Advent
This morning is the first Sunday of Advent. Most of us are probably familiar with that concept, but for some of us our familiarity may be limited to those calendars with little windows that open up revealing a gift or treat for each day of the month leading up to Christmas.
The word “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival”. So the period we call Advent is a season marked by expectation, waiting, anticipation and longing. It is not intended to merely be an extension of Christmas, but rather a season that links past, present and future. It offers us the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the coming of the Messiah, to celebrate Jesus’ birth and what that means for us today and to look forward to His return in the future.
In a season often marked by frenzied busyness, Advent is an opportunity to set aside time to prepare our hearts and help us place our focus on a far greater story than our own – a story of God’s great love toward us that compelled Him to send His very own Son into this world to meet our greatest need. It is a time to reflect on how God came to bring light to us while we were living in great darkness.
One of the common traditions of Advent is the lighting of the candles on an Advent wreath. A circular evergreen wreath represents God’s unending love for us. And the lighting of five candles throughout the season - one for each of the four Sundays before Christmas and one on Christmas Eve - represents Jesus’s coming to a world lost in darkness. As the prophet Isaiah wrote
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
(Isaiah 9:2 ESV)
For the next four weeks, we will unwrap four gifts of Christmas – hope, love, joy and peace. And each Sunday we will light a candle to remind us of those gifts. This morning, we begin by lighting the candle that represents the gift of hope.
[Light candle]
It is certainly fashionable as Christians to bemoan the increasing commercialization of Christmas. It’s not uncommon to see Christians complaining about a “war on Christmas” and urging our culture to “Keep Christ in Christmas”. But in many ways this really isn’t new.
When Coca Cola came looking for a Christmas special to sponsor for their holiday marketing back in 1965, they approached Charles Schulz, the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip and producer Lee Mendelson. What was basically a low budget, last minute production ended up winning Emmy and Peabody awards and because it struck such a nerve with its audience, it has been a Christmas staple for over 50 years now.
You’ve probably seen it a time or two. If so, you know that Charlie Brown is surrounded by all the trappings of Christmas, but they all come up empty. When in exasperation he shouts “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!”, his best friend Linus sets him straight with a clear answer straight from Luke 2:8–14. Linus recites the passage in one of the most poignant scenes in television history. Will you read it out loud with me?
And there were in the same county shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. (KJV)
It is in those words that Charlie Brown finds hope. It’s where the whole Christmas experience turns for him and good ol’ Chuck realizes the true meaning of Christmas. He goes from being depressed by the season to being inspired by it. He goes from an inward focus of questioning to an outward focus of sharing the season with others.
Most of us are probably familiar with the words we just read and the rest of the Christmas accounts that we find in the gospels written by Matthew and Luke. And we will certainly incorporate those accounts in our observance of Advent over the next four weeks and on Christmas Eve. But we’re also going to see how the story and meaning of Christmas is found elsewhere in Scripture as well.
This morning, we’ll see how Paul wrote about the gift of hope in a letter to one of his close associates named Titus. So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Titus chapter 2. Please follow along in your Bible as I read:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
(Titus 2:11-14 ESV)
This is certainly not a traditional Christmas passage, but it does nonetheless describe exactly what happened that first Christmas when “the grace of God appeared”. That description reminds me of the beginning of John’s gospel where he essentially says the same thing:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14 ESV)
What I really like about both of these passages is that they go beyond just the facts about the birth of Jesus and get right to the heart of why Jesus came to this earth – to reveal God’s grace and bring salvation to all people. And that is the aspect of Christmas that makes the gift of hope available to all of us. And what is really exciting about the words that Paul writes to Titus here is that hope extends to every aspect of my life – past, present, and future.
• The birth of Jesus brought hope in the past because when Jesus became flesh and dwelled among us, He made it possible for every person to experience salvation.
• In the present, the fact that Jesus came to this earth and lived as a man and faced every temptation that we face, and yet never sinned, gives us hope that it is possible to do what Paul commands here and live a self-controlled, upright and godly life in which we are zealous for good works.
• Finally, as we’ll see this morning, the first coming of Jesus gives us hope as we wait for His second coming in the future. Paul describes here how hope makes it possible for us to wait for the appearing of the glory of “our blessed hope”, Jesus.
So let’s spend a little time this morning considering how the birth of Jesus brings us hope that impacts our past, present and future.
Before we do that, though, it seems that it would be prudent to review the definition of Biblical hope. We did this a while back while we were studying 1 Peter, but it won’t hurt to go over it again.
In English, the word “hope” conveys the idea of “wishful thinking”. In fact, at the beginning of this year when we talked about hope, I think I probably used the example of saying “I hope the Cubs win the World Series this year”. Certainly after not having done that for well over 100 years that was nothing more than wishful thinking at the time. However, in this case, it did actually come to pass. I’m not nearly as optimistic when I say “I hope the Bears win the Super Bowl”, which I believe is now mathematically impossible this year, or when I say “I hope to see the University of Arizona football team in the Rose Bowl before I die.” That kind of hope is certainly nothing more than wishful thinking.
But the Biblical idea of hope is much different than that. I think the best definition that I’ve seen is that hope is “confident expectation”. And if there is one event in the history of mankind that illustrates the idea of confident expectation it has to be the birth of Jesus.
From our perspective, that event took place over 2,000 years ago in the past. But for the people who were living at that time, it was an event that they had hoped for – waited in confident expectation for – their entire lives. God has first promised to send a Messiah who would save the people from their sins in Genesis chapter 3. And He had given hundreds of other prophecies about that same Messiah through His prophets over the years. Some have estimated that there are over 300 Old Testament prophecies of Jesus that were fulfilled at His first coming. And many of those prophecies spoke specifically of His birth. In Matthew’s gospel account, he quoted and applied a number of those prophecies to Jesus’s birth.
I think the best illustration of the hope that God’s people had when it came to the promised Messiah is Luke’s account of Jesus being presented in the Temple when He was 8 days old. In the second chapter of his gospel, Luke records how an old man name Simeon and an elderly prophetess named Anna both recognized that the 8-day old baby before them was in fact the Messiah. There is little doubt that they, like most Jews, were familiar with the prophecies regarding the birth of the Messiah. And they had been waiting with confident expectation for the one who would fulfill each and every one of those prophecies.
What is really encouraging about Luke’s account of that event in the second chapter of his gospel account is that even though both Simeon and Anna were well advanced in years and had nothing to go on other than the promises of God, they had not lost hope. They had lived their entire lives with confident expectation that God would fulfill all the promises He had made about the Messiah. And now, finally, their hope was completely fulfilled.
So how do we make sure that, like Charlie Brown, Simeon and Anna, that we allow Christmas to fulfill our past hopes, give us hope in the present, and fuel our future hopes? Or to put it another way…
HOW DO I RECEIVE THE GIFT OF HOPE?
Paul’s words to Titus provide us with the answer to that question. Let’s look at three ways we can receive the gift of hope in a way that impacts our past, present and future.
1. Trust Jesus to cover my sins
Without Christmas our hope for a right relationship with God would be nothing more than wishful thinking. If my salvation is up to me and what I can do, then I’ll live my entire life wondering if I’ve done enough. No matter how good of a life I live, I’ll constantly live in fear that I haven’t done quite enough to overcome the bad in my life. That is not a very hopeful way of living.
But the appearing of God’s grace in the person of Jesus makes it possible for us to completely change how we look at our relationship with God and live with the confidence that that relationship is 100% secure because it doesn’t depend on what I can do but rather on what Jesus has already done for me. And, as Paul points out in verse 11, that kind of hope is available for every single one of us because the birth of Jesus made salvation available for all people.
But, as Paul reveals in verse 14, that kind of hope requires not only that Jesus was born in that manger in Bethlehem, but also that He grew up, lived a perfect life and then “gave Himself to redeem us from all lawlessness”. I especially want to call your attention to the word “all” there in verse 14. As we have discussed before, there are a lot of people needlessly going through life without hope because they think they have done something so terrible that God can’t possibly forgive them. But the consistent message of Scripture confirms what Paul reveals here – when Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead He paid the penalty for “all lawlessness”. Short of rejecting the salvation that God offers you through Jesus, there is absolutely nothing that you can do, no sin you can commit that is beyond the ability of Jesus to cover.
Perhaps there is someone here this morning who has never received the gift of hope because you haven’t trusted in Jesus to cover your sins and remove the guilt and the punishment that comes with those sins. If that is the case, there is not a better Christmas gift you can receive this year than to know for sure that your sins have been forgiven because Jesus did everything to make that possible beginning with coming to earth that first Christmas and taking on a body of flesh. If you are that person and you’d like to receive that gift, a little later on I’ll tell you how we’re here to help you do that.
But for the rest of us who have already trusted Jesus to cover our sins, we need to make sure that we don’t turn away the hope that Jesus offers by needlessly doubting that what He did for us by entering into our world as a little baby and ultimately dying on the cross is adequate to cover all of my sins. That is one of the reasons that we’ve been spending time in the Book of Romans each fall for the last several years so that we can be reminded of that great gift of hope that Jesus has made available to us.
Practically I think one of the best ways to make sure we don’t doubt that Jesus sacrifice is adequate for our sins is to spend time in the Bible in places like Romans where we’re reminded of what Jesus has done for us. And then we can respond to what we read there by thanking Jesus for that gift.
2. Don’t try to “keep Christ in Christmas”
I know what most of you are probably thinking right now – what do you mean “don’t keep Christ in Christmas”! But before you dismiss what I am about to say or label me a heretic, will you at least allow me to fully explain what I mean?
In this country it has become quite common for Christians to talk about a “war on Christmas” each year during this season. And here are some of the battles that tend to be fought as part of that so called “war”:
• Christians tend to be a lot like Charlie Brown, when it comes to lamenting the increasing commercialization of Christmas. And so the phrase “Keep Christ in Christmas” seems to have become the battle cry for Christians who are pushing back against that trend. I know that already this year I’ve seen bumper stickers and signs with that slogan. You can go online and purchase magnets, posters, t-shirts, tree ornaments and nativity sets that are imprinted with those words. And I consistently see pastors who preach sermons with that title. In a moment I’ll share some potential drawbacks of using that theme.
• It seems like every year Christians engage in an argument with our culture about whether to say “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” or whether it must be “Merry Christmas”.
• Last year, the so-called “war” reached an all-time low, in my opinion, when a group of Christians claimed that Starbucks was waging a war on Christmas because they had removed the snowflakes, ornaments and trees that had appeared on their Christmas cups in prior years.
So what does the “war on Christmas” have to do with the gift of hope? Before I answer that question from our passage, I first want to demonstrate to you the importance of what I’m addressing here by sharing with you 2 memes that one of my Facebook friends posted this week. This man worked for me a number of years ago when I owned a deli. From everything I know about him, I’m pretty sure he is not a Christian. But I think he probably reflects the way a lot of non-Christians view some of the tactics that many Christens employ in order to counteract this so called “war on Christmas”.
[Show memes]
Perhaps your first reaction to those memes is to get angry or defensive. But before you do that perhaps it would be useful to consider how those outside the church often view us and the appropriate steps we can take to counteract those perceptions.
Here is how this morning’s passage might help us to do that. In verse 12, Paul tells Titus that the way that the hope of Christmas is to impact our lives in the present is that the incarnation of Jesus makes it possible for us to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives”. And then in verse 14 he reinforces that idea by reminding us that Jesus not only redeemed us from all lawlessness, as we have already seen, but that He also is purifying us into a people who are “zealous for good works”.
As we have discussed frequently in our study of Romans, we don’t desire to live that kind of life because it earns us favor with God, but we do that instead out of gratitude for what God has already done for us and because we want Him to be glorified by our lives. And at least one of the ways that kind of life glorifies God is that it causes others to desire the hope that we have as a result of our faith in Jesus.
So the next time you’re tempted to make a big deal about whether someone says “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” or you tell them to “Keep Christ in Christmas” because they are listening to “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” instead of “Joy to the World” or when you decide you’re going to boycott some company because they no longer put snowflakes on their coffee cups, ask yourself this question before you act: “Is this going to help the other person find the gift of hope in their life, or is it going to hinder that process?”
Finally, before I leave this point, the whole idea of “keeping Christ in Christmas” is really unbiblical in the first place. There are actually a lot of unbelievers who do exactly that. They are OK with celebrating the birth of a little baby in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, just as long as they don’t have to consider that baby grew up, lived a perfect life and died for their sins and that the entirely of His story requires a response on their part. So the entirety of who Jesus is certainly is much more than just His birth.
And for those of us who are His disciples, Jesus doesn’t just want us to keep Christ in our lives for one day of the year, or even a season. We are not just to keep Christ in Christmas, but to make Him the very center of our lives every day of the year. If Jesus is only kept in Christmas, there certainly isn’t a whole lot of hope in that.
3. Give Jesus my fears about the future
We live in a world where people are really afraid about the future, and with good reason in many cases. I have to admit that I sometimes think about the world that my kids and grandkids will grow up in and how difficult it is going to be for them to live as disciples of Jesus. I’m concerned for them, but I’m not worried. That is because of the truth that Paul expresses in verse 13 where he describes how the birth of Jesus enables us to wait for “our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”
One day, Jesus is going to return to this earth. That is a truth that is taught in both the Old and New Testaments. And when He does, He is going to make everything right. Those who have put their trust in Him in this life will get new resurrection bodies in which we will live in His presence for eternity. So that gives us hope that no matter what we might experience in the few short years we live here on earth, we have a glorious eternity to look forward to. And I know that is true for my kids and grandkids, too and that they will be there with me in that eternal life.
And the return of Jesus is not just wishful thinking. I am absolutely confident He will return just as He and the prophets promised because He came to the earth the first time, just as the Scriptures promised. And that confident expectation allows me to give all my fears about the future to Jesu knowing that there is nothing that man can do to me to take me from His hands.
The first gift of Christmas is the gift of hope – hope for my past, my present and my future. It is a gift that I receive like all the gifts of Christmas – by putting my faith in Jesus alone. And, like all the other gifts, it is also a gift that is not just mine to hoard for myself, but one that God wants me to share with those around me who also need that hope in their lives.
So we’re going to end our time this morning by spending some time in prayer for the purpose of both allowing us to enjoy the gift of hope in our own lives and also asking God to help us share that gift with others.
Pray
1. Thank God for covering your sin through Jesus – past, present, and future.
2. Thank God that Jesus is coming again and ask Him to help you wait in confident expectation for that second coming.
3. List some people you know that need the gift of hope in their lives:
• Pray that God’s Holy Spirit would draw them to Him
• Ask God to provide opportunities for you to share Jesus with them and to give you wisdom as you do that
• Invite them to come with you on Christmas Eve
