Services | Sunday at FPC | Sermons | Podcasts | Home

Hold the Fort!

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt — December 2, 2007
 

Introduction
It was, in the minds of many military historians, the crucial campaign of the Civil War. In 1864 the Union Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman left its base in Chattanooga, Tennessee and began to march deep into Georgia towards the critical railway hub of Atlanta. If the Federals were successful, the Confederacy would be split in two, and the army of General Lee in Virginia would be cut off from much of its supply base.

The rebels, under General Hood, knew how desperate their situation was. They were short on manpower, so they resorted to devious tactics. The Southerners attacked the rear of the Northern Army, trying to cut off its supply line. At the little mountain town of Allatoona, Sherman had left behind a small garrison. The men in grey attacked viciously. When General Sherman got the news, he rushed to Allatoona with his best cavalry and crack troops. In the distance he could see the smoke and flames of the battle. His troops in that small town were surrounded and under heavy bombardment. Sherman told his flagman to send a message to the besieged garrison; in those days before radios and cell phones this was the only way to do so. The flags spelled out the urgent message, “HOLD THE FORT. I AM COMING.” With renewed hope they fought all the harder. An hour later, Sherman’s reinforcements broke through the rebels and relieved those exhausted defenders.

One of the soldiers in that battle, a young infantry private, later became a pastor and evangelist. He never forgot the words of his commander that were sent to him and his frightened comrades at Allatoona. They brought to his mind the Great Commander of the Church, and His promise to His people. In his twilight years this former soldier wrote a hymn titled Hold the Fort, for I Am Coming, about the promise of Jesus to return to earth. Though the hymn isn’t in our hymnbooks, it’s a powerful reminder of our Lord’s guaranteed Second Coming, and of the hope we all should have in it.

This season of Advent is a time of waiting. But it’s hard to wait. We get impatient and frustrated. It’s hard for children to wait for Christmas. A four-year-old doesn’t understand time, so she naturally complains to her mother, “Why can’t it be Christmas now? Why do we have to wait?”

We adults don’t do all that much better with waiting. We get frustrated when we’re stuck in heavy traffic heading to a mall during the Christmas season. We hate the long lines at the supermarket checkout or the post office. We despise the delays at the airport, standing in line at ticket counters and security checkpoints. Waiting is hard. And it’s much harder when one has no idea when — or even IF — the waiting will ever end. It can feel much like it must have felt to be fighting the seemingly hopeless battle of Allatoona in the Civil War, when dealing with a temptation that doesn’t quit, pain that won’t diminish, depression that won’t lift, grief, financial pressures or worries that won’t go away. How much longer can I hold on? we wonder.

Scripture Reading
Our Scripture passage for today tells the story of a man who had been waiting a very long time — all his life, in fact — for his prayers to be answered. He was one of the very few truly faithful believers among the people of Israel over 2000 years ago who had not abandoned hope that God’s promise to send the Messiah would one day be fulfilled. And then one day, when he was nearly on his deathbed, old Simeon got the surprise of his life. Let’s read the story from Luke chapter 2:

When the eighth day arrived, the day of circumcision, the child was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived. Then when the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete, they took him up to Jerusalem to offer him to God as commanded in God’s Law...

In Jerusalem at that time, there was a man, Simeon by name, a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died. Led by the Spirit, he entered the Temple. As the parents of the child Jesus brought him in to carry out the rituals of the Law, Simeon took him into his arms and blessed God:

‘God, you can now release your servant;
release me in peace as you promised.
With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation;
it’s now out in the open for everyone to see:
A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations,
and of glory for your people Israel.’ “

Luke 2:21-32, The Message

Like Simeon, We Are Waiting
Here we are today, 2007 years later. And the hope that kept Simeon going for all his years is now an accomplished fact, an undeniable historic reality. The Messiah did come. He fulfilled every promise spoken of Him in the Old Testament. He died for the sins of all lost men and women. He then rose again in His own power on the third day, and ascended into heaven to rule over the hearts of all who trust in Him. He sent His Holy Spirit into our souls. The longed-for redemption has come.

And yet, like Simeon, we’re still in a waiting time. We live after the First “Advent” or Coming of Christ, but before His Second Coming. We have the written record in Scripture of all He did to fulfill the Old Testament, but we are still awaiting the completion of the promises He made while He was here. And it’s customary in churches around the world at this Advent Season to review again the promise of Christ’s return to earth someday, and of what it means for us to live in this “in-between” time in sacred history. Salvation has come to us; we’ve tasted its first sweet drafts; yet the complete fulfillment of it — the elimination of all sin and sorrow and pain and death — has yet to come.

So how do we handle this — we people who hate to wait? There are two primary dimensions in which Christians need to learn and to practice the skill of godly waiting, demonstrated so long ago by our hero Simeon. First, we have to wait for the resolutions to life’s problems — that is, allowing God’s timing and God’s work to be completed in our day-to-day challenges. And second, we wait together as the people of God for Christ’s return and the completion of His work of redemption.

In what ways do we find ourselves waiting individually on God’s timing, often quite different from our own? Think of these circumstances, right in the midst of our own congregation.

• There may be a single person here today who wants very much to be married, to have a companion, to enjoy the pleasures of intimacy and love. But God hasn’t provided that person — at least not yet. And so he or she has to wait. And it’s hard, especially in a world where many people care nothing for remaining sexually pure, saving their intimacy for the proper security of the marriage bed. Temptations are there every day to do it the human way rather than God’s way, to satisfy their desires hastily.
• There may be a person here today who is grieving, whose heart feels like it’s nearly at the breaking point. Someone they love has been taken away, through death or divorce or a long-distance move. And they’re lonely. It’s hard to wait for God to heal a broken heart. Will I ever be happy again? they wonder.
• Someone in our fellowship may be fighting a battle against a terrible disease. Long rounds of treatments, surgery and/or medications leave them feeling exhausted, like the weary soldiers at Allatoona who wondered how long they could hold out till relief came.
• A married couple in our church has not been able to have children. They’ve prayed and gone to doctors and tried the latest fertility drugs, and still they’re without a child. It’s hard to wait, when all your friends are having babies, and the adoption lists are so long. It’s hard to wait for God’s timing and God’s will to be revealed.
• There may be a college student or a young professional among us who is unsure which way to go in his or her career. He waits for God to guide him; she hopes for a sign, a clear word; yet it feels as if the Lord is silent, as if He’s ignored them. It’s tough to wait for guidance and direction.
• Perhaps there’s a business man or woman in our church whose company is in big financial trouble. They work day and night in the shadow of a possible bankruptcy liquidation. So many friends and so many business colleagues seem to be doing just great, while they have to watch every penny. It gets old after awhile.

Do I need to go on? There are so many waiting situations in life, times when we find ourselves feeling frustrated and impatient — just as Simeon must have. It takes faith and courage to keep believing and trusting through a long period of waiting.

And though we may think we’re all alone in our waiting, actually the entire human race is in a time of waiting for God’s final chapter of redemption to be written. Listen to these words of promise from the Apostle Paul (found in 1 Thessalonians 4), addressed to some believers who were having a hard time waiting nearly 2000 years ago:

We can tell you with complete confidence — we have the Master’s word on it — that when the Master comes again to get us, those of us who are still alive will not get a jump on the dead and leave them behind. In actual fact, they’ll be ahead of us. The Master himself will give the command. Archangel thunder! God’s trumpet blast! He’ll come down from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise — they’ll go first. Then the rest of us who are still alive at the time will be caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Master. Oh, we’ll be walking on air! And then there will be one huge family reunion with the Master.

1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, The Message

The end of all our waiting will come when Jesus returns — or when we personally come to the end of our lives, breathe our final breath, and go to be with Him. Either way, that last step — we go to Him, or He comes for us — is the end forever to sin and sorrow, temptations and trials, problems and pain.

The Story of Endurance
Until then, we need to wait faithfully, obediently and expectantly. On his great expedition to the South Pole, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of the Endurance became trapped in the Antarctic ice and their ship was crushed. Using a small boat, Shackleton and a few of his crew undertook the treacherous crossing of open ocean to try to find a British naval base on a South Atlantic island, and get help. He left the rest of his crew on a bleak piece of rock called “Elephant Island,” and promised them that he would return for them as soon as possible.

When Shackleton finally reached civilization and outfitted a rescue boat to retrieve his crew, the cruel Antarctic winter had begun again. The ship was blocked from making it to Elephant Island by huge icebergs. Then one day, as if by a miracle, an avenue opened in the ice. Shackleton’s ship raced through the narrow channel. His men on the island were all ready and waiting, and in a matter of moments they quickly were ferried to the ship and scrambled onboard. No sooner had the ship cleared the island than the giant ice floes crashed back together again. It was a narrow escape.

“It’s a lucky thing you men happened to be packed and ready to go today,” Shackleton said to his men. “Otherwise we would have never made it.” The men replied, “We never gave up our confidence in you. Every morning we packed up our tents, got our things ready, and scanned the horizon — reminding one another ‘The Commander may come for us today!’”

What would have happened if they’d quit believing in his promise, or given up hope of his return? They would not have been ready. But those men waited patiently and faithfully, and they were obedient to their master’s command to be always ready.

Waiting faithfully will be rewarded. Our Lord will come to us at the right moment. That’s the message that Simeon discovered so long ago. That’s what we’ll discover as well. When He returns, may He find us to be faithful! Hold the fort, for He is coming!