Midweek Advent
Dear friends in Christ. The psalm that gives us our text today is a psalm written and prayed by God’s people asking Him for His mercy once again at a time when they were suffering distress. Some would see the first verses of this psalm talking about the time the Lord brought the people back to the Promised Land from captivity in Babylon; and because our text says: Yes, the Lord will give what is good; and our land will yield its increase, they would see that the specific problem is a drought. Others see this psalm expressing the psalmist’s feelings of distress and being in danger. While this can certainly be the thought as you read the psalm through quickly, a more thorough reading and meditation, like we will do this evening, finds this psalm to be a beautiful Advent and Christmas psalm. This psalm, first of all, expresses the distress and longing of the OT people who were longing for a Savior; they wanted to hear of His coming: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints. And it, secondly, it gives a description of what the OT faithful expected, longed and looked for in a Savior: Surely his salvation is near… that glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from heaven.
1. Dear Christian, we are in the holy season of Advent. Advent is a far cry from our society’s “holiday season” that we are in the midst of now. The “holiday season” is a busy time of parties, concerts, shopping, baking, decorating, etc. It seems like it’s one thing after another. Yes, we do this sort of thing, whether willingly or we get sucked or shamed into it; but as Christians the main thing in this season before Christmas is not all the outward trappings. That’s why we come to church Sundays and tonight. We want the true reality—we want to prepare ourselves to hear and rejoice at the angel’s Christmas proclamation [Lk. 2.11]: There is born for you this day…a Savior, who is Christ the Lord; we want Jesus, our Savior from sin.
That’s where our psalm is so helpful. As we read it and understand it as the longing of the OT saints for a Savior, we also see ourselves longing for Jesus not only to return on the Last Day but also for Him to come to us today, personally and individually, in His holy word and sacraments. Yes, these OT saints who wrote our psalm were very much feeling their distress and the danger they were in. So what did they do? They yearned all the more for the Savior to come; they longed for the peace/ forgiveness that He would bring about and that message that God would speak. That’s why our psalmist, together with all the OT faithful, prays: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.
That’s why we observe the holy season of Advent to spend extra time around our Lord’s holy word, to recognize our sin and our need for a Savior, to ponder the love of the Father who would send His Son into this world to become also true man to rescue us from our sins, to ponder the love of the Son who willingly obeyed His Father’s will, and came to this earth, living a life of perfect holiness for us and taking all our sins to the cross to suffer and die for them and reconciling us sinners to the holy God, to recognize and marvel at the simple faith of the Blessed Virgin who said at the angel’s announcement [Lk. 1.38]: Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word; to recognize and marvel at St. Joseph’s bold faith.
For us, in the midst of the busy “holiday season” we gather around our Lord’s word, we come to church and pray with the psalmist: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints. As we rejoice that Jesus has come, as we long for Jesus to come again, we pray for Jesus to continue to come to us again and again in His word and sacrament so that we can hear Him: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.
That’s why Advent is a quiet time for us of meditation and pondering, of examination and repentance so that we can hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints. Let us retreat from the hub-bub around us, that does its best to drown out the Lord and His word and go into the quiet of Scripture, sound devotionals, and church. Here in the psalm, our psalmist looks for that great gift of God—peace, that is, forgiveness; for through the forgiveness of our sins we sinners are reconciled to the holy God and are at peace with Him. That’s our prayer and longing now in Advent—for Jesus to come to us in His holy word and sacrament and give us that peace/ forgiveness. Let me hear in the quiet of Advent what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.
Like the psalmist, our Advent prayer is also one of patience: but let them not turn back to folly. Yes, we hear the peace/ forgiveness of sins that God the Lord will speak…to his people, to his saints. But we need patience as we struggle against sin. One trick of the devil is that he tries to get us to despair and become discouraged when in examination and confession we see all our sins; our sins seem insurmountable; he wants to get us to think: what’s the use of fighting against sin, I’m just a lost and condemned sinner anyway. By this he wants us to despair and give up on the faith and to turn back to folly, go back to a life of deliberate sin and so to forget about the holy Christian faith, to forget about Jesus. That’s the time that we need to pray all the more fervently: Let me hear in the quiet of Advent what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.
The other trick of the devil is to use God’s peace/forgiveness He speaks and gives in the word and sacrament against us. He tries to get us to believe that since our sins are forgiven they really are no big deal so why not sin and serve self, that we can go on willingly sinning, that we don’t have to repent; in short, that we use the free blessings of forgiveness as an excuse to sin and turn back to folly.
But what does the psalmist remind the faithful in his day and us of? Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him. Fearing the Lord as the One who can and does punish soul and body in hell, fearing turning away from Him and back to folly by living a life of unrepented sin, fearing the misuse and abuse of His graces and gifts He gives in His holy word and sacrament, is a good thing. Fear is a faithful guardian God uses to preserve us in salvation. As we take seriously and fear the Lord, fear losing our salvation, we will be diligently seeking the Lord in His holy word and sacrament, and, relying on his grace to keep and preserve us, praying especially now in the quiet of Advent: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to his people, to his saints.
We learn from and join the Old Testament saints in praying. They prayed for the Savior to come, to come to earth; they prayed for the Incarnation. We pray a prayer of thanksgiving: God did become man to be our Savior! And we pray that the Lord keep us steadfast in this faith and that in the word and sacrament we keep hearing the Lord…speak[ing] peace to his people, to his saints and receiving it.
2. The OT saints did not just think that God would somehow wave a magic wand and sins would be gone and heaven opened. Instead, they had, for example, the prophecies of the virgin birth [Is. 7.14] in Bethlehem [Mi. 5.2], and [Is. 9.6] of the Son being given who is the Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace, etc. And so they looked forward to the coming Savior who would be both true God and true man; they had the prophecies of a suffering Savior who would die and rise again and by that reconcile us sinners to the holy God. In the last verses of this psalm, the psalmist reflects on these prophecies, and gives us a very lovely description of this Savior—who He is and what He would do, a very beautiful and picturesque description of what we celebrate at Christmas—the Incarnation, God becoming man.
Mercy and truth meet. Here we come to what the Incarnation/Christmas is all about. This is why there even is a Christmas at all. Mercy and truth meet. Jesus is the culmination of God’s mercy and truth coming together. Because God has mercy on us sinners, there was a Christmas; that’s why He sent His Son to be our Savior. Instead of letting us wallow in our sins now and suffering eternally in hell later, God gave us the way out—in Jesus. When God in His mercy sent His Son to be our Savior, He also showed that He is truth because what He said and promised He fulfilled. His word can be trusted! On the flipside, as God remains true to His word and promise He has mercy on us sinners. In Jesus, on Christmas, God’s mercy and truth meet. Now in Advent, that’s what we are preparing our hearts to welcome and rejoice in.
Not only do we see God’s mercy and truth/ faithfulness coming together in Jesus, but also in Jesus, as the psalm describes for us, righteousness and peace kiss each other. Especially as Jesus came to the culmination of His work on the cross on Good Friday, righteousness and peace kiss each other. The holy, perfect righteousness of God, which requires Him to punish the sinner, comes together in Jesus—His Person, His body—with peace. In Jesus on the cross, we see, in full force, God’s perfect righteousness that punishes sin and peace, kissing/ coming together. In Jesus they kiss each other because God, in His mercy and in His faithfulness to His promises, charged Jesus with our sins/ the sins of all people, even though Jesus is perfectly holy and righteous in and of Himself. In fact, shortly after this the psalmist describes the Savior this way: Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a pathway, that is, Jesus was righteous from the moment of conception on; He did righteousness because He is righteous.
Jesus, the righteous One came, did righteousness, kept God’s holy Law perfectly for us and yet—because God is merciful to us sinners—Jesus was charged with our unrighteousness and punished for it. That’s how, in Jesus, righteousness and peace kiss each other. Because the Righteous Jesus was punished for our sins in place of us, we sinners now have peace/ forgiveness with God. The OT saints knew that God couldn’t just wipe away our sins. His righteousness demands that He punish sin; His forgiveness, peace with Him, had to have a foundation and that foundation is holy, righteous Jesus condemned for the sins of the world. In Him righteousness and peace kiss each other!
Again, who exactly is Jesus? Our psalm describes Him this picturesque way: Truth shall spring up from the land, and righteousness looks down from heaven. What made the Promised Land, Palestine/ Canaan, so special to the OT saints is that it was on that spot of the earth that the Savior, true God would become also true Man, born of Mary, and carry out His work to save the whole human race from sin, death, devil and hell; it was that spot of the earth where that glory the Glory of the Lord, the Savior would [dwell]. That Truth, that is, the true God, springs up from the land, describes Jesus: He is the true God, Truth, and springs up from the land, He became true man being born of the Blessed Virgin, to be our Savior. And that righteousness looks down from heaven, points out that He is God; He came down from heaven and sprang up from the land, that is, born of the Virgin, He, the true God, became also true Man. In Jesus, true man, Truth springs up from the land, and true God, the righteousness [that] looks down from heaven, meet.
Again our psalmist reinforces this as reflecting on the prophecies he writes: Yes, the Lord will give what is good—that is, His only Son, divine, holy and righteous—and our land will yield its increase—that is, He is true man born of the Virgin in Bethlehem. True God and true man in one Person—our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the glorious teaching and mystery of Christmas: God became man to be our Savior. And this is what we during Advent prepare our hearts to hear once again. INJ