Advent: The Way to Courage

Well, it is the third Sunday in Advent, these four Sundays of Advent that lead us into Christmas.

The third Sunday in Advent is traditionally known as Joy Sunday.

And so on Joy Sunday, traditionally the priest would stand in front of the congregation.

He would open the service with Philippians 4:4.

Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

It's a call for us to not just fret our way through this season, which we can do because I know you have your list.

I have my list.

You can, if you have kids, you can begin to look at this list and make sure you have like the right amount of presence for everything.

You know, is it even?

Have we spent about the same?

You're wondering if you can just buy a gift card for your sister.

Will she notice that you put no thought into this and you just bought it at Kroger the night before?

Will she notice?

You're not sure.

Your wife said that y'all aren't exchanging gifts.

Be careful with that.

Don't believe it.

You might have to see your awful brother this year, right?

Like just difficult relationships may pop up, right?

We have no shortage of fretting.

But we don't want to fret our way through the season.

And so we get this Sunday, this joy Sunday, to be reminded that this is a joyful season.

We all want some joy.

A couple of weeks ago, as a UGA fan, I went to the SEC championship game.

Is it too early?

Is it too soon to talk about this?

It's too soon for me.

UGA had won 29 games in a row.

Not sure if you're aware or not.

The longest win streak in SEC history.

My daughter, my daughter had never been to a game where we lost.

That's insane, right?

That's not normal, right?

Georgia Tech fans?

I mean, y'all know who I'm talking about.

Go jackets.

Go jackets.

And the game started unbelievable for me, right?

If you're a Georgia fan, you remember the beginning of the game.

It was all joy.

All joy.

I mean, it is high fives to people we don't even know.

It is all joy.

The Alabama lady to my left, she's right here.

She's no high fives.

She's not giving me high five.

All joy for me, and then the whole game switched.

Alabama fans, you know, Georgia fans, you know, Georgia Tech fans, you probably know too.

You were joyful with the Alabama fans because the game switched, no joy for me, joy was over.

She is having a blast.

She is having an unbelievable, joyful time ruining our streak of joy.

Twenty-nine in a row.

That's a wealth of joy.

That is ridiculous.

And you know what?

I needed one more.

Actually, I needed three more, if you want to be exact.

Right?

And that's worldly joy.

That is how worldly joy works.

That you can get 29 in a row and you still need one more.

Or immediately start comparing, right?

Because you have the joy of a new car and you love it.

And then you pull up and your friend has the like the limited version, and you didn't get the limited.

And then you're like, oh shit, I got the limited.

Right?

It just turns out it can be quite difficult to be joyful.

Priest Nick Lannon, he writes this in his article, why can't we just celebrate?

It isn't enough to be a Christian, is it?

We must immediately know just how good a Christian you are.

Remember the best line from John Newton's classic Amazing Grace?

Of course, there are many great lines, but the best is how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.

The implication is clear.

It's incredibly easy for us to forget how profoundly we needed that grace when we found ourselves eating the pods with the pigs.

The moment we feel safe, we start to compare ourselves to the other prodigals who've returned to the farm.

Who's repaying the father the best?

Let's go the other way.

Let's do what John Newton would have us do and remember the precious nature of God's grace given to us when we didn't compare favorably to anyone for any reason.

In fact, in Christ, everything's amazing.

If we're lucky for a moment, we can hear that and just be happy.

Right?

That's what the call of today is.

Be joyful, rejoice in the Lord.

Joy.

Theologian and author Henry Nowen, he writes this about joy.

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing, sickness, failure, emotional distress during an SEC championship game, oppression, war, or even death can take that love away.

Right?

We need that.

We need that today.

Our passage today is John 1.

Some religious leaders have come out to question John the Baptist, and something has changed in the core of John, in the core of who he is, in his heart, his inner self.

John the Baptist is this leader that stands between the old covenant of law and the new covenant of grace.

He does not have all of Jesus' teachings.

He does not have Paul's writings.

You and I know so much more about the Christian faith than John would have.

And yet he knows one vital, vital thing.

So let's read this text.

John 1, 19, we will read through 27.

And this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I'm not the Christ.

And they asked him, What then?

Are you Elijah?

He said, I'm not.

Are you the prophet?

And he answered, No.

So they said to him, Who are you?

We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself?

He said, I am the voice of the one crying in the wilderness.

Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

They asked him, Then why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?

John answered them, I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

And here's what John knew, which is our point number one.

In Christ we are free from using achievement to be our identity.

This is what enables him or empowers him to behave and speak like this.

What was John's identity?

How did he understand himself?

John describes him as what he is not.

He describes himself as what he is not.

Verse 19, who are you?

Not the Christ.

See, secure identity begins in understanding who we're not.

The attempt to earn your worth or identity can be exhausting when we use achievement or beauty or status or money for identity.

We always need one more win.

29 is never enough.

We always need another one.

Because we were created to receive identity, never build it or maintain it ourselves.

Remember a few weeks ago, my family watched the movie The Holiday.

Two weeks ago, I used this as a sermon illustrator.

We'll go back to the holiday again today because all answers are in the holiday, it turns out.

This 2006 Nancy Myers film.

If you remember, has anybody watched it?

Over Christmas?

Anyone watched it?

Okay.

Good job.

Iris is British.

Remember, Iris is British and she's just a mess and she's heartbroken over this horrible human being, Jasper.

Just a horrible human being.

He's just awful.

And he, but he's good looking.

And he's smooth and he's manipulative and he's selfish.

So Iris switches houses, get a break for him with Amanda in LA.

Amanda goes over to Britain.

Iris comes to LA to spend time there in LA.

And Jasper even flies to LA to come after her, to surprise her, marches into this house where my girls explode.

This is a pause moment and let the anger just kind of come out.

What is he doing here?

Isn't he engaged to Sarah in circulation?

Like, isn't he still engaged to Sarah?

What is he doing?

Why won't Iris see that?

He's an absolute jackwagon, this guy.

I mean, he is a miserable jerk.

I mean, he's lucky he didn't come into my living room.

My three girls would have taken him out.

But then in LA, Iris meets Arthur.

Right?

You've seen the movie, don't we love Arthur?

Oh, we love Arthur.

This kind elderly man.

And this is her breakthrough.

This is when her breakthrough begins.

Because Arthur, by simply being kind, he teaches her how a man should treat her.

And finally, Arthur just says it, dead on.

Iris, in the movies, we have leading ladies.

And we have the best friend.

You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you're behaving like the best friend.

You see, her breakthrough, she had to understand her identity is who she is not and who she is.

And she had to see that she was worthy of more than an unloving lover.

Jasper the Jack Wagon.

When we all live, when we live for the approval of an unloving lover, we never become who we truly are.

I mean, who would have guessed it?

The holiday, right?

I mean, who would have guessed it?

It holds all the secrets.

It holds all the secrets.

My mentor Scotty Smith, he wrote this.

We've read this before, it's so good, applies so well here.

On one hand, there are people to whom I attach my umbilical cord, metaphorically speaking, and look to them for life.

Their praise is an elixir of joy, sometimes more so than the gospel.

And their disappointment or rejection can taste like a potion of self-contempt, causing me to withdraw, retaliate, or medicate.

Nobody deserves that much power over our hearts.

Because the gospel's true, I can freely confess these things.

Because the gospel's powerful, I have hope for change.

This is what John knows.

Verse 26 and 27, John says, I'm not even worthy to untie Jesus' sandals.

In this ancient time, people walked everywhere.

There weren't clean sidewalks.

They're walking on dirty paths, so they show up into somebody's house with incredibly dirty, nasty, stinky, sweaty feet.

And only the lowliest of servants would go to untie these sandals and to wash these feet.

And so John's view of himself is very, very low.

But what sort of person is John?

This is what's kind of surprising, because John is actually incredibly bold and brave.

Which is odd, because you'd think if someone has a low view of themselves that they would be timid.

Because we've all known somebody who had a low view of themselves and they were incredibly hesitant in some way.

But here is John, and he's different than this.

Because he's humble, he's lowly, and yet he's fearless with courage.

This is an identity free of performance.

Pastor and author Tim Keller said this when he preached on this text.

A performance-based identity is an achieved identity.

Your sense of self-worth is rooted in how well you're doing.

It's performance-based.

And if you're living up to standards, then you feel good about yourself.

And if you're not living up to standards, you feel terrible about yourself.

And the gospel relieves us of this swing of pride and despair because we are receiving our worth from Jesus.

See, John has a low view of himself as he has a high view of Jesus.

So theologically, we could say he has low anthropology, a low view of humanity's nature and potential.

This is a total depravity of man as a sinner in need of God's grace.

We have ability, but it's limited and incredibly limited when it comes to concerns of the heart, forgiveness, righteousness, worth.

Which is why even high-achieving people can have burnout, guilt, shame, despair, depression, exhaustion.

We may even be getting better in some areas of our lives, but Matthew 5.48 levels us and humbles us into a lowliness.

Be perfect.

Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We need an outside rescue, an outside love.

God's grace to us while we don't deserve it.

To have a high view of God's grace while we have a low view of ourselves.

This gives us a high Christology, which is Jesus as more than enough for our hearts by his divinity, incarnation, teaching, work on the cross, and exalted worth as redeemer and restorer.

So this gives us point number two.

We grow in courage through a low view of ourselves and a high view of Christ.

We're created in God's image.

This is the doctrine of Imago Dei.

So there's no inferiority complex, such a gift.

Now we're saved through Christ alone.

This would be the doctrine of justification by grace alone.

So there's no superiority complex, which means this.

Here's the gift of the gospel for us.

This is what John knows.

We are secure enough to be below no one, humble enough to be above no one, and loved enough to be joyful and brave in the face of anyone.

See, John can only say he's not worthy to untie those sandals.

At the same time, he's behaving incredibly brave and bold because he knows a profound deep worth that is outside of his own performance.

Let's reread John 1, 25 through 27.

Because they asked him, Then why are you baptizing if you're neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?

And John answered them, I baptize with water.

But among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

John is pointing to Jesus.

Point number three is that the beloved always points to Jesus.

John is saying, Don't celebrate me.

I'm someone, but I'm not the loving, redeeming, salvific plan for humanity.

So we live receiving, and as we live receiving, we're secure, and as we live secure, our life finds meaning as we point to Jesus.

John knew this.

And thus joy flowed and courage flowed, boldness, bravery.

500 years ago, the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grunewald painted this, the Issenheim altar piece.

This was a huge piece placed in the hospital in Germany.

In the Issenheim hospital, monks were there and they served and they cared for dying peasants.

And in this piece, John the Baptist is to the right of Jesus.

And one thing is so clear when we see John the Baptist in this piece.

Grunenwald had it right.

You can get this sense of John the Baptist, clearly secure, bold, he's proclaiming, and yet it's not about him.

He's lowly.

He's not belittled, he's humble.

He's secure.

And Jesus is the point because John knows that his very self is not his performance.

His meaning will not just be in his own life, but it will be coming from God.

It's rooted in this relationship that he has with Jesus.

Beloved, your very self, the core of who you are, is not your performance or your record.

It's rooted in your relationship with Jesus.

This is the goodness of the gospel for us.

That it doesn't send us into despair and being belittled, and it doesn't send us into some superiority complex.

You are secure enough to be below no one.

You are humble enough to be above no one.

And because you are loved enough in Jesus, you can be joyful and you can be brave in the face of anyone.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace to us.

That we can call you Heavenly Father, not because we have earned something, but that you have welcomed us, you have pursued us in our own despair and limitations and sin.

Thank you that we were relieved of trying to work out of our guilt or shame.

And that we with open hands this morning receive the full forgiveness and righteousness of Jesus for us.

That our sin is put upon Jesus, his righteousness is given to us, and we are deemed your beloved forever.

Help us to grow in a lowliness that we do not think ourselves better than others.

Help us to grow in the security that we have in Christ, to be sure of who we are as your beloved, and help us to learn to point to Jesus, to serve others, and to find meaning as we glorify Christ in our lives.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.