Dawning in the Darkness
SUMMARY
Karl Ihfe begins the Advent season by examining the challenge of waiting, particularly how God's people waited 400 years between the Old Testament prophecies and the fulfillment of God's promise to send a Messiah. During this silence, many likely wondered if God had forgotten them or if His promises were merely myths. Yet God's "impossible plan" unfolded through ordinary people—a young girl named Mary and a carpenter named Joseph—who chose to believe despite the impossibility of their situation.
The sermon highlights how Mary and Joseph “borrowed courage” by remembering God's faithfulness throughout history. When the angel declared, "nothing is impossible with God" (Luke 1:37), it was an invitation to remember how God had worked impossibly throughout Scripture—from Abraham and Sarah's child in old age to the parting of the Red Sea. As we celebrate Advent, we too are invited to hope in the seemingly impossible promise of Christ's return, remembering that the God who fulfilled His promise in the first coming will be faithful to complete what He started.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Well, we're going to jump into our Advent series. It's an exciting time of year, one of my favorite times of year. I'm excited to also get to partner some with the chosen some of you know about the series. And so this series is kind of built around they. They actually did a. I don't know if it was a whole season, but it was several episodes around this part of the story.
And they've actually licensed us, Broadway and other churches around the nation to. To use some of those clips. So we're going to get to look and listen and think and dream together again about these stories that we find in scripture, the story of Jesus birth what that might have looked like and how that might have unfolded. We're going to dream and think together about what it might be like to have been a part of that holy night this morning. We're going to begin, though, with thinking about have you ever had to wait for something really important?
I know a lot of us have had this experience. Maybe it's been at a doctor's office or maybe recently you've been in the hospital and you're waiting to be released and all you need is for that doctor to come by and it just feels. Feels like they aren't coming. Or maybe you're like my son who's getting ready to graduate and he's applying for a job and he's waiting to hear back. He's talked with several different employers and he just doesn't know which one's going to say yes and offer him the job.
And he's waiting, and he's waiting and he gets told, I'll email you on Friday. And it passes and Monday comes. Is that email ever going to come? Maybe some of us have been waiting on a relationship. Maybe it's for a relationship to begin.
Maybe it's for a relationship to be healed, to be reconciled. We're longing for that day when that relationship will be restored back to what we hope it would be. And we're waiting. We understand how waiting stretches us and it exposes us. It often makes us wonder if the thing we hope for is actually ever going to happen.
Some have described waiting as living in that space between a promise made and a promise kept. This idea of waiting is all through the Advent season. But as you and I both know, if we've ever had to wait for something that really mattered to us, the longer we have to wait, the harder it is. The easier it is for doubt to creep in, for questions to come. The longer it takes, the easier it is for us to lose heart.
If that's true for things like we wait for in this life, you can imagine then what it would have been like for God's people, waiting on a far greater promise, a promise that one day he would send his Messiah and all things would be restored, all things would be made new. That God's people would experience his blessing in a powerful way once again, that God coming of the Messiah. I'm sure there were folks who felt like that promise, that they were waiting and waiting and waiting just seemed impossible. Kayla and I just returned from a trip overseas. We got to spend some time with our daughter, and she was telling us about a trip that a couple of her friends had gone on.
They were on a train in Italy. As you know, some people have to do that. So they boldly took that on. And they were getting on the train, and they were taking their bag and getting. Putting it in the little luggage compartment above where they were sitting.
And one of her friends, Mackenzie, had this big suitcase, and she was trying to get it up, but they noticed there's a little grocery bag up on the luggage rack. And so her other friend, who was with her, kind of looked around to see, is anybody claiming this bag? They can kind of making a commotion, like, maybe somebody will notice and go, oh, I'm sorry. Let me move that bag. Well, nobody did.
And so her friend Izzy just grabbed the bag and slid it over. Well, as soon as that happens, up pops this little Italian woman, this little old woman, and she says, no, no, not possible. Not possible, not possible. And back and forth they go between, well, there's room up there. We can kind of make, no, not possible.
She just kept saying over and over again, not possible. Now, Hallie tells the story much more funny than I have, but it was hilarious to listen to her talk about this phrase, not possible. So that kind of became this running joke for Kayleigh and I the rest of our trip. Hey, can we go eat there? Not possible.
Not possible. Possible. Hey, could you pass me that? Not possible. Not possible.
Sometimes I wonder when we hit these moments in our life that we begin to feel not, not possible. It's. It's not possible. All through the Old Testament, God had promised that he would send a messiah, that one day his people would be restored back to the place where he'd had them, where even in spite of their unfaithfulness to him, that he would restore them. And these promises were often communicated through his prophets.
In fact, here are a couple just to remind you of the ways that God made this promise from the prophet Isaiah. He said, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness. A light has dawned. For to us a child is born. To us a son is given.
And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. The prophet Micah a little later said it this way. But you, Bethlehem Ephrath, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. See, these promises that God's people received weren't just casual statements.
They were divine promises. Promises that God would act on their behalf, promises that God would move, that he would send a Messiah. Promises that one day, even though his world is broken by sin and separated from him, would one day be restored back to him through his coming Messiah. Then something happened that truly tested the faith of God's people. And that thing is time.
Time happened. Not days, not weeks, not even decades. Centuries. I mean, by the time we get to the opening pages of the New Testament, some words of which you heard Laura read for us just a moment ago, it's been 400 years of waiting and waiting and waiting. 400 years of prayers seemingly go unanswered.
400 years of it feeling like heaven has been shut.
The disobedience and the infidelity of God's people led to them being invaded and conquered and oppressed and subjugated. The people lived under the boots of empires, whether it was Babylon or Persia to Greece, finally in Rome. And at this time, they are remembering these promises of a coming king while they're having to pay taxes to this Caesar. Or they hear the words of scripture echoing in their heads and in their hearts as they walk past Roman soldiers who are oppressing them over time. What do you think happened to their hope?
Their hope that God's promise would one day be fulfilled? I mean, I don't know about you, but I get frustrated when it takes time for my sport highlight to come up on my phone and it's like 20 seconds lagging. Come on, come on, come on. You know, some of you know that. How often do you refresh your Instagram feed when you're standing in line at the grocery store or wherever you may be and it's come on.
I mean, you can imagine. What about waiting 400 years? How easily it may have begun to whisper amongst themselves?
Maybe it's not going to happen. Maybe we're too Far gone. Maybe our sin was too great and he just wrote us off. Maybe God has forgotten about us. Maybe we've messed up.
Maybe the miracle are just too difficult. Those promises had turned into legends which had become myths and maybe even at one point, folk stories, folktales. Until one day. Until one day the silence of heaven is shattered not by a trumpet, but a dream, a visitation. First, the angel Gabriel appears to a young, ordinary girl named Mary.
And he said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end.
And the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God, for no word from the Lord will ever fail.
Well, then, an angel visits another ordinary person. This time it's a carpenter named Joseph. That angel appears to him in a dream and says, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Suddenly, God's impossible plan now seems impossibly strange.
Angel comes to a no name girl from a no name town, engaged to this no name carpenter, right? This crazy story about an impossible pregnancy. There's no palace, there's no band playing, there's no fireworks. Really? Really.
This is how the impossible plan is going to unfold in the world? This is how you're going to send your Messiah. I wonder what was going on inside the minds and the hearts of Joseph and Mary after those visitations. I wonder if there was a moment in Mary's mind where she thought, will Joseph actually stick around? Could he possibly believe this?
I wonder if there was a moment in Joseph's mind where he could see the shame and the embarrassment in the conversations that would unfold if he tried to spin this tale to his buddies, if he tried to explain this to his family. He knows what's coming. Was there a moment? Can you see him wrestling with that? Could you imagine both of them trying to reconcile their faith with their reality?
How do those pieces fit together?
And yet somehow they did. Somehow they stayed obedient. Somehow they pressed on. Somehow they did the impossible. How?
How were they able to do that?
Dallas Jenkins and his team who created the Chosen have given us a picture of their interpretation of maybe how one of these conversations might have taken place when Joseph and Mary were on the road to Bethlehem. Let's check it out.
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How are they able to move forward in the midst of an impossible situation? I love this picture of them remembering. How did they move forward? Were they remembered? Joseph points to the sky and says, God told me to do this.
And she says, remember the words of the messenger. Nothing is impossible with God. They didn't just remember who called him. They remembered what God had already done, how God had already been at work. They remembered his track record, his power, his faithfulness to them.
They remembered it. One of my favorite preachers, John Ortberg, says it this way. He says, when certainty is impossible, faithfulness is still on the table. Will we stay faithful to what we already know to be true? How can we?
Well, because we remember. Just like Joseph and Mary, we remember. That's why we tell our stories. You know, last week in our series Overflow, David talked about the story of his mom returning that jacket to her friend. And it seemed like a really small act of service, but he was telling that story.
Why? Because sometimes people have a hard time believing in God. And yet when they encounter God's love and his grace through the kind, simple actions of a follower of Jesus, it makes that faith a little more possible. It makes that belief a little more possible.
So we tell our stories and we remember. We testify. When the angel tells Mary, nothing is impossible with God, it's not just reassurance. It's certainly that, but it's more than that. It's this invitation.
An invitation to remember, to walk back through the stories of scripture, that nothing is impossible with God. In fact, in the story of scripture, God specializes in impossible tasks. You may remember the story of Abraham and Sarah, who were told, one day you're going to have a son. Only she's well past childbearing ages, and yet there she is, holding Isaac. Nothing is impossible with God.
You may remember a Story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt and into the promised land. And he comes face to face with an ocean, an army behind him, an ocean in front of him. How will he survive? And God does the impossible and he parts the Red Sea. Or the story we sang about just a few songs ago, the walls of Jericho coming down by marching and shouting.
Or maybe the story of David that we looked at this summer, standing in front of a nine foot tall giant who had intimidated every person in the army. It's impossible. There's no way to beat him. And yet God does the impossible. I think we get a little insight into Mary's memory as we listen to the song that she sings after the angel Gabriel visits her.
Here are a few lines. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm. He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thought. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised. See, Mary wasn't inventing courage in that moment. She was borrowing it. She was borrowing it from history and from the testimony of the stories of her fathers and mothers, from God's proven reliability to his people. You see, today Marks the first day of Advent, and Advent simply means coming.
And certainly we think about the birth story of Jesus and his first coming. But we're also invited to consider and to think about his second coming. See, the Scripture promises that Jesus will come. He promised it and the apostles taught it, and Revelation declares it. But here's the tension that we feel in this season of Advent.
We also are familiar with the waiting. Israel waited for centuries for that first coming. And we've been waiting a couple millennia. And just like them, it can begin to feel impossible. And we see the news every day.
We read the headlines, the wars and the famine and the brokenness, the strife, the chaos, the uncertainty. We see it and it feels permanent. The chaos feels unstoppable. The injustice feels entrenched. Perhaps, like God's people long ago, we today feel that same impossible Is he really coming back?
Is the story really true?
Is this just the way the world is now?
The ache of waiting? It's real, just as it was for Israel. And it can produce hopelessness and fatigue and doubt. And so we commit ourselves to remembering and to repeating the truth that Gabriel shared with Mary 2000 years ago and that she sings about in her song. Nothing is impossible with God.
Nothing Is impossible with God. Church. Turn to your neighbor and say, nothing is impossible with God.
Oh, I don't think you really believe that. Let's say it like we mean it. Nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is impossible with God. It's more than a declaration, right, Church?
It's an invitation. It's an invitation to remember the ways that God has been at work in our lives. An invitation to remember Christ's birth, how it was the fulfillment of a prophecy. To remember his ministry, where lives were changed and literally transformed from the inside out. To remember his death, where sin was defeated and his resurrection, where death was defeated.
To remember him launching his church. That the gospel has been spreading and that today we sit in these seats in this auditorium because of the faith of our ancient fathers and mothers who continued to tell the story and remind us as we go along that nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is impossible with God. See, if God can part seas and raise the dead and bring life into dead places, to bring new life into barren wombs to redeem broken sinners, to resurrect his son, then he too can send a king. And he will.
So what does this mean for us? Well, it means we don't just wait passively. We wait faithfully. Right when uncertainty is not possible, well, faithfulness is still on the table. And so we're gonna remain faithful to what we already know to be true.
See, the first Sunday of Advent is a Sunday of hope. It's this reminder that nothing is impossible with God. And so we rehearse and we tell that story. In fact, over the next four weeks, we're gonna dive deeper and immerse ourselves once again in this beautiful story. On Wednesday nights, we're gonna do it in a special way, and we invite you to come and join us as we get to dive deeper into each one of these Hope, peace, joy and love.
But today we stand in hope. Today we rehearse our story. We tell the truth once again that nothing is impossible with God. We anticipate the hope of Jesus Second Coming and may remind us just as he came the first time, that he will come again. And when he does, all things that will be made new.
Because nothing is impossible with God. Father, may that be our heart's cry this week as we go about facing the realities that we live in. I got some of us. It took all the strength we had to get out of bed and get here this morning. I got some of us have some.
Some meetings and some conversations, some work that's ahead of us this week. That feels impossible. That we're gonna have this little voice on our shoulder that just says, not possible, not possible, not possible. Oh, God, would you remind us nothing's impossible because Jesus has been raised back to life? Because that tomb is empty.
Nothing is impossible. So, God, would you fill us with courage again in the places where we don't have it? God, would you help us to borrow it from our stories, from our history, from your proven track record of faithfully coming alongside your people and giving us what we need to take the next step? God, would you give us courage? Would you give us strength?
Would you give us hope? Father, thank you. That we don't have to walk this journey of Advent alone, that we get to walk it together.
So, God, for those of us who are coming this morning, who are wrestling with our faith, Lord, would you help us? Would you remind us once again, through the testimony of a trusted friend, family member, that nothing's impossible? That we don't have to be afraid of asking any question. We don't have to be afraid of a doctor appointment or a tough conversation? I get your promises that you are with us no matter what, no matter where this road leads, that Jesus will come again.
He is coming. And one day all will be made right. And so between that day and this, we trust you and we trust and the loving promises that you've given to us, God would give us strength to take our next step, whatever that may be. We ask all this in the name of the one who makes the impossible possible. Amen.