Hope for Everyone: 2020 Online Christmas Special

Merry Christmas everyone. My name is Renee, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and my wife Lori and I have a very special announcement to make. We are expecting a baby. We are expecting a son arriving mid-January. We are so excited about this.

You might have heard somewhere that we have two grandchildren already. Our two grandsons, there is Danny and there is Freddie. They are about two and four years old right now. We love them to pieces. One of my favorite things to do is to think back and reminisce on how we first discovered that these boys were on the way. Each of their births were predicated by some pretty creative announcements, like the very first time our son Jonathan and his wife Kelly posted a photo of the two of them in a bookstore.

My son was reading Hop on Pop, and my daughter-in-law Kelly was reading Are You My Mother, and they are both giving the camera a funny look. They sent it, and it took a second, but we suddenly realized he is going to be a pop and she is going to be a mother. And of course, my wife Lori and I just screamed in absolute delight. Just like these grandparents-to-be, open up the card. Grandpa. Oh my gosh. Some birthdays are more special than others. This is my favorite book from when I was a little girl. I would love for you to read this to baby Eisen. Happy birthday.

Oh, I love it. It holds the possibility of a miracle. Thank you. We have something else coming, but it is not going to be here until September. Your ultrasound. I'm 16 weeks. Oh God. It is so fun when you get the news that a baby is on the way, but nobody can ever top the baby's-on-the-way announcement that God made about Jesus because this announcement came not just a few months before the baby was to be born, but seven centuries before.

It is one of the least known parts of the Christmas story. You may have never heard this story before. I want to tell it to you tonight. It is in the book of Isaiah in the Bible, which we have been studying all month at TLC, chapter 7. This is special for me. I will illustrate this story with wood cuts from this very old German Bible. It is not old that it covers, not even leather or cardboard. It is wood. This old Bible was given as an heirloom to my parents on the day of their wedding.

Here is the story from Isaiah 7. Once upon a time, there was a very evil and very frightened king, King Ahaz. The Bible says King Ahaz did things that were so evil that if I told you about them, you would have nightmares for a week. One day he looked out his window to find his entire city of Jerusalem surrounded by armies. Two other kings were camped with their soldiers there, and they said, join us to fight the empire of Assyria or we will attack you.

Then the emperor of Assyria hears about this, and he is not happy. He says King Ahaz has this message. He says, I will attack you. I will attack you. So no matter what choice King Ahaz made, he was going to be attacked. It is no wonder the Bible says, so the hearts of the king and his people trembled with fear. Like trees of the forest shaking in the wind, they were going like this when they looked over their city walls.

Even though he was a very wicked ruler, the Bible says to his people, the Jewish people, that he will not abandon them. So he calls a prophet named Isaiah and says, here is what I want you to tell the king. Tell him to stop worrying. Tell him he doesn't need to fear the fierce anger of those two burned-out embers. But he also says to the king, unless your faith is firm, I cannot make you stand firm.

And man, this is such a good verse for you and me in these days. Unless your faith is firm, even God cannot make you somehow magically stand firm. Your stability comes from what you choose to have faith in, where you choose to place your hope. What are you counting on? What are you focused on? What has captured your attention and your imagination? You are either going to live your life in fear or in faith.

And you know, I was thinking about it this week. Fear and faith are actually very similar because they both anticipate the future. They both imagine future outcomes, things that haven't yet happened. Fear anticipates with dread, and faith anticipates with hope. And God is saying to King Ahaz in this story, the choice is yours. One will lead to stability and one to instability and fear.

Well, the Bible says King Ahaz says, I don't believe a word of this. He chooses fear, and Isaiah says, but Ahaz, God wants to encourage you. Check this out. Ask the Lord your God for a sign of confirmation. Ahaz, make it as difficult as you want, as high as heaven or as deep as the grave. Here's your big chance. Ask God for a sign that he's with us and make it as hard as you want.

Interesting phrase. You can make it as high as the heavens and as deep as the grave. Anything you imagine. But the king refused. No, he said, I will not test the Lord like that. And that sounds real spiritual in English, but the Bible makes it clear that really where he's coming from is I don't believe it and I won't believe it no matter what you say or no matter what sign you come up with.

In other words, this does not come from a place of faith. This comes from a place of stubborn fear. And Isaiah says, alright then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. God's going to give you the sign anyway. Look, the virgin will conceive a child. She will give birth to a son, and we'll call him Immanuel, and that's a Hebrew word that means God with us. We're going to come back to that. Remember that phrase.

Now, because of the king's wickedness and unbelief, the king's going to make some choices based in fear, and it's going to just spiral downward. For years to come, army after army will surround Jerusalem, and the people will be carried into exile and will be tempted to give up all hope. But one day, God will send his Messiah.

Now fast forward about seven centuries. The sleepy town of Nazareth and the ancient prophecies are about to be fulfilled. A man named Joseph hears from his fiancée Mary, I know we're not married yet, but I'm expecting a baby by the power of the Holy Spirit because I'm still a virgin. And Joseph faces the choice: fear or faith, and he plans to stop the marriage.

But an angel appears and says, do not be afraid. Take Mary home as your wife because you see the long wait is over. And the Bible says next verse, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said to the prophet: the virgin will conceive and will give birth to a son, and we'll call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Finally, the baby is here.

Ahaz didn't believe it would ever happen, and it looked like God had forgotten, looked like he'd abandoned, but in fact, God had been active the whole time; he kept his promise. Well, now here we are, Christmas 2020, and just like back in those days of King Ahaz, it looks bad out there. Right? We can feel like we're surrounded by all the various troubles of the year, but in fact, you and I have the same exact choice he had: fear or faith.

And those same words that God spoke to him can change you right now because the core message of Christmas can be condensed down to really one word in Hebrew, one simple three-word sentence in English: Emmanuel, God with us. Roll that little sentence around in your mind just a little bit. Imagine what it means as someone wrote: God, the cosmos creator, the one who spun the galaxies into existence, with us.

The holy God came to our planet, into one of our families, into one of our mangers, and to a Roman cross to forgive our sin forever. You know, you could say God really did give us a sign as high as the heavens and as deep as the grave because that's how far he went to be with you.

You right now, for the child feeling anxiety right now, God is with you. For the young person feeling my future's on hold because of everything that's happened in 2020, God is with you. For the single mother feeling isolated and lonely and stressed, God is with you. To the man feeling ashamed or angry or anxious, God is with you. For the elderly man or woman no longer independent and at risk, God is with you.

Emmanuel means whoever you are, you are not alone in the universe. You never have been, and you never have to be because God in Christ chose a manger in Bethlehem and a cross in Jerusalem to communicate one powerful truth: God is with us. That truth, if you choose to believe it instead of living in fear, has the beauty and the power to change every waking moment.

Now, I know that here in 2020, it's easy to be a little bit cynical about the promise of Christmas, just like a man I told some of you about a few weeks ago, the famous poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After his wife died and his son was severely wounded in a battle and America was divided by the Civil War, he found himself very depressed, and he wrote a poem about how he was frankly very cynical about Christmas.

He felt like how could God possibly care? There's so much going wrong right now. And then he felt God answer him, and he wrote this:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come
The belfries of old Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth, I said
For hate is strong and mocks
The song of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.

God is not dead or asleep. God is with us right now. And God's saying to you and me, just as he said to King Ahaz, remember, surrounded by threats, he had a choice: fear or faith. And you and I have the same choice here in Christmas 2020. Choose faith, choose to place your trust in Emmanuel, God with us. That's the key to hope for everyone.

And that's the invitation of Christmas. As Max Lucado put it, he took a journey of infinite steps and left the last step up to you. So receive him. Did you know that that's what the candle lighting at Christmas symbolizes for Christians? It's a beautiful way of saying, Lord, I receive the light of the world, Jesus, into my heart, into my life.

And so I invite you right now to take a candle and light it carefully as we sing Silent Night together. And, you know, during this song, by the way, you're going to see some video of TLC members all across the world joining us on this live stream, lighting their candles. And as you light your candle, I invite you to pray a prayer that will change your life.

It's simple. Pray, Lord Jesus, I choose faith over fear. I choose to invite you into my heart just as this flame is being invited onto my candle. I invite you, light of the world, into my life. I choose to trust you are Immanuel, God with us. And now, Lord, help me to shine my light into our dark world. And, Lord, bring to all human hearts, bring to this troubled, dark world, your light, your true peace on earth.