11-26-06-Advent-Candle of Promise
Thanksgiving is over and we have all been sufficiently stuffed. Black Friday has come and gone and we survived it! Now is the time when we start to pull out the boxes of Christmas decorations, check the lights to see how many are still working, and find out how many balls and ornaments need replaced. We trim the tree and look forward to the big day with anticipation (and some trepidation). Children begin to make wish lists and parents begin to plan what gifts to give to their children. Parties are scheduled at work and schools. Christmas plays are conducted at schools and churches. We pull out our favorite Christmas movies and CD’s and the TV channels begin to be filled with classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “White Christmas,” and “The Christmas Carol” as well as a host of newer Christmas movies like “The Santa Clause,” “Polar Express,” etc. But in the middle of all this hustle and bustle, we must never forget the true meaning of Christmas.
I have to tell you that Christmas has sometimes been a depressing time for me. I despise the commercialism and pressures that go with finding the “perfect” gifts for everyone. Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman are not what Christmas is all about! Yet, we are constantly bombarded by images and phrases that beg us to buy more than we can afford, celebrate the “spirit of Christmas” (which is definitely not God’s Spirit), and to worship a big fat man in a red suit (who by the way was created by the Coca-Cola company) and has flying reindeer to pull his sleigh full of toys.
But since I have discovered the celebration of Advent, I have been able to put the true joy about Christmas back into my heart. That is also my prayer for you, that as you use the Advent Devotionals for Personal Worship, which I will give you at the end of the service, you will discover new meaning in Christmas this year. Each week the children will be celebrating Advent with Mrs. G.G. and learning the same truths that we are. Then when you go home you can use the devotionals each day to teach your family about the Advent season. I believe that the greatest gift I can give you this year is the Word of God.
One point of clarification is necessary since the Advent Devotionals for Personal Worship are not original (they came from Lifeway—which is Baptist) so you will find a reference to Lottie Moon (which is a Baptist missions organization). When you see this simply substitute Dugit Ministries which is the ministry we support in Israel, or any other foreign missions program that you support.
Today we are going to start looking at the celebration of Advent. The word Advent comes from the Latin. adventus “coming”. . . . In the Church, it designates the season immediately preceding Christmas; in the western church it comprises the four Sundays prior to Christmas.. . . [i] Normally, we would start Advent on the first Sunday in December and go for 4 weeks, then on Christmas Eve or Christmas day the final celebration would occur. However, since Christmas falls on Monday this year, I felt like it would be better to celebrate the 5 services on Sundays and not have a Christmas Eve service. That is why we are celebrating Advent starting today.
Advent is the time of looking forward to Christ’s birth. Each Sunday we will light a candle representing a different aspect of the Advent season. On this first Sunday of Advent we celebrate the Prophets and their message of hope by lighting the first purple candle (light the candle, if not already lit). It is called the Candle of Promise because it reminds us of the promise that God made to send a Savior to the world. What is a promise?
Promise ■ n.
1 an assurance that one will do something or that something will happen.
† an indication that something is likely to occur: the promise of spring. [ii]
The very first promise in the Bible is recorded in Genesis 3:15 when God spoke judgment to the serpent for tempting Eve.
¨ Genesis 3:15 (NIV) “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Every Jewish boy grew up knowing this scripture. Why? Because it spoke of the promise of one who would come to set them free—the Messiah (Christ). The birth of a boy was such a blessed event in Israel, because they never knew if this particular boy might not be the promised one. For centuries, Israel lived with the promise that one day their Messiah would come. In fact, even today those who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah are still looking for Him to come.
Advent is a season of waiting with anticipation. We learn to wait as children for Christmas day—whether we believe in Santa Claus or not. We have to wait until December 25th finally comes on the calendar before we are allowed to open our presents. What does this waiting teach us? Does it teach us to expect something better? Does it teach us patience? This is a time when we can see that waiting for something is not necessarily a bad thing. Waiting at Christmas time teaches us that we must wait until the promise is fulfilled, just as Israel had to wait for centuries before the promise of the Messiah was fulfilled.
In our walk with the Lord, do we wait on Him in anticipation that He will fulfill His promises in our lives? Have we waited on God with anticipation that He will do exactly what He said He would do? Or have we gotten tired, like many in Israel did, and no longer look for His salvation in our lives? Have we decided to try to save ourselves with our own good works (rules and regulations) like the Pharisees and Scribes? Is waiting on God too hard for us?
Let’s look at some scriptures from the prophets that tell us just what Israel was waiting for to fulfill the promise of God:
¨ Isaiah 11:1-5 (NIV) 1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. 2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord—3 and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what He sees with His eyes, or decide by what He hears with His ears; 4 but with righteousness He will judge the needy, with justice He will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth; with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. 5 Righteousness will be His belt and faithfulness the sash around His waist.
Israel had waited for the promise of the Messiah to be fulfilled for many centuries by the time Isaiah gave this prophecy and had begun to doubt if God would ever fulfill His promise to them. David’s lineage appeared to be lifeless like an old stump (Jesse being David’s father). Have you ever cut down a tree and left the stump? We don’t like the stump—it is a nuisance, ugly, it gets in the way, and we sometimes trip over it. I am pulling small stumps up at my house right now and I can tell it is hard work. You have to dig down deep to find the main roots and then cut them with an axe so the stump no longer has anything to support itself. Then with lots of pushing and pulling, sometimes more digging, finally you are able to wrestle the stump out of the ground. With a bigger stump, you need a tractor to pull it out.
But, if you leave the stump, sometimes it still has enough life in it that it will produce a new shoot that will grow out of it and then you have a whole new tree that can bear fruit. So Isaiah was saying that no matter how long they had to wait, God was still able to fulfill His promise to send the Messiah. When this Messiah came, He would be the one full of the Spirit of God. He would be the one who would judge righteously and truly be the King of the Jews. He would be their deliverer and would be their savior. What a great promise this was for a nation that had largely forgotten about God and His promises.
Did God keep this promise? Oh yes! As we examine the New Testament scriptures we see that it was fulfilled when Jesus was born—of the lineage of David:
¨ Matthew 1:1 (NIV) A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David,. . .
¨ Luke 1:26-27 (NIV) 26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
¨ Luke 2:4 (NIV) So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
Another prophecy that concerns the promised Messiah is found in Micah (Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah):
¨ Micah 5:2 (NIV) “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me One who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Micah prophesied that Bethlehem (which means House of Bread) was the place where the Messiah would come from. Bethlehem was the city where David was born (1 Sam 17:12). So in fulfillment of this promise, Bethlehem was the small town that the Messiah came from (see Luke 2:4 above).
Isaiah spoke two more amazing prophecies about the promised Messiah.
¨ Isaiah 7:14 (NIV) Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
¨ Isaiah 9:6-7 (NIV) 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
What wonderful promises these are—a virgin will give birth to a child, He will be call Immanuel (which means God with us), and He will be the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. He will reign over David’s throne—that seemingly dead stump—for all eternity.
Friends, what has God promised you that seems like a dead stump? Let me assure you that if God has spoken it, it will come to pass. We may have to learn to wait on it, but in God’s time it will come forth. For example: G. G. was given a promise by God that she would marry a preacher. She waited seven years before marrying me. When we first met, I was not a preacher, but look where I am today. God did fulfill His promise to her and He will fulfill His promises to you.
God gave over 300 prophecies about the Messiah, so we would recognize Him when He came. As we have seen today, God fulfilled each promise that He made, through His prophets, about the Messiah. The One who was promised to be the Savior of mankind has come and His name is Jesus the Christ. All of the promises of God have been fulfilled in Jesus. That is why we celebrate Christmas—it a season of remembering God’s faithfulness to His Word by sending His Son to be born into the world to be our Savior. As we meditate on the Advent season, let us never lose sight of the promise of God to deliver us from the sin of this world and to put His Spirit into our hearts so that we can serve Him all the days of our life.
Thank God for His love and faithfulness in making and fulfilling the promise of the Savior. If you do not know Jesus as your Savior you can receive Him today simply by asking God to forgive you of your sins and to come into your life as Lord and Savior. Don’t let another Christmas season pass without receiving the promise of God for your life!
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[i]Myers, A. C. (1987). The Eerdmans Bible dictionary. Rev., augm. translation of: Bijbelse encyclopedie. Rev. ed. 1975. (Page 25). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.
n. noun
[ii]Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.