1ST SUNDAY IN ADVENT (1)

1ST SUNDAY IN ADVENT (1)

Text: Romans 13: 11-14

Source from Back to Luther with German archive reference. Back to Walther's Epistle Sermons.

Lord Jesus, by Thy grace we today enter upon another church year; even now, oh Sun of grace, you arise in order to come to us again in your Word and Sacraments and begin anew a year bringing light and life, peace and joy also among us. Alas, oh Lord, how many days of grace did you prepare for us and pour out your heavenly light in brilliant rays upon us in the past but we remained in our sins with the eyes of our soul tightly closed! In vain did you bathe us in light; our souls remained in darkness; we did not open our eyes to see the splendor of your grace? and take delight in it; we sleep on and rather take delight in the empty illusions of an imagined worldly happiness, yes in the sweet poison of sin. We sleep on the abyss of an eternal ruin. But behold! You do not cast us down in much deserved wrath; no, your protection still extends over us, holds us firmly with the hand of patience, and lengthens our time of grace; today you once again step before and cry to us, "The hour is here, you sleepers, the hour is here to arise from sin." Therefore shout these words with almighty power so that every soul hearing them will wake up, arise from spiritual sleep, put aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, yes, put you on, Lord Jesus, and when you will come again in flames to take vengeance upon those who did not obey your Gospel to enter with you into your glorious kingdom. Amen! Amen!

Dearly beloved friends in Christ Jesus !

Just as a sleeping person is not conscious of the rising sun casting its rays into his bedroom; just as he has no foreboding of any danger in which he might be and perceive neither the evil nor the good which may surround him; and on the other hand, just as he is sometimes delighted, sometimes frightened by mere empty dreams; just as he sometimes dreams of great fortune, riches, and glory, sometimes of grievous misfortune, even though neither the one nor the other has any reality; like unto it is the spiritual condition of all men before they have experienced the wonder of grace by which they are transformed through the Word and the Spirit.

Similarly, natural man lies in a deep spiritual sleep. He experiences nothing of the all-pervading light of the Gospel already shining on him. The greatest majority of them consider this heavenly light as darkness, divine wisdom which wants to save them as foolishness, yes, they rage against it as against the most fearsome obstacle to true human happiness. On the other hand, while others hear the Gospel with their ears, their heart remains untouched. They are like the dangerously ill which sleep with their eyes open. They let the Gospel rays shine upon them but their hearts and minds remain in darkness. All they have is merely a historical knowledge, or in other words, merely a dead head knowledge.

Consequently, they also do not come to know the danger in which their soul is by nature, namely, that it will be eternally lost. They never come to the knowledge of their natural corruption. They never realize that their nature

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is flesh born of flesh and therefore at enmity with God. They do not learn to differentiate rightly between good and evil, the important from the unimportant, their weal from their woe. They never experience what a benefit is theirs that Christ came into the world to save sinners; Jesus never becomes their all-sufficient comfort; never their one and all. The world and what it gives man -- that remains their highest good which they first seek and for which they take daily thought. To a decisive hatred of sin, even their pet sins, and to a real perception that the world and all that is in it and that what man can win and accomplish is nothing, or as Solomon says, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," --that they never realize.

Their life is like a dream. They sleep and think they’re awake; they are dead and think they are alive. They are in the grips of a great delusion. If God blesses them materially, that he might bring them to repentance through his goodness, then they consider this blessing as a sign of their own goodness and become so much the more secure; if, on the other hand, God sends trials and tribulations in order to draw them away from the world to himself, then they begin to quarrel with God and hate him the more, accusing him of being unjust and not dealing with them as they deserve.

Beloved, how unfortunate that man is who does not now awaken from this natural, spiritual sleep. This spiritual sleep is nothing else than the certain forerunner of eternal death, or eternal damnation. Therefore, the trumpet of God's Word sounds in our ears, "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light." Eph 5,14. This voice of God resounds also in today's epistle lesson. May God grant that today that sound will enter not only our ear but also our heart and banish the sleep of sin and awaken us to a new life in Christ ! -- Before we give ear to this voice, let us in silent prayer call upon God for the grace of his Holy Spirit.

Quote the text here: Romans 13, 11-14.

According to our text there is no doubt as to what the subject of our consideration must be. " That now it is high time to awake out of sleep," thus the holy Apostle addresses the Roman Christians already in his time. How much more so, therefore, does he address us today! Therefore, let us give our whole attention to the word of the apostle which is addressed also to us,

IT IS HIGH TIME TO AWAKE OUT OF SLEEP

1. Ponder Why it is High Time; and,

2. Seek to Learn in What the Awakening from Sleep Consists.

I.

We have already considered the sleep which the apostle has in mind from which we should awaken. It is not the physical but the spiritual sleep, the sleep of sin. It is not a sleep from which one must awaken only once in his life, but daily until his death, if he does not wish to sink into eternal ruin. Although only the unconverted lie in this sleep as in death, so that they see, hear, and understand nothing spiritual, still even awakened Christians are not entirely free from a certain spiritual drowsiness. If they, therefore, do not wish to fall back completely into the old spiritual sleep of death without realizing it they must ever and again allow themselves to be put on the alert. Therefore, whoever you may be, whether you are still an unbeliever, or already a Christian, this word of the apostle is meant for you, " It is high time to awake out of sleep."

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First of all, for what reasons does the apostle write this in our text? He gives two. The first one is contained in the words, " For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed." By salvation the apostle obviously does not mean God's grace and the forgiveness of sins. The Roman Christians already have these. Therefore, these did not first have to come nearer and nearer to them. He means, rather, the second coming of Christ on Judgment Day, when he will take his own into heaven and salvation. The apostle furthermore does not mean to say, that there never was a time, in which man did not have reason to arise from his spiritual sleep. He means this: as long as Christ had not appeared in the flesh, as long therefore as it was not possible that Christ would not come to judgment, to make an end to the time of grace for all men (this could be said by those who lived in the time of the Old Covenant), so long to be sure one could think that he could postpone the awakening from sleep for a while. But since our salvation is now nearer than when we believed, namely since Christ has come and can at any hour come again, now indeed it is high time to awaken from sleep, so that the day of the Lord does not come upon us and find us in sleep like the foolish virgins and the door to the heavenly wedding forever closed.

Now if the imminence of Judgment Day was grounds enough already in apostolic times for the Christians to snap awake, how much more for us! Not only have some 1900 years gone by since the apostle wrote these things, but also everything is fulfilled, yes, repeatedly fulfilled, what according to the prophecies of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets should precede Judgment Day. There is for example the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews over the entire world, wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, pestilence and famine, bloody persecutions, unusual signs in the sun, moon, and stars, the preaching of the Gospel in all the world as a witness to all people, the preaching of false christs and false prophets, the great apostasy, the Antichrist sitting in the temple of God, the revealing of the mystery of iniquity, the love of Christians themselves growing cold, the host of scoffers who walk after their own lusts and say, "Where is the promise of his coming?"

Now all this is already fulfilled, and therefore, nothing more remains except for the Lord himself to appear. Certainly this has happened contrary to the expectation of all Christians at all times that God in his incomprehensible patience has waited 1900 years for the repentance of the world. Which Christian will yet expect a longer period of grace for the world?

The signs of the last times, which we are now witnessing, have not now come for the first time, but are merely repetitions of signs which have been already fulfilled prior to this time. All tocsins of Judgment Day have already pealed their final sound and yet, as it were, cannot cease ringing. The- last hour has long since struck. The sands of time have run out. The last fearful resounding clang which will announce to all creatures the end of time and the beginning of eternity is on the point of pealing. The Judge is already at the door. God already stands outside with the firebrand of his wrath but it appears as if God's boundless patience is as it were still grappling with his justice, for his justice wants finally to set fire to the world which has become a great Sodom, melt its elements with fervent heat, and deliver it up to annihilation. The holy angels have already taken their battle stations and the archangel with the trumpet of judgment in his hand stands at their head awaiting the zero hour.

" It is high time to awake out of sleep;" thus the world in its death-throes calls to Christians and would-be-Christians. " It is high time to awake out of sleep," cry out the manifoldly fulfilled signs of the last day, lowering as a bank of thunderheads. " It is high time," shouts even the countless host of apostates which according to the prophecies of Scripture are the scum of the

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And is it not just to us here in America to whom God is especially clearly and distinctly calling, " It is high time to awake out of sleep"? What is it that the present great spiritual and temporal distress of our fatherland tells us — the tottering of all its foundations, the rivers of blood flowing on its battlefields, the heart-rending misery of countless thousands of wounded and mutilated in its hospitals, the grief and tears of its many widows and orphans, while over and above this unspeakable misery drunken lust lies, deceives, carouses, revels, dissipates, curses, jests, sports, and dances as though there were no God and no judgment and as though we lived at the dawn of all good fortune! All this also shrills in our ears, Oh, you Christians and would-be-Christians, " now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation " as well as the damnation of all godless, the end of all misery as well as the en d of all grace, blessed eternity and the judgment, heaven and hell, all this " is now nearer than when we believed."

Tell me, what would you say of a man who is sleeping in a straw hut and while we approach it with a burning torch shout to him, Get up quickly and run away! would want to sleep peacefully on until his hut would be actually in flames? You would call him insane. What else would it be but madness, not to want to awaken from the sleep of sin now that already the flames of divine wrath are approaching the straw hut that is the world, and heaven and earth and all creatures thunder, " It is high time to awake out of sleep! "?

It is true no man, no angel can calculate that day or that hour and with certainty predict when the entire visible creation will be in flames. For this reason it is the more frightful to give yourself up to the sleep of security for, as the Lord says, the day of the Lord will come as a snare upon all who live on the earth as the apostle writes, "For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." 1 Thess 5,3.

For all that the apostle adduces yet another reason in our text, why the hour is here, to awake from sleep when he continues, " The night is far spent, the day is at hand." The apostle wishes to say: as long as it is night a man is not ashamed to be clothed in a night dress, but when the sun ushers in the new day, he is ashamed to appear in them publicly — so also it is in the spiritual life. As long as a person lies in the night of heathen ignorance, so long does he not feel ashamed of his sleep in sin and the night dress of his wicked works. However, what a disgrace it is if, after the sun of the Gospel has risen and the day of eternity which will reveal everything fully approaches, he still continues to sleep, and, but not aroused until the thunderclaps of Judgment Day, he must appear before the piercing eyes of the Judge of all the world in the clothes of sin!

Oh my friends, may we also think upon this! Behold, also for us the night of ignorance is passed. Ue stand in the noon-day light of the Gospel. Yes, the dawn of eternity is already breaking upon the earth and the day is here. Do we want to sleep on and let the day of separation find us clothed in sin? -- Then standing before God in the shame of our nakedness we would "begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us." But in vain! For the earth with its hills and mountains will then disappear and not one corner of the world will remain in which the unconverted sinner can hide himself. But standing revealed in the filthy rags of his sins, a horror to all creatures, sentenced by God, he will be cast into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, no rest day or night, but only the smoke of their torment will ascend to eternity. Therefore, wake, awake! " It is high time to awake out of sleep !"

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II.

Now, my friends, it is time that we in the second place seek to discover, wherein the awakening from sleep consists.

Our text explains, " Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." First of all, these words tell us this much. It is not nearly enough for a person to awaken from his sleep of sin and to speak much of his being a poor sinner, and that he now no longer continues in carnal security but continues sinning with an uneasy conscience. There are only too many who are indeed startled out of their security but wish to show their Christianity through nothing but a continual lament over their sinfulness, yet in spite of it all they are in their former condition. The apostle wishes to know nothing of such a hypocritical Christianity. However, if a person really is awakened from his sleep of sin and has arisen, if he has really comprehended his former miserable damnable condition, because God's Word has pricked his heart, then he should also, if he does not wish to be eternally lost, do two things. As one who has awakened and arisen from temporal sleep takes off his night clothes and dons his work-a-day suit, so also should he take something Off and put something on.

What should he according to our text " cast off ?" Everything which belongs to the " works of darkness ". To that belongs all that because of which man seeks darkness, those things about which he wishes that no one, above all that the holy God may not see, know, and learn about, the evil intentions, thoughts, lusts, and desires of the heart, or sinful words, thoughts or attitudes, or hypocritical or openly godless works, in short, everything which God's Wbrd and Spirit rebukes in man. Whoever is not in earnest not only to recognize all this more and more, but also to cast it off; whoever does not honestly work toward becoming more and more free from all these works of darkness, in vain does he comfort himself with the thought, that God's Word has awakened him, that he no longer lives as does the world in carnal security without a care of his salvation. Such a person who is not intent upon casting off all the works of darkness, but still purposely lives in this and that sin which God's Word reproves is in all his religious awakening, yes, for that very reason, nothing but a twofold child of hell. Of him the Lord says, "And that servant, which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." Lk 12,47.

According to our text it is not enough that the awakened one cast off the works of darkness; there is something he must also " put on," namely, as the apostle says in our text, " the armor of light." As on the one hand under the works of darkness the apostle includes everything that a person would gladly see covered with darkness, so on the other hand, under the armor of light he

includes everything by which a man gladly comes to the light, which gives him a free conscience before God and man, which he need not hide nor feel ashamed of, and about which he the more rejoices, because he knows that his God knows of it. Thus the Lord himself speaks, "For everyone that does evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." Jn 3,20.21.

The apostle calls that which an awakened one should put on, not simply works but " armor ", because it not only adorns but also arms him for the battle over the crown. Wherein this armor consists, the apostle tells us in detail in Ephesians 6. Here we learn that the weapons of light first of all consist in loins girt about with truth, that is, in uprightness of his entire life before God and man; secondly, in the breastplate of righteousness over against

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everyone; thirdly, in feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace over against friend and foe; fourthly, in the shield of faith to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked; fifthly, in the helmet of salvation, that is, in a living comforting hope of eternal life; and lastly, in the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, which he daily wields for a winning battle against the flesh, world, and Satan. This, this is the armor of light which all those who are awakened from their sleep and have arisen must put on every morning.

In order to present the casting off of the works of darkness and the putting on of the armor of light still more clearly the apostle adds in our text, “ Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts there of.” Vv. 13.14. The intention of the apostle in these closing words is this: Perhaps you will say, we have already cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. But I pray you, warn and admonish you, do not deceive yourselves, for your salvation is at stake. That you have cast off the works of darkness you must also prove by a life unspotted from the world. He who says that he has cast off the works of darkness and still continues to associate with the godless world which lives in rioting and drunkenness, which lead, to lust and immorality and only too often to wrangling, envy, anger, strife, discord, yes, and not seldom ends in murder, he is a liar. To be sure, a Christian takes care of his body, but not to the end that he becomes lascivious but that he might become and remain fit to serve God and his neighbor. And still morel He alone has really awakened from sleep who not only keeps himself unspotted from the ungodly and wicked world and no longer acts like it, but who also has put on Christ, so that one does not see in him the old but the new man, the picture of the loving, gentle, humble, chaste, pure, heavenly-minded Savior.

And so in conclusion, appealing to your conscience, I ask you, who among us can say there was a time when I slept the sleep of sin and security even as the whole world; I went down the broad way and did not provide for the salvation of my soul. But praise God, his Word awakened me and I am awake ! And you who can confess that with a free conscience, can you also add, I am not only awakened, I have arisen from sleep? I have cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light with which I now daily fight for that crown laid aside for me? I have put on Jesus Christ? He is not only my comfort, he is also my dress? He is not only my justification but also my sanctification?

Ah, are there not still many among us who have never experienced an awakening from sleep which terrorizes, the same as when a man awakens who has slept alongside a precipice? And are there also those among us who indeed once were awake but have again fallen asleep and become fond of the world and allowed themselves to become spotted with the ways of the world? Have they not perhaps cast off the armor of light and once more put on the works of darkness, frolic with the world, and hate the servants of Christ who tell them this? And finally, are there not also those who, to be sure, have not yet completely fallen asleep but have become drowsy, as the Lord himself foretold of the five wise virgins of the last times?

Now, may not several at this point say, Ah, how often have not I wanted to awaken from sleep, wanted to put off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, wanted to walk in the new life and fight against every ungodly conduct, but I did not succeed? Ever and again I fell back into that old sleep of sin. What should 1 do? -- I answer, Despair of saving yourself and believe on the Lord Jesus. In that way you will acquire not only righteousness but also strength.

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Nevertheless, today the apostle above all wishes that we recognize that the hour to awaken from sleep has come. Let me therefore once more deeply impress upon your heart the apostle's words, because it is the word of the Lord, " And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Awake you sleepers! ON YOUR TOES! Cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light! Yes, put on the Lord Jesus Christ!

Soon, soon he will come in the clouds of the heavens and his reward with him. All the nations of the earth will howl, but all his faithful shall leap for joy.