Stephen closed tonight’s service by singing the Casting Crowns’ song ‘While You Were Sleeping‘:

‘Oh little town of Bethlehem,
Looks like another silent night
Above your deep and dreamless sleep
A giant star lights up the sky
And while you’re lying in the dark
There shines an everlasting light
For the King has left His throne
And is sleeping in a manger tonight.

Oh Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping;
For God became a man
And stepped into your world today.
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King
While you were sleeping,
While you were sleeping.

Oh little town of Jerusalem
Looks like another silent night.
The Father gave His only Son
The Way, the Truth, the Life had come,
But there was no room for Him in the world He came to save.

Jerusalem, what you have missed while you were sleeping.
The Saviour of the world is dying on your cross today.
Jerusalem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King
While you were sleeping,
While you were sleeping.

United States of America
Looks like another silent night
As we’re sung to sleep by philosophies
That save the trees and kill the children,
And while we’re lying in the dark
There’s a shout heard ‘cross the eastern sky
For the Bridegroom has returned
And has carried His bride away in the night.

America, what will we miss while we are sleeping?
Will Jesus come again
And leave us slumbering where we lay?
America, will we go down in history
As a nation with no room for its King?
Will we be sleeping?
Will we be sleeping?’ (Casting Crowns, ‘While You Were Sleeping’)

Tonight we had a quiz (with an ingeniously designed scoring method whereby baby Jesus moved from heaven to earth!) which involved questions about Christmas, singing activities and an egg and spoon race!

Many of the questions proved difficult to answer! – but in the interests of broadening our knowledge, we discovered that olibanum is another name for frankincense, 23 musicians feature in the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ (twelve drummers and eleven pipers) and Father Christmas used to dress in green!

Garry spoke tonight on the subject of ‘Advent Arrivals’, starting with a game of ‘word association’ to illustrate the point that nowadays when most of us think of ‘Advent’, the next word we think of is ‘calendar’!

For many people, Advent is the ‘countdown’ to Christmas, but just as the marathon runner Recho Kosgei failed to cross the finish line by only 900 yards in the Warsaw Marathon this year, so often we ‘count down’ and never really arrive…

Advent means arrival, and this time of year sees Christians preparing to remember the coming of Christ to earth. Luke 2:22-26 tells the story  of Simeon waiting for the arrival of the Messiah and finding this fulfilled as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. Luke 3:15 shows us that people were waiting expectantly for the Messiah, God’s chosen one, to arrive, but people’s perceptions about what the Messiah would look like were vastly different. Some were waiting for peace to come and justice to be done (see Is 2:4); others were waiting for a ruler to rout the Romans. Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem fulfilled the prophecy about this ruler (found in Micah 5:2), but most people could not understand how He could fulfil every prophecy and be a prophet, priest and king. We have the advantage of looking back to Christmas and seeing how His birth demonstrated the fulfilment of prophecy; we also see how His life, death and resurrection all demonstrate His role as Saviour and Messiah.

Jesus spoke, however, about another arrival for which we still wait. (Matt 24:1-3, Mk 13:26) Just as the people did not really know the time of the arrival of the Messiah and were taken by surprise that first Christmas, so we too do not know when Jesus will come again (1 Thess 5:1-6), a fact which causes many to scoff and doubt (see 2 Pet 3:3-9), but which means we need to be alert, sober and self-controlled. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night; we need to be counting down to this arrival and not just eating chocolates in our Advent calendars!

Apologies for the delay in posting this birthday photo from last week.

Eph 1:3 reminds us of the spiritual nature of God’s blessing. Sin has affected the world so much that it is now under a curse, and God’s blessing directly relates to the overcoming of this curse (see Gal 2:13-14). Romans 8 perhaps shows us the effect of all God has done for us in deliverance and salvation more clearly than any other chapter in the Bible. Paul makes it clear in this chapter that we are still waiting for the outworking of God’s salvation but assures us that God works for the good of those called by Him in every situation (Rom 8:28-30) and reminds us that ‘if God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Rom 8:31)

God has demonstrated His desire to bless and His love for us in giving His only Son to die for our sins (Rom 5:8, Rom 8:31-32). This gives us confidence through the trials and battles of life, because we know ultimately that nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rom 8:37-39). Paul was adamant that everything that happened – even his imprisonment – could be used by God to advance the gospel (Phil 1:12-18), and we too need the assurance that God is able to use everything (even that which others mean for evil, see Gen 50:20) for good. Jesus is God’s ultimate proof of love and care for us, but we have to acknowledge that Christmas shows us this gift came not with pomp and fanfare, fancy wrapping paper and loud advertising, but with poverty, humility and obscurity, and not everyone welcomed this gift. For those of us who embrace Jesus, we are reminded once again that blessing can look very different to our expectations but there is no good thing which God will withhold from those whose walk is blameless. (Ps 84:11)

Many of us struggle to believe that God wants to bless us because we have wrong ideas about what blessing looks like.

God is not Father Christmas, doling out presents to us whenever we ask for them. Blessing is not like advertising hype which promises much and delivers little. We often fail to recognise God’s blessings because we think of blessing in material terms only, viewing prayer like a divine slot machine!

We have to be careful not to simply associate blessing with temporal things, thinking that if God is going to bless us, we will have expensive cars, mansions to live in, pots of money and no financial stress. Paul reminds us that ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Tim 6:6) and that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.’ (1 Tim 6:10) Jesus taught unequivocally that ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Matt 6:21) and reminded us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt 6:24). If we understand blessing to mean solely material success and wealth, we will be disappointed and will certainly not have a right understanding of Scripture. There is a cost involved with discipleship (see Luke 14:27) which can never be ignored.

Blessing does not mean we can live how we please with no consequences. God’s primary purpose is to bring glory to Himself, which He does through transformation: transforming us from sinners in the kingdom of darkness to people who will be imitators of God, reflecting His nature and His light, life and love to everyone else. He is a God who will not yield His glory to anyone else (Is 42:8) and He will do everything He can to shape and mould us into His image so that we can fulfil our destiny of being heirs with God and joint-heirs with Christ, sharing in His sufferings so we can also share in His glory. (Rom 8:17) We mustn’t view God’s grace and blessing as a licence to do whatever we like with no regard for holiness. Blessing and grace are free gifts from God, but there are also consequences for sin which cannot be ignored. Only when we truly understand how God views blessing (in counter-cultural ways as the Beatitudes make clear) will we be able to enter into the blessings God has for us.