Sermon Tone Analysis

Well, we are celebrating the second week of / / Advent as we wait with great anticipation for the arrival of our savior, Jesus Christ!

No, Advent isn’t the 24 bottle of wine countdown calendar.

It’s not the chocolate or lego or there’s even a Chanel #5 fragrance calendar.

I kid you not.

And not to be outdone by them, you can pick up your Dior advent calendar, or maybe you are more inclined to go for the Tiffany & Co calendar with a cool price of $150,000.

You can’t make this stuff up folks...

I noticed this week, as I opened my cheese calendar, that in the top corner it says that it pairs well with their wine calendar… Of course it does.

Well, we put some things straight last week as we went through what Advent actually is, why we would want to participate in this long standing Christian tradition, and that the first week is all about / / Jesus our Hope.

And I truly HOPE that was your experience this past week, that you encountered Jesus your Hope.

/ / Advent means the arrival of a notable person, thing or event!

Originally from the latin word adventus, and it has been used within the Christian church for somewhere around 1600 years as this beautiful celebration and dedicated time to anticipating the arrival of Christmas, where we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

So, / / advent by definition is the arrival of something or someone important, by Christian understanding it is the arrival of Jesus Christ, both as baby born in a manger, and soon coming King when he will one day return, but also the Christian tradition and part of the Christian calendar of the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas day.

As we continue our journey through these 4 weeks of advent, we are going to start reading some of the Christmas story this morning from the book of Luke.

Starting in Luke 1:26, / / During the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent from God’s presence to an unmarried girl named Mary, living in Nazareth, a village in Galilee.

She was engaged to a man named Joseph, a true descendant of King David.

Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Grace to you, young woman, for the Lord is with you and so you are anointed with great favor.”

Mary was deeply troubled over the words of the angel and bewildered over what this may mean for her.

But the angel reassured her, saying, “Do not yield to your fear, Mary, for the Lord has found delight in you and has chosen to surprise you with a wonderful gift.

You will become pregnant with a baby boy, and you are to name him Jesus.

He will be supreme and will be known as the Son of the Highest.

And the Lord God will enthrone him as King on his ancestor David’s throne.

He will reign as King of Israel forever, and his reign will have no limit.”

Mary said, “But how could this happen?

I am still a virgin!”

Gabriel answered, “The Spirit of Holiness will fall upon you and almighty God will spread his shadow of power over you in a cloud of glory!

This is why the child born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

What’s more, your aged aunt, Elizabeth, has also become pregnant with a son.

The ‘barren one’ is now in her sixth month.

Not one promise from God is empty of power, for nothing is impossible with God!”

The Mary responded, saying, “This is amazing!

I will be a mother for the Lord!

As his servant, I accept whatever he has for me.

May everything you have told me come to pass.”

Advent - the arrival of a notable person, thing or event!

Who is this child?

Who is this baby to be born?

A true descendent of King David, the rightful heir to the throne of David, King of Kings, the very Son of God, God himself, the Son of the Most High!

If that’s not the arrival of a notable person, I don’t know what is.

This is why we started with Hope.

/ / Jesus our Hope, it’s not some wishy-washy, half baked hope we have in Christ, but Romans 15:13, is a prayer that Paul prays over the church in Rome and he says, / / May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

He is THE God of Hope and by HIS Holy Spirit WE can not just have a bit of hope, but ABOUND in Hope… or have an abundance of it.

AND, / / Hope itself is a confident expectation in a positive outcome.

So, we are in the second week of Advent, and the focus this week is on / / Jesus our Peace!

And of course, we’re not just giving him that title, but we’re asking the same questions we asked last week, what does that mean for us?

How do we experience Jesus our Peace?

How is He our peace?

What does that look like?

I want to start with an Old Testament prophecy about the coming of Jesus from the book of Isaiah.

The book of Isaiah was written around 700 BC, so roughly 700 years before Jesus was born.

I don’t think we can even fully comprehend how important and how impressive it is that the Old Testament is full of prophecy about Jesus Christ written hundreds and thousands of years before his birth.

The probability that someone actually fulfills the prophecies in the bible as much as Jesus does is staggering.

So, Isaiah 9:6-7 says this, / / For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.

The government will rest on his shoulders.

And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

His government and its peace will never end.

He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity.

The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!

Two things we need to draw from this scripture about the peace found in Jesus Christ.

/ / His NAME is Peace

vs 6 says that he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

We have a term for these types of names.

It’s called / / Epithet.

When someone is given a title like this that explains, or defines the way this person ruled or governed, or a quality of something they did.

Think of names like Catherine the Great.

Richard the Lion-Heart.

Abraham Lincoln was called the Great Emancipator.

And likewise in the other way we have Ivan the Terrible, of Vlad the Impaler, given that name because he literally was impaling people after he would take them captive.

I know, what’s that got to do with Christmas?

These names, these epithets are expressions of the persons characteristic.

So, when we say Jesus, the Prince of Peace, we are saying that his rule and his reign are defined by this quality and characteristic that he embodies.... Peace!

Where He goes, there is peace.

Where He rules, there is peace.

Where He is invited, peace follows him into that time and space.

This is a characteristic of who he is, inseparable.

It’s how he rules and what happens when he arrives.

He is the Prince of Peace.

The Ruler who brings his peace to the people he rules.

/ / His peace will never end

vs 7 says, His government and its peace will never end.

I like how the ESV translates it, it says, / / Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.

The word Increase there means increasing and also abundance.

So, / / the government of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is ever increasing, ever expanding in its abundance.

This is the very nature of God’s Kingdom.

He doesn’t take control of us.

He doesn’t force us to follow Him.

He is ever inviting us to follow him and be changed by His love as we allow him to love us.

So in that sense the expansion of Jesus’ government, his kingdom of peace, is ongoing every time someone says yes to the free gift of salvation and relationship with Him.

We talked about this earlier in the year when we looked at the Kingdom of God, when we choose follow after Jesus we come UNDER HIS rule and reign, and at that moment we are then protected in His kingdom, provided for in His kingdom, looked after and no longer trying to build our own kingdom, but secure in His.

The kingdom expands with every heart that that chooses to let God be its ruler.

And maybe there is a natural element to this as well.

The bible says that / / the heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord.

The skies display his craftsmanship.

(Psalm 19:1)

Our best understanding is that the universe itself is expanding, constantly.

NASA’s website states, “The Universe is getting bigger every second.

The space between galaxies is stretching...”

And my belief, and what I’ve seen is that science is always just catching up to God’s truth, and as we slowly catch up, as understanding unfolds, it continues to prove the supremacy of God.

So, of the increase of His government, which he is the God of the Universe, will never end.

So it’s ever increasing, but it’s also abundant.

And if where Jesus goes, his peace follows, then his peace is this abundant gift to us just like his hope is.