Advent 2023: Hope

Transcript

As a Christian, we inherit a 2000 years of church history, Christian history, and part of that is this calendar and there's a season of Lent. And depending on what tradition you're from, you have this 40 days leading up to Easter and for us, we are celebrating this idea of advent. And advent has this idea, it's a season where we're anticipating the advent of Christ. There are these three pieces to it. We reenact the Jewish anticipation for a Messiah. We celebrate the arrival of that Messiah and all of its implications, and we now anticipate the second coming of Christ. And so this is week three of Advent and we are going to talk about this idea of hope, of hope. Last March when it was still cold and wintry, my wife and I went to Home Depot and we bought a seeds starting kit that looked kind of like this.

We picked out the seed packets of the vegetables that we wanted to plant and we dropped these tiny seeds into the moist soil of this seed dome. And then we waited and within a couple of days you could see these little tiny green shoots emerging from the shell of the seed. A week later, it was starting to form an inch long blade that would become the earliest branches of the leaves and for the plant. Throughout this process of purchasing the seed dome, planting the seed, watering the seed, protecting the seed bed from our dogs, there was this experience of hope. There's this anticipation. What is this plant? Is it going to grow? Right? The act of taking a dead tiny, almost like so tiny microscopic seed and laying it on most moist soil is a bizarre act because nothing happens. It's not like you put it in the microwave and it comes out hot. You're laying it there and you're wondering, will this thing come alive? It's almost mysterious. It's almost magical that something happens with this seed. It's an experience of hope. When we planted the seeds, it was an unseen potential within the seed and the quiet, persistent push toward life, waiting for the right

Moment for the Christian hope is not just a wishful thinking. Hope is this confident expectation for the future based on God's promises. Again, hope is a confident expectation for the future based off of God's promises. When you look on a map of Eastern Avenue and Broadway, there is what we call an intersection, right? The two streets intersect, and the same is the case as we read our Bibles throughout this week and our own life. The Bible intersects with our life and the more we spend time hearing God speak through his word and we're chewing on it and we're meditating on the Bible, there is this experience of the Bible coming true in our own lives. And sometimes there is this wrestling of like, Lord, which verses are true for me. Now, sometimes the work of God's spirit as we're reading the Bible is he's convicting us like, Hey, listen, this needs to get right in your life.

Sometimes it's this encouragement towards a future. Other times it's this, Hey, you need to hold onto these promises. Many times it's wisdom. It's like, Hey, this is the right way to think about systems in life. And there is this idea of our life intersecting with scripture and hope is formed. Another way of considering hope is it's something that is forged in our hearts as we experience God's faithfulness in our lives. I don't know. I was thinking as I was preparing this message, I don't know if I've ever felt more hopeful, and that is a direct result of walking with the Lord and seeing him fulfill his promises in my life and be true to his word. And so we're going to consider this idea of hope and the idea of the Messiah coming into the world and fulfilling the hopes of the nation. And our text that we're going to open up with is Micah chapter five, verse two, Micah five verse two.

It says this, Bethlehem eita, you are small among the clans of Judah. One will come from you to be ruler over Israel. For me, his origin is from antiquity, from ancient times, a unique scripture. We will unpack this a bit and look at it in its context some more, but before we do that, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for giving us your holy word. We know that this scripture is a scripture that Jesus read and was familiar with, and it speaks of his coming being born in the city of Bethlehem. And we pray that as we consider this text and this idea of being a people of hope that you would stir in our hearts by your spirit this morning, you teach us about hope. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So this passage is from Micah who is a prophet that we find in the Old Testament is just one of the messianic seeds that are planted by the prophets.

Now, if you look at your Old Testament in your Bible, you have the Old Testament, you have the New Testament. The Old Testament tells the story and tracks the spiritual journey of the nation of Israel, and God is working through the nation of Israel to bring to the fore the idea of a messiah that's going to come and save the world, who's going to bring his kingdom to earth and is going to reign as the perfect king. And so Micah is one of these Old Testament prophets in your Bible who has a specific message in a specific time, and we'll talk just for a minute about this guy Micah and his prophetic Miss message. What was the context in which it was delivered?

The prophets were contemporaries from King Solomon all the way up to about 400 years before the time of Christ, so the prophets were speaking to the nation of Israel from right after King Solomon's death through hundreds of years of the split nations. You had the northern nation of Israel and the southern nation of Judah. Micah was a prophet during the eighth century bc. He was a contemporary of Isaiah, who we've looked at over the last couple of weeks, Amos and Hosea. His ministry occurred during the reigns of Jotham and then Ahaz. That's a name that keeps coming up. It's almost like Ahaz has been a part of our advent journey as a church king Ahaz in Judah and Hezekiah and who were the kings of Judah. This period was marked by social injustice, rampant idolatry and moral decay amongst both the region in northern. This is, I'm sorry, the proportions here are bad. This is squeezed for some reason, but there's the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. This is a better map and Micah is prophesying into this area and there's a lot of judgment and rebuke throughout this book. There's political corruption. Let me just show you one of his judgments against Judah and the political corruption that existed at the time. We'll come back to that chart in just a second.

He says in these four verses, he says, now listen, leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, aren't you supposed to know what is just, in other words, aren't you supposed to know what's right and just you hate good and you love what is evil? You tear off people's skin and strip their flesh from their bones. In other words, the systems that you're supporting, the social systems, the systems of justice, the way that the government is set up is dehumanizing. It does not value the flesh and blood of people. You're taking away the body, the embodiment characteristics of the people that you govern.

You eat the flesh of my people. After you strip their skin from them and break their bones, you chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot like meat in a cauldron. Then they will cry out to the Lord. This is the rulers are going to cry out to the Lord, but he will not answer to them. He will hide his face from them at that time because of the crimes they have committed such a grotesque picture, a depiction of this corruption. It's beautiful to see that the God of heaven looks down. He cares about government and politics. Sometimes you've been on the raw end of a political system or a governmental system where it's just not fair.

Early on when I was working in the compassion center and I had a little bit more time on my hands, I would take people to court for different things that would come up like homeless guys that would come through. And there's two in particular that I remember and one was had this accusation that seemed like there was no way that it could have worked. The timing of it could have worked out because I knew him and knew where he was at at the time. And then there was another guy that I can't even remember what his charge was. I think it predated me knowing him. And so I would go with him to, I would go with these guys to court. I just would watch the system and it was amazing to me how if you're poor, the system is unfair. You are relying upon a public defender who's overworked and it's just a system.

The justice system is designed to favor people who can afford a good, somebody who can represent them well in court, and God caress about those kind of things. And that's what Micah is speaking to. He's not speaking necessarily politically, but he's saying, look, God's word to you as a nation is that there's a broken benness about how society is working. You're eating for dinner, these people that are corrupt, he was delivering a message on behalf of God dealing with political corruption in Judah, in Israel, and he's articulating the basis of God's judgment. He's like a lawyer. Micah's acting like a lawyer on God's behalf, giving the indictment. The spiritual leaders though were not much better. Look at how the spiritual leaders were behaving. Micah three 11 and 12, her leaders, speaking of Judah and Israel, her leaders issue rulings for a bribe. Her priests teach for a payment.

In other words, I'll teach you whatever you want to hear, just pay me and her prophets practice divination for silver, yet they lean on the Lord saying, isn't the Lord among us? No disaster will overtake us. Therefore, because of you Zion, Zion will be plowed like a field. Jerusalem will become ruins and the temple's mountain will be a high thicket. Just imagine if both the spiritual leaders and the political leaders are corrupt and they're using, we can't imagine this ever happening in Baltimore, right? But imagine them using their of authority for their own advantage and God caress about it and he raises up this prophet to speak into this setting and to say, this is God's indictment of judgment against you. I pulled this diagram kind of looks like a comic strip, but this is the Bible project's outline of the book of Micah. The black outline here is the judgment sections, so this is one and two, and then these are the sections about hope.

If you go and watch the video that's six minutes long about Micah with the Bible project, the amazing thing, and they didn't do this on purpose, the amazing thing is over and over again, they use the word hope because Micah is speaking into this dark spiritual climate, but then he comes through with the hope, these words of hope. And so the prophecy that we look at here about Bethlehem being the place where the Messiah is born is found in this section here, or is it found there? Yes. Five. Yeah. Chapter five, Bethlehem. You have a leader born in Bethlehem and he's raised up to become a ruler in Jerusalem.

So we have this pattern, indictment, judgment, and then these words of hope and the fact that God is not going to leave his people who need to be judged because he's just, he's not going to leave them in this place of, well, what's the opposite of hope de That's right. He's not going to leave them in a place of despair. We live in an age of great despair. There are many people who are feeling a sense of worthlessness for a number of reasons. Some people I talk to feel a sense of despair because they can't identify how their work connects with their personhood, and so they feel unfulfilled in the work that they're doing. Some people are feeling despaired because as much as they try to do good, they're incapable of producing change in the world and they feel overpowered by it. There's other, there's parents that despair because it's like, look, I've done this for my kids and yet their kids are just struggling in the place as they're getting into their young adult years

And trying to do life. Some people are facing despair because it's like, where did this illness come from? Other people are facing despair because they went to work, they got an education and they played the game, and yet the game is not reciprocating back to them with their career or with the monetary expectations that they had. We're heading towards more despair. Just so you know, as computers and technology advances, there is this sense of humans being replaced more and more by technology, and what that does is if you don't have a framework to think about the world, as technology gets better, it causes a overall sense of what purpose does my life have? If you don't have the Bible coming along and saying that you're created a little higher as a human, you're created a little higher than the angels and that you're designed according to Genesis one and two, to reign and rule with God over the created order, and that someday you'll judge the angels.

Then if you're left without that meta narrative, that grand arc of the story and that there is a second advent of Christ, then you're going to look at the world as it progresses technologically and with corruption and broken systems, and you're going to despair. And so Micah is speaking into this and he's calling out speaking truthfully to what is so upsetting and upsetting probably to these citizens who feel like their flesh is being stripped off to them by systems, and they're hearing Micah say, there is this hope. There's going to be somebody born in Bethlehem. Let's look at that passage again, Micah chapter five, verses two through four. Bethlehem, you are small amongst the clans of Judah. Now, remember Judah's the smaller southern nation, and he says that this city, this little town, Bethlehem, was small amongst the clans of Judah, and one will come from you to be a ruler over Israel for me.

So this is coming 800 years. This is being spoken 800 years before Jesus is born, and when Jesus grows up and he is being identified as the Messiah, one of the knocks against Jesus is his birth story, his origin story, one that he's born without an identifiable biological father, but also just the fact that he's born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth. It is like, well, who could come from that? It's like that's a small town. That's not where the leadership of Israel necessarily would come from. Oh, but it is, it's found in this very inconvenient book that if you're a, well, I guess we'll get into it in Matthew here in just a second, but it's this fascinating little verse about somebody, this future ruler coming from being born in Bethlehem, and then it says, Micah continues. He says, therefore, Israel be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor has given birth.

Then the rest of the ruler's brothers will return to the people of Israel. Very poetic, symbolic, general probably maps on really beautifully to the birth of the Messiah. It maybe maps onto the second advent of Christ. And then verse four, he this leader, this future ruler, born in Bethlehem, he will stand and shepherd them in the strength of the Lord in the majestic name of the Lord his God. They will live securely mind you, no longer having their flesh stripped off of them and being eaten by the rulers. No, they will live securely for then his greatness will extend to the ends of the earth. These are the type of prophetic messages that Micah has, that Isaiah has, that Zechariah has, that Daniel has these prophets that were raised up by God's spirit and given this message to speak into the midst of a spiritual winter. Let's fast forward. Let's go to Jesus's time. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, Wiseman from the East arrived in Jerusalem and they said, where is he who has been born king of the Jews, for we saw his star at its rising and we've come to worship him, so they're associating this star with the king of the Jews. My personal conviction is that these wise men, these magi are in the lineage of Daniel and are carrying with them some of the prophetic messages from

Daniel Daniel's time when he and his compatriots are there in Babylon, and Daniel has all these prophetic words about a future Jewish king who's going to have this amazing rule, just a guess. So it says, then King Herod heard this, and he was deeply disturbed in all of Jerusalem with him. So he assembled the chief priests. He pulls together. So here we have politician, spiritual leaders. They get together and they are asking where the Messiah would be born. That's a good discussion right there. Let's get the political leaders together with the religious leaders and talk about the Messiah. Fortunately, it's not with good intention, but these religious leaders are inconveniently aware of Micah. They say it's in Bethlehem of Judea. They told him, because this is what was written by the prophet and you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, or by no means least among the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, who will shepherd my people.

Israel, this is 800 years a prophetic word coming to the front of the stage being fulfilled. The people who we would say were just victims in the day of Micah who kind of held onto Micah's words, they didn't get to see it fulfilled. They got the effect of feeling encouraged, but they didn't get the ability to feel the encouragement or they didn't get to see the day of it being fulfilled. But these spiritual leaders, these political leaders, it was in their day and how did they respond? They responded. Herod responded by saying, we've got to kill him. He's a threat to my authority.

It is amazing. As you see God's work through history, take that map it onto your life and know that God has told his story in a written account so that your hope can be fed. I'm going to go a little bit off script here, a little bit off script, and I won't have a passage, but I just love this from the beginning of Romans chapter. Romans chapter 15, if you have a Bible, you can look it up there. I'm believing. It's Romans, Romans 15, four. It says, for whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction. So whatever was written in your Bible in the past, it was written for our instruction. So when you have a sow that, what does that mean?

It's causative, right? It's showing it's an instrument. It's coming forward. It's written so that you have instruction so that we may have hope the Bible is written so that for your instruction, so that you might be and have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the scriptures. You see, it's a circle there in the way that Paul writes it. You have instruction, hope, endurance, encouragement from the scriptures. I love that, and I think that that is in a verse what I'm trying to show you from the book of Micah. Alright, let's wrap this up here.

The reality is that we go through spiritual winters, personal struggles. So this may be Christmas time where you feel like I'm supposed to feel happy, but maybe you don't. It could be that maybe you're experiencing a conflict in a key relationship that you can't get resolved. Maybe you're facing an illness or chronic pain, maybe your finances are tight, you feel discouraged. Maybe you're looking for work and you're just struggling to find that work that just lands and it's the right place for you. Maybe you're lonely, maybe you feel stuck. Maybe you have questions that are not resolved. Maybe you feel like evil is winning.

And the reality is that God often speaks of hope and promises in the midst of our darkest times. Jesus born in Bethlehem as foretold by Micah, is the embodiment of hope, not just for Israel, but for all humanity. We have as we go through our own seasons that are difficult, we have a person that is named hope. Jesus is our hope, Christ's life, death and resurrection fulfill the deeper longing for redemption, justice, reconciliation that is expressed throughout the Old Testament. And so let me encourage you on this third Sunday of Advent to find hope in Jesus amidst your current situation, injustice, societal injustice, personal trials, just as Israel would've found hope in those prophetic words of Micah, cultivate hope through prayer, meditation, meditation on scripture, participation in your church family, and then anticipate that second advent. Do you see how Micah's prophecy transcends the first coming of Christ into our day and beyond?

Because he talks about the reign and the knowledge of this king being this universal reign. We need to live in a way with the reality that should develop in us as Jesus followers, is that we have this personal relationship with Jesus. Hope is being formed in us, forged in us, and it is embodied in us as we look forward to the second coming of Christ. Peter says it this way in his epistle, who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good, who can harm you if you are devoted to what is good, but even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear them. This is Peter's remix. You know how you take music? You remix it. This is Peter's remix on the sermon of the mound. He's saying, you are blessed, you're suffering, you're blessed. Do not fear them or be intimidated. Then look at 15, but in your hearts regard, Christ, that's the word, esteem. Esteem. Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time. So you're ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason of the hope that is in you. So

Peter paints a picture where you're opposed, you're suffering possibly. And he's saying, Hey, look at, you're still blessed. Not only are you hunkered down, enduring, marching forward, not getting distracted, not off your game because of that suffering, but you're ready to answer people who are like, where's the hope coming from? How come you're so hopeful? How come you are going through all this stuff and you have so much hope? Remember, he talked about it at the beginning of his book, the Alien Hope. It's this hope that just invade your life because it's birthed in you by the Holy Spirit. Literally, the hope of heaven is something where you say like, God, I just give you permission to work in my life. Take away the despair. Fill me with your hope. And that is what the spirit of God wants to do in each of us.

And so you may feel like you're living in a dark spiritual time where even the things that ought to work, government, spiritual leaders, whatever it may be, the things that ought to work maybe are not working. And yet God speaks and he says, I care about injustice and I will judge. And you need to know that there is this hope in the Messiah. You can sink your teeth into it. It's the anchor for your soul. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for coming and fulfilling Micah's strange prophecy about you being a ruler and coming from this obscure town of Bethlehem that you fulfilled your word after 800 years and you fulfilled your word in our lives. God, I pray that as we do life and through this week, I pray that you would just encourage us with your word and that you would continue to form in us hope, and this would be a season where we can have that sense of hope in your second coming. We love you. We pray these things in Jesus name together. Amen.

Advent 2023: Peace

Transcript

This is going to be week four. In our advent series. We're talking about awaiting the king, and this morning we're going to cover the idea of peace. You may have noticed that it's almost unavoidable to sing a Christmas Carol without singing about the peace that God brings to bear through his son Jesus. One of the things that we are learning as we have gone through the book of Matthew together is that the values that compose the kingdom, things like love, peace, hope, joy, the things that compose the kingdom are associated with the presence of the king. You don't get to have peace, true peace without having the king. We live in a unique time culturally where many of the values in our culture align with values in God's kingdom. There's a desire for justice and equality. There's a desire for peace in the world. We are not living in a culture that just prizes war, at least here in the United States. We're hopefully lovers of peace.

There's these values that we have kind of as pillars within society, but the unique thing is that our culture wants the kingdom without the king. And what we're seeing as we go through the book of Matthew and what we're going to see again this morning is that you cannot have these values without having, in a true sense, in the way that our hearts long for. We cannot have these things without the presence of the king. You don't get perfect love without the king of love being present. You don't get true justice without the just judge of the whole earth being involved. So last week we talked about how there's this sense of anticipation that comes with advent for us. We have this reality where we have arrived and the first coming has arrived, but now we're waiting for the second advent. We call it the second coming of Christ.

We're living in this place of tension between a first coming that was very much historic and real, and there's realities that we inherit because of the first coming of Christ, but then there are things that we are living into hoping for with the second advent of Christ. That's very important as you live as a Christian, that you understand that you're between two way markers on a map, that there is a historic event that has happened in the past, and yet there are things that are yet in your reality that are unresolved because there is still a future coming of Christ. And so did you ever, when you were in first second grade in art class, make a fan by folding the paper back and forth? Yeah, I think as I was thinking about that this week, I think that the corrugation of those, the folded paper is the idea that I've been communicating a lot over the last couple years on Sundays in the text in that the Bible just kind of, it maps onto itself.

If you were to take that fan and to just collapse it down, you'd be able to drive a pin through it and it would touch all these different segments of that same piece of paper if you were to pierce it through. And that is in a sense how scripture is. So as we are in this place of tension, we are reenacting what the Jews lived in as they heard all these prophecies from Genesis three on through their history, there's this anticipation that a person is going to make it all better. A person is going to change reality. A kingdom is going to come through a king this morning. We're going to zero in on the promise of peace. The promise of peace. Let me set the stage for this a bit and just talk about the absence of peace on a global stage. There are currently at least 23 major armed conflicts that are occurring in the world right now.

One of the leading universities that studies global conflict is a university out of Sweden named Sula University, and they defined conflict. One of their definitions is this, an armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is a government of a state, results in at least 25 battle related deaths in one calendar year. So they have remember the covid charts tracking cases. Well, this university, they have a similar dashboard where they're tracking global conflicts. This is one of their charts. This is state-based conflict by level of intensity since the end of World War ii. And you see the rise in minor conflicts and this kind of the level degree of war.

They also have this map of current, this is at the end of 2022 current geographic areas that are experiencing conflict. It is the absence, the absence of peace. Many of these countries, people in these countries have lived with constant turmoil. It's an experience completely different from our own where the instability you live with instability, whether or not your government will be able to defend you, or maybe the government is not even the government that you chose or would have chosen to be underneath. And so there is this sense of global unrest that exists, but there is also internal turmoil. There is internal anxiety. There is again, another entity, I forget the body that tracks this, but their name will be on the next slide here. But they're looking at anxiety disorders, panic, generalized anxiety, agoraphobia specific phobias, social anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, separation anxiety disorder.

You take these things, you put 'em on a chart and you match it up against GDP, and you have this interesting kind of J curve where some of the lowest experiences of anxiety are in countries with low GDP. You also have some countries with high GDP with low levels of anxiety. But it's interesting how you have this curve that goes up as GDP increases. There is this turmoil that is not resolved with money, and it is a epidemic that is the anxiety of epidemic is ever increasing. Just a few quotes from characters. Prince Harry says, I've been to the very darkest of places, but I'm here now. I'm here because I've learned that life is about finding peace within yourself and then can truly share that piece with others. Amanda Gorham, who shared a poem at the presidential inauguration, she said in 2022, there is so much noise in the world.

It can be hard to find your own inner peace, but it's there and it's worth searching for. Lynn Manuel Miranda says, I'm constantly striving for peace, but I don't always achieve it. It's a journey, not a destination. And Emma Watson, I've had times in my life where I've felt very lost and very uncertain, but I've learned that those are often the times when we grow the most we live. Our human experience is an experience of external conflict and internal conflict. Our world longs to be at peace to have its internal and internal conflicts resolved. We long to have peace within and with the rest of the world.

This morning, we're going to look at a text from Isaiah chapter nine, verses six through seven. This is a very famous text that is oftentimes quoted at Christmas time because it prophesies of his son. So if you have the book of Isaiah in front of you, we're going to be in chapter nine. Isaiah chapter nine, verses six and seven. It says this, for a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace. The dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness. From now on and forever, the zeal of the Lord of armies will accomplish this. Let's pray.

Let's ask the Lord to speak to us through this text. Lord, this is a famous prophecy from Isaiah, and you said through Isaiah that this son who's born one of his titles would be the prince of peace and that he would reign and be present. We just thank you, God, that you came and that you are present and that your presence remains with us by the Spirit, and you want to bring about peace in our life that this is a real thing that we can experience as followers of Jesus. So teach us this morning about peace. We pray this in your name. Amen. Amen. So Isaiah chapter nine, this promise of a son. Again, just to review, there are a few names here, titles that Jesus has given. Notice, this expanse of the names that are given that we have. Wonderful counselor, your therapist, he's the wonderful therapist, but then he's also the mighty God.

He's the eternal father. So this family identity, the ongoing never ending eternal father and then a royal term, the prince of peace. And then he says a couple of things about what he's going to accomplish. He's going to have this vast domain, comprehensive authority. It says in verse seven. In verse seven, it says that he will have this endless, he will bring in endless prosperity. I know that there is a bad teaching, a heretical teaching in the church that we call it the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel. It's easy in the critique of that heresy to think or to take that and think God's opposed to prosperity. But no God's Jesus's reign. When he comes in with his second coming, he's present. He's going to bring about eternal everlasting prosperity and ambition. A personal ambition to be prosperous is not something that God is opposed to.

What is he opposed to? He's opposed to greed. The misuse of money, the process of getting means in a manipulative. The means would be manipulative to gain wealth using dishonesty, unbalanced scales, but yet the presence of Jesus is going to bring endless prosperity. There's going to be a revived Davidic throne, right? Again, here's our little second grade fan that's folded up. It's like we had the throne back there of David and David's coming back, but as Jesus and Jesus is royal, just expanding all of Israel's borders to the greatest expanse that they ever had. Geographically, Jesus is going to come and embody that, but it's going to be Jesus doing it from that throne, and then there's going to be justice and righteousness. The people that have been wronged, all of the wrongs done to you will be righted. There will not be a imbalanced justice. There will be a righteousness. At the time that Isaiah wrote this, Israel's peace was fleeting. So Isaiah who writes, who's the writer of this prophecy? God spoke through him. They're under Assyrian threat. The prophecy likely arose during the reign of King Ahaz of Judah. We talked about him last week. He was the king from 7 42 to 7 27, and at this time, the powerful Assyrian empire posed a significant threat to Judah. Maybe if you're here last week, you remember that map.

And so Ahaz is terrified and God raises up this man who is filled with God's spirit speaking on God's behalf, speaking, speaking this reality about this future 700 years down the road, this sun being given, it's beautiful how you think of just the turmoil that A has was experiencing and how the promise that's matched up with that from God, even though it's not for that moment, it is this government. He's like, Isaiah's like I got to tell you about this government that's going to happen through Jesus, this reign, this prince of peace that's going to come in and he's just going to be so good when he comes. So there's this exterior threat from Assyria, but then there's also these internal divisions that Israel and Judah was experiencing. Judah itself was experiencing internal divisions with some that were advocating for submission. Hey, let's just submit to Usy and others.

Were seeking alliance with other powers. Maybe we should go down to Egypt. Maybe we should just defend ourselves and just repent and turn back to God. This division weakened Judas position and further fueled the fear and uncertainty. Isaiah comes along and he talks about the prince of peace. There would be this anticipation that the Jewish people would have if they were listening to their scriptures. But then you fast forward 750 years, Israel had been repopulated. Israel had gone captivity then been delivered and been living back in the land. They had repopulated the land, but the land was under Roman occupation. So there were still open-ended promises from God that were not yet fulfilled. It was like, God, you made these promises. You said this was going to happen, but the promises were not yet fulfilled, and yet one of the promises hanging out there is that a virgin would conceive and give birth to a baby, and then this promise of that there's going to be this reign and this rule.

So if you're a Jew at the time, you're just wondering how does this all go together? Again, setting the stage for this scene in Luke, this idea of peace, the prince of peace, it comes up on the night of Jesus's birth earth. So we have these shepherds. The shepherds are in the same region. This is Luke two in the same regions. Shepherds were staying in the fields and they're keeping a watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, don't be afraid for, look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. So angels talking to shepherds the night of Jesus's birth, and they say, today in the city of David, a savior was born for you. Who is the Messiah? The Lord. This will be the sign for you. You're going to find the baby wrapped tightly in cloth, laying in a manger or the feeding trough of animals. Suddenly there was a multitude of heavenly hosts with angels praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heavens, and do you see it there? Peace on earth to people he favors.

When the angels came, angels, God's messengers, angels come to shepherds and say, this baby's born and a part of the message is peace on earth, peace on earth Again. Do you see here the thing that is long for being peace? It comes with a person. Now, I don't know your relationship with anxiety. I know I felt anxious about different things this week. It seems like it's a human condition, some more debilitating than others, and yet here is the Bible, which is God's revelation to us saying, I'm about peace. I'm about your peace. I'm invested. The thing you long for of having peace. That's what I want for you. But you need to understand that it comes through a person. Now, you can go to therapy. There's nothing wrong with therapy. You can change your circumstances. You can have your prescriptions. These things are not bad.

Those things are graces that God provides for us. But you need to at the same time understand that when the Bible talks about peace, the Bible hitches that solution to a person. You cannot have the solution without a person. You can adapt, you can cope. Medication is awesome. It oftentimes helps you get your head above water. If you're in that debilitating place of anxiety, all that stuff is great, but you need to understand that Jesus came to give you this peace that is well, it says in the Bible that it passes understanding a lot of therapy is here's what you understand here. Let's get into why is your peace disturbed? Why are you feeling anxious? And the Bible is not opposed to that, but it says that God can provide a peace that goes beyond our understanding. But you have to understand, you don't get to have it without Jesus.

Later on in Jesus's ministry, he talked to his disciples who dealt with a lot of anxiety in their life, and these guys were a panicky mess and you would be a panicky mess if you had seen John the Baptist get beheaded. He's this outsider. He's causing problems and the guy doesn't seem to want to avoid problems like he's happily turning over tables in the temple and raising Lazarus from the dead and rebuking the spiritual leaders of the day, like Jesus is not avoiding scary situations, and yet you're following him. And it's like, yeah, that would kind of be an anxious setting. And so in John 14, here's one of the things that Jesus says. He says, don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. Later on in that same chapter, he says, peace I leave with you because remember, this is the night.

This whole part of the Bible is when Jesus is his. He's the night before he's crucified, so he's giving final instructions to his disciples and he's talking to them about peace right before he's arrested and then crucified, and he's saying, peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give you as the world gives, don't let your heart be troubled or fearful. A little bit later, same, same setting, Jesus is having that last supper with his disciples. Here's another thing that he says. He says, I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace. Where is the peace located in me? You may have peace in me. You'll have suffering in this world.

Be courageous. I've conquered the world. Isn't that interesting that the peace Jesus is talking about is not absent from a promised suffering? You're going to have suffering, but you're going to have peace in me, peace in me, the follower of Jesus, the citizen of the kingdom. They can experience peace because Jesus resolves the conflicts. Jesus resolves the conflicts. Jesus brings with him peace, and he accomplishes, accomplishes a reconciling work so that peace can be experienced. Can you just do a mental exercise with me for a second? Tune back in here for just a second. Genesis three, go with me back to the beginning, right? God creates the heavens in the earth. Adam and Eve, they're in perfect relationship with God. They're at peace. God loves them. They're best friends with God. They would walk together with God in the cool of the day. They're in this beautiful garden.

They're completely naked and they're stoked about it. They don't even know anything's wrong. Nothing is wrong. They're completely naked and they're happy, right? But they disobey God and all of a sudden peace gets sucked out. All of a sudden, what does it say? They see that they are naked and they start taking fig leaves. Have you ever read a fig tree? I had a fig tree in California. They're these giant, giant leaves, but they're not very strong. Can you imagine trying to sow a fig leaf together to cover up your nakedness? That is not a sustainable outfit at all. They must've been freaking out, right? It's like, oh, here's some big leaves. Let's cover up. So they're covering their nakedness, then they're hiding. It says, the humans hid from the Lord. When they hear God approaching like the normal time to walk with God, they hear God coming and they go and hide.

They're not at peace with God. The relationship that beautiful. God's okay with me. I'm okay with God, no sense of guilt, no shame. All that's gone. They're running away from God's presence. And you see a little bit later as God's talking to them, what have you done? Why have you done this? God's inviting them to confess their sins and they confess a little bit, but then they start blaming each other. Adam's like, well, this is the fault of the woman you gave me. She, she's the one that told me to take the fruit. And then she's like, well, it's the serpent. He tricked me and I ate the fruit. There's just this. It's just conflict. It's a mess. You go one chapter later, you have two. Adam and Eve, they have two boys, and they get into a conflict and one kills the other. Can you get a clearer picture of peace is gone out of the picture?

It's a mess because there's no peace, and yet there is in every human this longing, Emma Watson is saying, and Lin Manuel is saying, and like Prince Harry is saying, is like, I want inner peace. And the Bible over and over again is saying, there is peace that's available and Jesus is telling his disciples the night before he's killed, peace, my peace. I'm going to give you my peace. I'm going to leave with you. Peace. I have it for you, but you need me. I have to be your king. You have to be willing to see that the peace that you long for is hitched to me. Again, Jesus brings with him peace. He accomplishes a reconciling work so that peace can be experienced, peace can be experienced.

Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah as the prince of peace, bringing not just an absence of conflict, but a deep reconciling peace between you and God and between humanity and the people that they are around. There is this now and not yet that we live in. I spoke about this at the beginning, and again, we live in this tension between the present reality of Jesus's peace in our lives, and yet a future hope of complete peace in his second coming, the already of Christians first advent and the not yet of his return. Let me give you four pieces just of practical application and how you can experience God's peace in your life. The first is this. You need to be at peace in your relationship with God. You are designed to be a friend of God. You are designed to receive God's love. And so I would invite you to embrace the peace that from a reconciled relationship with God.

How do you do that? Well, it's through Jesus. You trust that Jesus paid for the junk that you've done, that stuff that has broken your relationship with God. Jesus paid for it. And so you're just invited into a relationship with God by leaning on Jesus, leaning into what Jesus has done for you, accepting what he has done on your behalf. It's a step of faith that God, I'm ready to trust in you. It says literally that at that point you are reconciled with God. Think of these warring nations, Russia against Ukraine, Hamas against Israel. What's lacking there is reconciliation. They are killing each other. There is animosity that exists there, and the Bible says that you are an enemy of God through your actions. You may wish that your actions didn't make you an enemy of God, but they do. And God's love overcomes your and my disobedience.

Your and my disobedience has been absolved through the work of Jesus on the cross. So be reconciled to God. Let Jesus's work. Be effective on your behalf. Don't let Jesus just hang out there on the cross and then be resurrected not to your own benefit like he did it for you. Benefit. Let it be meaningful and purposeful because you just open up your life and say, I receive that. I surrender to that awesome reality. The second thing though is having done that, cultivate this inner peace daily spiritual disciplines like prayer. Have a conversation with God through prayer, like talk to God. He loves the things you want to talk to him about. You can be so honest with him. Read the Bible, meditate on the Bible. Take a little section of the Bible. You don't have to understand the whole thing. Yeah, it's daunting, but just read a little bit of Bible and quiet time.

Cultivate that inner peace where you're letting God be present through his spirit in your life. And then the third thing is peace. In the midst of trials. Recognize there are some things in your life where there are trials. There are some people that disrupt your peace regularly, and it might be something where, and you need to step out of that relationship. But there's some stuff that's unavoidable, right? Money just causes anxiety sometimes, right? Sickness can cause anxiety. Work the future. All of these things can just disrupt peace. And in a sense that's a trial. And I want to encourage you to find peace. Walk with Jesus the midst of those personal struggles and those uncertainties draw strength from his promise. This is John 16. Three is like I give you peace. You're going to suffer, John 1633, you will suffer, but I have peace for you.

Access it. Lean into that promise that he wants to give you peace. And the final thing here is as God is authoring peace in your life. Become an agent of peace to the people around you. Help people be reconciled. Be reconciled to others. Walk in forgiveness, understanding in conflicts and situations. This isn't sloppy forgiveness where people wrong you and you're just like, oh, yeah, it's no big deal. It means that you say, just like a judge who's kind of close to a case and they say, I'm going to recuse myself from the case. I'm going to pass it off to another courtroom. We're called as Christians, to not be the courtroom for the world. We can recuse ourself from all cases and say, I'm not designed. My heart is not designed to be a good judge. I'm going to let you be judged by God.

And God. It says in Romans chapter 12 that he takes vengeance sometimes and he needs space to take vengeance. And if you're going to be the one taking vengeance, you're not leaving space for God to deal with other people. And so the call of scripture is to be a person of peace. Sometimes there's just broken relationships and you can stand in the middle there and you can just help people get along, help people see each other's perspective, help mend relationships. The Bible says that if you're a peacemaker, you're a son of God. You're just being like God by stepping into a setting. It's an art form to be a peacemaker. Sometimes. There's these ambassadors that aren't just ambassadors. They donate a lot of money to the President, but they're ambassadors because they're just gifted at making peace. They're really good at knowing all these moving pieces, these geopolitical pieces.

They're not emotionally driven. They can just kind of step into the space and they can help warring factions be at peace that's bearing out the image of God in your human space. So let me encourage you in those four ways to experience God's presence, this peace of God, the prince of peace, bearing his image or bearing upon you, his kingdom, his reign, and his experience. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word and thank you for sending your son Jesus into the world as the prince of peace. And God, we just bring before you our anxiety, and

We wish that we could just flip a switch and turn off those feelings. And so many times we can't even outthink the anxiety. But yet, Lord, when we read the Bible here, it seems like you're about peace and that it's a part of one of your names. It's your title. You're like the prince of peace. You don't just stop wars, but you give internal peace. And I pray for everyone here that you would do that, that you would give us peace in our life, that this would become a living experience. It's this kind of invading peace that just comes in from the outside and just takes a hold of our hearts as you're there and as we're in relationship with you, help us, God, to be peacemakers as well. We want to honor you as we do life this week. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Advent 2023: Love

Transcript

We are entering the season of Advent. Advent derived its name from a Latin word called Adventist, meaning the coming or the arrival. It's a season of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas and the anticipation of his return at the second coming. So it's a season of anticipation. I just would encourage you have the next four weeks leading up to your Christmas time and it's going to be a crazy busy time, right? There's a lot of things that are stressful. It's a unique season. People drive fast, malls are packed. Shopping centers are miserable to go into, but one of the things that I'd encourage you to do during this time is just reflect on and have that spirit of anticipation of, Lord, what do you'd want to do in my heart? Historically, advent has been a time of spiritual reflection, penitence and renewal akin to lent that season leading up to Easter, but it has a focus on joy and hope of Christ's birth.

It's a period where believers prepare their hearts and minds for the arrival of the savior, remembering the long period of waiting and expectation before the birth of Jesus. So our theme is going to be the awaiting the King, and we will talk about love, hope, peace, and joy over the next four weeks, all embodied with this idea of just awaiting the king. This morning I want to focus our attention on the love of God and the advent of God's love. Our text is going to be Isaiah seven 14, which I'll put up here on the screen. I'll read it and then we'll pray together. Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. See, the virgin will conceive, have a son and name him Emmanuel. Let's pray together. Lord, we ask that during the next four weeks that we would be able to stop the normal routine and anticipate, have that spirit of anticipation for the advent of Christ, just like those who waited eagerly year after year, hoping to see the Messiah.

We want to join in that anticipation, Lord, that as we have that spirit of anticipation, may you find in us soft and tender hearts to receive what you would say and what you'd show us. We pray that you'd speak to us this morning through this text. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen, amen. So what I want to do this morning is look at this passage from Isaiah, Isaiah chapter seven, and then two similar passages from prophets. 200 years later, I'm going to give you some historical information. My hope is that this is not for the sake of being new, but that you're going to consider the idea of this anticipation for the coming of Christ in a whole new way. Isaiah seven 14, it was delivered in the eighth century before Christ. So 800 years before the time of Jesus during the reign of King Ahaz.

Lemme give you a map of what the world looked like at the time of King Ahaz. The thing that you need to see there is that there is the northern nation of Israel, and then in the South there's that green little area that's this area of Judah. So Israel had been split into two separate nations after the death of King Solomon. And for years and generations and generations there had been idolatry and walking away from God, the kings of Israel were rebellious and did not follow the teachings of Moses. And so God raised up the Assyrian nation and the Babylonian nation about a hundred years apart from each other to come and take captive Israel. So the Assyrians came first and carried Israel off captive, and then later the Babylonians came and took sacked Jerusalem basically and took captive the people of Judah and Judea.

So Isaiah is a prophet during the time leading up to Assyria, coming and taking and invading, and Isaiah's prophesying to King Ahaz. King Ahaz is a king in the southern region there of Judah. And at this time there was a significant political and military upheaval. Judah faced threats from surrounding nations, especially from Israel. Their northern brother was a threat to them. An arum who was the leader of Syria, was pressuring Judah to join their alliance against the Assyrian Empire. So you have Assyria threatening, and then you have kind of this alliances being made in the south between Israel and Syria trying to fend off this growing nation called Assyria. The immediate backdrop for Isaiah seven is a prophecy During the mite war, Israel also known as Ephrem, an arum, they had formed a coalition to resist Assyria and they wanted Judah to join them again, the king of named When Ahaz refused those two nations, Syria and Efrim or Israel, they attempted to invade Judah and install a puppet king in Jerusalem.

So imagine Ahaz operating from a place of incredible vulnerability. Think of some of the modern wars that are taking place and the leaders of nations and the threat of a major nation coming against you. And you've got to decide, do I join this alliance with these foreign nations in Syria and Israel? What do we do? And so it's into that context, that big giant question that A has, not just a question but terror of potential harm. Isaiah prophesies to King Ahaz was in a difficult position facing a threat of invasion and overthrow. He was considering seeking help from the Assyrian Empire, basically going around the back of Israel and going to Assyria, a decision that the prophet Isaiah strongly opposed because it showed a lack of faith in God's protection. So the prophet urged king aas to trust in God rather than foreign alliances or military might the prophet urged the king to trust in God rather than foreign alliances or military might. It was during this encounter that the prophecy of Isaiah seven 14 was given God with us. This is going to be the basis. I'm going to try to make the case for you that God loves you and that he demonstrated his love for you by coming and being with you. This prophecy is given to Ahaz through Isaiah.

Imagine going to Isaiah. You're a king, and this is a spiritual Sr. And there's people, you've gone through things, moments in your own life where you're like had great questions or Let me pose that to you as a question. Can you think of a time where you had great questions and the fear of calamity in your own life? Have you ever felt anxious about something on the horizon? And you're wondering, what does the future hold? You're upset. You're afraid, and you look for somebody who's spiritual somebody, somebody give me a word from God, somebody speak to me. That's the place where Ahaz is at. And so this is the bizarre word that comes from Isaiah, not just God with us, but the Lord himself is going to give you a sign, Ahaz, a virgin will conceive and have a son and name him Emmanuel. You got to love just kind of the bizarre nature of how God works, right?

Imagine your moment of anxiety and you're like, I don't know what to do. I'm upset. And the spiritual person says, well, God's going to give you a sign, a virgin's going to conceive, which is miraculous, right? Because that's not how conception takes place. A virgin's going to conceive and his name is going to be God with us. What a crazy thing to say to somebody who's anxious right in the midst of their terror, and yet that's the word that is spoken to Ahaz. He's saying, should I join this political alliance? And the answer from God is a virgin will conceive, his name will be God is with us. Here's the point that I often make, you know that this is a theme in my teaching over and over again. It's that God works in a patterned way and that you can be a king facing calamity. You can be a mother in a tight spot. You can be a senior facing the last 10, 15 years of your life. You can be a student

Feeling out. It does not matter. The stories of the Bible can map onto our life. And God's word to ahaz can be the word 200 years later, which we'll see. And it can be the word that's given to Joseph as he's learning of the pregnancy of his wife. The God of the Bible is the God who comes along and he speaks into this king's life and he says, God's going to work. He's going to give you this sign. And in the name of this person that's conceived is Emmanuel, God is with us. There are other times where God speaks this same thing.

Haggai prophesied during a time when the Jewish people were returning from the Babylonian exile. Remember I showed you that map and Babylon's on there? Well, they got carried off. They ended up in captivity, and they were there for 70 years. This period is around five 20 BCE, nearly 70 years after the first wave of exiles and the destruction of the first temple. And Haggai is prophesying. He's speaking on God's behalf to the nation. This small group of people that had come back from Babylon and were trying to rebuild Jerusalem. His primary message, Haggai's primary message was focused on the rebuilding of the temple. The Jewish returnees had initially started rebuilding the temple, but they faced opposition. They became discouraged leaving the work incomplete. So here's another just really human experience that you probably could relate to. If we sat with this group of people in five 20 BC and asked them about just what are you guys feeling?

You got a half-built temple. You've got people that are opposed to the rebuilding of the temple. You got some political stuff, some threats against you. Their emotional experience as humans would be very similar to your emotional experience in your setting. And God has a spiritual person called a prophet who speaks on his behalf into that setting. I would encourage you to understand this is one of the reasons why we want to recognize the work of God's spirit through us, that God speaks through his words, but then he also speaks through one another. And there's never going to be a person who's going to speak into your life where that's going to disagree with the Bible, but God uses, even to this day, he uses people with this gift of prophecy, this spiritual ability to speak right into the moment. I've always told people, you need to have friends, you need to have counselors, you need to have prophets.

And I forget what the fourth thing is that I tell people, but you got to have, there's four, I'll remember it right? Get on slack. It's been a little while since I've given my four, but you ought to be, I would look around you and think about, okay, you got friends. Friends are just loyal, right? You can talk with them about anything. There's a sense of safety that those friends provide for you, and then you're going to have people that counsel you. That's where they're going to take and understand the systems of the world. Maybe it's a therapist, but maybe it's just somebody that they're not necessarily your buddy. You're not going to go bowling with them. Well, I'm not going to go bowling with anybody. I hate bowling. But okay, maybe you like bowling, right? You're not going to go bowling with your therapist, but they're really good at taking just the observed systems in the world and they're going to apply them to your life and say, here's how the observed wisdom and systems apply to your life.

And they're a counselor to you. But then there's this other group of prophets that really God provides. They have the spirit of God working through them. It's not like they're really trying to gin it up or do something magical or fancy. It's just that they have a relationship with God and they use their mouth and they communicate, and it's just like God speaks through them. We got people like that in our church where they don't know that they're operating in that gift, but they just talk like, Hey, here's what God's showing me on my heart and I'm listening. I'm going, oh, that's from God. God speaks to that person. And it happens over and over again through that person, and I know and I listen to them differently than maybe I would listen to somebody else. So this guy named Haggai is one of those people.

He's a prophet, and God's spirit is on him speaking to a bunch of discouraged construction workers, right? Don't you love the Bible? Here's a whole book of God's spirit comes on these guys to talk to construction guys, construction workers. Here's what he says. Haggai one 13 and 14, then Haggai, the Lord's messenger delivered the Lord's message to the people. What does God say to the people? I am with you? Where did we hear that before? The word Emmanuel, right? Emmanuel. God is with us. God says to these discouraged construction workers, I'm with you. This is the Lord's declaration, right? So God promises it. But look at verse 14. The Lord roused the spirit of Zabel. He's one of the leaders at the time of SheTiel, governor of Judah, the spirit of the high priest, Joshua son, Joseph Zak, and the spirit of the remnant of the people.

So these three different groups, like two individuals in a group, their spirit is roused. They began to work on the house of the Lord of armies, their God. I love that. I love that picture of where again, the spirit of God comes along and just says, Hey, I'm with you. I'm with you. There's another contemporary of Haggai named Zacharia Zacharia. He's got a whole book in the Old Testament. Zacharia is prophesying in the exact same context to the exact same group of people. He's a contemporary five 20 BC while sharing Haggai's concern for the rebuilding of the temple as Zachariah's prophecies. They had this broader scope, and he included visions that point to the future restoration of Jerusalem and the coming of the Messiah. The establishment of God's kingdom like Haggai Zacharia encouraged the people to in the task of rebuilding the temple and assuring them of God's presence and support.

I'm going to show you two verses here from Zechariah in just a second similar theme. But the reason why I am showing these verses to you, and I want to meditate on them with you this morning, is that there's this anticipation of God, we need you to be with us. We need the king. We need you to come and put on flesh and blood and be in our midst. So Zechariah says this daughter, Zion, shout for joy and be glad for I am coming to dwell among you. This is the Lord's declaration. Many nations will join themselves to the Lord on that day and become my people. I will dwell among you and you will know that the Lord of armies has sent me to you. Zacharia has a bunch of distraught, discouraged, demoralized, I can't think of any other words in front of them.

And the temple, the wall is not getting built. There's a threat from the surrounding enemies. There's this worry of there's just total instability. And yet God speaks this word to them. And the amazing thing is God's going to encourage this group to finish the work. Jerusalem does get rebuilt and this temple happens. It's the temple that Jesus does ministry from. But not only does this passage get fulfilled in the sense of God's rousing their spirit and he's in their midst as a spirit, but this speaks to Jesus coming and literally dwelling among you. Here's the point. If you're new to the Bible, if you're new to the Bible and Christmas, the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin, it's not this idea that all of a sudden this alien appeared and as Jesus like in the story of human history, there's this whole backstory of the nation of Israel anticipating and waiting for a king, a priest, king that would come and right what is wrong, bring justice, bring peace, establish the flourishing that they had longed for.

And there had been these occasions where the enemy was threatening and they were reaping the consequences of their own sin, and they just didn't know what to do. And they had questions, all experiences that you and I can relate to, yet God speaks through his spiritual people. God speaks into that setting. He says, I will be with you. That's a loving God. You think of the gods of the Greek mythology, the presence of God wasn't always the most pleasant thing, but yet the God of the Bible, when he says, I will be with you, it's there to be with his people, to strengthen them, to be what their hearts long for. And so that leads us into our New Testament text in Matthew one 18 through 23. It says that the birth of Jesus Christ came about in this way after his mother, Mary had been engaged to Joseph.

Remember she's about 13, maybe 14 years old. It was discovered before they came together, before they had sex, before they came together, it was found that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, I'm going to stop for there for just a second. So here again, we have this human experience relationship, right? And this relationship is a bit strained because his fiance is pregnant and he's like, this doesn't work. This isn't going to go very well. Think of ahaz, stressed out as a king. Think of the discouraged construction workers, distraught over, what do we do next? How do we build the rest of the temple? And here's Joseph, right?

God is faithful in these people's point of questioning, frustration, not knowing what to do next. God works in that context, not just to get you by the skin of your teeth, but it's like, no, this is the context for my glorious work. This is me setting the stage so that I can do something awesome in your life. Do you hear that? That's important for you to know as a follower of Jesus, because you are going to face, we all face moments where things are tight and we have questions, and life's a little bit frustrating. And you've got to see this pattern throughout the Bible that anticipates the arrival rival of God in the person of Jesus Christ where he's with us. So here is Joseph ready to get this divorce from Mary, and an angel appears in a dream and says to him, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her, it's from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Now, all this took place. So we go back to the narrator being Matthew. Matthew says, he comments on Joseph's experience here and this word from the angel, he says, now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet Isaiah. See, a virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son. They will name him Emmanuel, which is translated. God is with us. So Matthew, as he's retelling for us the story of Jesus, he's deeply aware of this Jewish history all these times where God has said, I will be with you. And then he says, but let me tell you about this story of Joseph and how he's redirected right at the end, right at the end, right before he divorces Mary, and he's told about Jesus, who's going to save his people from their sins. This is Emmanuel, the God who is with us.

There is a virgin woman that becomes pregnant, engaged. Her future husband is ready to break off the relationship. And the angel says, this pregnancy is from God. And the angel's message to Joseph aligns itself with Isaiah seven 14, part of this idea of walking by faith. We talk about that a lot as Christians, that God works as we trust him. The idea of walking by faith, a big part of that is this belief that God is in control working in a patterned way, and that the pieces of your life that sometimes feel like puzzle pieces spread all out in all kinds of directions. That picture there, that God's in control of that, and that he's putting the pieces together, that is a fundamental act in our faith. Walk, trusting that God is putting the pieces together and that he is going to be with us.

So I want to encourage you this morning in closing, to identify with figures like an ahaz, like the returnees, the construction workers in Haggai, in Zacharia's time, like a Joseph who felt overwhelmed and know that as we do four weeks of advent and live in anticipation, we're awaiting the king who wants to be with us in love that you are deeply loved. And when God is like for Zacharia and for Haggai, when he said, I'm going to be with you, think of Joseph, the story of Joseph out of Genesis. Joseph was in a tight spot. His brothers betrayed him, sold him off to slavery in Egypt. It's a difficult situation, right? And the text says over and over again that God was with Joseph. That was not Jesus the Messiah incarnate as his buddy. Like Joseph couldn't touch. Joseph couldn't touch Jesus. But God's presence with Joseph, God being with Joseph, meant that Joseph succeeded in the house of Potiphar.

He succeeded when he was in the jail of Pharaoh. He succeeded when he was called upon by Pharaoh to interpret the dreams. And so that in a sense, is God with us. Same thing with Ahaz. Same thing with Zacharias and Haggai's people. But man, when we celebrate Christmas, we're celebrating God with us at a whole nother level. It's a miracle that God was like, because hey, any one of us would be like, I'll take Joseph's experience if God could just be with me in that way. Let me succeed in all those difficult settings, like yes. And in a sense, we now live with the presence

Of Holy Spirit with us. But yet there is a point, a historical act that God did in our history, human history where God took on flesh and blood and was with humans for 33 years as the loving God who was willing to die on the cross for our sins. The love of God has been demonstrated through Jesus being Emmanuel, the God who is with us. So in closing, I just commend that God, that person of Jesus Christ to you. Sometimes it is a stressful setting, a stressful season being Christmas time, and just know that God wants to reveal himself to you as the God who is with us. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word to Joseph, and to Zachariah and Haggai, to Isaiah, to Ahaz. Lord, we pray that concept of you being with us as the Messiah, that our hearts would be inclined to anticipate a greater sense of your nearness to us. Lord, help us to give space for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, Lord, to be open. Just Paul prayed that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened to understand a bunch of spiritual stuff. Lord, give us this capacity to be tuned in to the work of your spirit, to hear your voice, to hear you speaking through the spiritual people around us. Lord, would you just turn the lights on in our life to know you? Thank you. Thank you for Jesus. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.