Churches all over the country will soon be making plans to re-create one of the most meaningful times of the year…the birth of Jesus…and with the Christmas season comes the Christian celebration of Advent.
Advent stands between the already and the not yet…the already is when the Old Testament saints waited expectantly for the coming of the Messiah that occurred when God came to earth in the form of a human on that first Christmas day.
Today is about the ‘not yet’ as we wait for the second coming of Jesus…one sentence sums up Advent…it’s the time for the celebration of Jesus’ birth as well as preparing our hearts for His second coming.
Advent is a time of waiting…whereas Christmas is about celebrating…with a desire that is more centered on moving products off store shelves than reflecting on the brokenness in our world that no cart full of Black Friday bargains can fix.
For centuries Christians all over the world have celebrated Advent as a way of preparing themselves spiritually for Christmas…the term ‘Advent’ means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’ …Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve.
For Pastors, Advent always presents pressure to create a Christmas sermon series that is unique…fresh…and creative…but really…how many people don’t know what Christmas is about?
With respect to Advent…that pressure is only heightened by preaching about something that is not even mentioned in the Bible…so the question is why is the church even observing Advent if it isn’t found in the Bible?…because Advent is celebrating the waiting.
This morning we’re looking at week one of Advent…the candle of prophesy and hope…and how that relates to Advent…to Christmas… and to our lives today.
Hope is one of the three classic virtues of Christianity…faith…hope…and love are foundational in that they draw us to God and to each other.
That’s what differentiates ordinary hope from Biblical hope…Biblical hope is not just a desire for something to happen in the future…Biblical hope expects it to happen…it is the confident expectation that something will happen in the future.
As part of the Advent celebration the Advent Wreath is a reminder of what happened more than 2,000 years ago when Jesus left Heaven and entered into our world bringing light into darkness.
Originally it had 28 candles…24 small red candles and four larger white ones…a German Pastor devised the wreath to satisfy the children at a mission school who would ask every day…’Is it Christmas yet?’
They would light a new red candle each day…to help the children count the days until Christmas, as well as a white candle on Sundays.
Eventually the red candles were discarded in favor of a wreath with just five candles…three purple…one pink…and one white candle in the center…the four candles are lit on each successive Sunday of Advent while the center candle is lit on Christmas Eve.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent so we light the purple Prophecy Candle…in remembrance of the prophets who prophesized the birth of Christ.
Why did God send His prophets? Prophecy is a prediction or a promise God gives as a preview of His future plans…unlike human predictions God’s predictions always come true.
Goes back to what I said last week with respect to ‘do you understand these things’ and the question of:
There are thousands of other religious texts, why do you believe your Bible is the only religious text inspired by God?
Take the Quran…the sacred scriptures of Islam…Muslims will argue that the Quran is the inspired Word of God given to Mohammed just like the Bible is the inspired Word of God given to the Jewish prophets…which makes the Quran at least on an equal with the Bible…Right?
Gabriel spoke to Daniel…Mary…and Zechariah—the father of John the Baptist – so Gabriel speaking to Mohammed over a period of about 23 years…should count the same as the prophets in the Bible. WRONG.
FIRST of all Gabriel is an angel from God…why would he appear to an unbeliever and give him a message that was already told about in the Bible?
What makes the Quran seem authoritative is that the narratives in the Quran center on the same people as in the Bible… Adam…Noah…Abraham…Moses …Mary…but the stories don’t align with what the Bible says about them.
In addition the Quran says nothing about Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry and even denies Jesus’ ‘divinity’…including that He was crucified and was resurrected.
SO…Why would God inspire a book—the Quran—that omits His Son’s sacrificial death? He didn’t.
Then there are those who believe that Nostradamus is a prophet of sort…that he predicted numerous events in world history including: the French Revolution; the rise of Napoleon and Hitler; the assassination of JFK the September 11, terrorist attacks and more recently that he predicted the onset of COVID-19.
Here’s the problem with Nostradamus…many scholars believe he paraphrased prophecies from the Bible…in most of his prophecies they are so general in nature that you can read whatever you wish into them…as a result most of his writings are pathologically noncommittal…for example his prophecy about COVID:
Near the gates and within two cities/There will be two scourges the like of which was never seen. Famine within plague, people crying to the great immortal God for relief.
Well…first of all…that is so general I don’t know how that relates to COVID and secondly the prediction…‘the like of which was never seen’ is invalid because throughout history there have been far worse plagues than COVID.
…Bubonic Plague killed between 75-200 million
…Influenza killed between 20-50 million
…HIV/AIDS killed 36 million
Two of those plagues occurred before his lifetime…so how has COVID which hasn’t killed nearly the people as those three…as of Nov. 22 COVID has killed 6.5 million…but COVID is the ‘like of which was never seen’?
How is that prediction even remotely referring to COVID?…due to the vagueness of his writings and the lack of specific dates it makes it easy to selectively identify his prophecies as referring to any major dramatic event and claim them as true.
BUT…When you look at the Bible the prophecies of the Bible leave nothing to the imagination …there’s not a ‘well it kind of fits’ meaning.
God doesn’t guess at what will happen…He makes a promise and God always keeps His promises…God doesn’t change His mind…let me just say it’s important to know the difference between a conditional declaration of God and an unconditional determination of God.
We claim that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant revelation from God… without the belief that the Bible is without error and incapable of being wrong, the Bible is nothing more than meaningless words on a page like today’s newspapers.
Believing the Bible is “infallible” and “inerrant” is believing the Bible was given by inspiration to the original writers who communicated God’s message to accomplish His divinely intended purpose.
There are over 350 Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus…that are specific in their statements…because everything that was written was from God.
To be the inerrant Word of God a document must be found reliable by using historical analysis…archaeology…and fulfilled prophecies…it must be proven to be true…that is what separates the Bible from the other religious books that claim to be inspired.
God gave His people Israel hope by speaking to them through the prophets… much of the Old Testament was centered on hope.
Hope had to do with waiting for…looking for…and desiring something:
…the hope to be delivered from their enemies (Psalm 25)
…the hope to recover from illness (Isa 38:10-20)
…the hope that God would provide land…peace…and prosperity (Gen.13:14)
…the hope in anticipation of the coming Messiah (Isa 9:6-7)
That’s why we celebrate Advent…it represents the hope of being ready for the coming of God’s Son.
The story of Jesus doesn’t begin with a baby in a manger and it doesn’t end with Jesus on the Cross.
The entire Bible anticipates and tells of the great Messianic King who has come to bring hope to a dark and dying world.
The anticipation of Advent is felt throughout the Scriptures…you can find whispers of the Christmas story from Genesis to Revelation…the very first mention of Christmas shows up in the first three chapters of Genesis.
Genesis 3:15
I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.
God’s response to Adam and Eve’s sin isn’t only judgment; it’s Advent…God’s promise of a future Savior who will come and destroy the serpent which will be God’s means of reconciliation between Himself and man.
The prophecies of Jesus are specific…with names and places identified…there is no guessing about the accuracy of what is written in the Bible.
–Jesus would be born of a virgin [Isaiah 7:14] Fulfilled [Matt. 1:22 / Luke 1:26]
–Jesus would be born in Bethlehem [Micah 5:2] Fulfilled [Matt. 2:1 / Luke 2:4]
–Jesus would give physical healing [Isaiah 35:5-6 / 42:7-18] Fulfilled [Matt. 11:5 / Luke 7:22 / John 9:6-7 / 11:43-44].
–Jesus would come from the tribe of Judah [Gen. 49:10] Fulfilled [Matt. 21:5]
–Jesus would ride a donkey into Jerusalem [Zech. 9:9] Fulfilled Matt. 21:5-11]
The likelihood of a person predicting today the detailed prophecies about someone in the future is unimaginable.
—How does someone “arrange” to be born in a specific city in which their parents don’t actually live?
—How does someone “arrange” to be born in a specific family?
—How does one “arrange” their own death – and specifically by crucifixion?
—How does one escape from a grave and appear to people after having been killed?
Prophet after prophet spoke of the coming Messiah giving specific details about his ancestry (Genesis 12:3; Numbers 24:17), what tribe of Israel He would belong to (Genesis 49:10)…what town He would be born in (Micah 5:2) …He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) …what His name would be…and He would be an heir to King David’s throne and would reign forever (2 Samuel 7:12-13).
The writers of the New Testament wrote about the fulfillment of these prophecies…then when Jesus came, they cried in relief: we have found the one the prophets wrote about…He arrived on Christmas morning.
The Christmas story is full of examples of people who put their hope in and who waited patiently for Christ and were not disappointed.
Mary…was told by the angel that she would give birth to the Savior…when the baby was born she held the Savior of the world in her arms…Mary’s hope was not disappointed.
Simeon…a man who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord, appeared in the temple at the precise moment Joseph and Mary were bringing Jesus into the temple…his hope was not disappointed.
Anna was a prophetess…an 84-year-old widow…who put her hope in God… as a result she had an encounter with Jesus…she was not disappointed.
BUT…least we forget…Advent is not just about those who waited for Christ’s first coming…it is also about us who wait for His second coming when He will banish all evil…He will make all things right…He will restore the earth…we will see Him face to face…and all our hopes will be fulfilled.
The Christmas season is a wonderful time of the year for many reasons…but one of the most important reasons is the hope that Christ brings to a lost world.
At times we’re like Isaiah who prayed that God would come down and reveal Himself…‘that you would tear open the heavens and come down’ [64:1]. He prayed this because he says ‘I live among people who do not know you’ [6:5].
What a tragedy to know people who don’t know the Lord…if God would only come down and reveal Himself people would believe…NO they wouldn’t… but…maybe and hopefully during this time of year people will realize that Christmas is more than just a celebration…it is the coming of God to earth.
As we enter this season of Advent here’s the question…here’s what Isaiah was praying to happen…here is a trustworthy saying…Jesus came into the world to save sinners [1 Tim. 3:15] …that means He came to save you and to save me.
What are you doing during the time of in between…the time God allows us to let go of everything that stands in our way of receiving God’s gift to us, the gift of Jesus?