Sermon Tone Analysis

Well good morning!

Glad that you’re here with us on this first Sunday of Advent.

Several years ago, when I began talking about Advent, I had several people come and tell me that they had never really heard of Advent… or had heard of it, but didn’t really know much about it.

Advent is the season of the year leading up to Christmas.

The Advent season lasts for four Sundays.

Each week of Advent has a theme, and is traditionally symbolized by the lighting of these candles.

The themes are Hope, Faith, Joy, & Love.

The emphasis of Advent though is two-fold… First, it commemorates what Jesus Christ has ALREADY done for us.

This is the idea that Jesus Christ has already come in the flesh… He has already lived among us… He has already been crucified and risen from the grave… and because of that, salvation is already available to us.

So, for those of us who have put our faith in trust in Jesus Christ, we have reason to rejoice because we’ve ALREADY been saved… we’ve ALREADY been forgiven… we’ve ALREADY began to experience the transformation that Christ’s salvation brings… and, as Jesus says in Luke 17, we’ve ALREADY began to experience the kingdom of God.

So, the first emphasis of Advent is looking back to the first Advent… it focuses on the already… what Jesus has already accomplished.

But there’s a second emphasis of Advent that focuses on the not yet.

This focus is on when Jesus will come again, and what will happen when He comes again.

The not yet becomes amplified for many of us during the Christmas season.

Because even though we rejoice that we’ve already experience salvation, holidays can bring reminders that this salvation has not yet come in its fullness.

Many will be celebrating the holiday all alone… Many will gather around the table at Christmas and there will be an chair that is empty, that just last year, a husband, or a wife, or a mom, or a dad, or a son, or a daughter was sitting there… but they’re no longer with us this year.

Millions of people around the world are going to be exchanging gifts and doing Christmasy type things… but they don’t know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

To them, baby Jesus is just a tradition, or just a decoration.

So, with all the joys of the ALREADY of Christmas and the salvation that we’ve ALREADY experienced, there are so many reminders of the NOT YET… so many painful reminders that this world remains broken… that this world is NOT YET the way God intended for it to be.

So, during Advent, we look back at the ALREADY, and we look forward to the NOT YET.

We look forward to that time when all the pain is gone, when the walls of brokenness has been torn down, when families are finally reunited again.

We look forward to that day when Jesus Christ returns and he brings the fullness of His salvation… the fullness of His redemption… the fullness of His kingdom.

So, for the next 4 weeks, we’ll be talking about Advent, but today we finish our series called Align.

But our last sermon in the series ties in with the first week of Advent, which is hope… So this is kind of the last in the Align series… and also the first of our Advent series.

For the last 3 weeks… we’ve talked about the Grand Story of the Bible, and how we need to positionally align our ideas, beliefs, and lives around that Grand Story.

We’ve talked about Creation, God’s Purpose in Creation, How We’ve Messed Up Creation By Sinning, & How God has provided Redemption through Jesus Christ.

Today we want to focus on NOT YET.

What happens to us after we come to know the redemption found in Christ… and what’s awaiting us someday.

And perhaps the best way to start laying this out is to look at the Apostle Paul.

Paul is one who experienced a dramatic transformation in Jesus Christ.

If you know his story, Paul is on the road to Damascus… he’s going there to persecute Christians… but Paul encounters the risen Christ on that road, and becomes a Christian.

Paul begins to experience the reality of the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ.

He was a Pharisee, a religious leader… but now, Paul understands God in a whole new way, and gains a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but as Paul goes on his journeys, preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, he experiences a transformation in relationships.

He sees how people are starting to love one another and come together through Christ.

Paul also sees his relationship to the world transformed.

Paul supported himself as a tent maker… but after trusting Christ, his vocation was transformed.

His vocation took on a whole new meaning and had a whole new significance.

As Paul reflects upon this transformation that he’s went through… this ALREADY… he says this to the church in Galatia.

Did you hear the ALREADY in his statement there?

Paul is saying I’m experiencing the already of salvation.

My relationship with God has been transformed… my relationship with other people has been transformed… my relationship with God’s world has been transformed.

But… did Paul experience EVERYTHING about salvation through Christ?

Listen to what Paul says in Philippians…

Paul readily acknowledges that although he has already experienced salvation, he has not yet experienced its fullness.

What Paul is talking about here in Philippians chapter 3 is the fullness of his salvation… he’s talking about knowing Christ in a complete way… he’s talking about experiencing the COMPLETE transformation of himself, his relationship to God, his relationship to others, and his relationship with creation.

And yes, he’s talking about experiencing the resurrection, which is the fullness of God’s salvation that we will inherit someday.

So Paul is saying… I have been saved… but I have not yet experienced salvation in its fullness.

In other words… Paul says… salvation is something that has happened to me… past.

Salvation is something that will happen to me… future.

But look at how Paul also describes salvation is 1 Corinthians chapter 1…

So, salvation has an ALREADY aspect in the sense that it has happened… that it is currently happening… but salvation also has a NOT YET aspect… there’s an aspect of God’s redemption that I haven’t yet experienced… it’s out there in the future… I will experience it someday, but I haven’t yet.

And perhaps the best picture in the Bible of the salvation to come is found in Revelation chapter 21.

If you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, turn with me to Revelation chapter 21.

So again… big picture if you’ve been with us for the last 3 weeks… God creates, orders, organizes and fills this world… and it’s perfect… but we bring sin into God’s perfect creation and now, everything is broken… it is fallen… But the Word became flesh… and Jesus Christ brings about redemption through His life of perfect obedience, His death on the cross, and His resurrection.

Revelation chapters 21 and 22 tells us about God’s future plans of when He completes His work of redemption.

And so, this is not only God’s story… but it’s our story as well.

It’s a story of the future of everyone who places their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

Let’s read together.

Revelation chapter 21.

As we read Revelation 21 and 22 we have to see how this takes everything that we’ve talked about for the past 3 weeks… it’s takes it full circle… back to Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 and 2… God creates everything… He steps back and says… My creation is VERY GOOD! Genesis 3 tells us that God had a regular pattern of coming down and walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day.

This was the world the way God wanted it to be.

The picture of Revelation chapter 21 is a redoing of Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. It is God’s final act of Creation.

He renews the heavens… and He renews the earth.

And what’s the purpose of this?

Verse 3 tells us… God’s dwelling place is with His people.

Everything is right back to how it was at the beginning before sin completely corrupted everything.

So, in some ways… Revelation 21 paints the picture of things coming full circle.

But, in another sense, saying it goes full circles is perhaps not the best image because there is one significant difference between Genesis chapter 1 and Revelation 21.

It’s verse 4…

Those things… those symptoms of the curse will be eradicated… they will be no more.

In other words, where in Genesis 1 and 2 had the potential for fall, Revelation 21 tells us that that possibility has been removed.

God’s redemption is complete… it’s final… and absolutely nothing is going to mess it up again.

This language continues at the beginning of Revelation chapter 22.

Again… notice the Genesis 1 and 2 language that’s found here.

The tree of life shows up again.

Remember when Adam and Eve were banished from the garden in Genesis 3? God says… y’all are cut off from the tree of life.

You have access to it no more.

Well, here it is again in God’s renewed earth… and there is full and free access to the tree of life.

There’s no longer any curse… In other words… there’s no longer any sin, destruction, depravity, or death.

Everything that has happened as a result of Genesis 3 has been purged and cleansed.

The stain of sin is gone.

Verse 5… they will reign for ever and ever… showing the finality of God’s redemption for His people.

That God’s redemption, once done, will never be undone.

So this is the conclusion of the big picture.

This is the fulfillment.

This is the final consummation of God’s plan of redemption that we need to align our ideas, beliefs, and lives with.

This idea that the curse will one day be removed completely… that God, in a final act of creation, will renew all things.

That’s God’s future… that’s our future… that’s the future that is true for everybody who will follow Jesus Christ.

This is the NOT YET that we look forward to during the Advent season.

Now… Anytime we talk about the NOT YET of Scripture… what’s awaiting us, there is always a lot of misconceptions… a lot of pop culture that has made it’s way into beliefs… and there’s always a lot of questions.

So, I want to spend just a few minutes going over the big ones that people believe the most.

The first one is how and when?

For heavens to betsy, people have been talking about the how and the when for a long, long time.

When I was a boy I read a book called 88 reasons Jesus will return in 1988… I don’t recommend reading that one.

In 1970, Hal Lindsey wrote a book called “Late Great Planet Earth”… which has been edited 3 or 4 times now because certain predictions didn’t really work out, so they changed a few things before re-publishing it…

You ready for the answer to this million dollar question of how & when?

I don’t know for sure.

I’ll make one technical statement for anyone that is interested in studying eschatology, and I’ll leave it at this. 20 years ago, I abandoned the Pre-Millennial belief and became an Amillennial.

When it comes to end times, pretty much all the systems we have out there have holes in them.