INTRODUCTION:

            This advent season, my messages will follow the Scripture that corresponds to the candle that is lit each week.  As such my messages will not focus so much on the birth of Christ, but our preparation for again celebrating His first advent with a focus on His second advent which will begin with the resurrection and rapture of the church and will climax with the bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth in judgment and triumph to set up His millennial kingdom on this earth and reign over the whole world.  It is right for us to celebrate His birth that was prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, it was the event that changed history forever as the Savior of the world was born into the world to conquer sin, Satan, and death and to reconcile sinful man to the holy and sovereign God of the universe, the one and only true God.  The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ made it possible to restore the relationship between God and man that was meant from the beginning.  A lot of Old Testament prophecies looked forward to this event, and it is the first advent that makes the second advent possible.  As believers we should be living in such a way that we are always anticipating the imminent return of Jesus Christ and this is what this morning’s Scripture calls us to do, to live in such a way as to always be ready for the return of Jesus Christ whenever it may take place.  Let’s pray and then get into our passage of Scripture for this morning.

--PRAY--

 

SCRIPTURE:

            Turn in your Bibles to Romans 13:11-14 and listen and follow along as I read again the Scripture that was read with the lighting of the first candle, the candle of prophecy.  Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.

     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 believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” (Romans 13:11–14, NASB95)[1]

WAKE UP! (Romans 13:11-12a)

            Maybe when you first heard these verses read when the first candle was lit you thought what do these verses have to do with advent.  As I already mentioned, remembering and celebrating the first advent should always make us anticipate and look for the second advent.  The verses just before our passage, verses 8-10, are all about love and Paul writes that the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.  Paul ends by stating again, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10, NASB95)[2]  Now Paul turns his focus to the urgency of believers becoming more and more like their Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, who Himself is the source and the power of that love that we must possess to fulfill the law. 

            Paul in verse 11 and the first part of 12 uses a number of phrases that express urgency.  The phrases “it is already the hour … now salvation is nearer … the night is almost gone … and the day is at hand” (Romans 13:11-12a, NASB95) all are words of urgency.  Paul is saying that the time is almost up, the time to listen and obey is now.  This is not a time for apathy, complacency, or indifference now is the time to act.  If Paul used such urgency in his day, think how urgent this is today.  It has always been urgent and will continue to be urgent until the Lord returns, it is then that our opportunities for earthly faithfulness, obedience, and evangelism will come to an end and judgment will begin.

            Paul begins verse eleven with the phrase, “Do this…” which carries the idea of doing something in addition to what Paul had just been stressing in verses 8-10 regarding love.  Since chapter 12, verse one Paul has been telling his readers what the sanctified life looks like.  We are to never stop offering our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice (12:1).  We are always to be properly related to unbelievers as well as believers, to civil leaders as well as church leaders, to enemies as well as friends and neighbors—fulfilling God’s law through love.  This is what Paul has been teaching up to this point, then he writes, “Do this…”  one thing because of the time, knowing the time.  Now we must understand that Paul is not referring to chronological time, which is a different Greek word, the time that Paul is referring to is an era, an epoch, an age.  There are many distinct eras or ages that are important in God’s redemptive history and the particular age that Paul is referring to here is the age which precedes or come just before the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, this present age that we are living in.

            Paul then tells us what we are to do, we are to wake up!  It is almost as if he is shouting, “…it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep.” (Romans 13:11b, NASB95)[3]  Sleep is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “a state of inactivity, with a loss of consciousness and a decrease in responsiveness to events taking place.”[4]  Paul is calling us to wake up from spiritual sleep, from spiritual unconsciousness, and spiritual unresponsiveness, and spiritual inactivity concerning the things of God.  Remember Paul is not speaking to the unsaved here, those who spiritually dead, but to genuine believers whose spiritual lifelessness and laziness made them appear and act as if they had no spiritual life.  Such laziness and apathy are intolerable in light of the urgency of spiritual matters.  We must be aware of what God is doing in the world and not only aware but concerned about it and we must also be concerned about what He has promised to do, but we cannot if we are spiritually asleep.

            When Paul writes that “now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed,” (Romans 13:11c, NASB95)[5] he is clearly speaking about the completion of salvation.  Remember he is addressing Christians who have already believed and are saved.  The salvation that is nearer refers to the future and final stage of redemption, which is glorification.  These readers were already justified; in other words, they were declared and positionally righteous in Christ.  That happens once and saves the believer from the penalty of sin.  Sanctification, on the other hand, is a lifelong process of the believer growing spiritually in practical righteousness.  Glorification is the believer’s ultimate perfection as a child of God.  When the Lord Jesus takes us to be with Him for all of eternity, that is when this aspect of salvation will be realized.  It is the hope of Christ’s imminent return, to which Paul appeals.  Whenever the New Testament speaks of Christ’s return to take us home it always calls Christians to holy living in anticipation of our going to heaven.  That should be the highest incentive that we need to live according to our Lord and Savior’s will and for His glory.

            Paul then writes in verse 12, “The night is almost gone, and the day is near.” (Romans 13:12a, NASB95)[6]  This declaration by Paul means that man’s time of spiritual unbelief, rebellion, and sin is coming to an end and God’s time of judgment, glory, and righteousness is about to begin..  This term “day” is often used in the New Testament to signal the dawning of the imminent return of the Lord Jesus, and it is used here in contrast to the night of man’s spiritual darkness, which is almost over.  The nighttime of world history will soon give way to the daylight of Christ’s glorious kingdom, and Paul tells his readers that they need to be awake before this time and busy about the Lord’s business of making disciples.

 

DRESS FOR BATTLE (Romans 13:12b)

            Paul next instructs us to dress for battle.  First, he tells us to lay aside the deeds of darkness.  In other words, forsake or renounce and repent from the deeds of darkness, a term that includes all sins that a believer my indulge in.  The Lord is grieved by all sin, but as believers when we sin we bring special grief to the Holy Spirit of God, by whom we were sealed for the day of redemption.  We sin by choice, we voluntarily cloth ourselves with its evil.  In the power of the Spirit who indwells us we can reverse that choice and lay aside sin, disrobing ourselves of it.  This is a continual process of disrobing ourselves of our sin through repentance, keeping short accounts with our Savior and Lord.

            Scripture often uses the figure of darkness to represent sin, as Paul does here describing sin as the deeds of darkness.  Once he instructs us to lay them aside, he moves from the negative to the positive, from emphasizing confession and genuine repentance of the destructive darkness of sin to putting on the protective light of righteousness.  Paul imagery is that of a soldier who had dressed himself in clothes for going out for a night on the town.  As day dawns, his commanding officer orders him to wake up, take off his night clothes and put on the armor he will need to fight the day’s battle.  Armor is made for warfare; its purpose is to protect the one who wears it.  Through the indwelling Spirit working through our new nature in Christ, we not only have every resource necessary to forsake the deeds of darkness but also every resource we need to put on the armor of light.  God’s own light provides divine protection in our battle against Satan’s powers of darkness as well as the natural darkness of human sin, to which, even as believers we must be constantly on guard.

            Paul admonished the Ephesians in chapter 5, verse 8, “…for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light” (Ephesians 5:8, NASB95)[7]  The Christian’s spiritual armor of light is the light of God’s own holiness and purity with which He desires His children to be constantly clothed.  It is the clothing of spiritual purity and integrity, a reflection of our Lord’s holiness that whether they admit it or not the world can see.

LIVE AS IN THE DAY (Romans 13:13)

            Because we are children of light and have available the Lord’s own armor of light, we should behave properly as in the day.  To behave properly is to live in a way that pleases the Lord.  It is to live honestly before our God and before men, to live an outward life that is consistent with our inner nature in Christ, to live a sanctified life that reflects our justified life.  It is to be in tune with the Spirit and follow His guidance in our lives and to be constantly laying aside the deeds of darkness and putting on the armor of light.

            The Christian who is not striving to live a holy and obedient life is a believer who does not comprehend the significance of the Lord’s second advent.  On the other hand, the Christian that is longing for and anticipating Christ’s second advent is characterized by holy living and a striving after godliness, purifying himself as the Lord is pure.  We are to behave properly as in the day because as God’s children we are of the day. 

            Returning to the negative, Paul as he often does gives us a list of sins that we are to lay aside and avoid, this list is of characteristics that reflect spiritual darkness rather than light, the night of unrighteousness rather than the day of righteousness.  First, is carousing and drunkenness which refers to what happens when a person drinks too much and immoral disorder follows.  The next two sins are sexual promiscuity and sensuality which both speak of a departure from the purpose for which God created sex.  The last pair is strife and jealousy which both occur when we are more concerned for our own self than we are about loving our neighbor.  Paul knew that while we are still on this earth we still must be on constant guard against the lies of Satan and the desires of our fleshly nature, constantly laying aside the sin that so easily entangles us and trips us up, and constantly putting on the armor of light so we can battle against the darkness in the power of the Spirit.

 

PUT ON CHRIST (Romans 13:14)

            Paul ends this chapter by reminding us of what is needed to be children of light.  He writes, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” which represents the continuing spiritual growth that began when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and became children of God.  As we grow in Christ, as we put Him on, the old clothing of sinful thoughts and habits are being discarded, and His divine clothing of righteousness, truth, holiness, and love are being put on.  As the Spirit continues the process of sanctification, the Lord’s character becomes more and more our own character.  In other words, the single purpose of a Christian is to continually put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

            John tells us in 1st John 3:2-3, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2–3, NASB95)[8]  Looking for Christ’s second advent with loving expectation purifies our lives, because to long for Him is to want to please Him, and to want to please Him is to want to be like Him.  Paul told the Galatians believers that he would not be content and that he would continue in labor until Christ was formed in them (Galatians 4:19).  Jesus Christ already is formed in us in the sense that He indwells us and has given us His own nature.  But like John, we should look forward to the glorious day when we shall be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.

            We grow from one level of Christ’s glory to another as we faithfully study and meditate on His Word, as we commune with Him in prayer and as the author of Hebrews writes, “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24–25, NASB95)[9]  The person who puts his faith in Christ for salvation takes on the name Christian, but the quality of his Christianity is determined by his own spiritual faithfulness.

            Paul again uses contrast to make his point, this time in the opposite order than he used before.  Here the order is the positive, first put on Christ and His righteousness and then the negative, then put off sin by making no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.  This word translated provision has the basic meaning of forethought, of planning ahead.  Most of the sins that we commit develop from wrong ideas and lustful desires that we have allowed to linger in our minds.  The longer we allow them to remain, the more provision we make for the flesh to bring them to fulfillment.  To feel the desire of sin is the evidence of the presence of sin in us, to fulfill the desire is evidence to the power of sin over us.  As long as we are in our mortal bodies we will experience the presence of sin within us.  But at no time does a Christian have to yield  to sin’s power.  Because we have the provision of Christ’s own nature and Spirit within us, we do not have to make provision for the flesh by fulfilling its lusts.

            When Paul uses the term flesh here he is not referring to our physical bodies but to our remaining humanness, our remaining inclination to sin, which finds its outlet through our bodies.  It is for this reason that Paul wrote in Romans 8:23, “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:23, NASB95)[10]   The provision for sin begins in our hearts, mind, emotions, and will which are still influenced powerfully by the flesh, by our old nature.  This is why Paul writes in Galatians 5:16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16, NASB95)[11]   Walking by the Spirit is to live by and obey the Word of God faithfully.

CONCLUSION:

            What does this passage have to do with the first Sunday of Advent, with the candle of prophecy?  It is a call to us to remember the prophecies made concerning Christ’s coming and to look back to that first advent and understand that the Lord Jesus Christ took on human flesh so that He could be our perfect substitute and suffer God’s wrath against sin for us and in dying in our place and rising from the dead three day later Jesus Christ forever triumphed over sin, Satan, and death.  In the sovereign wisdom of God, He made a provision for us to reconciled to Himself through the death and resurrection of His own Son.  This is why Paul calls us to wake up, put on our battle clothes and lay aside our deeds of darkness, put on Christ and by His power in us make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.  We must walk by the Spirit to fulfill the mission given to us by the Lord Jesus.  That mission is to make disciples until He fulfills the promises, the prophecies of His second advent.  Be awake, be alert, be a disciple maker.  Are you praying daily for the five people whose names you wrote down?  Are you praying for their salvation, are you praying for God to give you opportunities to be a witness to them?  That is where making disciples begins.  And all the while living in anticipation and hope for Jesus Christ to return and take us home to be with Him.  “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” (Philippians 3:20–21, NASB95)[12]

 

[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[4]MacArthur, John, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 9-16. Chicago, IL : Moody Publishers, 1994.

[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[10]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[11]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[12]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.