The Surprise of Advent

Introduction:

Christmas season is here

How many wait till after Thanksgiving to set up?

How many is Christmas your favorite Holiday?

We have the next two Sundays here to talk about Christmas

And then we’ll have a Christmas Celebration by the fire pit

And then 3 weeks off—We will be joining the main sanctuary

Scripture Reading:

Luke 2:8–20 (CSB)

In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping 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 the people: 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 will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and peace on earth to people he favors!

When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”

They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.

What is Advent?

We call the four weeks leading up to Christmas ‘Advent”

This has been a church tradition for thousands of years

Does anyone know what advent means?

The Arrival

We take one month every year to remember the arrival of Jesus in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago

And there is a twofold-focus of Advent: Looking back and looking forward

This week we will look back at the Birth of Jesus

The humble and unexpected birth of our king

But there is also a future aspect of advent—its a time that we look forward to the second coming of Jesus

How this is a season of anticipation and waiting

And we’ll talk more about that next week

But before we look at the birth of Jesus I want to say a word about one of our biggest obstacles reading and teaching the Bible… familiarity

A Word on Familiarity

Whenever we read our Bibles or listen to a sermon—one of our greatest enemies is over-familiarity

It’s not necessarily bad

We should know our Bibles—and be familiar with it

But there is also a danger to it…

(SLIDES)

Peter Krol:

Beware the deceptive wiles of familiarity — that sweet but double-edged virtue that makes you feel at home in the word of God. Familiarity of the tender variety persists in reminding you of the gospel and deepening your communion with Christ. But if you’re not careful, cold-hearted familiarity will betray you with kisses, poison your wineglass, and watch impassively while your life slips steadily away. You might not even realize it’s happening.

Unexamined familiarity will prevent you from looking at the Book. Because such familiarity crowds out curiosity, it imperceptibly stiffens necks, hardens hearts, and deafens ears. Familiarity may lead us to assume things that are not in the text, and it may blind us to things that are.

And the Christmas story is in great danger of over-familiarity

We hear it year after year

And maybe for some of us when we hear there is a Christmas message: we roll our eyes and brace for yet another Christmas sermon

Jesus in the manger

The angel

The shepherds

The wise men

But my prayer for today has been that you would not let your familiarity with this story prevent God from speaking to you through it

So it’s not that I have some interesting or hot take on the Christmas story—but we have the same powerful story that has been passed down for thousands of years

The story of God himself becoming a man

And I hope that today we can see this truth and what it means to us

So today I want to focus on the unexpected nature of the Christmas story

(SLIDE to MAIN)

The Unexpected Savior

On this side of the NT this story has become so familiar to us

But the story of Christmas was so very unexpected and even scandalous

We just finished through the story of the Bible last week so most of you know how to OT went

In short it is cycle after cycle of God’s people rebelling—repenting—being delivered

and then repeating

There were great leaders and terrible leaders…. but overall the direction of the story is downward

And through it all God has promised a messiah—someone anointed by God to save his people and establish their kingdom once and for all

And I know we know the Christmas story and the NT so well… but I want you to suspend all of that for a moment

While the people were waiting for someone who would be empowered by God to lead them…

Who would have thought that God himself would become human and enter into the story

How unexpected must this have been?

I mean this is a foundation of the gospel—the incarnation—but how often do we overlook it

Yeah, we know… God became human in Jesus

But think of how outrageous this really is!

Imagine being a Jewish person at this time

God sometimes sends his angels

At time God himself is made known (like at Mt. Sinai)

But you would never expect God to be born as a baby

For God to become a human and live life as a human

Sleeping, eating, laughing, working

That is crazy

Even for my Mormon grandpa...

But this is what we read in the Scriptures

That God works in ways that no one expects

The Unexpected Birth

And not only was the fact God himself would enter our world—but how he did it also reverses all of our expectations

If God himself was going to be born into this world surely he would be in a family of wealth and nobility…

But when you read the story we see that this is not the case

He was born to a family in poverty

He was welcomed not by the religious leaders and rulers but by shepherds

He spent his early life on the run and a refugee in Egypt

He knew what it was like to be hungry

He knew what it was like to work and be exhausted

God was not immune to the hard things of this world

Ex. How I would do things: Sims/Minecraft

Jesus’s birth was so unexpected that it was literally a miracle

He was born of a virgin

Think of the shame that would have brought on Mary and Joseph...

The shame it would bring on you

This is why Paul calls the gospel the mystery of God:

(SLIDE)

New Living Translation (Chapter 2) 1 Cor 2 6-8

6 Yet when I am among mature believers, I do speak with words of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world, who are soon forgotten. 7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. 8 But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.

Our Surprising God

The Christmas Story truly shows us how surprising our God is

That he works in ways we would never expect

Now we might be familiar with it now; but it doesn’t mean that it was expected

Ex. Movie with a major plot twist

You might know the ending but it doesn’t make it any less surprising

In the Christmas story we see the words of Isaiah come to life:

(SLIDE)

Isaiah 55:8–9 (CSB)

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

and your ways are not my ways.”

This is the Lord’s declaration.

“For as heaven is higher than earth,

so my ways are higher than your ways,

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I’m sure it’s not how we would’ve written the story, but this is how God chose for it to play out

And I think it is one thing for us to look back and see how God works in unexpected ways in the past and say “wow!”

But it is a whole different thing when we live in the present moment with our surprising God

Often God doesn’t work how we think He should

I want you all to think of a problem or issue in your life

What would it look like for God to show up and make things better?

If you were God what would you do?

Relational Problem (family & friends)

Future Plans/College Career

Sickness

Fear

What did the Jews expect of their Messiah?

A powerful military leader that would defeat the Romans and reestablish the Jewish people as a nation

But God send his Son, who subverted all of their expectations

Who not only failed to overthrow the military power, but was crucified by the Romans

And I believe the question for each of us today is the same?

What are our expectations of God?

Often we find ourselves frustrated with God because He isn’t working according to our plan or time frame

What would it mean to trust and unpredictable and surprising God?

One of the most popular Proverbs reads:

(SLIDES)

Proverbs 3:5–6 (CSB)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

and do not rely on your own understanding;

in all your ways know him,

and he will make your paths straight.

We are being called to trust a person—not a plan

(SLIDE to main)

Conclusion

And this is what I want us to remember this Christmas season—the unexpected miracle of Jesus’s birth

That God is and will continue to be a mystery to us—beyond our comprehension

That he can work and do miracles in areas that we thought were impossible

And in things we think He should do—sometimes He won’t act as we think He should

That His ways are truly higher than our ways

We don’t need a God we can put in a box and understand completely...

We need a God that is bigger than us

And thankfully, our God is so much bigger than us

God is more loving, caring, compassionate, forgiving, righteous, than we can ever imagine

We serve a big God

(SLIDE)

"If we could understand God he would not be God, for it is a part of the nature of God that he should be infinitely greater than any created mind." ~ Charles H. Spurgeon

So today, I’m asking you all to surrender to our big God

Whatever is weighing you down—God has a better way

As C.S. Lewis says:

(SLIDE)

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Wow

Guys, I hope you can catch this vision of God

That you can break through your familiarity to open your eyes to how wonderful and amazing our God is

That this wouldn’t be just another Christmas where our eyes are fixed on what presents you will get in a couple of weeks

But that this would be a season that you ponder who our God is

That you would expect him in the unexpected

That you would behold and worship our great God

Our Hope is far greater than we can imagine:

(SLIDES)

New Living Translation (Chapter 2) 1 Cor 2:9 (NLT)

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined

what God has prepared for those who love him.”