Peace (Week 4 of Advent)

INTRO:

One of the biggest issues we face today is coming to an understanding of God’s Love.

What seems to happen is we can only see this love through our own experience (lens).

How we are loved by others is how we view God’s love.

Someone who loves a person unconditionally, is how that person who is being loved views love.

Someone who loves a person conditionally, is how that person who is being loved views love.

You can eve say that a person who is told they are loved by someone who abuses them, this is how a person views love.

So when someone is told they are loved by God

We sometimes struggle with whether the love of God is big enough for us.

Even here on Christmas Eve, we might look at the story of a God who came as a baby and think, That’s great, but God didn’t come for me. I am too broken/too messed up/too much for God.

Our inability to believe in the expansive love of God is the root of a lot of destructive thinking and theology in our individual lives and also in the church as a whole.

Yet here we are, on this last Sunday of Advent, with a psalm that once again focuses on the hesed—the

steadfast love, the faithfulness—of God.

The psalmist uses King David as an example of that steadfast love.

This psalm of lament points to the promise made to David but also alludes to David’s failures.

This psalm is a reminder that, even in the mess of David’s life, God was still faithful to him.

We know that God does remember God’s people and that God is still faithful because, as we gather to celebrate the final Sunday of Advent on Christmas Eve, we know that the Messiah was born of the line of David—the ultimate illustration of the steadfast love of God for all.

BODY:

Turn to Psalm 89:1–4 “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.” You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.”

Psalm 89:19–26 “Of old you spoke in a vision to your godly one, and said: “I have granted help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people. I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him, so that my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not outwit him; the wicked shall not humble him. I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him. My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.”

1. King David’s legacy is complex.

a. David became king over Israel following God’s rejection of King Saul, who had become unrighteous.

b. David is remembered as one of Israel’s greatest kings even though one of his most memorable acts as king was abusing his power by raping Bathsheba and killing her husband, Uriah, to cover up his crime.

c. David repents of his sins, and God is faithful to forgive him. The Bible later calls him a man after God’s own heart.

d. Matthew 1 provides the family lineage of Jesus, calling Jesus “the son of David” in the very first verse, and then going on to show how Jesus is descended from King David through Solomon, who was the son of David and Bathsheba.

i. Bathsheba is named in this lineage as “the wife of Uriah,” which is a direct reminder to the original hearers of David’s sin against Bathsheba and Uriah.

2. The steadfast love of God shows up in the mess.

a. Psalm 89 is another psalm of lament.

The people sing of the faithfulness, the steadfast love, of God in the past, and of the promises of God toward the descendants of King David, but they also sing of despair.

i. How long will God be hidden?

ii. How long will God be angry?

iii. Where is the former great love of God?

iv. Remember us!

b. While a response from God to their lament isn’t here in the text, we see as we remember forward this Advent that God does remember them.

i. This psalm is honest about sin and unfaithfulness, and indicates a desire for repentance.

This story is messy and full of brokenness and despair.

ii. We remember forward, and know that God did hear them and did respond by sending Jesus through the line of David and Bathsheba.

This is the redemptive story: where once sin and brokenness sought to destroy, God continued to be faithful and ultimately brought about salvation through this messy, broken lineage.

c. We can trust as well that, no matter our past or even our broken present, God’s steadfast love is for us.

If God can take this broken life of David and ultimately bring about redemption for the whole world, what can God do with our brokenness when we repent and lay our lives before Jesus?

God loves us where we are and wants to bring us peace and wholeness.

3. The Prince of Peace is born into mess.

a. Mary was a real person, young and likely scared. We sometimes forget the messy reality of these moments. Mary’s choice to obey God and bear the Christ had real consequences.

Christ was born into vulnerability.

The incarnation story is messy.

b. Nothing looks how we would expect it to.

The story of the world’s redemption comes through real people, into messy stories, and in vulnerable ways to vulnerable people.

c. Christ comes to bring peace—shalom, wholeness.

He seeks to heal the brokenness, to forgive the sin, and to move people away from the chaos that is made from sin and death, bringing peace and comfort.

d. This is a story for us.

i. Where is there brokenness and sin that needs to be repented of so we can find the wholeness and healing of Christ?

ii. What legacies will those coming after us be part of because of the faithfulness of God toward us?

CONCLUSION:

Where is God?

Where is the love of God here and now?

When we look back in order to look forward, we see that God is here, Immanuel, in the midst of our vulnerabilities, in the midst of our messes, in the midst of the sin done to us and also the sin we have done. God longs to draw near.

The Prince of Peace longs to come, even now, once again, to bring renewed hope into our lives. We can sing with confidence, “Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in” because God’s love is steadfast for us, even now.