You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Faith Church.

Especially in this Advent season, you know, like, churches all around the world, free Sundays ago, we celebrated the 1st Sunday of Advent. You know, for centuries, as, as Christians have thought about how to organize, like, the calendar year, how do you think about the year, they've always seen the 1st Sunday of Advent as the beginning of the new year, not January 1st, but, I guess, 2 Sundays ago would be happy new year. How are you doing on your resolutions? Don't worry. You have plenty of time to still bake them and break them if we follow, you know, the January new year schedule.

But, Advent and the reason Advent is the beginning of of the way Christians have thought about the year is because Advent is the season of anticipation. It's the season of of wondering what the future brings. Because it's the season when we look back at when Jesus came to Earth as an infant. It's the season when we look at what does it mean that Jesus came to us individually, and then what's gonna happen when Jesus comes again, when he returns again as as our savior, as our king. This year at Faith, we've been looking forward, looking ahead to the the home that God has has promised to those who follow him.

And whether you're a follower of Jesus or not, the home that God has for us is it's the home that we're all longing for, whether we recognize it as such or or not. Because it's the home where, as we talked about the last couple weeks, it's the home where we feel like we finally belong, the place where we know we're loved, where we're accepted, where we're always welcome. It's the home that God invites us to. And this week, as you'll see, it's the home where we finally hear the words of blessing that we've been longing to hear our whole lives. It's just blessing in the home we're longing for.

Now if you're like me, you probably have childhood memories of driving unbelievably long distances in the snow to spend just a handful of hours with relatives that you don't see any other time of the year? Anybody else? Yeah. Man, my my family, so all 5 of my brothers or all 5 of us, I should say. I have 4 brothers.

5 of us. My parents, we'd pack up the car. We'd drive from Des Moines, Iowa to Peoria, Illinois where, where my mom grew up in Kickapoo County. We loved that when we were boys. She was a Kickapoo County Girl Scout.

Anyway, we get to drive back there every Christmas for at least one night at my great grandmother, Velma Eberly's, home. My great uncle Richard would be there, he always smelled like his farm, and, and his sister, my great aunt, whose name I tried so hard to remember this morning, I cannot remember her name, but I remember she was the one who always complained that we would freeze to death if we weren't wearing socks and hats inside. Put a hat on that child. And I can remember my mom rolling her eyes because my aunt, whatever her name was, wasn't married, didn't have any kids, was somehow an expert on child rearing. And I have, if you're like me, you know, I've got those fond memories of eating breakfast at my great grandmother's Formica and Steel kitchen table, of all 5 of us boys sleeping, like, side by side in the attic, pretending to be excited when we opened Great Grandmother's Gift and it was always a pair of scratchy socks and a $5 bill.

At least until she told us that because we weren't sending thank you notes every year for the socks, we were ungrateful spoiled children and we would not be getting $5 bills anymore. I mean, she had a point. We should have been sending thank you notes, but, you know, over the years, our our trips to Peoria kept getting shorter and shorter, until the last one I remember, we drove 4 hours in the morning, we had dinner, we opened presents, we had supper, we drove 4 hours home. And I remember my great grandma being, as she got older, a little less and a little less excited when 5 boys busted through the back door asking for bacon and running like crazy around the house. And I think, you know, the older I get, the more I understand, why those trips got shorter and shorter.

You know, when you put in all of the effort to go home and you're dragging 5 boys with you who don't want to be in the car for hours on end, and and you're going back to the place where you remember as a child always being welcome and appreciated and adored, and then when you and your family walk through the door and you get, like, sighs of, they're here. We all wanna go back to a home, the kind of home one songwriter puts it this way, I love it, it's this home is where there's a place to rest and wounds get dressed and the table's full and there's a sound of laughter in the halls. We want to go home to a place of blessing. You know, we wanna escape all of the fears and inadequacies and shortcomings and failures that we bring with us when we go home. Right?

The last thing you wanna do is walk in the door and see your own fears and and failures reflected back to you in the eyes of the people you just want a blessing from. Do we wanna go home and hear a blessing because it's what we were made for. It's what our souls long for. There's something deep down inside each one of us that knows that we were made for a home that we haven't we haven't been to yet. A home where we're invited in, where we're welcomed, where we belong, and where we're blessed.

A home where our father, our true father, speaks words of blessing and love over us. You know, the home where you just long to see your father's face light up when he sees you. There's blessing in the home that we're longing for. The home that god has ready for us. And that's the one big idea I hope rattles around in your head for the rest of this Advent season.

There is, like, pastor Nathan preached last week, there's belonging in the home that we're longing for, but this week, there's blessing in the home that we're longing for. We're all looking for blessing. The ultimate blessing we're longing for is only found in the home we've never been to, the home that god invites us to, the home that we're longing for. Let's jump in and and I'll I'll show you what I what I mean. To get at this idea, we're grabbing just a few verses from the middle of chapter 3 of Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia.

Let me read them. Galatians 3 13 14. By the way, this is found on page 1156 of the Black Bible in the Deceit in front of you, if you wanna turn there and follow along with me. Just 2 verses, Galatians 3 13 and 14. Paul writes that Christ, Jesus, the Messiah, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on the tree. So that verse 14. So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. If you've been following along with us in our sermon series, through the book of Acts, which, by the way, if this is your first Sunday with us, we've taken a break from a long series in Acts, this early history of the church, in order to talk about, longing for Christmas during this Advent season. But if you've been with us in Acts, you might remember that Paul wrote this letter to the churches in a region of the world called Galatia way back at the end of his first big church planting journey.

It was around the end of Acts chapter 14, beginning of chapter 15. And he wrote this letter because he'd been traveling from city to city in this region talking to people about Jesus, planting churches, inviting Jews and Gentiles alike into the family of Jesus. And there there have been a lot of questions about how exactly someone who wasn't Jewish already becomes part of what was a Jewish movement, the Jesus movement, the church. Paul has to go to Jerusalem, so he slaps off this letter real quick trying to explain as quickly as he can what he's been thinking. And these two verses, these 2 that we're grabbing, are in the middle of this big section where Paul is trying to explain to gentile followers of Jesus that they're part of a much bigger story than they had ever realized.

These are people who have come, to to realize that the life that they've always longed for can only be found in believing that Jesus is the messiah of the Jewish people and therefore the Lord of the whole world. And because they believe they're now part of a family they've never been part of before, the family of Abraham, the Jewish family. And being part of the family means they're part of God's promise to Abraham to give him the whole world as his inheritance. And they're part of God's promise to Abraham to give him a family big enough to fill that whole world. But some of them were wondering, they're starting to question, they're starting to to to doubt, maybe I can't really follow Jesus correctly if I'm if I'm not completely in the family that Jesus is part of.

Right? The the Jewish family. Maybe I'm not really in the family of Jesus until I'm following not just Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, but also following Torah, the Jewish law. That's why Paul's arguing in this section that faith in Jesus and following the law are are incompatible. He says in in verse 10 on the on the previous page that that, in verse 10 on the on the previous page that that everyone who relies on the works of the law is under a curse.

Because the law itself says, if you can't follow it, if you don't follow it, then you're cursed. And since no one can follow the law perfectly, then if you're under you're cursed. And since no one can follow the law perfectly, then if you're under the authority of the law, right, whether you were born into it as a Jew or became part of it as a gentile and became Jew become Jewish, if you're under the law, you're cursed. But then verse 13 comes in, but the Christ, the messiah, Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. So that in the Messiah, Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come even to the gentiles.

And we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith. This passage is all about curses and blessings, blessings and curses, but what are blessings and curses? I'm glad you asked. Because they're not really words that we use all that often these days. Right?

Unless you blow your nose and we say, bless you. Right? You sneeze or cough or something, or you use less than appropriate language, you curse. Or, you know, when we're we're in Christian circles, so we say a blessing before eating a meal, or we sing songs with, you know, words like bless God, God blesses us. But what does the Bible mean when it uses words like blessing and cursing?

Well, what I think is fascinating about these words, blessing, cursing, is that both are forms of what word narratives call performative speech. Performative speech means that means blessings and cursings are words that actually do something, not just refer to something. So stick with me. Most of the time when we when we talk, our words don't do things, they refer to things. You know, our our words reflect a reality that that already exists, a reality that's independent of of our words.

For instance, I could point to, you know, couples sitting in here, and I could say, like, you are husband and wife. Right? And those words are simply reflecting reality. But when I get to perform a wedding, and I get to stand up here with a couple that's not yet married, and I get to say, I now pronounce you husband and wife, my words are in that moment actually doing something. It's not so much the signing of a piece of paper.

It's the spoken words, I pronounce you husband and wife, that perform the act of making those 2 into 1. That's performative speech, speech that that does something, speech that changes reality. That's what blessings and cursings are. They do something in the world. Now all blessing starts with god.

As as one author puts it, every blessing is grace and gift. It's just overflowing with goodness and and boundless love. But if all blessing starts with God, that means that any and all blessing that a human being can do, you know, whether we're saying we we're blessing God or or blessing one another, all the blessing we do is either that gift returned or that gift passed on to someone else. I can only bless God in praise because he has blessed me first. I'm returning to God the gift that that he gave me.

Not like, you know, returning a gift to Amazon or giving back the scratchy woolen socks from great grandma Velma, but we return the gift of blessing to God more like an echo off of a canyon wall. Or, you know, a call and response in a great jazz tune. Or the way that when an infant smiles at you, you can't not smile back. Right? It's giving the gift back.

And and I can only bless you because God has blessed me first. Any blessing I bestow on you, I only, you know, I only have because I've received it from God. So, when I or when someone you know speaks words of blessing over you, words like the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, you know this, the Lord turn turn his face toward you and give you strength. I can only confer a blessing on you that I've I've first received from God. My words only achieve something because I'm I'm channeling what I've received from God on onto you.

You you could think of it like the sun. Remember in 4th grade science class when you learned that all life comes from the sun? The energy that a plant receives from the sun is channeled through the plant into the animal that eats the plants. Whether that animal is me enjoying a caesar salad, or one of my father in law's cows soon to become next month's brisket. The blessing of the sun is being channeled through them on, not to me, but so the sunlight in this metaphor is the blessing.

It comes from the sun. It can be reflected back to it. We call that praise or absorbed and passed on to others. Grass can't generate its own sunlight any more than you and I can generate our own blessing. It comes from god.

Now the opposite of a blessing is a curse. A curse is is much more than just, you know, all the words you can't say in polite company. It's more than wishing something bad would happen to someone. If blessing is like sunlight on grass, then a curse is whatever comes between the sunlight and the grass. I remember a few years back watching, as a friend's neighbor covered his entire backyard in black plastic.

He was trying to kill all the grass that he can plant in a brand new yard with, you know, none of the weeds in it. Curse is what happens when we come between the source of blessing and another person. You know, like an eclipse or a black plastic tarp. Curse is when we receive a blessing and refuse to pass it forward, to pass it on to others. Which which brings us back into this text back to Galatians 3.

Paul says that the the Messiah Jesus redeemed us, purchased us out of the curse by becoming a curse for us. As one author put it, in Jesus, he said, divine love goes to the darkest possible depths to enable the rescue operation to take place. When we were suffering under the oppressive, sticky, inky blackness of our own sinful selfishness, when our own longing to be welcomed and loved and accepted somewhere, anywhere, led us down paths of self destruction. That's when Jesus took the curse. He absorbed the curse.

He became the curse for us. He took the whole of the blackness, the entirety of our self destructiveness, the full measure of our bitter self poisoning, and he wrapped it all up into himself, swallowed it into himself so that we could once again receive the blessing. You know, it wasn't as easy as just pulling the black plastic tarp off of the lawn so the grass could get at the sunlight again. Because we weren't just covered by a curse, we had to become the curse. Removing our curse was as difficult as taking flour out of an already baked cake.

But Jesus had to become the curse. He had to let the curse kill him, so that he could destroy the curse in himself by his resurrection from the dead. But having become the curse, then he could buy us out from under the curse, so that if we are part of him, then in him and through him, the fullness of the blessing of Abraham could flow out to the world to everyone, even to gentiles. Even to us. That's the whole big point that Paul's trying to get across in these few verses in Galatians 3.

If you're a follower of Jesus, whether you were born Jewish or not or became Jewish or not, if you're following Jesus, you've been bought out from under the curse that cut you off from blessing from god. And because of Jesus, the blessing of god, the blessing that he had promised to Abraham way back here on, like, page 7, the blessing now flows through Jesus to you and to me. Now I know when I when I read passages like that, I wanna know if this is great, but what exactly is the blessing? Like like, show show me. What what is the blessing we're all supposed to receive?

Like, is it financial security? Or is it emotional equanimity? I'm not gonna have all those highs and lows I used to have. Is it obedient children? Is that the blessing?

Or maybe it's those jealousy inducing beach vacation photos that we can post on Instagram with a caption and hashtag blessed, like, that's what he's talking about here? Well, no. I mean, as good as those things are, they're not the the blessing. The blessing is, as Paul tells us, is the presence of god in us, the life of Jesus lived through us, the love of the father shining on us. Because it it's not blessing like reward.

Right? Hey. Now that you believe, I'm gonna give you a prize or a paycheck. Or like ding ding ding, you found that, you know, you hit the jackpot. It's not a reward.

The blessing is that now we draw the source of our life from god, from Jesus, from the holy spirit. As Paul says, you know, elsewhere, one page to the right in his letter to the Ephesians, it says blessed be the god and father of our lord Jesus Christ who's blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Every spiritual blessing. And he goes on to explain what he means by the spiritual blessing. He says we are chosen, we are made holy, we are loved, we are predestined, we're adopted into his family, we're redeemed, we're forgiven, we're lavished with grace, we're given his will to follow.

We're united with him. We're promised with an inheritance, and we're sealed with the Holy Spirit. And then he ran out of space. Every conceivable blessing, all of the goodness of God, the full power of the sun now shines on us and fills us and gives us life. God isn't holding anything back.

Paul says every spiritual blessing, not most of them or some of them or, you know, the basic ones that everybody gets, but if you perform well, then you get some extra ones. There's no, like, merit badge blessings. He says every spiritual blessing, all that god has and is and will ever give is given to us and is shown upon us in Jesus. He's not being eclipsed. Like, when the moon goes between the sun or dims, his his goodness to us hasn't set beyond the horizon and left us wondering if it will ever rise again.

It's just the fullness of god's goodness shines on us. In Jesus, there's no more curse for us. We're blessed. Even if we don't fully feel it yet. Because we're not yet home.

We live in the in between. You know, like kids on a road trip back to grandma's house for Christmas. We're still we're still in the are we there yet phase. But we're we're on our way back home, and we're just hoping that when we burst through the back door, we'll be greeted with smiles and hugs and with laughter and and maybe a few tears because it's just so good to see us. But even even that trip to grandma's house and the trips that you're gonna make in the next couple of weeks to go back, or maybe the trips that the people you love are gonna make to come here, they never quite give us that full feeling of blessing that we're longing for because eventually the trip ends.

And because our relatives are human. And because walking through the front door of our old home doesn't change the reality of our lives outside the home. We're all still longing for the new home, the final home, the home that that we haven't been to yet, but the home that when we get there, it will know, it will just feel that it's it's it's bright. That this is home. Rest.

In the meantime, we live on the way. We put this people on the way towards our own, knowing that we have the blessing in Jesus even if we don't fully feel it yet. But as we live on the way, we live wanting to to be that blessing for others, to to bless others with the blessing that we've already received, to reflect to others the father's smile that that is on us, to to receive his smile and reflect it onto the people around us. And we walk as people on the way. We walk in in faith, knowing that the the fullness of blessing is is it's just a it's just around the corner.

It's just a little it's just a little while longer. Are we there yet? Almost. We'll feel the fullness of God's smile shining on us eternally. The best thing we're all looking for is in the hollow that we're longing for.

And one of my favorite songwriters, captures this this tension, this waiting. In a song called Home, he writes, you know, so what do you do in the meantime? He says, well, put my hand on the plow, wipe the sweat up from my brow, and plant the good seed along the way. As I look forward to the day when, at last, I see my father run to me, singing of my child. Come on home.

Home to me and I will hold you in my arms in a joyful beating. Because there will always, always be a place for you at my table. So return to me, my child. Let's pray. Father, we know we are not home yet.

We long to be there. We long to be in the place where we hear your voice speak words of blessing over us. We know that we have received blessing from you and Jesus. All of the things that Paul tells us that we've been chosen, accepted, adopted, forgiven, loved, given your will, and given an inheritance. But we're still in the car.

We're still on our way home. So father, help us to live faithfully as we wait, and as we anticipate the day when we will run-in the back door and see your smile. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.