Advent, the Season of Waiting

The Testimony of Kelly Mahan

1. The week before last, we had the wonderful privilege, of baptizing Kelly Mahan in the sea. Today will be her last Sunday, and she’s going to share her testimony with us.
2. Thank you. First off, I want to say, what an amazing time it has been to be here in Athens. And to be a part of such a great church, the beauty of so many cultures, so many backgrounds, and it’s the most beautiful thing, that I have been able to be a part of. And I thank each of you for your kindness, and the meals with a lot of you, and also challenging myself in new ways.
3. So, I want to give a little bit of a testimony. But I’m actually going to need some volunteers because I’m a visual learner…

The Sermon by Brian van Deventer

1. It’s Advent Season. Advent, the season of wonder. Today, I begin to wonder what happened to me this morning. You can count yourselves as the luckiest people in Church today or the unluckiest. Because somehow, I left the first pages of my notes at home, so this will either be shorter or much longer. Depending on how much I can remember and how much George helps me at the back.
2. My theme today is about Advent. It’s about the fact that Advent is about a season of waiting. Sometimes, people who go to Churches like ours think that these traditions are just traditions. Why would we take time to light candles on a Sunday morning? And have a little extra sermon that we call an Advent speech. Why should we take the time to hear verses that we’ve heard, year after year after year?
3. But the purpose of Advent, is to help you feel the tension of this season. It’s to help us feel what it’s like to wait for the coming of the One. When I was a child growing up, Christmas was a big time in our house. My mother, maybe some of you have seen these things, she had the most amazing display of an entire city, under the Christmas tree, complete with all the different buildings, the little trolley that wandered through, the glass pieces that served as ice-skating rinks. Pastor Gail, you’ve seen it before – my mom put out a big deal. And then of course, sometime during December, some gifts would start appearing under the tree. My mom and dad were smart enough to not hide gifts until late, because they knew we would find them. So, things got wrapped and put under the tree.
4. Now my mom and dad did not spend a lot of money on gifts, because then and even now, they didn’t have money. So, our gifts were usually something very usable – sweaters, pants… But we had no shortage of toys. So, my parents celebrated and opened our gifts on Christmas eve at midnight. That was just our tradition. We would have a big dinner, on Christmas eve, usually after we got home from Christmas eve service, and as a kid it was my favorite meal of every year. My mother baked those potato boats that were amazing, some good broccoli with cheese sauce. Nothing on the table, really healthy for you. Well, there was corn, but corn has no nutritional value, so, it doesn’t count.
5. So, the strange thing was, as a young child, I was always waiting for Christmas eve. But, honestly not because of the gifts, I wanted that food. I loved Christmas eve dinner. I also loved the leftovers on Sunday afternoon. But for those few days before Christmas Eve, us kids, we would get anxious. We’d be shaking each other’s gifts to tell each other what we thought what it was. Maybe one of us was with mom and dad when they bought the other one a gift, and we were not supposed to tell on each other. But it was a big wait. And that’s what Advent is. It was good that I waited more for the food than the gifts, because the food sustains me, whereas the gifts, if they were toys, are just a distraction. And I don’t know about the parents in this room, but I’m sure that our parents only bought us gifts to keep us distracted.
6. And so, really my point today, about the waiting of Advent, waiting for the day of the actual coming of our Saviour. It’s a period of time that builds habits. And so, I want to challenge you from today, because this is really the first Sunday of Advent. Although as Pastor Gail said we started last week. We started early because we’re more anxious than other Christians for Jesus to come. But the season starts with remembering that you have to learn to wait patiently.
7. This month of waiting, marks for us the arrival of God in human flesh. And we live in a time where we look back in history to see that. But a lot of our Scriptures draw from the Old Testament, because we remember the people of God who waited for centuries, for Jesus to come. The children of Israel were anxious for the Messiah to come and rescue them. They knew from the Old Testament about the seed of a woman who would crush the head of Satan. You read about this in Genesis and in Romans. They had read about a prophet like Moses, Deuteronomy. They heard about a priest who would surpass the existing covenant order, Book of Psalms. Isaiah, told them about an heir to David’s throne, and Psalms told them that that King would be greater than David was. So, for hundreds and hundreds of years God’s people waited. Until finally, Hebrews tells us about all these people who were commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us, that only together with us would they be made perfect.
8. Now, we get to live in the era of the Messiah. Christ has come, and He was the climax of history. He came to show us the Father’s good love. So, today, I want you to just place into your mind, what are the things that cause you to wait anxiously. It’s good for us to rehearse the patience of the ancient people. Because it can help us appreciate what we have now.
9. I think the idea of the Advent season; I should have had this prepared – there’s two songs that make me think of Advent. One we usually sing a lot at the beginning of the season, and for the musical people in this room, it’s got a bunch of minor chords, “Oh come, oh come Immanuel, and ransom Israel…” It’s got a kind of low murmuring. It kind of makes me feel; sometimes when you sing it, it kind of makes me feel like it should go faster, and even though it’s a song of hope, it was actually written to be a lament. It’s begging for the Messiah to come.
10. And at the other side, once Advent is over, and Christmas is done, or usually for us, we represent this on our candlelight service night, which you should all be at on the 17^th of December, right? A little shameless plot, but we go from, “Oh come, oh come Immanuel…” to the very last song of the night. Back to major chords. “Joy to the world, the Lord is come…” It changes the mood. Because the waiting is over, and the lamenting turns into proclamation. Advent, if you’ll give it the opportunity, will be a season of change for you. It can create habits. God’s good and powerful gift of habit, teaches us an important truth for the Advent season. Holidays and feasts, fill not only our mouths with laughter (Ladies on Friday Night), and bellies with food, (All of us at every table), but shape our souls for good or ill.
11. If you will take the time each day, to remember the wait, this could be one of the most distinctive months in your life. It’s a special month anyway, it has its own music, songs and poems written for it, stories specific to the season, everywhere you go you’re going to be reminded, in our offices, we’re not allowed to hear any music that’s not Christmas music now. You’re going to be reminded of it everywhere all the time, because everybody else out there wants you to buy stuff. But in here we want you to give stuff. Not material stuff, but the stuff of your heart; the stuff of your mind, ‘Lord, what am I waiting on from You. What is the salvation that I’m waiting to see come from You. When I sing “Oh come Immanuel, what am I wanting You to come into.’
12. Perhaps, perhaps come the end of the season, Advent will have confronted you, challenged your faith, challenged your positions in life, and our prayer for you would be, that you come out on the other side, more like the shepherds in the field who were praising God, “Glory to God in the highest”. Hopefully you’re more like that, than you are like in one of my favorite Christmas movies, ‘Scrouge’. That should be the title of the sermon – Be a shepherd, not a Scrouge. It’s a good movie. I pray that you’d be more like the ‘Wise Men’ than ‘Herod’. Herod was fearful of the coming of the Child. And there might be some of sitting in the room today, who actually a bit fearful about Jesus getting too close. Maybe we’re singing “Oh come Immanuel…” but not too close.
13. The Wise Men travelled the earth, to find the Child. You’re going to be on a journey over the next few weeks, whether you admit it or not, whether you get in to it or not, you’re going to be confronted over these next weeks with the season. It could be very long for you, in our house Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving. That’s almost 40 days before Christmas. As a child, that’s a long time. Listening to the music, looking at the gifts, waiting for that day to come. For some it could be a long season. Or, it could be a joyous one.
14. Don’t go through the motions this year, let’s approach the season like the people of Romans 14, or about the people that Pastor Gail read about earlier form 1 Thessalonians. Let’s remind ourselves that we’re not like everybody else. We are people who have into covenant with the Mesiah, who entered this world 2000 years ago. To make the absolute difference in your life.
15. People wait for January first, to make new year’s resolutions. I stopped doing that when I was about 8, because I figured out that it didn’t work. Very few of us can change ourselves. Maybe we can change some behaviors, but there is only one thing that changes the heart, one Person that can change the way we encounter life. Let Him come to you in a fresh way all over again. Treat this Christmas Season differently.
16. Make a particular effort with us to see and savor the person of Christ. Build Him into your life, in greater ways than you have before. And if we will concentrate on that this season, the Messiah will come again. He will come into our life now, and here is the best news, He’s coming in the flesh again. “Oh, come let us adore Him…”