Music.

Little game and if you get the name if you get it

correct I'm gonna your prize will

be shoot I did not prepare for this so we'll let you be first in line for communion

today how about that all right so gonna put a picture up on the screen If you know who it is,

you yell it out. All right, ta-da.

Oh, come on, you knew.

All right, well, Nate Willink is first in line,

for communion, but he cheated, because he knew. This is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, right?

Very famous American poet from the mid-1800s.

Longfellow led quite a difficult life, all right.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about it and then we're going to hear about,

we're going to read a poem and then sing a poem that was later turned into a

song that he wrote about his life, right.

We're doing this little series on Christmas carols and like I said last week,

like I'll continue to say, we are not preaching on the itself,

right, because the carol is not the inspired word of God, right?

The carol is not Scripture.

The Christmas carols that we're looking at each day, they're kind of like the

sermon illustration that helps

to illuminate the point that Scripture proclaims all throughout, right?

Last week we talked about, O come, O come, Emmanuel, and about how there is a both.

Almost like a prayer. It is a prayer, right?

Where we are imploring the Lord to come and to come quickly,

to be present with us as we look forward to the moment of our salvation,

and the moment where all of the hopelessness,

that is trying to seed itself into our lives is eliminated and only hope exists.

And so today we're gonna look at one of the, I wouldn't say it's necessarily

a famous Christmas carol, although I'm sure you all know it,

but it was written by Longfellow.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he was married, he was a father of seven children.

One of them died at birth.

And there was a point in his life, kind of later in his life,

his kids were all still little and in the house where his wife passed away tragically

at night when her dress caught on fire.

Too close to the fire that kept the family warm, her dress caught on fire at

night, and they were not able to pull it out.

He threw his body down on her to try and put it out with his own body.

He himself suffered severe burns in the process, but the next day she passed

away from complications to that incident.

And so he became a father, a single father.

And then later in life, his oldest son,

Charlie I think his name was, his oldest son went and was volunteered at a very

early age, I think 16 or 17, volunteered to go fight for the North in the Civil War.

And he went and fought and he took a bullet.

And entered into like one of his shoulders, the back of his shoulder,

went all across his body, nicked his spinal column and out his other shoulder

and left him essentially paralyzed.

And so he was now taking care, he got that news and was on his way to kind of

retrieve his son from the military hospital,

having become a single father, and now in the midst of watching his eldest son,

who went to fight in the Civil War,

be essentially paralyzed from that.

So it was on December 25th, it was Christmas of 1863 was the year that Longfellow

and his second oldest son traveled over to Cambridge,

Massachusetts to visit his son, fresh from the battlefield.

And while walking in the city of Cambridge that morning, he,

Christmas morning, he heard from the, one of the local churches,

the church bells ringing.

It's famous, like big famous chapel, right?

Sanctuary, the church bells were ringing and he could hear from inside the church

service that was happening as he was walking by.

And the congregation was singing a song, I would assume, or a chant or a prayer

from Luke chapter two, peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And it was a constant refrain that they were singing and he was hearing the

church bells and he was hearing peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And he was walking, as he was walking on his way to the military hospital to

meet his son, who had been paralyzed in war.

Longfellow, he's reported as saying or thinking, he kind of just looked around

at the proverbial circumstances of his life.

Kind of reflected on what was going on in him, what had happened to him in his life.

He considered what he was hearing from the church bells that morning,

considering his own pain-filled life as a widowed father of now of six,

now with a fatally wounded son.

And he was considering these lyrics, peace on earth, goodwill towards men,

on this Christmas morning as he heard the church bells like just blaring in the morning air.

When he got to where he was going, he sat down and immediately wrote down this poem.

Felt like it was on his heart. It was later turned into a song that we sing

on Christmas, or on the Christmas season.

I heard the bells on Christmas day.

Here are the lyrics. I heard the bells on Christmas Day,

their old familiar carols play, and wild and sweet the words repeat of peace

on earth and goodwill to men.

I thought how, as the day had come, the belfries of all Christendom had rolled

along this unbroken song of peace on earth,

good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and it mocks the song

of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

But then peeled the bells more loud and deep.

God is not dead nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.

With peace on earth goodwill to men.

Till ringing, singing, on its way, the world revolved from night to day.

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

What is clear, what is certainly clear, is that Longfellow aimed to or wanted to capture,

what for him was this massive, massive dissonance between his lived experiences,

and what he heard the church bells proverbially ringing on that Christmas morning.

This is one of those themes of Advent or the Christmas season that we don't

really think fits or belongs or we don't always like to include it,

but it's one that is kind of written honestly on every page of Scripture and

it certainly is reflected in our own lives as well,

that the Christmas season is a season,

the Advent season is a season of anticipation,

and hope-filled waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ.

But we can't fully

understand the tremendous nature

of that hope that we have and what we put our hope in is coming in Jesus without

also recognizing that the place from which we hope is one that is often filled

with nothing but despair.

There is no hope to be had unless we start from a place of what?

Hopelessness, of despair, but we often come into the Christmas season and we

say well this is just a season of joy, this is a season of celebration,

this is a season of happiness,

and sometimes we even may feel guilty because we're We're supposed to be happy right now.

We're supposed to be full of joy. We're supposed to be full of excitement and

celebration for the Christmas season.

Everyone else, everyone around us is, right?

But we forget that rooted deep within the promise of hope in Jesus Christ is

the reality that we sit in a very hopeless place without him.

And so, when Longfellow writes these words, and he says, And in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said.

For hate is strong, and it mocks the song Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

He, he willingly, he is, he allows himself to be honest enough, even for a brief moment,

to recognize the despair that is washing over his body, and who can blame him

given what he has gone through, right?

That he allows, he's honest with himself, he's honest with his readers,

he's honest with his audience, whoever that may be,

that despair has washed over him and he bows his head and he says,

well, Lord, I hear the church bells ringing, but I'm having a hard time believing

that there is peace on earth, that there is good will to men.

It seems, Lord, like, it seems like hate mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.

See, the circumstances of the world seem to be this kind of roaring chorus that

drowns out the hope-filled promises of God.

Our experiences are the circumstances, the darkness of the world,

the hate of the world, the brokenness of the world, if we sit there and just listen to it,

ears attuned only to the sound of darkness, it would indeed seem to mock the

song of God's promises to us.

It's been my experience that we're often really scared to bring those types

of honest reflections to the conversation of our faith, especially around Christmas

time when we're all supposed to be happy.

But it's obvious that Longfellow is not scared to bring that out of his experience.

And the reason that he isn't isn't, the reason that he isn't is because it's

clear to him that even in the gravity of his own personal tragedies,

that hopelessness, and darkness, and hate, and pain, do not have the last and final say.

Because the very next verse, the very next stanza, communicates the hope that

is seated in Longfellow's life in those, like, generally, but also in that moment specifically.

Yeah, in despair, I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth,

I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men, right?

But,

but, then peeled the bells more loud and deep.

God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth and goodwill to men.

God is not dead.

God does not sleep. He is not far off.

He is not removed. He is not removed from the reality of life.

He has not left us and abandoned us to the hopelessness of the existence that we experience.

He has not said, hey, your issues are your issues and yours alone.

You know, you figure them out. you created them, you do it.

See the darkness on the surface of our lives may make us believe that that darkness

runs down even to the very core of life and that there really truly is no hope.

But because God is alive, not only is he present,

But he is actively working to promise and bring to fulfillment the promise that

all that has been made wrong, or all that is wrong, shall be made right.

And this, this is the message that rings loud and clear. not just in the song,

of course, but all throughout Scripture.

So I want to look first at kind of like the where there's one line that is in

every single stanza of that song, right?

Peace on earth, goodwill to men. Where does that line come from?

Where Where is Longfellow drawing that from?

Well, he's drawing it from the gospel, particularly the account that we'll look

at this morning is from Luke's gospel, chapter two, all right?

So if you have your Bible with you this morning, open up to Luke chapter two.

Luke is the third of the gospels.

It's probably the most, I would say, the most well-known of the Christmas or

Nativity scene narratives of the four Gospels.

Luke writes with a lot of precision. In Luke chapter 2, we'll start at verse 8.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around

them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, 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.

This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.

And suddenly, a great company of heavenly hosts appeared with the angel,

praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.

The first time we encounter these words is in Luke's gospel.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.

And as the story goes, the shepherds were casually, I would assume,

casually doing their job out in the field when the Lord, an angel of the Lord, appeared to them.

And the glory of the Lord, it says, shone around them and they were terrified.

Then in the midst of all that was mundane about their life, they were accosted

by both the glory of the Lord and an angel of the Lord.

And it seems to be a common theme throughout the Christmas nativity if you read

it, is that every time an angel of the Lord comes on scene, people get pretty afraid, right?

Yeah, we may have met, because we all, you know, not, I don't watch them,

but most people watch Hallmark movies, right?

And we see, right, we see these, We see these, oh, like an angel appears, right?

And they're dressed in white and they're glowing and they have blonde hair and

blue eyes and they're nice looking and they're gentle and they're kind, right?

And they speak, you know, they're a very inviting presence, right?

It's a very palatable idea of what an angel is, right?

Well, every time the scripture declares that an angel comes and gives someone a message.

It's not kind of Hallmark angel.

It's like terrifying presence of the glory of God, right?

Dropping to our knees, wondering what in the world is going on.

This is unlike anything we've ever seen, unlike anything we've ever experienced.

I am in very fear of what is going on right here. It says that they were terrified.

See, when God shows up in glory, it is meant to.

When God's presence shows up in our lives, when his manifest presence shows

up in our life, when his glory is revealed in our life, it is not meant to leave us unchanged.

It is not meant to leave us unaffected as if we're fine in the presence and the glory of God.

And the holiness of God, we can stand on our own two feet.

We're like, it's like buddy, buddy Jesus, right?

No, but when God shows up in glory, it's meant to stop us in our tracks,

to accost every bit of our senses, to make us freeze in a humble fear of how other than us God is,

how holy our God is in comparison to who We are.

It should put us flat on our face in a terrifyingly humble posture that the

glory of God has come and visited upon us.

But what's even more interesting is that even though that's kind of like,

not just the, not a forced reaction, but it's a natural reaction to the glory

of God being revealed in our lives,

that it's not the, it's not the purpose or really the,

it's not what God desires for us in the midst of His glory being revealed.

How do we know? Well, because as soon as, as soon as the shepherds show how

terrified that they are, right, their natural reaction to the glory of the Lord being around them,

the angel of the Lord speaks up immediately and he essentially says, hey, don't be afraid.

Verse 10, verse 9, first an angel of the Lord appeared to them,

the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified,

but the angel of the Lord said to them, do not be afraid, I bring you good news

of great joy that will be for all people.

God's intention, listen, God's intention for His glory and presence around us

is not to leave us in a place of terror or fear.

It's not to leave us with not knowing what He is there for.

It's not to leave us in a place of guilt or condemnation.

God's intention for His glory and presence revealed to us is that we would be overcome by His peace.

That the glory and power and presence of God revealed to us is meant to bring

us peace in the midst of His presence.

God's presence for us is one that is meant to bring us peace.

This is a truth that is written on, like it's weaved into the fabric of all

of scripture and all of creation.

You think, I'm even thinking of like probably the most famous of all Psalms, right?

It's Psalm what, 23, right?

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leaves me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

right? I will fear no evil. Why?

For you are with me.

It is your rod. It is your staff that comforts me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies and my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and your mercy will follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Right?

It is because of the presence of the shepherd that we may walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, fearing no evil, for he is with us.

It is the presence of the shepherd. It is the presence of God.

It is the presence of the glory that speaks to us a peace even in the midst

of terrifying circumstances.

See, God's glory shows up in sometimes a terrifying suddenness to deliver a

message that is ultimately good and comforting and looks towards a future full of peace.

I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.

Maybe you feel like the terrifying suddenness of something in your life right

now has left you in a place of fear and trembling about what might come next.

Waiting for maybe the proverbial other shoe to drop or something increasingly bad to happen.

But what Scripture shows us is that the glory in the presence of God comes to

speak about the peace of God and the fulfillment of the promise of God to those who would receive Him.

And so as we look towards, even in the moment of a,

like even in the midst of terrifying circumstances, as we look towards the promises of God,

understand that the promise of God for our hope and future in the midst of terrifying

circumstances does not always look like we have imagined it.

Right? We're in a horrible, we're in the midst of a horrible,

like suddenly terrifying situation, and we ask Lord, Lord,

or we say, Lord, I know your promises for me in the future, our good,

I am looking for you to fulfill your promise for my good in the midst of this

situation. And so then what do we do?

We catalog all these understandings of how God is going to rescue us out of

the situation and deliver us into the future that is full of good news and hope, right?

And we say like, okay, it's gonna mean like, God just comes on with a legion

of armies and smites all my enemies right before me, right?

He's gonna pluck me out of the middle of this circumstance with like this miraculous intervention.

The skies are going to part, right? The light is going to shine down.

I'm going to see it as I imagine that I'm going to see it because if I was God

and I was doing it, this is exactly how I would do it, right?

True or not? True for me. I don't know, right?

But listen, if we know, if we understand anything, right?

It's that we should understand this, is that like, His ways are not our ways.

His wisdom it's not our wisdom, right?

Thank you, Jesus, right? I'm really grateful that God has not taken me up on all my ideas, okay?

Because what ultimately, to the shepherds, to Mary and Joseph,

right, to the people of Israel,

did the promise of God look like in order to bring them peace?

Did he come crashing into the world with 10,000 legions of angels,

setting them free, bringing them into a place of peace and good news?

No, the promise of God fulfilled looked quite different.

It looked a little bit more like

a baby born in humble circumstances to a family no one's ever heard of.

Wrapped in leftover cloth and laid in a feeding trough because there was no place else for him.

It may look more like that. God's promise for your hope,

the hope-filled promise that God has for us may look a lot more like a baby

wrapped in clothes and lying in a feeding trough and a lot less like the complete

reversal of your circumstances or experiences.

But what is certain is that God's glory is in the peace.

This truth, yes, here is found in the Gospel of Luke, indeed.

But it also finds its trajectory earlier in the Old Testament as well,

right? This is not just a Jesus principle.

This is not just a New Testament principle. This is a principle that is written

all throughout the pages of scripture.

It's not a new idea for God to show up in the midst of circumstances where all

hope is lost and say, listen, I am here, you are not alone.

I am with you and I will bring you peace.

When hurt, and when brokenness, and darkness, and evil abound, what do we do?

Do we roll over in resignation that this is just our lot in life,

that we just must trudge through it all, not changing anything?

Or, like Paul says in 2 Corinthians, do we fix our eyes not on what is seen,

because what is seen is temporary, right?

What is unseen is eternal.

He says this actually in 2 Corinthians chapter four. Let's look at that scripture.

Be encouraging to us. you.

2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 through 18, he says, therefore,

therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away,

yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." What was seen

in Longfellow's life was just complete loss and despair and brokenness and hopelessness.

What was unseen for him was the bells that peal loud and deep that God is not

dead and he does not sleep.

The wrong will fail, the right prevail. Peace on earth. Goodwill to men.

But again, like I said, this is not just a New Testament principle,

it's not just a gospel principle, it's also written in the fabric of all of who God is.

If we were in youth group right now, we would play a sword drill game.

Who grew up playing sword drills?

You know what sword drills are, okay. Like, for all you who didn't grow up in the church, right?

Sword drills, it seems, not a weird thing, I don't know, but sword drills are

when people race to find the right Bible verse, right?

And when you're yelling out the right Bible verse, right? Or when you're yelling

out the Bible verse, you always kind of want to pick one that's a little obscure, right?

You don't pick like Genesis 1, because everyone knows where Genesis 1 is, right?

You pick like one of those that people are like, That's not even in the Bible.

You're like, okay, second Maverick three, nine. Ready?

Right?

So, we'll take one way out of the depths of the Old Testament, right?

In Lamentations, the book of Lamentations. Did you know that there's a book

called Lamentations in the New Testament, or the Old Testament?

It's on page 688 in my Bible. I have no idea what page it's on in yours, but right,

but listen, Lamentations is a, did you know that it's a whole book in the Bible,

where the writer is like, man, life is bad.

This is not going well. This is not going well.

But.

But I choose to believe that God is my fortress, my rock, my steadfast anger.

Lamentations, really like the whole thing is about that dissonance even that

Longfellow felt, that you and I feel like, man, the world, it mocks the song

of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

But I hear the bells peal loud and deep that God is not dead and he does not sleep.

And we hold them both in tension. Remember we talked about that tension last

week between the already,

what God has already accomplished in Jesus Christ by faith and what he has not

yet, what we have not yet experienced.

We have the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until Jesus

Christ, the Son of God returns for a second time and all is redeemed and made

new then and then the deposit of the Spirit in us, right?

Witnesses to the fact like, yeah, that's what we were waiting for.

And now everything has been fulfilled.

We live in that middle space, that tension between what God has already done

and what God is, what has not been accomplished in the full redemption of the world.

Lamentations is all about that. So in Lamentations chapter three.

So.

I'm a little bit of a, we're gonna read 17 through 33.

I have been deprived of peace.

I have forgotten what prosperity is.

So I say, my splendor is gone in all that I had hoped from the Lord.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet, this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O God.

I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.

It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in

silence, for the Lord has laid it on him.

Let him bury his face in the dust.

There may yet be hope.

Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him, and then be filled

with disgrace, for men are not cast off by the Lord forever.

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

Where he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.

And if you've been with us here a little while over the last few months,

you know that we've been preaching a message in the book of Romans prior to Christmas.

And in Romans chapter 5, we had talked about this really interesting dynamic.

One of the main things that Paul does in writing to the Romans in chapter 5

is he aims to kind of like juxtapose or compare against one another the incredible

depth of destruction that the sin of Adam has brought on the whole of creation

and all that it has destroyed.

But at the same time, he compares the incredible level of destruction of the

sin of Adam with the incredible level of redemption and grace that comes through

the other one man, Jesus Christ.

And what Paul wants to do there, and he does several times, is to demonstrate that yes,

even though the sin of Adam seeps down into the core of all of creation and

spreads to all of Adam's seed and destroys all that God has made new,

how much more,

how much more is the grace of God to bring redemption through Jesus Christ.

How much more is the goodness of God and the power of God in Jesus Christ to make all things new?

In each place he talks about it, he doesn't elevate the depth of brokenness

and depravity that sin brings.

He elevates the tremendous power of God to be so much more than the power of sin and darkness.

Let this be the refrain of our lives when we are in the midst of and the middle

of a situation that brings There's so much that is that line from Longfellow's song,

in despair I bowed my head, there is no peace on earth, I said,

for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

But how much more is the promise of God?

How much more is the promise of God than the darkness that fills the night?

How much more is the promise of God than the hopelessness that fills our soul?

How much more is the promise of God than the brokenness that seeks to tear apart

everything that God has built up in us and through us and with us?

How much more does God give us in Jesus Christ so that the brokenness is no longer broken?

The hopelessness is now filled with hope and all of the despair that we have

been carrying with us in our life is now only the ground upon which we may sing,

joy to the Lord, for he has done it in me.

Just the examples from Romans, so you know I'm not lying to you here.

Romans chapter 5 verse 9 and 10, he says, Since we have now been justified by

his blood, right? We've been made right by his blood.

How now, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him?

For if when we were God's enemies we were reconciled to him through the death

of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?

Then in verse 17, for if by the trespasses of one man, death reigned through the one man,

how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of

the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ?

How much more?

How much more is the power of God? How much more is the hope of God?

How much more is the wholeness of God than every bit of hopelessness and brokenness

and darkness that we experience?

That is the promise of the Advent season.

That is the promise of Christmas. That everything that the world of darkness

and sin tries to tell us is final and inescapable,

God can and will overcome.

I'm going to pray and then Pastor Luke is going to come up and lead us in our

communion celebration and remembrance this morning.

Heavenly Father, how much more, Lord?

How much more is your goodness?

How much more, Lord, is the hope that you have offered to us in Jesus Christ?

How much more is the promise of restoration than the brokenness that we've experienced,

Lord. Father, thank you.

Thank you, Lord, that in the midst of what is despairing,

Lord, that you have not stayed, you do not stand far off,

but that you are present and near and with us. In Jesus' name, Amen.