Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2005 : December 18, 2005

Theme: Christ Is Coming! Trust His Power to Save

Church year occasion: Advent 4

Imagine a world where it is always winter, but never Christmas. That is the place brought to life by C. S. Lewis in his book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which many of us were able to see portrayed in a movie yesterday. I don't want to give away everything if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, but there were certain themes that Lewis put into his book that really make you think. One of them is the idea of it being always winter but never Christmas.

Ask almost any kid in our country what their favorite day of the year is, and what would most of them say? Christmas. In our neck of the woods (the Northern Hemisphere), December is the darkest month of the year, and one of the coldest. There is a reason why people get the "mid-winter blues." If we didn't have something to look forward to, something to cheer us up, we'd fall into despair and hopelessness and futility.

But on a spiritual level, always winter but never Christmas would be the worst thing imaginable. Jesus never would have come. We would have no hope.

That's why it's important for us to celebrate the coming of Jesus to this world caught in the icy grip of sin and death. It's important because we can see once again Christ's power to change our hearts and our lives by the word of hope he brings -- a Savior has been born. Christ is coming -- so we Trust His Power to Save.

The people Isaiah was writing to probably lived with more despair and death than we do because for them Christmas hadn't come yet. The glory days of Kings David and Solomon were ancient history. Now they were constantly being overrun by enemy nations whose sole aim was to take away their wealth and power. Instead of turning to the Lord for strength and hope, the people's leaders often turned to whatever nation they thought would benefit them most or to whatever god they thought that would give them victory over their enemies and fertility for their crops, and the people were often all too willing to follow their leaders. As things were getting darker and darker for the Israelites physically, things were getting darker and darker spiritually as well. Finally, only a remnant remained who remembered the true God and the amazing promises he had made to his people to send a Savior from sin.

It was to that remnant that Isaiah spoke now: "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion." God's people were to trust in the power of their God to save them, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

To those poor in spirit, Christ would give good news of the greatest joy. Can you imagine being poor? Some of us can, perhaps -- wondering where the next meal is coming from, wondering how the heating bill is going to be paid, worrying about providing for your family. Some of us have gone through days like that -- but not many of us. But all of us have been poor in spirit. We were bound hand and foot in bondage to the devil because of our sins. C.S. Lewis pictured it as a winter that never ended. Such an existence can only lead to despair. But then Christ came to break our bondage to sin. In the movie, when the lion Aslan came, the icy grip of the witch's winter thawed.

Christ would come to bind hurt and broken hearts. Have you ever had a broken heart? Maybe you loved someone, but they never loved you back. Maybe you lost a loved one in death -- a child or brother or sister or parent. Those events will affect you till your dying day. You feel that your life is one big puzzle with thousands of pieces that has just fallen apart. But for you, Christ has come to bind your heart and life back together.

Those who are held captive, Christ would come to free them from their dark dungeon. What is the dungeon that holds you? We've all done things that we're not proud of. But maybe you can think of some horrible things you've done, things that you feel are beyond redemption. In the movie, we think of Edmund, who lied and envied and schemed and eventually betrayed his own brother and sisters. As a result, he found that he fell into the clutches of the White Witch and had become her unwilling servant. In the same way, when we sin, we are following the destructive direction of the devil. And we might go so far down that road that we don't know how to get out of it. We have no power to get ourselves out of sin's power and influence and consequence, which is hell. But Christ came to release us from that dungeon and give us the light of life and freedom in the gospel.

God knows when tears are streaming down our faces and when our lives are colorless and drab and hopeless because of our sins. By ourselves, we can only fail. We can only mourn and grieve and despair. But when Christ comes, he gives the opposite -- comfort for a troubled soul and a guilty conscience, the beauty of forgiveness, gladness of sins paid for in full, and a garment of praise given to God as a result. Instead of a hopeless existence, Christ provided an alternative -- the good news of his love for sinners -- that's the power of Christ and the good news he came to bring. Paul says it is the "power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." (Romans 1:16) Christ went down into death s the lamb of sacrifice. He rose as the lion of Judah, never to die again, offering eternal life to all who believe in him for salvation.

When the power of Christ comes into our lives, it changes our hearts. No longer do we have hearts without hope and joy, filled only with despair and thoughts of futility, now we have hearts filled with hope and joy. We couldn't make that dramatic change ourselves. Christ had to send his Holy Spirit into our hearts to make that change. Only Jesus could breathe the saving gospel into our stone cold hearts to make them come alive. Only that power of the gospel could break the spell that sin and the devil had over us, and break its control over our lives. It is the power of the resurrected and victorious Christ that makes such a change. It has brought the meaning of Christmas to our hearts. Now Christ rules our hearts.

Christ's power to change your heart is Christ's power also to change your life. Does that mean that all our battles against the devil and our sins are over? No -- in fact, now they have really begun. When we were in the devil's power and control, he could focus his power elsewhere. But now that we have become the enemy of the devil, he will be ferocious in his fighting against us. Now he will try to take those times of trial and pain in your life and get you to forsake your Savior, to turn you back on him, to blame him for your misfortunes, to get lazy in your Christian faith. Make no mistake, even though Jesus has already won the war by dying for our sins and rising from the grave in victory, we are right now waging a spiritual battle everyday. You still might not know how to pay your bills. Your physical life might be falling apart. Your heart still might be broken. But now spiritually your life is totally different. Listen to verses 10-11: "I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations." You are wearing right now the robe of Christ's righteousness; it is the garment of your salvation. Now things spring up in our lives that give us reason to rejoice because we see our God working behind the scenes, sometimes barely noticeable, sometimes roaring like a lion so that we can't mistake the real power for change in our lives.

I don't know if you are like me, but I always hated turning the last page of a book and putting it back on its shelf because I knew that I had to go back into this world of deception and fake friends and heartache and pain and sorrow and school and work day after day after day. I always wanted to live in that other world where things were exciting and fresh, even if they weren't always happy and peaceful. It kept me from wanting to read any books because I knew that I'd always have to turn the last page. But the power of the gospel of Jesus that is revealed in this book, the Bible, has changed all that. This book isn't some fantasy book that allows you to escape from reality. This is reality! Jesus isn't just a part of our imagination -- he is real, and he's really on the move in your life. He took our very real enemy Satan head on. He went to battle him for our very souls with eternal life and death hanging in the balance -- and he won! He stepped up to the devil who wanted our souls in hell forever, and waged the battle of life and death with him. He didn't do it with force of arms or a powerful display of heavenly glory that would have destroyed us if we even glimpsed it. No -- Christ, the all-powerful Creator, God of all power and might, who with a thought could reduce our atoms and the devil's atoms into nothingness, he took our place. He endured insult, pain we can't even comprehend, loneliness and despair beyond anything our minds can even begin to imagine. He went to the cross to suffer our curse, our damnation, our eternal hell. His holy blood seeped out of his body because it was only something so precious and so holy as the blood of God himself that could pay the price for us. Our almighty God showed his almighty power by becoming weak and despised and rejected.

That's not fiction -- it happened -- in our world. As a result your hell for all eternity has been changed to heaven for all eternity. Your sin has been forgiven before the One who should judge you guilty, but now declares you innocent. You death has become life. That is the power on display in a scratchy manger in a Bethlehem barn. Your life in now hidden with Christ in God. And when you get to the end of this book and turn the last page and then have to go back into this life of pain and sorrow, the message of Christmas won't end -- it will go with you. Why? Because this is how it ends: "He who testifies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen." (Revelation 22:20-21)

That's why we celebrate the story of the ages once again. That's why we celebrate Christmas in the midst of a sometimes very bleak, wintry life. We celebrate Christ's coming and trust his power to save. Amen.