Learning Waiting from the Jews

The liturgical season of Advent, which commences four Sundays prior to Christmas Day, is an annual time of preparation and waiting in the church. On the one hand, the church’s Advent waiting is commemorative, as we look backward and prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus – the long-awaited arrival of God’s promised Messiah. On the other hand, the church’s waiting is anticipatory, as we look forward and prepare for Jesus’ promised return – the Messiah’s second and final coming.

With respect to the latter, the New Testament says much about the End of Days, the time of waiting between the first and second coming of Messiah. However, very little of the discourse pertains to when the End will come, for God has not disclosed to man the precise time. Instead, the New Testament is preeminently concerned with the character of the “last days,” and thus with how the Christian is to live, that he might persevere in faith to the End and not lose hope. Throughout the New Testament, references to Christ’s return are accompanied by warnings, such as, beware, stay alert, be ready, and, repeatedly, watch! Indeed, the Bible offers such warnings because “the Day of the Lord,” when Christ returns for judgment, “will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2; cf. Mat. 24:43).

In these “last days,” then, the Christian is to learn the proper way to prepare and wait for the second advent (“coming”) of Messiah. Given the proneness of the sinful heart to wander, and the unknowability of the precise time of the Bridegroom’s return, the Christian properly prepares himself and awaits the coming Day of the Lord chiefly through prayer, watchfulness, and a holy life. Moreover, the church can learn much from ancient Israel about preparing and waiting for the coming of the Lord.

Abraham and his descendants had been awaiting the arrival of God’s promised One for roughly 2,000 years – about the same duration that the church has now been expectantly awaiting his return. God had not kept Israel in the dark about what Messiah would accomplish nor about the signs by which they would recognize the inauguration of the Messianic Age. Indeed, since the very call of Abraham (ca. 2000 B.C.), not only the law, but the gospel with it, had been preached throughout the history of Israel (Gal. 3:8; cf. John 5:39). In other words, God had been proclaiming to Israel the coming of Jesus of Nazareth from the beginning, even if his name was not revealed until Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary.

And yet, despite Jesus being voluminously foretold to Israel in the law, the prophets, and the psalms, when the long-awaited Messiah finally did come, “his own people received him not” (John 1:11), a calamitous outcome to millennia of preparation and waiting. What happened? Did God mislead his people in some way, or fail to do as he said he would? No indeed, for Jesus’ life, ministry, and Passion were in accordance with, and the fulfillment of, the Scriptures of Israel.

Instead, Jesus was a stumbling block to those in Israel whose expectations of the Messiah were far too narrow and rested too much on human understanding. For example, God had promised that the coming Messiah would judge the nations and save Israel from her enemies. When it became apparent through Jesus’ ministry, however, that Israel was not to be exempted from God’s judgment of the nations, and that the enemies over whom Israel would ultimately be vindicated were not, as many had assumed, the oppressive Romans, but the powers of sin and death that ruled in the heart, many were scandalized and took offense at him. For those in Israel who trusted chiefly in their lineage and their own righteousness, and who were eager for God to smite the Gentiles and make heads roll, God’s generosity and mercy in Jesus Christ to Jew and Gentile alike was a bridge too far.

Just so, Jesus was a stumbling block in Israel not because he failed to be and do what God had promised, but precisely because he perfectly and superabundantly fulfilled the Messianic vocation. For, from the beginning, it was promised to Abraham that, through him and his offspring (singular), God would bless all the nations of the earth. Jesus is the promised offspring of Abraham, and, so, in the sending of his only-begotten Son, God accomplished to the letter all that he had foretold to Israel. But he did so in a way that defied man’s small, this-worldly expectations, and thus in a way that was altogether surprising.

There is a lesson and a warning to the church from ancient Israel here. For just as the first advent of Messiah contained surprises, even for God’s people awaiting his coming, so also will his final return. The Christian is thus exhorted to pray for humility, to prepare room in the heart for the God whose ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than ours and therefore always surprising!

Finally, it should be observed that the church and the Jews await together the coming of Christ. The difference is, whereas Jews who disbelieve that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah are awaiting Messiah’s first coming, the church awaits his second coming. Nevertheless, Jews and Christians alike are waiting for the same thing: the coming Day of the Lord. We ought to pray for ways to strengthen and encourage one another in our shared watching and waiting, that together we might be found awake and ready when the Bridegroom comes.

A blessed Advent to you,

Ben Blobaum

Pastoral Intern