Welcome this morning. I'll – I think I'll hide behind this podium for the message. I do have a few things to look at here on my screen. So hopefully you can all see me. I asked for a platform, but we didn't have one. So something to boost my height a little bit. I'd like to thank the elders for the opportunity to serve them in this way and give them a break, hopefully a little bit of a break from their work and their efforts as they leave this body. I obviously have gained an appreciation for the amount of work that they do put in over the past few weeks as I prepared for this. So thank you for that. And I sure appreciate the opportunity to serve you in this way. In saying that, the weight of preparation, as some of the other men have said, over this year was great. It's a big responsibility to stand up here and open the Word of God for you. Hopefully, I won't miss the mark too much. Do feel free to let me know what you think. With that, we'll go ahead and get started. I'd like to start with a Christmas story from long, long ago, Christmas long, long ago, 1982. I was around 12 years old, and this was a Christmas that I remember more than most. Before you conjure up Norman Rockwell pictures in your mind, let me tell you, we weren't roasting chestnuts over an open fire. It's much more mundane than that. My entire childhood in Chicago was spent in a 100-year-old house with drafty windows and poor insulation. This year was a particularly tough one. My dad had been out of work at points during that year, and so we were struggling financially too. All my friends were talking about their Atari video game systems. Atari was a nice little video game console that they had back in those days. One of them had the latest thing that year though, it was ColecoVision. This was at least twice as good as Atari. Great stuff. Every kid on the block wanted one of these. Remember Donkey Kong? Good. Yeah. How perfect our lives would be if we only had one of these. But then our hope became reality. Somehow my parents had pulled it off. Maybe someone else had helped out. I don't know. We knew we were getting that ColecoVision that Christmas. Let's just say I had a vision of it, but nothing supernatural, if you know what I mean. It seemed like knowing that it was coming, though, made the suspense all that much greater. We could hardly wait for this to happen. Israel was waiting for something, too. You could say it was sort of like Christmas Eve for them, maybe. Things had fallen apart for them politically over the years. And they wanted to return to the glory days of David and Solomon. God was with them in the temple at that time, almost as Adam had been able to walk with God in the garden. Obviously not quite the same thing. The world at the time of Christ was fairly stable politically. The Roman Empire had solidified, and the Pax Romana, or Roman peace, had settled over the land by about 27 BC under Caesar Augustus. But the Jews did not appreciate the benefits of belonging to the Roman Empire, as we all know. Israel was waiting for something, something big. Before we open the word, let's let's ask for God's guidance and blessing on our time today, let's pray. Our Father, as you have spoken to me over the past few weeks, I pray that you would help me to communicate to your body here this morning. I thank you for the many blessings that you gave us at Christmas long ago. I pray that you would help us to think about those blessings in a new way this morning and help us to put them into practice in our lives. And bless our time here as we as we open your word in Jesus name. Amen. Since we're not going through a passage today, verse by verse, like we usually do, I want to start by giving you a quick overview of where we're going today. First thing we're talking about is what Israel was waiting for. And then we're going to talk a little bit about how that compares to what we are waiting for as the church today. We'll look back at what happened in Israel. And again, we'll try to apply that to how we live our lives today, too. You will recall that about three months before Mary gave birth to Christ, the Prophet John was born. Zechariah, John's father, had been told by the angel Gabriel that his wife Elizabeth would have a child, but he couldn't believe it. Advanced and aged much as Abraham was and Sarah in their day, they were too old to have children. God rendered him unable to speak because of his unbelief. When they brought the child to the temple on the eighth day to have him circumcised, his father gave him the name John, as he had been instructed by the angel Gabriel. When he did this, he was suddenly able to speak. And he didn't just ask where they'd be getting lunch, either. Part of his pronouncement was about his own son, John, but he begins with words about the coming Messiah. And this is the passage that Nathan read this morning, Luke 1, 68 through 75. I'll be reading from the ESV this morning, so if it's a little different from some of the King James that some of you read, you may. That's why beginning of verse 68. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. That we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. To show mercy, to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And then John does, Zachariah does go on to speak of his son. We won't look at that this morning. As I was reading again the Christmas stories and Matthew and Luke to prepare for this, this is the passage that struck me this time around. If you look at Zachariah's prophecy again, Does that look like what Christ did during his time here? Was Israel saved from the hands of their enemies and all who hated them? Zechariah's words are inspired by God, of course, and they will come to pass either in our death or in the second coming of Christ. God's people will be delivered from the hand of their enemies. But you can also sense Zechariah's expectation that the fulfillment was imminent. We might have thought the same thing. As I touched on earlier, Israel was under the rule of the Roman Empire at the time, Zechariah uttered these words, but we often isolate the Christmas story in a bubble and forget that Israel had been under the thumb of one oppressive regime after another for hundreds of years. This had all been prophesied by Daniel in some detail, for example, In Daniel 11, 4, we can see that the Greek kingdom of Alexander the Great would be divided into four parts upon his death, and it would not go to his descendants. This was fulfilled when his kingdom was divided among his four generals. Later, a Greek king came to power in one of those four regions, also foretold by Daniel, the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes. In around 168 B.C., Antiochus Epiphanes had defiled the Jewish temple and outlawed their religion. He enforced this decree with the worst atrocities you can imagine. He is said to have had mothers with nursing children killed and the babies killed also. Because they had been circumcised in accordance with the Jewish law. He profaned the temple and he dedicated it to the Greek god Zeus. Even his name Epiphanes is essentially the same word as our word Epiphany from the Greek Epiphania. That's your Greek for the day, guys. That word means God manifest. So this guy was walking around with the title God manifest. Well, the Jews responded to these actions, as you might expect. Revolt. The Maccabean revolt. Within a couple of years, the Maccabees had overthrown Greek rule in Jerusalem and pushed them out of their area. So later, when Rome came to power, subject nations were allowed to continue their religions and cultural traditions. The Romans did not want to repeat the errors of the Greeks. And so it was that as the time of Christ's birth approached, there was a king of the Jews, Herod the Great. Herod was the son of an Idumean man named Antipater. Idumean was another name for the Edomites, the nation that arose from Esau. So he was not Jewish by that line. These Idumeans had converted to Judaism, however, but of course the religious leaders of Israel had regarded them as illegitimate Jews, as you might expect. And Herod's mother was an Arab woman named Cyprus, so he had no real claim to the throne there either. Herod had come to power in part by being elected to his position by the Roman Senate. He solidified this position by marrying a young woman, Miriam I of the Hasmonean dynasty, which had been the Jewish ruling family for years. So though Herod was king of the Jews, we know the history of Christmas. Herod was as treacherous as the Romans or the Greeks ever could be. We know about the massacre of the innocents, the killing of all male children under two years old at Christ's birth. But Herod also had his brother-in-law killed. He had several of his ten wives killed, including Miriam I. And Miriam's sons, he had them killed also, because his eldest son Antipater from another wife had named after Herod's father, had convinced Herod that they were plotting to overthrow him, and thus Antipater's place as heir to the throne. So this was an evil corrupt man, as you all know. Sometime around 4 BC to 1 BC, Herod died. 4 BC is the accepted date, but there is interesting evidence to support the later date of 1 BC. And it's also interesting that since there's no year zero, 1 BC is a lot like year zero because it's the year before 1 AD. So the established calendar may be anchored closer to Christ's birth than we thought. At any rate, Herod died a horrible, painful disease involving rot and worms. His kingdom, Judea, was divided among his three remaining sons. His son, Herod Antipas, Sorry, I've lost my spot here. Herod Antipas was installed as ruler of the Galilee region, but none of those three sons was actually a king. They were given the title Tetrarch, or ruler, by Rome. So after Herod's death, there was again no king of the Jews. The Jewish people must then have been really sure this was it. The time was right for the new king to come. So it's not hard for us to imagine what the Jews were thinking when they read prophecy. They were calculating dates, they were looking for a new king. I mentioned Daniel's prophecies as I opened. Here's another one that is used to calculate the dates of the coming Messiah. It's in Daniel 9, 24 to 26. Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and profit and to anoint the most holy place. Know, therefore, and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for 62 weeks it shall be built again. The city of Jerusalem shall be built again with squares and a moat. But in a troubled time. After the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. Now, looking back, we can see clearly what was meant by the anointed one being cut off and having nothing. And we can see the rest of that verse clearly is the destruction of the temple and sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans. The Jews of that day, though, might not have known what to make of all of that, but they could see from this passage that there would be an anointed one on the scene at around the year we now know is 33 A.D. Without going into detail, let me just say that that's a hard date they could calculate from the passage above, based on the starting date of the decree to restore Jerusalem and the intervening 69, 69, sevens of years. As a priest would give begin his service at 30 years old, they kind of counted back from that 33 to know that. Some priestly messiah might likely be born before 380. And what kind of Messiah were they looking for? We could ask the Jews today for their perspective. They are still waiting for the first coming of their Messiah, a man who literally fulfills all of the prophecies. They point to prophetic messages that Jesus did not literally fulfill when he was here as a proof that he was not the Messiah. They do this all the time. They bring up passages like this one in Isaiah 11, verses six to nine. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the lion, and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And Amos 9, 13 through 15, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes, him who sows the seed, the mountain shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel. And they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land I've given them, says the Lord your God. Sounds like the Garden of Eden before the fall, doesn't it? The people of Israel were ready for the Messiah to come and for God to restore creation. Let's leave that stage set for a moment and consider another question. What are we waiting for? Today, in some ways, we find ourselves in the same position as Israel. We have prophecies. In fact, we still look forward to the fulfillment of many of the same prophecies that Israel was looking at. We have prophecy, I'm sorry, we have promises from God that the wicked will be punished and the righteous given rest. We have a sin-filled world that seems to be coming apart at the seams around us. There are powers set against God. We see powers as being aligned with Satan, and those are appearing to gain strength every day. There's the theory of evolution and its religion, humanism. We see that anything goes except Christianity. The platitudes of tolerance and acceptance are used to smother any dissenting view. Intolerance will not be tolerated. In many other countries, it's even worse. Christians don't just endure ridicule, they're being forcefully silenced in places like Iran, North Korea and China. They're being slaughtered in places like Sudan, Egypt and Syria. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so to speak. So the stage is set. It's time for God to clean up everything. It's time for our king to return and establish his kingdom here on Earth. We've made our calculations. We're pretty sure we know how it's going to happen. Maybe we're a little like children looking forward to Christmas morning, too. There's anticipation of what's what's good to come. There's discontent with the way things are going for us right now. We know something is wrong. We want it fixed. We want the effects of the fall to be reversed. That's it, isn't it? There's nothing wrong with that. And that's what Israel wanted, too. We're crushed under the curse. We know that all of creation is broken. So let's look back again and see what happened when Christ was among us. Sorry about this, guys. OK. Jesus failed to meet our standard. He just wouldn't follow our agenda. I mean, look at his arrival on Earth, born in a stable, laid in a feeding trough. His arrival announced not in the temple in Jerusalem, but instead to the lowest of the low, the shepherds working in the fields outside Bethlehem. And Jesus confused people, we saw earlier that Zachariah knew the time had come, this was it. But he may have had the wrong idea about God's timing. If Zachariah did understand it wrongly, we wouldn't have been he wouldn't have been alone in that. Just look at the doubts expressed by his son, John the Baptist, in Matthew 11, two to three. Now, when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come? Or should we look for another? Now, surely, if anyone could be confident that Jesus was the Messiah, even if not yet enthroned, it was John. But you can almost hear it in his voice. This isn't what I thought would happen, Jesus. Jesus didn't explain himself to John, but he gave him evidence instead. In Matthew 11, four to six, Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have the good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. No, the Jesus, the Jews of Jesus Day were not expecting things to turn out the way they did. They didn't understand how prophecies like Isaiah 53 fit into the plan. We have a couple of verses from that chapter, Isaiah 53, verses three, five and seven, I picked out as good examples here. He was despised and rejected by men, man of sorrows and acquainted not with grief, acquainted with grief as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. He was pierced for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities, upon him chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. He was oppressed. He was afflicted. And yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth. That doesn't sound like the hero they were waiting for. And then there was a serious setback. After Jesus fulfills the prophecy we just read, can you imagine the emotional roller coaster the disciples have been on after his ministry, death and resurrection? Game on. Look at these miracles. This is it. The Messiah is here. Game off. The disciples were despondent after his death. Game back on. They can't even kill this guy. We're going all the way. It may sound like an exaggeration, but you can actually see it in some of the stories in the word. Take, for example, the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, 13 to 35. In verses 19 to 21, we pick up with the disciples explaining to Jesus what had happened in in Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was prophet and mighty indeed and word before God and all the people and our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it's now the third day since these things happened. And then, of course, in verse thirty two, Christ revealed himself to them and we see their reaction. They said to each other, came on. Did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking with us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem, they found the eleven who were with them gathered together, saying, the Lord is risen indeed, he's appeared to Simon. But then something interesting happens a little bit later in that same chapter, the playbook is revealed, or at least some of it. Versus forty five to forty nine, Jesus appears to the disciples again, and not only do we see that the game is indeed on. But we begin to see the nature of the game. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. He said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. Listen to this. That the repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I'm sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. So what does this mean for us as we await the second coming? Yes, watch and wait. Be vigilant. He said to be ready. There's nothing wrong with looking forward to the restoration of of God's creation and his order in this broken world. If you look at the parable of the virgins and the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, you can see that he's promised that he will come and that we are to be ready. He's promised rest from our labors and a reward for our good deeds. Yes, there are even promises of a coming smackdown of Satan and his allies. But in the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament, both in the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament. But as the Jews of old discovered, sometimes it is tough to interpret prophecy and figure out exactly what's going to happen. But here's something we miss. We need to realize that the kingdom is here now. It's easy to be discouraged when the world in peace is like it is. And our country in particular, with its declining Christian influence, it's easy to feel like we're on the losing team. Perhaps you look at what's going on around us and maybe after an election didn't go the way you'd hoped, for example, and for a moment you feel as hopeless as the disciples did. Two days after Christ's death. So what is the nature of Christ's kingdom? He has already established it, we see in Luke 17, 20 to 21. Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. Nor will they say, look, here it is or there. For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Note that when they note that they ask when the kingdom of God would come, but that Jesus responds in the present tense, it is not coming in ways that can be observed and it is in the midst of you. Yes, he was pointing out the fact that God himself was standing there talking to them, that the kingdom of God was present in the person of Christ. But he was also saying that the kingdom as a thing was there among them. It's something he established in his coming. No big parade, no earthquake, not yet. It snuck up on them. And if it's not something easily observed and doesn't come with fanfare, What is it like? We see that in Luke 13, 18 through 21. He said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in its branches. And again, he said, to what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. The mustard seed illustrates that the kingdom is something organic that starts small and then grows into something all out of proportion from its beginnings. And the metaphor of the yeast working through all of the flour tells us that the kingdom will eventually prevail over everything. It will not be snuffed out. So what do we do about that? What does this mean for us as we wait the day of the Lord? But also as we live each day in his kingdom. I have to admit that when I got to this point in preparing the talk, I had a hard time figuring out what God wanted me to do with this. The whole New Testament speaks to this question. An exhortation to get to work in the kingdom doesn't seem to fit. This is a church that pursues God and his work diligently. Of course, I was praying about it, and then it occurred to me that this is not only a reason to work hard and join the fray, but it's also a reason to rest assured in God and be at peace. Yes, all of creation is running down as a result of the fall. All creation groans, as it says in Romans. But it's being redeemed every day by the people of God, and that redemption will see completion in the day of the Lord. Something that occurred to me just this morning as we were reading it again, as Nathan was reading this again, if you look at verses 74 and 75 in Luke 1, The passage that we read, we see that Zechariah says being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. Well, that part. Was a short term prophecy, that's something. That we do now. Or we should be doing. Now, all of this made me think of the passage in Hebrews 10, so I'd like to close by reading some of it. You should try to read verses 19 through 39 of Hebrews 10 today if you can. I'll only read 19 through 25 here. It sums up well our security in God, Christ's purpose in coming so long ago, his victory over the powers of evil in our world, and how we should spend our days here until that final day comes. Verse 19. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Another Christmas, also long ago and in my life. It was another tough year for us. There weren't any Christmas presents under the tree. My father had not been able to buy any that year because of being out of work again. I remember my aunt and uncle coming down our driveway with stacks of presents in their coming to bring us what they thought we should have at Christmas time. They had gone out of their way, they had used their own money, and they had brought Christmas to our home. That's another Christmas that sticks in my mind. And that is the kingdom at work. And I found out this morning that that uncle just passed away this morning. I got a text as I came up here. So he's standing in the full kingdom now, the day of the Lord, and basking in the glory of God. But he didn't wait. He got to work in the kingdom while he was here. So what are you waiting for? Let's pray. Our father, we thank you for blessing us so richly with your body. With each other. We thank you for the example that so many in this body have been to us and for the ways that they have served us and our family and for giving us the example of how to serve others to. Your kingdom is a wonderful thing. It's powerful, it's mighty. You do deliver us from the hand of your enemies. As we serve you here on Earth. And so we thank you for that. Show us how to live more fully in your kingdom each day. In Jesus name. Amen.