Well, if we haven't met, my name is Cole.
I am one of the pastors here at Frontier Church.
If if there is one thing that we have noticed as the Christmas
seasons have come our way and left, it's that for everybody in
this building, Christmas feels, I guess it feels different.
For some of us, they are sweet memories.
For others of us, they're painful memories.
And so one thing that we wanted to do this year for the Advent
season was, as each week rolled in, was we wanted to have one of
the pastors read a pastoral letter over all of you.
And so you've got me this morning.
And so, as I've been praying and thinking about you guys this
week and writing a letter, here's what the Lord brought to
mind. Dear Church, I'm praying that
this year, the Advent season leaves a real and profound mark
on your walk with Jesus. Personally, for the last few
years, this season has been one of the richest and most
enjoyable seasons for the Dyke household.
One reason the the primary reason is because my wife Chloe
is awesome and she does an amazing job helping our family
just worship together and putting together some fun and
enjoyable practices into place that really light up the eyes of
our kids. We light candles together, We
sing advent hymns together. Mostly just go tell it on the
mountain because the kids like that and they like to sing it in
a regular version and then a whisper version and then a silly
voice version. So we do lots of go tell it on
the mountain at the Nike household this time of year.
We do advent reading calendars together, we ring an advent
bell, all the cheesy stuff. And of course we do all these
things imperfectly. But for us, it's really become a
season that I look forward to every year, which is kind of
strange because when we launched Frontier Church all the way back
in 2016, we actually didn't practice the season of Advent
together as a local church for the first year.
A lot of that was because we had our heads buried in the
challenge of just surviving each Sunday.
And so Christmas Sunday, that first year really kind of came
around as a surprise to us. But in our second year of
Frontier Church in 2017, we can finally catch our breath.
And so we mapped out our first Advent season together.
And as a young church, we weren't exactly sure how well a
historic practice of the church would be received.
Like, what the heck does the word Advent even mean?
Right now? We're gathering at a a jazz club
in downtown Des Moines. We didn't know how Advent was
going to be received that first year, but nevertheless, we
walked through the story of Jesus's first and second
Cummings. We lit candles together, we sang
Christmas hymns together, and after it was all said and done,
we were amazed at how much our church loved it.
Particularly, we were surprised by how much struggling young
families and single adults were helped by the structure of the
season and how that structure lent itself to developing
meaningful, meaningful traditions.
And so, as one of your pastors, that's my prayer for you this
season, that whether you're single, dating, married, married
with kids, married without kids, that this season becomes a
highlight that you look forward to every year as it points you
back to the biblical story of the coming of Jesus.
God made flesh. So I pray that for those who are
living under the thumb of depression and unrelenting
sorrow that God would let you see light this Advent season,
that you would remember that you worship a God who doesn't always
lift the fog of depression. But he did take on flesh and
participate in human sadness with you.
So may you not let the depression give way to cynicism
and may you guard your heart against the turning up of your
lip at every jolly thing this Christmas season.
Don't give an inch to cynicism this year.
Do not permit the Christmas lights to drag you down.
Secondly, for those of you who have children, I pray that this
season is filled with memories, this Advent season that are
meaningful. Personally, when I look back at
my own life and my own 35 years of memories on spool before me,
I find that the Christmas season makes up a lopsided and
asymmetrically large amount of my memories.
It's probably true for you too. So as parents know this, know
this, and take care to leverage this season to tell the story of
Jesus to your kids. Tell it while having fun.
Light some candles, eat some sweets, Establish traditions,
sing loudly, laughed often because Christ has already won.
And it might sound silly to do all of this in this present
moment, but who knows what memories might come flooding
back to your kids 16 years from now in college when they see a
lit candle in a dorm room. So plant the seeds now.
And lastly, I pray that for those of you who are at peace
and are filled with joy, I pray that this season you would, in
the words of GK Chesterton, take part in the great campaign of
sabotage against the powers of cynicism.
Because while the world is filled with brokenness and
sorrow, you, because of Jesus, you are the light of the world.
Be that be that this year be the light of the world, invite
people over to your dinner table.
Know that the darkness trembles at the sound of an out of tune
Christian singing loudly. Drink the eggnog to the very
bottom of the glass to spite the devil.
Defy the powers and principalities by wearing the
Christmas sweater without embarrassment.
String the Christmas lights in the front lawn without blushing.
And though you be weary, though you be wary.
By the power of Christ Jesus made flesh the wary world.
It does rejoice because the world won't be weary forever,
but it will rejoice forever. So now with that, I love you
guys. Heavenly Father, I pray that you
would turn our eyes to Jesus this morning, to his first
coming that happened 2000 years ago, and also to his second
coming that is ever present and before us.
And so we pray for Stephen this morning as he unpacks your word
for us. May it build us up, Bless us,
and may it be one of the very many ways that you point us to
Jesus this morning. Give us.
Hope. And give us peace and don't let
this thing catch on fire. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
That's a good prayer because we don't want this to light on
fire. It's.
I don't know if you can see this, it looks quite flammable.
So I mean, Darren, you're probably on catch duty if
something lights. Well, good morning.
My name is Steven. I'm one of the pastors here and
there's probably like 10 of you in the room that have actually
heard me preach before, so excited to be up here, got my
notes. The real story of why I'm
preaching this morning is because every Sunday at about
9:30, I walk in or, you know, we come in and we do our little
huddle and Kale asks me if I'm going to preach that day.
And for, I don't know, three or four years every Sunday I say,
no, I'm not preaching today, Kale, you need to leave me
alone. Lots and lots of knows.
And I just had to get that that monkey off my back.
I had to get Kale to leave me alone.
So that's why I'm up here. I'm really excited.
And yeah, I don't really have much else to say about that, but
take it all in, because this is a rare occasion.
So today's reading is from Isaiah, chapter 54, nine through
14. If you're able, please stand.
And let's kick it off by starting in the word.
All right. This is like the days of Noah to
me, as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over
the earth. So I have sworn that I will not
be angry with you, and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains made apart and the hills may the hills be
removed. But my steadfast love shall not
depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,
says the Lord who has compassion on you.
O afflicted one storm tossed and not comforted, behold, I will
set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with
sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of a
gate, your gates of carbuncles, and all your wall of precious
stones. All your children shall be
taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your
children. In righteousness you shall be
established. You shall be far from
oppression, for you shall not fear and from terror, for it
shall not come near you. You can take a seat.
The date was December 22nd, 2011, somewhere in Nebraska.
I'm looking for Kylie Collins. Is she in here?
Well, that's probably good because I'm going to kind of hit
on Nebraska December 22nd, 2011. Lauren and I are driving to Des
Moines from our home in Denver, Co.
We've lived in Denver for about 6 months at that time.
We've been married for about seven months.
At some point in our drive, we start discussing our plans for
the next week. It's the week of Christmas.
We've got all this built in, anticipation and planning and
seeing family and all that good stuff.
So we start discussing our plans for the next week and I'm sure
most of the decisions had already been made, been agreed
to, But like for the sake of the story, just pretend because I
really don't really remember any of the details of what we
decided. But let's pretend that I had not
already agreed to all the proposed scheduling.
So we're driving through Nebraska.
You'd emphasize we're still in Nebraska.
And I start asking about our plans and what we have going on.
And so we have day one with Lauren's immediate family.
Little tradition we do with them November 23rd.
Then we have Christmas Eve with my family.
And then on Christmas Day, Christmas morning, I believe we
are driving to Illinois to spend time with her extended family.
Then we're going to drive back to Des Moines for like a night
and then drive back to Denver, Co And it's good to know that I
I hate Rd. trips. I was scarred when I was a kid
because like a good Midwestern family, my parents, we didn't
ever fly anywhere. We just drove everywhere.
So I'd taken Rd. trips to the West Coast, we'd taken Rd. trips
to see some family in the East Coast and the South, and so we'd
done all these massive Rd. trips.
And I don't know, I'm old enough that we didn't have DVD players,
we didn't have the iPad was not invented yet.
We had. I had a Walkman and one of these
Rd. trips I had a Walkman and I left me and my brother.
We left all of our CDs at home, so we like stopped at a gas
station. And I I shouldn't say this, my
brother got a boys to men CD and I got an Avril Lavigne CD.
And so for a road trip to to San Francisco we had, you could
either listen to talk radio that was constantly on in the car
with my parents or I could listen to my Avril CD or my
brother's voice to Mensi. So I do know all the words to
both of those albums like without question, even today.
Still. But anyway, so those were how
Rd. trips were. You know, they're, you know,
books walking in, whatever it was.
Some people love it. No, it was awful.
So I still hate Rd. trips. And so anyway, we're we're
driving, we're driving on like a five or six day trip.
We're driving from Colorado to Des Moines.
And then I am surprised to find out that in the middle of this
road trip, guess what, there's another road trip to Illinois,
which is so exciting. So I I gently and patiently,
obviously I tell my wife, my new wife, we've been married for six
or seven months at that .0. And another good detail is that
I also told her that we were moving Lawrence, very family
oriented. I told her that we were moving
to Denver, Co because I was going to do grad school when she
had already agreed to marry me. So we were engaged and I said
guess what? We're moving to Colorado and
which is not cool. But she did it surprisingly so.
Anyway, I told my new wife, you know, new new wish wife told her
we're moving to Colorado without really asking if we can move
Colorado. But so we're on our way back to
visit family. And I tell her somewhere in
Nebraska that actually, I don't want to go to Illinois.
Love your family, but I'm not really interested in making that
trip. So like 2 days before we're
supposed to go to Illinois, I say no hard pass, Let's not do
that. So.
So Lauren, who's driving at the time, she gently reached over to
my side of the car and with a big smile opened the door and
pushed me out of the car on the Interstate.
That's not really true. She didn't do that.
That's probably what she wanted to do.
But actually what she said was that if I didn't suck it up and
go to Illinois and put on a smile and enjoy our big family,
get together, that she was probably going to kill me.
So, right. Yeah, she don't play.
Yeah, she said something like that.
So, you know, this is probably a whole different conversation
about expectations with family and holidays and all that stuff.
And I'm not going to get into that.
And really, I probably, I think the main culprit, the main
person to blame is Nebraska in this scenario.
But yeah, Nebraska really ruined this trip.
But anyway, this is kind of a silly example of the kind of
conflict that can kind of like spring up during the holidays,
right? This is just a silly example.
Usually there's, I mean, often there's much more complicated
conflict that springs up around the holiday season or what we'd
call that the Christmas season. And I'm sure many of you have
have stories where things like this have happened during the
Christmas season. You have things that you want to
happen during the season that don't end up happening.
And then, oddly enough, there's things that you really, like,
never want to happen, that, like, always tend to happen
right around the Christmas season.
And it seems like we frequently experience an increased level of
heartache during the Christmas season.
I mean in in the two weeks that I've been writing this sermon,
my Facebook feed has been filled with filled with people
experience like serious, serious suffering.
I mean it just like keeps popping up and I couldn't tell
if it was because I was looking for it, if it like it was
actually just becoming more frequent.
I really think it is. It just comes up and it's like
the hardest parts of life either decide to occur during December
or, I mean often they're put in the forefront of our minds
during this season as well. And we get stuck between dealing
with this heartache or just pretending that everything is OK
because it's supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.
And I grew up with this, this kind of seasonal heartache in my
own home as well when I was a kid, when I was I think a little
bit younger than my daughter who's eight I think was six or
seven, My grandfather died like December 20th, so my mom's dad
and very suddenly he was young. He was like 6060, sixty years
old, so very young. And I was too young to really,
you know, understand what was going on.
And a lot of that is like being hidden from the heartache, you
know, and stuff like that. But, so I don't remember the
details a lot. But I can remember the mixed
emotions around the Christmas seasons and the like, years
after that of my mom and my grandma.
Like, you know, missing, missing my grandfather and like this
cloud of loss kind of hovering over what's supposed to be such
a joyous time. And looking back on that
situation in those years of heartache hasn't evolved.
Now I really just. I feel so bad.
I feel like they felt so stuck and they didn't get a chance to
grieve because they didn't want to let it ruin Christmas.
And I get that intention right, like, they don't want to put a
downer on this joyful season. But like, hello, your husband
died. Your your father died.
It's it's OK to be upset. You don't have to shield
everyone from that, but instead of seeing the experience of
grief, I saw this suppression of sadness and pretending to be
happy because that's what the season expects.
That's what the Christmas season expects.
A wise man, I wish he was here. A wise man once said that grief
is a communion we take separately but eat and drink
together, as will boards. Will boards is great.
I've like I. Honestly, I when I started
writing this sermon I that like popped into my head.
It's like 2 books ago. Anyway.
Grief is a community. We take separately but eat and
drink together. And man, if there is anything in
the world that sucks more than cold sweater today, it's that
people feel like they have to pretend to be happy when they're
really, really miserable. Would you like that one?
But but Advent, here we go this morning.
We're talking about conflict, peace, and how the advent of
Jesus shapes and changes how we engage with everything.
I love Advent. Know me.
I freaking love Advent. I've one, I've kind of alluded
to this. I have one really good reason
why I love Advent. And that's because the Christmas
season. Now here, I'm not talking about
Christmas. I'm not talking about Baby
Jesus. I'm talking about the Christmas
season overall. In public, even in private, and
our city and our homes in the world, the Christmas season
sucks. The Christmas season comes with
all this baggage and all this pressure, and all this pressure
does two things. It creates disappointment and it
creates conflict. When I think about peace during
the Advent season, I think about Jesus delivering us from the
chaos and conflict of the Christmas season.
Advent has everything you're looking for in the Christmas
season without any of them pretending, and without
everything pretending that everything is perfect.
Advent actually tells us that even though Christ came, it was
amazing, beautiful. God made flesh.
It tells us that God has not done yet and we're still
waiting. We're still watching for the
Saviour to come again. All the pain, all the sadness,
all the things that we think we need to hide during this season,
we can embrace those things. We can embrace the chaos.
We can embrace the conflict because we still have have this
hope for the second coming of Christ.
OK, that's kind of my thing about Christmas and Advent.
I don't need, I don't have enough time to get into all of
that today. So let's get back to our main
topic, which is conflict and peace.
When I said I was talking about peace, Spade was like, you got
to make sure you bring up. Did you say Palestine?
Yeah. Palestine.
So anyway, is anyone here that is unaware of the conflict in
our world, right? Like it's one of those things
that has become such a normal part of our lives that we, we
like, are almost unfazed by it. I think if I asked you, when I
say the word conflict, if I asked everyone in the room, I'd
get like 100 different answers of what people think of when
they think of conflict. Because we're going to talk, you
know, you're going to think of things that are local going on
in our homes and our churches. We're also going to think of
things nationally, like Ukraine and Palestine and then Israel.
But we're going to, you're also going to think of things like
this exciting election cycle that's coming up, right?
We're going to have so much fun. And, like, even as I'm writing
this sermon and I'm writing this sentence, like, I get in a
notification on my phone about another surge of COVID that was
coming to like, conflict is just all around us, right?
I don't really care what you think about COVID.
Whatever. But it's just a conflict that
we've dealt with, right? It's just one of those things.
Conflict is everywhere rather than locally neighborhoods,
homes all around us. And I think we can fall into two
traps when we think about this conflict and chaos in our lives.
The first trap is to completely dwell on it, let it overtake our
minds, and let it completely bury us in grief and despair.
Because honestly, if we let chaos, the chaos in our world
that is very real, occupy our minds, it will cause despair,
will cause depression. It means, you know, anyone like
that. It might be, I'll skip that
line. They might be watching Fox News
or CNN, like the volume to 100. Like all day every day, right.
Like, and I mean I have people like that in my lives.
I don't know about you. I mean, OK, did you know that
the average American watches TV for five hours a day?
Like, that's crazy. And just think if that was only
news, like, like politically charged news, like that may
cause a little bit of, you know, despair, right?
I think it would. It would for me.
So the first trap is like conflict, just totally overtake
your mind. Or the second trap is, I think,
just as bad. And that's to pretend that the
conflict doesn't exist. And I think that's a trap we
kind of find it ourselves in a lot of times during during the
Christmas and Advent season. So that's to put our head in the
sand and live as if the world is all sunshine and roses.
And what's weird is that it actually may work for a while.
It may work seasonally. It may work during the Christmas
season to pretend that everything in the world is
happy. Go lucky and fine.
You find some happiness, put a smile on your face.
But it that smile's going to fade.
When you come face to face with this conflict that lies just
under that surface, it's also going to cause the people around
you. This is another problem it's
going to cause the people around you, do you feel like they can't
be authentic and real and embrace the the the difficulties
that are in our world, They're not going to feel welcome to do
that because you're pretending you're being a, you know,
everything's all good and they may, they may decide to do the
same. So they may feel compelled to
put their heads in the sand for a little while, ignore pain,
conflict and the heartache that is going on in our world right
now. And that's going to spread, it's
going to spread around to people of them too.
You know, it's just one of those things.
So. So how do we avoid these traps
when it comes to conflict? I think we're going to have
another verse. It's Isaiah 5410, which is one
of our verses. Yes, Carl, for the mountains
made apart and the hills be removed.
But my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant
of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion
on you. So how do we deal with this
conflict in our lives? And that's by finding rest in
the assurance unity with Jesus Christ that Jesus came, He
brought salvation, He brought hope, He brought new life.
But also that he's coming again. Jesus is coming back.
And his second coming, he will finish what he's already
started. In verse 11 he says, O afflicted
one storm tossed and uncomforted.
I, meaning the Lord, I'm going to build your foundation.
I'm going to build your walls, build your gates.
I'm going to build your foundation on something that
will withstand all of life's chaos and all of life's
conflict, and that is the promise of Advent.
It's this peace that we're talking about this morning.
Our foundation is no longer unstable.
Our foundation is no longer dependent on ourselves.
God has built our foundation in Jesus Christ coming to earth and
reconciling us to God. So what does that look like in
our day-to-day lives? The truth is that Jesus came and
he is coming again and it gives us peace within ourselves.
Jesus offers us peace. I mean, peace might be one of
the most misused and misunderstood words in in our
language. Peace is not ignorance, it's not
pretending. Peace is full of presence and
full attention. Peace, the peace that Jesus
brings, is covered in flesh and it's drenched in blood.
Peace that transcends circumstances.
It does not ignore circumstances.
But we have peace. No matter life circumstances.
We can actually rest. Advent, You OK?
Oh, shoot. I don't know if you heard that.
It was like AI think we're OK. Yeah, she's OK.
Peace No matter. Life circumstances.
Advent is a reminder that God is making all things new.
God has promised to make all things new.
The 2nd way that Jesus brings peace is in our relationships.
All human relationships have some level of conflict.
Jesus teaches us to have peace no matter the conflict around
us. And as Christians, we don't have
to fear the conflict that's in our world and in our
relationships. We can we can move towards the
messiness in the conflict because we have an unshakable
peace through Jesus. And the final and the most
important way that Jesus brings us peace is that he brings us
peace with God the Father. The incarnation of Jesus means
that God came to be with his people, the God of the universe,
the God that by his words holds all things together.
Hebrews one. That means every second of every
day, every breath that you take happens because God is holding
our very existence together by the power of his words.
I mean, that's crazy. That's a sermon in it for
itself. And another day, maybe if we go
through Hebrews, you get me back up here, I'll preach about,
preach about that. It'll be fun.
This God sent his Son to be with his people on earth to bring
them back to him. God's peace at Christmas, God's
peace at Advent is that we have peace with God.
It means that we have rest with God.
It means that we abide with God. We abide in God.
It means that we are secure and safe and home with God.
We are already there, but also not quite yet.
That's the great paradox of Advent.
God is with His people, but also not yet to that fullest extent
that He will be with His people. So during the Advent season we
celebrate and we mourn, we rest and we strive, we enjoy and we
yearn. We sing joy to the world.
The Lord has come and we also sing, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel. And we mean us.
We don't mean just Israel before Christ.
The song is not in remembrance of that.
You see, Israel, that song is about us longing for Christ to
return. So how does that change the way
we engage with each other during the Advent season?
First off, God has given you peace.
It is yours, yours for the taking rest in his promise that
he is coming back. We can embrace the conflict.
We can embrace the difficulty and the heartache around us
because we know that Jesus is coming back.
We have to stop pretending that everything in the world is
perfect. I promise you that once you do,
once you stop pretending you will feel this weight being
lifted off your shoulders. That you really didn't know you
were carrying. The season is hard.
It's OK to admit that if I scared you when I said that
Christmas season sucks, that's OK.
But it's it's OK to admit that it is stressful and the
expectations are so high sometimes.
But guess what? It's hard for the people around
you, too. And when you finally say enough,
guess what? Your kids are going to thank you
for it. Do you know what my kids want to
do right now? Like, every night during the
Christmas season, they want to watch a stupid Christmas movie
and they want to drink hot chocolate.
Like, they're like, this is the time we get our hot chocolate,
we get to watch a movie, and that's, like, all they want to
do. So any of this additional stuff
that we plan for our kids, you know, awesome, great, really
fun. But, like, that's not what
they're expecting. Like they love it, obviously, if
we do it. But like my kids just want to
drink a chocolate, so and the people around you in your
community, they're going to notice when you say enough is
enough too. And they might just join you in
letting go of these expectations and the stress that it causes.
So consider this You refusing to choose conflict over peace.
You're choosing peace. You're deciding to choose peace.
It might invite your family and your friends to do the same
thing, to let go of the conflict and the weight that's weighing
them down and the pressure that they feel.
How cool would that be? Your decision to stop striving
for perfection during the Christmas season could cause a
ripple effect of peace in our families, in our community, in
our community groups, in our church, in our neighborhoods.
I mean, come on, right Then. I have a final challenge for you
this morning, and that is to lean into the Advent.
Lean into Advent. The last few weeks that we have
left of this season, I have a quote.
It's going to be on the screen. Boom, Carl, Man, Advent.
Listen to this. Listen up.
Advent is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts.
Since it comes at winter time. Fire is a fitting sign to help
us celebrate Advent. If Christ is to come more fully
into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really
Incarnate for us, God with us, then fire will have to be
present in our prayer. Our worship, our devotion will
have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly
change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility
not to waste this Advent time. That's my last challenge.
Don't waste this Advent season. Let your prayers burn like fire.
That can change and will change hearts.
Celebrate the season as one of joy and one of longing.
Jesus is coming back. This is when we celebrate.
Amen. Amen.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for
who you are for coming. And God, I thank you that you
are coming again. What a great joy it is to
celebrate you this season. Help us to be mindful of you,
and help us to truly desire peace.
Amen.