Introduction

Some stories stay with us because they're beautiful, and some because they're honest. One of those stories for me is the book The Great Gatsby. It was a book that I hated reading in high school because the ending. The ending was so terrible. I realize now that that was part of the whole point, It was actually brilliant writing on the author's part to make you feel that bad by the end of the book. The Great Gatsby is not a book about romance. It was a story about what hope means, about what happens when you build your life around the belief that one thing, one relationship, one moment, one dream can finally make you whole. Gatsby built his entire life around the belief that Daisy, her love, would redeem him and make him whole. But it doesn't. And that's what makes the ending so unsettling, because in its ending, we see ourselves in Gatsby. We may not build mansions or throw parties, but we all build our lives around something we believe will fix us. Things we believe will finally make things right. Christmas is a season when those things rise to the surface. The lights are the brightest, the music is familiar, and the expectations are high.

And when whatever we're counting on to save us feels closer than ever or it may be more fragile than ever.

Big Question

What are you counting on?

What are you counting on this Christmas season? What are you counting on in your life? Most of us are counting on something, not something evil. We're counting on something reasonable, something good, something understandable. For some of us, we hope that this year will finally be different. Different than all the other ones. That relationships would heal. Family gatherings would go smoothly. Old tensions wouldn't resurface, and the ache that we've been carrying for years would ease. For others, we seek stability or success, needing to be right, being needed or being admired, or maybe for us as parents getting through this week without losing our minds with our kids at home, right? That's what that Christmas song is all about, right? Gatsby believed that Daisy could give him a future that would help him erase his past. We might say it different, but we often believe that If this works out or if that comes through, everything's going to be okay. The problem isn't that we hope.

The problem is that we hope in things created. We place the burden on created things to carry the weight that only God can do to heal what is broken in us, to give us peace, and to justify our lives. Christmas has a way of exposing what we're really counting on because the expectations are higher. Emotions are closer to the surface. And if you ask any five-year-old tomorrow who didn't get what they want, disappointments hurt more this time of year, don't they?

So ask yourself honestly:

• What would devastate you most if it didn't happen this year?

• What are you hoping will finally make things feel whole for you?

• What are you counting on to carry the weight of your happiness?

Essentially, what are you counting on?

The good news is that the Bible has great answers for us. We're going to look at two things tonight. A promise the world has been waiting for and that the promise is a son. So let's look at that first one.

A Promise The World Has Been Waiting For

When we think about where Christmas starts, we often think about the baby in a manger, or maybe we think about the angel coming to Mary, or we think about the star, we think about the wise men or the shepherds.

But this story starts way before what Luke records in his gospel. The story of the advent starts in Genesis, starts in Eden. God had just created humanity. Everything was perfect, not just more not only perfect, but relationally whole. Nothing was hidden, nothing was strained. God walked with humanity, and humanity was at rest. It was the perfect that we longed for, the satisfaction that lasts. God had given Adam and Eve the first people one rule, and they broke it. As God was ushering them out of paradise, he gave them a promise. Someone would come to make right what they had made wrong. The promise is that the offspring of the woman would come to someone who would bring back that peace that they had lost. Every generation wondered, is this finally the one? That's what Genesis shows us, the genealogies, all that. It's tracing who would be the one to crush the head of the snake. And yet every generation was disappointed. The whole story of the Old Testament is a story waiting for the long-expected redeemer, the one who would make everything right, except chapter after chapter, book after book, we are left without a happy ending.

No one could make it right. No one even came close. No one even filled half of the requirements that the job description required. And yet the Old Testament isn't a pessimistic book. There's hope littered throughout every page, a quiet whisper that God will bring us the one who will make us whole, who will make redemption possible.

That's what makes Christmas and this Christmas story, magical. Not magical in the sense of escape, but miraculous in the sense of fulfillment. This isn't a story that distracts us from reality. It's a story that finally explains it. It's what transforms this season into a season of hope.

It's the true reason we love this season, whether we understand it or not. Not for the presents, not for the music that we love, not for the family get-togethers. Why we love Christmas is because Christmas is an answer. It's an answer to a question humanity has been asking since sin entered the world. It's a question each and every one of us has asked deep within our heart. Who will come and fix the brokenness I feel? Who will come and redeem what feels lost? Who will make everything right? It's the reason we love Christmas.

It's because the answer has come. The answer isn't another philosophy, another self-help book, another form of therapy, another thing. The answer is a person, and his name is Jesus. After centuries of waiting, the question isn't if someone would come, but who could it possibly be?

The Promise Is A Son

The answer that we see is the promise is a son. After centuries of silence, God speaks again, not to a king, not to a prophet, not to a priest, not to Jerusalem, not to someone important. He speaks to no one. He speaks to a no one. And yet he speaks.

The promise is coming. God sends the angel Gabriel to Mary to deliver the world's greatest news. The promise from the garden would become incarnate. God would make good on his promise, even if he had to do it himself. The way that this story unfolds is wildly unimpressive. In fact, it's so unimpressive. It's impressive how how impressive it is. It is incredible. The good news comes to a teenager in a town that no one had ever heard of. But this is how God works. All throughout the Bible, God uses the unimpressive, the overlooked, the weak, the outsider, the stranger, the nobody, which is great news for us.

Because if salvation required being impressive, being righteous, Being powerful or being all put together, we would have been disqualified before we had a chance to begin. The good news for us is that we do not have to be impressive for God to save us. This Christmas season, do you feel passed Do you feel unimportant? Do you feel like a nobody? Do you feel like you have nothing to give, nothing to bring? The good news is we stand before our creator who looks at creation and says, Look at what I do with nothing. Bring me your nothing. That's enough for me. God wanted to show that it is his greatness, not ours, that he needs. He will show his greatness through us, whether we are impressive or not.

For generations, God's people had lived with these unanswered prayers. They married, they buried their children, they watched Kingdoms rise and fall, and still they waited.

And yet Luke, Luke is telling us this wait is over. Jesus has come, but he's come unimpressively. Jesus comes and is born into one of the poorest households maybe in history. He's born into extreme poverty. When Jesus goes to the temple with his parents, just a couple of days after he's born, his parents sacrifice, which was a common practice in Israel.

They sacrifice a dove, which indicates to us that they were one of the poorest people in all of Israel. That was only allowed if you couldn't afford anything else. In Nazareth, it was a particularly poor town, but that being said about what they had given, they were probably one of the poorest, even in Nazareth. There was a section that we can look back at through archeological digs and findings that there was a section of housing that people lived in that was carved out of a cliffside. Jesus probably lived there. Jesus's home, his bed was probably carved out of rock. Jesus probably lived in cold, dark cave. Jesus's life would show God's greatness through obscurity.

He came not to be impressive. He was born in a manger, but he came to save. He came to redeem. And that's the message that Mary receives, that she will bear the Son of God. Let's look at verses 30 and 31, if you have your Bible still open. It says this, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you should call his name Jesus.

She will not just bear any son. She will bear the long expected king. I think when we hear the word king, we think about the power that it takes. We think about Rome. We think about the Roman Caesars. That's definitely what the people of Israel thought of, that the king would come to be this king. That's what they were hoping And yet God had something else in mind, a king who would conquer by serving, a king who would seek his father like David did.

That's what we see in the next two verses. Luke 2:32, it says, He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end. Notice how the angel talks to Mary. She brings Mary through history, at least two historical people, that Jesus will fulfill the covenant that God made with David. This covenant from 2 Samuel 7 says this, "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son."

The promise That God gave David is the same promise he's giving to Mary. Jesus would be the king, the king of kings the world had been waiting for. And yet, he would not look like any king going before him. He would bring everlasting peace. He would defeat all of his and our enemies. But he would do this not by military conquest. He would do this by being conquered. He would be the one to defeat death itself by dying.

The angel doesn't just talk about David, but he goes all the way back to Genesis, bringing up Jacob. The weeks leading up to tonight, we We've been studying the Book of Genesis and how it leads us on a path directly towards Bethlehem, the long-expected savior, the one who had crushed the head of the snake. We've been looking and tracing this person through the Book of Genesis. We saw that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve being tempted by the snake.

God promised to reverse what had happened by crushing the serpent's head. Jacob was the father of the people who God would use to bring forth the snake crusher. Jesus would be the one to make everything right. The promise had narrowed from a people to a family, to a virgin, to a child in a manger. All of history is holding its breath for this moment.

Main idea

The long-expected deliverer and king has come

The long-expected deliverer and king has come. Since the beginning, we needed a rescuer.

We can see the constant and consistent downward spiral in scripture towards sin and away from God. We can see the misery that it brings to the world. In addition to scripture, we can feel this in our lives as well. With or without the Bible, we know that this is true. We know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world we live in.

There is something fundamentally wrong even in us. We see this and feel this when success does not satisfy, when relationships fracture, when guilt lingers longer than it should, when we achieve what we desire and still feel restless.

And yet the thing that we've truly wanted, the thing that we truly need has come. The thing that would restore us came 2,000 years ago. And whether we want to admit it or not, we are still people, whether we believe this, we are still people who look somewhere else. We look somewhere else for something that will satisfy us, something that will make us whole.

Christmas does not invent this longing. It exposes it. C. S. Lewis has this quote that says, "If I find myself in a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

The longing we feel in this world proves that we need a true salvation, not something temporary, not just another add-on, not just another scheme we can add to try to make ourselves happy. We need true and lasting salvation. What advent shows us is that we not only can't we chase down our own salvation, but we don't have to because God came to us. God became a man and dwelt among us. It's why we sing the song we sing earlier, Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free.

From our fears and sins, release us. Let us find our rest in thee. We no longer have wait to find the answer that humanity has been waiting for since sin came into the world. We can find true rest in our savior. But because of sin, we could not get to God, so God had to come to us.

Salvation did not come through effort, through improvement, through enlightenment. It came through incarnation.

Such good news cannot remain good news unless it changes us. We can't just see this and remain unchanged. And that leads us into our points of application,

Application

Believe

This story is more than good news. You can't encounter it in a meaningful way and not let it change you. You can't sample it. You can't use it only for inspiration. We must believe it. This is not another add-on to our life to make our life better. This is not another philosophy that we try to mix in with other ones to see if finally this will be the thing that makes us happier. If I add just a little bit more Jesus in, then my life can be a little bit happier.

No. This is This is surrender. This is saying to God, I've tried to save myself, and I can't. I know I can't. I've tried everything. I've tried justifying my actions. I've tried using it and anything and everything to distract me or numb me from the feeling that I have inside that I know something is broken, something is wrong, a longing for something true, something real.

God, I surrender that desire to try to save myself. I can't. I won't be able to. I've been trying to answer the question, what will save me all alone on my own? But God, now in this moment, I know that you've given me the answer. His name is Jesus. What we believe as Christians is that Jesus came and lived the life we couldn't. He was perfect. And he came to die. He came to die on a cross trading places with us. He took what we deserved. He was punished. Although he had done nothing wrong, what he deserved was everything good. He came to be punished in our place. That's what we deserve. We deserve to be punished, to be cursed. And yet the God who created everything came to bear our curse.

And three days later, after he died, he rose again from the dead. If tonight you're hearing this for the first time and it's starting to make sense to you, if you believe this, I don't want you to pass up on this moment of what the Holy spirit is doing in you. This isn't something that you've done, that you've worked out intellectually. This is God working in your heart. Christmas is more than a story of acute nativity. It is a story that can transform every part of your being. If that's happening for you today, I don't want you to miss it. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or do anything silly. But if after the service you want to talk, me and a couple elders will be up here in front, and we'd love to pray with you and talk about what this looks like.

Rejoice

But I want you to know one of your clear next steps is this, to rejoice. And for everyone who believes in the gospel, it is a call for us to rejoice. This is the greatest news in the history of the world. Our savior is finally here.

This should cause us overwhelming rejoicing, overwhelming amounts of worship that we no longer have to seek out to save ourselves, that we no longer have to try to find the right philosophy, the right thing, the right person who will save us. He's here. He came 2,000 years ago to bear what we couldn't. This is the reason that we give gifts, is that Jesus came to be given. We give gifts because it's one shadow, it's one small way that we can embody what Christ did for us.

So this Christmas season, rejoice, sing praises, pray, give gifts, serve one another, love one another, not out of a heart of trying to earn anything, not even because Jesus was just a good example, but because Jesus is reason to rejoice because God God had come to rescue us.

Every one of us is counting on something. The world counts on progress. We count on relationships, success, health, control, something that we feel will make us whole again, something that will make it right. Again and again, those hopes end the same way. Unfinished, empty. But Christmas tells us something radically different.

The answer did not rise from within us. Hope did not come from human effort. Salvation did not emerge from history's best idea.

It came down!

The eternal stepped into time.

The creator entered his creation.

The king laid aside his crown.

He came not to be admired, but to be given.

As church fathers have confessed throughout centuries:

"that he, the bread might hunger, the fountain might thirst, the light might sleep, the way might be wearied by the journey, the truth might be accused by false witness, the judge of the living and the dead might be judged by a mortal court, that he, justice, might be condemned by the unjust, that he, the foundation, might be suspended on a cross, that the healer might be wounded, and that life itself would die."

This is the God who came to us. He came to us so that those who are broken could be made whole. Christmas is not a story of humanity finding God. It's a story of God coming and finding us. The long-expected deliverer has come, not because we were strong, but exactly because we were helpless, not because we had earned him, but exactly because we were desperate. And tonight, the invitation is not to fix yourself.

If you're hearing a message of, Try harder, be better, you haven't been listening. This is not about improving yourself. This is not an invitation to prove yourself worthy.

The invitation is simply this. Receive him.

Receive the long-expected deliverer and King who has come for you!

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for who you are, that you are our King, that you came in the most humble ways. God, we talk about this as the humiliation of your son, Christ, to be born in a manger. God, to stumble upon the very ground you made.

You came to bear our sin and our shame even more than we can comprehend. God, we thank you that we don't have to try to muster up the energy within ourselves to save ourselves. But you came to do what we could not do.

God, we praise you. God, I pray that as we sing, as we reflect in what advent is, that it would be more than gifts, that it would be more than a family get together, but that we would rejoice that you have come to save us. Father God, as we sing our final song, help us to truly rejoice as people redeemed.

It's in your name we pray. Amen.