Old Louisville Christmas 2025
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I mean, honestly, with all that that we've just done, could we be any more foolish? I mean, yes. I mean, us. Right here is Third Avenue Baptist Church and all of those who are gathered with us. Could we, in what we have done, be any more foolish? Now here we are, gathered in this place with lights and heating, and we're singing about songs, singing songs that are about joy and hope and comfort and kings.
We've got our little lights twinkling and our red ties and our green ties and our pretty holiday dresses looking all festive. And in a thousand different ways, the world out there is nothing but death and despair. And just this weekend, just yesterday, an unknown yet number of people died at Brown University in a shooting just less than 24 hours ago, and yet we sit here and we sing of angels sweetly singing o'er the plains.
Here we sit, singing that Jesus was born, that man no more may die. And yet today, 20 people, I think, died at the hands of anti-Semitic terrorists in Sydney as they were celebrating Hanukkah on the beach. We sing that somehow, somewhere, there's a thrill of hope and the weary world rejoices.
We sing that this king will bid envy and strife and quarrels cease and fill all the world with heaven's peace. And yet there are thousands of people still dying in Ukraine. War is still raging in the Middle East. China is still threatening to invade and assimilate. Taiwan and the Taliban are still torturing and maiming and murdering people at will in Afghanistan.
So really, let's be honest. And for us to do this, there's really no more, there's no better explanation for us being in this place and singing and laughing and celebrating and eating and drinking in a world with so much darkness in it, there's really no explanation but that this is the height of fatuousness and folly. This is the laughter and singing of a bunch of blind fools who have obviously closed their eyes to the suffering and death around them.
We really are, we Christians, aren't we? We really are like the oblivious partiers at Prince Prospero's ball, completely powerless against the darkness and death that's stalking us and therefore determined to just close our eyes, put our fingers in our ears, and sing fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Please don't bother me with the death and destruction in the world. Is that the only explanation for why we do what we do when all the rest is going on?
Is that what we're doing here? Just a bunch of blind, foolish, silly people who are in denial of reality? Well, I think it's easy. I think it's very easy to charge Christians with that. Because I think unless you've looked really deeply into what we Christians believe, it can in fact look that way when you come to a service like this. But here we are, the Christian church all over the world in a season that we call Advent, which is traditionally and deliberately, believe it or not, a time of darkness in the life of the church.
Most of the time in churches around the world, you don't have Christmas lights on just yet at this point in Advent. What you have, rather, are shrouded declarations, all the lights turned off. Sometimes the decoration's not even up because Advent is, by its very nature, a time of waiting and even of foreboding. Something is about to happen, is the sense of it. You know, I think sometimes the meaning of Advent gets misunderstood as being just, well, let's have a time right before Christmas, right before all the glitz and the glitter and the twinkly lights and all the rest of it.
Let's have a time where we pretend that Jesus isn't here and that the world really is dark when we know for certain that it's really all about the twinkling lights. But friends, that's not what Advent is. Advent is more a season where we as Christians stop and take a moment with all our theology locked and loaded to look the darkness and evil and suffering of this world square in the face, to reckon with it, and to wrestle with it. And I think, alone, among all the religions of the world, it is Christianity which finally has something to say to all of that.
But what? Well, that's what I want us to consider tonight. I want to take you for just a few minutes to a very famous passage of Scripture this evening, One that I think captures this tension of hope in the darkness. We read it a little bit earlier in the service. You can look at it on lesson three if you want to, or you can take a Bible, turn over to it in the Bible. It's Isaiah chapter 9. Most of all, this prophecy from the prophet Isaiah helps us, I think, to see how in the midst of all the darkness and death and destruction, there can, in fact, be such hope.
Let me read it again. Isaiah chapter 9, verse 1. Verse 1 is not in your bulletin, so you'll have to pick it up when I get to verse 2. But here it comes. But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
You, O God, have multiplied the nation. You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken, as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. Because to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. And he will sit on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness. From this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Now that's a hopeful passage, isn't it? To us a child is born, to us a son is given, a light has dawned. There's a lot of talk there about hope, but in order to understand just how great that hope is, you have to understand the situation into which Isaiah made this prophecy.
You've got to understand just a little bit of what was going on in Israel when Isaiah wrote this down and presented it to the people, because by the time Isaiah spoke these words to the people of Israel, their spirits were already at the point of breaking. And in fact, their nation and its history was marked by nothing but shattered hopes and broken dreams and unfulfilled longings. That's all they even really knew anymore. If ever there's been a dark age in the history of the world, this was it for the nation of Israel. You know, they had a glorious age some centuries earlier in the reign of old King Solomon, but there wasn't much left of his kingdom.
I mean, years before that, God had made some fantastic promises to Solomon's father, David, that there would be someone always to sit on the throne of David, that someone would reign on that throne from everlasting to everlasting. But by the time Isaiah is prophesying, that just looks like a pipe dream. And one king after another has sat on the throne of Israel, and then on the thrones of a divided Israel that broke into civil war. And one after one after one, they were all judged for their wickedness, some of them even sacrificing their children in the fire. So by the time Isaiah spoke here in chapter 9, That great hope of a king to sit on David's throne was terminally ill.
One line of kings in the north was just about to be wiped out by the Assyrians and never hear from them again. The other line of kings had finally wound down to this toad of a man called Ahaz who was sitting on the throne in Jerusalem and looking out for nobody but himself. And Israel was surrounded by these enormous empires that were just looking for a moment to crush them. Syria to the north, Egypt to the south, Babylon over to the east, and they've got nowhere to run to the west unless they just want to get wet in the Mediterranean Sea. There's nowhere to go. Ahaz was unrepentant. He was looking around for alliances with other nations rather than going to the Lord his God. And so the great line of Davidic kings was failing. It's hard.
It's hard to imagine a darker, more despairing time in the life of the people of Israel than this time right here. Their nation is crumbling. Enemy armies are pressing in around him. And the Davidic throne is powerless and corrupt and unrepentant. And yet all of a sudden, like a shaft of light, this is what Isaiah says. In the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea. The people who have walked in darkness are about to see a great light.
I want you to see something about that. I mean, if you're looking in your bulletin, you can look at verse 2 a little bit. If you're looking in verse 1 in the Bible, you can actually see it more clearly. You see that phrase there in verse 2? The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. You know what he's talking about there? He's talking, if you look at verse 1, about the two northernmost tribes of Israel, Zebulun and Naphtali. They were the two northernmost tribes. so what would happen to them over and over again through the centuries is that when invading armies would come across the desert and invade Israel, which had to happen from the north or the south, Zebulun and Naphtali, those two places, were the first to take the brunt of the attack. So more than any other tribes of Israel, those two nations lived in constant fear and destruction. Every time they would build houses, some marauding army would come through and destroy them. Every time they had children who grew up to be adults. They had to send them off to war to defend the country and be killed. These were people who lived in anguish and in darkness. And yet, look what it
says. Look what it says. It's in those places where the light of the gospel first shines, which is interesting because that's the first place that Jesus begins to preach is up in that area of Zebulun and Naphtali. The light of the gospel first shines in the darkest of places. Those in most despair saw salvation first. Because one of the things that the gospel says to a world that's broken and destruction and death and despair is that God offers salvation to the hopeless.
Not just the almost hopeless, but the hopeless. Those who have given it up, those who aren't looking for any silver lining in the clouds anymore, those who think the heavens are just brass when they pray, it's to you that God offers hope first. The good news of Christianity is good news for the hopeless. Friend, if that's you, if that's you, then the doors of heaven are wide open for you to come to Jesus and be saved. there's more over the next four verses you've got these four specific promises that are made for us i think there are four things that give us hope in the midst of this dark and fallen world i mean first of all look that there's there's there in verse two we've already talked about it a little bit but light for those in darkness light for those who are in darkness that's one of the promises that the gospel makes by god's power a new dawn has come in the coming of Jesus, the darkness is broken and people who are living and walking in it would see light again.
How long has it been since you saw light? I don't just mean the sun or these really bright things right here. I mean light. The light of life. The light that gives joy to life. How long has it been since you saw that? And if it's been a long time, why is that? You know who's the source of all the light and life in the world? We read about it in the very last lesson. You can look back at it. John 1. The life and the light of the world are in Jesus Christ.
The world may counterfeit that in a thousand different ways, but you'll never find the source. You'll never find the true source of light and life until you come to Jesus. Look at verse 3. He also promises here joy for the despairing. God increases His people's joy. They'd been in slavery under Assyria. The other half of them was about to be in slavery under Babylon. And so when they were there and they read this prophecy, this verse right here, God increases His people's joy, must have seemed so strange to them when they were in slavery.
No country, no king, no land of their own, under the foot of foreign rulers. And yet there it is, promising that when the Savior comes, there will be this deep, satisfying joy that comes when a harvest has been brought successfully home or when a battle has ended in victory. That's the kind of joy that you have when you come to Jesus. You can lay down your weapons. And it's glorious. Third, in verse 4, he says, freedom for the enslaved. Just like God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt and in Exodus, he would do it again.
But look at that phrase there, in the days of Midian. What does that mean? The yoke is broken, the staff is broken, the rod is broken. You did all this just like you did on the day of Midian. What does that mean? Well, you remember back in the book of Judges, the story of Gideon? This was the guy in the book of Judges that raised up an army to throw off the power of this nation called Midian that was oppressing Israel. And if you remember the story, the first thing God did when Gideon presented him with this great army was that he said cut it in half and then cut it again and cut it again and cut it again.
And eventually he wound up with like just 300 guys that were going to take on this empire of Midian. What was God's point? God's point was, Gideon, it doesn't matter how big your army is. If I want to save you, I'm going to save you. And if I don't, I won't. That's what that phrase means. God save us like you did in the days of Midian. It means that God is reminding Israel of exactly how much they did in rescuing themselves from Midian. and it was 0%.
It's one of the great misunderstandings that people have about Christianity. That in the work of salvation, God does 99% of it and I just have to give 1%. God takes 999 steps toward me and all I've got to do is take one step toward Him. It's not the case. It's not the case because the reality, according to the Bible, is that if you do take that one step and reach out and embrace Him, it's because God has already brought you from death to life in the first place. friend if you're a sinner and you are you're not just sick you're dead Paul says and your trespasses and your sins and yet God has the power to bring your soul to life maybe that's happening tonight and maybe just in singing the things that we're singing and talking about the things we're talking about you feel your heart coming to life and what is this and and what I want to tell you is maybe it's faith in Jesus and what you ought to do is let that feeling topple over into true trust and reliance in the Savior and say yeah yeah I believe this and i need to know more very fast trust in jesus not because of anything you do but because
he does it all as in the day of midian fourth he says there's peace for the war weary look at verse five there every boot of the tramping warrior every garment rolled in blood is going to be burned up as fuel for the fire wars are going to cease he says for god's people i mean you don't have to read very long in the old testament to see why that would be such a compelling prophecy to these people. I mean, there's a lot of war in the Old Testament. But now, war boots and blood-stained tunics are going to be thrown into the fire. It's the same thing that Isaiah talked about a little bit earlier when he said that Israel, on that last day, are going to be able to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Wars are going to be over, so boots and weapons and armor could ultimately, on the last day, be thrown into the fire and used for cooking to keep warm or banged into some other tool to be used on the farm.
Friend, these are above all promises that are made to a people who are ground down. You know, I think it's part of being human to feel ground down sometimes, whether you're a Christian or not. I mean, I know that as Christians, we're not supposed to feel that way, but we do. Life is hard and temptation is strong. And so we feel ground down. We feel like we're groping in darkness. We open up X or CNN or Fox News to see what's going on today. And it's just like, oh, my goodness.
I just feel crushed. But you see, the thing is that what it means to be a Christian is not that you're always winning. But that even when you're losing, you find hope in promises like these. Even when Satan rubs your nose in the dirt, you still get up and you look to the Savior and you say, my hope is still in you. Because Lord, where else am I supposed to go? Friend, how are you ground down?
Physical pain and sickness, find hope in a God who promises joy even in the midst of pain. The bad circumstances, you didn't get a job, you lost a job. Find joy in a God who cares for those who are in despair. Fear the future? Find solace and comfort in the God who rules over all, who is infinitely wise, and who says, cast your cares on me because I care for you. Is it sin? Is that what's got you ground down?
Just the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil? Have you gotten to the point of giving up? I think sometimes in the Christian life, we get to the point where we think we don't have a right to rejoice. We're not worthy of it. I shouldn't feel that kind of joy because of who I am. I don't have a right to sing that. Forget it. I don't belong in God's presence singing to him. But, friend, look at the whole point of these verses in Isaiah. Look at the whole point.
This joy, this freedom, this rejoicing comes to those who are in darkness and despair. who are in anguish, and who are broken in sin. Those are the people that are called to rejoice. You know the song we sang a few minutes ago right at the beginning of the service? Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. It's like that sometimes for Christians. Sometimes we show up at a service like this and it's exactly like that.
Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. But do you know how it is a whole lot of other times? It's, O come all ye faithless, broken and defeated. O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem, and let's adore him. But how? How is that going to happen? Well, it's in verse 6. All this is going to happen because to us a child is born, and to us a son is given.
You see what he's saying there? Someday this child is going to be born who's once again going to sit on David's throne, who's going to take the government on his shoulders and rule Israel and the world in peace and righteousness forever. This child is going to be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. I'm sure you all know by now who finally fulfilled this promise. The whole service tonight was meant to lead your mind into seeing who it is that fulfills that. it's Jesus. It's Jesus that establishes David's royal line, who takes his seat on David's throne.
And you remember what the angel said to Mary, right? The angel said to Mary, don't be afraid, Mary, you found favor with God. Behold, you'll conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you'll call his name Jesus. And then listen to what he says, he will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end it's almost a point by point exposition of Isaiah 9 6 and 7 David's great throne had been empty and forgotten for centuries by this point but God now was about to give it to this child Jesus who would rain on it for all eternity you know back a few decades ago there was a an american musical group called the waverly consort that traveled around the country performing a musical rendition of the christmas story as it's told in matthew and luke it was an extraordinary piece of work lots of musical
skill and all the rest but i want to draw your attention to just one part of it that has particular relevance to what we've been talking about so in the in the play the the wise men arrive and they tell Herod and his sons of the birth of Jesus. And the response of the sons in music is this. You have to listen carefully for the words, but they're important. The sons of Herod say, we now hear of the birth of a greater king whose power is over us. And so we fear that we will be taken from our throne. Against that petty pretending king, give word that the battle has begun so they declare war against Jesus this new king that's come and then in the play and in the bible too they begin to plot what they're going to do to go to war against this king and the plot that they come up with of course is the slaughter of the infants in Jerusalem well then in the play there's a character that represents Rachel from the old testament weeping for her babies that have been that have been killed now by Herod and she says alas tender babes such savage wounds from the
swords we see how are we to bear such deeds and then there's a group of people over here on the stage who who are called the consolers the comforters the ones who are supposed to give Rachel comfort in all of this they're humans and they're singing to her about why she should be comforted and they say to her rejoice now Rachel even in your mourning for those babes live now as the blessed among the stars. And Rachel waves it off and says, no, how can I rejoice when I behold these lifeless limbs?
But the comforters keep on. Why do you weep for the children when they have gained the kingdom of heaven? And then Rachel shakes it off again and her final word is, great is the anguish of my soul. My heart is troubled within me. great is the anguish of my soul my heart is troubled within me and no words of the comforters will suffice in the play those words from rachel great is the anguish of my soul my heart is troubled are the last human words in the play no other human speaks again in fact the next word after Rachel's cry is not a human word at all. It's the voice of an archangel repeating the words of Jesus to her. Suffer the little children to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven.
And then the whole chorus responds, O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Look, here's the thing. Humanly speaking, there is no answer to Rachel's cry. And there is no hope for her children's future once they've been married. Murdered, I'm sorry, not married. There is no human answer, in fact, to the suffering we see around us and that we experience.
We humans have nothing to say to that. We can console and we can comfort and we can do everything else that we think is necessary, but in the end, all our hearts want to say is my soul is in anguish within me there is no human word left no no the only word the only word that makes any difference the only word with any power to face up to evil is the word of god and that's what we proclaim at advent and christmas what we proclaim at advent and at christmas are is that finally the bonds of suffering and death are broken because the king of glory has been born the flow of death the sting of death is swallowed up and grace is given to us friends a whole lot of you still have a lot of christmas parties to go to yet there are gonna be a lot of gifts there's gonna be a lot of food and cookies and family and friends there's gonna be a lot of stuff happening but in the midst of it
all don't forget why we do all this in the first place it's because after so many centuries of hopelessness so many centuries of despair and silence from heaven finally the savior king has been born and the throne is no longer empty praise god let's pray our lord we thank you and we praise you that you are wonderful counselor mighty god everlasting father prince of peace and we thank you oh lord that in the midst of all the death and despair and suffering in our world even in the midst of those things that we have no answer to you have an answer and it is that the throne is no longer empty and you will set everything right our god we thank you for these things.
We thank you that you are a God who loves justice and who shows mercy. We thank you that you invite each and every one of us to come to you in faith and repentance so that we might be saved. And we ask, oh God, that not a single person in this place tonight would go away without the blessing of forgiveness from your hand. We ask all of this in Jesus' name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.