The Battle Against Advent Series

Today is the 3rd Sunday of Advent, a time when we remember the coming or the arrival of Christ into this world. And we have been trying to refocus our attention on some of the truths involved in Advent. We began w/ asking whether there was a genuine need for Advent. That is the problem w/ modern man. He doesn’t really see the need for Advent. Why do you need a Savior to save you from sin when all that is needed is just to educate people better? For since they are really good at heart, if we will just educate them to the dangers of something, naturally they will choose to do right. Of course, 1 of the problems is no one knows what is right anymore, but that is beside the ptn. And so I tried to establish the fact that yes, there was a genuine need for Advent for as we saw in Romans 3, everything about man, his character, his speech, his conduct, his nature is inherently sinful.

Spurgeon was once staying at the inn in one of the valleys of northern Italy where the floor was dreadfully dirty. "I had it in my mind to advise the lady to scrub it," said Spurgeon, "but when I perceived it was made of mud, I reflected that the more she scrubbed the worse it would be." Just so God knew that there could be no improvement of the corrupt nature of man except through faith in His Son. No amount of education & sensitivity training will clean up man’s sinful nature. It has to be made new by the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. And so yes, there was a need for Advent.

Last wk, we looked at the Promise of Advent. And we saw that the Promise of Advent goes much further back than Gen.3 when Adam & Eve 1st sinned. The Promise of Advent goes back before the creation of anything. It goes back to when there was just God. And it was back then that He purposed to choose you so that you might know Him & have a rel. w/ Him. But in choosing you, He also committed Himself at that ptn. to coming into this world to be despised & rejected & to be put to death on a cross. Before He created the very first thing, He declared to Himself, “Yes, it is worth the effort. Yes, it is worth the cost.”

So we have established there was a need for Advent & that God promised to meet that need. In fact, promised to meet the need before even there was a need. Today I would like for us to consider the fact that not everyone was enthralled about the Promise that God had made. In fact, there was 1 who was so against it, that he was going to do everything in his power to make sure God did not keep that promise. I am speaking of God’s archenemy, the devil - Satan. And so our topic for today is the Battle Against Advent.

Is good news always welcomed? You would think if something was truly good news that everyone would welcome it, everyone would want it to be told. But such is not the case, as you fully know.

Many times what is good news to one person is bad news to another person. As a country, we celebrated this year the 55th anniversary of the end of WWII. What a tremendous day of good news that was when victory was announced. But what was great news to us in the US, was bad news to the people of Japan & Germany. This past week Al Gore conceded to G. Bush. What was good news to Bush & his supporters was bad news to Gore & his supporters.

Adam & Eve destroyed the goodness of God’s creation when they sinned in the Garden. But in the midst of a series of curses God pronounced because of their sin, He also announced some good news. One day, 1 would come that would destroy the one who had tempted Adam & Eve & make right what had been made wrong. That was great news to Adam & Eve & all mankind, but it was bad news to Satan. And so ever since that day, Satan has tried to overthrow God’s plan - 1st by trying to keep Christ’s 1st Advent from happening; 2nd after Christ did come, Satan tried to have him killed & eventually succeeded in the crucifixion; 3rd by trying to keep anyone from pledging their allegiance to Christ now; & 4th by, sometime in the future gathering all the forces of hell to do battle against Christ again in that final battle.

Today we just want to concern ourselves w/ the 1st strategy of Satan - his attempt to keep Christ’s coming from happening & thus causing God’s promise of Gen.3:15 to be broken. Satan, as we will see, is going to do everything in his power to keep God from keeping his promise.