Waiting in Faithful Love - December 8, 2024

Amen. It is that time of year. We have the privilege this season of looking

at Mary's song, but today we'll look at a lesser-known song that we don't really

talk about too much at Christmas time, and that is Zachariah's song.

And if you didn't even know there was a guy that was named Zachariah that sang,

well, today you're going to learn some more about that.

But I've got a question for you. It's kind of critical.

And guys, this maybe will test you, but what is your famous,

your favorite, I should say, Hallmark Christmas movie?

Okay, it's rhetorical. You don't have to answer. Die Hard.

I don't know if that's a Hallmark movie, but I'll count that one, man.

I asked you that question because I learned this week in the research for my

sermon that this season alone, which by the way, started way back before Thanksgiving for some reason,

there were over 46 new Hallmark Christmas movies and four Hallmark Christmas series.

During the season. And let me read just a few of the titles.

Now, guys, stay put. Don't leave, okay? It's not a Hallmark kind of sermon thing,

but there's a point. Here's some of the titles.

Twas the Day Before Christmas.

The Christmas Charade. Ooh, intriguing. How about this one? Trivia at St. Nick's.

You like that? How about this one? Santa Tell Me.

You've got to know that that's just perhaps important how

about this one to have and to holiday oh okay

here's one that's aimed toward the guys and i didn't watch this but i saw actually

saw the advertisement for this holiday touchdown a chief's love story now i'm

not going to ask for a show of hands but i know some of you may have watched

that if it already came out i don't know just a few more scouting for christmas.

Three Wiser Men and a Baby, and Operation Nutcracker. I don't want to know about

that one, but I want you to tell you this.

It doesn't matter which one you like or which one's your favorite because they all have the same plot.

They really do. I've watched a few with my wife.

I'm not, I'm not, very thin ice. I'm in trouble.

Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly. But not before I finish this illustration.

Here's what you can expect from a holiday Hallmark movie.

First and foremost, there are lots of gorgeous, well-groomed people in every single one.

I've not seen a dog-faced person in any of them except for the dog.

And the dog is always well-groomed in those movies.

Secondly, someone always returns to their small hometown from the big city.

Third, there's always a conflict going on. And usually the conflict is between

a small family-run business and a big, big city corporation that wants to take your farm away.

Fourth, there's always a Grinch in the holiday Hallmark movies that rediscover

their joy for Christmas and their heart grows three more sizes.

Fifth, the town always comes together. People that are in the town are named

Holly. They're named Eve.

They're named Nick or they're named Chris. It's amazing.

Number six, Christmas magic happens when all of a sudden a Christmas angel appears.

When someone turns out to really be Santa Claus.

Wow, who would have guessed in these movies that the older guy with a white

beard and white hair that always wore a red fuzzy jacket would be Santa Claus. But it's there.

A seventh, people resist their obvious romantic partner.

Oh, no, I could never fall in love with her. Oh, I could never fall in love

with him. But it happens.

Number eight, we're almost done. Don't leave. There's always a single parent

hoping to find true love or that one of their adult children will fall in love

because their significant other has passed away.

And that was their last wish, was that their child would find true love.

Hey, these are good things, I'm telling you.

Number nine, usually there's a childhood sweetheart that's involved every single

time, whether it's a love interest or a love rival, they're always there.

And last but not least, and I know there's many more, but this is not a sermon about Hallmark movies.

That is, there's always lots of snow right on Christmas Day and lots of beautiful

holiday decorations and Christmas cookies to go around.

In every single one of these Hallmark movies, you can see that.

And I'm already in trouble, so I better end this opening by saying this.

When it comes to Christmas, we expect these kind of things, right?

When it comes to Christmas and the Christmas season, we expect to find manger scenes.

We expect to find poinsettias and all kinds of Christmas decorations.

And when it comes to the church life, we expect to see things like Advent candles

that are being lit as we go through the season.

We expect to hear these stories that are in the Scripture about the angels and about the wise men.

And we expect this stuff. And when it comes to the.

I'll say it one more time, and then I'll stop. The hallmark shows we expect

that there's lots of love to go around.

And at Christmastime, shouldn't we also expect there to be lots of love to go around?

And this morning, the opening scriptures that we had read for us were about

love, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

That faith, hope, and love abound, but the greatest of these is love.

And when we see the passage of Scripture this morning, when we read it,

when we stand it and we honor God's Word as it's read, we can't help but understand

that there's a kind of love that's being expressed here.

It might not be the hallmark, sappy kind of love that always captures our heart,

the romantic kind of love, but it's a love that is that, but goes deeper to

the very core and the very essence of who we are.

It's the very love that we all long for deep within, whether we like those kind

of shows I mentioned earlier or not.

We know that in all of this, we can trust in God because God has always been

faithful and because His love is the kind of steadfast love that you can always count on.

No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, there's always a God

that's going to love you and that always has his arms open, ready for you to

be welcomed, to come, to come and be transformed.

And in Advent, we say it's a season of waiting, and it's God who waits in faithful

love for you to come and to be transformed into who he really has planned for you to be.

There's an open invitation for you to come, And this morning,

we're going to read what has been known as the Benedictus.

It's Zacharias and his prophetic love song to God.

It rivals the Mary song, which we'll talk about in two weeks when we have our

special Christmas choir performing.

And I want to invite you back for that as well. That's going to be great.

But hear the word of the Lord this morning from Luke chapter 1,

Luke 1 · chapter mention

starting in verse 67, and we'll go throughout the whole song here to verse 79.

God's Word says this, His father, that is John the baptizer's father,

Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, Praise be to the

Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.

He has raised up a horn of salvation among us in the house of his servant David,

as he said through his holy prophets long ago.

Salvation from our enemies and from all the hand of all who hate us,

to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant,

the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,

to enable us to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all of our days.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High,

for you will go on before the Lord and prepare the way for him to give his people

the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins because of

the tender mercy of our God,

by which the rising of the sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those

living in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the path of peace.

Father, thank you for your word. May you bless it to our lives.

Lord, may we be built up and encouraged.

And Father, may we, like Zechariah, be turned to praise you for the love that

you have shown us over and over again, that steadfast, faithful love.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

Well, this morning, the benedictus, the good words that we have from Zechariah are just that.

If you're not too sure about this Zechariah guy, let me fill you in on a little bit.

Zechariah, he was one of the guys that worked in the temple.

And in the temple, there were so many priests that were there that they started

to kind of divide them up for the temple work.

Now, of course, you always had the high priest who was the only one that could

in the temple go to the holiest place, the Holy of Holies.

But there were these other guys that would, from time to time,

they would be called upon to go and to work in the temple to provide the incense

that was placed on the table of

incense in the holy place, not the Holy of Holies, but inside the temple.

And that represented the prayers of the people going up as a fresh fragrance to God.

Well, not long before this passage, well, actually, about nine months before

this, a little bit longer, Zechariah was the one who was chosen to go in and

to be the priest that got to take the incense before the altar.

And it was astounding that this was the guy that got to do it.

Because you only got to do this one time in your life as a priest, if you ever got to.

The odds were amazing to be able to do this. I mean, there was so many thousands,

tens of thousands of priests, and it kind of got narrowed down to,

okay, you get two weeks of duty that you had to go, and then they would just

kind of cast lots, you know, kind of roll the dice to see, okay,

who's going to get chosen?

And then it would narrow it down to three, and then two of those three would

prepare the incense, and the third one would be the guy that got to take the

incense in and present it at

the altar, which represented the prayers of God's people going up to God.

Well, the die landed, the lot landed upon Zechariah, and he was the one chosen,

and so he did this very, very special task,

a once-in-a-lifetime task that only he would be able to do in this one time, and so he did his task.

He went into the altar, and as he went to the altar before the great giant curtain

of the Holy of Holies, and there, as he was getting ready to do his priestly

duties, there was an angel of the Lord that appeared.

Now, can you imagine? You know nobody else is supposed to be in there except

the ones that are authorized, except the ones that have been trained to do what

you're supposed to do there.

And so Zechariah is going in, and all of a sudden there's an angel that's there, and he is afraid.

This is all at the beginning of Luke chapter 1, by the way.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

He's so afraid and the angel says peace be still hey and this is my paraphrase

dude my name's gabriel i'm here the lord has heard your prayer your wife is

going to conceive now she's older her womb's been shut up and and it's been

a disgrace when you couldn't have children and.

And so he's lived with all this, and now he's hearing this from God.

Zechariah really doesn't believe Gabriel, and he's like, how can this be?

What are you talking about, man? What do you mean my wife's going to have a baby?

I've heard your prayer, God said, or the angel said. God said through the angel.

God has heard your prayer.

And because of his disbelief, Gabriel says, hey, you're not going to be able to talk.

You've got to be quiet. You're not going to be able to talk through this whole pregnancy.

And so when here comes Zechariah he

comes out of the the holy place out of the temple and everyone

the crowd is gathered around because it was traditional that when the the priest

would come out of giving the incense before the altar of the Lord and it going

up that the priest would come out and he would say the great benediction the

Lord bless you and keep you and you know the benediction from Numbers,

and they were excited, waiting to hear this.

But when Zechariah came out, he couldn't say anything.

He couldn't say a thing. So everyone gathered there.

They knew something had happened. They knew something was up.

They knew something incredible was going on.

Well, the story goes that Zechariah could not talk through this whole time.

As a matter of fact, his wife's cousin, Mary, came to visit, and she was with child.

And it's funny because after Gabriel visited Zechariah in the temple,

guess who he went to visit next?

Mary, Elizabeth's cousin. And he went to visit her, the same Gabriel.

Well, Zechariah was there. Mary comes to Elizabeth's house, and she was there

for a whole time, and she sang her song during this time and everything.

Well, finally it came past, just to make this long story short,

this one chapter is pretty long in Luke.

When it comes to this point, the baby is born, and they're like,

well, what do we call him?

Zechariah Jr.? You know, that's kind of the tradition. You name him after, you know, the dad.

But no, when Zechariah was able to speak, his name will be John.

Well, John, we haven't got no cousins named John. What are you talking about,

man? No, his name will be John.

And then he was able to speak and able to proclaim. And can you imagine this

guy has been waiting over nine months with all this stuff, thinking about all

these things that have happened.

He had Mary, Elizabeth's cousin, come to their house, and she was telling Mary,

I mean, Elizabeth, all these great things that had happened to her from this angel.

And Zechariah was not able to say, that happened to me too. Oh,

let me tell you all about it. He couldn't do that because he couldn't talk.

And so for this nine months, he's kept this all bottled up inside of him.

And now he can finally speak. And what does he do?

He turns his praise to God, and he can't wait to proclaim everything that God has done.

And as we look to the Scripture this morning, we first see that he was Spirit-filled,

and there was a Spirit-filled cause for celebration.

There was a prayer that was heard. Remember, the angel appeared to him and said,

God has heard your prayer.

God has heard your prayer that you would have a son, an heir.

But this wouldn't be just any ordinary son.

A sign was given when Zechariah could not speak.

When you look back at verses 19 and 20 of Luke chapter 1, you can see the sign

Luke 1 · chapter mention

and all the people saw that he could not speak.

They knew something incredible had happened within that holy place of the temple.

And then we see in verse 57 that the promised one was given.

When it came time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she was given a son.

God, God had blessed this family. Folks, there's times when we got to celebrate.

Celebrate good times. You know, this is probably when we should start breaking

out singing that song. Hey, check this out.

Oh, it's time for celebration.

Am I bending? I'm going to break it. This is made for children.

Adults aren't supposed to be on it.

There's a time to celebrate when God does these things, when we come together

and we're here to worship the Lord. It's a spirit-filled time.

We're here to praise God for what he's done. When things happen in the life

of our church family, we're here to celebrate, celebrate those things.

God, look what has happened.

I want to give you a sneak preview to the next year.

We're going to celebrate. We're going to celebrate some things.

Or celebrate what God has done, what God is doing.

Now, I'm not saying you got to wear a party hat and have one of those little

blow things that you save from New Year's when you come, but maybe it might

be handy to keep some here just to praise the Lord for how he's moving in our

lives. We don't celebrate that enough.

We don't testify enough to what God is doing. But here's Zechariah.

He couldn't help but testify.

He couldn't help but praise God for what God was doing in this very moment.

And in this moment, it was a prophetic song, a prophetic psalm even,

if you will, that he was proclaiming.

Folks, we got to celebrate.

Celebrate those good things. The world is looking to celebrate stuff.

Man, I watched the football game on Friday night. It tore down the goalpost

at Boise State University and threw it in the river.

I was a little upset at that until I read, well, they're going to tear it down anyway.

But I'm like, you got the potato bowl coming. And they're not going to have

a field goal on that end, you know, a goalpost.

We'll see what they do. But they were celebrating.

When I watched all the football games, there's always celebration going on.

Folks, we serve the living God who has answered our prayers every single day of the week.

Is he not worthy of a celebration?

Don't go tearing down the cross behind me or the set. But I'm telling you,

we got some things to celebrate in Jesus.

Zechariah was celebrating in prophecy. This is some good things.

And so I want to take this song now in two parts, because there's really two parts of the song here.

The first is a love song for God's Savior.

When you look again, verses 68 through 75, you can see the proclamation of what

God is doing at this very moment.

Zechariah's son is John. He will be known as John the Baptizer,

John the Baptist, the one who would go before Jesus, make a way, call people to repent.

This guy would live in the desert, would have his camel skin clothing and eat

wild locusts and honey as his diet.

I mean, this was one weird guy.

Jesus' cousin. Anyone got some weird cousins? You don't have to raise your hand

because there's some cousins in here today.

But I got to tell you, this weird cousin, God had a plan for him.

God had a plan for him and what he was going to do to prepare the way for the

Savior, to prepare the way for Jesus, and he would be effective.

And so Zechariah knew this. And so, first of all, he just praises God for the personal Redeemer.

Again, in verse 68, Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,

because he has come to his people and redeemed them.

Zechariah was proclaiming that salvation is here and salvation is now,

and that there is a personal redeemer for Israel.

But folks, I got to tell you, not just for Israel, for all human beings who

would lay down their sin, who would repent, as John would say,

and follow Jesus, seek his forgiveness, seek his plan for their lives.

You know, Job in the Old Testament says, he testifies that, I know my Redeemer

lives, and in the flesh I will see him.

Job had this great prophetic vision that there is a Redeemer for each one of

us, a personal Redeemer.

Hey, I don't care what you've done, where you've been, what you've been through.

If we were to display your life on a board. You might not want that. I might not want that.

Because there's some ugly things. Sin does ugly things to people,

especially when it's our own choice that we make.

But at the same time, there's a Redeemer. There's one who wants to buy back

your life from that stuff.

There's one named Jesus, and that's who John was proclaiming,

hey, come, repent, because Jesus is coming. You're Redeemer.

Your Redeemer is going to be able to buy back your life that sin has taken.

Buy back the time, the ugliness, and give you blessing where cursing abounded.

This personal redeemer, Zechariah was proclaiming, that is here now.

This personal redeemer. Folks, you've got a Savior, and He's a personal Savior.

He's one that will meet you right where you're at. He'll forgive you.

He'll take that sin away. Man, he'll transform your life if you'll just wait

upon him, if you'll let him do that.

Well, secondly, in the song of love for God's Savior, Zechariah praises because

the mighty Savior comes from David's house.

King David, the mighty king, in verse 69, he raised up a horn of salvation for

us in the house of his servant David.

The horn of salvation was like the horn of a mighty animal.

There's all that kind of imagery in the Old Testament. When you read of a mighty

horn, I mean, hunters, what do you do when you shoot an animal with a nice rack?

You put their head on the wall.

You cut that thing off, you mount it, right?

Why? Because it's like, look what I brought down, this mighty animal.

And because they're beautiful, and because you thank God for them and the meat

that they provided to your family.

Well, this horn of salvation, man, it's a mighty Savior.

I remember when I was a kid, there used to be this show called Mutual of Omaha's

Wild Kingdom. Anyone remember that?

And I remember vaguely in my mind, just these two rams just butting heads with

their mighty horns and just coming together.

And man, how much power that they had. And we think of the horn of God's salvation,

saying Jesus will be this mighty Savior, the mighty one come to redeem,

and that the Savior will be from the house of David,

as prophesied, that the Redeemer would come through the lineage of King David,

that there would be a great and mighty king.

It says he's the prophesied one in verses 70 and 71. Again, as said through

his holy prophets of long ago, salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

Salvation was at hand, and Zechariah could not help but proclaim this,

even as the Romans inhabited their territory, even as the Romans occupied their

territory, occupied the capital,

occupied the whole known world, really, in their area, that salvation would come.

Folks, this kind of freedom, not just a political freedom, but this kind of

freedom that really we are freed up to do what God wants us to do.

This is what Zechariah was prophesying about, that this one who came,

this Jesus that would be born, he is the one that's not only going to redeem

us, but he's going to bring true salvation.

Not only that, when we look at verses 72 through 75, and this is powerful,

this one who come, we praise God because he is the merciful covenant keeper. He kept the deal.

You know, never been ripped off before because someone didn't keep their deal?

I was asking you to raise your hands. We can start a support group.

Man, that just gets you right in the gut. One, you feel stupid. Why do I trust this guy?

Two, you feel even more lousy because you just got ripped off,

and maybe you don't have something that you used to have because you gave it

to this criminal who ripped you off.

I mean, we could go down the list and maybe that is apt for a support group

to start sometime along the way.

When it comes to God, I want you to tell you, He's never going to rip you off.

We kind of maybe rip off God sometimes. Oh God, if you get me out of this situation,

I will give my life to you and go to Africa.

And then we get rescued and, well, we're still stateside.

I mean, it's kind of a silly illustration, but really we get the point that

sometimes we promise God lots of things to get things to go our way,

but we don't keep our end of the bargain.

It's a good thing with the salvation, Bill, that God has kept both ends of the bargain.

He's kept our end, but he's kept his end as well. He's given us Jesus.

And he said, the condition is you come to Jesus.

Zechariah is praising God for this prophesied one. And listen to what Zechariah proclaims.

It's written in the scripture, verses, let me see, 74 and 75.

Well, let me go start 72. To show mercy of our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant,

the oath he swore to our father Abraham to rescue us from the hand of our enemies

and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all of our days.

God has made the covenant so that we could be just as God intended for us to

be way back in Genesis before sin entered in, that we would be able to be free

to serve God however God wanted us to serve Him,

that we'd be free and to live a life of holiness.

That means a life without sin, a life where we could do the right things that

God wants us to do and had planned for us to do, that all of our days forever

we could serve Him, freed up to do just that.

Not encumbered by our own desires, not encumbered by our own pride,

not encumbered by our own lust of the eyes or lust of the flesh,

but just to do what God created us to do, to serve Him how He created us to serve.

So whether it was like Zechariah, we could sing a mighty song to God in the

most beautiful of voice.

Whether it was to come together and build stages, build things,

that we could build them for the glory of the Lord.

No matter what God gifted us to do, that we'd be able to do that,

to live out freely who God wants us to be.

That's what Zechariah's proclaiming, that Jesus would free us up to do because

God keeps his covenants.

Whether it's the covenant with Noah, whether it's the covenant with Abraham,

the covenant with Moses, the covenant with David. I mean, we could go on and on and on.

God always keeps his word. He is faithful to do that.

You know, when someone loves you, they're going to keep their word, right?

God loves you. He's going to always keep his word.

It might not always feel like, again, a Hallmark movie, where everything in

our life is just flowing and on cue it snows on Christmas Eve as we're exiting

to go home from a beautiful candlelight service.

That's my prayer, Lord. No, that'd be awesome.

Doesn't always work out like that. But even through the yucky stuff, guess who's with you?

God. Through the beautiful stuff and the great celebrations, who's with you? God.

We can hope in God, and we can love in God too, because God first loved us.

And if the one who is faithful to continue to love you, no matter what you've

done, where you've been, what you've gone through, your fault or not,

God will always be with you there.

We can just proclaim the same love song to God, this love for God's Savior, Jesus.

And that's what we celebrate. Well, Zechariah changes his tune a little bit,

not so much, but he turns from praising God the Savior to praising God for his Son.

This is a different kind of love song. It's still a song of love,

but he proclaims a great praise for God.

Back in Malachi, his Son was prophesied.

Back in Malachi, hundreds of years earlier, his son was talked about by the prophet.

Here's what it says in Malachi 3, 1-4. See, I will send my messenger who will

prepare the way before me.

Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty.

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears,

for he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap.

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.

He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.

Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness.

The offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord as in the

days gone by in former years. See, I will send my messenger.

John was going to come and kind of plow out the way for Jesus to come,

to do all these things that Malachi prophesied, to see this one come,

and oh, how powerful that was.

John is testifying and praising God for his son who was prophesied.

He goes on to say that this is God's forerunner.

He's going to be the prophet of the Most High in verse 76.

His son John will prepare the way of the Lord.

In verse 77, he will proclaim the forgiveness of sins.

Boy, I know sometimes maybe a dad's love for a son isn't all touchy-feely, right?

You know, it's not all like ooey-gooey. I don't know how to explain it.

I don't know how I feel about my sons, how much I love them.

It's different than a love for the daughters. I love them all the same,

but it's different in how it's expressed. But it's kind of like the proud dad.

I was watching the football game the other night, as I told you,

and they showed a little camera angle of Ashton Gentry's parents after he ran that big run.

You know, that was just awesome. Oh, but just the proud dad face that's up there,

you know, the love that he had for his dad or his son and the love that he had

for how this was all playing out.

You know, when we think about it really deep down, God has that kind of love

for us guys, but ladies, for you too, he's proud of you. He loves you.

God is the ultimate one who loves.

He knows just how we need that love expressed, and he's willing and waiting

to do that if we will be ready to accept it.

Sometimes we're not ready to accept the love of God.

Sometimes maybe our love has been tainted or tarnished, and we haven't got a

good example of what it's like to receive the love of God.

And so we kind of put it off because it's just too much for us to process,

too much for us to handle.

Here, Zachariah, he's just saying, And this man or this boy will grow up to

be this man that will get ready the way for Jesus. Get your hearts ready.

Finally, what he says about his son in verse 78 and 79 is that he's going to

proclaim the rise of the heavenly son, the one who will be there to give light.

Folks, we think about this love song. It is a different kind of love.

It doesn't sound like a good Hallmark movie. It doesn't sound all touchy-feely.

But there is a lot of love here and that's being expressed.

God would love us enough to send his own one-of-a-kind son, Jesus,

to be born as a baby, to live, to grow up as a man, and all that time to never

sin, to never yield to temptation, to keep his way pure.

The kind of love that Jesus has for us that he would say, I will take your place

and I will take your punishment for the sin that you've done,

for the sin that you've committed, for those wrong things that you've said,

the wrong things that you've done, the wrong things that you've thought.

I will die in your place so that you will never have to be separated from God.

The powerful love of God in this way.

You know, when we think about it, how can we wait in this faithful love?

I'll admit something to you here. And Melanie, you might want to leave the room

for this. I don't know. I'm already in trouble.

I'll just tell you, if I hug you too much or give you a handshake too much or pat you on the shoulder.

My love language primarily is physical touch.

That's why I got to give you a high five. That's why I got to give you a hug or a handshake.

And so you can imagine the conflict we have in our relationship when my wife

works at a daycare all day.

Her primary love language is not physical touch.

And she's been touched all day. She's been snotted on all day,

thrown up all day, on all day, not thrown up.

And so when she comes home, it's like this.

Not touch me. I need five minutes alone. And here's me. Honey, oh, I missed you.

Give me a hug. Not after this sermon.

Too many personal illustrations.

You know, sometimes we have to express love differently.

So I have to say kind things to her, words of affirmation, or buy her stuff.

Well, yeah, that's not going to happen very often. No, it does.

Christmas is coming, right? How do we receive, I should say,

God's faithful love or celebrate this faithful love when it might not be our

love language, it might not be our love style, but how can we wait in this?

See, she eventually does let me give her a hug, eventually.

When we're waiting, sometimes the waiting is the hardest part.

That's what Advent's about. We're waiting, we're preparing to celebrate the

giving of Christ, the greatest gift Fifth of all, I've just listed a few of

them here. I'll go through them really quickly.

One is celebrate God's faithfulness. We've talked about over the past several

weeks having this daily gratitude that we express to God in our prayers,

maybe written in a journal, written on slips of paper.

I mean, just to express to God that we're grateful, that He's always been faithful

to us in the good times and in the not-so-good times.

Maybe we even keep a prayer journal that we write our prayers in.

However that is, just celebrate God's faithfulness if we really want to wait in this faithful love.

Secondly, reflect on our own love for the Savior in our personal devotional

times, our personal worship times.

Just spending time with God to say, hey, God, I love you.

Maybe when you come together in worship...

Know we're not really an expressive crowd. That's okay. But however,

God would like you to express yourself in that when you come together,

if it's raising your hands or standing or just saying amen to the songs,

or I know Rich over here, he likes to clap after the songs that we praise to the Lord.

However, it is just to express yourself to God in that way, to reflect on our love for the Savior.

However, God's made you to worship, go for it. A third, embrace your role in God's plan.

You know, in the text today, it said that God wants us to serve Him in all that

holiness and righteousness forever.

Maybe it's looking for ways that we can serve others to prepare the way for

them to experience God's love, to prepare the way for them to receive God's

love and to experience salvation.

It also has to do, man, maybe some of what we need to do is just testify more,

be more celebratory about what God's doing.

Folks, it's okay in here to come and share what God's doing in your life.

We don't have to be all closed up and closed off from everybody.

I know that the world likes to really attack us for stupid things.

But in here, it should be a place where we can easily just celebrate those things.

Hey, here's what God has done.

I hear it when I'm in the Sunday school classes. We have these prayer requests

and praise reports as well.

And so we get to elaborate on how God is moving and working.

Number four, trust during the waiting and silence. During those times, it can be hard.

Man, if you have some executing strengths you're all about doing, it is hard to wait.

I've confessed that to you before as well. It's hard to not do something,

but there are times when we have to just wait.

There are times when maybe silence is the order of things.

In our day-to-day, it's crazy. We hardly get any times of silence,

Sometimes not even in our own homes, right?

There's always got to be some kind of background music playing,

some kind of background noise happening.

But sometimes God just wants us to wait.

Just waiting and got a fishing rod in your hand and it's just quiet.

Those are great times with the Lord.

There's times where you've been out skiing in the hills or snowmobiling,

you just turn everything off and just everything's quiet. You're on top of the mountain.

You're looking around at God's creation.

Beautiful times of waiting and silent reflection. You know, practicing patience.

It's hard, but it's rewarding.

Being silent when God wants to really speak to you know, those times are great

times to wait and just to trust God.

Two more when we're done this morning. Celebrate God's promises.

Why do we do this this morning? And have we done it? And will we do it three more times?

Well, we want to remember God's promises. We want to remember God's promises

about the hope that He brings to our lives.

We want to celebrate the promise of His love and that His love is for everybody.

Next week, we'll talk about the joy that we have in Jesus. And we'll celebrate

the joy as we light the pink candle.

And then we'll talk about God's peace that he brings to us.

And then Christmas Eve and subsequently the following Sunday,

we're going to light the white candle.

And this tradition that we have to remember God's promises, to remember that

they're just not for long ago, but they're for now, they're for here,

and they're for us personally.

It's a celebration of those promises.

When we gather to worship, We're celebrating the promise that where two or three

are gathered together in the name of Jesus, that he is here in the midst of us.

We celebrate that promise that God is here with us.

Finally, this morning, how can we wait in faithful love? And that is just to

proclaim God's salvation. Proclaim it.

You might be saying, well, you're the preacher. That's your job, buddy.

You're supposed to be the one proclaiming. Well, yeah, and I hope I do,

but it goes beyond me. It goes to all of us.

It'll go to me whether I was a preacher or not, because what we're supposed

to do is to proclaim who God is and the way that we live.

I've said before, we're all living letters.

We're all living epistles written to the world to show what God is doing in our lives.

So each and every one of us should be living in a way that proclaims the salvation of God.

What comes out of your mouth should proclaim who God is, and the way that you

speak to others, and what you say, what you joke about, what you talk about,

and that holy conversation that is there within you.

Boy, that's how we proclaim God's salvation.

And finally, what we participate in, what we allow ourselves to be part of,

that should be proclaiming God's salvation to others.

Boy, in all these things, we can be waiting in the faithful love that God is

doing something in us, that God wants to do something in us.

And so I'll just ask you this morning, are you waiting in that faithful love?

Like Zachariah, he was ready to proclaim God because God was doing some awesome

things, and he was in the midst of it.

His son would be part of the great story of God.

Well, just like John the baptizer, I want to tell you, you are part of God's

story. and what God is doing.

And are you letting God write you into the part?

Are you following God's direction?

Because whether you like it or not, you're part of it.

You're in there and you might have to wait on some things, but boy,

when those things happen, hallelujah.

And that was Zachariah's hallelujah.

Things were starting to happen that he'd heard about his whole life.

And I pray that you'll experience those things that you've waited for in your

life, for God to start to move and start to do things.

To pray with me, would you? Lord, thank you for today. I thank you for the opportunity,

Lord, that we've had to gather and to worship you.

And Lord, I pray that you've spoken to each one of our hearts this morning.

I know you've spoken to mine.

And Lord, you teach us how to love. And that love isn't always maybe like we

expect. Maybe it's a little different.

It's not all glitzy and glamorous, the way sometimes the world portrays that love should be.

But Lord, you're always there, whether we're doing what you want or not.

God, you're there with us.

Lord, you're there with us when

we're right on key and we're right there doing what you want us to do.

And God, you're cheering us on the whole way to turn and to follow you and to do what's right.

So Lord, this morning in this Advent season, I pray God that we'll experience your love anew.

We've got a few more weeks before we get to celebrate Jesus come and in the Advent season anyway.

And while we do celebrate Jesus now, we just ask God that you would challenge

our hearts this morning.

Lord, help us to wait in faithful love upon you.

And, Lord, just to trust you as we go forward. God, we pray you'll be glorified

today, and it's in Jesus' name that we ask. Amen. Amen.