Midweek Advent
Dear friends in Christ. Although this time of year there are the extra demands on our time, extra busyness, all the Christmas preparations and demands that society, others and we ourselves place on us, we in the Church have Advent. Advent is the quiet in the storm of all the “holiday busyness.” Although we will often get sucked into it, we have the refuge of Advent. –And that’s why I would think you are here today. Advent is the quiet in the storm because it directs/ refocuses our attention away from all the outward hustle and bustle and directs us once again to the quiet calm of Bethlehem and the Savior who is born there.
Advent places us back in the shoes of the OT people as they looked longingly for that Savior to come. And as we remember that glorious way that God prepared the way for His Son to come, born of the virgin in Bethlehem, our Advent prayer is that God would prepare our hearts and minds to again welcome and worship Him when we hear the angelic Christmas announcement: Unto you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
That’s why Advent is for us the inner quiet/calm in the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle. In this season of Advent, we are examining our hearts and lives, looking for sin, sorrowing over that sin, and by the power of the Holy Spirit rooting it out of our hearts and lives. We are using the season of Advent to, as Isaiah says, prepare the way of the Lord by making straight in the desert a highway for our God, raising every valley, making low every mountain and hill, straightening the crooked places and making the rough places smooth. By the very nature of our repentance, our Advent season will be quiet, introspective. Precisely by God working in His holy Law and by leading us to recognize our sin, we then long all the more for that Christmas announcement, to hear the Christmas Gospel.
This announcement of the Savior’s birth that we will hear once again now fills us with a fervent longing and hope. Our lives as Christians are lives lived in this hope—this firm and certain hope—that not only has Jesus, our Savior, come born of the virgin in Bethlehem; but also that He comes to us in the Word, the absolution, with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper and in the water of Holy Baptism; and we lives our lives in the full and certain hope that He will bring us with Him to heaven—both soul and body. Advent is a quiet time, the calm in the storm, because it is a time of introspection and joyful and expectant hope.
1. As we look at today’s text, we find a prophecy of Jesus and His work that the Lord gave to the OT people to encourage them and strengthen them in their wait for the Savior, to give them hope that He indeed is coming, to fill them with a longing for His coming. Since the prophecies were given to the OT people, they use OT images, but they describe the NT reality. That’s what we have in today’s text, a prophecy of the kingdom on the Messiah: On that day I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen and wall up its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it...
The tent of David refers to the house of David, the proud kingly line that were his descendants. It has fallen. The kingly line of David is not a dynasty, not a house but a tent—a mere temporary, weak structure that cannot last. The line of kings from the house/ dynasty has collapsed. Elsewhere, the Lord compares that kingly line from David to a tree that has been cut down to the ground. When the Lord spoke these words through Amos the proud palace of the house of David was already that simple, tent—and it would only get worse. At the time of Amos, the line of kings following David were only ruling over the land of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin—the other ten tribes were led by another king. Then the last king in David’s line was deposed and the people went into exile in Babylon for 70 years. After the Lord brought them back to the Promised Land, the kingly line was not restored but the people were under the rule of the Persians, the Greeks, the Syrians, the Romans and the kings they appointed over them. So much had the house, the tent of David fallen, so much was it in ruins that when the Wise Men came they actually had to ask Herod, the puppet king set up by the Romans [Matthew 2.2], Where is He who has been born king of the Jews? The monarchy and family of David had fallen into so much ruin. Also remember—Mary and Joseph were descendants of David. They were poor, certainly far from any royal grandeur. The tent of David [had] fallen, and fallen deeply. Yet, as deeply as it had fallen; as bad as everything had sunk and decayed, the Lord’s promise still remained and the Lord remained faithful to His promise. That’s why the people could live their lives in hope, in fervent, longing, expectant hope that the Savior would come!
Here is our great comfort in our lives when everything, like the tent of David, has collapsed and why we can live our lives in hope—God is faithful to His promise to love us and work out all things for our spiritual good, to keep us in the faith and bring us into heaven. And as we feel our sin, when we use the season of Advent to examine our hearts, we can live our lives in that sure and certain hope of the forgiveness of sin because, as St. John [1 John 1.9] tells us, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
What made the house of David—here, the tent of David—so important and why it was so distressing to the people that the house/ dynasty of David was a tent was that the Savior, the Messiah was to come from the line of David. That’s what God had promised David [2 Sm 7.12]: When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers [that is, after you die], I will set up your Descendant after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish His kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. Because the Messiah/ Savior would, as God promised David here, be a Descendant of David, the people knew that the promised salvation would only come through the line of David. And that’s why it was such a distressing thing for the Israelites to seen that the tent of David had fallen—if the tent of David was collapsed/ gone, how could there be a Savior? But this is also why this prophecy was such a comfort to the people. Here God was comforting them/ giving them the promise that He would act; that He would restore the breaches and ruins—even when all hope was gone and the tent of David had collapsed. That promise like we have here in our text was the hope that kept the OT faithful going; and that was the hope they were longing for!
And they were not disappointed in their hope! I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen and wall up its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it. And who is the “I”? God the Father Almighty—He is the Lord who is doing this. He sent the Son, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity to become also true man. Jesus, according to His divine nature is the almighty eternal God; according to His human nature, He is a descendant of David. That’s the Christmas miracle we will celebrate in a few weeks—God becoming man. By sending His Son to be born of the virgin, God was being faithful to His promise to David that the Messiah would be one of His descendants and that His rule, His kingdom would be an eternal kingdom. In Jesus, according to His human nature as a descendant of David, the fallen tent of David was raised. That’s what the angel Gabriel told Mary about Jesus when he announced His conception [Lk. 1. 32]: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. With Jesus’ first coming, His first advent, He fixed and walled up the breaches and ruins of the fallen tent of His ancestor David as He established His kingdom, the Church. He did that as He was enthroned as King on the cross and now His kingdom, the Church, eternally stands.
When the tent of David was fallen, when there was seemingly no help for it, then the Lord comes and raises it up and builds it. That’s the way that God normally works. He works so that it is clear that it is His work, His doing that brings the rescue. He always works in such a way so that we recognize it is all by His grace and mercy, not by our work or merit. Humanly speaking, it was about done for. From that lowly tribe of Judah, from that despicable line of David which nearly ceased to exist, God brought rescue: He sent His Son true God who became also true man, a descendant of David. And here is the fulfillment of His word of promise He spoke through Amos: I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen and wall up its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it. From that fallen tent of David Jesus, in and through also His human nature, would build an outstanding Church filled with grace and the Holy Spirit, an eternal kingdom, a Church that would be secure and established forever, as in the days of eternity.
2. Because Jesus came the first time for our help and rescue, walling up the breaches and raising the ruins, that is, by gaining for us the forgiveness and salvation on the cross, He can now come to us today in His holy word and sacrament and give us these gifts/blessings. That’s what Advent teaches us: Jesus still comes to us today in His word and sacrament; and since He comes to us in them, how we then want to prepare our hearts and minds to receive Him and the gifts and blessings He both obtained for us and now gives us. The vital thing to remember is that Jesus has walled up the breaches and He has raised up the ruins—He did that during His 1st Coming—He has established His Church and He is now calling us and inviting us into it.
Jesus has raised up the fallen tent of David—Jesus is ruling over His kingdom, the Church. By His holy life and innocent suffering and death, He has restored its strength and beauty. His Church is a beautiful, glorious kingdom because it shines with His holiness and righteousness which He gives us in the forgiveness of sin. Before the world, Christ’s Church, His kingdom, may look like it is fallen, decrepit, hardly holy, full of all kinds of sin—but before God, she is a holy temple—holy and righteous in Christ because we receive in faith the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s perfect righteousness.
Again, the very fact that we are part of Christ’s Church, is no feather in our cap. It’s because He came to us in His word and Sacrament and by His Holy Spirit created faith in our hearts to receive His gifts and blessings. Again our text: Therefore they will possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations upon whom My name is called. In the OT the people of Edom were the enemies of the Israelites, enemies of the people of God. But now according to this prophecy they are part of the people of God and heirs the blessings. What does that mean? It means that the Church and the blessings Christ wants to give you in the Church are meant for all people. This is a great comfort because by nature we are all enemies of Christ—but He comes to us in His word and Sacrament, offers us His forgiveness and salvation and by His Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts to say “yea and amen”. By this He brings us into His glorious and eternal Kingdom—all by His grace.
Rejoicing in His first coming and that He set up His kingdom, the Church, we in faith prepare ourselves and welcome Jesus coming to us with His gifts and blessings and in joyful expectant longing wait for His return on the Last Day. INJ Amen.