Wednesday, December 3 2025
Advent Midweek 1
Text: Matthew 21:1-11
Sermon Audio
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
O Lord How shall I Meet You, the beautiful hymn that we just sung, shows the meaning of Advent quite marvelously. This hymn will serve as the theme of our midweek services this year, and Adventtide in general. Each stanza brings out a different richness of the different ways in which Jesus comes to His people. We will dive into each of these in the coming weeks. There is the first coming of Christ that blessed Christmas morning that ushered in salvation through His perfect life, atoning death, and victorious resurrection. There is Christ’s continual coming through His written and spoken Word, through the waters of Holy Baptism and the partaking of His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, and through the love of the people that He marks as His through those means. Lastly, there is Christ’s second coming in the final judgment that we wait and hope for, where the wicked will receive eternal condemnation and He will usher His faithful into eternal life and salvation.
1 John mirrors this truth. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.” The word that the apostle uses here for sent is written in the perfect tense. This gives the sense that God has sent, is sending, and will send His only Son into the world. This three fold sending of Christ is the heart of the Advent season. It is also our heart, because it is in the perfect sending of Christ that we live through Him. Let’s dig into the first sending of Christ today. O Lord, how did you meet us?
The very next verse from our Epistle reading gives us the reason behind His coming in the flesh some 2000 years ago. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Here is that word sent again. This time it is strictly talking in the past tense. God loves us so much that He sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins. Not just our sins but the sins of the world. This is the way in which God loves the world. Yet while we were still sinners Christ died for us. This doesn’t make any sense to us, yet it is the perfect love of God.
Has he not seen me?! I know the wretched man that I am. He knew me from the foundation of the world. He sees the idolatry of my heart. He knows deep down that my flesh aches to pursue every lust of my flesh. I want the biggest and fanciest truck, I want to lash out at people who get under my skin, I want to let my eyes linger at the scantily clad woman that walks by, I want to say whatever it takes so people don’t realize how depraved I am inside, and I most certainly don’t want anyone telling me I can’t do all these things. I truly deserve the wrath of God… yet Jesus is the propitiation for all of the sins that plague our human flesh. A propitiation is a sacrifice that appeases the wrath of God so that no one else gets punished. Only the perfect God who took on our human flesh could be such a willing propitiation. Christ’s sacrifice is pure love for His fallen creation. This is the love that He delivers to us even while we were yet sinners. Yet this isn’t how anyone expected the Christ to free the world. He was supposed to be a triumphant king, right?! He wasn’t supposed to be a mere sacrifice born in a lowly manger. That’s what the sheep were for. The faithful remnant of old were looking for a King not a propitiation!
Well, they did get the King. It’s just that His kingdom was not what they expected. They wanted a warrior in the image of David. That is what was foretold right? David’s Son would sit on the throne forever. David conquered earthly enemies in the name of the Lord. The Philistines didn’t know what hit them; surely the Christ would ride in on a white stallion and show Rome who was truly boss! That is a king we can rally behind. Our earthly enemies could be destroyed and we can finally live our lives how we please. The people didn’t realize that the promised King had a heavenly kingdom and He was the Prince of Peace. A peace that goes far beyond temporary worldly peace.
That’s the problem, worldly peace will fade. There’ll always be another Philistine or Rome. Another evil empire continues to be lurking around the corner in this world. Jesus came to usher eternal peace that would put an end to all evil. He had to do it in a way that only God could. He had to be born of a virgin. Only God could be born from a womb that had never known a man. If God didn’t take human flesh into Himself He couldn’t redeem mankind. This is how our eternal King can begin to claim His people. He redeems the poor and lowly by becoming poor and lowly. He doesn’t view Himself as too good for His people, even though He has every right to. He brings His people into His goodness. Our King must therefore walk where His people couldn’t. He must live a life of perfection. He fulfills every law so it could be fulfilled in Him. He doesn’t sin, so that those who are in His kingdom could be sinless in Him. A true King stands in the stead of His people, paving the way for them to be able to live in His kingdom.
Jesus would continue to do things that only God could do. He performed miracles, redeeming His creation to Him and showing that He truly was God incarnate. Only God could do the things He was doing and only God could teach with the authority by which He was teaching. People marveled, and rightly so. Christ’s redemptive work as He went through His life brought people to faith in Him as the Messiah. The incarnate God with us. They knew He was their true King, yet they didn’t fully understand it, they just believed it. He battled against the sickness, the demons, and the sins that plague humanity and healed them, cast them out, and forgave them. Our humble King was fighting for mankind. His people met Him with glad hosannas when He came to sit on His throne in His kingdom.
We see in our Gospel that He rode into town to claim his throne, on a donkey? This was the steed of peace and the palms are praises of victory. Jesus is ushering in both peace and victory. The King had done what He needed to do and it was time to put on His crown and sit on His throne. The battle needed to be finished. So our king comes, once more lowly. He lets Himself be handed over to the authorities so they could give Him his crown of thorns and the throne of the cross. This is where final victory would be finished. Here the redemption of the world was won by our King. Jesus battled for His kingdom as the Prince of Peace. His death was the glory of God as our King. Death has been defeated and Christ has triumphed. He rose in victory over death on the third day. This is the kingdom that He came for that blessed Christmas morning. This is what the faithful people of old were waiting for. He is the one in whom all their hopes rested. He may not have been what they expected, but Jesus is the King, the true God who took on human flesh, that the whole world needed. He came as David’s true son, bringing peace to man by defeating the powers of sin, death, and the devil. He is the only true propitiation for men before God. Christ is the perfect love of God.
Ok, so I just showed that Jesus really did come into the world as our triumphant King so that the whole world could be redeemed into his kingdom, so what? That was then, this is now. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Jesus had to first come into the world and do all of these things to be able to continue coming and to come again on the last day. He first had to finish all things on the cross. Now you know the heart of the love of God and you can love one another as a reflection of His sacrificial love to the world. That doesn’t seem that simple. We will dig in more next week on how Jesus continues to come to us today, bringing us His love. O Lord, How do you meet us? Once we understand that, we can fully realize how our love is part of this ongoing coming. Until then, we rest in the knowledge that our King really did come to fulfill all things as was foretold since the fall of man. He did come and take on human flesh, so that all of mankind could be joined to His life, death, and resurrection. He did come to forgive us from all our sins. We now sing with the church triumphant hosannas to Christ our King. Our King who brought to us peace, who reigns then, now, and eternally, and has brought us into His eternal kingdom. Thanks be to God!
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard and keep you in the true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.