Matt Chandler - Finally Fulfilled

I just wanted to personally wish you a Merry Christmas and tell you that you have made it a delightful experience to pastor this church. I’m grateful to God to be with you in this season of human history, pushing back darkness and trying to surrender all that we are to Jesus Christ. I want to now move us towards a new point, and if you’re kind of new here this morning, we have been in the middle of this Advent series. We started out by talking about the promises of God and moved from the promises of God to the longing that those promises create. Whether you’re a Christian or not, whether you’re religious or irreligious, there are some inconsolable longings that exist in you and in me. Now, today, right before we celebrate the Incarnation, I want to talk about the fulfillment of those promises. It’s important to note that the way we started was by looking at our design as humankind. The Bible says that God created man and woman, and that they were naked and unashamed. That little phrase is vital for understanding our human longings. In our design by our Creator, you and I were meant to be naked and unashamed. Here’s what that means: there would be no shame, no hiding. How about we do it this way? Every human I know, when they can be honest—which is not as frequent as any of us would like—would honestly say that there’s a small voice in them, worried that they’re going to eventually be exposed as a fraud. I’ve been to six continents, and all I’m telling you is that humankind, wherever they are, harbors this latent fear of being exposed as a fraud. If you start to dig into that, there’s no real rhyme or rationale around it; it’s just that feeling of being a fake. People see us in a way that feels inconsistent with our true selves, and eventually, we’re afraid we’ll be exposed. This is a latent fear, but I think it ties back to how we were designed to live: to be naked and unashamed—no projection of who I am or who I’m not, just who I am, in all my weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. We have been designed to walk like that. Yet, most of us project a different reality, a different image of who we are. We talked about the fact that we were created to be naked and unashamed: no shame, no guilt, no hiding, fully known yet still loved. Then sin enters the cosmos and fractures all of this. In the midst of that fracture, God immediately begins to make promises to us. Here are those promises: a Messiah would come who would save us from sin and death. The reason that this doesn’t resonate with the force it should is that you and I live in a day and age where all of our issues aren’t labeled as rebellion; they are labeled as therapeutic. Are you tracking with me? What has happened in recent years is that we have lost the language of evil and sin. We can’t label brokenness for what it truly is. Instead, it’s more palatable and acceptable to call it therapy or therapeutic. You’re just not going to solve sin and death with therapy because, wherever you are, there you are. You’re tracking with me on that? So, what happens here is that the Bible says, «Hey, one is coming who is going to save you from sin and death.» Every issue you or I have is tied to sin: our own sin, another person’s sin, or simply the sin that exists in a broken cosmos. But the Bible promises that one is coming to save us from sin and death, and we then receive the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, which we covered at length last weekend. If you’re interested, I’m tight for time, but go listen to that online. Then we discussed this new way of being, which is to be able to relate to God and be reconciled to Him, as well as to one another—not through behavioral modification, but through faith in the coming of this Messiah. I said that the new way of being you and I receive is not through white-knuckle discipline—where we know what’s right and finally figure out how to do it—but rather by believing, through the grace of God, that through faith, God reconciles us to Himself. Over time, He sanctifies us into the image of Jesus, which means I’m not relying on white-knuckle discipline to figure it out. Instead, I’m surrendering and pressing into God through Christ, via the Holy Spirit, growing and being shaped by that Spirit as I do life in community with other followers of Jesus Christ. I’m interacting with the Word of God and living out the life He has created for me. All of these promises are latent in human experience; we’ve just lost the language for them. The Bible tells us that the Gentiles will fulfill the law without knowing it, which means that, by design, we are created as humans who inherently know what is right and are drawn to it. We just—if I’m honest—struggle to follow through.