The word Advent means "approach." And after all, what is everything this side of the grave but "approaches?" We approach to hope, we approach to love, we approach to serve, we approach to being all life is an approach, and perhaps heaven itself will be a never-ending, but an ever-satisfying, approach to the Father.
I. But the first thought with which I have to deal, is the marvel that there should be the possibility of any approach at all between two things so alienated, so separate, so very wide asunder, as a pure holy God, who dwells in light, and that dark, vile thing, a human heart. To show how that possibility was brought about, and then how the capability was to 5e used and turned into fact, that is the aim and the substance of all revelation.
II. Christ's first advent to the earth made other advents possible. (1) There is an advent, when some providence, importunate in its strength, knocks at the door of a man's heart, and a still whisper in his soul tells a presence, and a cord of love draws his affections. (2) There is an advent when God fulfils His own promise, and comes and dwells in a man and takes up His abode in him. (3) There is an advent, when every object we look at in nature and every mercy we taste in providence everywhere, brings God nearer and nearer to a man's mind. (4) There is an advent when Christ shall come in His glory, and bring with Him all His saints. But not one of these advents of Him to us, or of us to Him could have been if Christ had not come first to this earth to roll away the barrier. Flesh was the veil that shut the sanctuary, till His pierced body became the veil rent, and the Shechinah shone beyond the circumference of its limits, and it was free to every man to go in and out.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 219.
References: Jeremiah 30:21. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1673.Jeremiah 31:1. J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 211.