Matt Chandler - Glorious

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Luke chapter two is where we’re going to camp out together today. Well, I’ll put two other texts on the screen, but pretty much we’ll just walk through the narrative. So while you’re turning there, let’s have a quick talk. How many of you are 100% ready for Christmas? Go ahead and raise your hand; I just want to see. Keep your hand up. This is more check. Check this out, BL. Why you got your hand up, bro? What do you have to do? Blame BL, man, he’s ready! He’s ready to… Oh, you mean I didn’t mean open; you’re ready to open your presents, boss. I meant like you’ve done all the shopping and got everything ready to go. Okay, yeah, no, it’s changed now. Get your hands back up. You’re done? Like I’m done? That’s amazing! Y’all are freaks. How many of you would say you’re 90% done? Still got a couple of little things, just knick-knack things here and there? All right, all right, that’s probably normal. How many of you, like Pastor Matt, are in trouble? Like Pastor Matt, I am in a lot of trouble. I still don’t even know what to get. All right, my wife says she doesn’t care—I don’t believe her. Right, and so, okay, so we’re about where you would think we would be. Now, when we started, when we entered into the season of Advent, what I said was that you and I were going to have to fight not to get swept up in what I called an over-realized eschatology. An over-realized, like more than any other time of the year, this is a time where we are sold rainbows and lollipops just constantly. All right, and so from every movie to every special on television to all the ads that are carpet-bombing our existence, all of them have this message: that this is the year where it all comes together, that this is the most wonderful time of the year, and that really what’s presented before us is that we’re going to get the Red Rider BB gun. It’s coming, and maybe not even that. Instead, we’re going to get a bonus check from our boss that enables us to put a pool in the back, and this is the year that our dad finally stops neglecting us to sell bad children’s books and is instead going to turn his affection to us and love us like we deserve to be loved, even though we’ve been in the North Pole for the last 40 years, right? That this is what we believe is going to happen this year; that finally, the rift that we have in our family will be healed. Finally, we’re going to get the gifts that will satisfy the longings of our hearts, and so prevalent is this type of campaign that sociologists have had to name what happens to us post-Christmas. Now it’s called the Christmas blues. Right? And what happens is that right now, there are lights everywhere, and there are trees. More than likely, you’ve done some things to your house that you don’t do the rest of the year. You’ve got stockings that are up; you’ve got a tree that has lights on it. More than likely—maybe not all of us do—but there’s brightness around the world right now, in our world in particular, that’s not normally there, and all of it will start to go away on December 26th. By the New Year, most of our lights will be down, or at least they’ll be turned off, right? And things will go back to normal, and it’s starting to affect us in a way that doesn’t really bring joy but rather brings disappointment. It’s literally a season that has begun to weave disappointment into us. And so what I said is that really we want to kind of engage that face, and as Christians, we’re not just celebrating Christmas. Although I want you all in on it—right, trees and tinsel and songs—I want you to enjoy it. I’ve got three kids; we’re having a blast, but what I want us to steward as the people of God is not just Christmas but Advent. Advent is a Latin word that means coming or arrival, and so what we’re doing is we’re looking backward, we’re looking forward, and we’re rejoicing in the now in a type of specialized way. We’re looking back at the coming of Christ in the first Advent as a baby, and we’re marveling at the power of Christ made manifest in the Holy Spirit today. And we’re looking forward to the return of Christ because there is a day coming where all the desires of our hearts are satisfied, where all the reconciliation that we long for in our family actually occurs, where the gift that comes finally does satisfy us once and for all. That day is coming. All that we’re celebrating at Christmas is actually a shadow of a reality that’s on its way. But all of that will not happen on December 25th. In fact, you’re going to be reminded of why you don’t like your sister. Oh, we can’t have real talk in here. Do we need to—I need to lie, right?