Today, I want to talk about this subject: The Mystery of the Manger. The Mystery of the Manger. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of the concept of Advent. Have you ever heard of it? Raise your hand. I want to make sure I’m aware of who needs me to teach a little bit about what Advent means. Just raise it high so I’ll know. Okay, great! Just for clarity’s sake, never come to church feeling inadequate because you don’t know something. We come to learn, okay? So, you don’t have to pretend that you know something. If you don’t know something, just say, «I don’t know.» I want to teach it to you because there was a time when what I’m going to teach you, I didn’t know either.
Advent starts on December 1st and ends on December 24th. What does Advent mean? It is when we celebrate the coming of Jesus. We celebrate it twice: for His coming 2,000 years ago in the form of a baby, and we also worship Him because we know that He is coming back again. Okay, if I don’t preach anything else and you don’t shout about anything else, please know that when I say He’s coming back, and you are a believer, you ought to just go crazy!
What it means is that God—can I teach you today? Is that okay? —what it means is that God, through Jesus Christ, has prevented you and me from having to suffer. Watch this: not the consequences of sin but the damnation of sin. There is a difference, okay? The consequences of sin—if I treat somebody wrong, I reap that back. That’s a consequence. But sin really only has one consequence now because of the blood of Jesus, and that is death, hell, and the grave. But because of Jesus Christ, who is what the Scripture denotes to us as the propitiation for sin—in other words, He is the payment for sin—now I have consequences, but I don’t have damnation.
Okay, so I may have hell on Earth, but I’m not going to die on Earth and go to hell. And I don’t want us to preach a gospel that says we can do anything we want and get away with it because that’s not the gospel. But I also want to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ that says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. So, God can be both. One moment, God can be the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and the next moment, He can be the Lamb of God. God is not monotonous; He has duality. He is plural: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
And so we celebrate for three weeks and three days Advent, the coming, the anticipation of Jesus. For John 14 says, «If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, that where I am, you may be also, ” which means when I accept Jesus Christ, I get to go to the place He went back to. Now, why is this important? Because if His eye is on the sparrow, then His eye is on you and me. So right now, in this service, I want you to know that God is looking over the balcony of heaven, and He sees you and me.
Now let’s pause. This is the thing: Jesus Christ had to die and shed blood because we’re covered by the blood. Why? Because God—Yeshua, God Yahweh, God Jehovah, God Pericas, God Logos—see, all of these are three in office, one in purpose. There is but one God, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. So although we speak about God in plurality, He is actually one. Yes, sir!
Now, we have trouble believing that. People call us polytheists; we’re not polytheistic, we’re monotheistic. Because I am your pastor, and I’m my child’s father, and my wife’s husband, and my mother’s son, but I am not four people. I have different offices. So God doesn’t have to split Himself apart to keep us together; He is actually the Triune being, but He is also God. Are you listening to me?
So Advent is us celebrating Him for three weeks and three days. Watch this: When He comes back, I want to find out who knows for a fact that when Jesus comes back, this is the old church teaching now—if He were to come back right now, how many of you know you’re going back to be with Him? I don’t want you to be ashamed if you don’t know, because by the time this service is over, you’re going to get a chance to do it, and we’re going to give the devil a black eye, because he thought you were going to hell! But touch somebody and say, „I’m heaven-bound, baby! I’m heaven-bound!“
So Jesus Christ Himself came that where He is, there we may be also. Now what’s going to happen? Can I teach? Is this fine? All right, we’re going to shout later, but right now I have to teach you something. So when Jesus comes back, the Bible says the sky is going to crack like glass, and then those who are dead—it’s going to be a real live spooky movie. You’ve seen „Thriller“; it’s going to look just like that; they’re going to come up out of the ground. Okay, just come up out of the ground. And those who are alive will be caught up in the twinkling of an eye. Everybody blink—that’s how fast the Rapture is. Some of you think you’re going to be like, „Okay, Lord, you’re on your way; I’m sorry for everything.“ You’re not going to have time!
