No End To His Kingdom
Luke 1:26-35
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 1:30-33 30 Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. 33 And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… The Angel Gabriel is busy in the first part of the Advent season preparing the way for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by proclaiming that the time for His arrival is coming soon. Last Wednesday we heard in the opening verses of Luke’s first chapter how the Angel Gabriel appeared to the priest Zacharias and announced to him that he and Elizabeth would bear a son named John. This son would go before the Lord Jesus to prepare His way, in much the same way that the Angel Gabriel prepared the world for our Lord’s coming by making the necessary announcements.
In a sense, the Angel Gabriel is living up to his name which means, “the strength of God.” The strength of God is shown through the Angel Gabriel by sending him to announce the arrival of God in the flesh. The Angel Gabriel prepares the world and us for the birth of the Savior by making the greatest of announcements to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This young maiden, who is betrothed to St. Joseph, will be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceive in her womb, and bear the Son of God.
This is why she is called “Theotokos,” the God-bearer. She will give birth to a Child, a human Child. She who is a daughter of Adam and Eve, and of the house and lineage of King David, will bear a Son. But this Son will also be God. The Child to be born will be both fully man and fully God. God’s strength will be revealed in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth who will be born in Bethlehem. Therefore, the Lord God sends “the strength of God” – the Angel Gabriel – to announce to the Virgin Mary and to all those who hear this Gospel from the Evangelist St. Luke that our Savior – our eternal Strength – is coming.
We hear about our Lord’s coming to us in three ways during this Advent season. First, He came to us when He came down from Heaven and was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem and laid in a manger. Second, He comes to us whenever two or more of us gather around His holy Word and receive His Sacramental gifts which deliver forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation. And third, He will come again on the Last Day to take us to our eternal home in Heaven. All three of these ways that our Lord comes to us are present in the announcement of the Angel Gabriel.
The Angel Gabriel announces to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she will bear a Son – the very Son of God. This, of course, has already happened for us, and we celebrate this wonderful and historic event on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and throughout the Christmas season. Our Lord Jesus has come to us; the Lord God, the Creator of the world and all things, was born as a man. He took on our flesh so that He might redeem us from sin, death and the power of the devil. God became man for us so that we might have life – eternal life – with Him and all the saints and angels.
By announcing the birth of the Savior to the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel is really proclaiming to all who hear and believe that we, too, get to join him and the whole company of Heaven for all eternity. He is inviting us to dwell with him and all the saints and angels with our Lord Jesus Christ for all eternity.
The Angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that the Son of God which she will bear “will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there will be no end.” Certainly there are eternal aspects to this proclamation. The Kingdom that our Lord Jesus will bestow upon us on the Last Day will last forever; His Kingdom will absolutely have no end. We will sing the eternal liturgy of the Lamb in His Kingdom surrounded by all the saints and angels for all eternity.
This obviously is the third way our Lord will come to us that we focus upon during the Advent season. But this eternal Kingdom does not start on the Last Day. It does not begin when our Lord Jesus judges the quick and the dead. We will certainly enjoy this Kingdom eternally when we die, or when Jesus returns in all His glory, whichever is first. But we already enjoy this Kingdom, now in these last days, in this present generation.
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Jesus has already established His Kingdom through the works and merits that He accomplished while He lived with us on Earth. He established His eternal Kingdom through His perfect obedience to the Law and will of God, and He signed the deed to our eternal home when He offered up His life as a ransom for us on the tree of the holy cross. He paid for all our sins with His own holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.
Then He sent out His Apostles to establish His Kingdom on Earth. He established His Kingdom on earth through the Apostles’ work of building the Church on earth. Therefore, our Lord Jesus comes to us in this present generation through His preached Word and His administered Sacraments. That means He IS ALREADY reigning over the house of Jacob – which is the Church – even now in these last days.
This Kingdom in which we live will have no end because the Church will not end; it will be glorified and magnified and adorned as a Bride for her wedding. All of the sin and shame that we endure in this world will be removed from us. The Church will no longer suffer persecution. The saints will no longer endure hardship, pain, or torment.
In the meantime, while we wait for these things to come to fulfillment, we get a foretaste of these eternal realities when we gather together around the Word of God. Our Lord Jesus gives us a taste of what Heaven will be like when He pours into our ears His wonderful promises of forgiveness, life and salvation. He has indeed washed us clean in our Holy Baptism and made us co-heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. He has given us a place in the Kingdom; He has made us citizens of Heaven through Holy Baptism.
And He reminds us continuously through His preached Word and through His very own Body and Blood given in bread and wine that not only are we citizens of Heaven and will enjoy the eternal heavenly realms, but He even gives a foretaste of what the wedding feast of Heaven will be like. In this life we receive bread and wine which are His body and blood, and in so doing we remember our Lord’s death for us. In Heaven this feast will be so great and wonderful that no human words can possibly describe it. Even St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist in the Book of Revelation could only give us a glimpse of what Heaven is like with his descriptions of the beatific vision. We get to enjoy only a shadow – an image in a mirror darkly – of the glories of Heaven.
The Angel Gabriel came to the Virgin Mary and proclaimed to her that she would give birth to the Savior of the world. He proclaimed to Zacharias the priest that his son would be the forerunner of the Savior, and would point mankind to the Savior. God’s strength is in sending messengers before His face who proclaim His coming, so that all mankind might look on Him as their Savior in faith, and be saved from all their enemies for all eternity.
Moses and the Prophets were sent to prepare the way of the Lord. The Angel Gabriel was sent to prepare the way for the Lord. St. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way for the Lord. And after Jesus came, the Apostles proclaimed to all the world all the good things that He has done for mankind. He has brought salvation to all men through His perfect life and His innocent suffering and death on our behalf.
And this too… The Ministers of our Lord are still sent to us today to turn us to Jesus. Your pastor desires to lead you into the eternal Kingdom that has been prepared for you. Of our Lord’s Kingdom there will be no end.
We enjoy this Kingdom now, although imperfectly, as we live in the Christian Church in this world. We will certainly enjoy this Kingdom perfectly in Heaven when our Lord Jesus calls us out of this vale of tears to our eternal home. Jesus is the Son of the Highest – the Son of our heavenly Father. To Him has been given the throne of King David. He reigns from this throne for all eternity.
This altar is a symbol of that throne of our Lord for us in this life. When we get to Heaven we will no longer see and worship in symbol and shadow, but will see the Lord Jesus face to face in all of His glory. We will kneel and bow before Him, and He will reign over us all for all eternity. Then the whole company of Heaven will sing the eternal liturgy, and we will join our voices to theirs as we rejoice eternally that our sins have been paid for, and we have been granted an eternal life in Heaven.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
