Scripture Reading:

• Psalm 80:1-7; 17-19
• Romans 1:1-7

Opening Prayer:

Father God, we thank you for the honor and the privilege it is to gather here this morning. I pray that you would bless this time we will be spending together in your word. As we prepare our hearts for this last week of Advent and the celebration of Christmas, may our hearts be filled with love for you and for our neighbor. May we never forget that we love, because you first loved us. Thank you for the privilege of being able to share in your love. Amen. 

Introduction:

Believe it or not, today marks the fourth Sunday of Advent. Christmas is literally just one week from today! I hope you feel the anticipation of Christmas welling up inside you. As a child I remember that I hated waiting for Christmas to come, but now as an adult I feel like there is something special about the waiting that I want to savor and hold onto for just a little while longer. This Sunday is a good time to pause and savor the week ahead. It is a time to reflect on the great gift of Christ. It is a time to remember that, while we eagerly anticipate Christ’s return, we are blessed to live in an age in which the Savior has already come and salvation has already been won!

The traditional theme of the fourth Sunday of Advent is love, a theme that is so prevalent in the scriptures that we could spend years of sermons on the subject and still only scratch the surface. Love is something so powerful and otherworldly that even secular people, in a supposed age of science and reason, acknowledge the miraculous power of love. The apostle John told us the reason we love is because we come from a God who is love:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4;7-8, ESV

It is a remarkable claim to say that “God is Love.” John is not saying that love is something God does, but rather that love is something that God is. Love is what theologians call an “attribute of God”, meaning that it is true of God at all times, and if it ever ceased to be true then God would cease to be God. They are essential to who God is. Some of the attributes of God are “incommunicable” which means they are qualities that only God can possess. These incommunicable attributes include things like His eternality (never beginning or ending), His immutability (never changing), and His omnipresence (ever present at all times and places). These are the attributes of God that are hard for us to wrap our heads around, because they are unique to God.

There are, however, “communicable attributes” which are attributes that both God and the people He made in His image can possess. While only God is perfectly just, human beings can reflect His justice. Only God is perfectly good and wise, but human beings can grow in wisdom and goodness. Arguably the most important attribute of God that we are called to reflect into the world is love. Jesus himself said that love is the mark of a true disciple of Christ:

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:35, ESV

Love is what has propelled humanity to strive to build a better world than the one we inherited from our forefathers, and in some ways love has succeeded. At Christmas time we see images of people feeding the hungry, doing small acts of kindness and charity, and holding hands with one another as we sing songs of peace on earth and good will towards men. What a shame we cannot be this way all year long.

Unfortunately, as always, Christmas comes and goes. We find ourselves slowly pulled back to real life where love is not always felt or seen. It is not as though we do not want this love to carry on, but we struggle to keep it alive in us. Sin creeps in, divisions form, animosity rises up to divide us again, and then before we know it we are back where we started. We find ourselves once again in the need of God’s forgiveness, and awaiting a day when this cycle of sin will be broken forever. It is in that waiting and hoping that I feel a connection to the cry of Psalm 80.

God Restore Us!

Ever since the fall of man, human beings have tried to re-create a loving world apart from God, and every attempt has crumbled into failure. Three times in Psalm 80, the psalmist cries out for restoration. The Psalmist desires for God’s face to shine down once again in love upon His people, so that they may be saved. If the love of God is not shining down upon us then we are lost, doomed to continue wandering in the darkness of our sins. It is not that we are incapable of love, but that without God our love will always be overpowered, corrupted, or perverted by sin. After all, God is love. Without God we cannot love in the truest sense.

When we read Psalm 80 and put ourselves in the place of the psalmist, we recognize that we have fallen short of perfect love. Like the psalmist, we turn to God with hopeful anticipation. We acknowledge our need for hope, and a new beginning. 

At the end of this lament, the psalmist casts his hope into the future:

But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,

    the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!

Then we shall not turn back from you;

    give us life, and we will call upon your name!

Psalm 80:17-18, ESV

Who is the man of God’s right hand? Who is the son of man whom God made strong? No doubt the psalmist had a kingly figure in mind, but what king could rule in such a way that the people would never turn back from God again? This can only be the promised Messiah!

Jesus Christ Our Lord

The Savior King, who would cause God’s face to shine upon His people, was a hope that the psalmist could only look forward to. For him it was prophecy, but for us it is history. The love of God we celebrate came to us two thousand years ago as a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Christmas is the celebration of the beginning of the fulfillment of the promises the ancients longed for and prayed for!

This Savior King would grow in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man until the time was right for him to reveal himself to the world. He would travel for three years performing signs and wonders and preparing people for the coming of the Kingdom of God. He would allow himself to be arrested, to suffer, and to die in our place so that he could then rise from the dead, having defeated sin and death on our behalf! He ascended into heaven and, as the psalmist declared, he is now seated at the right hand of God the Father making intercession for us so that, as the scriptures declare, there is now no condemnation for all who are in Christ Jesus, but only everlasting life!

This is the gospel of God which Paul was set apart for:

The gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

Romans 1:1-6, ESV

Hear this good news, God fulfills his promises! This is the good news of a Savior who will destroy death and rescue creation from its bondage of sin. As we have been seeing week after week, this Gospel of God was promised in advance through prophets of the Old Testament. They pointed to David’s Son, God’s Son, whose divinity was confirmed through his resurrection from the dead. To get this good news out into the world, God called messengers like Paul, to proclaim the gospel “among all the nations.” This message of God’s love continues to penetrate the world today, especially at Christmas time. 

Paul knew what it was like to live in the days of waiting for the Messiah, and he was blessed to be among the first converts to the faith. Paul is regarded as one of the greatest missionaries and evangelists in Church history, but what motivated him to be so eager to proclaim the gospel? 

Paul understood just how amazing it was to be living on the other side of the promise. He knew what it was to wait with eager anticipation, so when the days of waiting were over he wanted everyone to hear the good news! 

As you hopefully know by now, we have been collecting money for our Lottie Moon Christmas offering for several Sundays. This annual offering is one of the many ways that Southern Baptist Churches like our own support missionaries around the world who are taking the gospel to peoples and places where it has not yet been preached. But why do we do this? Why do Christians spend so much time and energy on getting the gospel out to the ends of the earth?

Firstly, we do it because we were commanded to do so. The last command that Jesus left his church was, 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20, ESV

But secondly, we do it out of love! We love God, and so we should not be satisfied with knowing that there are still peoples and places that do not know Him as Savior and Lord. We love our fellow men, and so we should not be satisfied with passively watching them wander in the darkness of sin and death, not when salvation has been made available to all! 

Sometimes I think we forget how amazing the good news is.

Remember the Psalmist’s recurring plea “restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!” Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the church in Corinth: 

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV

The light has come! It is the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ. The gospel of Christ is the ultimate source of light. The gospel puts all of life into proper perspective. We who are in Christ have been given the right to become “children of light” (1 Thess. 5:5) who are being transformed by the work of the Spirit. We are tasked with shining the light of Christ’s love into all corners of the world!  At the culmination of human history Jesus will return as the King of kings and Lord of lords. God’s love will be victorious over all and as God’s Word promised us:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4, ESV

As we celebrate this season of love, let us do so with a recognition of all that Christ has done for us, and with eager anticipation of what Christ will accomplish when he returns. Let us rejoice that when we read the Psalmist’s plea, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!” (Psalm 80:3) we can remind ourselves that in Jesus Christ we are forgiven. The saving grace of God made available through Christ is the greatest gift of love!

As John’s gospel reminds us, God sent His Son into the world to be our Savior, not merely out of some obligation to keep a promise made long ago, but because God loves us and longs for the day of our salvation.

 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16, ESV

Just as Israel placed their hope in a future Messiah, so we place our hope in the Messiah who came to us in love two thousand years ago, and who will someday return to establish justice and peace without end. Salvation can only be found in Him. When we turn our backs on love and backslide into sin, we can only be restored through Him. He is our advocate with God the Father and His blood is the price paid for our salvation.  If our hearts no longer burn with love for the Lord, if we find our hearts growing cold this winter season, I pray that we would repent and return to Christ. He who is love will be faithful to revive us and restore us. 

Prayer of Decision:

Father God, We thank you this morning for gathering us together in this place. As we enter the final week of Advent leading up to Christmas, I pray that you would help us to keep your love ever before us. Help us to remember that you are love, and that through your Son, Jesus Christ, we can truly know love and share love with one another. If any here do not know your love, I pray that you would help us to begin a conversation today that would lead them to full assurance of your saving love upon them. Bless this time of decision Lord we pray. Amen.