God's Good News of Great Joy...For You - Part II

First Mid-Week Advent Service - 12/5/07

Old Testament – Isaiah 40:1-5   (This is an Old Testament prophesy of things to come in 700 years when John the Baptist would appear) Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling; “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will se it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

Gospel – Matthew 3:1-6     In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

Sermon-

Tonight we have the second of our five-part series on the “Real Meaning of Christmas”. In this series we are zeroing in on the words the angel spoke to the shepherds in Luke Chapter 2, “Fear not, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” What we’re doing in this five-part series is taking each little phrase and researching it so that we understand the full meaning of Christmas and that our joy is complete.

Last Sunday we talked about the phrase “The angel said to the shepherds” and we saw that the word “angel” means messenger, one who brings a message from God. And we said there is no difference between an angel and the Bible – both are messengers. Whether you get the Christmas story in black and white in the Bible or whether an angel appears in front of you, it’s all the same. The words have the same power and the same impact because their source is God. We also talked about how God’s Word does what it says it does. If God’s Word says “fear not”, fear begins to crumble and peace is reanimated, reborn in us. It’s the same with good news; when God speaks good news, the bad news in us crumbles away and good news is reborn, comes to life, is reanimated. And the same for great joy – when God speaks the word, sadness disappears, it begins to crumble, joy is reborn, reanimated in our lives.

This week I promised that we would talk about how to eliminate fear from our lives. You can have a great December no matter what happens and you can look forward to the New Year without fear because of the words of God’s messenger that are recorded in the Bible: “Fear not”. There are a lot of things to be afraid of in this world, all you have to do is watch the news and you can be afraid. We can be afraid of the weather; tornados, hurricanes, too much rain, too little rain, global warming. Take tornados for instance. I remember when I was growing up in Wisconsin in the mid 1960’s, we got clobbered with tornados and I was afraid of them. But we really shouldn’t be afraid of tornados. What we really need to be afraid of is the Person who controls the tornados, the Person who with one word can speak a tornado into existence, the Person who with one word can dissipate a tornado, the Person who can with one word direct the path of a tornado – God! We really need to be afraid of God, not tornados. We can be afraid of illness. But we don’t need to be afraid of illness. What we need to be afraid of is the Person who controls illnesses, the Person who can provide healing, the Person who can not provide healing – God! Or we can be afraid of terrorism. But we don’t really need to be afraid of terrorists. The Person we need to be afraid of is the Person who with one word can have every terrorist in the world drop dead in a second – God! Or we can fear the future; 2008 is coming and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the coming year. But we don’t need to be afraid of the future, what we need to be afraid of is the Person who controls the future – God! We could be afraid of people who can harm us mentally, emotionally, physically. But we don’t need to be afraid of them. The Bible says in Matthew 10:28 “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”- God! So what the Bible encourages us to do is do some fear consolidation. You’ve heard about debt consolidation, taking all your debts and putting them into a pile so you only have one debt to pay off. Well, God says to do fear consolidation. Take all your fears, everything that you’re afraid of, and put them into one pile, get a box and dump them in. The Bible tells us not to be afraid of them; the only thing we’re supposed to be afraid of is God. So take your “Fear Consolidation” box and put that into a “Fear of God” box. That’s what the Bible tells us to do.

What causes a fear of God? The first time we read about fear of God in the Bible is with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Reading Genesis 3:8-13, after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit they were not supposed to eat of, God came to pay them a visit. God was their friend, He was coming to visit them, to have fellowship with them, to have communion with them in the Garden of Eden and…He can’t find them! “The LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ Adam answered, ‘I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And God said, ‘Who told you were naked, have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?’” Well, right now Adam would be shaking in his boots if he had boots, right? But he didn’t have any boots, he was naked! But he was afraid and tried to get himself off the hook. Who does he blame? Eve! And then she tried to get herself off the hook so she blamed the devil. And the Adam and Eve Replay is born – blame your sins on someone else! The point is – they had sinned and all of a sudden Adam and Eve feared God.

There are numerous examples in the Bible illustrating fear of God. In the story of Christmas   beginning in Luke 1:26,  Gabriel the angel, a messenger from God, appeared to Mary with some very good news for her; that she would give birth to the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus. “He said ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her ‘Do not be afraid’”. We know in our conscience, deep down inside, that God has every right to come and punish us because we are sinners and have disobeyed Him, and the knowledge of that sin creates fear. Reading ahead to the birth of the Savior, Luke 2:9 says, “An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” The shepherds were afraid, knew they had not been holy and feared that God had come to do bad things. But the angel said, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news.”

1 John 4:18 says “Fear has to do with punishment”.    We fear God because of what He could rightly do to us. Now if only we could do something, if only a miracle would happen, if only somebody would come to take all the punishment that God could mete out against our sins; if someone would take that punishment we would be off the hook and wouldn’t have to fear God anymore, the punishment would be taken. If only that would happen, we could live without fear. If we could consolidate all our fears into God,  the only Person we need to be afraid of and if we could just find someone who could appease Gods’ anger over sin, we would never have to fear Him again. And Someone has done just that! Jesus Christ came into the world to take all the punishment that we deserve for our sins and He’s absorbed them. When we lit the first Advent candle last Sunday in the Advent Wreath ceremony, we quoted from Isaiah 53:5 “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was wounded for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” He died, He paid for our sins, He rose from the dead and we know that all our sins are paid for. So with everything paid for, there is nothing to be afraid of any more and there is no more punishment. If fear has to do with punishment as the 1 John passage says, but there is no punishment any more, do we need to fear God? No!

And what happens next is wonderful! When assessing God’s love shown by Jesus Christ on the Cross, it takes all the fears that we have consolidated into “Fear of God” and we know they are gone; they have been swallowed up in the love of God. That’s why this is such good news of great joy. That’s why the angels began with “Fear not!” when they said, “To you is born a Savior, Christ the Lord”. Christ would eliminate all the fear. So fear not! To you is born a Savior, he is Christ the Lord, you can go home tonight without any fear.

Heavenly Father, One of the things that plague us all the time is fear and You came and addressed it. You told us to consolidate all our fears and be afraid of You because You control everything. And You have even taken away the fear of You by paying for everything that we’ve ever done wrong on the Cross. You punished Your Son so we know You won’t punish us. Fear has to do with punishment and there is no punishment; consequently there is no fear. Thank You for reminding us of that this evening. As we go home, help us to fear not. We pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.