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 faithchurchindi.com. Now here's the teaching. K. I have a question.

I asked the folks that were here at 4 o'clock, results were mixed, so I'm really curious what you all like, you guys are more discerning. You've come to the later service, so I expect, that I'm gonna get a little bit better data out of you guys. And and I should say, before I ask this question, I should preface it by saying, I know I'm too late to do anything with this data, but it'll be helpful for for me for next year. So I'm very curious, when is too early to start listening to Christmas music? Before Thanksgiving, I heard somebody at 4 o'clock said that, like, they shouted out July.

Like, they start listening in July. I was like, what is wrong? Oh, you start in January. Okay. See, we we kinda well, let me see.

Show of hands. How many of you are, like, before Thanksgiving is fine? Like, anytime in November, let's do it. And how many of you are, like, not until Thanksgiving dinner is cleaned up? Okay.

Oh, man. It's 5050. I don't know what to do with this data now. I need a statistician to help me out. If it were up to me, when you know, to decide when are we all gonna start listening to Christmas music, when can Lowe's start selling inflatable Christmas decorations, and when is the mall gonna start playing non stop Christmas music, and all of that, my answer would be about 2 and a half hours ago.

Because I'm more of the kind who is like, hey. Once a thing starts, like, once you start to get a flavor of it, I just wanna be there. Like, for me, surprise me. I I don't like the whole build up anticipation thing. My wife, my daughter, I think are the exact opposite.

Because they'll start playing Christmas music, set up the tree, as soon as Thanksgiving is down, Christmas is up, and the music starts, and the tree goes up, and all of that, because they just love the the anticipation of it. They're like building up to the actual day. And I kinda get it, but for me, like, when I finally got my wife's gifts all wrapped and I put them under the tree, like, 3 days ago, I was like, you wanna open them? Right? I mean, like, why wait?

Why build it up? But, again, I get it. The more you kind of build up towards the actual event, you know, the more anticipation there is for the actual event, that when you finally get there, like, the payoff is is just so much better. Right? Does anybody agree that's how you kind of approach Christmas?

The more build up you can kinda put into it, the more anticipation, the more longing for Christmas morning, the more, like, when you finally get there, just the the the joy, the the excitement, it just builds and builds and builds until you're finally there. You know, the the more longing and anticipation you can build, the greater the joy when when it finally arrives. You know, we we just read from Luke chapter 2, one of the many Christmas stories in the Bible. And when we read the stories of kind of the first Christmas, they they kinda have that sense of, like, a long anticipation until finally we're here. And the payoff is huge.

Of course, you know, if you've read your way all the way through the Bible or you're trying to track this whole story, you know it's been like 400 years since God has showed up and said anything to his people, the people of Israel, the people of God, and then after 400 years of this silence, it's like suddenly, now we've got angels and and shepherds, and we've got the the the birth, and we've got the star, and we've all of this stuff is happening. It's like Christmas morning is just huge after all of that build up. We kind of get a sense of that coming through in verse 18. You know, as we've run up to verse 18, you've got the shepherds, the the angels appear and and they tell them, like, there's this baby that's been born, and they give them all these instructions, and the the shepherds run over. They wanna go see it for themselves.

And verse 18 or verse 17, they they they shared with everybody that was there what the angels had told them. And verse 18, then all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. Yeah. They wondered at it. Of course, that that word wondered has in it kind of that sense of of amazement, of just being overwhelmed by something.

It's like, this is absolutely incredible. Like, I'll never forget this. You know you've been in one of those moments if someone you are with has ever, like, elbowed you and said, why aren't you filming this? Right? Get your phone out and tape this.

It's one of those moments where you're like, I I want to remember it. I'm I'm not gonna ever be able to forget it. I assume most of us have memories like that kind of associated with Christmas. One of the clearest earliest ones for me is I was 8 or 9, maybe 10 or 11, and, I woke up one Christmas morning and came out to the living room. And our our living room in the house that I grew up in was about twice as wide as it was deep, and we had a big kinda cased opening, so you'd kinda come around it, and the tree is centered there against the bay window.

And I'm the first of 5 boys, and my mom has the spiritual gift of giving gifts. And, so the the tree is you know, it's 4 o'clock in the morning or 5 o'clock in the morning, whatever time, we woke up, and the tree is all lit, and and it looks beautiful, but I'm not looking at the tree. I'm looking at literally 2 thirds of the floor of the living room covered in presents. It was just one of those, like, I'm never gonna forget this. Amazement, and wonder.

Now that I'm a parent, I can't understand, like, what my mom was going for year after year when she was creating these moments for us, because when our our daughter was 4 or 5 or 6 or somewhere around there, and we'd finally decided we were gonna give her her own pet cat, a kitten, for Christmas, we spent the weeks leading up to Christmas with this, like, little stuffed black kitten, that we hid around the house, like, Elf on the Shelf style. And we told her every night the Christmas magic was making the kitten come alive, and it was getting into trouble, and and getting into the fridge, and drinking the milk, and, you know, all of this stuff, and leaving cookie crumbs around, and accidentally falling in the toilet and all of those things. But, of course, you know, when daylight came, the the Christmas magic turned the cat back into, this little stuffed animal, and so we we built this whole thing up until Christmas morning, and she comes out, and there's, you know, the presents on the floor, and one of the presents starts moving and making noises. And, you know, she picks it up, and there's a black cat, black kitten under there, and her face just I was like, man, it doesn't get any better than this.

And she looks at she's like, Blackie. And that's the cat's name, Blackie, and we still have Blackie, and she's horrible. She hates us. Smacks us when we walk by if she doesn't have food. But that's the that's the the sense of of wonder, of amazement, of, like, I'm never gonna forget this moment.

I don't know if it gets any better than than this. But verse 19 actually shifts a little bit because verse 18 says, all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds had told them, but Mary Now, of course, Mary is included in verse 18. She's one of those that was there when the shepherds shared this message, and so she is wondering for sure. But her reaction to all of this that's happened to her and about her goes a little deeper than just the amazement or the astonishment. Verse 19 says, but Mary treasured up all these things.

Everything she'd heard, everything she'd experienced, everything she'd been told, the angels, the shepherds, like, all of this. She treasured up all of these things and pondered them in her heart. You know, treasured and and pondered have more of the sense of, I gotta remember this. Like, I need I need to remember what's happening right here. Like, I need to take a clear mental picture, put it in my mind palace so I can come back to it later.

I have to remember it. This idea of of treasuring, like, holding on to and pondering, thinking over, Mary in this moment is saying, there's more happening right now than I can experience right now. Like, this event is bigger than what I can just experience in the moment. I need to remember this so that I can think about it later and think about it over and over and over again. All of this, she's like, I gotta hold on to this.

This is worth thinking about. Of course, if you know the story, you know, Mary had a lot to think about. An angel had had told her that this baby she was going to have would be like God, son of the most high, like God. He would rule on David's throne forever, which no one's been ruling on David's throne for a couple 100 years here, so this is kind of a new thing. And and the angels told her that that him, this this baby boy, and and, of course, her too have been chosen by God, and then angels or then shepherds show up, and they say some angels came and told us that you're having a you just had a boy, and he's the Christ, like, the Messiah.

Not just like a king that would reign on David's throne, but the king, the one that would reign forever. You know, Mary is living at a time when Roman occupation means nobody in charge is gonna be excited about the idea of a king being born. She's looking at this boy and going, I mean, he's an infant now. They can't even sit up, much less sit on a throne. So, obviously, this is gonna take a little while.

But then what do you do? Like, do you go to the temple and say, I was told he's the next king? Do you wait till he's 12 and take him to the palace and say, like, I know you guys think you're in charge, but, actually, he's in charge now. Mary's being told, like, your boy is gonna grow up to I mean, the eyes of the state, he's he's gonna be a war criminal if he's the one who starts the insurrection that puts one of our people back on the throne. It's that first Christmas morning, and Mary is living in this tension.

The tension between, you know, the wonder, the amazement, the quiet moment when you're like, it just it doesn't get any better than this. And on the other hand, there's all these unanswered questions, and what comes next, and I need to really think about this, and this is confusing, and if what everyone is telling me is true is actually true, then this is not the end of the story, this is just the beginning of it. There's gotta be more than just this. This moment right now, this moment right here, which that that tension of, I can't imagine it possibly being any better than this, and it's got to someday be better than this. That that tension, that rhythm, that kinda ping pong back and forth between those two extremes and that tension is something that I think kinda characterizes Christmas and our celebrations of Christmas.

There's moments where you're like, man, it just you know, when your kid opens the present with the kitten in it, or you see somebody coming home that you did not expect to see, there's those moments where you're like, I don't know if it if it gets any better than this. Later when, you know, we're all together and holding candles and singing Silent Night, does it really get any better than that? And yet at the same time, we're like, but this can't be all that there is. There's gotta be something more. Now I know all of the Christmas marketing, everything we've been seeing for weeks weeks on end is very much geared towards buying our way to feeling the first one.

Right? That's what all the ads are meant to do is is to get us into that. You know, we we can with the right money and the right engineering, like, we can get those moments where it just can't get better than this, and we can avoid at all costs those moments where we feel like, boy, Christmas just didn't measure up. My wife and I were talking about this a couple of days ago, and she mentioned she was like, yeah. I know I know that feeling.

It's the feeling after you've opened about your 4th present on Christmas morning, and you're like, you're starting to feel a little sick to your stomach, like, this is a little much. And I was like, 4? Like, I've built up a tolerance. I can get to 17, I think, before I start to feel like there's too much. But we do all kinda get to that point where it's like this it doesn't get any better than this, but surely there must be something more than this.

And the reason we feel that way is, especially as Christians, is because we're not just celebrating Christmas, we're observing the whole season of Advent. Because Advent as a season reminds us of the joy that it doesn't get any better than than this side of the season when we look back on the coming of Jesus as an infant who grew into the man who gave himself for us. The joy that we experience because of that, but the season also points forward in anticipation, in longing. This this can't be the end of the story. And the reason I say it can't be the end of the story is because it isn't the end of the story.

I know Christmas is more it's it's, you know, marketing wise, it's it's much more economically viable holiday than Easter. But even Easter isn't the end of the story, because one day Jesus is coming back and celebrating Advent means sitting in the tension of Jesus has come as our savior and he is going to come again as our king. Both of those things are gifts. Now I'm I'm expecting I'm assuming most of you are doing, like, gift exchanges. You've been buying gifts for each other.

Like, my goal every year is to get to Amazon 0. Like, I want my my Amazon list to get to nothing if possible. It never happens. That was that was a joke. You know, I was trying to sound materialistic for fun.

Come on. But you're gonna exchange gifts with one another as as, like, an expression of your care for each other, or even just, like, having your family around you that, you know, the gift of other people's presence is part of the celebration of the season. But I think there's gonna come a moment for each of us tonight, tomorrow, and the next couple days weeks as we celebrate with family in different places. There's gonna come a moment where you're sitting there in the middle of the Christmas celebration with the people you care about, and you're gonna think, this this can't be all that there is. The temptation is gonna be to run away from that moment.

You know, get some more eggnog, open another present, something to sort of make that feeling go away. But that feeling is a feature of Christmas. It's not a bug. It's part of the gift that God has for us. He has the gift of joy, absolutely, but he also get wants to give us the gift of longing for Christmas.

The longing, the deep and inconsolable longing, I can't think of a better word that just can't be fulfilled right here and right now. We can get so close. We can get tastes of it in the feasts and in the family and in the gifts, but there's a deep and inconsolable longing for him that we'll only be satisfied when Jesus returns. We live in the tension between wonder and pondering, between celebrating and waiting, between joy and longing until our king comes again. I hope at some point in the next day or 2, for Christmas, you'll open up the gift of longing for Jesus to return.

Let's pray together. Father, you have met us in your son, in the gift of your son, first, as an infant coming in weakness and in humility, and then as as the one who who conquered death through his own loving self sacrifice and his resurrection from the dead. You have given us everything we need in this good news of your son, Jesus, dying and rising again for us, and yet even as we have come to that good news, we still wait in longing and anticipation to sing truly the words, joy to the world, our lord, our king is come, on the day that he rules forever. Father, until that day, keep us in your faith. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.