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And we pray, Father, now that you would shine the light of your Son Jesus Christ, the light of the world, shine it in our minds and in our hearts, that you would bring life where there is death by the powerful word of your gospel. Do this, we pray for your glory in us and our joy in you. And we ask these things, Christ, in your name and for your sake. Amen. Please be seated. I almost broke Anglican Christmas rule number one today. Excuse me. And I wonder if anyone knows what that rule is. Anglican Christmas rule number one. Can you hold that for me? Thank you. Anglican Christmas rule number one is no Christmas hymns until Christmas. And the reason for that particular unwritten but often spoken rule, especially often spoken if you spend much time around Father Curtis. The reason for that. The reason for that particular unwritten rule is the tendency that we have to subsume Advent into Christmas, to treat Advent as if it is simply some kind of pregaming for Christmas. Not the unique season that it is. Now, today is not Advent, of course, so maybe the rule technically wouldn't have been enforceable anyway. Regardless, I wonder if any of you have guessed why I almost broke Christmas rule, Anglican Christmas rule number one today. Maybe. I know. I know, right? Maybe it struck you. Maybe it struck you. I'm so glad he said because you were a Baptist. There's been a change in language there, which I'm very appreciative of. Maybe it struck you while we were making our way through the scripture readings. You can turn in your bulletins to our Old Testament lesson today from Malachi. And as you're turning there and as you're considering what Debbie just read for us in Malachi, I'm going to recount to you the last verse of today's almost Christmas hymn. Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace. Hail the Son of righteousness. Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings, mild he lays his glories by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. I wonder if you've guessed it. Glory to the newborn King. That scripture which inspired Charles Wesley to pen his famous Christmas hymn of the Son of Righteousness risen with healing in his wings, it also says this, jarringly. Behold, the day is coming burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts. It will leave them neither root nor branch. The day is coming. Malachi penned those words before the Lord fell silent for four hundred years. And during those four centuries, before John the Baptist comes bursting onto the scene, during those four centuries Israel will be subjugated, the temple will be desecrated. Judas Maccabeus, Judas the Hammer, he would arise and lead a rebellion against their seleucid overlords, and finally Rome would enter the picture. The day is coming. With Roman control, the Herods would arise as their lackeys, and Herod the Great, known for his buildings and his brutality, he cast an eye towards Nehemiah's derelict temple and decided it was time for a change, bigger, better, bolder. That's what the Lord's temple surely needed. It needed Herod's touch to make it truly magnificent. The day is coming. With Malachi's words largely forgotten, and Herod's building project, his vanity project, one of the wonders of the ancient world, that vanity project rising up in glory, Jesus, St. Luke just told us, he walks out of that temple, never to step foot in it again. I'm going to give you a main point this morning because Sam has been begging for it for the last few times that I've preached. You're welcome. Here comes the bus. There goes Sam. A main point for today. Christians are a the day is coming people. As the kingdoms of this world rise against one another and are thrown down, as earthquakes and famines lay men low, and as we are brought bound in change before the rulers of this world, some even unto death, the sure and certain hope we have is the promise of God that the day is coming. Well, before we look at the coming day, let's consider the days at hand. Jesus lays it out for us in Luke chapter 21, verses 8 through 17. I'll invite you to turn in your copy of the scriptures there, or if you want to grab the pew Bible in front of you, you can find that on page 827. It'll be helpful to have that in front of you. In Luke chapter 21, Jesus lists off false Christs in verse 8, wars and tumults, verse 9, nations and kingdoms rising against one another in verse 10. We read of earthquakes in various places, famines, pestilence, fearful sights, great signs from heaven. All that's in verse 11. And then in verses 12 through 17, we read of the pending, the imminent persecution of the people of God. That's quite an opening salvo for Jesus' most controversial sermon, the all of that discourse. Rising some 150 feet above the temple, the Mount of Olives, where Jesus is preaching. It would have afforded a breathtaking view of Herod's temple, those noble stones in all of their glory. And it's there on the Mount of Olives that Jesus preaches about the end of time and the consummation of all things. A sermon which has led to so much speculation and so much ink spilled through the centuries. This is how the historian Josephus described the noble stones of Herod's temple in his history, The Jewish Wars. He says this the exterior of the building wanted nothing. It lacked nothing that could astound either mind or eye. For being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes. To approaching strangers, it appeared from a distance like a snow-clad mountain. For all that was not overlaid with gold was of purest white. Quite the backdrop for a sermon. Walking out of the temple on Tuesday of Holy Week, one of Jesus' disciples had made a throwaway offhand comment, praising the noble stones and offerings that adorned the edifice of the temple. And Jesus' response to them that we just read was shocking. He says, the day is coming when all of these noble stones will be thrown down and the temple destroyed. Surely that's impossible, Jesus. What kind of earthquake could jar these mighty stones loose, some of them as big as a boxcar? What could cast down such a structure, even the house of God? Well, when will these things come to pass, Jesus? When will not one noble stone of the temple be left on another? And when will they be thrown down? Well, this morning I'm not going to attempt to interpret all the signs that Jesus mentions or to lay out some precise ordering of events preceding Christ's second coming because there's not time for that, because there are far too many interpretations, but most importantly, because I don't think that's the main thrust of what Jesus is saying in this passage. Notice, though, that all of those things that Jesus mentioned: false Christs, wars, commotions, nations rising against each other, earthquakes, signs from heaven, and persecution, all of those things that he mentions in his sermon, that opening salvo, they are not exclusive to that particular day when Christ comes again. They're not exclusive to the run-up to that particular day when Christ comes again. What Jesus is describing is a world groaning under the weight of sin. What Jesus lays out is simply the narrative of every day after the fall. Earthquakes happen because we broke God's earth in our rebellion. Famines raged because in the perfect garden of God, where men lacked for nothing, our faithless greed won the day. Because every good thing was simply not enough for us. Kings arise against one another because we sought to pull our true king off his throne and set ourselves in his place. It's just every day east of Eden. Furthermore, Jesus seems pretty clear towards the end of Luke 21, this is verses 27 through 28, that his coming is going to be absolutely unmissable and unmistakable. You're not going to need all these signs and wonders because when Christ comes again in his glory, everyone is going to know what's happening and who it is. So don't be overwhelmed or frightened. Don't fix your eyes on all these things that will happen and do happen, Jesus says. Don't look to the days at hand, but look instead to the coming day. That coming day. Jesus starts describing it in verses 17 and 18. Where he says that some will be betrayed by family, by mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors. Some will be put to death. A familiar tale, if you know anything, about the persecuted church in every age and especially in our day. Jesus summarizes life in these days as we wait for the coming day this way. You see, this is not the Jesus that's so popular within and without the church today. Both in the church and outside the church, our preferred Jesus and our assumed Jesus is some kind of mystical talisman or some worker of magic who exists simply to give us our wants, to reassure us when our consciences cry out, and to give his benediction to the desires that rule our lives. We don't like this downer of a Messiah who says things like, You will be hated by all for my name's sake. That's the thing about the coming day. Malachi, he described it so vividly. It's like an oven where the proud and self-assured will be burnt up like stumble, root and branch devoured, clean gone. The coming day is a day of judgment. But it is precisely that coming day of judgment that sustains believers in the midst of injustice and persecution and wrong and suffering. Sam really eloquently laid that out for us last week as we considered the life of Job. So I'll encourage you, if you want to consider that particular point more, to go and listen to his sermon so you can better understand how God's promised and perfect justice gives confidence to believers. But for today, and in today's text, that coming day of judgment is both a dread, threat to sinners, and a sure and certain hope for the people of God. In one and the same breath, Jesus says, You will be betrayed and martyred and hated by all for my name's sake, and not a hair on your head shall perish. Now that seems like a patently absurd claim on the face of it. Not a hair on your head shall perish. Now I'm gonna run my hands through my hair right now. Just some of you maybe can find that longing spot on the top of your head. Not a hair on your head shall perish. Eleven of Jesus' disciples, they would seal their testimony and their faith in Jesus with their blood. The one who did it, St. John, one day he laid down all alone on the island of Patmos. And his hair turned to dust. Even the crowd on the periphery of Jesus' sermon there on the Mount of Olives. Listening in, even they, if they had lived long enough, they would have been laid low by Titus's destruction of that glorious temple in the year 80 70. A day when it was burned and all the noble stones were pried loose, as Roman soldiers dug for gold that had melted away. So fly to the hills, Jesus had warned, lest you perish in that day. You see, everyone of that generation died. And everyone in every generation up until this day has died. Not a hair on your head shall perish. Friends, if you are to gain your life, if you are to endure until that final day, the coming day when Christ comes again in his glory, if you are to endure, it is because you have believed Christ's words that not a hair on your head will perish. You have believed that the God who spoke those words rules and reigns supreme and is greater than all the kingdoms and nations waging war against one another. He is more powerful than all the earthquakes breaking open the crust of this earth. He's more powerful than any famine or any plague, and that his word shall endure despite what your present circumstances may seem to indicate. In a world where the only certainties are death and taxes, here's the weight of Jesus' words. God is so wise and so good that in that coming day, the day of resurrection, when Christ comes again, he will not forget a single hair on your head. This is how the Heidelberg Catechism says it. The first question: what is your only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and redeemed me from the power of the devil. And he so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven, not a hair can fall from my head. Indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation. Do you believe, Jesus, when he says, not a hair shall fall from your head? Do you believe that for yourself? Do you believe that for those saints who have died in the Lord and are awaiting the resurrection day? Friends, that's a good word and that's a sound promise. Not a hair shall fall from your head. There's one other phrase from the gospel passage that's been ringing in my mind and heart over this last week. It's that phrase, noble stones. Now, ostensibly, that's a description of the massive stones of Herod's temple. But I think if we zoom out a bit more, there's something else at play. So look in your Bible, Luke 21 is kind of an oddly placed chapter heading. Because it breaks up the contrast that Luke seems to be drawing between two people. You see that at the very end of Luke 20, where we read about the scribes who are there praying long prayers for a pretense. They're up there in all their robes, right? And they're devouring widows' houses. That's the very end of Luke 20. And then in Luke 21, we find Jesus looking and seeing a widow in the temple, placing her two coins in the offering box. It's the contrast that Malachi was talking about in verses, in chapter 3, verse 18. Once more Malachi says, You shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him. That scribe and that poor widow, they are the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. And we would assume that it's the religious leaders and the wealthy who are there, who are the ones who have served the Lord by their giftedness and by their gifts. But that's not what Jesus seems to say. It's that poor widow who put everything that she had into the box. That poor widow, whose every hair is numbered and remembered by a sovereign father, whose faith and the promises of a loving God is so great that she puts in everything she has because she knows everything she has is not hers anyway. She's the one whose eyes are fixed on that coming day. Friends, there is a coming day with a coming king. And when that day and that king come, when the Son of righteousness rises with healing in his wings, we will either be burned up like stubble, pleading our riches, trying to buy his grace, or we will be purified and refined as he fashions us into the true noble stones of the temple of God. Forever fit together with Christ as our cornerstone. You see, Christians are a the day is coming people. Not a we've arrived people, but a day, uh, the day is coming people. A people who cling to the promise of the coming king. That when he comes again and the dead are raised, he will not forget a single hair on our head. So take heart. Though kings rage and earths quake, we possess the sure and certain hope of God's promise that the day is coming. The day of Christ the King. Let's pray. We thank you, O great King of the heavens and King of the earth, that when you come again and we are raised, you will raise up every hair from our head. Not a single hair will perish. We thank you that though we often forget you, you do not forget us. So Lord, by your Spirit, fix our eyes not on this world, not on the earthquakes and tumults, not on kings and nations and politicians, but to instead fix our eyes on that coming day when we see you in all your glory. And we pray, Jesus, that you would come quickly. Come quickly and set this broken world to rights. Come quickly and gather all your saints home. We pray these things in your name and for your sake. Amen.