Hello everyone and welcome to Trinity Sermons.
Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share with you sermons that inspire and
encourage you in your faith journey.
As together we are learning to love Jesus, live like Jesus and lead others to Jesus.
Today we're starting the Season of Advent and this is our first sermon from our sermon
series Advent Conspiracy.
Today we will read from the Gospel of Luke and Rob Herkmans will be with us and talking
about the first tenet of the Advent Conspiracy, which is worship fully.
Please make sure to follow our podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.
We hope you enjoy the sermon.
God bless.
Good morning everyone.
Good morning.
Today's reading is from Luke chapter 1 verses 26 to 56.
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a
town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant
of David.
The virgin's name was Mary.
The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored.
The Lord is with you.
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might
be.
But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary.
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 he will be called the 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.
How will this be?
Mary asked the angel.
Since I am a virgin.
The angel answered, 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.
Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she, who was
said to be unable to conceive, is in her sixth month, for no word of God will ever fail.
I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered.
May your word to me be fulfilled.
Then the angel left.
At that time, Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea where
she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Spirit.
In a loud voice she exclaimed, Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you
will bear.
But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
And is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her?
And Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God and my Savior.
For he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on, all generations will call me blessed.
For the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm.
He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones but 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 our ancestors.
We stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.
This is the word of the Lord.
Okay.
I think the coast is clear.
Now listen, keep it quiet everybody.
Keep it quiet.
Actually, none of what I'm about to say should be recorded.
So I want all the cameras to be killed.
Okay.
And the doors, lock the doors.
Nobody comes.
Nobody leaves.
Okay, were any of you followed this morning?
When you came to church, you got to be, was anyone following me?
Please, you know, you got to think about these things.
You got to be careful about these things.
Okay.
All right.
I think, I think we're good.
I think we're good.
Guys, I want to call you to order and welcome you to the first meeting of the Advent Conspiracy.
I mean, the Advent Conspiracy.
First order of business.
It's coming.
Guys, it's coming.
And you know what I mean when I say it.
I'm talking of course about Christmas.
Christmas is coming.
I checked the calendar.
I double checked the calendar.
It is December 3rd.
And besides that, all the telltale signs are there.
Mariah Carey is playing on the radio 24 7.
Okay.
Starbucks has changed the color of their cups.
Right.
There was snow this past week.
There was, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
There's already invitations and parties and it's all happening.
It's all coming down.
It is happening.
Christmas is coming.
There's no two ways about it.
Another way you can tell Christmas is coming is the decorations, of course.
How many of you already started decorating?
How many of you are holding out a little longer?
How many of you never took your decorations down from last year?
Yeah.
You look like a genius right about now.
In July, you looked like a weirdo, but now you look like a total genius.
So yes, everybody, Christmas is coming.
And that's why today we're launching the Advent Conspiracy at Trinity Streetsville.
Some of you are like conspiracy.
What the heck have I walked into this morning?
I don't like this.
I don't feel comfortable with this.
I want to leave.
Too bad.
We shut the doors.
You can't go anywhere.
We're going to talk about this.
And besides, those two words, Advent and conspiracy, might just save your life.
Might just save your Christmas.
They might save your heart from exhaustion.
They might save your mind from going crazy.
And they'll certainly save your bank account from debt.
Let me explain what I mean.
First, that word Advent.
What does that word mean?
Well, Advent, of course, is an ancient word.
It's a Latin word, which means coming or arrival.
And so for hundreds of years, Christians have been preparing for Christmas by setting aside
the four weeks that immediately precede Christmas.
Why?
To get their hearts ready, to get their minds ready, to get their spirits ready for someone
who is arriving Advent, someone who is coming.
And on three, why don't you, we'll all say together, who is it that is coming?
Who is it that is arriving?
One, two, three.
Jesus.
Gosh, not so loud.
Gosh, guys, keep it down.
Come on.
Yes, Jesus is coming.
And this is, Advent is a beautiful way to prepare for a season that is usually full
of stress and all it can drive you crazy.
Because if you're like me, maybe you're just longing for a quieter Christmas, a more peaceful
Christmas, something that with less hype, something with more holiness.
In fact, do you know the word holiday?
Do you know where it comes from?
It comes from the words holy day.
That's what Advent is about.
It's to help us enter into Christmas, not just as a holiday, but as a holy day.
That's what Advent means.
But why that second word?
Why that scary word conspiracy?
Well, I'll tell you why.
It's because if you looked around culture lately, you'll probably notice that that simpler,
holier idea of doing Christmas has been completely crushed under the modern Christmas movement,
right?
It's already spinning at warp speed out there.
The parties, the gifts, the shopping, the decorations, all that, the ho ho ho and the
go go go and the spend, spend, spend.
It's already begun.
And just when we should be slowing down, things are speeding up.
And just when we should be preparing our hearts, we're over stuffing our schedule and preparing
our Amazon wish lists and we're piling on the purchases.
And so for many of us, when Christmas is finally done, you know what we end up saying?
We end up saying, man, I'm glad that is over.
Can you believe it?
Can you believe it that that that instead of drawing us closer to Jesus, the way culture
celebrates Christmas often pushes us further away from Jesus?
Well, that is where the Advent conspiracy comes in, right?
It's you know what a conspiracy is?
It's a secret plan by a group of people to do something counter cultural.
When you hear conspiracy, you might think of like JFK or crop circles or flat earth
or the Illuminati or whatever.
But the Advent conspiracy is different.
It's a group of people.
That's us.
And we are pushing back against the cultural pressures, the culture of consumerism and
the culture of commercialism and the culture of distraction.
And we're saying this Christmas, no, no, we're not going to do it that way.
This Christmas.
Instead, instead, this conspiracy says we're going to dedicate the next four weeks to going
against the grain, to sticking it to the man.
And we are going to practice the four core beliefs of the Advent conspiracy.
This is the manifesto of our movement, the four core beliefs.
Are you guys ready to hear the four core beliefs of the Advent conspiracy?
Guys, what I say about being loud, you got to keep it down.
Okay.
One.
The first thing we pledge to do is to worship fully, to keep Jesus at the center of Christmas,
not Santa, not Frosty, not Rudolph, not Jeff Bezos.
Jesus at the center.
We're going to talk more about that one today.
That is the first core belief of the Advent conspiracy to worship fully.
The second core belief is that we commit to spending less this Christmas.
Oh, Rob, you're such a Grinch.
I didn't say spend nothing.
Said spend less because I'll tell you, according to culture, that you don't really love someone
unless you have spent a whole ton of money on them.
There's pressure to spend money that we just don't have to buy stuff that we just don't
need to impress people that maybe we don't even really like.
And advertisers, they feed us this peppermint lie to say, if you really love them, you'll
spend money on them.
But it's not true.
Spit it out.
Spit out that piece of peppermint, right?
There's other ways to show people that you love them besides spending a whole bunch of
money.
And next week we're going to talk about that.
So we worship fully and we spend less.
And that brings us to the third core commitment of the Advent conspiracy.
And that is we are going to give more.
And you say, well, Rob, how can you give more and spend less at the same time?
It's easy.
We are going to give more relationally.
In week three, we're going to see how our presence can actually be our presence and
how we can give our own time and give creatively to other people in ways that don't necessarily
cost money.
Instead of going into debt, we can give our time and energy.
Instead of buying gifts from the mall, we can make gifts.
We can give gifts from the heart.
Like God, we are going to learn that we love not by spending more money, but by spending
ourselves.
We're going to give more.
And then thirdly and finally, with all the time, money and energy we have left over,
we are going to love all.
And this Christmas here at Trinity, we are going to be supporting people who are in need
in our own community through the Trinity Care Fund.
We're going to be feeding the hungry in our own city through our partnership with the
Open Door, and we are going to be empowering women in Honduras in our connection with World
Vision.
In other words, what we're going to do is we are going to love all.
This is the manifesto.
This is the conspiracy movement.
There you have it.
Worship fully, spend less, give more, love all.
It is a 2000 year old conspiracy that we need now more than ever.
And I will tell you, I believe that if you and your family will pledge to practice these
core beliefs this Christmas, will there be two people who will benefit?
One you will benefit because this Christmas will be a Christmas that you remember with
joy, not with dread.
And secondly, it will actually benefit the world, right?
It'll be a Christmas where the poor and the forgotten and the marginalized are lifted
up.
And the Christmas is where it actually changes the world, right?
And isn't that what Christmas was supposed to do in the first place anyways?
So let's conspire together this Advent.
It all starts, it all starts by learning how to worship fully.
It's very interesting that every person in the Bible who encountered the baby Jesus,
do you know what their response was?
It was to worship.
Mary worshiped as she sang that song that Curlan just read to us.
The angels worshiped, the shepherds worshiped, the wise men worshiped.
We read they fell to the ground, they fell at his feet and they worshiped him.
Worship was at the heart of the very first Christmas.
Worship has to be at the heart of this Christmas too.
Now Greg Holder is an author who wrote a book called The Advent Conspiracy.
And a couple of weeks ago, Elizabeth, our online engagement director, sat down with
him and had an interview with him.
And I want you to hear what Greg says about worshiping fully this Advent.
It does come down to those four tenets.
The first one, worship fully.
Obviously, this is where it has to start.
Christmas begins and ends with us worshiping the King.
If you take that out of our celebration of Christmas, it all falls apart.
And so we do want to stress that when we talk to our families, when we talk to our churches,
we are going to gather around the King and worship the God who came to be with us, the
God who came to rescue us.
It's just, it all begins and ends with Jesus.
And so for us, he is the focal point of all of this.
That begins to fuel our gratitude.
It begins to clarify our perspective.
It ultimately begins to motivate even our generosity.
But it is worship fully.
So that was a great interview.
You can see that entire interview, not this Sunday, but next during our halftime show
in the middle of the two services.
You can hear that full interview.
But when we say worship fully, let's just make this clear.
We're not just talking about this one hour when we come to church on Sunday.
That is actually a very narrow definition of worship.
What we're talking about, what Mary, the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men were doing was
way more than that.
Worship literally means worth-ship.
It means ascribing worth, ascribing value, elevating God above the many other things
in our lives.
And so therefore, it has to do with our hearts.
It has to do with our minds, but it also has to do with our actions.
And worship therefore is something that bleeds into our home life, into our work life, into
our school life, as well as into our time here at church.
It is to somehow reorient your entire life toward God who is worth it, who is worth everything.
But if we're going to worship fully, there's a few things that we are going to have to
do in order to make that happen.
First, we are going to need to declutter our lives.
In other words, we're going to have to have less busyness in our lives.
Secondly, we're going to need to decelerate our lives.
We're going to have to slow down, and thirdly, we're going to have to de-stress.
Less worry, less anxiety.
Because here's the truth.
You can't worship if you don't have the time.
You can't worship if you're moving too fast, and you can't worship if you're consumed with
the anxiety that comes along with this season.
So if I were to ask you the question, you know, who or what do we worship at Advent?
Your answer to me would be Jesus, of course, and that is the right answer.
But is it the true answer?
Rob Hirkman's.
Is it the true answer?
Does the way I spend my time, does the way I spend my energy and my money reflect that
I worship fully the King?
Does a look at my calendar, does a look at my credit card bill testify that we are people
who worship Jesus fully?
I'll tell you, it is really hard to see what is going on in the manger when we are rushing
from store to store to store in the mall.
In fact, I would say that every step that we take toward over stuffing our schedule
takes us further from the manger.
Every step toward over busying our lives, over committing our calendars takes us further
and further away from seeing the meaning and the heart of Christmas from seeing Jesus.
I just want to say it's crazy to say, but how is it that the time of year when focusing
on Jesus should be the easiest is actually the hardest?
And so what do we do about that?
Here's what we do.
We conspire together.
We agree to declutter and decelerate our lives this Advent.
You know, in our house, when people are coming over for a visit around Christmas, usually
in the 10 minutes before they show up, we're decluttering.
We're like saying, get this in the closet or hide this or take this back to your room.
We're decluttering.
So what would it mean for you to declutter your soul and decelerate your life this Christmas
and create space for Christ to dwell in your heart?
That is the question.
The answer, well, it might look a lot like Mary.
Mary, of course, she was just a girl when the angel visited her.
I often wonder what that was like.
Did the angel show up in a brilliant flash of light that she couldn't deny and was just
in her face?
Or was it more like some of those movies where the angel is just this guy in the background
who's kind of just subtly sitting around.
And because Mary had enough space in her schedule and because Mary was moving slowly enough
and because she was paying attention enough and that she was able to see God, she was
able to hear from God.
Right.
I actually like that version.
The angel says, greetings, greetings, you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you.
You're going to conceive and give birth to a son and you will call him Jesus and his
kingdom will have no and she heard it.
There was a lot of things competing, but she heard that message.
But Mary was a Jewish girl from a no name town.
She was young.
She was poor.
She was a woman.
That's three strikes against her in that culture right away.
She's unqualified to do anything important.
Right.
But God comes along and hand picks her to be the mother of the Messiah and she hears
it.
She was aware of it.
She was paying attention.
But also notice Mary's posture of openness.
She wasn't so distracted that she missed God's voice.
She wasn't so cluttered that she ignored the call.
I'm sure of course she had questions.
What will this mean for me and what my family say and my friends say?
What will Joseph say?
Right.
She had lots of questions, but she also had an uncluttered heart and an unhurried spirit.
I'm sure she could have said, God, I've already got plans for my life.
God, I've kind of already got priorities for what I want to do with my life.
But you know what she did say?
She said, I am the Lord's servant.
May your word to me be fulfilled.
God, I don't know why you chose me, but whatever you want to do, may it be so.
It's just beautiful.
It's this open posture of availability and surrender.
And as we sit here on December 3rd, do you have that openness in your spirit?
Do you have that kind of openness in your calendar to say, God, I've got plans, but
your plans are better.
God, I've got a million things going on, but what you want for my life is more important
than all of them.
In fact, maybe this December, God is asking you to do something that's really exciting.
Or maybe this December, God is asking you to do something that is really challenging,
right?
He's asking you to sacrifice in some new way.
But my question is, are you too busy to even hear his voice?
Are you too distracted to sense his presence coming to you?
You know, one of Jesus's names was Emmanuel, which means God is with us.
Do you know God wants to be with you?
God wants to speak with you.
The question is, is there room for him to do that?
Can you fit him into your calendar and into your life?
God wants to speak with you, but can you hear what he's saying?
Are you paying attention?
You know, a lot of people say, I don't feel all that close to God, but God hasn't gone
anywhere, right?
We're the ones who back away.
We're the ones who drift away.
And it all starts right around December 3rd, right?
When our life gets cluttered up and when God gets crowded out.
So let's conspire not to speed up this month, but to slow down, to take time to clear the
clutter in our lives, make room for worship.
And while we're decluttering and while we're decelerating, you know what else?
We'll also be distressing.
There is a strong link between Christmas and the rise in mental health concerns like stress,
anxiety, and depression, not just mental health, but also physical health.
The months, the months, December and January, the highest months in the year for things
like heart attacks as well.
Why is that?
Because doing Christmas the way that culture wants you to do Christmas is crazy.
It's the perfect storm for stress.
Buy this, go there, clean the house, entertain your guests, buy the right gifts, spend more
money than you have, deal with your family problems, eat too much, drink too much.
These are all things that cause us stress.
But there's a solution for this stress, right?
Worship is the remedy for worry.
Praise is the antidote to the pressure.
And once again, if you don't believe me, look at Mary, Mary knew stress, Mary knew anxiety
more than you or I ever will.
It sounds strange.
Can you imagine a 13 year old girl being told she's going to give birth to the King of the
universe?
I mean, I know it sounds, it sounds crazy, but it's just kind of how things worked back
then in that culture.
And she's engaged to what a 15 or a 16 year old guy named Joseph.
Can you imagine as a teenager being told that you are going to give birth to the Messiah,
that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you?
I mean, imagine as a 13 or 14 year old girl getting that text message, it would be like,
it would be, if it would freak you out, it would be, you'll be overwhelmed with anxiety.
You'd be terrified, wouldn't you?
But not Mary.
Interesting.
Her response is to trust and worship.
She sings a song of praise.
It's called the Magnificat of Mary.
She says, my soul magnifies the Lord.
My spirit leaps up within me.
It rejoices within me in God, my savior.
Holy is his name.
Can you believe it?
In the middle of all that stress, in the middle of all that anxiety about what the future
was going to hold, Mary chooses to worship fully.
She receives unexpected, unsettling news that rocks her world and all the plans she had
for her life.
And without freaking out, Mary worships.
She says, God, you've got a different plan.
I magnify you.
God, in the middle of all this pressure, I praise you.
God, in the middle of the anxiety, I trust you.
In the middle of the stress, I surrender to you.
And do you know what that means?
It means that even in the uncertainty of your life, you can worship fully too.
Not just by singing songs on Sunday, although that's great, but by glorifying God with your
life and just trusting him completely.
Are you worried about something today?
Have you come to church and your heart is heavy about something?
You can worship in the midst of that worry, right?
Have you received some unexpected news?
Maybe a disturbing phone call came your way this week and it's shaken you up.
Maybe you got some bad grades at school or the midterm was especially hard.
Let worship overwhelm your worry.
Has life just not worked out the way you thought it would or the way you hoped for?
You can still worship fully even when you don't understand fully.
When you magnify, magnificate, magnify God, he becomes larger and your worries become
smaller.
So could that be you this December?
Could you take out the magnifying glass and put it on God?
Not try harder, but just trust more, surrender to God in every situation.
So there it is, guys.
There it is.
And again, please keep us quiet, right?
We don't want this getting out too far, but this is our subversive plan this Advent.
First, when the pressure is on to stuff your schedules so full that you can hardly breathe,
what are we going to do?
We're going to conspire to declutter our lives to create spaces where we can be still and
meet with Jesus.
Secondly, when the world is going crazy this December, moving a mile a minute and faster
and faster and faster, our little scheme, our little scheme is to slow down, to decelerate
our lives so that we can catch up with God and that God can catch up with us.
And then third, when the stress comes and it will, and when unexpected things happen
and they will, our sneaky solution will not be to worry, worry, worry, but to worship
and to surrender our stresses to God.
Guys, I hope you are as excited about this conspiracy journey as I am.
I hope you're ready to join this movement.
I hope you're ready to worship fully just as Mary did with her life.
And I'm hoping that you're saying, yes, Rob, I love this idea.
This is great, fantastic, but I don't know how.
I mean, I want to worship fully.
I want to give more.
I want to spend less.
I want to love all, but I don't know how.
How do I do that?
Well, I got good news for you.
We have got a boatload of resources.
And at the end of the service, we're going to tell you how we can fully equip you to
live out this conspiracy in the next four weeks ahead.
So don't worry about that.
But for now, I just want to say it's really exciting to do this with you because do you
know what would happen if this year Christmas wasn't about stuff?
Do you know what would happen if this Christmas you spent less and you gave more and you loved
all and you worshiped fully?
Do you know what would happen if you vowed?
If we vowed as a community today, let's do this together.
I'll tell you what would happen.
It would transform your life.
It would transform the life of this church.
It would change the world.
It would make Christmas not just the holiday, but the holy day.
It was always meant to be.
So let's conspire together.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
And we hope that you found the sermon to be a fresh and inspiring teaching as we embark
together in the season of Advent.
And if you enjoyed the show today, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast
so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.
Please come back again soon and thanks again for listening.
Today's sermon was taken from the 915 service on December 3rd, 2023 at Trinity Church, Street
Roosevelt in Mississauga, Ontario.