WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:05.219 Friends, I am so glad that we're here and that we didn't have to miss a Sunday due to weather 00:00:05.219 --> 00:00:13.519 ! Because I love Advent. As much as I love and am excited about Christmas, man, I love the season of Advent. 00:00:14.599 --> 00:00:20.440 And there are a lot of reasons for that. One of the main reasons I love the season of Advent is because, like it or not, 00:00:20.440 --> 00:00:29.760 life is full of unanswered questions and unmet longings and unfulfilled, 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:37.920 expectations. And what do you do with those things in your life? If you look around the secular culture 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:46.620 this time of year, there is an invitation to plunge into materialism, to plunge into consumerism, 00:00:47.519 --> 00:00:54.900 to binge watch Hallmark movies. I'm not knocking if you like. I mean, we may talk about it later, 00:00:54.899 --> 00:01:01.679 but I'm not knocking you too hard. But the point is that the invitation in our broader culture is one 00:01:01.679 --> 00:01:09.359 of escape and avoidance. We're given an array of ways to numb, to detach, to disconnect, and to escape, 00:01:09.459 --> 00:01:15.799 and to essentially minimize or altogether ignore these unmet longings and unfulfilled expectations. 00:01:16.439 --> 00:01:22.099 And Advent does the exact opposite. Instead of avoidance and denial, the season of Advent 00:01:22.099 --> 00:01:31.079 intentionally carves out space for our struggles and for our hardships. And there's an invitation 00:01:31.079 --> 00:01:38.840 in the season of Advent to see these not as things to be avoided, but as avenues into the presence of 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:46.419 God, as avenues and ways through which we experience the renewal of God. And so that's what we're going 00:01:46.420 --> 00:01:55.700 to talk about this morning, how Advent and the foregrounding of our longings and struggles is 00:01:55.700 --> 00:02:01.400 actually a way into the presence of God and a way to experience His renewal. And all of the 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:07.200 lectionary readings speak to this. I had a really hard time choosing which lectionary reading to focus 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:12.900 in on, so we're just going to do them all. And we're going to do it under three headers, the promise of 00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:19.000 renewal, the paradox of renewal, and then how to live in the tension. So let's pray. Our Lord, 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:26.360 Heavenly Father, thank You for being the kind of God who doesn't give us simple ways of escape, 00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:33.099 but rather You go to the core, You go to the heart. And Lord, it is in those desolate places, 00:02:33.219 --> 00:02:40.020 in those struggles where You are most likely to be found. And so, Lord, we pray that as we open Your Word, 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:45.180 that Your Holy Spirit would guide us, illuminate Your Word, and that You would speak to us in the 00:02:45.180 --> 00:02:50.700 ways that we desperately need to hear from You this morning. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:55.520 So first of all, I want to look at the promise of renewal. And for this, we're going to primarily 00:02:55.520 --> 00:03:00.379 be looking at Isaiah chapter 35. You'll notice this week all the lessons are printed in your 00:03:00.379 --> 00:03:04.620 bulletin. So if you don't have your Bible, beginning on page 8 of your bulletin, you'll see all the lessons 00:03:04.620 --> 00:03:12.200 printed in order. But the simple truth of the matter is that when we think about the Christian faith, 00:03:12.780 --> 00:03:19.379 the entire Christian faith is built around God's promise of renewal. The entire Christian faith is 00:03:19.379 --> 00:03:25.500 built around God's promise of renewal. And the prophet Isaiah talks about this in chapter 35. 00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:33.780 Isaiah 35 is a poem about pilgrims who are on a journey, and they are wandering in the wilderness, 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:40.879 and they're trying desperately to find their way home. And in one sense, this is the story of 00:03:40.879 --> 00:03:45.879 Israel in the Old Testament. This is what we read about in the Old Testament. The Israel, 00:03:46.039 --> 00:03:51.979 they are pilgrims, and they're trying to find their way home. But each time they get to the place that 00:03:51.979 --> 00:03:56.560 they think is going to be their home, it never lasts. It turns out it's not actually the home they 00:03:56.560 --> 00:04:02.599 were looking for. So they're in Egypt, and then they're in Babylon, and then they're under Roman 00:04:02.599 --> 00:04:08.239 occupation again and again and again. They find themselves captured and enslaved and in exile, 00:04:08.500 --> 00:04:15.240 and they never seem to be able to get home. And by home, we mean a place where they can root down 00:04:15.240 --> 00:04:22.480 and belong and live in lasting peace. But what we understand if we zoom out and look at the whole 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:29.459 story of the Bible is that the story of Israel is really the story of the whole world. It's our story. 00:04:29.459 --> 00:04:36.399 Because the Bible overall says that we are spiritually homeless, that we are strangers, 00:04:36.879 --> 00:04:42.240 that we are exiles in the world, that we are pilgrims trying to find our way home. 00:04:43.299 --> 00:04:51.039 And most people, I think, most people, even non-religious people, know this instinctively 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:56.200 because we experience our spiritual homelessness in our daily lives. 00:04:58.200 --> 00:05:07.660 This is the reason why, no matter how good your marriage is, that person is somehow never able 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:15.780 to fully satisfy your longing to be fully known and fully loved. It's why sometimes, 00:05:15.779 --> 00:05:21.939 even in the best marriage, you can still feel lonely or alienated. It's the reason why, 00:05:22.019 --> 00:05:26.739 no matter how far you advance in your career and how much you give to it, you rarely, if ever, 00:05:26.799 --> 00:05:31.419 feel like you've arrived. And when you do feel like you've arrived, it's not what you thought it was 00:05:31.419 --> 00:05:37.059 going to be. And you realize it was a false peak, and there's another horizon to aim at, 00:05:37.119 --> 00:05:44.219 another peak further up the trail. It's the reason why, no matter how great your Christmas is this year, 00:05:44.220 --> 00:05:50.500 no matter how many fun things you plan and how many fun movies you watch and how good the food is, 00:05:50.680 --> 00:05:55.340 no matter how great your Christmas is, there may be, for many of us, this nagging sense 00:05:55.340 --> 00:06:02.320 that something is missing. And a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that's nostalgia. 00:06:03.340 --> 00:06:09.080 And you think, at some point in the past, Christmas was really great, and if we could just recapture 00:06:09.079 --> 00:06:14.659 some of that or maybe even go back in time, then it would all be there. But I guarantee you, 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:18.839 if we invented a time machine and you could go back to those moments you think had it all, 00:06:18.919 --> 00:06:27.219 they didn't have it all. That's misplaced. It's not nostalgia. What we're really longing for in those 00:06:27.219 --> 00:06:31.019 moments of longing is we're actually longing for something that we've never actually experienced. 00:06:31.979 --> 00:06:36.240 We're longing for something that we were created for, but we've never actually experienced it. 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:45.620 It's just this deep, ancient memory in us that says, some point long ago in our collective history, 00:06:45.879 --> 00:06:51.280 we did know what home was like. But we've been wandering ever since, and all of us were born 00:06:51.280 --> 00:06:57.400 into a life of searching for that home, a place where we can be fully known, fully loved, 00:06:57.480 --> 00:07:03.360 where we can find satisfaction and wholeness. And the Bible says the reason that we are spiritually 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:10.060 homeless is because God is our home. All human beings were created to live with and serve God, 00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:16.980 but because we've rejected Him, the world has become like a wilderness. Because human beings want to live 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:22.420 however we want, the world has become a desolate place. That's what it's like when human beings try to 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:28.600 be our own gods. And so, as a result, when we look around the world as it is now, we see poverty and racism 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:34.900 and injustice and oppression, symptoms of spiritual homelessness. Sickness, aging, decay, death, 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:40.760 symptoms of spiritual homelessness. So, the Bible says that God is our home, and life apart from Him 00:07:40.760 --> 00:07:49.480 is destructive and dehumanizing and ultimately terminal. All of that is the backdrop to Isaiah chapter 35, 00:07:49.480 --> 00:07:55.420 because as we look in Isaiah 35 and we see what happens, these pilgrims are making their way 00:07:55.420 --> 00:08:02.000 through the wilderness and their surroundings begin to transform. And the desert begins to change 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:09.319 before their very eyes. It becomes like Lebanon and Carmel and Sharon. In other words, the dry, 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:16.080 inhospitable wilderness turns into the most fertile, abundant, and beautiful place imaginable. 00:08:16.079 --> 00:08:24.699 And then it says that God Himself comes, and He brings renewal. He brings comprehensive renewal, 00:08:24.699 --> 00:08:32.340 and we see all of these reversals happening. So, we see social and cultural renewal. He's coming 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:37.779 to right all of the wrongs committed against His people. He's coming with vengeance and judgment. 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:45.620 He's coming to transform places that used to be full of danger and death into bubbling springs and 00:08:45.620 --> 00:08:52.100 flourishing gardens. He's coming to bring physical and spiritual renewal. It says that as the Lord 00:08:52.100 --> 00:08:57.600 comes, the blind are given sight, the deaf can hear, the lame can walk, the mute can sing. This is not 00:08:57.600 --> 00:09:04.460 just physical healing, but spiritual healing. And then the pilgrims come to a highway, verses 8 through 10, 00:09:04.460 --> 00:09:09.440 and this highway finally brings them home. And it says they come streaming into Zion, 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:13.680 and they're singing, and they're full of joy into the very presence of God. 00:09:13.679 --> 00:09:22.439 And if you read this closely, you realize this is not about these pilgrims finally figuring out the path 00:09:22.439 --> 00:09:30.500 home. This is not about them finding their way home. This is a poem about home coming to the pilgrims. 00:09:31.779 --> 00:09:38.639 They're in the wilderness, and all of a sudden, home comes to them. The wilderness is transformed into 00:09:38.639 --> 00:09:43.600 their home. God comes to them, and He transforms them, and He transforms the world around them, 00:09:43.740 --> 00:09:51.259 and then He raises up a highway and brings them into His presence. Right? So, this promise of renewal, 00:09:51.939 --> 00:09:59.759 of a home coming, and by that I mean home coming to us, this promise has animated God's people for 00:09:59.759 --> 00:10:05.740 centuries. It was a source of hope, a source of identity that they clung to even in the worst of times. 00:10:05.740 --> 00:10:13.139 One day, God's going to come and put all things right. That was their hope. But here's what we 00:10:13.139 --> 00:10:19.779 need to see. When that renewal finally came, when that home coming finally happened, it defied everyone's 00:10:19.779 --> 00:10:28.480 expectations of what it would be like, including a man named John. And that brings us to the paradox of 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:36.039 renewal and the story of John the Baptist. The first time we meet John, he's still in his mother's womb, 00:10:36.879 --> 00:10:44.399 not long before the first Christmas. And Luke chapter 1 says, even in the womb, he was already 00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:50.960 filled with the Holy Spirit. This is, to quote Jesus, the greatest of the prophets. 00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:58.240 When Mary is pregnant with Jesus and she visits Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is pregnant with John, it says John 00:10:58.240 --> 00:11:05.660 leaps in the womb. He's filled with the Spirit, and he instinctively senses this renewal is coming near. 00:11:05.920 --> 00:11:11.180 The thing that we've been waiting for is about to happen. And then as John grows up, he becomes this mighty 00:11:11.180 --> 00:11:18.820 prophet, and he draws followers from all around. And at one point, Jesus comes to him to be baptized. 00:11:18.820 --> 00:11:26.860 And John sees the Holy Spirit descend like a dove, and that confirms to John that Jesus is, in fact, 00:11:26.920 --> 00:11:34.220 the Messiah, the bringer of God's renewal. And so John is out there preaching and calling people to 00:11:34.220 --> 00:11:38.800 repent. He's saying, renewal has finally come. The thing that we've been waiting for is happening. 00:11:39.180 --> 00:11:44.400 God is going to purify and restore Israel, and he's going to put the world right again. It's finally 00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:53.459 happening. But in our gospel reading, Matthew chapter 11, what do we find? 00:11:56.279 --> 00:12:04.740 John's sitting in prison, awaiting his execution. The local ruler, Herod Antipas, had seduced his 00:12:04.740 --> 00:12:11.299 brother's wife, and then he left his wife and married his brother's wife. And John had the courage to speak 00:12:11.299 --> 00:12:17.919 truth to power. He publicly rebuked Herod for something that everybody knew was a notorious sin. 00:12:19.859 --> 00:12:26.740 Herod responds by throwing John in prison. And we can only imagine what John must have been thinking 00:12:26.740 --> 00:12:33.719 as they closed the cell door behind him and clicked it shut. John's thinking, I got nothing to worry about. 00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:42.279 Any minute, Jesus is going to show up. He's going to rip the door off by its hinges. And he's going to 00:12:42.279 --> 00:12:47.820 set me free. And then Jesus is going to bring justice toward all the corrupt leaders, including 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:55.620 people like Herod. And I'm going to be right by his side. And it's all going down. But then a day passes, 00:12:55.620 --> 00:13:02.639 and another day passes, and a week passes, and time passes, and Jesus doesn't come. 00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:10.799 And the longer John sits in prison, the more disillusioned he becomes. You know, he's hearing 00:13:10.799 --> 00:13:14.639 all these things. Jesus is out there. He's doing all these good things. He's healing people. He's, 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:20.000 you know, he's changing lives and making a difference. But John's sitting there, he's thinking, 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:26.240 but where's the justice? Where's the revolution? Where's the axe being laid to the root of the tree? 00:13:26.379 --> 00:13:33.519 That's what I've been waiting for. You can imagine the things that must have been going through John's 00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:41.940 mind. I did exactly what God asked me to do, so why am I still in prison? The Messiah is here. The true 00:13:41.940 --> 00:13:47.480 king of the world has come. Why is Herod still on the throne? A notorious sinner. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:14:01.080 So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus, are you the one who's to come? Or should we look for 00:14:01.080 --> 00:14:07.179 someone else? I think if we're honest, probably some of us know how John feels. 00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:14.080 You know, some people I know, you know, maybe you remained sexually faithful all your life. You saved 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:18.700 yourself for marriage. But despite all your prayers and efforts, that marriage never came. 00:14:18.700 --> 00:14:26.940 Or maybe you hoped the church would be a refuge from the world, but instead you encountered conflict 00:14:26.940 --> 00:14:33.980 and disappointment, just like anywhere else. Or maybe you followed Jesus faithfully at work, 00:14:34.020 --> 00:14:40.980 and you made costly ethical choices out of your desire to be faithful, but instead of being rewarded, 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:49.940 you were passed over, you were quietly pushed aside. Or maybe you did the right thing in a relationship. 00:14:50.180 --> 00:14:56.960 You know, you did the hard thing. You told the truth. You acted with integrity. You tried to be a true 00:14:56.960 --> 00:15:01.759 friend, but no one recognized it, and you ended up being painted as the bad guy. 00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:10.460 The real question that John is asking, the question behind the question is this. 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:21.039 Have I made a huge mistake by following Jesus? With all the things that I've given up and all the 00:15:21.039 --> 00:15:28.759 things that I've sacrificed, have I made a huge mistake? Look at how Jesus responds. 00:15:28.759 --> 00:15:39.519 Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk. Those who 00:15:39.519 --> 00:15:44.980 have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the 00:15:44.980 --> 00:15:49.319 poor. He's quoting, among others, Isaiah chapter 35. And what's he saying? 00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:59.520 The prophecies about the Messiah are being fulfilled right now. The kingdom of God is here right now. 00:15:59.860 --> 00:16:05.720 God has come in human form, and renewal has begun. And so, how do we make sense of this? 00:16:07.540 --> 00:16:13.900 Well, as Christians have wrestled to make sense of this, there's a term that theologians have come to 00:16:13.899 --> 00:16:21.819 use, and that term is the already but not yet. And that is a paradox. It grammatically really does not 00:16:21.819 --> 00:16:30.240 make a whole lot of sense. In other words, God's kingdom has already begun. It has already come. 00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:36.419 And that work of renewal began through the life and the death and the resurrection and the reign of 00:16:36.419 --> 00:16:43.719 Jesus. And so, in the time of Jesus and after, we see prophecies like Isaiah 35 being fulfilled. 00:16:45.039 --> 00:16:51.899 And because of Jesus' coming, physical and spiritual and social and cultural renewal are now possible. 00:16:53.019 --> 00:16:59.319 The Holy Spirit is ministering in the world as we speak. And yet, at the same time, 00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:10.320 as it has already happened, God's kingdom has not yet been fully established on earth as it is in heaven. 00:17:11.059 --> 00:17:16.100 So, Jesus sits on the throne of heaven, but His rule is still contested. 00:17:17.259 --> 00:17:23.559 So, now we live in this space where there is forgiveness for sin available to all who ask, 00:17:23.559 --> 00:17:31.759 but the power and the temptation of sin remain. The work of justice is ongoing, and some of you do that 00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:38.779 work, but there's still so much injustice in the world. The Holy Spirit has filled God's people, 00:17:38.940 --> 00:17:46.299 but life is still full of hardship and struggle. The church has been established as the body of Christ 00:17:46.299 --> 00:17:52.379 Christ on earth, but we still struggle with conflict and seemingly endless division. 00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:01.159 One day, Jesus will come again, and all tears will be wiped away, and He will heal the world and 00:18:01.159 --> 00:18:07.180 establish His kingdom on earth. But until that day comes, we have to figure out how do we live in the 00:18:07.180 --> 00:18:14.559 already but not yet? How do we live in the tension? And this is why Jesus says in verse 6, 00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:21.899 and this is very important, and blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. 00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:33.700 What's He really saying? Blessed are those who don't give up and turn away when the kingdom does not 00:18:33.700 --> 00:18:41.779 match their expectations or when Jesus does not match their expectations. Blessed are those who don't 00:18:41.779 --> 00:18:49.039 give up and turn away when God's work of renewal doesn't look like what we thought it would look 00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:56.779 like. So, there's this paradox within God's renewal. In some ways, it has already begun to be fulfilled 00:18:56.779 --> 00:19:01.839 with the coming of Christ, but in other ways, it has yet to be fulfilled. How do we live in the time 00:19:01.839 --> 00:19:08.319 between in this tension? How do we wait well? And that's really the question at the heart of the 00:19:08.319 --> 00:19:15.119 season of Advent. How do we wait well and live in that tension? And to answer this question, 00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:21.740 we turn our attention to the New Testament reading in James chapter 5, because this is exactly the 00:19:21.740 --> 00:19:28.559 question that James is seeking to answer in this part of his letter. He says, be patient then, 00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:34.639 brothers and sisters. And everything he says after this tells us how to be patient. Be patient then, 00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:41.020 brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming, until God finally comes and finishes what began 00:19:41.020 --> 00:19:47.620 with the incarnation on that first Christmas. And then he gives us an image. See how the farmer waits 00:19:47.620 --> 00:19:52.980 for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 00:19:54.580 --> 00:20:00.220 I don't know if anyone in here has ever been a farmer, probably at least one of you just knowing 00:20:00.220 --> 00:20:05.839 this congregation. Probably somebody is at least, you know, some of you I know maybe grew up on farms. 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:11.279 But farmers, it's really important if you're a farmer to be very clear on what you can control 00:20:11.279 --> 00:20:19.160 and on what you can't control. Farmers can create the conditions for growth. They can plant the seeds, 00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:26.660 they can tend the soil, but farmers cannot cause the growth. No matter how much they might want to, 00:20:26.660 --> 00:20:31.580 a farmer can't simply walk over and yank the crops up out of the ground. 00:20:33.640 --> 00:20:36.640 You have to wait. You have to be patient. 00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:43.500 And even the most knowledgeable, experienced farmers don't fully understand the mystery of 00:20:43.500 --> 00:20:49.040 how that growth happens. At some point, you're just staring at the ground, waiting for something 00:20:49.039 --> 00:20:58.259 to grow up. And so it is with God's renewal. No matter how hard we struggle, we cannot cause God's 00:20:58.259 --> 00:21:05.200 work and God's renewal to happen on our timeline. So we have to learn how to wait patiently on God's 00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:11.460 timing. And as I'm saying this, I want you to be thinking about a relationship or a situation, 00:21:11.659 --> 00:21:15.920 a set of circumstances in your life where you feel like you're beating your head up against a wall, 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:20.460 where you've tried everything. And at the end of all of your efforts, you're just kind of staring at 00:21:20.460 --> 00:21:25.039 the barren ground, hoping and praying that something happens. I want you to think about a 00:21:25.039 --> 00:21:31.000 situation like that. Because we can't cause these things to happen in our own timeline. We have to 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:37.000 learn how to wait on the Lord's timing. But there are things that we can do. We can, as the farmer can, 00:21:37.360 --> 00:21:45.259 tend the soil. We can create and maintain the conditions where that renewal is able and likely to 00:21:45.259 --> 00:21:50.619 happen. And James actually gives us some very practical ways of doing this. James is incredibly 00:21:50.619 --> 00:21:57.720 practical. Lots of exhortations in James. Very practical. And he gives us ways of doing this, 00:21:57.779 --> 00:22:03.240 which also happen to be practices that we focus on during the season of Advent. So I'll give you 00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:11.379 sort of three categories that John deals with here. The first thing that we can do in terms of how do we 00:22:11.380 --> 00:22:17.160 wait well and how do we focus on the things that we can control is verse 8, it starts there, 00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:25.920 is to tend our own hearts. We can tend our own hearts. Verse 8 says, be patient and stand firm 00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:32.660 because the Lord's coming is near. And the Greek phrase stand firm actually literally says, 00:22:32.660 --> 00:22:42.840 establish your heart. Plant your heart firmly. Establish it. Root it down deep. Root yourself down 00:22:42.840 --> 00:22:54.440 in the faith. Waiting time is not wasted time. It's easy to think of time spent waiting as time wasted. 00:22:55.480 --> 00:23:01.660 We're just kind of passing the minutes until something interesting happens. But spiritually speaking, 00:23:01.660 --> 00:23:08.840 waiting time is never wasted time. The time that we spend waiting on God to do what only God can do 00:23:08.840 --> 00:23:16.740 is often the time when God does His deepest work in us. So learning how to wait on the Lord is crucial 00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:25.000 for our growth. It is only by waiting on the Lord that we learn to trust Him. It's only by waiting on 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:30.920 the Lord that we develop resilience and endurance. And by the way, resilience and endurance are extremely 00:23:30.920 --> 00:23:37.480 important in the spiritual life. It's only by waiting that we develop that resilience. It's only 00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:43.800 by waiting that we learn how to let go of things we can't control. And that's a lesson we have to learn, 00:23:43.880 --> 00:23:49.900 if you're anything like me, over and over and over. You see your white-knuckled grip and you realize, 00:23:49.900 --> 00:23:59.180 I got to let this go. So this is a time to tend our own hearts, to establish our hearts, 00:23:59.580 --> 00:24:04.840 to cultivate that deep trust and faith and resilience by waiting. 00:24:06.660 --> 00:24:11.140 Number two, James calls us to tend our relationships with one another. And you know, 00:24:11.340 --> 00:24:16.380 if you're reading through this at a glance, it seems kind of like a weird turn for him to all of a sudden 00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:22.000 start talking about relationships until you think about it for a second. You realize in any community, 00:24:22.460 --> 00:24:29.100 whether it be a family or a friend group or a workplace or a church, whenever there is uncertainty, 00:24:29.740 --> 00:24:34.660 whenever there is anxiety, whenever you as a group are waiting on things to happen, 00:24:34.820 --> 00:24:39.360 things outside of your control, it can tend to bring out the worst in us. 00:24:39.359 --> 00:24:51.740 Because any social system, any communal system, in that system, anxiety spreads. It's like a virus. 00:24:52.599 --> 00:24:57.019 And if you have a little pocket of anxiety here, it can quickly spread and the whole system becomes 00:24:57.019 --> 00:25:02.359 anxious and uncertain. And when a bunch of people are doing life together and everybody's feeling that 00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:07.240 anxiety and uncertainty, it can tend to bring out our less desirable qualities. 00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:12.240 And so James says, starting in verse 9, hey, as you're waiting patiently on the Lord, 00:25:12.339 --> 00:25:17.400 part of waiting patiently is making sure, verse 9, you don't grumble against one another, 00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:21.980 brothers and sisters. He says, or you will be judged because the judge is standing at the door. 00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:26.279 I think this is so relevant for us right now because, you know, as a community, 00:25:26.460 --> 00:25:33.140 we're going through a lot of change right now. And any living, thriving organism is going to go 00:25:33.140 --> 00:25:37.880 through times of major change. And this is just one of those seasons for us. 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:42.040 And because of that, because there's things that we're waiting on, like we're waiting on the 00:25:42.040 --> 00:25:46.840 completion of our renovations, we're waiting on this move, we have a sense that things are going 00:25:46.840 --> 00:25:52.300 to change and some things are changing. But in many ways, we're not able to fully imagine or realize 00:25:52.300 --> 00:25:56.280 what that's going to be like. A lot of the more significant things are still in the future. 00:25:56.820 --> 00:26:00.780 So we're sort of in a holding pattern, waiting for these things to happen over the next couple of 00:26:00.779 --> 00:26:07.559 months. That's a hard season to be in. It feels like a limbo. And so I think this is extremely 00:26:07.559 --> 00:26:13.879 relevant for us. And in these times, there can be, and I feel it in myself, a very powerful temptation 00:26:13.879 --> 00:26:21.639 to grumble, to complain, to take out our frustrations on the people around us, sometimes, 00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:28.220 sadly, the people closest to us. There can be a temptation to assume the worst about other people 00:26:28.220 --> 00:26:35.299 and their motives. We can begin to operate with a kind of worst case scenario mentality when, 00:26:35.539 --> 00:26:39.160 if there's information we don't know or things that we're unclear on, we fill in the blanks with 00:26:39.160 --> 00:26:45.980 the worst possible scenario. So when that kind of thing starts to take hold, it can really do damage 00:26:45.980 --> 00:26:50.900 in a community. So James is saying, hey, during times of waiting and uncertainty, when you're wrestling 00:26:50.900 --> 00:26:58.259 with those unmet expectations and unfulfilled longings, it's especially important to guard and 00:26:58.259 --> 00:27:06.720 care for our relationships, to be careful how we use our words, to be careful how we talk about other 00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:14.620 people, to commit ourselves to assuming the best about other people. When there's ambiguous 00:27:14.620 --> 00:27:19.900 information, when we don't know what's happening, when we see somebody doing things that don't seem to 00:27:19.900 --> 00:27:25.280 make sense, instead of assuming the worst, to commit ourselves to assuming the best. What is the best, 00:27:25.360 --> 00:27:30.900 most charitable assumption about this person's motives? So James is saying, during this time of 00:27:30.900 --> 00:27:36.519 uncertainty, guard not only tend to your heart, but tend the relationships around you. Give special care 00:27:36.519 --> 00:27:40.660 to ensuring that those relationships are intact. Don't grumble against one another. 00:27:42.019 --> 00:27:48.480 And then finally, the third thing he calls us to is to tend our relationship with the Lord, 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:55.360 beginning in verse 13. James calls us essentially, the whole section could be summarized as that we 00:27:55.360 --> 00:28:02.539 are called during times of waiting to be people of prayer, to be people defined by our prayer life. 00:28:03.640 --> 00:28:08.019 So he first calls us, pray for those who are struggling. There are people in our community 00:28:08.019 --> 00:28:14.099 right now who are struggling. Be a community of people who pray for that regularly and often. 00:28:14.099 --> 00:28:18.839 There are people who are celebrating and happy and they're in a great season of their life. He says, 00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:23.339 you know, we should also be people who sing prayers of praise to those who are joyful. 00:28:24.799 --> 00:28:29.179 And then after that, he calls us to be people who pray for healing, who practice healing prayers. 00:28:29.439 --> 00:28:33.819 Is someone sick among you? Call the elders, anoint them with oil, pray that they might be healed. 00:28:34.859 --> 00:28:41.619 We actually have a healing prayer ministry for that express purpose. Anybody who wants prayer, 00:28:41.619 --> 00:28:47.079 our healing prayer ministry will come to you, our prayer ministers will anoint you and pray over you. 00:28:48.339 --> 00:28:51.179 That's a ministry that I hope and pray grows in the coming years. 00:28:52.199 --> 00:28:58.559 And then he also talks about prayers of confession. Of course, Christians can always confess their sins 00:28:58.559 --> 00:29:03.959 directly to Jesus and be forgiven, but there is a, and I will say this from my own personal experience, 00:29:04.459 --> 00:29:10.879 a particular kind of healing that we experience when we confess our sin aloud to other Christians. 00:29:11.619 --> 00:29:17.939 And while Christians can freely do this with one another, this has historically been a role 00:29:17.939 --> 00:29:24.739 that has been played by priests in the church, right? If you want to confess your sin to someone 00:29:24.739 --> 00:29:32.019 who is prepared to receive confession, someone with whom you know they're going to abide by the 00:29:32.019 --> 00:29:38.139 strictest standards of confidentiality, someone who you know is not going to judge you or think 00:29:38.140 --> 00:29:43.900 differently of you, somebody who's going to offer you words of encouragement in the gospel, 00:29:44.460 --> 00:29:53.140 somebody who is speaking with the authority of the historic church, the forgiveness of Jesus Christ 00:29:53.140 --> 00:29:58.900 into your life, then clergy are available for that and it's something we offer to those who ask. 00:30:00.280 --> 00:30:03.800 And then finally, intending our relationship with God at the end of our passage, 00:30:03.799 --> 00:30:07.619 he says that we should as Christians, instead of using our words to grumble against one another, 00:30:07.919 --> 00:30:12.200 that we should use our words to restore one another, that if there are people in the community 00:30:12.200 --> 00:30:16.839 who have fallen away from the faith, right? People who've dropped out, you haven't seen them in six 00:30:16.839 --> 00:30:24.279 months, you don't know where they are, but they haven't been in church. People who are struggling 00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:31.339 with doubt or uncertainty. People who are rebelling against the Lord in ongoing active ways. He says, 00:30:31.339 --> 00:30:37.439 it's the role of the community to do everything we can to restore those people, right? To be the kind 00:30:37.439 --> 00:30:42.500 of community where if you're here, you're going to be encouraged in your relationship with the Lord. 00:30:43.699 --> 00:30:48.439 Sometimes whether you like it or not, if you're in this community, you're going to be encouraged in 00:30:48.439 --> 00:30:56.699 your relationship in the Lord. Tend our relationship with God. So this is the invitation that we find in 00:30:56.700 --> 00:31:01.240 the heart of the season of Advent. We have a little more time in this season before Christmas, 00:31:01.240 --> 00:31:08.299 but the invitation is to learn how to wait and to learn how to live in the tension of the already, 00:31:08.299 --> 00:31:16.960 but not yet. And this invitation is really an invitation to recognize that in those unmet longings, 00:31:17.420 --> 00:31:23.059 in those times of struggle and a hardship, those are the times when we are most likely to encounter 00:31:23.059 --> 00:31:30.619 Jesus in a new way. But what you find is that those barren places that become bubbling springs, 00:31:31.079 --> 00:31:37.159 that's not just something that happens in the future. There's a way in which we meet the Lord 00:31:37.159 --> 00:31:46.440 in a unique and powerful way in that barren spring, right? We're in that precisely in that darkest moment, 00:31:46.440 --> 00:31:54.400 in that place of languishing. We can encounter God in very powerful ways. And in a very real and 00:31:54.400 --> 00:32:00.960 immediate way, that barren place becomes a bubbling spring. That desert becomes a garden because it is 00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:06.620 in that place that you meet the Lord. And that's what we're invited to discover because these are the 00:32:06.620 --> 00:32:14.240 times when we're most likely to encounter Jesus in a new way. Let's pray. Our Lord, Heavenly Father, 00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:22.819 may this be true. May it be so. Lord, as we continue in our time of prayer, as we come to your table, 00:32:23.240 --> 00:32:29.140 Lord, we are here because we desire to encounter you afresh. And in particular, for those of us who 00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:33.980 may be struggling for whatever reason, we pray that you would minister to us in the power of your Holy 00:32:33.980 --> 00:32:41.819 Spirit, that in this Advent season, we would taste and experience your power to bring renewal to us. 00:32:41.819 --> 00:32:45.139 And we pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.