ADVENT • 1

What Time Is It?

SONGS FOR PRAYER

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the start of the New Christian Calendar Year! Our readings begins with Jesus saying that the Son of Man is surely coming to bring God’s purpose to a climax or completion despite people’s readiness or rejection of it, just as the Great Flood in Noah’s time. Within this context is the warning to ‘stay awake’. God’s activity should fuel the believer’s hope and faith even as we discover how and where we fit in his end-time story and play our role in advancing His divine purposes.

SET PRAYER

Unexpected God,
your advent alarms us.
Wake us from drowsy worship,
from the sleep that neglects love,
and the sedative of misdirected frenzy.
Awaken us now to your coming,
and bend our angers into your peace. Amen.

reading for: Tuesday Night, 22 november

Matthew 24:36-44

It’s time to live boldly for Christ while awaiting His return

Read

  • READ

    As Christians, we live between the First Coming of Christ and his Second Coming. And as Christmas approaches, as believers, we look backward, to remember God’s mighty acts of salvation over our lives and through generations, and forward, anticipating the vindication of God’s ways in a new heaven and a new earth.

    This season of Advent leading up to Christmas, we are invited to consider again what it means to be a Christian living “between the times.” On the one hand, Advent reminds us of God’s promises to Israel of Immanuel – God’s Presence with us where comes in human flesh to deliver God’s people from sin and evil. On the other hand, Advent calls us to look forward towards the day on which this Immanuel will return as King of kings and Lord of lords. He will put all that resists him, even death itself, under his feet. Living between the times, we give thanks to God for the Christ child, even as we plead and long for His return.  

    Matthew 24:36–44 is one of a group of sayings and parables about a day of judgment that will bring Jesus’ kingdom rule to its climax. Jesus warns that this day will take the world by surprise. Just as in Noah’s time, people will be going about their everyday business— eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage—with no awareness of God’s impending judgment. They will be like a homeowner who fails to anticipate the hour at which the thief will break in. Not even the angels or the Son know the day or hour. The point is that we must be ready for the Lord at any time. When he finally appears, those who are ready will be saved, and those who are not ready will perish.

    Jesus restates these themes in three parables in the following chapter (Matt. 25). The first tells of ten bridesmaids who are waiting for a bridegroom. When he finally arrives in the middle of the night, he receives the five who wisely kept oil in their lamps but shuts the door to the five who foolishly let theirs run out. The second parable is about a master who, leaving on a long journey, entrusts his servants with his money. When he returns, he commends two servants who made wise investments, but condemns the one who only buried his portion in the ground. The third parable, like the first two, warns of a day of judgment that will divide humanity into two groups – ‘sheep’ and ‘goats’. All three parables explicate the point in Matthew 24:44: “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

    To live between the times is, to trust and hope that God has begun, and will continue, to transform us more and more into the stature of Christ, in whom all of God’s mercy and loving-kindness becomes manifest. Advent calls us into a continuing history of relationship with the Christ who meets us at whatever point of history we are at or at whichever direction we are facing, whether toward the past, the present, or the future.

  • REFLECT

    In the shadow of the never-ending Russia-Ukraine war, the cryptocurrency crisis, rising costs of living and looming economic recession, we need stand in the light and be wide-awake and alert, with our eyes focused on the Lord and His glory and not on this world. As followers of Christ, we live simple responsible lives in the world and choose not to get entangled in the trappings that steal our hearts away from Him. We constantly remember and respond to the God who acted in Jesus Christ, who acts now, and who will act in the consummation of history. He who has made all things new in Christ, will complete His work when He sends his Son back here. We are not to be distracted or discouraged by what is going on in the world today. One day Jesus will return suddenly, like a thief in the night. And when He does, will you be ready? Take a moment to contemplate the state of your heart and the direction of your desires.

reading for: Wednesday Night, 23 November

Isaiah 2:1-5

It’s time to anticipate God’s ‘new’

  • READ

The prophet Isaiah takes us up a mountain and shows us what our hearts truly yearn for. First, he paints a dynamic picture of God’s presence, in the form of His house and Temple being established as the highest of the mountains, and the nations streaming to it. People everywhere will be drawn to God, from all nations, all cultures, all races. They come from all corners with the sole desire for divine instruction. It is God’s glorious manifest presence breaking out into all of Creation from the Temple Mount.

The temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem was far more than just than local geography. It was the locus of God’s presence in the midst of God’s people. To envision Zion as elevated above all other mountains and the focus of pilgrimage by all peoples (v. 2–3) is to claim that God’s presence is the true centre to which all nations will eventually flow. Nations will always be in conflict unless God’s reign is recognized beyond that of kings and God sits on Mount Zion enthroned above the ark of the covenant, reigning over all other claims to power.

And as the word of the Lord goes forth from this mountain, justice is meted out. God will judge between the nations and settle disputes. The word of the Lord will transform the way the world works: inequities will be balanced, shackles will be loosed, wrongs will be set right. Out of this justice will come transformation—weapons of violence will be turned into tools of productivity and nourishment. The nations will put their swords down, and will not train for war anymore. Capitalist and consumerist ideas of the good life will vanish. In its place, is shared openness to the divine way, and of peace that speaks to some of our deepest hopes and desires.

  • REFLECT

    Is picturing the end of time when God will set everything right, a stretch for you? Isaiah’s vision may be even more outrageous than that. He announces that this remarkable transformation will take place “in days to come.” “In days to come” may not be specific, but it does imply that such transformation will come within history. In the gospels and the New Testament, we learn that at Christmas, Jesus did finally come, and this prophecy of Isaiah has become a reality. But this reality that the Scriptures proclaim looks so different from the experienced reality of our lives. Does that make the Scriptures untrue? How then are we to make sense of our lives and the world around us? How then shall we live in-between this tension? Take this question to the Lord in prayer and seek Him for an answer.

reading for: Thursday Night, 24 NOVEMBER

Romans 13:11-14

It’s time to wake up

  • READ

    Paul is reminding his readers in this part of his letter that they already know what time it is. But do they really? So he urges his readers “to wake up from sleep”—to pay attention and be alert to the imminent in-breaking of God’s reality into their lives. It is time to get up. It is time to throw off the old life. It is time to wake up and live in the reality of the new age that has dawned because of Christ. It is a wakeup call for Advent. For Paul, of course, this “time,” this moment, is Kairos time, the ‘right time’ when the fullness of God’s kingdom is being realized. The end times are here because Christ has come, died, resurrected and ascended. So do not delay, do not procrastinate. Tomorrow is too late.

    We are to awake from the darkness of sin and licentiousness into the new dawn brought about by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We are to peel o the night clothes of selfishness and ignorance and to put on the new clothes of Christ.

    These familiar Paul’s language will remember Ephesians 5:14, where he says “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead,” and the second echoes Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (2:20). The Apostle calls upon believers to rest upon the reality that a new world is being born. The new man, the new woman, belongs radically to this new world, rather than to the old.

  • REFLECT

    How many people today “sleep” through their lives, totally unaware that they are living on the frontier between the old order of things and the new order, where Jesus reigns and all that is wrong has been set right? Pray for the Holy Spirit to awaken specific family members and friends you are inviting to your Kampung/LG and Christmas gatherings and Christmas service.

reading for: Friday Night, 25 NOVEMBER

Psalm 122

It’s time to draw close to God in gratitude

  • READ

    The first Psalm for the new year is “A Song of Ascents” because going to the Jerusalem temple always meant going up, and it is concerned with the longing for God’s presence in the temple.

    The psalmist rejoices to be at last within the city gates (v. 2). Jerusalem is praised for its stability, “built as a city that is bound firmly together;” (v. 3), its political significance as a center for all the tribes (v. 4), and the justice enforced within it (v. 5). All of this is ensured by the king, descended from David, appointed by God (v. 5; see also 2 Sam. 7; Ps. 89:19–37). Because of these blessings brought by the city (as well as for the sake of family and friends living within its walls, v. 8), the psalm instructs to all who read it:

    Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers!” (v.6-7)

    For this ancient psalmist, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a journey into the very presence of the Divine. In other words, if you have seen Jerusalem, you have seen God.

  • REFLECT

    This year, can you remember the moments of your own personal encounter with God? As you look back, can you recall moments (whether challenging, painful, or joyous) where you were in the very presence of God? Reflect one or two of these moments and allow gratitude to surface within you. Share it with an LG member or a prayer buddy.   

Season of AdventCNL