Advent is the season of preparing for the light of the world to enter the world. It is about preparing our hearts for Christ. It is, as we’ll read in our passage this morning, the season of the dawn. We know what beautiful dawns look like here, when the sun is just starting to come over the horizon and it lights up the sky with pinks, oranges, and turquoise blues and greens. One of my favorite things about living in New Mexico is getting up before the dawn to help with balloon fiesta in October, and I love when we’re all waiting to start inflating the balloons on the field and the sun starts peeking over the mountains and lighting up the vibrant colors all around us. But one things I noticed about the dawn, especially at balloon fiesta field, is that it is coldest right when the sun starts to come over the mountains. There are still long stretches of shadows and places of darkness.
Advent is the season of dawn, where we live in the space between the darkness of a world without Christ and the light of a word with Christ; where we see the light coming, yet it hasn’t fully come. As we prepare our hearts for this time and we celebrate the light, we remember that we are no longer people of the darkness, we are people of the light. Romans 13, which we’ll look at today says, “The night is almost gone, and the day is near.” We are called to be the people who live in this space, in the reality that the kingdom of God is now, yet still to come in its fullness. Today is a day of hope, a reminder of the hope we have in Christ coming in a stable so long ago, but also a reminder of the hope we have that Christ will come again. It’s a reminder that we are called to live, to love, to serve, to celebrate, to mourn, and to grieve—all in the light of hope.
Join me please in Romans 13:11-14, “Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed. 12 The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let’s rid ourselves of the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let’s behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and debauchery, not in strife and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” (NASB)
Paul tells us to know the time. Know the time you live in. When Jesus came 2,000 years ago, He entered a world that had long been broken and sinful. When He came, these things weren't eradicated. Sin, suffering, pain, and death all still existed in the world even after He died on the cross and was resurrected. The Roman church knew this because they saw the evidence of it all around them. The early church was familiar with suffering and pain and death as they were often persecuted for their faith and martyred for it. Remember that Rome was the land of the legendary Colosseum, where suffering and pain and death became spectator entertainment.
We also can look around us and see sin, pain, suffering, and death. We can read the headlines, I have one for you on a slide that happened just a week ago. I don’t care that it was in an LGBTQ nightclub where this tragic shooting took place. Yeah, I know who “those” people are, so do you. Sin still exists, but is this how we handle sin? Do we cause more sin, pain, suffering, and death to handle sin? We can see the dark all around us, and yes, sometimes even within us.
We know this well about the time. But Paul was highlighting that this present time is different for disciples of Christ. While we, the church, are painfully acquainted with the sin and suffering of the world, we are also aware of the power of the Holy Spirit and the resurrection power of Christ in our lives.
Because of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, those who follow Jesus should already be living as though Christ has returned. Paul says, “that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep”. This image of waking up, which is a fairly common image used throughout the New Testament, points to those following Jesus, in two ways.
It’s first to remind disciples of Jesus that if they are not currently following Him, it’s time to wake up and get in line. It’s time to step out of a place of APATHY. Wake up! You are meant to be awake and alive in Christ, remember your baptism, remember that you are called to be an active participant in your relationship with Christ and the body of Christ. Apathy is not acceptable.
A family friend of ours lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he’s also a pastor, not of a Nazarene church, but still a fellow brother in Christ and minister of the word. He posted these thoughts last week, “Where are the Christ-like (Christian) people on Sundays? What happened to Christians being committed to gathering together to praise Christ and Commune with the Lord on His day? After 43 years as Christ’s minister, my heart breaks from the lack of commitment, loyalty, and sacrifice from some of my fellow followers in Christ. If my heart aches so, how much more does God the Father’s heart hurt who know the hearts of us all?”
And my thoughts are…yeah. Exactly.
And I know his heart, and mine, and quite frankly the hearts of genuine pastors and preachers across the world because this is what we have seen and understand: that church attendance is the easiest thing to do when you are actively trying to grow in your relationship with God. It’s usually the first thing you’ll start doing if you want to walk closer with God, and it is usually the first thing you give up when you feel distant from God. And so we can’t help but think that if you’re not here with the body more than you are here, it’s probably (not always, but probably) a good indicator of where you are in your relationship with Christ. And that is what breaks our hearts because we want nothing more than for you to fall madly and radically in love with the God who is madly and radically in love with you! That’s all we want! I don’t want you to like me, I don’t want your money, I don’t want you to think I preach well, I want you to love Jesus in such a deep way that it changes who you are in the deepest and darkest parts of your soul! That’s all I want! And I don’t say this to guilt-trip you because that’s not my heart. I am just agreeing with Paul, wake up! If you are asleep in your walk with Jesus, it’s time to wake up and step out of that apathy.
This call to awaken from sleep was also to remind disciples of Jesus to live in the resurrection power of Christ, dwelling within them through the Holy Spirit. In Christ, God invaded the old age to bring about the new age. We, as people of Christ, live in the new age while we await Christ’s return.
Paul says in verse 12 to, “rid ourselves of the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” We are meant to walk in light, and not darkness. Though there is darkness in each of us, we rid ourselves of the deeds of darkness. This means that when we see darkness and the deeds, the acts of darkness in us, we don’t try to hide them and cover them up. We let the light of Christ expose the dark. We accept that it’s there, and we humbly give control of those dark areas over to God so that He can work that resurrection power in us through the Holy Spirit to cleanse us and purify us of all unrighteousness.
Paul talks about these things in verse 13, “not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and debauchery, not in strife and jealousy.” Carousing and drunkenness we would call drunken revelry today, doing things like going to wild parties and getting completely drunk and letting your drunken state determine what you’ll do. He talks of sexual promiscuity, sexual looseness and laxness, having improper sexual relations. Debauchery is a combination of both drunken revelry and sexual promiscuity and adds an element of violence into it. Strife and jealousy talks about jealous infighting amongst people who should be loving one another.
These are things that happen in the darkness, at night, when everything is allowed, and this is the way of the world that is lost in sin. Paul says to put on the ARMOR of light. Do the things that are associated with the day, with the light of Christ. I love that Paul uses the word “armor” because what that implies to us is that if you are putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, as he says in verse 14, then you will be protected from the flesh and its lust. Striving to live in the light and be more like Jesus helps to protect us from living in the dark!
But I also love that Paul reminds us of the importance of the dawn. It is an in-between time, darkness is fleeing but still hangs around in some places, light is coming but isn’t fully here yet. Think of the summer time, when it hits 85 by 10 in the morning here in the desert. By 2 pm it is so hot you wouldn’t even entertain the thought of going outside to do yard work. We understand that when days are hot like this, you do all your activity early in the day, while it’s still cool. But the dawn, and the cool early morning hours, they don’t last long. Before you know it, the sun is fully up.
The implication here is to hurry. There is no time to waste. In Matthew 9:36-38 we read this about Jesus, “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless (pain, suffering, sin), like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” (NIV) We are the workers. Point to yourself and say, “I am a worker.” You are a worker. The harvest is now. You are the answer to the disciples’ prayers to God to send workers for the harvest. But we’re supposed to help bring in the harvest before the day comes. That’s what the dawn is for, it’s for the harvest.
Our state motto is that this is the Land of Enchantment, but we know that really it’s the Land of Mañana. This is the land of tomorrow where everything that can be put of to tomorrow is put off until the day after tomorrow. But Paul was urging us to see that we are already in the dawn, and the time is now! We cannot wait and we cannot put it off until tomorrow. There is to be a sense of urgency to the actions of Christians, both when it comes to riding ourselves of our own personal deeds of darkness and living in the light of Jesus in our walk with him, and when it comes to sharing the glimpse of the hope of the kingdom to come with those who are still living in the dark.
We are people of the dawn. We live in hope, even while we still see the shadows of darkness. We live as people of the light.
Advent is the season of the dawn. Christ came, and we ought to be radically transformed because of Him. The kingdom of God hasn’t fully come, all things aren’t made right yet, and to deny the reality of suffering and sin in our world is a heartbreaking mistake. But for those who live in that reality, we are to be a glimpse of the world to come. We are a community of hope, of grace, of goodness, of righteousness, and of love.
We are to live as people who exist in a different kingdom that is actively breaking into our world, just like the morning breaks into the night. So we lit the candle of hope today. I pray that it is a reminder to each of us that we are people of the light and that we carry the hope that Christ has come and that Christ will come again. Let us live as people of the dawn.
Reflect on hope and the light of Christ this week:
Read Romans 15:13, who is the source of hope? How does hope abound in us?
Read Romans 8:24-25, how does this describe the hope we have in Christ?
Read Romans 15:14, what role does Scripture play in our hope? What if we are neglecting the Word of God?