Advent 4 Sermon - Love - December 19, 2021
I want to start with a question. Are you ready for a question? If you could have any 3 words spoken to you by someone you truly care for, what would they be? [Await response]
Well, a survey was done some years back, and participants in the survey were asked this question.......what 3 word sentence would you most like to hear or have said to you ? The top three answers were 1. I love you.....2. I forgive you.......3. Supper is ready. How does that relate to Advent? Listen and I’ll tell you.
Let’s look at this word, since it’s the focus of today’s advent theme: Love
Love. What do you love? What it is that you love most in your life. What do you really cherish?
Love is a strange word in the English language. It’s a word that carries great weight, and conveys deep human and divine emotion and affection on the one hand. On the other hand, 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”.
Like many people, I might say that I love music, I love the arts, I love staring at beautiful paintings, I love nature, creation; I love good literature, a good movie, a good TV series, and there are a lot of them nowadays.
But of all of the things that I've seen and experienced in my 59 years on this planet, nothing comes anywhere near close the beauty of Jesus. There is no one who evokes a love response in me that’s close to Jesus. I am profoundly in love with my wife. I deeply love my children and grandchild. I’m completely committed to them.
But Jesus - Immanuel - God with us. There’s none like Him. There is none like Him. There is no greater love than His. There is no greater gift than the gift of His love.
And as personal as Jesus is to me, as life-changing as his presence has been in my life, the truth is that Jesus has made an enormous impact on all of human history. In fact human history can be thought of as being in two parts.
There is everything that has happened since the beginning of time. That includes all that has been created. 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. It would take a library the size of Toronto to record all of that. Ridiculously large volumes of data.
So that's a lot of things. And what would it take to bust history in half, to create a break in history, to create a tear between one time and another time, to be such a rapture to the fabric of time as to create a division in history?
What would it take to reboot history and require it to start fresh, with yet a new beginning. Perhaps a comet from outer space that threatened to blast the world to bits. That would be a significant marker in time. Existence itself would have to start all over again. Don’t worry. This comet will just pass us by.
What could divide time, the way humans think of time?
Perhaps the founding of an empire that was to outdo all other empires. But history is full of human empires - the Han Dynasty, the Mongol Empire, the Greek empire, the Roman empire, The Ottoman empire, The Holy Roman Empire. These were huge, powerful human creations that dominated their regions of the planet. They were each a massive big deal. But 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 2021 and that it’s not December 4021? 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 divide 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.
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 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.
“He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute”. Augustine of Hippo
It marks the moment when God became man. When Jesus was born, God took on human flesh, bound Himself to a human body.
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. Vulnerable, liable to death. Born into an unstable and brutal world.
“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation”. J.I. Packer
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 before and after, 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, including me and all who identify themselves as followers of Jesus. 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 lonely and 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 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. And in His resurrection. Do that and you are His. 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”.
Another is that all of creation exists with there being or ever having been a Creator. [Powerpoint skips - repeat above or scan through]
Those are common illusions that people hold to.
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.
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, a good TV series, and there are a lot of them nowadays. But of all of the things that I've seen and experienced in time on this planet, nothing comes anywhere near close the beauty of Jesus. Nothing approaches the beauty of the Gospel.
Nothing is more comforting, nothing is more inspiring, nothing is more encouraging, nothing is more uplifting, more healing than the heart of the Christian faith, which is Jesus. “The cross is the center of the world’s history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve”. (A. MacLaren)
Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.
? Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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. May we wonder that God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us, as he dwells in us by his Holy Spirit.
May those who have not placed their trust in Jesus thus far, consider the hope and promise or living life in relationship with and near to the Lover of our souls. I pray you might know that joy. “Let him into the mire and muck of your world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out”. (Max Lucado)
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.
We started today with a question: If you could have any 3 words spoken to you by someone you truly care for, what would they be? Can you recall the top three answers to this question...What 3 word sentence would you most like to hear or have said to you ?
The top three answers were 1. I love you.....2. I forgive you.......3. Supper is ready.
Well, today, God has three, three word sentences to say to you.
There are 1. I love you. 2. I forgive you and 3. Supper is ready. Won’t you come and join in the Lord’s Supper.
Let us pray.
God we thank you that in Jesus Christ we are invited to share in Your life. May we each honour the Christ Child this Christmas as we linger with him in the manger. May we draw near to you. As we do we know from Your Word that you will draw near to us. And may we also seek to share with many others this love that you have shared so graciously with us. We ask this for Christ’s sake, in whose name we pray. Amen
