The Christmas We Weren’t Expecting, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. You see if you're really going to come to God there's got to be room in your heart for him to surprise you, to do the unexpected.

Sometimes the greatest love that God might show to you or to me is not in fixing our problems but when he uses that problem to open your eyes to see the treasure you have in him and sometimes that comes through pain. Welcome to Summit Life with J.D. Greer, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today, Pastor J.D. takes us back to the most wonderful time of the year, one last time.

So if you needed a little more Christmas, you came to the right place. But did you know that the Bible tells us that when Jesus came, he drew a dividing line? One that would separate people for all of eternity.

So the question for you is which side are you on? Make sure you stick around to the end to hear more about our latest resource that will help you know more of the Bible in 2022. But let's not waste any more time and jump right into the message Pastor J.D.

titled, The Christmas We Weren't Expecting. Sometimes, you and I talk about the Christian life as if it is instant fulfillment, immediate answers to prayer requests. If you do A, oh yes, God will give B. And if you do A in your marriage, then your marriage is going to turn into B.

And if you do A with your kids, then your kids will turn out like B. But friend, that is just not always true. Many of you find yourself in a posture of waiting this Christmas. You're in a time that feels dark, a time of confusion. Maybe you even feel abandoned. Maybe it's a season for you of yearning and longing, a longing for something to be set right. Injustice seems to reign everywhere around you.

Maybe you yourself have been the victim of that injustice. Maybe you, like Anna, are yearning for some need to be fulfilled. Life just has not turned out the way that you would always expect it. Maybe it's a longing to have your family put back together.

Or maybe to have a family of your own. You were hoping to be married by this Christmas, and here we are again, entering another Christmas season, and you're still single. Maybe you're grieving the death of a child this Christmas. Maybe you're grieving a miscarriage this year. Maybe you're still waiting on a prodigal who is yet to return home. I don't know. I don't know.

And here's the thing. You've tried everything that you know how to try. You've tried to do it God's way. I mean, you went and got advice, and you talked to the pastor, and you believed God, and you trusted him, and you worked hard, and still, things have just not gotten better for you. Why isn't the marriage getting better?

Why isn't the situation changing? Simeon and Anna's story show you that God sees you. God has not forgotten you, and waiting does not mean that you've done something wrong. Waiting is, in fact, an essential, I would even say an appointed part of the Christian life. If you want God to deliver you, if you want his powerful working in your life, it will come on the heels of a season of waiting. God will not disappoint those of you who wait for him. He will not let you be put to shame. Nobody who has ever waited for God, ever in history, has been let down.

No one, not even one, you will not be the first. Waiting is an essential, even an appointed part of the Christian life, and that's what we're reminded of at Christmas. I love how Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who ended up being a martyr of the Nazi regime, I love how he said it. The Advent season, the Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life, our whole life kind of feels like an Advent season, he says. That is the season of waiting for the last Advent.

Advent just means coming. The last coming for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Christmas reminds us that while we've got a lot to be thankful for here, a lot of us are still waiting. In fact, we're all waiting for the second coming of Christ. We're all waiting for the new heavens and the new earth. We're all waiting for Jesus to come and make things right, and for all the sad things in our lives to become untrue. So I would just say to you this weekend, whether you've got a specific need that you're waiting on God to do something in, or whether it's just a yearning for heaven. Simeon and Anna show you that God has not forgotten you. The joy and the comfort of Christmas is for you.

Even if your situation is not going to change this weekend, which leads me to number two. Number two, God's answer did not match their expectations. God's answer did not match their expectations. I think it's safe to say that neither Simeon nor Anna was thinking that a helpless baby born to a dirt poor family was God's answer to their longing, but he was. You see, what Israel thought they needed most, what they thought they needed from God was God was different from what they actually needed most. What they thought they needed most was political deliverance.

What they thought they needed most was a new husband or a restored fortune, but what they actually most needed was restoration with God. This, Jesus says, is eternal life, not streets of gold and not perfect health. You want to know what eternal life is? To know God and Jesus whom he has sent. You can have that knowledge in pain as well as you can have it in health. In fact, sometimes you can have it better in pain than you can in health. Jesus said the abundant life that I'm talking about is not a Mercedes Benz and it's not a 5,000 square foot house and it's not a second home at Hilton Head and it's not a perfect family.

It's not all the people around the table. You want to know what the abundant life is, Jesus says? It's knowing me and walking in the fullness and joy of your heavenly father.

We may think that what we most need is physical health this Christmas or financial assistance or family reunion, but what we most need deep in our souls is reunion with our heavenly father. You see, you and I were created for God. Whether you've ever realized that or not, maybe I'm going to start filling in the gaps for you in ways that are making connections maybe you've never made, maybe you've never understood, never thought of yourself as a religious person, but see, I know a secret about you. That is, you're created for God. Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mathematician, he famously said that the human heart has a, it's like a gigantic hole in it, a void, a vacuum, he called it. He said we spend all of our lives trying to figure out what goes in that hole. We try to romance and we turn to romance, think if I meet Mr. Right or Ms.

Right, then well then that's going to take care of it. He said but that hole is not filled by money, it's not filled by romantic love, it's not filled by family, it's not filled by job success, it's not filled by prosperity or political peace, that hole is in the shape of the love of Jesus Christ. And that's why no matter what you find in life, you're always going to feel like something is not quite there, something is still missing because you're created not for health or prosperity, you're created for fellowship with God. You're not even created for family, you're created for fellowship with God. That's why Saint Augustine said 1,500 years ago our hearts are restless until they learn to find their rest in you. You were created for God, you need to be restored to him and only this Messiah, only this Christ born as a baby to live the life you were supposed to live and then die the death you were condemned to die in your place, only that baby could fill that hole.

The arms that you've been searching for in romance have actually been his arms. The security that you look for in money is actually found in the presence of Jesus and his promises. The significance that you craved from your dad, from your spouse, from the approval of others, from likes on a Facebook post, that significance is found in hearing God the Father say to you, you are my beloved son or daughter in whom I am well pleased. Now I want to be very clear, okay, God is good and we're supposed to ask for that goodness to break into our lives and our families. At this church we believe that we can and should pray for physical healing, we should pray, you can pray, you should pray for an end to loneliness, you can even pray for political help, but first and foremost Jesus came to lead you and me into fellowship with the Father because again that's eternal life, that's the fullness of joy, that is life abundantly and apart from that any other fix is only going to be superficial anyway. What God did here was unexpected but it was exactly what they needed. Can I ask you this weekend are you ready for God to do the unexpected in your life this Christmas? Be honest, are you ready for God to do the unexpected in your life this Christmas? I do not care how spiritually mature you are or how much you know or how certain you feel that you know exactly what you need most from God. I'll just go ahead and tell you as a guy who's been a pastor for almost two decades now with a PhD in theology, you've got to always be ready for God to do the unexpected in your life and if there is no room in your heart for God to surprise you, I mean legitimately surprise you, I mean I didn't see that come and surprise you, well then maybe it's not God you're actually worshiping, maybe it's not God you're really seeking.

You see if you're really going to come to God there's got to be room in your heart for him to surprise you, to do the unexpected. Sometimes the greatest love that God might show to you or to me is not in fixing our problems but when he uses that problem to open your eyes to see the treasure you have in him and sometimes that comes through pain. I mean think about it, how does a surgeon bring peace to your body? Not by telling you everything's going to be okay, if you got a tumor in you he's got to cut you, he's got to cut you to take that tumor out so that you can have peace. How does a therapist bring peace to a downcast or a depressed person? A lot of times it's by dredging up the past, isn't it?

Getting you to remember and confront those painful memories, often this is the irony, you got to feel worse before you can feel better. It's the same thing with spiritual healing, sometimes the paths toward peace lead us through valleys of pain. It's like we often say here at the Summit Church, sometimes God answers our prayers by giving us what we would have asked for if we knew what he knew.

Sometimes God shows his love by giving us what we would have asked for if we knew what he knew and what he knows is that your deepest longings, the deepest longings in your heart and the peace that you're really looking for, those are found in the knowledge of him. Those are found in the knowledge of him. Simeon said two things that right at the end that I want to close this with.

Two things, look at them, verse 29. After this encounter Simeon said, I can depart in peace. Hey, what had changed in Simeon's life? Having had the Spirit of God open his eyes to see who Jesus really was, he could depart in peace.

Nothing had changed about his circumstances. Israel was still under Rome's rule. When Simeon left, he would still be a victim of injustice, walking out of that great temple.

He might be confronted by a Roman soldier who would say something rude to him or push him or maybe even take his money. Yet Simeon says in the temple, I am at peace and I will leave in peace. Nothing had changed with Anna's circumstances, had it? She's still over 100 years old and she's still a widow, yet she's at peace.

Here's my question. Can you be at peace today? When you leave, whether it's one of our campuses or the home that you're sitting in, can you be at peace today?

What do you require in order for you to be able to say, I can depart in peace? Do you require a change in circumstances? Do you require resolution of some injustice?

Do you require some kind of personal vindication? Do you need a new husband? Do you just need a husband?

Do you need your kids to come to faith? Imagine this ring of keys right here as representing the keys to your heart. Remember how in the old days people just collect keys and the really important people would have them all and I was like, that person must be important, they got keys everywhere. So imagine this just representing one of those big old key rings and here's what most of us have done. This represents the keys to peace in my heart. And so you've taken one and you've given it to your spouse. My wife gets a key and my kids get a key and my stockbroker gets a key and my boss gets a key and my girlfriend's got a key and your boyfriend's got a key and the school I'm trying to get into, well they got a key also.

And then you step back and you tell all those groups, all those people that they better treat you the way that you want to be treated because they've got the keys to your peace. Well y'all, that's not a good plan for a couple of reasons, right? Number one, they're going to let you down. Guaranteed. You don't even have to have much life experience to know that and when they let you down, it's hard for you to even be mad at them. Let me tell you how I can say that. Because the person who's let you down most is staring at you every morning when you look in the mirror.

Am I right? Every morning when I look in the mirror, I'm looking at the person who has lied to J.D. Greer more than any other human in history. Every morning when I look in the mirror, I'm looking at the person who is disappointed and let down J.D.

Greer more than anybody else. So here's what I know, if I've let me down, I can't be surprised when other people let me down either because probably I've let them down. In fact, I'm sure of it. So it is silly for me to give them the keys to my peace. Listen, if hope for you is found and somebody taking the key and using it the right way, then all hope is, listen, is delayed disappointment for you.

That's all it is. You've given it to them and you might be able to delay your disappointment for a little bit, but it's coming. No, no, only Jesus should have the key to your peace. There should only be one key on that ring and you should be able to hand it to Jesus and you should be able to say you've got the key to peace in my heart because only you're going to be faithful with it and you're what I've created for and your promises are sufficient and only you can guarantee it. That's what Simeon and Anna do here. They saw that Jesus held the key to their peace and once they saw Jesus, once they'd entrusted themselves to him, then they could depart in peace.

Is he and he alone the keeper of your peace today? Here's the second thing that Simeon said that is so important. Verse 34, this child is destined to cause the rise and the fall of many. Simeon said this baby's going to bring a dividing line. Verse 35, Simeon says he'll cause offense.

Because of him, Simeon said, the thoughts of a lot of hearts are going to get exposed. What they really think about God, this baby boy is going to grow up and reveal that because of his claims the truth about their heart will actually be revealed and we can pull back the veil on their fake religiosity because that baby is going to grow up and preach that none of us are good enough to get to heaven and he's going to have to give us that as a gift through his work not ours and we're going to have to receive that humbly like beggars. Jesus did not come to make you a better person. He came because you could not be a better person and you'd have to depend on him and him alone to save you and a lot of people aren't going to like that because it's going to attack their pride because they want somebody to improve them. They want a new and better version of them but Jesus said you are dead in your sin and I got to put my life into you.

You got to admit that you're worth, you're worth nothing spiritually to God or you're at least worthy of nothing spiritually and you got to receive the gift humbly. He's going to demand absolute lordship from us and a lot of people aren't going to like that either because while they got no problem with religion they want to retain control of their lives. They want control of their pocketbooks. They want control of their destinies. They want control of their relationships and so this this baby boy is going to be a better person. He's going to be a better this baby boy is going to grow up and say if I'm not Lord of all I'm not Lord at all and they're not going to like that because as religious as they are they want to keep their hands on the reins and this baby boy is going to grow up and insist that more than we need fixes to our problems we need him and a lot of people aren't going to like that either. They're not going to be satisfied with that and that's going to reveal that a lot of them aren't interested in God. What they're actually interested in is what they think God can do for them.

This baby boy is going to bring a dividing line and all of us are going to be challenged. Hey get this Simeon talk about a guy with some backbone Simeon looks at Mary yep Mary and looks at her and says and a sword will pierce your soul also. Hey could we just acknowledge there are a few people in the Bible that are presented as admirably and attractively as Mary right? I mean yet even Mary didn't get it completely right. Mary was seriously mistaken at first as to what her son was all about and more than once more than once she tried to stop him. Mark 3 31 look it up especially if you grew up in a church that taught you that Mary was sinless. Mark 3 31 says that Jesus's mother and brothers found his claim so absurd that they thought he was literally verse 31 insane. Verse 21 says that they tried to bring him home out of his ministry they tried to bring him home by force because they thought verse 21 he was out of his mind. So Simeon looks at Mary and says Jesus's claims are going to challenge even you Mary.

Why do I point that out because that means you should expect that he will challenge you also. In fact I would say that one of the signs that you've really encountered Jesus is that you've wrestled with him because he really given yourself that Jesus is going to feel in some ways like a sword has come into your soul. Really wrestling really encountering Jesus means your pride is going to get challenged and that control you want over your life that's going to get challenged too and he's going to challenge you at the core of your idols and if you've never wrestled with that deep challenge you probably have never grappled with the real him. You've just gotten religious. This baby boy is going to draw a dividing line and that dividing line is going to separate people for eternity.

John 3 he that believes and obeys the son has everlasting life and those that don't believe and obey the son will perish without him. The most important question you will ever consider is what side of that dividing line are you on? Have you surrendered to him? Have you given yourself to him or are you still without him? He's a dividing line. He's a dividing line. My kids and I were on a trip recently and we were coming out of the RDU airport and we walked in this little corridor the TSA corridor where you pass like the there's this little like line with lights in it and it represents the security line and my kids every time we go on a trip every time they say dad don't you remember that time you made the security alarm go off every time we go now they say dad this is the play I'm like I remember the place because it was you know we were walking on the line I was just trying to be you know dad jokes so I was I was like oh look there's this line here and I thought it was like a zone like sort of a general kind of like just you know don't go past this area and come back so this little line on the floor I was like you know hey kids look I'm in I'm out I'm in I'm out and they're all you know and all of a sudden the the lights start flaring and the alarm goes off and the whole air and like the security guards come running another thing and I'm like you know I get down on my knees no I didn't get on my knees but it just it was a moment because the kids like remember that like I remember that remember the time you almost got arrested dad I remember that so but it's a line right and you're either on one side or the other either in or you're out it's a dividing line what side of the line are you on with Jesus have you ever come to a place where you've acknowledged that you can never be good enough to earn heaven have you come to a place where you surrendered yourself to him knowing that only his mercy could save you and that you were putting him in charge of your life you can be a better person he came because you couldn't be a better person and have you received him acknowledging that only he can save you right and having received that can you now say I am ready to depart from here and I am ready to be at peace why don't you bow your heads if you would at all of our campuses and our homes hey friend it's very simple okay have you received him if not you could do it right now through we call it surrender in faith that's the biblical words surrender in faith Jesus I turn over control of my life to you I can't save myself you've got to save me I receive you right now as my savior say it to him wherever you sit however old you are Jesus I can't save myself and only you can save me the peace you are looking for is found in Jesus have you discovered that peace you're listening to summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor author and theologian J.D. Greer if you put your trust in Jesus today or have questions about what it means to follow him please give us a call at 866-335-5220 we'd love the opportunity to pray with you and if you missed any of this message you can always find it free of charge at jdgreer.com summit life exists to bring you resources and bible teaching that'll help you dive deeper into your walk with God every day and that's why we're offering a resource this month that will help you remember scripture this year and hopefully for years to come the bible is our foundation the most important way that we hear from God so why not become a better student of the bible by committing more of it to memory the good news is we are right there with you with our new scripture memory cards Jesus quoted the old testament frequently in his life in ministry he quoted from 24 books roughly 180 times it's clear that he thought of the scriptures as the ultimate authority in life and a way to understand the heart and desires of God why would we not follow Jesus by knowing and trusting scripture the way that he did the rejoice always memory verse cards come with our thanks for your generous financial gift of 35 or more call right now to make your donation and request the set of cards the number is 866-335-5220 again that's 866-335-5220 or go online and request them when you visit us at jdgreer.com or drop us a line the old fashion way by writing to us at jdgreer ministries po box 122 93 durham north carolina 27709 while you're on our website sign up for our e-newsletter it's the best place to get ministry updates sneak peeks of our new resources and pastor jd's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox or subscribe to the summit life podcast on your favorite device it's a great way to stay connected with us go to jdgreer.com i'm molly vinovich inviting you to join us again next week when pastor jd teaches about a paralytic man and his friends all of whom were desperate to get close to jesus but as we'll see in this story as eager as they were to get to jesus jesus was even more eager to extend forgiveness to them and to us so enjoy your weekend of worship with your church family and be sure to join us again monday here on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries