ADVENT: The Hopeful Wait

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The joy, God, you're the joy of the heart that longs.

The Gospel kind of infers, indicates, and promises that there's a light that is coming for the heart that holds on.

The gospel says you don't get everything you want in this world.

The gospel says that in this life we look through a glass dimly.

Translation, you're not as smart as you want to be.

The gospel says that you are infinite creator God, and we are finite created beings.

And while we can accomplish and achieve a lot, no one can be like you.

That is the lie of the garden that Satan convinced Adam and Eve that God's afraid you'll somehow be like him.

God, we don't aspire to that.

We bow before the truth of the gospel, that there is one God.

Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one.

The Lord our God is one God.

And so the world works because there's one God.

I don't have to, the pressure's off.

I don't have to be God because that job has already been joyfully filled, sufficiently accomplished.

And so I can rest.

I can say soon, very soon, and live with the tension of the already and the not yet.

Soon is the Bible way of saying hadn't happened yet.

And so what do we do in the meantime, God, we wait.

That separates creator from creation because the creator doesn't wait.

We wait.

We know we're thinking too much of ourselves when we think that you wait on us to make up our minds.

And we just drowned it in three chapters of Romans, which have just obliterated that false theology.

And so now, Lord, we come to Advent, to a season of waiting, of just remembering and building us a sense of anticipation that only comes from a right understanding of the Bible.

We're not here to read the cultural tea leaves.

We're here to read the Bible and more importantly, let it read us.

And so, Holy Spirit, illuminate and eliminate what's necessary so we can be people of the way.

We pray and we listen now in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

And let me just invite you.

It'll be hard for you to see your Bible, uh, not because we didn't pay the electricity bill.

Uh we we use light during advent, light and darkness during advent to remind ourselves that though God came uh early on and God created Adam and Eve and God did all this stuff, there was a period towards the end of the Old Testament.

You read the Old Testament, the minor prophets, the guys that have names like homeschoolers used to name their kids, like Malachi and Habakkuk and all those names.

You okay?

Yes?

I love homeschoolers.

I know you're here.

Thank you.

Uh but but you read the end of the Old Testament and it kind of looks like God's angry, but what happened is people just quit listening.

They were just kind of like, we got this.

We, I mean, it it's it's 2013.

Come on, that stuff that that like applied back then, but I mean I've been to college and took a psychology class or I took a biology class.

I mean, are you kidding me?

You really think that stuff's really applicable in 2013?

Absolutely.

And so because people kind of got puffed up and big in their intellect, God just said, okay, you don't listen, I'll just quit talking.

And there's 450 years of silence between the old and the new testament and and and and and and and just, I mean, people are like, people were born and died with no revelation, no illumination, no, it's just a sense of bleak nothingness.

And that's what happens when men think, you know what, I can kind of throw off this whole God thing because it's just holding me back.

I'm not developing intellectually and emotionally and physically like I can.

If this this thing just restrains me.

The great theologian Bill Gates said a while back, when it comes to a as far as an efficient use of time, religion is really a what was a colossal waste of time.

I can think of many better things to do on a Sunday morning.

You see, there's something in our DNA that doesn't want to wait, which is why I want to talk to you this morning about what I call the hopeful wait.

And lest I sound all high and mighty like I got it all together, we hate to wait.

I hate to wait because it smashes the idol of efficiency.

I come in every morning to my office and there's a list usually on my desk somewhere reminding me of all the things that I've got to do, and I feel better about myself at the end of the day when I've crossed them all off and I can just drop it in the trash can.

But sometimes the world doesn't cooperate because everybody in the world doesn't think like me, believe like me, and work like me.

The world would be a better place if they did, but they don't.

Yes, thank you.

There's one more honest person in the room.

The rest of you are liars.

I so hate to wait.

I pull up to a red light, and if there's two lanes, I try to figure out which one's gonna go fastest.

And like there's two cars in this one, or four cars and two cars, and if there's three and three, here's how impatient I am.

I look and see what kind of car it is.

Like recently I come on the Grand Park and I saw a Mustang, a Nissan, and an SUV, and I thought, I'm getting over here.

Because over here, there was like a VW Beetle, a 71 Dodge Dart, and a beat up pickup.

Well, I forgot that the guy in the front in the Mustang had a midlife crisis and bought the Mustang.

He's like 106.

The light changes, and I'm thinking, light him up, pal, let's go.

No.

Bomba Domba D.

I was I was so mad.

People behind me saw what was coming, and they just got in the draft in this lane over here, and it was like nine cars.

By the time we got to the next line on the Grand Parkway, I was counting how many cars behind I was because if I'd have gotten that lane, I'd have been seven cars up there.

When somebody got my oil changed, I called the guy and said, How long is it gonna be?

And the guy said, It's gonna be an hour.

By the time you get a bit an hour.

So I took a couple books to read, gave my keys, hey, my truck's right out there, and go.

Sixty-five minutes later, I was at the counter.

Excuse me, when I came here, you said it's gonna be an hour?

Hello?

It's now five minutes past an hour.

He said, Well, we're kind of backed up, not my issue.

You say, I know enough of the Bible to make me getting my way be God's will.

Here's what I dropped on the guy at the Jiffy Lube.

Uh Jesus said, let you yay be yay and you nay be nay.

You got a problem with that?

Or I mean, I'm just saying.

Fifteen minutes later, oh man, you'd have thought I was I was like, give my keys, I gotta go.

He's like, Well, sir, we'll get to it.

Get to it.

Is that tomorrow or next Tuesday?

Hey, really, what I was saying was, I'm too important to wait like the rest of these people over here.

I don't want to read your people magazine from 2009, okay?

All right, I'm not interested.

Took my keys and walked out.

He said, Well, give us another chance.

So, my mind, I thought, if I go back, give him another chance, maybe he'll remember me and give me a discount.

So I went back.

Remember me?

Because if I had to wait, I want you to have a record on file that I waited.

Remember me?

Yeah, I remember you.

Uh, how long is it gonna be?

30 minutes, all right, and mark.

Sit back.

Now I don't let them see me do that.

I just clan set my watch, kind of casually, okay, here we go.

Walked on and sit down.

There's that People magazine right there.

Mm-hmm.

That's good.

Uh, when Miley Cyrus was on the Disney Channel.

You do the math on that one.

So I'm sitting there reading my book.

38 minutes.

There I go up to the counter.

Hey, uh, excuse me, I don't know if you remember me.

We're doing this thing again.

Sorry, it's kind of been not my issue, okay?

I've been praying that you would keep your word clearly.

My prayers are not working.

Everybody in there is get them, man, get them.

We wait all the time.

I mean, come on, you're here to make money, turn these cars out.

Not only do I not want to wait, if you make me wait, I've got, I can tell you how you could be more efficient.

My own wife said to me, because my in-laws came on Tuesday and just left this morning, so I'm a little twitchy.

Let me tell you something.

After three days, family's like fish.

You start to smell funny.

I told my wife, she's pulling out the table.

We have a formal dining room table, it's got two leaves in it we never use.

You can see like ten people around it, and she's got it all.

And I started telling her, Hey, you know what you ought to do?

And she's like, This is after she's baked six pies, two cakes, a turkey, blah, blah, blah.

And I just said innocently, you know what you ought to do?

Mm-mm-mm-mm.

No, sir.

No, sir.

And I just said, Well, have it your way.

If you just want to screw it up, go ahead.

Apparently, you're not supposed to be honest in marriage.

Later that night we got in bed, and in the cover of darkness, my wife said, You need to repent of believing everybody should do the thing, do things the way you would do them.

It's your life.

Do what you want.

And I heard, you ever, guys, you ever laid in bed and you can feel your wife kind of shaking?

And I thought, oh, she's crying.

I better console her.

She was laughing.

So I just confess in my hypocrisy about waiting.

I don't like to wait.

Deep down inside, you don't like to wait.

The Bible, for a lot of us, feels like it was written by a bunch of guys who burp dust and it's just not applicable anymore.

We can't wait on that.

We've kind of outgrown that.

And I just want to start off by making, I'm going to make three statements, okay?

And we're going to be all over the Bible.

It'll come up on the screen, so just stay with me.

First point I want to make on this first Sunday of Advent is we talk about the hopeful wait.

The hopeful wait.

The weight of Advent is not punishment, it's preparation.

First point is simply this that waiting is a part of God's plan.

Waiting is a part of God's plan.

You're like, okay, thank you.

Hello, I got no, no, no.

On a deeper level that I don't think we quite understand, there's a different way that God could have done it, but he's chosen to do it in such a way that reveals his nature.

You say, what do you mean?

Genesis chapter 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Remember that?

The earth was void and formless, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, all that good stuff.

And he makes all the animals.

There's not a He makes man, He makes all the animals, and there's nothing found suitable for Him, so He makes woman.

And when God made woman, that was a great thing, right, man?

That was awesome.

If you're not married, you should thank God every day that God made woman, because golly, that's good.

Is my wife in here?

See if I can redeem myself here.

And so puts them in the garden, says, You're free to eat of any tree in the garden, but of this one tree, don't eat.

And they're like, hey, God, what's too far on a date?

We want to go as far as we can.

And they're right there, and the serpent, the enemy, the devil, Satan comes along and says, Hey, God's afraid you'll be like him, knowing good and evil.

And the Bible says that Eve took the fruit, gave some to her husband, they ate, and when they did, it's called that's referred to as the fall.

Sin entered into the world.

If you get mad at the way the world is, don't shake your fist at God.

The world's like it is because we're like we are.

We are by nature a distrusting people.

Sin is not a mar on God's character.

Hey, where's your God now?

I mean, good God.

I mean, there's an earthquake in China.

Are you kidding me?

This morning, a train derailed in New York and four people were killed.

Absolutely.

Because the Bible says that creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.

Creation is groaning, kind of going, come on, are you kidding me?

You think this is the way it's supposed to be?

What do you mean, waiting is a part of God's plan?

After the fall, God comes and he speaks to Adam and Eve, then he speaks to the serpent, and then he says this in Genesis 3, verse 15, I will put enmity, hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

Genesis 3:15

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

He shall.

You shall.

God says, I will put enmity.

You say, I don't get it.

What do you mean?

Waiting is a part of God's plan.

Let me demonstrate it this way.

I don't know if you saw it this week or not, but on one of the new Good Morning America or something, there was a video.

Two 14-year-old kids in Florida decided to meet after school and fight, okay?

And so they they met there, and not only did they decide to meet and fight, but they decided to videotape it, okay?

Which apparently in this day and age, you've got to videotape everything.

And not only did they decide to meet and fight, but one of them's parents decided to show up.

Now ask yourself, what kind of sorry parent do you have to be that you're gonna show up and watch your kid get into a fist fight with another kid?

Okay, memo to you, grow a brain, mom and dad.

But the guys there, and here was the one redemptive thing that I kind of thought the redneck in me said, okay, I get that.

The one kid started losing, the kid whose dad was there started losing.

And so the dad, I don't know if he showed up with his shirt off, but in the video, he did not have his shirt on.

He should have had a shirt on.

But the the dad with his boiler just hanging out just jumps in and starts just wailing on this 14-year-old kid.

And I'm like, I get that.

Am I saying that's right?

Absolutely not.

But I got kids, you jerk with my kids, you're walking on the wrong side of me, my friend.

It's on like conky dong, all right?

We're gonna get at it.

And I don't mind going to jail or whatever.

So I kind of get that.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Here's why.

Look at me.

Because in the garden, God, the Father, looks down.

And why and if you're a thinking person, part of you is kind of like, what do you mean?

You're just gonna say, Hey, hey, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise this heel.

That's the first messianic promise.

God is saying to Satan, by the way, you think you're gonna do something, but you're gonna get crushed in this deal.

Part of you should wonder, now, why would not the fatherhood in God kind of swell up and God go, oh yeah, you jerk with my kids, bam, bam, I'll crush you right here.

But he didn't.

Here's why.

Because God is I am, he can use the language of I will.

And because there's a gap between I am and I will, those people who live between the nature of God and the promise of God are forced to wait.

It's one of the boundaries that God establishes between creator and that which he created.

So waiting is a part of God's plan.

Secondly, waiting is a universal experience of God's people.

Waiting is a universal experience of God's people.

You say, what do you mean?

I I just thought, well, here, I just want to see, because sometimes when I'm I'm forced to wait, I feel like I'm being punished, and I start thinking, what have I done wrong?

Why this?

I remember being in college, I didn't get married until I was 28 years old.

Now, when I was 27, that felt like I'd been sentenced to hell.

Can I just be honest?

Because when I was 27, I was traveling around the country preaching.

I was uh God, God, despite me, blessed my ministry.

I enjoyed what I did, but I had this kind of gnawing sense of aloneness, kind of like, is this what it's always gonna be like?

Because I wouldn't mind being married.

Now, when you're 18, you're kind of like, hey, I want my wife to be this and that.

I want her to be a descendant of Lottie Moon.

I want her to love Jesus.

When you're 26 and you're still single, you're like, God, if she's got a pulse, we'll go from there.

I can work on the rest.

Because here's what happens: waiting, waiting causes you to kind of lower your standards and expectations.

And it's the worst thing that you can do.

Matter of fact, there's some of you in this room that will engage in certain behaviors, not because you think they're okay, but because it makes you more acceptable to the people in your peer group.

Because the hardest thing to do is to wait.

The Bible, you say, What do you mean waiting is the universal experience of the people of God?

You go on from Genesis 3, you go to Genesis 7, and you read this about a man named Noah, Genesis 7:1.

Genesis 7:1

Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I've seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.

For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and not every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.

And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Now you say, No, what do you mean?

That's exactly right.

People say, Well, do you believe the Noah ark says?

Absolutely I do.

The Bible says it rained for forty days and forty nights, but you've got to keep reading from Genesis 7.

Keep reading.

Don't get your theology of God from the media or from hearsay or your friends sitting around the lunch table at school going, Well, I think, thank you, thank you.

That does like I don't, okay, whatever.

The Bible says that he got seven pears.

So you think, well, they went on two by two, so you think all the animals in the world descended.

I think on the ark was all the DNA essential to repopulate the earth.

Absolutely, I believe that.

I believe it.

But the Bible says that not only did it rain for 40 days, and people are like, my brother, oh, how much water?

How hard does it have to rain?

Have you done like the mass and volume of that to figure that?

Because my brother's smart.

Just ask him.

He's on his third marriage, which is really not a marriage, they just live together, but he's got it figured out.

I'm like, hey man, marriage, not that hard.

It's one man, one woman, one flesh relationship the way God's done.

I don't need you to lecture me, okay, preacher?

All right, just checking.

Bill Nye, science guy, he was telling me, Oh, I don't believe in the Noah Art because, you know, how hard does it have to rain for 40 days?

I mean, it could rain solid masses of water for 40 days, and it still wouldn't flood the earth because the crevices, I said, it didn't just rain from above.

The Bible says the fountains of the deep opened up and water gushed up out of the ground.

He's like, Oh, I never heard of that.

Well, if you're gonna formulate an opinion about things in the Bible, why don't you actually read them in the Bible?

Nutty, crazy, put down the course light at Thanksgiving, heal Billy, and just mix in a little Bible reading.

You want to go outside?

Absolutely, I do.

More than I have words for.

Whoa! Do I want to go outside?

Oh man.

Christmas is coming November.

But the Bible goes on and says, hey, in chapter 8, verse 13, it says, In the 61st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.

Now, by the way, most people, my brother, think that Noah was in the ark for 40 days and 40 nights.

Now, if you do the math, start reading in Genesis chapter 7 again.

Genesis 7 · chapter mention

If you're going to formulate opinions about things in the Bible, don't get your information from Wikipedia.

Crazy, I know.

The Bible, if you do the math, Noah was in the Ark for 370 days with seven pairs of all the animals on the earth at that time, enough DNA to repopulate the planet.

I believe in evolution within the species.

I don't think we were monkeys and became men.

Where's the missing link?

We can't seem to supply that.

Years ago, they had the exhibit here in Houston of Lucy.

It's like six bones.

Really?

You're basing a worldview.

I want my money back for this exhibit, and I want to open hand slap all of you that think this is the missing link.

Are you kidding me?

You're smart and you're gonna sell this to us.

Wow.

But the Bible says this in Genesis chapter 8, verse 13, after 370 days being in the ark, it said Noah took the covering off the ark.

Genesis 8:13

You ever wonder what that smells like?

What am I saying?

Waiting is a universal experience of the people of God.

It doesn't stop there.

In Genesis chapter 12, verse 1, God speaks to a man named Abram.

Genesis 12:1

And he says, Hey, leave the land.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred, that means your family and your father's house, to the land that I will show you.

Once again, because he is I am, he speaks in terms of I will.

And the next verse says that, and Abram left.

And Abram left.

If you keep following this little guy, Abram, into the book of Genesis, you get to chapter 17, and God promises he and his wife, Sarah, a son.

He says, Hey, you're gonna have a son.

They've already got this, you know.

Hey, they had like a maid, a handmaiden named Hagar, and Sarah said, Hey, I'm barren, I can't have kids, we've got infertility issues going on.

And but hey, here, this will get us a kid, and they gave birth to this little man named a little boy named Ishmael.

And God said, Ishmael is a wild donkey, he'll be angry his entire life.

And and and God goes back to Abram and says, Hey, here's the deal.

I meant what I said.

I am the great I am.

I speak in terms of I will, and you gotta wait for me to do what I say I will do, but if I say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it.

And he's like, Okay, and he laughs in God's face.

It was 25 years from the time God promised them a child.

There's people in this room right now, they're trying to get pregnant, they can't get pregnant.

You understand that.

You're like, Are you kidding me?

Just another month of oh.

And you go from Genesis 17, go keep going forward over into Genesis 22.

They have Isaac the sum of the promise, and God speaks to him again and say, Genesis 22 and says, Abraham, and God, and Abraham says, Here I am.

I'd be more the type that says, Abraham, nobody's home.

Abraham says, Here I am, and he says, Take your son, your only son, Isaac, and offer him up on an altar, which I will show you.

Because God is I am, he speaks in terms of I will.

And the people of God, that's plenty enough for them.

And so he takes his son and he goes and he says at one point, turns to the servant and says, Stay here, I and the lad will go and worship and come back to you.

Is sacrifice an act of worship for you, or is it just an insult upon your personhood?

Twenty-five years waiting for a son, and then God says, Sacrifice your son.

And he raises the knife to take the life of his son.

And he looks back, and there's a ram caught in the thicket, and he looks at, and he told his son all along, God will provide a ram.

He was like, Hey, where's the sacrifice?

We got the wood and we got fire.

Where's the sacrifice?

God will provide.

Because he's I am, he not only speaks, but you can speak of him in terms of I will.

God will provide a sacrifice.

So when Jesus comes on the scene thousands of years later, the first thing John the Baptist says is, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

Why does he say that?

Because Abram was right.

God will provide for himself a sacrifice.

And all these things, like Megan read earlier, all these stories in the Old Testament are not just separate stories, random things that we vote on with our intellect.

It's all little reminders of this one big story that God is telling.

And all along as the story unfolds, people wait.

You go from Genesis 22 into Genesis 37, and you read about a man named Joseph.

Joseph was a man that had visions and dreams, and his brothers got a little envious.

And this is what the Bible says of Joseph.

This is what they decided to do.

It says they saw him from afar, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him.

And they said to one another, Here comes this dreamer.

Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.

And then we will say that a fierce animal had devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.

But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of the hand, saying, Let us not take his life.

And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood.

Cast him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him.

They might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.

And so when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe and the robe of many colors that he wore.

And they were there they took him and they cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty, and there was no water in it.

You see, all along these different people and these different stories, they while you're waiting, there's just these thoughts go through your head, like like for Noah, as he's locked up in this boat for 370 days in the stench of all these animals.

At some point goes through his head, yeah, no good deed goes unpunished.

I'm a righteous man, and this is what I get for it.

Abraham.

Thought goes through his head.

Is there a plan B?

Is there hello?

Can we negotiate?

For Joseph, the thought goes through his head.

It's very simple.

I knew I should have kept my mouth shut.

Me and my dreams.

If I'd have just kept my mouth shut, here I am at the bottom of a pit, and his brothers are going.

We'll see what comes of his dream now.

And for 13 years, Joseph waits.

And 13 years later, his brothers appear before him, and their very life depends on Joseph speaking up.

Because waiting is a universal experience of God's people.

Exodus chapter 2, guy named Moses.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

He kills a man, flees to the far side of the wilderness.

He marries a woman out there.

He kind of sets up shop.

He grew up in the home of Pharaoh.

I mean, he had it made.

He was lived in the lap of luxury.

He could have gone to the finest schools anywhere.

Because he was, he lived in fear that people were going to get him, people were going to find out about his past.

So living out on the far side of the wilderness, out of uh just just thinking, okay, well, there you go.

Thought goes through Moses' mind: God's forgotten all about me out here.

I just got to make the most of this.

Then you get to Exodus 32.

Moses has gone up on the mountain.

He's come back from Exodus 2, and he's the central character that God's going to use to deliver his people.

He goes up on the mountain to get the Ten Commandments, and the people, here's what the Bible says, Exodus 32, 1.

Hear this.

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around themselves, gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, Up, make us gods who will go before us.

That's for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.

We do not know what has become of him.

Church people have always had a short memory.

Notice the way they talk to their leaders.

Up, dance, monkey, up.

Make for us some gods.

Up.

What goes through their head?

Any God will do.

We're not waiting unless Moses guy, we don't know what came of Moses.

I mean, the guy that led us out of the land of Egypt.

Let's not miss that little fragment in the sentence.

We don't know about him.

We want something we can fixate on because we live in bondage to the visible.

If we can't drive it, eat it, live in it, sleep on it, or put it in the bank, it doesn't matter.

And then you just spill into the New Testament.

And you see that the church is born out of a season of waiting.

Acts chapter 1, verse 4, it says, And while staying with them, he, Jesus, ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

Acts 1:4

So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.

Now notice this, Jesus said, They're like, Hey, Jesus, will you at this time, when we've waited long enough, and it's time for you to do what we would do if we were God?

And Jesus says, It's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father is fixed by his own authority.

Why do I read that a second time?

Simply to say this.

The Bible is more agricultural in its timekeeping than chronological.

The Bible's more agricultural than it is chronologically.

What do you mean?

That's why when you read the New Testament, Jesus says over and over and over, my time is not yet come.

Jesus, would you come up to the feast?

My time is not yet come.

The Pharisees picked up rocks to sown him, and then Jesus disappeared in the crowd because his time had not yet come.

See, the Bible talks more not about chronology, but about ripeness, about things coming to fruition.

It's as if somebody is in control of the whole thing.

Imagine that.

So in John 12, when these Greeks come and they say, We want to see Jesus, Jesus goes into this weird soliloquy like he forgot his lines in the school play.

And he starts just jabbering on about the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Unless the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and people's like, What?

Because timekeeping in the Bible is not chronological, it's agricultural.

That's why Galatians 4 4 says this.

But when the fullness of time had come, when everything that needed to happen had happened, when the elevator door dinged and then it opened up and got Jesus steps on to the sea.

When the king was set down in the chaos of the cosmos, time had been fulfilled.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

See, waiting is part of God's plan.

Secondly, waiting is a universal experience of God's people.

So if you're waiting on something today, you're not being punished.

God hadn't forgotten.

You're on the backside of the wilderness going, Hello! I read all the books at the bookstore, and I've been praying the prayer of Jabez since 1997.

Are you kidding me?

And nothing's happened.

I'm not rich yet.

I would just say this to you in closing.

Waiting connects the process to the promise.

You're like, what kind of what?

Waiting connects the process to the promise.

What do you mean?

We have a tendency, let me just read.

We have a tendency to kind of get things.

We we kind of look in the Bible, we kind of hunt and peck, and we find a promise and we hang on to it.

Like I'll give you a great example.

This is a proverb, not a promise, but the proverb that says, train up a child in the way they should go, and they shall not depart from it.

And our kids, we train them up in the way they should go.

We do all we can for them, and sometimes they just go off the deep end and just go goofy, just crazy.

And you love them and you're like, ooh.

And you come to God and you here's what you say.

God, I did what you said.

I trained up my child in the way he should.

There's a process that comes with every promise.

Let me demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Because waiting connects the process that we don't like to the promise that we love.

This is in Jeremiah chapter 33.

Jeremiah 33 · chapter mention

This is what God says.

He says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

And in those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up from David, for he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely.

And this is the name by which it will be called.

The Lord is our righteousness.

Now, think about that for just a moment.

Everything in the Bible happens in a context.

And what is the context of this?

Jerusalem is under siege.

It is just being ramsacked.

Jeremiah is hunkered down.

As a matter of fact, that's verses 14 to 16.

But if you look back at verse 1 of chapter 33, this is what the Bible says.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up in the court of the guard.

Now, stop right there.

You're smart people.

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still shut up.

We're reading from Jeremiah chapter 33.

Jeremiah 33 · chapter mention

So that means somewhere before the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the first time.

That would be in chapter 32, where when all this stuff is breaking out, I mean Babylon, the Chaldeans, they're just ramsacking.

It's kind of what's going on in Syria right now.

And this is what God says.

The word of the Lord spoke to him and said, by the way, Jeremiah, here's what I want you to do.

I know that this place is a bombed-out shell of what it used to be, but I want you to buy this field over here in Anathoth.

And everyone is like, What?

Are you kidding me?

It would be like you going home today and calling your realtor and saying, hey, listen, we killed it in the market.

I'm cashing out.

I just cleaned up on derivatives this year, okay?

Or I just, whatever.

Wherever you got it from, you calling your realtor and saying, I want to buy some vacation homes.

He's like, awesome.

I got some packages in Vail.

I got some down in Florida on the Gold Coast down there.

I got some in California.

You're like, no, I want a home in Baghdad.

I want one in Syria, and I'll take one in Afghanistan.

That would be his response.

He would be like, uh, that's real funny, but let's be good stewards of our.

See, I want to put this down to where you live because that's what God told Jeremiah to do.

Anathoth was, nobody was living there.

I mean, all you heard was the clicking of tanks coming through on their tracks.

It had been bombed out.

There was nothing there.

Why did God tell Jeremiah the word of the Lord came to me a second time?

Which means there had to be a first time.

First time was in the previous chapter, God said, I tell you what, because I am the God who, when Moses says, Who shall I tell him sent me?

You tell him, I am sent you.

That's the only time God describes himself, I am sent you.

Because he is I am, he's earned the right to speak in terms of I will.

And to establish what he will do.

He tells this prophet Jeremiah, you go buy a field in Anathoth.

Because one day I'm going to restore the fortunes of these people such that everybody's going to want to live here.

Can you imagine how foolish he felt going and plunking down money on that?

And people are like, You want a what?

Good, because that's how foolish some of you feel for waiting on God for the things you've been waiting on God to do for years.

Praying the same prayers you've been praying for years, and it gets darker in your head and darker in your heart, and you get a little more frustrated, and you get a little more edgy and a little more raw and a little bit more, all these things, and pretty soon you're just like, God, are you kidding me?

You look at your wife and you're like, Are you getting anything?

And she's like, I got nothing.

You're looking at your kids, you're like, Are you getting anything?

I got nothing.

You even find yourself flipping around late-night religious television, which you got to be pretty desperate to believe any of that.

Because you're just like, God, I'll take anything, just a morsel, just a crumb from your table, God.

I'm dying down here.

Just give me some kind of indication that I'm not in the left field.

And if I am, just give me a glove so I look like I know what I'm doing.

And God says, buy that field, Ananathoth.

Because I will restore the fortunes of this place, so much so that it will be called the Lord of Righteousness, which by the way is one of God's names from the Old Testament, Jehovah Sidkun, the Lord of righteousness.

God says, What I'm gonna do is as certain and as sure as who I am.

Are you kidding me?

I am the great I am, therefore, when I say I will, you can bank on it regardless of how long you have to wait.

Now that sounds good and feels good, but the reality is that many of us in this room are still waiting.

So I want you to preach the last part of the sermon.

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you just to stand to your feet, just whenever you feel ready, if you're still waiting on something, and just say, I'm waiting for whatever.

Whatever it is, and then just sit back down.

Just stand up, say it, sit back down.

You're waiting on anything.

Just say it out loud.

I'm waiting for it.

After you said it, you can sit back down.

Just stand and announce it.

Anybody else before we close?

Let me just say this.

Same thing happened in the first service.

A lot of I'm waiting on my son to come back to the Lord, I'm waiting on my daughter to come back to the Lord.

The task for the parent that is waiting on that is not to talk your kid out of anything.

The task for the parent who's waiting on their their their child who's off in the far country is to enjoy God more than your kid enjoys their sin.

That's what makes them come to their senses and say, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough food to spare?

And here I am starving to death.

But if they can wreck your faith while you're waiting on them, why should they believe?

Anybody else waiting on something today?

Lord, we light this first candle of Advent as a reminder to ourselves and to the world that we are awaiting people.

Because we are created and not creator.

We don't get everything we want when we want it, and that's okay.

And so we wait as an act of worship.

We're not being punishment.

You're the great I am, and because of that, you have earned the right to say I will.

Because your promise is as certain as your nature.

We believe that today in Jesus' name.

Stand to your feet, I'll speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

Your father wants you to know that you are not an easy bunch to love.

Nor are you convenient.

But he also wants you to know that he's loved you forever.

Depart now and think about why and how.

And do likewise.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you, you dismiss.