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Raise us to thy glory. And now, Father, we do pray that you would give us grace to cast off the works of darkness. That you would give us grace to put on the armor of light, that you would wake those who are slumbering from their sleep, so that we might see salvation is nearer and coming near, that we might believe and hope and rest and trust in your Son Jesus Christ. And we pray these things in his name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated. So, how many of you all went shopping on Black Friday? Anyone? I know. That number is apparently decreasing. I was reading about that as online sales are going up, Black Friday shopping is decreasing, which may be of some benefit. I don't do Black Friday shopping. But let me ask you this: how many of you went shopping on Wednesday or Tuesday of last week or Monday? How many of you all went shopping the week before Halloween or the week before All Saints? It'd be good for us to say that. How many of you went shopping then? Well, if you've been shopping sometime in the last month, you have noticed in the stores, I'm sure, Christmas trees and nutcrackers displayed besides besides pumpkins and grim reapers, right? It's been this fascinating, if not slightly infuriating. It's been fascinating to watch Christmas, at least that that commercialized plasticky version of Christmas. We've watched it come forward and forward, creeping ever nearer. So much so that it's not just Turkeys and pilgrims who have to now stress out about St. Nick's encroachment, but even Jason and Jamie Lee Curtis and the cast of It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. We've become so used to seeing the trappings and tidings of Christmas earlier and earlier in the year that we're no longer outraged, as I think we should be, when summer turns to autumn and the scent of pumpkin spice has just begun to fill the air, and already Santa Claus is coming to town. Well, our saving grace and refuge from all this premature Christmas cheer may just be this place on Sunday mornings. I wonder, did those scripture passages that we've just read, did they warm you up like a cup of hot chocolate? Did they turn your thoughts and minds to Santa Claus and reindeer and Christmas cheer, all the deeply wailing that we just read and sang about? While everything around us is already singing Christmas. The gospel text this morning, really all of today's scripture readings, they had a slightly different refrain, didn't they? The scripture this morning, it sang of darkness in the sky, echoing the darkness of our hearts and minds. Not, did we sing, of the ever-encroaching sugar cookie Christmas that we experience today. Jesus tells us in today's text that there's a day coming when everything that we think is sure and certain will begin to tremble. Tremble such that the very stars in heaven they begin to fail and fall, and the heavens themselves begin to shake and tremble. In the midst of such chaos, a sign will appear. The sign of the Son of Man, whom old Daniel had prophesied, the Son of Man coming, having mounted upon the clouds with power and might and glory. And how is it that men respond when they see this Son of Man coming? Matthew tells us there's mourning, wailing. You see, this gospel text we read is no warm cup of peppermint mocha with Bing Crosby scrooning white Christmas in the background. No, instead it's a warning. It's a shot across the bow, the bow of our contentment and our indifference. To those of us who are settled and sure, who are rolling along merrily through life without an eye toward the kingdom of God or a care for his Christ, to us, Jesus' words are jarring, waking us from our slumber. Just as his words were intended to be. Though those words may have been jarring and intending to wake us from slumber, they are still gospel words. They're still full of good news, full of hope, because Advent is so much more than simply pregaming for Christmas. Advent is the anxious anticipation, the heartache-tinged longing for Jesus to finally come again. And to finally set everything right. Last week on Christ the King's Sunday, we arrived at the culmination of Jesus' lifelong trek to Jerusalem. St. Luke uses this turner phrase, the way, the way, the way, over and over again in his gospel. That way is both the rocky highways and byways that Jesus walked from Bethlehem all the way to Jerusalem, but the way is also the new manner of life. The new manner of living and thinking and walking and ordering our affections, our loves. The new way Jesus invites us to walk. And that way is markedly distinct from the way the world walks. The way of Christ the King is a way of giving and self-sacrifice. It is the way of justice and mercy, of undeserved grace. Because by the way, that's all of us. Any of us who have received grace have received undeserved grace. The way of undeserved grace and of compassion. The way of Christ the King is where the kingdom of this world, as it trumpets a dog-eat dog existence, Christ comes and says, Die to yourself so that others might live. So while you and I are constantly allured by the siren song of a you-do-you culture, reassuring each of us that we are in fact the center of the universe, like we assume, Christ the King, he says, prefer others before yourselves. And in the midst of all these competing messages, the way into the kingdom of God is marked with something surprising. Christ the King, the King, enthroned on a cross. That's unexpected. For sure. Every bit of it. Just as God intended it for be, to be, excuse me. And not just the king on the cross is unexpected, but the whole story of the gospel is unexpected. Surprising. If the gospel weren't so surprising and unexpected, it wouldn't be gospel at all. It wouldn't be good news at all. It wouldn't be God's divine plan and the story He's writing and crafting. No, instead, it would be some pitiful substitute of a story that you or I would think of. If we were to set out to mend a broken creation, if we were to set out to heal a sin sick world, we would write a familiar story. Like every Disney movie, like every space opera with laser swords that's been made. There would be the usual villains, the typical plot twist, and we find a predictable hero. But this story, the story of the gospel and of scripture, none of us would ever write a story like this. We would never put the king in a stable, much less on a cross. Well, how should the story have gone in our hearts and minds? Well, there are any number of ways that we might have spun the tale of redemption. Perhaps we we resonate with the flood that Jesus mentioned in Matthew chapter 24. We look around and we observe how the wrong seems to prevail and the right to fail, and how all manner of wickedness is having its day. We think we understand why God wiped the earth clean in Noah's day, and we wish that maybe he would send a flood again. We know that sense, reading the news, feeling overwhelmed by evil, wondering how long God will wait. The soon to be king on the cross, he understands that encroaching darkness. He understands the chill in the air as the days shorten and the night lengthens. The one who called Noah to build an ark and held it fast in the palm of his hands as the waters of judgment rolled, he understands sin's decaying effect on the world that he spoke into existence. And as he looks at the wickedness of the world, what does he do? There are no more floods of watery judgment. He doesn't send down an army of angel hosts from a heaven rent in two. No, instead, the Lord of angel armies and of ocean deeps, he weeps. He cries out over Jerusalem and all her sin and wickedness and rebellion, and he says, How I would have gathered you in as a mother hen gathers her chicks, how I would have saved you from the judgment to come if only you had ears to hear. As Jesus was gathered with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, with the holy city and the gleaming temple unfurled beneath them, Jesus says to them, Things may be bad, guys, but but take heart because they're only going to get worse. When I come again, it will be like it was in the days of Noah. Men and women will go about their lives unconcerned about their sin and rebellion, blissfully unaware that a flood is coming until that flood has washed them clean away. That's what it will be like, Jesus says, when I come again. One moment two men will be in the fields working, and the next only one will remain. Two women grinding grain, the next instant, only one toiling at her labor. Like those who had perished when the flood waters came. It's so easy for us to go about our existence without a thought toward the God in heaven or the ark of salvation he has provided. Noah's neighbors, they must have thought that he was a fool for building his ark. You know, it had never rained until one day it finally did. One day everything was fine, and then the next everything was gone. Friends, though the judgment of God may seem slow, that judgment is certain and sure. There is a surprising immanence, a surprising suddenness to the kingdom of God and its coming judgment. Just as the judgment comes with surprising swiftness, though, so comes his mercy. Cast your minds back to the beginning of our gospel text. There in your bulletins, or you can find it on page 779 of your pew Bibles. When Jesus, the Son of Man, when he comes again in great glory, we read that the tribes of the earth they mourn. Mourn because they have rejected the Lord's Christ. Mourn because in their hearts they knew there was a God in heaven, but as St. Paul says in Romans 1, they worship the creation rather than the creator. And so it will be when the Son of Man comes again in glory. There will be no more pretending, there will be no more excuses. Every idol of our heart will be laid bare, and we will know without a doubt that the word of God is right and just and true. The tribes of the earth will mourn. But there is another category of man in Matthew chapter 24. The Son of Man, what does he do? He sends out his angels to the four corners of the earth to gather his elect, and for them, there is no mourning. They do not raise their voices in wailing despair, they raise their voices, singing, rejoicing, triumphant. There are those who long and look for the coming of God's promised one. And when he appears, they rejoice. In the weeks to come, we'll we'll read of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Those two saints who were surprised when Christ came near. We'll read of old Simeon and Anna, who had waited their whole lives long for the promised one of Israel, who had waited with hopeful anticipation because they knew God's promises and they believed God's promises, and they clung to the words of a faithful God. We'll read of humble shepherds, startled while watching their flocks by night, who left their lambs in the care of a sovereign God so that they might go and worship. We'll read of wise men who trekked across deserts to adore the one the star heralded. Because God's kingdom comes with surprising judgment, and it comes with more surprising mercy. One of the things that I love about our Anglican tradition is that we we read the scriptures in worship. And we read a lot of the scriptures in worship. Not just the sermon texts from the day, but the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Gospel, and we read the great poetry of Scripture and the Psalms. We we cover them all. And I think in so doing, we better comprehend how all of the Bible, all of Scripture is one big story, and at the very middle of that story stands a cross. Like Simeon and Anna and the shepherds of old. Let's turn and let's just for a moment consider what the prophet Isaiah had muttered some 700 years before our Lord's first advent. Isaiah chapter 2 in your bulletins, or you can find that on page 531 of your pew Bible. Let me paraphrase our reading for you this morning. A day is coming, Isaiah says, when the mountain of God will be exalted above all the idols and false gods of this world. And his throne shall rise above every other throne. Nations shall flow to it so that they might learn the law of the Lord and might walk in his paths. From his temple, the Lord shall judge rightly, perfectly. Every dispute settled with equity and peace will reign because the nations are no longer enslaved to sin. They're no longer pursuing their own desires, they're no longer following their own broken hearts. Instead of plotting and training for war, Isaiah says, they will turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Rather than striving to dominate one another, they will instead tend the garden of God together. Here's the surprise of the kingdom of God again. Here's the surprise of this story that you and I never would have written. The nations, the tribes who were mourning in Matthew chapter 24, who were wailing because judgment was coming, the nations they flow into the Lord's holy mountain. What for? So that they might learn his law and walk in his paths. That is absolutely astounding. Because all their lives the nations have striven against God's law. They preferred instead their own wisdom. Their minds have been darkened by sin and rebellion. They've been not just content to live in their own darkness, but they have waged war against God and his people and his Christ. Does that sound familiar? If not, it should. Friends, that's you and I before the light of the gospel shines in our hearts. And now this most dramatic of reversals, the scattered nations, the scattered peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, they flow into that holy city which they had so long despised. They flow into that place, the Lord's temple, which they had sought to destroy, so that they might come and sit at the Lord's feet and learn his law. This law, it's of course the law and the prophets. It's the Old Testament that you and I hold in our hands today, but it's so much more. The law Isaiah speaks of is the word of the Lord. The same word which the apostle John proclaimed as he opened his gospel. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The promise of Isaiah is that the word written, the word made flesh, because of that word flowing from Jerusalem, the nations, all those wandering in darkness, will see light and will flow into Jerusalem. There's one final surprise in the readings today. You know, we sometimes turn things around and get them backwards, believing that the church is a fortress for the righteous, while a wicked world is throwing itself against her fortifications. But as the light of the gospel begins to break, we see another truer story unfold, another gospel surprise, another plot twist in the Lord's story. The sign that Isaiah foretold is the sign that led the shepherds and the wise men to the infant Christ's cradle. Is the very same sign of the cross and the crucified king that points to that king coming again. The dawning light of the coming king reminds us that the church is on the move because the king is on the move. Following her king, the church assails the gates of hell, plundering it and extinguishing the darkness with gospel light. And when all the signs have been read, and when all the paths have been trod, we see that the swords in our hands have become plows and our spears have become hooks, and we look around and we find ourselves back in a garden. Just as we were made to be in the beginning. Because in the remade kingdom of God, when Christ comes again, we're all gardeners. Everything began in a garden. The garden of God. And we, by our disbelief and pride, we plunged God's perfect garden, all of his creation into darkness. In shame, we hid from God in that darkened garden, and we've hid from God every day since. And Advent, that one candle burning there, reminds us of what our hearts already know. Reminds us just how dark God's world has become. But light is breaking on the horizon. And every step we take towards the light, the light shines a little bit brighter. Every road that we tread with Jesus, it leads us back closer to the reborn garden of God. And in that garden, there is no more sickness, there's no more dying, no more sorrow, and no more parting. The gospel is surprising when it shines in the darkness of our sin and rebellion. It's surprising when it calls to the nations, those who had lived as rebels against God's rule, when it calls to them, come. Come to the house of God. Come into Jerusalem and worship God in his holy temple. The gospel is surprising when the king of all creation is laid in a feeding trough, when he's rejected by his own people, when he hangs on a cross. The gospel is surprising when it breaks into your life. When it breaks in when you're not waiting for it, when you're not looking for it, when you're not longing for it, the kingdom of God comes and it catches you off guard. And there is the king standing there, doors open, inviting you in. This advent, the king's invitation, is the same as Isaiah's was all those centuries ago. To those who are lost, stumbling around in darkness, to those trapped by sin and despairing that they could ever be freed and saved, to those weighed down by shame and without hope, cut off from God and all his merciful promises, all his merciful promises, to all of those. This is the invitation. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we do pray that you would shine your light in our hearts, that you would help us to believe where we are faithless. That you would give us this good message that the King is coming, and when he comes again, he is coming, Lord, in judgment. He is coming, Lord, for his church. Make us a part of your church, Lord. Usher us into that ark of salvation so that we are not swept away when you come again, but instead our voices go up, rejoicing. Rejoicing that we have finally seen our King face to face. And we pray these things in the name of the King, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Invite you to stand as you're able as we confess our faith together in the words of the Nicene.