Advent - 3 - Joy

Scripture: James 5:7-10

James 5:7–10 NIV

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door! 10 Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

12/14/2025

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Snow Day?

Opening Prayer:

Gracious God, we confess that our joy has been dampened by a deluge of worry and fear. We fail to see the signs of Your grace all around us. Forgive us, Lord, and open our hearts to rejoice in Your promised coming and salvation. Restore to us the joy of Your presence. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Joy

The Feeling of Advent

When you're young, and your main job for Christmas is just to be there, Christmas takes a long time to get here. But it's a sweet kind of waiting. You watch the presents slowly gather under the tree through the weeks of December. First one or two appear, then a few more, until by Christmas Eve the tree skirt has disappeared beneath all those wrapped mysteries. The Christmas decorations seem to grow brighter even as the days grow darker and colder outside. There are carols playing on the radio and Christmas movies on television. I remember my dad getting a log to burn in the fireplace to help warm up the house. Some of you might remember that, too.

And then there's Christmas Eve at church. The candlelight. The whole congregation singing "Silent Night" together in the glow. The hush that falls over everything as the story is told one more time. The world slows down. Time stretches out. Somehow, the waiting itself becomes part of the gift.

But for those of us who have a lot of preparation and work to do, working to make sure all those traditions and celebrations actually happen, waiting for Christmas doesn't feel slow at all. We blink once, and it's Thanksgiving. We blink twice, and Christmas Day is here and gone. The stores have been rushing us since before Halloween. The commercials and the to-do lists pile up. Somewhere in all of that, the season of joyful anticipation can turn into a season of hectic anxiety. There's never enough time to get everything done.

The church calendar invites us to slow down and prepare our hearts, not just our shopping lists. But most of the time, we don't feel like we have that choice. It just happens. Or does it? Maybe it happens because somewhere along the way, we decided that Christmas depends on us. We feel the obligation to make the memories, to create the traditions, to hold it all together in our own strength. The more we try to make it happen ourselves, the faster it slips through our fingers.

This morning, I want to think back with you. Not just about what Advent really means, but what it really feels like. Because I wonder if somewhere in all our doing, we've forgotten how to wait. I wonder if that waiting might be exactly where we need to be.

Looking to the Prophets

Two weeks ago, on the first Sunday of Advent, we lit the candle of hope. We talked about turning our eyes toward God as our light in the darkness. We talked about the mountain of God that draws all people to Him as their true source of hope and life. For thousands of years, God's people climbed toward that mountain. And when they finally arrived, they discovered it wasn't a place. It was a person.

That's where Advent begins. That's where God's people have always had to begin.

The original Advent lasted thousands of years, all the way back to the Fall. A thousand years before Jesus was born, King David and his son Solomon yearned for God to come and make things right. They caught a glimpse of what life could be like in a right relationship with God, but they couldn't fully live it out. They knew the hope they found was not just for themselves. They were responsible for leading their people toward that same mountain, toward the One who would finally bring them there.

For the next five hundred years, the prophets carried that hope forward. From Isaiah to Malachi, they saw the problem clearly. They felt the pull of a world dragging them toward sin and away from God. In the midst of that darkness, God gave them hope. A light to turn their eyes toward. A reminder that God was there, that He saw them, and that He was making a way out.

In all of those prayers and prophecies, God told them to stop trying to fix things on their own. He said, "Trust me. Put your hope in me, not just with your words, but with the way you live. Follow me even when it doesn't make sense." God promised that if they did, He would provide for them. He would protect them. He would be their good shepherd. He would give them peace, even when there was no peace around them.

All those stories of the people who came before Jesus point toward Him. And then God surprised the world. Jesus didn't come as the conquering king they expected. Instead, He came and suffered to free us from sin, died to free us from death, and returned to heaven with a promise that He would come again to finish everything.

All of us on this side of that very first Christmas are also waiting for the day He's coming back. Our stories intertwine with Jesus. Because of Jesus, they intertwine with everybody else, no matter when or where they lived. You heard the scripture from James a few moments ago. James shows us that connection. He encourages us to find joy in the waiting.

Patient Trust

Last week, on the second Sunday of Advent, we lit the candle of peace. We read from Psalm 72, Solomon's prayer for the King of Israel. Solomon understood that the peace he found in God was not meant to be hoarded. It was meant to be shared with everyone under his care. That's what it means to be a leader after God's own heart. You climb the mountain, and then you turn around and help others make the climb.

But Solomon also knew he couldn't manufacture that peace on his own. None of us can. We talked about what it means to stop striving, to let God hold us still in His shalom, even when life is chaotic around us. James, the half-brother of Jesus, knew something about that struggle.

Can you imagine growing up with an older brother who could do nothing wrong? James isn't mentioned by name in the Gospels. We only catch a tiny glimpse of him behind the scenes, standing with his mother, Mary, trying to convince Jesus to come back and take care of the family the way the eldest son was supposed to. But somewhere along the way, James stopped resisting and started following. He went from a skeptic to the author of one of the New Testament's most powerful letters. The reason his letter is so powerful is that it contains more quotes and references to the Sermon on the Mount than any other text outside the Gospels. James didn't just know Jesus. He knew his teachings by heart.

Our passage today is from the end of his letter. James tells his readers to be patient until the coming of the Lord. Practice patience until it becomes who you are. That's what Advent is all about. Waiting for the coming of the Lord.

James gives us a picture. Be patient, he says, like the farmer who waits for his crop to grow. The farmer has to wait for both the early and late rains to fall before the harvest is ready. If he gets out in the fields too soon, the work will be cut short. What he tries to harvest will be immature. It won't be ready. So James tells us, just like those farmers, we also have to be patient. To do that, we need to strengthen our hearts.

Why do we need to strengthen our hearts? To be patient. What happens when we struggle to be patient? We get stressed. We act impulsively. We create chaos and disorder in our lives. Underneath that impatience, there's usually something else driving us. Fear. Anxiety. Desire. These forces stir up conflict within us. Here's the strange thing about desire. Following it feels like freedom. But the more we chase it, the more it controls us. What feels like freedom becomes a kind of slavery.

So James tells us, "Don't grumble against one another." When we're struggling to be patient, we can get short-tempered with the people around us. But that is the exact opposite of what Jesus wants to do in our lives. He wants us to ask for help. Then let him in and let him help.

Here's what patience really looks like. It means putting fear, anxiety, and desire aside. Not pretending they don't exist. But refusing to let them drive. It means trusting the peace of Jesus to hold us, and to hold everything else together, while we wait. That is what it means to strengthen your heart.

This week, when you feel yourself losing your peace, starting to grumble, stop and name what's driving you. Say it out loud if you need to. "This is fear. This is anxiety. This is desire." Then tell it to take a backseat. You need to see Jesus.

That is how we find shalom peace, even in the midst of the storm.

And if that sounds impossible, James tells us we're in good company. The prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord all went through suffering. They were the closest to God, and they still had to wait. This is where James takes us directly to the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of the Beatitudes, Jesus himself preached, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for their righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

So Jesus tells us, and James is passing it along, that we're waiting for our reward. That requires patience. But then Jesus says something unexpected. He says there is an opportunity for more than just waiting quietly. Even in the waiting, we can rejoice. Even in that time in between. And maybe especially in that time in between.

There is a place for joy.

Joy - the Gift Found in the Waiting

There is a place for joy.

Yes, you heard me right. I said joy. Even before the celebration begins, there is a place for joy.

There is a special kind of joy that happens in the space where we are still practicing patience and haven't yet received the reward. On our good days, it's like the excitement we feel the night before Christmas, when all the stories and all the wonder seem to happen. Everything stops, and time stands still. It's so different from Christmas Day, when everything flies through, and then it's Happy New Year, and then it's gone, and it seemed like it was just a moment. There is a place for joy in the time before. A powerful, pregnant moment.

We even experience this when things are difficult. Think of a runner coming up to the finish line, realizing they can overtake the person in front of them. You would swear they're in agony. Their face twists with effort as they push with every bit of strength they have. But they can only do that because there's joy in their hearts. They've caught sight of what could be.

There might be more joy right before they win than right after, when exhaustion hits, and they try to come to terms with what their faith just got them to do. That's the true joy of Advent. It's the excitement we feel because we know the kingdom is here, but not yet. We know Jesus has come, but he's not finished, and he's coming back. We know Jesus has already saved us, and we're just waiting for him to work out that grace in us to perfection.

These pieces of Advent build on each other. Just like the ancient Israelites, we have to look to God first to find our hope. If we aren't looking to him, we’ll miss everything else. Those people back in Jesus's time who were not looking to God missed the angels in the sky, the shepherds shouting the good news, and that tiny Savior born in a manger.

Once we see God, he invites us to put our trust in him and receive his promises. He begins pouring into our lives a new kind of life, inviting us to receive that shalom peace we won't find anywhere else. The hope of Jesus is there to direct our eyes to him. The peace of Jesus is there to hold us still and firm as we wait for him to arrive and complete the work in our lives.

James shows us what happens in that moment when we look at Jesus, and he holds us in his peace. Everything in us wants to freak out. We think about all the things we should be doing or could be doing. Everything in us tries to break away, take our eyes off Jesus, and go back to doing things the way we always do them. But James tells us, in that place, in the midst of that anxiety, when desire and fear make war on our hearts and try to push us to disorder, be patient. Stand firm. Keep your eyes on Jesus.

He shows us that in that moment, when our attention is focused on Jesus and we're letting him hold us, as we watch him do the work, that is the space for joy. That is that pregnant pause, that wonder-filled moment, that night before Christmas. It's that final lap when we can see the end in sight and know that we may not be there yet, but we're going to make it. That is where true joy lives.

This joy becomes holy and righteous because we know in that moment that fear, desire, and anxiety in our lives haven't disappeared. They've just taken a backseat. They're not driving anymore. We know that joy, peace, and hope are not filling us up because of what we have done or what we're doing. It's there because we've stopped doing it, and we're now watching Jesus do it.

There is a time for planting in our lives. There is a time for harvesting at the end, when we bring what has grown out of our labor to God. But there is a joy in the middle, a joy in the waiting, when we recognize that we're not the ones really doing the work. We begin to watch and see what Jesus is up to, as he takes the little bit we can bring to him and the broken pieces of ourselves we offer to him. We watch him grow us, heal us, transform us, and do more than we can imagine. When we find our hope in keeping our eyes on Jesus and sit still in his peace, letting our fear, desire, and anxiety take a back seat, he fills us with his joy. That joy bubbles out of us in ways that are contagious to those around us and sometimes unexplainable to those who can't see the kingdom yet.

Brothers and sisters,

Are you looking to Jesus as the source of all your hope?

Are you allowing him to hold you still in his peace? Or do your desires and your fears and your anxieties run your life and rule over you?

If you've found that hope and peace in him, are you making space in your heart and your mind, in your life, for that joy that he wants to fill you with as you wait with that joyful patience for the best that is yet to come?

Closing Prayer

Lord, thank you for coming to us as a light in the darkness and watching over us as our Prince of Peace. Thank you that you are coming again as our King of Kings, bringing a victory we are only beginning to see.

Forgive us for the times we've abandoned you and returned to darkness. Help us up when we stumble.

Give us the grace you promise, sufficient for each day. Help us to be patient with this world you're trying to save. Help us to be patient with the people around us, whom you loved enough to send your Son to die for. Help us to be patient with ourselves as we let go of running our own lives and allow you to fill us with joy.

As we begin to see the vision of what you have for us, give us the faith to believe you can get us there. In your holy name we pray. Amen.