Jeremiah 33:14-16

Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is on the way. One day a 5 year old said to her mother, "I thought you said Christmas was around the corner?" Her mother replied, "It is." She then said, "No it isn't, I looked for it, and it wasn't there!"

I know it seems like Christmas will be here before we know it. The leftovers from Thanksgiving are almost all eaten and Christmas will be here in no time. There is no stopping it. The days on the calendar will just melt away. You better get your decorating and shopping done, only 26 days!

It was different when I was a child. As a child it seemed like Christmas would never get here. I would hear a Christmas Carol or see a display in a store and for the next month I must have been impossible to live with. "How much longer?" "Is it here yet?" I know all the adults and older kids said Christmas was coming, but it seemed like it would never get here. I looked, and it wasn't Around the corner.

That is the way the children of Israel felt. They thought the day of the Lord would never arrive. You see in the days of the prophet Jeremiah Israel was being destroyed. In judgment for the faithlessness God had allowed them to be conquered and the leaders carried off into captivity. The prophet Jeremiah had foretold this judgment.

But even before they were conquered God also revealed through Jeremiah that they would be redeemed. They would be carried off into captivity but they would also return to Israel. These words of hope would be carried by them off into captivity to see them through the ordeal of Exile from the promised land. And for decades they would turn to these words from God.

But I am sure it seemed to be taking for ever. Like a child yearning for Christmas, they yearned for the day of the Lord to arrive. They longed to return to Israel and Jerusalem. But how long would it take?

But Jeremiah told them "The days are surely coming � when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah." But tied up in this promise of a return to life in the promised land was a larger promise. There was the promise of a great king anointed by God. Not just another descendant of David but someone greater than even David. He would be a righteous branch who would execute judgment. The people would be saved and he would be called "The Lord is our righteousness."

And Israel waited for centuries for the branch off the tree of David. The Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans ruled over Israel. And they waited for their Messiah. I am sure they thought the day would never come. They would always be ruled by foreign powers and unrighteous puppet kings.

But we know that the day did come. This prophesy was fulfilled when Jesus was born. That is what Christmas is all about: the birth of the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the righteous shoot off the branch of David. God was true to his word. As surly as day is followed by night, the day came and God fulfilled his promise!

The day is surely coming. It is as inevitable as Christmas. Go look at your calendar. Christmas is on the 25th and day will follow night and as surly as the sun rises and sets it will get here.

But there is more here than just a holiday. Christmas is about the coming of God's salvation and redemption. Jesus is the righteous shoot who came to save any who would believe in him. Saves us not just from unrighteous and unjust leaders. Buy one who came to save us from sin and death. He came to deliver us out of darkness and into light!

And Jesus is here. Through his Holy Spirit Jesus is with us still executing judgment. His coming was the fulfillment of this prophesy. And he will come again to complete what he began.

"The days are surely coming," when Jesus will "execute justice and righteousness." That is what Christmas is all about. Just as you can't stop Christmas from coming you can't stop Jesus. If you are not ready for his return you aren't ready for Christmas.

Has the day come when Jesus came into your heart to execute justice and righteousness? If it hasn't, then let him in. Ask Jesus into your heart. Let him wash away your sin. Let him bring righteousness.

Then celebrate that salvation. When Christ comes again, you can say "The Lord if our Righteousness."

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Expectation are an interesting thing. They can shape and color your experience of events. If you are expecting something very bad to happen, and then something only moderately bad happens you experience the event as a relief or even joy. Conversely if you are expecting something very good to happen and then something only moderately good occurs, then you experience disappointment.

For instance, I have seen the same kind of thing happen to people several times. The Dr. says that a person may have an illness which will require years of treatments and they may never be cured of it. Then after some tests the Dr. says that all they need is major surgery and they will be well again. No if you were to tell most people that they need major surgery they would be disappointed. Yet in these case because their expectation were focused on something much worse they actually were overjoyed to hear that surgery was all that was needed.

On the other hand I am reminded of a story. A young woman heard from a friend that had a friend who worked at the mall that they saw her boyfriend in a jewelry store buying something. The young woman jumps to the conclusion that he was buying an engagement ring. That was her expectation. It turned out he had bought her a necklace and matching bracelet. Most women would be overjoyed to receive such a gift but this woman was disappointed. Her expectation had colored and shaped her experience of the event.

"The days will surely come, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house Israel and the house of Judah." This prophesy of Jeremiah's had a profound effect on Israel. It created great expectations. It was written about 580 years before Jesus was born. At that time Israel and Judah had been conquered and were living under the rule of an occupying army. Most of the Hebrews had forsaken God and started worshiping the gods of the surrounding people. The best and the brightest had been taken away into captivity so there was a lack of leadership to address the deplorable spiritual situation in which they found themselves. Often times the armies ruling over them determined who was in leadership and who wasn't. And they made sure that the leaders in power did as the army wanted them to. Israel needed someone who could follow God's will and not the will of the occupying generals.

The people needed a Messiah: a king sent from God, a leader who followed the Spirit of God, a Savior who could conquer the foes that oppressed them, someone who understood the plight of God's people, a Messiah who could rule in righteousness and justice, a Prince who would bring peace.

The Righteous prayed for a savior, so God had promised them one. The message came through the prophets like Jeremiah. This Savior would understand the people because he would be one of them, a descendant of David. He would be righteous and would rule with justice. He would conquer their oppressors. He would make Israel great again. Through him Israel will become an example of God's righteousness to the nations. It will be such an example that people will no longer call it Israel. They will call it "Yahweh Zidqano," which means "the Lord is our righteousness." The days will surely come when the Lord would fulfill the promise made to Israel.

As we all know the story of Christmas is the story of the fulfillment of that promise. Jesus was the King that God had promised them. But he was no ordinary King. Jesus was the son of God; God in the flesh. Because he was the son of God he would lead the people with the wisdom of God. But because he was also a human he would understand them. God sent him into the world to deliver the faithful from the oppression of sin and death. And through his death he defeated the source of all oppression, the Devil. When Jesus came the first time he brought peace to our hearts and when he comes again he will bring peace to the world.

The problem was Jesus was not what the people expected. They expected the Messiah to be a mighty warrior who welded a sword. They expected him to be royalty because he would be a descendant of David the great king. They thought the Messiah would drive out the Romans. They thought he would bring the people peace by securing the borders.

For almost 600 years they had waited in expectation for the long promised Messiah. And when he came, they missed him. They completely missed Christ and the first Christmas! They were looking the wrong way! They were busy peeking through the palace windows looking for a king to save them. Many missed their Messiah's birth because a poor homeless child was beneath their notice.

The Children of Israel needed a Savior and God sent them one. People today need a Savior. They need someone to deliver them from the oppression of materialism. They need someone to give them good news. They need the love of a Heavenly Father to liberate them from lostness and aloneness. They need a ray of hope in the hopelessness; a light in the darkness. We need a Messiah to save us from our own hatred and sin.

God has sent us a Savior. That is what Christmas is all about. It is about the promise of salvation to all who have faith. It is about the Joy of living in the presence of God's Son. It is about the peace that God promised first for our hearts and eventually for all creation.

In Jesus' day most people missed the salvation that God sent them. They were too busy looking for a warrior to recognize the Prince of Peace. Today most people miss the true meaning of Christmas. Like the Children of Israel they are too busy looking in the shop windows. They completely miss their Savior when he does come to them.

If material gifts are what you look for at Christmas, you are missing the point. Our savior did not come bearing DVD recorders, ipods, and rocker recliners. He came bearing liberation, freedom from the oppression of sin. Jesus didn't come to stimulate the economy and pull us out of a recession with a flurry of economic activity. He came to bring Good News to the poor and peace to troubled hearts.

Christmas is not about things. It is about Christ the promised Savior. If you want to know the joy of Christmas, focus on Christ. Joy comes through seeking God's vision of justice and peace. Joy comes through embracing God's Son who came as the child of a poor carpenter. Christmas Joy, real Joy, is found only when we look for Christ first.

Before we get too far into the Christmas season adjust your expectations. This Christmas don't celebrate the gifts under your tree. Instead celebrate the gift of Salvation from God. This year put aside the desires for material things. Instead look for and expect the gift of Eternal Peace found only in Christ. And I promise you God will more than fulfill that kind of Christmas Expectation.

Luke 21:25-36

On the 1st day of Advent my Savior gave to me: a parable on a fig tree. Look at the shopping malls and the strip malls. As soon as they sprout plastic candy canes and plywood elves you know that Christmas is coming. I hope no one is offended by this humor. But I see a connection between Jesus' parable about the fig tree and the season we are celebrating.

Of course in the parable of the fig tree, Jesus is talking about the day of the Lord, Judgment Day, the second coming. He had already told his disciples that the day of the Lord was coming. He also knew that their hour of testing was coming. Jesus was headed for Jerusalem where he knew he would be arrested, tried and crucified. He also knew that God's judgment was coming on the world one day and that he would preside over it.

So he told the disciples a parable to prepare them. It was spring as Jesus and the disciples headed for Jerusalem. And Jesus noticed the buds appearing on the trees. So he said, "When you see leaves appearing on the trees you know that summer is near. In the same way when you see these things happening you know that the time is near." Then Jesus went on to warn them to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man.

There are a number of ways that the signs of the Christmas season can teach us to be ready for the coming of Christ. First of all there is the whole commercialization of the season. It has been transformed by many from a time of celebrating God's gift to the human race and it has become a time of making money. The Christmas season is the time of the year when many stores and manufacturers make enough money to get through for another year. And often in the midst of all this the original, true, meaning of the holiday is lost.

Of course the world does this kind of thing all the time. Jesus himself warned against letting the worries of the day distract us. The demands of our day to day lives often draw our attention away from God's demand on our lives. We begin worrying about the economics of life instead of the reality of God's truth.

So learn a lesson from the commercialism you see in this season. Don't let the hustle and bustle of life keep you from communing with the Lord. This season more than any other gives you the opportunity to put that into practice. Begin by making service to the Lord a priority this Christmas. Make time to worship and read the Bible and pray. Make time to visit friends and family and strengthen those relationships. Make time to reach out to the needy, the lonely, the lost.

Another lesson we can learn from this season is a childlike faith. One of the enduring symbols of our season is the child looking out the window. We see it in Christmas cards and we hear it in songs. We have all seen that expectation in our children and perhaps we can even remember experiencing it ourselves. They truly believe and watch for something or someone to come down out of the sky to bring them gifts from the top of the world.

Of course we adults don't look at life the same way children do. You tell them that Santa is coming soon and they run to the window to look. Jesus tells us that he is coming again soon and we have to think about it and doubt. We say to ourselves, "Jesus said that almost 2,000 years ago and he still hasn't come." And instead of running to the window to look we just walk away.

But this season can teach us to regain that sense of expectation. Jesus told his disciples to have a childlike faith. Perhaps like children we can learn to place our faith in the coming of Christ without needing to pin it down on a calendar. Like the children on the Christmas cards, we can look expectantly to the sky for Jesus to return. And we can believe that even though he hasn't come yet, he surely is coming again.

Another lesson we can learn from this season is the power of the gift given. You notice, I didn't say the power of a gift. Melissa and I have a bad habit of buying gifts early and then forgetting where we put them. We discover them later after the holiday or birthday they were intended for has passed. Back in February of 1996 we were in Arizona, and I bought a geode for my sister. My sister used to collect rocks and I thought she would like that. I intended to give it to her for her birthday in July, but that passed and I forgot. So then I intended it for Christmas later that year, but that passed too. To make a long story short she didn't get it until Christmas 1998! Gifts don't do much good sitting on a shelf or in a drawer. But once a gift is given, it is able to convey more than its material worth. A gift given has the power to convey the love of the giver.

At the heart of Christmas and all its gift giving is God giving his only begotten Son. And Jesus was a gift of love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."(John 3:16) And consider the power of that gift given! For God sent his Son, not to condemn the world, but to save it.

If we truly learn that lesson then we too can be gift givers. I'm not just talking about the giving of tokens of affection wrapped up in boxes. I'm speaking of giving of ourselves. We can learn the power of giving of ourselves for others; the power of giving time and energy and talents to God's work. It will be good if you take an angel off the angel tree and give a package to a needy child. It will be better if you also spend some time with a lonely neighbor or a child. It will be wonderful if you also share Jesus with someone this season. But intending to give the gift is not enough; like that geode for my sister the gift must be given. Then when we have given away all that Jesus has given us, we will be ready for His return.

So look at the signs of the season. Just as you know that Christmas is approaching we can know that Jesus is coming. Christmas, after all, is the celebration of Jesus first coming. Jeremiah and the other prophets looked for hundreds of years for the arrival of the Messiah. We have already waited thousands for Jesus' return. But just as surely as he came a first time he will come a second.

So be ready. Keep your lives focused on God. Don't let the worries of this world distract you form your real purpose. Keep on the watch knowing that Jesus will return just as he said. And always be about the task of giving God's gift of love.

Learn this lesson from the Christmas season. When you see the Christmas decorations go up in the shop and streets, you know that Christmas is near. Also know that Jesus' return is near.