Great Expectations

Pastor Phillips' Sermon

Christmas Service, December 25, 2005

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, on this great and glorious day, we are gathered here before you to worship you, to celebrate what you've done for us in Jesus. Bless us with your Holy Spirit as we turn to your word for courage and strength and hope in the life we live here in this world and the hope we have for eternal life in the next. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Great expectations. That's a good name for a book, isn't it? It's also a good name for a sermon about Christmas because all of us look forward to this day. We look forward with anticipation. We remember all the wonderful memories of growing up and other experiences we've had at Christmastime, so we look forward to the celebration of Jesus' birth with great expectations.

It's absolutely normal at this time to have a heart filled with expectations, to have thoughts about what you'd like to happen on this day within your family, within your church, and in your life. Great expectations surrounded the birth of Christ, and it's fitting that we, too, have those kinds of feelings.

The difficulty is, in our world, our expectations are often focused on the gifts that are given and received. We're hoping the gifts we give will accomplish the task for which we send them, that they will actually create that Kodak moment in the person we've given them to and that they'll just be overjoyed and it will be exactly what they're hoping for. And the gifts we receive, we hope those will somehow fall in line with the things we desire and the things that please us. Other times, there are expectations about who you give gifts to. In your family, there are traditions about gift exchanges and secret Santa and all that kind of stuff. And sometimes at your work place, there are expectations to give and receive gifts as well. Kind of funny how those expectations influence and impact our experience of this wonderful day.

Think about Mary for a moment. Last night we heard some wonderful readings from Max Lucado and it just really made me think a lot to hear that read in our worship experience and just the perspective he took as he described what Joseph must have been going through and what Mary must have been going through and all of those different things. But let's think about Mary and her expectations at the time of our text, at the time when the angel appeared to her. Prior to the angel, life was different, wasn't it? Prior to Gabriel appearing and giving a wonderful message, life was different for Mary. And it makes you wonder, based on the message the angel shared, Mary was highly favored by God. God had chosen her for a wonderful and special privilege to bear His son. It makes you wonder what kind of person this girl was and what her outlook on life was. We know she was engaged and maybe she was looking forward to that. Maybe she was really excited. Maybe she was just deeply in love with Joseph, and she was just dreaming of their life together and what that would be like and what kind of wife she would be, hoping she would be a good wife and be able to do the things he would ask of her and hoping he was the kind of man she thought he was, a good and godly man who would make a great husband and great father for their children. Maybe that's what her expectations were. Maybe that's what she was thinking about. But why did God choose her? Was it because she was incredibly beautiful or talented or intelligent? Or maybe she could sing beautiful songs or play wonderful music? Why do you think God chose her from all the young ladies, all the teenage girls, why did God choose Mary? We don't find a lot of information about her, do we, in the bible. We do know she was young, that she was a virgin, but I think the one reason God would choose her was she had a humble heart. It wasn't based on talent and skills and things like that, but it was based on the disposition of her heart. The scriptures say repeatedly, “God opposed the proud but gives grace to the humble.” And isn't that what He's doing for Mary? Giving grace, giving love, giving honor and prestige. Mary is now I can't think of a more famous person in the whole world. In regards to Christianity, Mary has all the human honor she could possibly receive. I believe God chose her because of her heart.

What were her expectations about life, though? Well, I already explored what they were probably like before the angel appeared but now what? Now that the angel, Gabriel, has come to her and she was in great fear and troubled at his greeting, now he said some wonderful words, that she would be pregnant. And she says, “That's not possible.” And the angel says, “With God, all things are possible.” That should have clued her in. Life was never going to be the same. God was coming into her life in a new and powerful way. He was changing her future to meet His expectations, His expectation to fulfill His promise to deliver His people.

I'm not sure if she really understood the words she was hearing. “You are favored greatly by God. You will give birth to a son. His name will be Jesus, and He will save His people from their sins.” I'm not sure if she could comprehend those words, if they registered with her. I'm sure she was still in fear and awe of the appearance of the angel. But I also know this is a deeply sentimental person, as we read repeatedly through the gospels that Mary treasured up all these things in her heart. And so, as she heard these words, they sunk in and went and lived in her heart and she treasured them with anticipation and expectation. Even though she didn't know all the details, she had this quiet confidence that God was with her, God was in control, and God would use her to do something wonderful.

Now let's take a look at the nation of Israel . Israel, not really much of a nation at the time when Jesus was born, dominated by foreign powers, but they had this wonderful history as God's people, how God had been with all the patriarchs and how He delivered Israel as they had become a nation in slavery, God had delivered them through Moses and led them through the wilderness to the Promise Land. And then how the people desired kings because everyone else had a king. They wanted a king. They said, “to lead us in battle.” Now if I was God, I would be offended because, up until that point, God had led them in battle. God had been their king. But they wanted to be like all the other nations and God said, “So be it. I'll give you a king.” The first king was Saul. God anointed him, it says in the bible. The prophet came and anointed Saul, poured oil on him, symbolizing that God was choosing this person and the Holy Spirit was going to be on this person. And it says in the scripture that Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit and he was a new person that day. God changed him by him being anointed.

So God gave them a king. And each king was called the anointed one, which in Hebrew is “Mâshîyach” or Messiah and in Greek is “Christ 4 s” or Christ. So each king was God's anointed choice to guide and govern His people. And the people, when they first desired a king, thought, “Oh, it's going to be great. We're going to have this strong human leader that's going to be right there. We can see him. We can touch him. We can talk to him, and he's going to keep us safe and he's going to be wonderful.” But those kings, those messiahs were not wonderful. Every one of them is just like you and me. Every one of them struggled with sin and, from time to time, they would give into their sin and their sin would cause pain and suffering in the lives of God's people. And he would lead them astray from God to worshiping false gods. So their messiahs that had been chosen, first by God and then after awhile, they kind of chose their own. “Oh, that looked like a good one.” “Oh, he's strong.” “Oh, he could probably fight pretty good.” After awhile, they chose their own gods and they no longer really were the anointed ones of God. And things became worse and worse. And finally, it got so bad that God removed His hand of protection from His people. And He allowed the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Egyptians and anybody to come in and conquer His people.

This is the context of the words of the Old Testament reading where Jeremiah looks forward to a time when God would deliver them. Their expectations about the Messiah are now framed by their pain and suffering, the pain of watching their families torn apart by foreign conquerors and their children carried off as slaves to another country, the pain of watching their cities destroyed and their crops stolen and their walls beaten down so they were completely defenseless against their enemies, the pain and suffering that is in this world was shaping what they expected the messiah to come and be.

Now we turn to ourselves on this Christmas Day. What are your expectations of God? We've already talked about the expectations about gifts and family things and all that, but what are your expectations for God? What do you expect Him to do for you? What do you expect Christmas to be all about for you? Well, I think, just like Israel , our expectations are framed by our pain and suffering. When we hurt, we expect God to fix it. When we have debt, we expect God to increase our wealth. When we have pain, we expect God to heal us. When our loved ones suffer and we pray, we expect God to fix it. Our expectations are framed by our own personal experience. We expect God to be what we want Him to be and sometimes we imagine up a definition of who God is and, if He doesn't fit that definition, then He doesn't exist. “If God existed, He wouldn't allow the tsunami,” for instance. See, we box Him in. We define Him with what we expect based on our pain and suffering in this difficult life and this struggle against sin.

Our expectations of God seem to revolve around the problems of living in a sinful world. Hum. A sinful world. Why doesn't God fix it? Wait a minute. Isn't that what the angel said to Mary? He will save His people from their sins. Isn't that what Jesus came to do, to fix our sinful world? Jesus, our Savior. Yes, exactly. Jesus came to fulfill God's promises, God's expectations, to save us from our sins. God's expectations are that we are holy and perfect like He is holy and perfect, that we are sinless. And I know, just like you know, that I am not holy and perfect, that I am not sinless. So I fall short of God's expectations, but Jesus did not. He lived a holy and perfect life. He met God's expectations of us. God's expectations are that the soul that sinneth, it shall surely die. The wage of sin is death. God expects us to pay for our sin with our debt. Jesus did that. He met God's expectations for payment for our sin when He hung, bled, and died on the cross. God's expectations, when He created this beautiful world and the universe were that He would live forever with His beautiful creation. Jesus did that by opening the way to heaven for us. So now that we trust in Jesus as our Savior, our sins are forgiven, and we have the guarantee of eternal life in a place that is not framed by pain and suffering, in a place where there is no grief, there is no sin, there is no sorrow, that God dwells intimately with us and He wipes every tear from our eyes. Jesus did that. He fulfilled every expectation that God had of Him.

And as we come before Him to worship Him today, with a humble heart, we realize He has filled our expectations, too, to deliver us, not in a temporary way from an illness or from a financial problem or anything else, but in a complete and perfect way by delivering us from this life to eternal life in paradise.

We still live here, don't we, in a world framed by pain and suffering. But we look forward to that new world, to that new heaven, to a place where there will no longer be any pain. Jesus did that and now I want to show you in scripture some beautiful words that God has given all of us to hang onto in our prayers, in our time of suffering, when we feel weak, when we need help, that we can turn to God. Ephesians 3:20-21, “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.” Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church