To Dwell on the Meditations of God
So maybe you’re onto it by now, especially after last Sunday’s exhortation. But in any case, I want to spell it out and make it clear: Advent is for longing for the return of Jesus our King. And especially this Advent, this year.
Ryan Griffith said it best, “This Advent we need a little less Christmas past sentimentality, and a lot more King Jesus on his white horse.”
King Jesus is who we’re confronted with in Revelation 19, the vision of Jesus returning in judgment. And it goes rated R in a hurry. Because it’s real judgment. No warm and fuzzies here. No “every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings” — or anything else you might hear in Bedford Falls (which I enjoy, by the way). Rather, in the vision John reminds us that the return of Jesus is for putting the world aright. That means salvation and judgment.
And this will hardly make sense to us unless we hold in our minds and hearts the truth of God’s holiness. ’Tis the season, speaking culturally, that his majesty is most domesticated, and if we fall for that, we’ll miss not only the fittingness of coming judgment, but also the sheer mercy of Jesus’s birth.
And so to help us, I share with you some Puritan insight, because it’s been helpful to me. Richard Baxter, the great English pastor, reminded his 17th century congregation what we still need today:
If he be good, and infinitely good, there is all the reason in the world that you should love him; and there is no show of reason that you should love the world or sin before him.
If he be faithful and true, his threatenings must be feared, and his promises must not be distrusted; and there is no reason that you should make any question of his word.
If he be holy … then he must be an enemy to sin, and to all that are unholy, because they are contrary to his nature. Consider that he is almighty, and there is no resisting him … in the twink of an eye can he snatch thy guilty soul from thy body, and cast it where sin is better known.
A word of his mouth can set all the world against thee, and set thine own conscience against thee too … and if he be thine enemy, it is no matter who is thy friend; for all the world cannot save thee, if he do but condemn thee …
He was from eternity, and thou art but as it were of yesterday; thy being is from him; thy life is always in his hands, thou canst not live an hour without him, thou canst not fetch a breath without him, nor think a thought, nor speak a word, nor stir a foot or a hand without him …
no love can be great enough, and no praises can be high enough, and no service can be holy and good enough [to match the glory of this God] … this is not a God to be neglected, or dallied with; nor a God to be resisted, nor provoked by the willful breaking of his laws … O therefore dwell on the meditations of the almighty! (Works, II: 589)
Let us, indeed, dwell on the meditations of God this Advent.
