul sees them as they will be presented on that day: namely, guiltless. That’s the way God sees you too. He sees guiltlessness in you. Why? Because it was taken to the cross in Jesus Christ. He sees the people who are eagerly waiting for His return. He sees us as saints who have been claimed and adopted by Him through His Son, Jesus Christ — saints saved by faith.
The day of the Lord is a dreadful day for those who stand apart, who do not believe, who do not confess their sins, who do not make use of the means of grace given in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. But to you who believe — you who struggle against sin, not that you’re sinless but that you struggle; you who confess your sin, for He is faithful and just to forgive your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness — we all await a day when the wrongs will be righted, sin will be no more, sickness and death will be events of the past. The day of the Lord will be a glorious historical event, greater than any fall of an empire in the Old Testament. For you, the day of the Lord is a day to look forward to with eager anticipation. Paul says we are waiting for the revealing of our Lord, “who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here you are: guiltless in God’s sight because of the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Your guilt has been taken away, and your life has been replaced with Christ. That’s what God the Father sees. It’s not a license to be lawless or stupid or selfish or mean or ill-spoken. It’s a reason for celebration that, though we are a normal people — a congregation, and from time to time we certainly know we’ve had our share of fights — as you are waiting for the revealing of Jesus Christ, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sustains you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ. God sees you as His sons and daughters. One day, that’s all anyone will see in you — including you. For your sins are forgiven, and the day of Christ is glorious for you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.