Getting Ready
Advent 2020 • Sermon • Submitted
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This is the start of the Christmas season. We have our tree here, but we don’t have the lights or ornaments on yet. They will be coming. We will have the tree ready for Christmas.
That is the familiar theme during the advent season. We “count down” the days to Christmas. Maybe we have a daily advent calendar, or we light the wreath and count down the weeks till Christmas. We are preparing for the big day.
While we are getting ready of the big day, with everything else, we also tend to have a spiritual box over here, And say things like let’s not forget about the true meaning of Christmas, and we struggle to make time, to read our Bible. We are trying to prepare our hearts.
Let’s be honest here. We say prepare our hearts for Christmas but what does that really mean. It sounds kind of nebulous. For instance, What are we preparing for exactly? Church on Christmas Eve? Is tat it? Well what if you are sick, or you are working, or what if there is a pandemic, and you don’t even know if there will be Church on Christmas Eve. What are you preparing for then?
Is it for the birth of Jesus? Well that is not right either Jesus was born already, he already lived died and rose again? So that is not it either.
And how do we prepare our heart? What does that mean. Do we sort of enter into things like a monk, and live simply and quietly for the next month, lighting candles and fasting, and confessing. I don’t ike that is it either.
Let us try and put some solid ideas to this preparing our hearts thing.
When we look at Christmas, it is a celebration to remind us that God came to us. God took on flesh. Jesus was born fully man and fully God, so that he could save man from the power of sin, and death.
That is what Christmas is, a celebration of the coming of Jesus. When we celebrate that event that occured in the past, we are reminded and we look ahead to Jesus coming again. We are looking forward to the day we will be with Jesus.
Living as a Christian means we look back and have faith in the past events of God in history, like the cross, and living our life going forward in the hope of the day when we will be with Jesus.
Much of our life is spent then preparing for the day when we meet Jesus, either when he returns, or when when we die. SO we want to prepare for that day.
There was a really old song, from my grandparents day, that went if I knew you were coming I would have baked a cake. When we know someone is coming we want to prepare for them, We want to greet them, lovingly and with joy and expectation.
When we have faith in Jesus, when we repent of our sins and trust in His finished work at the cross, the rest of our Christina is preparing for the day we will be present with Him. We are lloking forward and begining our new life now, things of the old like, those negative, sinful things, are leaving us, and we are lving a new life of joy, and love and peace.
SInce we do not know the day or the hour, we tend to forget what we are preapring for, we tend to get caught up in this world, in its sin and we tend to drift backward, toward who we were and who the world is.
SO at Christmas we are reminded Jesus is coming, and we should start to prepare. We want to great Jesus ready, and not with things left undone. We do not want to reach the end of our days surprised at Jesus’s return regretting not sharing Christ with someone, or living a life that does not give glory to Jesus.
I am convinced that the more you know who God is, and what he has done, the more you will fall in love in with Jesus. To know what God has done and who He is, we turn to the Bible. We read about the things God has done in history and we learn who he is, the best way to prepare to meet Him, is to know Him. So, let’s turn to our advent readings for today.
The first one is from the Old testament book of Isiah
Isaiah 63:16-17, and Is 64:1-8,
As I read these pay attention to how we can look forward to the coming of Jesus
16 But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.
17 Why, Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance.
1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!
2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins.
8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
This passage talks about our sins, it talks about how we have turned away from God, but in verse 4 we see a turn,
4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
Even though all of us are sinners, even though even our righteous acts are like filthy rags we read this.
8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
The our New testament reading is from the Book of Mark. Mark 13, 32 through 37.
These words are from Jesus, It is the last week of Jesus’s life, and Jesus and disciples are leaving the temple, and Jesus is teaching. This is from the very end of a section called the Mt. Olivet discourse. and Jesus says this
32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.
34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.
36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping.
37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’ ”
Jesus says what i say to you, I say to everyone-Watch. Advent is the season where we watch, we watch for the coming of Jesus, we prepare for the coming Jesus, Jesus says do not let Him find you sleeping.
What does that mean to watch, to not let Him find you sleeping- to be ready.
When i was kid I remember my Father would give me some chores to do. I was supposed to mow the lawn. Now, I lived toward the end of a long street. I could see the whole length of the street from the from yard,. I could see my father coming from a long waty down the street, I did’t get the lawn mowed, or if I was up to other mischief, I could see Him coming, and I would regret it, and there would be fear, because I was going to get in trouble.
That is what it can be like for some people, in fear they do not want to be “caught” doing or not doing something. I don’t want you think of the coming of Christ in that way. Instead there is a better way.
Remeber In Isaiah 63 and 64 we hear about God our father, and He is the potter and we are the clay.
I remeber a time when my friends and I were builindg a go-cart oin the garage. We had worked on it all day, My father kneww we were working on that go-cart.
WHen the time got near for him to be off work, my friends and I gather on the driveway, I excitedly told them, man wait till muy Dad gets here, we can show Him what we did, and he will help us, he will work on it with us, and my friends and I gathered and watched the street, We waited in anticipation knowing that soon my dad would be there, and he would help his it was grwat
See God knows the sinful things we do, He knows how we have rejected,a nd He sent in the flesh. Fullly God and Fuly man, to live the life we could not live, and die in our place, to bring us into a relatio ship with Him, SO that God would be our father, and that we anxiously and with hope wait, for His coming.
Take some time this advent to read about our God from His word. I will send out reading for the week in an email.
Now let us turn to Psalm, 24. ANd we will close in scripture prayer.
If you are not familiar with scripture rprayer, i will read some verses from Psalm 24 , and pray using the word of God as a strating point for prayer,.
Of David. A psalm.
1 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.
3 Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?
4 The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.
5 They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Savior.
6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, God of Jacob.,
7 Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
8 Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
9 Lift up your heads, you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
10 Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty— he is the King of glory.