The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness...
The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.
The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.
Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?
2 A prophecy of Christ's kingdom, and the calling of the Gentiles, Isa 2:1-5.
And rejection of the Jews for their idolatry and pride, Isa 2:6-9.
The great majesty and power of God, and his terrors on the wicked; with an exhortation to fear God, and not to trust in man, Isa 2:10-22.
2:3 The law - The new law, the doctrine of the gospel, which is frequently called a law, because it hath the nature and power of a law, obliging us no less to the belief and practice of it, than the old law did.