Hope
Our Search for Heritage
Welcome to The Well Community Church, and Merry Christmas to you. My name is Brad, and I get the privilege of hanging out with you here today. Welcome to those of you joining us in person, those at one of our gatherings via video, and of course, those joining us online.
Some years ago—I don’t know if you’ve had this experience or not—I was really curious about my heritage and my family of origin. I was told growing up that if my grandma would have just kept the right paperwork, there was enough Native American in me that I could have paid for my college. I thought, “Well, I’ve got two kids now, so I should look into that!” I mean, what if, right?
So I jumped on Genealogy.com or whatever it’s called. I think it’s actually run by the Mormon church because they baptize for the dead—which is a weird doctrine—but they have great records. I was tracing my records back and it went from Fresno to Southern California, then to Oklahoma, then a little Arkansas. I was moving farther and farther east, getting closer to where my relatives immigrated to this country and got off the boat. I was all excited; I was one name away. But then I hit a wall of unanswered questions.
Well, two years later, I found out they’ll ship you a little tube in the mail. You spit in it, send it away, and bam—they give you all the information right there. I took the DNA test and, honestly, I was very disappointed. I wanted something awesome and unique, like Scandinavian or Russian. No. It was British. Like, 98% British. I’m about as straight-up, boring white dude as you can get. But I will say this: it gave me a sense of heritage. I’ve got a hankering for bangers and mash now, and I don’t know why! But having that history, that heritage, is helpful. You know which region you came from. With that comes a lot of history—some of it is really good, and some of it is really bad—but I think all of us are like that as we trace our family of origin.
A Golden Thread of History
Here at The Well Community Church, we are a non-denominational church. That’s really good in some ways because we don’t carry a lot of denominational baggage. We don’t have a long history of fights where these people got mad at those people and started another denomination. But it also means we sometimes lack that “golden thread” of history that says, “This is our heritage; this is who we are.”
Some of you remember going to our Fig Garden campus back when it used to be the German Evangelical Free Lutheran Cross Church. On the wall, they had a mural of all the generations and styles going all the way back to when they migrated from Russia. There’s something unique and cool about that. Here at The Well, we don’t really have that. We’re kind of untethered in some ways.
However, we are a Protestant church. If you trace it back, we were part of the Protestant Reformation. That movement started in 1517 when a guy named Martin Luther, frustrated with the corruption of the church at the time, nailed 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. He was frustrated by a distancing from the Scripture and the rise of a church hierarchy that dictated everything. The primary issue was indulgences—the idea that if you gave enough money, a loved one might be granted an exit from purgatory into heaven. It was a wonderful fundraising campaign, but it was not a biblical concept.
When Martin Luther and the other reformers came around, they said, “No. Let’s go back to the Bible.” Sola Scriptura. Let’s go back to grace alone, Sola Gratia. Faith alone, Sola Fide. The glory of God alone, Sola Deo Gloria. They began a movement of churches that got back to the basics.
But it’s worth mentioning that not everything pre-Reformation was bad, just like not everything post-Reformation is good. Wise students of history look at their heritage and acknowledge the bad things, but they also look for the good things we might have accidentally thrown away. One of those things worth looking at afresh is the idea of Advent.
The Arrival and the Expectation
“Advent” comes from the Latin term Adventus, and it means “the arrival” or “the coming.” It has been celebrated for centuries. If you look at the movement of the Gospel, Jesus dies and rises in the first century, and the book of Acts shows the Gospel moving from Jerusalem to the remotest parts of the earth. But as the church grew, so did persecution. There was a joke among historians that if the Tiber River flooded, the Romans just blamed the Christians. If grain prices went up or you couldn’t sell your grapes, it was the Christians’ fault. They were persecuted significantly until the rise of the Emperor Constantine.
Constantine had a conversion experience at the Milvian Bridge, saw a vision of a cross, and painted crosses on his shields to win a battle. In March of 313, he passed the Edict of Milan. This didn’t make the Roman Empire Christian, but it removed the persecution. Before this, being a Christian meant you might be thrown to the lions. Afterward, it became in vogue. It was actually good for business. You could argue that Constantine was both the best and worst thing to happen to Christianity, as the empire moved toward becoming an “all-Christian” empire.
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the tradition of Advent began to solidify. It was celebrated during the four weeks preceding Christmas, and it had a double meaning. It celebrated the first coming of Christ—the Incarnation—but it also celebrated the future return of Christ. Both were moments of hopeful expectation.
Advent is meant to awaken a childlike hope in us. Think back to when you were a kid. I remember being a “Chevy kid” at Dry Creek Elementary, and Christmas was my jam. I could not wait. My parents put us on lockdown: “Stay in your room and don’t get out of bed until we tell you we’re ready.” What that really meant was they wanted a quiet cup of coffee before the chaos broke out, but I didn’t care. I was awake at two in the morning, standing in the hall with my brothers, ready to go. As soon as we got the green light, we came stampeding down the hall. I still love Christmas to this day.
Advent is designed to awaken that same sense of expectation. We are celebrating something even better than presents; we are celebrating Jesus, the one who promised to come and to come again.
Symbols of the Season
Different traditions celebrate Advent in different ways, but most use an Advent wreath made of evergreen branches, symbolizing the forever faithfulness of God. Typically, there are four or five candles. The first two are purple, representing hope and peace. These weeks are introspective—we acknowledge our need for the Gospel and reflect on our need for Christ.
By week three, there’s a shift. The candle is typically pink; it’s the candle of joy. You’re a week away from the big celebration! Finally, there is the white candle, the Christmas candle, celebrating love and the Incarnation. We light candles because Jesus is called the Light of the World in John chapter one. It’s an acknowledgment that light shines in the darkness.
Families used to mirror this at home. They would have a family dinner, light the candle, and keep it lit for the week as a moment of expectation. If you give your kids an Advent calendar, it’s basically an excuse for them to have twenty-five days of chocolate, but they are so excited for that next little piece. “Can we do it now? Can we do it now?” The tradition of Advent is meant to bring us to that same sense of “Can we do it now?” regarding the presence of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the celebration of Advent is only possible for those who are “troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.” Advent is our anticipation of the Savior who came to seek and save the lost—of which we are foremost of all.
Week One: The Prophet’s Candle
Week one is the lighting of the first candle, representing hope. It is often called the “Prophet’s Candle” because it looks back over the Old Testament for glimpses of our Christ. If you’re new to the Bible, it might seem like God was just trying things that didn’t work—Adam and Eve failed, Cain killed Abel, Abraham had family drama, David was a murderer, and the prophets got killed. You might think the Incarnation was a last-ditch effort, like God was saying, “I’m at my wit’s end; I guess I’ll try going down there myself and see how it goes.”
But that’s not the case. Jesus was not a last-ditch effort; He was the only option. He was Plan A, and there was no Plan B. Listen to how Paul describes this in Ephesians:
Ephesians 1:2-5 (NASB)
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly [places] in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,
God orchestrated His plan perfectly when He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. This means that all throughout the Old Testament, every story whispers His name.
In Genesis 3, the wheels come off and sin enters the world. Everything is cursed—the serpent, the man, the woman, the earth. Yet, tucked within that curse is a little glimpse of hope. It says that one day, “He”—a singular male pronoun—will come and crush the serpent’s head.
Genesis 3:15 (NASB)
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’
Adam didn’t know who “He” was, but we have a different perspective. Looking back from 2023, we know exactly who crushed the power of Satan.
We see it again in Genesis 12, when God tells Abraham that through him, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. We see it in Genesis 49, when Jacob prophesies that the scepter of rule will not depart from Judah until “Shiloh” comes—the one to whom it belongs.
Genesis 12:3 (NASB)
And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.’
Genesis 49:10 (NASB)
’The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him [shall be] the obedience of the peoples.
We see it in 2 Samuel 7, when David wants to build God a house. God basically says, “Bro, I don’t need a condo. But I’m going to build a house through you—a line of descendants culminating in one who will rule forever.”
2 Samuel 7:12-16 (NASB)
’When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. ’He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ’I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him, as I took [it] away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. ‘Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.’‘’
In Micah 5, it says that from the tiny town of Bethlehem, a ruler will come whose goings forth are from the days of eternity. In Isaiah 7, it says a virgin will be with child and His name will be Immanuel, “God with us.”
Micah 5:2 (NASB)
‘But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, [Too] little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity.’
Isaiah 7:14 (NASB)
’Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
It’s all through your Bible. It’s hopeful expectation. It’s Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, all the way through.
The Child Born to Us
This brings us to Isaiah chapter 9. If you have your Bibles, I’d love for you to turn there. I love the sound of pages turning, by the way. It’s one of the things I regret about technology—I wish they could just program that sound into the iPad.
Isaiah 9:2-7 (NASB)
The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them. You shall multiply the nation, You shall increase their gladness; They will be glad in Your presence As with the gladness of harvest, As men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian. For every boot of the booted warrior in the [battle] tumult, And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of [His] government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.
This is the blessed hope of the coming Christ. A child is born to us; a son is given. Some people get confused and ask, “If He died and rose, how is the government resting on His shoulders?” We often miss the “already but not yet.” When Christ went to the cross, He destroyed death and crushed the power of Satan. Satan thought killing Jesus was a victory, but it was actually the ultimate victory for God.
Jesus is seated now at the right hand of God. He is ruling and reigning in heaven, and one day He will rule on earth as it is in heaven. He is our Wonderful Counselor, our Mighty God, our Eternal Father, and our Prince of Peace.
A Reawakening of Wonder
As we enter this Advent season, we aren’t just kids looking for a nugget of chocolate. We aren’t just lost in ritual. Hopefully, there is a sense of reawakening that childlike wonder.
To be honest, the older we get, the more boring we get. We just click the days off. We put the tree up and we’re grumpy about it. We complain about the traffic and the fact that nothing is on sale. We can become those people. But can we call a timeout for a second? We aren’t here for the sales or the stress; we are here for Him.
Can we raise our sights and create that childlike anticipation? Can we be like those kids standing in the hallway, asking, “Can we come now? Is it time?” We should have that same internal excitement for Him. Let’s create moments with our families and loved ones to anticipate the coming of our Christ.
As we close today, I’d like to do something a little unique. I want to read from John chapter one. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word? We don’t do this very frequently, so I appreciate you indulging me.
As I read this, you can close your eyes or just keep a moment of reflection. We are talking about a tradition that is centuries old, meant to awaken a heart of anticipation for a Christ who was Plan A from the very beginning. He didn’t consider equality with God something to be grasped, but He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant, even to the point of death on a cross. This is the Jesus who is the Light of the World.
John 1:1-5 (NASB)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Praise God that we serve Jesus, the Light of the World. May this Christmas season be a reawakening of an ancient tradition with a modern heart as we learn to celebrate Him.
Let’s pray. God, I’m so grateful that the Gospel is the Gospel. It has not changed, it has not been modified, and it doesn’t need an upgrade. It doesn’t need to be retooled for the times or reimagined. We are not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. Lord, we are here in hopeful expectation of Jesus our Christ. By Your grace, would You kindle inside of each of us a renewed passion for His coming? We celebrate Him this Advent season—Jesus, the Light of the World, in whom we find our hope. Amen.