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This is week 3 in the series, Advent: When Hope Invaded the World. In this sermon, we look at the theme of joy.
Short Clip
Tis’ the season. For Christmas trees. Nativity scenes. Hot chocolate. Egg nog. And Lexus commercials.
Aren’t these always so great?!
Just picture it. It’s Christmas morning. You have all your gifts for your spouse wrapped in wrapping paper. The hundred dollars or even a few hundred dollars you both agreed to budget toward Christmas presents for each other.
You each take turns giving each other boxes to unwrap.
And then they say that there’s one more. They tell you to follow them outside.
You walk outside and there, in the driveway, is a brand new $50,000 car with a big red bow on the top.
In the commercial, everyone is ecstatic. Their smiles are the kind of smiles that end up hurting your face after a few seconds. The recipient of the gift is blown away and filled with happiness. The giver of the gift is over the moon with how awesome their gift is.
Can you picture how that would go at your house?
NOTHING like the commercial, right?!
You bought me a car? Why in the world would you do that without us talking about it first?
How in the world are we going to pay for this?! I can’t believe you did this!
Right?!
I mean, maybe I’m just not their target market.
What We Don’t Have
But yeah. Tis’ the season for us to be reminded of what we don’t have.
Ugh, I don’t have a Lexus.
Ugh, I don’t have brand new jewelry from Jared’s.
Sorry honey, my kiss doesn’t begin with Kay.
Growing up — Christmas
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, Christmas morning was one of the most anticipated moments of my world.
To go to bed with no presents under the tree and to wake up EARLY and go downstairs and see all the presents all present under the tree was an experience of all-out excitement.
As a kid, the thoughts running through my head were, I wonder what I’ll get. I wonder if it will be this or that. That would be SO AWESOME if I got that thing. Man, I’ll kind of be bummed if I don’t get that.
But then, when everyone else finally woke up, the moment of truth came. The moment of reveal. The moment of pure happiness would begin.
Wrapping paper tearing. Boxes popping open.
The best stuff? I’d have like 30 minutes to check it out and then I’d get ready for the day and head to my great grandparent’s house on my dad’s side of the family where we’d do the gift opening thing again the next day and repeat the whole experience.
The next few weeks after Christmas
And then the next few weeks after Christmas were filled with me playing the new video game, watching the new movies, playing with the new sled or, one year we got a small 4-wheeler, so riding that.
But as I look back, it never failed that eventually, the things I was so excited for on Christmas would slowly fade away in terms of my interest in them.
Fading satisfaction
Why? Because there was always going to be something new and different. Those things, their ability to satisfy my desire for entertainment or fun would eventually fade.
Perpetually longing for something this world can’t satisfy
And that’s the rat wheel we all seem to find ourselves in in life. I don’t know if you’ve taken time to think about this, but why do we seem to be perpetually longing for something we can’t seem to grasp?
Why do we always find ourselves, eventually, unsatisfied?
Why do we look at other people’s lives and think: if only mine was like theirs, then I’d be happy.
Why do we look at the things we don’t have and think: ah, I NEED that!
It seems that we are perpetually longing for something this world can’t satisfy.
Advent: When Hope Invaded the World
If you have a Bible or a way to access Scripture, please turn to Isaiah 9.
For the last couple weeks, we’ve been observing Advent as a church family. We’ve been asking God to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus.
If you missed one or both of the last couple weeks, you can go to FCCFamily.com to catch up this week and you can find the sermons there.
Isaiah 9:1-5
Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations.
2 The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
a light has dawned
on those living in the land of darkness.
3 You have enlarged the nation
and increased its joy.
The people have rejoiced before you
as they rejoice at harvest time
and as they rejoice when dividing spoils.
4 For you have shattered their oppressive yoke
and the rod on their shoulders,
the staff of their oppressor,
just as you did on the day of Midian.
5 For every trampling boot of battle
and the bloodied garments of war
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
The area of Galilee — Darkness
The area Isaiah highlights here is in the northern part of the kingdom of Israel. And the significance with that is that the way people traveled to get to Israel followed two rivers that went north west, an area called Mesopotamia.
People travelled along these rivers because the land was fertile, there was access to water and if they wanted to go west, they would have to travel through hundreds of miles of a desert.
So whenever there was an army that was going to come around and attack Israel, they would predominately come from the north. And that’s where Zebulun, Naphtali, Galilee, that’s where they were—the north.
The place of war. The place of battle. The place of blood. The place of poverty. The place of despair.
People walking in darkness
So yeah, these are people “walking in darkness”. But then Isaiah is telling them that they will see a great light. And what a welcomed sight that would be, right?!
The land of darkness gets a great light!
The land of war that gets to see the moment when their war-torn boots and garments will be burned because they aren’t needed anymore.
Galilee — Jesus’ Hometown
Think about this: the place that people walked in darkness, the place that people would wanted to move out of, the place that no one was moving to with excitement, is the exact place Jesus moved into.
But isn’t that just like God? Always doing the unexpected. Always exceeding our expectations.
Isaiah 9:6-7
6 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.
7 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.
A turn in the description of the messiah
Here we see a number of things, but one of the main things that Isaiah is saying is that the promised Savior, the promised Messiah is not going to simply be a human being who does human things.
No, Isaiah is giving us the expectation that the child coming is going to be unique. God is going to get directly involved in the mess that has become of this world.
So let’s look at these four names of the coming King.
He will be named: Wonderful counselor
This promised child is going to be a miraculous kind of leader, someone who can come up with a plan and can also carry that plan out to completion.
This child will be able to answer the questions we often ask: what now? what next? why? how? when?
John Maxwell is known for saying, everything rises and falls with leadership.
If the leader is healthy, if the leader has vision, if the leader has a plan of action, if the leader can rally those He leads, things will get done.
And this coming king?
He is like the coach who can put together a game plan and it’s a perfect one.
He is like the executive who can see what needs to change and can communicate the needed changes with clarity and hope.
He is like the mom who can navigate a grocery store with all her kids.
He’s like those, but infinitely greater.
He is going to be a leader on the level of miraculous.
He will be named: Mighty God
This promised child is going to be mighty—a valiant warrior. He is going to be brave and powerful, able to absorb all the evil that has ever been done and defeat it.
This promised child, somehow, is going to be God. Somehow, it seems, God is going to put on flesh, become a human being and go to battle, rescuing his people.
He will be named: eternal father
This promised child is going to be so unique that he is the very source of time itself. That’s what this means. It’s not to say that Jesus is God the Father, but that he is the father of time, the creator of time, the source of time.
He is the author of eternity. There isn’t a time that He doesn’t know. There isn’t a moment He is unaware of.
This promised King is a king no one can match or compete with.
He will be named: prince of Peace
The rule of this King will bring peace. No more wars. No more violence. No more strife.
His rule will bring wholeness where there was brokenness, well-being where there was danger.
Undoing Genesis 4
This coming King is going to undo what was done in Genesis 4.
It’s there that we see Adam and Eve, exiled from the Garden of Eden, exiled from the presence of God, expand their family and give birth to two sons, among many other children.
Cain and Abel grow up. Abel becomes a shepherd and Cain becomes a farmer.
Cain sets aside a portion of his land and presents it as an offering to the Lord.
Abel also presents an offering to God, some of his firstborns from his flock.
And God finds that Abel’s offering was more pleasing than Cain’s. Cain grows furious over the whole ordeal.
6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? 7 If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”
10 Then he said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!
Because Cain grew jealous of Abel, his brother, we see the first murder. We see violence and blood stain the ground of God’s good creation.
Sin, as God pointed out to Cain, was desirous of him. And instead of resisting it, he gave in to his hatred for his brother and ever since, we have not seen peace, but strife. We have not seen peace, but wars. We have not seen peace, but violence.
Undoing Genesis 4
But God hasn’t left us to our own demise. He is saying that this coming King is going to take what was done in Genesis 4 and undo it for good.
Undoing it for eternity (Isaiah 9:7)
He’s going to undo it for eternity, because this King is going to reign on His throne forever.
Israel’s Longings
This is good news for the people of Israel who were dealing the split of their nation and the increasing threats of outside powers seeking to conquer them.
For Israel, a wonderful counselor, a mighty God, an eternal father, and a prince of peace. That all sounds great!
Seeing their battle clothes be done away with? That sounds amazing.
For them, a picture of peace would have been a desirous sight to see.
But you know what? They didn’t get to enjoy the reign of that King.
Our Longings
But in the arrival of Jesus, we see that promised child rising up.
We see that child being the King God promised.
And it’s in that arrival that our deepest desires, our most desperate longings come to be satisfied.
C.S. Lewis Quote — Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
Our deepest longings and where we typically go
I believe we all have similar fundamental desires or longings as human beings.
We all long for direction. We want to know what we should do, why we should do it, and we want to know that that direction has a purpose.
The problem is, we typically go to self-help books or speakers to get direction. We typically come up with elaborate plans of our own that aren’t fully thought-through and end up failing in the end. And we are left, then, discouraged and without direction.
We all long to be rescued. There is a reason we always look up when we are confronted with the difficulty of this life. There is a reason why even those who don’t know if they believe in God will pray to God when their life is falling apart. We all yearn and long to be rescued from this world. We all have a deep sense that how things are are not how things ought to be.
The problem is, we typically engage in escapism and find things to occupy our mind so that we can have a temporary moment of rescue from all the chaos of this life. We’ll lose ourselves in our work and become workaholics or we’ll lose ourselves in an addiction, all so that we can experience, on some level, being rescued from what is.
We all long for transcendence. We want to know that this life isn’t all that there is. Our experience isn’t all there is.
The problem is, we typically give in to the allure of universalism that says that yes there is an after-life of wonder and goodness and everyone will be there. Or we’ll come up with new technology that will allow us to download our brain basically and exist on a computer—that’s not science fiction, it’s a real thing that is being worked on. Or we’ll take drugs to try to experience feelings that go beyond normal reality. Or we’ll engage in sex outside of marriage, longing to find a closeness and experience that is beyond this world.
We all long for peace. We want to live in harmony with others. We don’t want to see more violence. We don’t want to see more strife.
The problem is, we typically will say that this new war is so that we can make peace. Or we engage in passivity and try to simply avoid all signs of conflict. Or, in an effort to avoid relational strife, we keep all our relationships on the surface so that no one can know enough about us to hurt us. We keep ourselves in our little shells for our own safety while doing more damage to ourselves than we could have ever imagined.
We all long for direction, for rescue, for transcendence, and for peace.
C.S. Lewis Quote — The Weight of Glory
But let’s consider another C.S. Lewis quote, this time from his book, The Weight of Glory:
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Here’s the Problem
We begin life with wonder, with imagination, with a deep sense that there is more to this world than what we see.
But over time, we fall into apathy, with contentment, and with certainty we look at this world and what we can see and we declare that what we can see is what things will be.
What God is Saying
And yet, all the while, God has been telling us a story of how what we see is not all that there is. What we experience is not all there is. And that a King is coming.
He is telling us a story that JOY is possible. That our deepest longings that we oftentimes don’t ponder on enough, those longings can be satisfied.
Direction, rescue, transcendence, peace. In a word, JOY. These things can be found. These longings can be satisfied.
But the thing is:
We find joy when we find our desires fully satisfied in Jesus.
And that’s the good news!
Our longing for direction? Our coming King is the WONDERFUL COUNSELOR!
Our longing for rescue? Our coming King is MIGHTY GOD!
Our longing for transcendence? Our coming King is the ETERNAL FATHER, the source and author of eternity!
Our longing for peace? Our coming King is the PRINCE OF PEACE!
Our longing for joy? One word: JESUS!
Anticipation for His Coming
Friends, our King is coming.
And our level of anticipation should be as high as it can be.
The feelings of Christmas morning I had as a kid should be ever-present and ever-expanding because I am anticipating the coming of our King, the one who will bring satisfaction to all our deepest longings.
He Didn’t Just Tell His Promise, He Fulfilled His Promise
Church, lets anchor ourselves down in the fact that our God doesn’t just tell us some promises, He fulfills those promises!
So let’s fix our eyes on Him. Let’s slow down in this season. Let’s consider all the implications of our deepest desires, our deepest longings.
When we find ourselves wanting, let’s stop and consider what that says about our need for Jesus and His ability to meet that need.
Let’s find joy. Let’s let Jesus satisfy all our desires. Because He can. For eternity.
