Welcome and thanks for joining us today for our sermon here on the second Sunday of Advent
at Trinity Church, Streetsville.
This is the second sermon from our sermon series, The Advent Conspiracy.
We have Rob Hirkmans with us today where we will be working through the second tenet of
the Advent Conspiracy, which is called, Spend Less.
And I really hope you enjoy this message today, and we hope it encourages you to rethink your
purchasing this Advent and stir some thought as well.
So here it is, enjoy and God bless.
Good morning Church family.
The Gospel reading is from Matthew chapter 2 verses 1-12.
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Maitre from
the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?
He saw his star when it rose and had come to worship him.
When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jews lived with him.
When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he
asked them where the Messiah was to be born.
In Bethlehem, in Judea, they replied, For this is what the prophet has written, But you,
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.
For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.
Then Herod called the Messiah secretly and found out from them the exact time the star
had appeared.
He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.
As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.
After they had heard the King, they went on their way and the star they had seen when
it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and
worshiped him.
Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country
by another lot.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thank you, Lord.
Oh, yeah.
Hey Zion, how are you today?
Oh, I'm doing well.
How are you?
Yeah, I'm pretty good.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, all right.
Merry Christmas, Zion.
All right, Merry Christmas, Rob.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
Hey, hey, everybody.
I want to welcome you.
I want to welcome you to the second official meeting of the Advent Conspiracy.
Now some of you are probably saying like, hey, what was that all about?
What was that little thing you just did with Zion?
Well, you know how like secret societies and conspiracy movements, they all have their
own like secret handshakes, and sometimes they have like a secret code word or a secret
ring or something like that.
So we thought, you know, because we're kind of doing something a little subversive in
this conspiracy, we need to have our very own secret handshake.
And so I am very proud to tell you today that the official secret handshake of the Advent
Conspiracy is kissy thumbs.
Kissy thumbs.
This is how we're going to do it.
Now you may say, well, that seems like a bit of a strange kind of secret handshake.
But wait, get this.
Look, because when you put your fingers together like this, you see what happens.
It forms the letter A, and that doesn't stand for Avengers.
It stands for Advent Conspiracy.
This is our secret handshake.
Isn't that awesome?
So cool.
Yes, I can't wait.
I can't wait.
So what I want you to do right now is I want to turn you turn to someone who's around you
this morning, and I want you to say Merry Christmas, and then give them the secret handshake.
Give it a shot.
Isn't that cool?
Yes.
Now, OK, I want to be honest with you.
We probably don't need a secret handshake, although it's super, super cool.
But because we don't need a secret handshake because if we wanted to know kind of who's
in and who's out and who's part of this movement, all we really got to do is look at their lives.
We just got to look at how you live your life over this month of December as we lead up
to Christmas, because members of the Advent Conspiracy have pledged to live their lives
a certain way as a kind of subversive movement as we come to Christmas.
And the Advent Conspiracy has these four core commitments, these four core ways of life
that we're going to practice.
I wonder if you guys remember what those four commitments were.
We're going to refresh ourselves this morning.
But our first core commitment in the Advent Conspiracy, which we learned about last week,
was that we are going to worship fully.
We're going to worship fully, which means we're going to do everything we can to keep
Jesus at the center of this celebration.
And that'll probably mean decluttering our lives, slowing down our lives, and trying
to get rid of some of the stress that comes with Christmas.
So we're going to worship fully.
Today we're going to talk about this second one.
We are going to spend less.
So in our current culture that really, really, really pushes us to spend, spend, spend, that's
actually really devastating for our soul.
And we're going to talk about that one today.
We're going to spend less.
And then thirdly, next week we're going to talk about how we can give more.
And when we give more, we're going to give more relationally, which means that maybe
more of our gifts aren't going to come from the shopping mall this year.
They might come, well, they'll definitely still come from the heart though, right?
And then finally, that means our last commitment is we're going to be able to, say it with
me, love all.
We're going to be able to take some of the resources, energy, and money that we've kind
of saved and give it to some of the people who need it the most in our world through
a big act of generosity, this Advent.
And isn't that what Advent's all about?
Isn't that what Christmas is all about?
To change the world, to change the world.
So that's how we are subversively working to make Advent and Christmas meaningful this
year.
Now I have to just say, some of you, you're not quite getting this whole kind of secret
society thing.
I'll tell you what I mean.
I was driving down the road the other day and I went by the house of Rick and Ali Bradshaw.
And I was like, really?
You're going to put a cross on your garage?
Or you're going to put baby Jesus in a manger scene right outside there?
I mean, what part of conspiracy?
Don't you understand?
Rick and Ali, do you really want the whole world to know that God loves them this Christmas?
Come on.
No, I'm just joking, of course.
Way to go, Rick and Ali.
Well done.
It's an open secret.
It's an open secret, but it's an open secret we're celebrating.
Anyways, what we're learning is that Advent is the perfect antidote that we have to the
chaos of the modern version of Christmas.
And so by worshipping fully, spending less, giving more, and loving all, we're going to
learn to see Jesus from the manger, not the mall.
OK?
So that brings us to today's topic, which is spend less.
Now I want to know, you know that talking about this with you this morning gives me
a certain amount of fear, intrepidation.
I'm a little nervous.
I have a car running in the parking lot just in case I have to get out of here quick after
the service, because many of us will say, oh, this is such a grinchy, grinchy idea.
I mean, Rob, Christmas, Christmas is all about excess.
It's about excessive spending.
It's about excessive buying, excessive eating, excessive drinking, excessive partying and
revelry.
And it's true.
Yeah, here in Canada, Christmas is, let's be honest, it's 99% commercial.
You know, it's all about finding that right gadget for him or that right gift for her
or getting the kids everything that they want.
And of course, we are doing our part.
You and me, we've all done our part in this.
Canadians back on last Friday or the Friday before that, we set a new Black Friday spending
record.
And in the US, Amazon sold more items on Black Friday than ever before in their history.
In fact, they sold 1000 items per second on average during Black Friday.
So here's the question, though.
Why do we do this?
Why do we celebrate Jesus this way?
Why do we say, happy birthday, Jesus, and in honor of your name, in honor of your birthday,
Jesus, I'm going to spend a whole bunch of money that I don't really have.
I'm going to charge it to a card that I can't really pay in order to buy a bunch of gifts
for people who don't really need them or buy sweaters for people who will probably never
wear them.
So why do we do this?
And again, my point here is not to make anyone feel bad.
You will not hear me say bah humbug at all throughout this whole message.
This is not a guilt message.
And here's why it can't be a guilt message, because Christmas is all about giving.
Gift giving is actually a biblical idea.
I think the reason we give gifts at Christmas is because of the story we read in Matthew
chapter 2, where the wise men brought those three gifts to the baby Jesus.
So yes, Christmas is a season of giving.
It always has been, it always will be, and it always should be.
But it just seems that things are kind of getting a little bit out of control.
So what if this year we did something a little countercultural and we just spent less?
That's what I want to talk about.
And I think that one way to get at this is actually to dive into our reading today from
Matthew chapter 2, because there's lots there for us to learn.
When Jesus was born, we know that Herod was king.
And historians know a lot about King Herod.
You see, the civilized world at that point was pretty much ruled by the Roman Empire.
And the leader and lord of the Roman Empire was Caesar Augustus.
But Caesar Augustus had put Herod in charge of this area of Judea, where the Jews live.
So in some ways, what you could say is that whenever you spoke of the emperor, you were
supposed to say, Caesar is lord.
But whenever you spoke about Herod, you were supposed to say, Herod is great.
Herod is great.
That was the nickname, I think, probably Herod gave to himself that he was Herod the Great.
You could, you know, if you were following him on Instagram, you'd find him at Herod
the Great, right?
He was probably a guy with a very big ego, if that's the nickname you're going to give
yourself.
And actually, I think that's kind of true, because when you look at his life, Herod often
undertook these massive building projects just to kind of show off his prestige and
his power.
Let me share a few of these building projects with you this morning.
Quite fascinating.
One, of course, was the massive and beautiful and amazing renovation of the temple in Jerusalem.
The temple in Jerusalem never looked so good as it did when Herod had finished renovating
it.
He rebuilt the house of God.
I don't believe he rebuilt it for God's glory, though.
He rebuilt it for his own glory.
He wanted to have a capital that was worthy of his power and prestige.
So there was the temple in Jerusalem.
He also undertook this major building project in a place called Caesarea by the Sea, or
Caesarea Maritima.
This city was like a little version of Rome in Israel.
It had an amphitheater, where you could have horse races, chariot races, and all this stuff.
It was like he was trying to bring the glory of Rome into the city he was building for
himself.
But he named it after Caesar, right?
Caesarea Maritima.
Now, you might notice out there there's like a marina.
And very fascinating was that that was the first time, I think, in antiquity that people
built structures with concrete that hardened underwater.
So prior to that, that wasn't a thing.
But again, Herod was a great innovator.
He was politically connected.
He was rich.
He was ambitious.
And so he even like innovated this unique way of creating concrete that hardened underwater.
So he was all those things.
But he was also paranoid.
And that's why he built this structure named after himself, Herodium.
And it is a mountaintop fortress, was a mountaintop fortress, where he basically just cut the
top off a mountain and then built this fortress.
Why?
So he could escape there if anyone ever kind of came after him.
He was convinced that everyone was after his throne.
In fact, we know from history that he had his favorite wife executed because he thought
she was just a bit too ambitious.
And he had three of his own sons strangled to death because he thought they too were
ambitious and maybe vying for his throne.
He was ruthless.
Even Caesar in Rome said, I would rather be Herod's pig than Herod's son.
And the reason he said that, of course, is Jewish people didn't eat pork.
And so at least a pig would have been safe in Herod's family.
This is the backdrop of Christmas, everyone.
A tyrannical king who is obsessed with power and prestige, hoarding possessions, taxing
the poor to pay for massive self-aggrandizing building projects.
It was all part of what Greg Holder, the author of a book called The Advent Conspiracy, all
part of what he calls the empire of more, the empire of more.
Build more, spend more, make more, gain more, hoard more.
More is always better.
More is merrier.
This is the world of King Herod.
This is his kingdom, his empire of more, more, more.
Now into that empire of more, more, more, we read that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in
Judea during the time of King Herod.
So now Jesus, not born in the capital city, but born in a small town, not born in wealth,
but born into poverty, didn't have famous parents.
He had peasant parents, Mary and Joe.
No one had ever heard of them.
He's not born into a palace.
Where was he born?
He was born in the garage out back because there was no room for them in the hotel or
they couldn't afford the hotel.
They were in the stable.
And so what you end up having is you've got this picture of Jesus being born in great
humility.
And you have to bring that into juxtaposition with this other kingdom that he's being born
into the kingdom of more.
And what you end up is with two kingdoms in conflict, Herod's empire of more and Jesus's
humble coming, the humble coming of Christ.
Now about that time, wise men from the East arrived and they started asking the question
that you really should not ask given what we know about Herod.
Hey, where is the newborn King of the Jews?
To which Herod, I'm sure said, excuse me, excuse me.
What did you, did you just say there's another King?
Because listen to me, I rule this town.
I'm King of this place.
I rule this empire of more.
And that of course got him all worked up.
And we read, say it with me, King Herod was deeply disturbed.
Why was he deeply disturbed?
This is why, because at Christmas, at Christmas, when God enters our world, he immediately
confronts the empire of more.
The humble birth of Jesus challenges the power, the military muscle, the wealth, the palatial
palaces, the massive building projects.
He challenges all of it.
He challenges the very idea of what a King is, of what a savior is.
Now Herod, of course we read was furious.
And then in a sad and just sickening moment of the Bible story, he sent soldiers to kill
all the boys in around Jerusalem who were two years old and under.
So here you go, everybody.
Merry Christmas.
Here's what you've got.
A state sponsored genocide.
Herod did not want any rivals.
He did not want any competitors to his empire of more.
This is a hard piece of scripture to look at and a hard one to fathom, but we have to
look at it.
And here's why.
Because it shows us that the Christmas story has this dark side to it.
That there's this dark underbelly, if you will, to Christmas.
When you pull back the tinsel, when you pull back all of the decorations, what do we see?
We see a battle going on.
We see two Kings, two kingdoms fighting with each other.
And there's this, in Jesus, there's this rebellion afoot.
There's a conspiracy, if you will, on the rise.
And what we see is that Jesus is offering himself not as a King that hoards power, but
as a King that surrenders power.
Not as a King that is full of wealth, but a King that actually surrenders his wealth.
He gave up his heavenly riches to be born into poverty.
It's the empire of more versus the humility of Christ.
That was the choice that God was offering the world on the very first Christmas day.
And that is actually the same choice that God is offering you and I today.
All of us also have a choice to make at Christmas.
Who are we going to serve?
The empire of more or the humble Jesus?
Now Herod's not around anymore, but I think there still is this counterfeit King out there
that wants our allegiance.
And let's call it, you could call it lots of things, but let's call it consumerism.
Like Herod, it is all about bigger and better and faster and more and more and more.
More presence, more possessions, more spending.
The empire of more that we live in says pile on the purchases.
You need more.
Charge more to your cards.
Spend more of your time and spend more of your energy and spend more of your resources
chasing after more, right?
If you ever think about it, debt and consumerism peak.
They peak at the very same time when the savior was born into the world to liberate us from
these things.
It is a battle and Christmas is like ground zero for that battle.
And what do you think is actually closer to the heart of Christmas and to the heart of
Jesus?
Are we piling more and more on our pile of more or spending less so that we can give
to those who are in need?
Now in that book that we're reading, the Advent Conspiracy, Greg Holder says something.
I don't know.
I haven't actually fact checked it, but if it's true, it's pretty profound.
He says in America, the amount of money, he's an American, we spend on Christmas is 45 times
the amount of money it would take to supply the entire world with clean water.
Now that is, if that's true, that is hard to swallow.
And if that's true, we have a real important choice to make this Christmas.
Which king are we going to worship?
Which kingdom are we going for here?
So that's why one of the core commitments of the Advent Conspiracy is to spend less.
Now that does not mean spend nothing.
It just means spend less so that your heart, your heart doesn't get hollowed out by consumerism
and end up just leaving you feeling defeated and deflated at Christmas time.
I want to show you a little clip.
This is from the interview that Elizabeth did with Greg.
He talks a little bit about what spending less looks like from where he sees it.
Because celebrating Christmas, one of the things that we will sometimes say is that
a beautiful Christmas morning is not defined by having a pile of presents four feet high
around the tree.
What I've noticed in my own life and previous, like pre-Advent Conspiracy days, and we all
fall into this, it's kind of like you think, well, more is better.
And so we've just got all of these things, and particularly when you have young kids,
it's like, let's just shower them with so many things.
And what we have found is when this happens, which I understand motivation, but when it
happens, the kids then really don't even take the time to savor or enjoy one gift from the
next because they're tearing into something and tossing it over their shoulder to get
to the next thing, to get to the next thing, which is just this hyper consumerism that
we've all been led to believe, well, this is how you celebrate Christmas.
When that little baby, Jesus, grew up and became a man and started walking around teaching
people, he said this once, he said, watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of
greed.
Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
And I think that Jesus would say, especially at Christmas, especially at Christmas, remember,
your life isn't about the abundance of stuff.
Your soul is worth so much more than stuff.
In Jesus' kingdom, less is actually more.
That's hard for us to understand.
There is this lie that we face every day out there that says, if you buy this, you will
be happy.
If you buy this, they will be happy.
Right?
If you buy these shoes for your wife, that gadget for your husband, this phone for your
kids, and actually, it's true.
You do feel happy.
When you receive a gift, I feel happy.
You feel happy.
But I guess the question is, how long does that happiness really last?
Does it last two or three days?
Does it last two or three hours?
We spend billions of dollars in December trying to get that latest thing that will somehow
give us that happiness we're looking for, that joy that we're longing for.
But what we're searching for is something that money cannot buy.
There is this God-shaped hole in your heart, the saying goes, and no flat-screen TV is
going to fill it.
Neither we nor our children nor our friends or our family will ever experience that deep
soul satisfaction that we're all looking for without Jesus in our lives.
And that's the truth.
So now, do you kind of see how spending and our spirituality are really connected?
Somebody comes back from Walmart after doing some Christmas shopping and says, I feel closer
to Jesus.
Never, never.
Because what happens is, under the tsunami of hyper-consumerism, as Greg mentioned, all
the joy and all the wonder gets washed away.
Actually, pretty soon, when we shop, shop, shop, Jesus actually becomes just one more
commodity, one more thing that we buy.
Not this king that comes to rule in our life, but just something that we can consume.
Jesus becomes something we consume.
So do you see how this can rob us of our joy and the wonder of our relationship with God?
So what if this Christmas we did something differently?
We took our cue from the wise man.
What if we gathered around the tree this year, not in a mad scramble about who got what,
but rather just filled with joy and filled with worship, as the wise man did?
What about you, though?
What if you scaled back your spending this December so that you could worship more fully
and give more joyfully?
I asked the question to myself, Rob, are you willing to rethink your own approach to gift
giving this December?
Let's end very practically today because I want to give you some ideas of how you might
do this.
And the thing is, when you hear us say spend less, you might be like, well, spend less
than what?
Spend less than I spent last year, spend less than my neighbors do, or spend less than the
average Canadian, which is something like $1,000 per person per year or something like
that.
What does it mean to spend less?
Well, here's some secret little secrets that I want to share with you.
What does it mean to spend less?
Here's the first one.
Set a limit.
Now the word limit sounds very negative and oppressive, but really the best way to curb
over runaway spending is actually to set a limit before we get there.
Now, Greg Holder, he just said, right, that what are we really teaching our kids anyway
when we bury them under a huge pile of presents on Christmas morning?
With every gift they open, it seems like the previous gift becomes less valuable and the
message of Jesus is probably lost in all that anyways.
So here's an idea.
You can take it or you can leave it.
It's entirely up to you.
But one of the things that people sometimes do is they take their cue from the wise men
and they say, what if you actually gave three gifts per person this year?
This is the idea that when the wise men came, they opened up their treasure chest and they
had gold and they had frankincense and they had myrrh.
So we could say, hey, hey, you know, the baby Jesus got three gifts at Christmas and so
will each of us.
We're going to limit our gift giving to three presents each.
Sometimes people say, OK, the gold gift is something that you really, really want.
And the frankincense gift would be something that maybe you really need.
Maybe you need a new snow suit or a new jacket or something like that.
And then the myrrh gift could be some kind of an experience that you would share together.
Hey, we're going to go to a concert together.
We're going to go to a nice dinner together, a family outing or something like that.
I have to tell you, we have done this as a family in previous years.
And I think what we've discovered is that with fewer gifts, every gift actually becomes
more meaningful.
So if you want to give this idea a try in your household, we've actually got little
gift tags ready for you to pick up at the resource table afterwards that say gold and
frankincense and myrrh.
And you can say to so and so from so and so.
I would just say word of warning, two things.
Parents don't just drop this on your kids on Christmas morning.
Have a conversation with them.
Explain, hey, kids, this is something we're going to do this year.
Second thing I would ask, don't throw me under the bus when you're having that conversation
with them.
Don't say, oh, Reverend Robb thinks you've got too many gifts.
And he's going to you need to change.
But no, seriously, having a conversation, just having the conversation will open up
all sorts of good things for your family or for your boyfriend or girlfriend or for your
coworkers or whatever it is.
So set a limit, set a limit.
Maybe, maybe go with the three, three gift idea.
That's the one thing.
Second thing, of course, is make a budget.
Most of us spend way beyond our means at Christmas.
Apple News the other day reported that one in four Canadians, 25% of Canadians, are still
paying off credit card debt from last Christmas.
So a budget really does help you take charge of your spending choices rather than letting
culture dictate your spending.
A budget doesn't mean that you don't eat out or you don't throw a party or don't buy gifts.
But a budget tells you where you want your money to go rather than wondering where did
it all go.
And the budget, when that credit card bill shows up in January, it will not be a moment
of shock and regret, but of relief and freedom.
So that's the second thing.
So we limit, make, set a limit, make a budget and thirdly, lastly, spend wisely.
Slow down and give a little thought to some of the gifts that you're giving instead of
just grabbing a random gift card and saying, hey, I thought I'd give this to you just to
let you know I thought of you at the very last minute.
Right?
So choose your gifts more carefully.
Think about the gifts that Jesus were given.
They were very carefully curated for who he was.
He was given gold.
Gold is a gift of royalty.
He was the newborn king.
He was given a frankincense.
Incense is a gift for a deity.
You burn incense as you worship.
You are the son of God, frankincense said.
And myrrh, myrrh was actually a spice used to embalm dead bodies, which is hinting that
Jesus was not just a king.
He was not just the son of God, but he was also a savior.
And that of course leads us to thinking about the cross and what he gave us there.
So just be thoughtful this Christmas, make gift giving even a spiritual exercise.
Pray about the people on your shopping list.
Say God, what is the best way I can show my love to them?
Maybe God will say, spend a little less, or maybe God will say, give them an experience.
Or maybe God will say, you know, just get grandma and grandpa a framed photo of the
family because here's a pro tip.
That's all they want anyways.
That's all they want.
Or remember, gift giving does not mean, no, I should say it this way, spending less does
not mean that you love people less.
Okay.
So here we go.
Let's conspire together by spending less, giving more, worshiping fully and loving all.
Are you with me?
Let's, let's set a limit.
Let's make a budget and let's spend wisely.
Are you with me this Advent?
Because with God's help, we can resist that empire of more and celebrate the birth of
Jesus just beautifully and relationally and humbly.
So thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thanks for listening into our sermon today.
We are so glad that we can share our message and the good news with you in this way.
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Thanks again and join us next week.
Today's sermon was taken from the December 10th, 2023 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.