Good morning everybody. Happy Sunday. Welcome to The Edge Church online. My name is Steven Van Denend and I’m one of the pastors here. So glad to have you joining with us today on this first Sunday of Advent. Now, for those of you who may not be too familiar with Advent and what it’s all about, let me just share a little bit about it.
Advent is the four-week season leading up to Christmas that churches around the world have been celebrating now for some 1,800 years. That word advent actually means “coming” or “arrival.” Advent is a time where we –– as the church, as the people of God –– celebrate, not just an event that happened 2,000 years ago with the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but we also celebrate that Christ has come and is present and is at work even now and that he will return again — not again as a baby in a manger, but as the ruling and reigning eternal King of heaven and earth.
So Advent is a time where we not only look back to see what God has done and how God has moved but we also look forward with expectation to what God is doing in what he has yet in store for us. Advent is an opportunity for us, in a season that’s often filled with a lot of busyness and distraction and preparations, to simply just take some time and to settle our hearts and to set our hearts and our minds on the true meaning and gift of Christmas — Jesus.
Now, over here we have one of the traditional symbols of the Advent season –– the Advent wreath and candles. The evergreen for the wreath is a symbol of life, of everlasting life in the midst of winter and death as the evergreen remains colorful and alive. The circle serves to remind us of the unending love and life that we have in God. The Advent candles are a reminder that Jesus came as the light of the world to bring light to our darkness. Then each week one of the candles is lit. Each one represents something different. Today, we light this first Advent candle.
This is a candle which is often referred to as the Prophet’s Candle. This is a candle that serves to remind us of how the Old Testament prophets waited with expectation for the coming Messiah. It is to be a symbol of hope for us as we also wait with hopeful expectation for Christ’s return.
This morning now, I have the great privilege of kicking-off our Advent Series that we’re calling Thy Kingdom Come where over the next four weeks we are going to simply look together at God’s word and the incredible Christmas story of Jesus, the son of God and King of heaven who came for us. As always at the end of every message, I’ll leave you with some questions to help you reflect upon what you’ve heard today; for you to take some time to either journal or to talk about with those gathered in your home or your house church gathering.
Finally, one more thing that we’re going to invite you into this Advent season and we’re calling it our Advent Action. Really this is just an opportunity for all of us, as the family of God, to practically and tangibly share the love and goodness of God with others this holiday season; to help us put our faith in action and not simply be hearers of the word but doers, who reflect the love and generosity of our father in heaven. We’ll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the message, but I want to just pray for us and then we’ll jump into our message together today.
Let’s pray:
Father, we just come before you this morning in the name of your son, Jesus. God, I thank you for this time. God, I thank you for every person who’s joined with us today and every person who will hear this sometime later. God, I pray that as we open your word, Father, that you would speak. God, that you would minister to every single heart. God, thank you that it’s no mistake, it’s no accident, God, that we’re tuned in right now. That God, you have something to speak to us. God, you have something that’s for our lives, to transform and change us. And God, I pray that each one of us would grab hold of what that is today. God have your way in our hearts. God have your way in this word. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
When we open up God’s word and we come to the Christmas story, one of the things that is revealed to us about God is that he is a deliverer. That he is the one who saves us from death and despair and destruction. To say that God is a deliverer is to say that he is a liberator, that he is a defender, that he’s a hero and a savior. In fact, this is exactly what the angel of the Lord says to Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, before he was even born.
If you remember the story, Joseph finds out that the woman he is engaged to marry is pregnant and that he is not the father and so, in light of this information, he considers calling off the marriage and cutting ties with Mary. Only, he looks to do it quietly because Joseph’s an honorable man and he doesn't want to shame her publicly. But at the same time, he doesn’t think that he can continue and go on with the marriage and then this thing happens to him in Matthew 1: 20-21. Listen to this, it says:
20 But after he [being Joseph] had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save [or deliver] his people from their sins” (NIV).
One of the great declarations of the Christmas story and season is that God the deliverer is coming and indeed has come. In fact, this picture of God as a deliverer is a constant throughout the scriptures. The Bible is filled with something theologians call typology, where God shows us who he is and what he’s like; where he reveals to us his nature and his character and his ways through the characters and the stories that we read in scripture and where there is this foreshadowing in them of things yet to come. One of the great examples of this in the Old Testament is the story of God delivering his people, Israel, out of slavery and bondage in Egypt.
We find this story in the book of Exodus. And if it’s a story that you’re not familiar with, let me just set the stage for you here. God’s chosen people, Israel are dwelling in the land of Egypt, not first as slaves, but because God had rescued them from a terrible drought that had plagued their land, through one of their own, a man named Joseph, who God sovereignly protected and advanced through the ranks of the Egyptian ruling class, so that Israel would be saved. But after hundreds of years of living in the land, this happens to Israel in Exodus 1, starting in verse 8, it tells us, it says:
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves (Exodus 1:8-14, ESV).
Now, something important for us to be reminded of here is that difficulty and hardship and pain should not come as a surprise for us. God does not promise us a life that is free of pain and suffering. It is part of the human experience that no one is immune from, as we live in a broken and fallen and sin-stained world. Here we have the people of God –– called by God, loved by God –– and yet the scripture tells us that they are being dealt with shrewdly; that they’re being taken advantage of, that they’re being treated harshly. It says that they are afflicted with heavy burdens, that they’re being oppressed and afflicted.
Maybe this resonates with your heart and is a place you find yourself in today. Maybe you feel like you have been dealt with in hurtful ways, that you’ve been under a heavy burden, that you’ve been treated harshly or taken advantage of, oppressed and afflicted. Perhaps like the Israelites you’ve even wondered if you’ve been abandoned by God. “God, where are you? Do you see what’s happening? Do you see what I’m going through? God, do you even care?”
Listen to what happens as the story continues in Exodus 2:23-25. It says this:
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel — and God knew (ESV).
Now, this is a profound little text for us with a whole lot to teach us about who God is and what he’s like. But I want to point out and highlight just three things for you this morning that I believe are so important for you to know and to hold onto, in not only this season, but your whole life. And here’s the first one: God knows.
It says at the end of the passage, that God knew. God knows. Regardless of what you’re going through now, whatever you’re dealing with, whatever the struggle or hardship or hurt or pain, God knows. God knows you even better than you do and he’s no stranger to where you are. He’s not ignorant of what’s going on in your heart and your mind and your soul or your body, in your relationships, in your life. He’s not surprised. He’s not shocked. He isn’t afraid or worried or wondering what to do about it. You are not unknown and you are not unseen. God sees you and God knows.
Here’s the second truth to grab hold of from this: God hears. It says that the people of God, they cried out for help and that their cry went up to God and it says that God heard their groaning. God hears you. God hears you.
Okay, it doesn’t matter how old or young you are. It doesn’t matter how spiritually mature you are or not. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you think you are.
Regardless of the words that you use and how Christian or not they sound, God hears you when you call to him. So often in our most difficult seasons, especially the ones that seem to linger, the ones that we just can’t seem to get past, it feels like oftentimes our prayers are going nowhere, that our prayers are just falling on deaf ears but the truth is that God hears. God hears.
And not only does God know you and see you, and not only does he hear you, but here’s the third thing I want you to grab hold of this morning. The third truth: God intervenes. God intervenes. God responds. When it says here that God remembered the promise that he made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it isn’t saying that God had forgotten and needed to be reminded of his promise. It’s saying that now was God’s time to make good on his word.
When it comes to your life and your struggle and your situation, God not only knows what’s going on, and God not only hears you when you call to him, but he also knows what to do about it and he knows when to do it. See, just because you might think that it’s time for something to happen, doesn’t mean that it’s God’s time to move, but because perhaps there is something in the midst of your struggle that God has for you to learn, that God is using to grow you or move you or change you or to show and minister to someone else through you and your struggle.
So what is it that God then does here? God intervenes through a man named Moses that he uses to deliver his people from their bondage. Now, just a quick note here, God’s answer to your prayer will often come in the form of other people that God has sent and placed in your life to help you, to encourage you, to challenge you, to minister to you, and to remind you of who God is and who he says that you are in him. So that’s something to pay attention to, not only for your own life but also for how God might be wanting to work through you to be his answer to someone else’s prayer.
Back to Moses, though: if you remember that story, you remember that God shows up to Moses in this burning bush and he tells him to go to the Pharaoh, the most powerful person in the land and tell him that the one true God says, let my people go. To prove it God, through his servant, Moses brings about all kinds of plagues upon Egypt. He turns water into blood and then, after that frogs show up everywhere, then flies come and they start killing off all the livestock. Then the Egyptians, they break out in boils all over their bodies. Then hail starts to fall and just starts destroying things. Then a swarm of locusts comes in and eats up all the vegetation. Then darkness comes and it covers the skies for days.
Then the final plague comes, known as the Passover, where the angel of death came to take every firstborn son in Egypt with the exception of those who had sprinkled the blood of a spotless lamb across the doorpost of their home. For those, the angel of death would pass over or pass by and their children would live. It was after this that the Pharaoh finally relented and released God’s people. However, when they were on their way, he had a change of heart even then and in his anger gathered together an army to pursue them and bring them back. But this time God supernaturally opens up the Red Sea. He parts the sea so that his people could walk through to the other side on dry ground. But when the army of the Egyptians entered that place, the water fell upon them and it swallowed them up and swept them all away. God intervened. God showed up. God was their defender and liberator and savior because God is a deliverer.
Now, maybe you’re thinking, well that’s a really great story Pastor, but in my life and in my world, in my brokenness that I’m walking in and the hurt and frustration and the anger and depression and anxiety and my suffering, this divine, miraculous intervention is nowhere to be found. There’s no water turned to blood or parting of the Red Sea in my life. It just seems like plague-upon-plague for me. If that’s you today, then grab ahold of this truth of God for you, from his word: God knows and God sees you and God hears you and God intervenes at exactly the right time.
In fact, God is at work even now because you’re here. You’re tuned in to this message right now, and that’s not by accident. God knew that you would be here listening to this word, right now today. God planned that you would be, so that you could hear and receive his word to you, so that you could be encouraged by it and so that he could minister to you by his spirit and love you right where you are.
Perhaps you’ve been so busy looking for some kind of grand parting of the waters in your life and you’re missing out on what God has for you in this season, in the trials that you face and in seeing all the little miracles that God has been orchestrating that are in front of you, even now. God is a deliverer.
In our Exodus story, we get a picture of this, of just how good God is but it’s just a shadow that is meant to point us forward to the greatest miracle of all that is available to every single one of us in Jesus. Because while Moses delivered God’s people from physical bondage and slavery and captivity, Jesus comes to deliver all of humanity, including you and me, from more than just the difficulties of our life, but to save us from the root cause of all of life’s devastations and difficulties and plagues that separate us from God and the life that we’re meant to have in him and that is our sin.
Remember the Christmas story in the words of the angel to Joseph, who said to him that she is going to give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save — he will deliver his people from their sins.
The good news of Advent and of Christmas is that Jesus has come. The deliverer has come and he has already made a way for us, by giving up his life to death on a cross for the sin of the whole world, for all of your sin, all of mine and after three days, being raised from death to life in victory over sin and death, and its bondage in our lives. He has made the way for all who would turn away from sin and put their hope and their trust in him, who would surrender their own will and way to his will and way, for those to experience the true freedom of his grace and forgiveness, to receive his Holy Spirit, to guide and empower you through all life’s journeys and to be restored to relationship with God, knowing him, encountering him and walking with him today and forever and eternity.
God knows you, God sees you, God hears you and God intervenes. God is at work, even now. How will you choose to respond to him today?
I want to just close our time together this morning with just a few questions for you and then an action step to take. Three simple questions for you to just reflect upon, to help you process, maybe to journal, to talk about with those in your home or at your house church gathering. Three questions.
Here’s the first question. What is your biggest takeaway from the message today? What is the one thing that resonates most in your heart?
Here’s the second question: How have you experienced God’s deliverance? How have you seen God show up in your life? Maybe if that’s a tough question for you or even if you answer that one, maybe this question applies more to you. Is there something in your life today that you’re asking God to intervene in and deliver you from? Is there something going on in your life where you say, “I need God to move in this.” What is that for you?
Here’s the third question. What is one practical thing that you can do to help you keep your focus on Jesus and your hands open to whatever he might want to do through you in this Advent season?
Now, that leads me into our Advent action that I was telling you about at the beginning of my message and here’s what I want to invite you into. I want to just ask that you pray and consider: Who in your life is really going through a challenging time right now? Maybe that’s a family member, maybe a friend, maybe that's a coworker or a neighbor or a brother or sister in the Lord, but who in your life is just going through it? My guess is that there’s probably a number of people as we have been walking through this pandemic, but who is it that comes to mind for you? And here’s what I want to ask of you, to consider what it is that you could do this week. What is one thing that you could do this week to encourage them and bless them and let them know that God sees them and he loves them and you do, too?
I want to pray and then we’ll close our time together. Would you join with me?
Father, thank you this morning for your word. God, thank you for just being present, for being with us. God, thank you for being our deliverer. God, I pray that every single person, God, would know your salvation. Holy Spirit, that you would minister in every single heart. God, for those who are just going through it right now, God, for those who are feeling alone, for those who are just feeling hurt and wounded, God, I pray that they would grab ahold of this truth. That God, you know them, you see them, God, that you hear them as they cry out to you and God you are at work in the midst of their situation. God, not only to move in that God, but to change them. God, I pray that all of us would have eyes to see you, God and what you’re doing in this season and God that you would give us eyes to see those around us and how we might bless and encourage them. God, how we might serve as a conduit, God, of your love and your goodness. God to let them know that you see them too, and that you love them. Lord, have your way in us. God, I pray for our house churches and those gathered in homes right now. Lord, I pray that conversations would be fruitful, that God, we could encourage and bless and minister to one another. God have your way in us. God, thank you for this Advent season. I pray that our focus would remain on you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well go ahead and take a little time and dig into those questions. Or if you want, in just a couple of minutes we are going to respond and close our service with a song of worship together. God bless you. Have a great week.