Matt Chandler - Living and Longing for the King

If you have your Bibles, let’s go to Luke chapter 3. We will be looking at a prophecy that Isaiah made, which John the Baptist preaches about regarding what would occur at the coming of Jesus. But before we do that, we have framed this Advent season really around the themes of the «already but not yet"—this space that you and I inhabit as believers in Christ. On one hand, the first Advent of Jesus, the first coming of Jesus, purchased for us certain things: His life, death, and resurrection give us victory over sin and death, freedom from oppression, and liberation from sin addiction. And yet, there is a «not yet» aspect to it all while we simultaneously celebrate what Christ has done, as we wait for the full consummation of that victory to actually occur in the second coming of Jesus. We are a really strange people, simultaneously celebrating and walking in some sorrow. If you’re a Christian, this has likely been your experience, and we could testify to the «already» of Jesus Christ. I could testify to the fact that Christ has saved me; He picked me up, like David said, out of the muck and the mire and set my feet on a rock. I could recount His goodness in delivering me from the sins that have haunted my bloodline for a hundred and fifty to two hundred years. I could testify to His goodness and grace in my life in various areas. And yet, I could also lay before you things that I don’t understand: losses that I’ve endured, sicknesses that have drained the life from my body, and fears that have pursued and haunted me. Therefore, I find myself, like you as a Christian, in this space between the «already but not yet.» What this often does for us as Christians is give us a front-row seat to the kingdom of God breaking through the ordinary. What you and I get to experience as Christians while in this tension between the «already but not yet» is that we have a front-row seat to sorrow, loss, mourning, frustration, and relational strife. The kingdom of God bursts forth into the middle of that and shows that God does not submit to the natural order, but the natural order submits to God. I was preaching on the «already but not yet» two weeks ago, and on Saturday night after the 7:15 service, I laid that idea out: we are in the «already"—here are evidences of the «already»; we’re in the «not yet"—here are evidences of the «not yet.» I walked off this stage, right through there, and went back to my green room over here in the corner where I poured myself some tea. Then I noticed that my phone was lit up. I thought maybe Lauren had texted me, saying, «Hey, I’ve got the kids; we’re going to do this, ” or „When are you coming home?“ I was half-expecting something like that. When I looked at my phone, I realized I had a series of missed calls and messages informing me that one of our members, a man in a high level of leadership, had his 15-year-old daughter, Lily, fall into a swimming pool. She needed to be pulled out and resuscitated, and they had rushed her to the hospital, where doctors had said she was not going to wake up, and if she did, she would be a vegetable for the rest of her life. But remember where we are: we’re in that space in between, in the „already but not yet,“ where at any moment the kingdom of God can burst into the ordinary, revealing that God is outside of the natural order and does as He pleases. So we started to pray— we prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed. Then we got the MRI results back for the first one, which confirmed what the doctors had said: there was serious brain damage in the images. In fact, there’s a 72-hour rule around these things, especially concerning swelling in the brain, and we were at the 48-hour mark. So there was this fear: we had another 24 hours of swelling, and there was no more room for the brain to swell. Thus, we prayed all the more, emboldened to pray even harder. We prayed at elder-led prayer meetings, our home groups prayed, and I had been hosting a prayer meeting with some of our pastors during Advent from noon to 1:00 PM. We prayed there, and we prayed as a staff. Then we got a second MRI, which revealed that the damage from the first MRI was no longer there, all right? We freaked out, right? We were just charismatic enough to get excited. So we started praying kind of bold, insane prayers— the kind of prayers that make you a little uncomfortable when you read them in the Bible. It’s like how Moses prayed, reminding God of what He had said. That kind of prayer can make you feel weird, right? Where Moses declares, „You said this; these aren’t my people; these are Your people, and You commanded…“ So we just started praying crazy prayers like that. Then her eyes opened, and we began to pray even more and became even more emboldened. I mean…