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This is week 2 in the series, Advent: When Hope Invaded the World. In this sermon, we look at the theme of peace.
Short Clips
Flying, Airports, PHX Walk to Baggage Claim
How many of you have never flown on an airplane?
Okay, so if you’ve never flown on an airplane, you probably don’t know about the dreadful wait at baggage claim.
The way it works is you arrive at your destination, you get your carry-on and yourself off the plane and then you make a b-line to wherever the signs say baggage claim is.
If you have kids with you, this is more of an adventure than it is a walk. Shiny stores often line the halls of the airport so it’s an art of keeping them moving forward and not wanting to stop and see the many things in the windows of the stores.
So you walk. You walk. And then you walk some more.
Now, depending on the airport, the walk may be short, it may be long, and it may even include taking a train.
PHX Airport
This year, we’ve been on a couple of flights out to the Phoenix airport and the journey from your plane to baggage claim is quite a long one.
And I think I now know why.
New York Times Article—Moving Baggage Claim Further = Less Complaints
There was an article in the New York Times about the challenges that the Houston airport was facing.
People were getting off their flights and heading to baggage claim only to stand there and wait for over ten minutes.
For those of you who have flown before, you know how long ten minutes can feel while you’re standing and staring at the baggage claim tracks to bring you your bags.
It’s a duel. You stare. You look around. You stare. You look around. Your mind is on the place you’re going when you leave the airport. And that makes the wait frustrating.
So the article tells how the Houston airport was getting a lot of complaints for their long wait at baggage claim.
So the executives at the airport hired more workers and dialed in their processes and made the wait become an average of 8 minutes which was quicker than industry standards.
But the complaints kept coming in.
So they came up with a different strategy.
They moved baggage claim to furthest possible point they could, making the walk from the airplane to the baggage claim an extra ten minutes.
This made it so that the wait was essentially the same, but by the time passengers arrived at baggage claim, their bags were already available.
The complaints? They stopped.
Those executives tapped into a powerful truth: what we do while we wait is important.
Expectations and Waiting
Why did those complaints stop? Because people already expected to have to walk to baggage claim. And they also already expected to have to wait for their bags.
So by making the walk longer, they were able to exceed the expectations of the time they would have to stand idle, staring at the baggage return. By giving them something to do while they waited, they were able to keep their passengers happy.
But it’s interesting. It’s not just what we do while we wait that is important. It’s what we expect while we wait.
Think about it:
If the hostess at the restaurant tells you it’s going to be a 30-minute wait and you look around, seeing that the restaurant is full, seeing the other people waiting, in the middle of the dinner rush that you decided to participate in, you’ll grab your buzzer, sit down or stand somewhere, and wait with expectation.
On the other hand, if you go into that same restaurant before the dinner rush and walking in, you see plenty of open tables and no one waiting, and the hostess greets you, telling you that they’ll get you a table in just a minute, you wait there for about 30 seconds and then start wondering what’s wrong. If the hostess left, you start getting frustrated after a minute and then if ten minutes go by, you likely have already left the restaurant.
Our expectations in the middle of waiting can make all the difference.
Advent: When Hope Invaded the World
Last week, we began our series, Advent: When Hope Invaded the World. If you missed last week’s message, you can go to our website and find it there (FCCFamily.com). But in this series, we are participating in Advent. Advent simply means arrival or coming. And through this series, we’re asking God to prepare our hearts both for Jesus’ second coming, when He will return to make all things new and for His first coming, when He entered the world and invaded it with hope, peace, joy, and love.
Today, we’re going to be in Luke 1, so if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there.
Israel’s Waiting — 450 Years of Silence
At this point in history, before Jesus’ birth, Israel was experiencing over 450 years of silence from God.
They had been used to Him speaking to them through prophets and leading them as a nation.
Their expectation had been for God to speak and so they were waiting for Him to do so again.
But for generations, He remained silent. Over 4 centuries of silence was becoming deafening to the Israelites.
Had God forgotten about them? Will He come to their rescue?
They were under enemy occupation with the Roman Empire flexing its world-conquering muscles over them.
Would God deliver them? Would He keep His promise of a Messiah, of a King?
For good and faithful Jews in the first century, these were the questions they were asking. They were waiting for God to speak. They were waiting for God to move.
Mary Was Visited
But then Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel. He told her that she would become pregnant and give birth to a son. To name him Jesus.
He gave her a promise about this son:
“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.” – Luke 1:32-33
He told her that this would happen by God’s power, for she was a virgin.
And she replied to Gabriel and told him that she is God’s servant and may it happen as he told her.
Mary Visits Elizabeth
After that—we don’t know how long after—she traveled to her relative Elizabeth’s house who, in her old age, was pregnant with a son—John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus who would prepare the way for Him.
When Mary enters Elizabeth’s home, John jumps for joy in the womb and Elizabeth yells a greeting of joy toward Mary.
As they spend time together, at some point, Mary sings a song to Elizabeth. A song that has a lot of echoes from the Old Testament.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes regularly spoken sentences don’t suffice to communicate what is on your heart.
So Mary sings a song. Let’s look at that song.
Luke 1:46-49
46 And Mary said:
My soul praises the greatness of the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 because he has looked with favor
on the humble condition of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations
will call me blessed,
49 because the Mighty One
has done great things for me,
and his name is holy.
Dynamics With Mary and Joseph
In the middle of her world being turned upside down, Mary doesn’t respond with fear.
She doesn’t look at her relationship with Joseph, her fiancé and dread the possibility that he may just follow through with leaving her like he was planning to.
She doesn’t start panicking about how she is too young to be a mom to any son, let alone the Son of God.
She doesn’t start to consider how all her plans for her life are being changed.
She looks at herself as God’s servant
She doesn’t wait for that baby to arrive with fear. She waits for that baby to arrive with peace and praise because she looks at herself as God’s servant.
When she says that her soul praises the greatness of the Lord, that means that her being and her affections are crying out, trying to tell of God’s greatness.
That everything in her, everything about her, wants to express and communicate the wonders of the God who HAD been silent, but is now speaking and moving, and He is going to be SAVING.
Instead of waiting with fear, she is waiting with expectation.
She is God’s servant and He is using her in an amazing way.
The virgin giving birth to a son that Isaiah spoke about is HER. Little ol’ Mary from Nazareth. A teenager with nothing. She wasn’t royalty. She didn’t hold a place of power.
She is simply God’s servant.
Being a servant vs thinking you’re in charge of your life
But that mindset goes against what we are used to seeing in our world and it would have certainly been counter-cultural for her as Roman influence had been spreading throughout Israel.
To be God’s servant means that everything she has and everything she is, is not hers, but she is God’s.
But that’s not what this world is used to, right?
We make our money. We spend our money. We come up with our own plans. Nobody better get in our way.
We do what we want. We think what we want. We pursue what we want.
We do what we’re comfortable with. Nothing more.
You see, the world’s ways are in direct contrast to what it means to be God’s servant.
Whatever Mary had or would have, she understood that to be God’s. If she came up with a plan, that plan would be changed in a moment if God prompted it.
If God needed her body to bring the Son of God into the world as flesh and blood, then she was up for that.
Her affections were for God first.
And that’s what it means to be a servant of God.
We are up for whatever He wants.
We pray bold prayers, inviting the Holy Spirit to have His way with us. Whatever He wants. Whenever He wants. However He wants.
Waiting… With a Promise—She had a peace with her waiting
Mary did not wait with fear, hoping for a promise. She waited with peace because she had a promise.
And that gave her a peace with her waiting.
This Transition & Waiting
As Sara and I have gone through this transition, we’ve had to learn how to wait.
We waited to see what opportunities God would open up in front of us.
We waited in between interviews.
Then we visited the search team and then we waited.
We came back, met many of you, I preached, and then we waited.
We listed our house and waited for an offer.
We accepted an offer and then waited to hear the results of the congregational vote here.
Yeah, that’s in the correct order, by the way. We sold our house before we knew we were moving to Bluffton.
Then we looked at more houses here, put an offer in, and waited some more.
Our offer was accepted and then we knew where we were going, where we were serving, and then… we waited.
We started preparing for the move. Packing. Waiting. Packing. Waiting.
And then we finally got here and then this past week we finally closed on our home here in Bluffton.
And I tell you all that to tell you this… waiting is hard. But when you know what you’re waiting on, it can change everything.
It’s a different kind of waiting to be waiting to get an offer on your home than it is to be waiting to close on that offer.
It’s a different kind of waiting to be waiting on the results of a congregational vote than it is to be waiting to start serving the church that is welcoming you with open arms.
Luke 1:50-55
50 His mercy is from generation to generation
on those who fear him.
51 He has done a mighty deed with his arm;
he has scattered the proud
because of the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has toppled the mighty from their thrones
and exalted the lowly.
53 He has satisfied the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering his mercy
55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he spoke to our ancestors.
Do you notice the story she is telling through this?
She doesn’t tell the story of materialism—the story that says the person with the most toys and the best toys wins.
She doesn’t tell the story of a god who is a servant to human beings, making sure that we are happy, making sure we have what we want.
She doesn’t tell the story of American partisan politics that if the other party is in power, the world is ending and if your party is in power, a utopia is on the way.
No. She tells the upside-down story of God’s kingdom story of how he will raise up what this world puts low. The humble, the hungry, the outcast, the poor, the downcast, the lonely, the hopeless have hope because God has done a mighty deed.
He is choosing to make His promise come to life in the womb of a lowly teenage girl from Nazareth.
Yes! She is singing the prologue of the story that has the hero die for his enemy.
And in this story, the hero is Jesus and the enemy? Me.
Genesis 3:15 — The Beginning of the Grace Story
The story that began in Genesis, right after sin entered the picture.
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” – Genesis 3:15
Mary knew this story. She knew that God was going to once again bless His people.
And now she knew that He was going to do it through the son growing in her womb.
So tell of God’s greatness? Yes. She. Did.
Waiting Well
And we can too.
Because, like Mary:
We do not wait with fear, hoping for a promise.
We wait with peace because we have a promise.
We wait for Jesus’ return, knowing that we have the promise of salvation.
Knowing that we have the promise of God being with us.
Knowing that we have the promise of being used by Him while we wait.
Knowing that we have the promise that all things will be made new.
We wait with peace because we have a God who has given us His promise, He has given us His word.
So how can we wait well?
Preparing well and Praising Much
Waiting well means preparing well and praising much.
As we consider what happened when God came down to dwell with us, we must prepare our hearts.
Have we oriented our hearts toward being a servant of God or are there areas of our lives that we have been holding onto tightly?
Have we surrendered our plans to Him?
Have we surrendered our desires to Him?
Have we surrendered our relationships to Him?
Have we surrendered our finances to Him?
Have we surrendered our habits to Him?
Mary was able to respond to the angel Gabriel with a willingness to do whatever God wanted her to do because she had prepared herself to be used by God whenever God would call her name.
Warren Wiersbe said, “Mary hid God’s word in her heart and turned it into a song.”
God changed Mary’s plans.
God gave her a vision for new desires—to see her Son do what God said He would do.
God put strain on Mary’s relationship with Joseph—you’re pregnant?! And God did it?! WHAT?!
God used Mary despite her lack of finances but gave her and Joseph what they needed.
God used Mary’s habits to remind her of His word and empower her to write a song to Him.
What if God did that to you? Would your heart be oriented so much toward loving God and loving people that you’d be willing to let everything else go and follow Jesus down a path that you never could have imagined?
And this isn’t to lift Mary up as if she was perfect. But to look to her and see how God used her.
How Would We Wait Differently?
Friends, we do not wait with fear, hoping for a promise. We wait with peace because we have a promise.
So how would we wait differently if we waited with peace instead of fear?
See, I don’t know what you’re bringing with you in this season of waiting.
It could be pain. It could be sadness. It could be celebration. It could be joy.
But what if we decided to make the most of our waiting?
What if we had a peace with our waiting?
If we were to do that, we would become peaceful inviters.
Because here’s the thing, people who wait well, proclaim God’s news. When we wait well in this in-between time, we stick out in an impatient world.
People Who Go Back to the Gospel Invitation
People who wait well go back to the gospel invitation.
They go back to various Scriptures where we see God’s pursuit of them.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but would have eternal life.
Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.
For while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
People Who are Gospel Inviters
And as they go back to that invitation for themselves, they also look those around them.
They see that that invitation isn’t only for them, but it’s for all those around them.
And because they have peace, when they invite someone to church or to talk about their Jesus-story, people will say yes, they will listen.
Why? Because in a world overcome with fear, peace speaks.
What we do while we wait is important—Invite to Christmas Eve
So as we draw closer to the coming of Jesus, I want to encourage you to invite a friend, a family member, and even a stranger to our Christmas Eve services (4 & 6pm).
And then talk to them about it after you leave the service.
And as you do, the giver of a peace that passes all understanding—Jesus—will be with you and as you speak to them, Jesus will be speaking to their heart.
