Advent 4 Sermon - Love - December 18, 2016
What do you love the most in life? What do you truly cherish? Nowadays people talk a lot about things they don’t like.
There’s a lot of negative conversation going on, a lot of negative thinking. We’ve just been through the nastiest and darkest election cycle in history that for many brought out a whole lot of negativity and gloom.
But today I want to step past all that and ask you to think about what it is that you love most in your life. What do you really cherish?
And then I want to ask, do you give enough of yourself, of your time and energy to that which you love th5e most?
Love is a strange word in the English language. In modern usage, the word "love" gets applied to all kinds of what are really "likes".
You know what I mean: "I love that TV show"; I love that kind of chocolate";"I love that game"; “I love sleeping in in the morning”.
But the word love in its proper meaning should only be reserved for things that we truly cherish.
Human history can be thought of as being in two parts.
There is everything that happened since the beginning of time, since creation. That includes all the years and millennia that humans did not walk this earth, and it includes all of human development since the first man and the first woman.
Now that's a lot of things. And it would take something very significant to happen to create a break, a division in history.
Perhaps a comet from outer space that blasted the world to bits. That would be a significant marker in time. Existence itself would have to be rebooted.
What could divide the way we think of time?
Perhaps the founding of an empire that was to outdo all other empires.
But history is full of human empires - the Greek empire, the Roman empire, The Ottoman empire,
The Holy Roman Empire. And none of them were big enough to divide time.
What could divide time? What could be the reason that we’re at the end of 2016 and that it’s not December 4016? That your birth year is what it is? Mine is 1962. Yours could be 5374 but for an event that reset all time.
And if something did happen in our history to mark a division between all that had gone before and all that came after, would you think that that would be worth spending some time to learn about it? I honestly think so.
And I honestly believe that the quality of our lives will change when we embrace what happened to change the way we count time forever.
One of the most wonderful and peculiar things about the Christian faith is that it recognizes that the axis that time turned on was...perhaps surprisingly, an infant. A baby boy to be precise, who divided all of history.
Who could have seen that coming?
What’s cool is that someone actually saw it coming.
750 years before it happened, and at a time when the very notion of hope seemed dead, at a time of great sorrow and emptiness in the life of the people of Israel;
This person, the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of something so momentous, so beautiful, yet so unlikely and so unexpected. What did he see?
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.
So Isaiah saw this vision long before the child spoken of was born. But born he was. And every moment in history before His birth we referred to as having happened before Him. “Before Christ”.
Every moment in history that has happened since we refer to as having happened “A.D.” Or Anno Domini, which means “after the year of the Lord”.
So in a very real sense, Christmas marks for us, every year we celebrate it, the moment in human history when the Author of life, the Maker of everything, was born on this planet. It marks the moment when God became man.
When Jesus was born, God took on human flesh, bound Himself to human bones, acquired a liver and kidneys, a spleen and a nervous system, digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems, a muscle and skeletal system.
Not to mention all the complex emotions that define what it means to be human. God’s whole and complete person was given birth on that starry, starry night in Bethlehem in the infant Jesus. All of the Godhead bodily dwells in Jesus.
So that’s why Christmas, when we mark this birth, is so important.
The next question is why? Why this event that divided all that had gone before and all that came after. Why did the prophets words come true, that In a land of deep darkness, a light did indeed dawn.
Well, that light was a Person Who was to live as a man, to demonstrate for us what God is like and what God says and cares about, and that person;
Called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, was, out of nothing but the purest love, to volunteer Himself and lay down His life in order to make a way for you to have a BC/AD in your own life.
Why do I mean by this? Well, what Jesus did in history, that is to divide it up between darkness and light, to take a world of deep darkness and then begin to enter it into light, into hope, into joy - Jesus has done this in the lives of millions of people, and He wants to do it in your life as well.
My own life has a BC and an AD. The BC part, before Jesus came in, was a dark place. It was an addicted place.
It was a hopeless place. It was a suicidal place. My life before Jesus felt meaningless and completely without power and joy.
It was its own little ‘land of deep darkness’ where I struggled to find purpose and meaning and worth in life. Every day had its own unique agony, and there was no relief in sight.
The AD part, since Jesus came into my life, has been a rich, rewarding and purposeful struggle that has been worth every moment.
Every good thing in my life, truthfully, has come into my life as a gift from the God who loves me with an everlasting love.
The Bible actually says that God is love. His reason for doing anything, the background music of all His actions, is only love. And his invitation to you today, is to enter fully into His love.
You can be embraced by this love even as it embraces you. He first loves you - no matter your history, no matter the things you’ve done, the places you’ve been.
He loves you first, and then because He loves us first and reaches out to us with the good news of the gospel, we learn of Him and we grow to love Him.
There is a before and an after in human history. It is “Before Christ” and it is “Anno Domini”. There can be a before and an after in your life as well.
If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you can make a decision today that will propel you from the BC of your life into the AD of your life.
No one is saying this change will be easy, no one is saying that there will be no further struggle.
But - here’s the thing - you will NOT be alone. Through every moment of the rest of your life - good and bad, you will be accompanied by the God who is Love.
He will be present to celebrate every high point, and present to console and strengthen you in every low point. Every mountain and every valley He will be with you.
That’s quite a promise, you might say. What’s it going to cost me? If you ask that question, there are two answers.
First, it will cost you nothing. Life with God, salvation - it is a completely free gift.
There’s not a finger you can lift to do something to earn this gift. That’s the thing about a real gift - it’s a gift, not earned at all.
It costs you nothing, and you only need to believe in Jesus - in his life - what He taught - and in His death, that it was a sacrifice made for you. Do that and you are His.
The second answer is that it will cost you everything. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and follow Him; to give our whole selves to God. I think of it this way: coming to Jesus costs us every illusion we hold to.
Illusions like: “I can work my way to heaven” and “I am the god of my life”. Illusions like “I am unloved and undeserving of love” and “The only purpose of life is to party and then die”.
Those are common illusions that people hold to AND that God invites us to let go of. “Let go of your illusions”.
This season calls us to look at Jesus.
The first look we have of Jesus is a very safe one. God Incarnate, God-in-the-flesh is a baby. Just a baby. That’s no threat.
That’s not offensive. True, that’s a little weird that the Maker of heaven and earth is bound up in swaddling clothes. But, He’s the Maker of heaven and earth, so He can do as He pleases.
The first look is of Jesus as an infant. Later insights into His life show Him as a teacher, a healer, and then ultimately The Saviour giving His life on the Cross for humanity.
So if you’ve ever wondered how Christmas got to be such a big deal, why it is celebrated every year...this is why.
Like many people, I love music, I love the arts, I love staring at beautiful paintings, I love nature, creation; I love good literature, a good movie.
I really love my family – my wife Barbara and our children, Jared and Elia.
But of all of the things that I've seen and experienced in my 54 years on this planet, I’ve got to say that nothing comes close to the beauty of Jesus.
Nothing approaches the beauty of the Gospel. Nothing is more comforting, nothing is more inspiring, nothing is more encouraging, than the heart of the Christian faith, which is Jesus.
What do you love the most in life? What do you truly cherish? Do you give enough of yourself, of your time and energy to what you love the most?
May we consider our truest love, and may we give that love the best of ourselves – the best of our energy, time and attention.
May we slow down and consider the good news of God coming to us in Christ. May those of us who have lived as followers of Christ consider our lives before Christ, and since He came into our lives, and thus rejoice at all His goodness in our lives.
And may each of us consider how much we are loved by the Maker of heaven and earth, Who proved His love by suffering on the cross for our sins, but Who first appeared as the Christ Child on that first Christmas Day. Amen? Amen.
