Merry Advent!

... Hello again. Welcome to Kingdom Offerings. This is Dave Scherrerrer, Hundredfold Ministries. And I want to say Merry Advent. At least as this recording is happening, I'm in the middle of the Advent season. And for pastors, there's a certain, I don't know, lament at Christmas time, weirdly. The pressure is on. There are all kinds of programs, children's musicals, Christmas choirs. They've got the holiday decorating Christmas trees to put up. There's a ladies' tea. There's a men's service group. And, of course, I've got to come up with a sermon. And Christmas has been the undoing of too many pastors. Let me try and set the stage. There are lots of visitors. Family members that show up once a year. And most of them kind of hate it. The guests fill the room. And those who invited them, their hopes are high. They may never let their shadow show in a church again for years. So it's time to hit the sermon home run. Or better yet, if you can manage to get some people on base, a grand slam would be even better. To build on this baseball metaphor, Christmas and Easter are kind of the World Series of the preaching pastor. If you're ever going to not strike out, this is the time. The job is to tell a very familiar old story that's been heard a thousand times, but tell it in a new way. Tell it in a new way that is amazing with a stirring pathos and some kind of content that changes lives. So Advent, Christmas, it's a big deal. And for the pastoral staff of a medium-sized church, it can be draining, not invigorating. Give your pastor a hug. So when I opened this chat with Merry Advent rather than Merry Christmas, that was my lead-in for today. For me, just changing the name from Christmas to Advent helps me center on this coming Christ in this otherwise pretty fierce season. Let me just kind of unpack that name Advent for a second. Advent is the ancient term given by the Christian faith to the season that we now call Christmas. Christmas and Advent, roughly the same. Advent, and if you were to look that up, it would be defined as the arrival of a notable person or a notable event. So Advent, somebody's coming on the scene. It speaks to the mysterious reality that God came to earth in the form of a tiny infant, and that being the person of God's Son, Jesus Christ, to bring salvation and hope to the world. It is Jesus who would one day save the world from our desperate state by his death on the cross. You see, Jesus is coming to be with us is the start of a story that is very good news. With all the commercialization that Christmas has become, it's easy to see why the old term Advent has even more meaning in our world today. The contrast for me with what Christmas has become with all the commercialization and Santa Claus-ation, it renders the real reason somewhat unrecognizable. In fact, we're seeing in places where the manger scenes are being taken down in city centers because they're too offensive for the public. We'd rather have this commercialized version of Christmas that means absolutely nothing. So it's the arrival, the Advent of this child that is causing such a stir. Frankly, it's much bigger than we make it out to be. That's actually saying something because Christmas has become stupid big. I mean, there's artwork, there's tens of thousands of pages devoted to the incarnation manger scenes. It's hard to miss Christmas. I'm going to make an editorial statement here. Christmas is bigger than Taylor Swift and John Lennon combined. But there is still a problem with Christmas. It's not the birth of the baby. It's the birth of the king. That's the problem. In my last backyard conversation, that's the blog environment of 100 Fold Ministries, and you can find that on our homepage. You can go back a week and take a look at this backyard conversation. But in that, I noted that everybody does love baby Jesus. Like I said, what's hard not to love? He's cute. His family is poor. They're in a strange city. They're terribly strong. We feel terribly sorry for them. It's hard, but they're in love, and they're going to make it through the night. There are seeking shepherds, singing angels, and the songs say ox and cattle are lowing and hanging out. So it all makes for a great Polaroid picture. And that's all until the magi show up. In Matthew 2, we read about their story. They come from the East, having seen the star, and they go to King Herod, who is the puppet king for the occupying Roman government over that geography that we now call the Holy Land. And they get Herod all worked up. We read in Matthew 2, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod, magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him. So Matthew doesn't tell us how many magi there were. The tradition of the three magi comes, I think, from the three gifts that they brought, rather than any actual number. Matthew references them in plural, so that we know that there has to be at least two. But according to cultural practices, travel in those days, and the status of those particular travelers, means there was probably dozens in their caravan. Camels would have been used to carry their supplies and gifts, but the magi would have rode on stallions, and that would have shown off their royal status. And there had to be servants and people to care for their needs. There were bodyguards to protect them from bandits that would probably want to get their hands on gold, frankincense, and myrrh. So the magi would have been quite a parade. Their sudden appearance as a foreign delegation entering into Jerusalem, would have no doubt created a huge spectacle. And that's why Matthew records that King Herod was disturbed, and all of Jerusalem with him. This was a major event, the coming of the magi. And this visit started a deadly firestorm. King Herod wanted no competition. He had already killed three of his own sons, he had killed cousins, he had killed wives, anyone that he thought was eyeing his throne. It was Caesar Augustus in Rome, who said it's better to be Herod's pig than to be his son. And learning from the magi that a king had been born, Herod ordered the death of every child two years old and younger. And that would have been when the magi first saw the star, and to that day it is still known as the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem. But here's the surprising point. Herod saw it right. There cannot be two kings to serve. And actually, Jesus agreed with Herod. In Matthew 6, just a little bit later in the Matthew narrative, Jesus is recorded as saying, no one can serve two masters. We are either fully devoted to the one, or fully devoted to the other. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and this world. You see, the difference between these two kings is that Herod killed, that he might keep a false kingdom, and that didn't work. And Jesus died to establish his true kingdom, and that did work. What a sad but happy truth. So I want to say, Merry Advent, Little King. So this is Kingdom Offerings. My name is Dave Scherrer of 100 Fold Ministries, and my next podcast will be released on Monday, December 25th. That's Christmas Day. Check in. Let's see if I can hit a home run.