What is your expectation of peace? For some of
us, peace is finally getting home after a long
day and realizing you don't have to be anywhere.
Put your feet up, favorite drink to the side,
just enjoy. Maybe you're turning off all the
lights, grabbing your favorite blanket. Mine
is black and white with the fuzzy side and a
flat side on the other one. And watching a movie
that you've already seen a million times because
You don't really want any plot twists today.
You're just trying to see Marty McFly go back
in time and save his family. It's just awesome
no matter how many times you saw it. Maybe for
some it's Casablanca. I finally saw that for
the first time the other day. Yeah, it stands
up. You know, or maybe peace is simply making
it through an evening without having somebody
say to you, hey, we need to talk. We often imagine
peace as the absence of conflict, everything
going our way, having control, quiet, the chance
to finally relax when the world stops bothering
us. Basically, peace is when everyone and everything
seems to cooperate with our plans. Michael Caine,
the actor, one time said, be like a duck, calm
on the surface, but always paddling like the
dickens underneath. And honestly, that describes
how many of us try to achieve peace. We look
serene on the outside, pretending everything's
okay, and meanwhile we're paddling frantically
under the water so no one notices the chaos.
Pastors are not immune from that as well. But
it raises a question, if there's paddling, if
there's pressure, fear, uncertainty, Does that
mean that peace has actually disappeared? Does
peace only exist when nothing goes wrong? Because
the truth is, the world around us has never really
been calm. Especially, I would say, when I'm
looking at what it is to be an exenial. You may
be wondering, what's an exenial? Well, maybe
you've heard of Generation X, maybe you've heard
of Millennials. Well, it turns out that there's
a six year period right in between the last part
of Gen X and the beginning of millennial, they
call exenials, because we know a little bit about
the old way that the world worked and a lot about
the new way the world has worked, especially
with the internet and the world drastically changing.
So we have our nice little pocket where a lot
of things change really quickly. You see, we
grew up in a world where every time you thought
things might settle down, something else happened.
1984, the first Apple Macintosh and personal
computing in your own home. 1986, watching the
space shuttle go into space as the Challenger
exploded. Going through that in kindergarten.
1989, with the Berlin Wall falling, the same
year as Tiananmen Square and the Chinese Communist
issues. the Exxon Valdez spilling in all the
poor ducks, the collapse of the Eastern European
regimes, 91 being Operation Desert Storm, the
end of the Soviet Union and Rodney King in California,
92 being the LA riots, 93 being the first World
Trade Center bombing, in case we forgot what
had happened eight years previous to 2001. and
the Waco siege with the Branch Davidians, 94
and the Rwandan genocide, and watching O .J.
Simpson being chased down the freeway, and many
of us wondering who's O .J. Simpson. The world
that we grew up in, but today's world is no different.
If peace depends on calm circumstances, when
has there ever truly been peace? So maybe expectations
of peace, they're just too simplistic. Maybe
we think peace is a mood or a setting or a temporary
ceasefire or an escape from other people's expectations.
But Advent asks a deeper, harder question. What
if real peace doesn't come where you expect it?
What if it doesn't look like what you imagine?
What if peace is not the absence of trouble,
but the presence of God? in the middle of it.
And the question opens the door straight into
Isaiah. See, Isaiah shifts the camera because
the devastation is still fresh in their mind.
The superpowers of the ancient world, these massive
empires that looked immovable, they're actually
toppling over like trees in a storm. Assyria,
swollen with arrogance and boasting its own strength
that brought down the northern portion of Israel.
is itself going to be cut down. Judah, the southern
portion, God's own people is not going to escape
discipline themselves. They too will fall. Their
kings, their pride, their defenses, all laid
low. The writing is on the wall and they know
it decades beforehand. Picture the landscape
after a hurricane has torn through. Trunks snapped,
roots exposed, the silence of judgment lingering
in the air. That's the same scene that Isaiah
wants us to feel. But in the middle of all that
ruin, he says something quite strange. A shoot
shall come out of the stump of Jesse. Not from
a palace with banners still flying, not from
a throne room still humming with life. And notice
the stump of Jesse, David's father. It's not
even from the stump of David, the famous king
that everyone remembered, but from Jesse, David's
father. A way of saying, go back even before
the glory of David's days. Strip away the nostalgia.
Start from scratch before you get back to the
Davidic line. From a dead stump, forgotten roots.
A people who have been through judgment, loss,
exile, and shame. It's like when I got to buy
my house about four years ago There was a bush
that was in front of the house and apparently
it had died during the ice storm of 2021 just
months before I'd bought it And the recommendation
was why don't you just go ahead and remove it?
But instead I broke off all the dead limbs on
the outside and left just this ugly little stump
base intact at the bottom And within two years,
it had already become beautiful and thriving
again. You see, this is God's pattern. When people
expect peace to come through strength, God grows
peace through weakness, the stump. When people
expect peace to come through victory, God's peace
is growing through humility, the stump. When
people expect peace to come through domination,
God grows peace through righteousness, justice.
Some of you know what that feels like. You may
have given up, frankly, on the very idea of peace
a long time ago. Maybe you're already telling
yourself, there's no point in even hoping. Just
count the days until it's over, whatever it may
be. Judah lived under that cloud for over a century,
feeling the weight of Israel's fall, wondering
if they were next, all while trying to appease
idols and imitate the powers that were around
them. They were exhausted, anxious, spiritually
numb. And right there, right in that long ache
of waiting, God whispers, watch the stump. Don't
look for an Everett David in armor. Don't look
for a savior who fits the old mold of success,
power, force, or bravado. Look for something
new. something small, gentle, unexpected. Look
for life growing where no life should be. And
then Isaiah lifts our eyes to a world transformed,
wolves lying down with lambs, children playing
safely where danger once lived, the earth itself
overflowing with the knowledge of the Lord. This
is not peace that tweaks politics or peace that
rewrites creation itself. It's looking to see
how that peace that comes to rewrite all of creation,
a kind of peace the world has never imagined.
No wonder people were not ready for it. See,
there's a moment in Israel's history where some
people might have wondered if Israel's promise
was happening right in front of them. Hezekiah,
right after this, brought reform. He tore down
idols. He redirected the nation to trust God
again. And for a brief season, There was real
hope, like a small green shoot breaking through
the soil. But Hezekiah, he was just a taste.
He was not the meal. A hint, not the reality.
A shadow, not the substance. Because even Hezekiah,
as faithful as he was, he still struggled to
trust God completely. His famous moment when
the Babylonian envoys showed that even he wavered,
revealing his wealth instead of relying on God's
wisdom. Because his reign was good. but it wasn't
the promised peace. God gives His people these
little previews sometimes to expect more and
not settle for less. Hezekiah whetted the appetite,
reminding Israel of the fear of the Lord, but
he wasn't the promise. That longing was setting
the stage for John the Baptist. You see, we move
out into the wilderness and we watch John, who
is preaching repentance, Not to be scolding for
its own sake, not to shame, but to prepare. It's
hard to hear, especially for those who don't
want to listen, but it's for the sake of preparation.
Leveling the ground, clearing the space, pulling
the weeds out of people's expectations so they
recognize the Messiah. John is saying, reset
your expectations. Scrub your assumptions. Clear
the soil of your heart because you cannot see
the Messiah if you're anchored to the wrong story.
I need to explain then what it is to have anchoring
bias. It's the psychological tendency to let
the first thing that you hear, the first voice
that you trust, the first explanation you receive
become your default. Once that anchor is dropped
and you've heard somebody's story paint the picture,
everything new gets interpreted through it, even
if the anchor is wrong. That's why so often people
are like, let me tell you first before you hear
it from anyone else. You see, Israel had anchors.
We have anchors. John came to reset them. Matthew
shows that there were three anchors that could
have happened with people. securing their hope.
If they placed their anchor in the Pharisees,
they would have expected peace by keeping the
rules, being pure according to their codes, and
having moral superiority. But if that's the case,
Jesus is going to disappoint you. If your anchor
is in Rome, then you're going to expect peace
through force, economic strength, political dominance,
like the Hellenistic Jews that were there at
the time. But Jesus then would confuse you. But
if your anchor is John, you expect peace through
repentance, openness, humility, readiness, and
then Jesus will fulfill you. You see, this is
why God again in mercy sends John first. John
is not the peace, he's the preparation for peace.
John cannot give the kind of peace that people
wanted because he was pointing toward the kind
of peace that people needed. See, some of Jesus'
very first disciples came directly from John
the Baptist's circle, and that matters. Why were
they ready when others were not? Because John
had trained them to expect humility instead of
power, truth instead of comfort. Repentance over
defending yourself. God's surprising work over
their own assumptions. John didn't just preach
repentance. He reshaped expectations. He loosened
the old anchors so we could receive something
new. See, those who followed John had already
begun unlearning beliefs that would have blocked
them from recognizing Jesus. So when Jesus appeared,
with a piece that was unlike anything that they
had imagined, they didn't resist it. They recognized
it. You cannot receive unexpected peace while
holding onto unexamined expectations. You cannot
receive unexpected peace while holding onto unexamined
expectations. You know, if you see your character
come up. If you watch the Ted looking to talk
to the Robin and Barney, his friend, has to come
along and say, have you met Ted? Sometimes you
need someone to point you to someone besides
themselves because we're open to the next voice
when someone we trust introduces it. John is
the have you met Jesus of the New Testament.
Because he's pointing beyond himself so that
people can meet the one who truly brings peace
But the tone shifts and John says a sharp warning
the axe is already at the root of the trees Why
such intensity? Because false peace must be cut
down before true peace can grow False peace says
everything's fine False peace says, I'm not the
problem. False peace says, if everyone else changed,
I'd be happy. False peace is denial dressed as
serenity. False peace is calm built on avoidance.
False peace is the illusion that we can keep
everything the same and still experience the
Kingdom of God. But true peace, the peace that
Isaiah described, says, Lord, Start with me,
even if it burns. Prepare my heart. Cut down
what is dead in me so something alive can grow.
This is the collision of Advent. The shoot that
comes from the stump, the axe at the root, they
belong together. God brings real peace, but he
often begins by cutting away the dead, the diseased,
the deceptive expectations that we leaned on.
because you cannot get the new shoot growing
up unless you let the old tree fall. We move
from the intensity of John's warning to the revelation
at the center of Advent. Jesus is the fulfillment
of Isaiah's vision, a peace that the world has
never known, peace that's not through force but
compassion. Peace that's not through victory,
but vulnerability. Peace that's not through domination,
but through righteousness. Peace that's not through
the throne, but through a manger. Jesus is the
shoot from the stump. He's a new David. He's
not in armor, but in swaddling cloths. The ruler
whose strength is gentleness, whose authority
is love. It's not always easy. And not everything
that Jesus said sounded like comfort and sounded
calm. But maybe this is the deeper issue for
us. Maybe we expect too little from God. Maybe
we expect the wrong things. Or maybe we expect
peace to move in the wrong direction, coming
from outside rather than from the inside out.
Maybe we expect a Savior who fits our preferences
instead of transforming us. Jesus exceeds those
expectations. He exceeds us. But not by comforting
alone, but rather by confronting us. Because
the real Messiah presents a peace that doesn't
bow to our assumptions, but redefines them entirely.
If you're uncomfortable, it's probably a good
thing. leads us to the turn. Because Advent is
not about waiting. It's about preparing. If John
the Baptist prepared people for Christ's first
coming, then we are meant to prepare people for
his presence now, for his coming again. But let's
be clear about this. We do not prepare people
to fit Jesus as if Jesus fits our politics. as
if Jesus protects our comfort, as if Jesus never
confronts us or disagrees with us. Because that
would be a false peace, a safe peace, an expected
peace, a duck on the water whose feet are not
paddling furiously, but in that case, a duck
who is not alive. Instead, we prepare people
for the Jesus who grows peace out of places that
look dead. who restores what sin is damaged,
who brings justice to the poor and burden, who
heals creation itself, who challenges every false
anchor that we cling to. We prepare people for
the unexpected Jesus. The Jesus who brings true
peace, not the peace we invent. It may sound
like it conflicts with the hymn, O long -expected
Jesus. But see, that's why the baptism of Jesus
is different from the baptism of John. Because
John's baptism asks, have you repented enough
to enter the water? Jesus' baptism announces
something radically different. You belong to
me because my Father has claimed you. Peace is
not achieved through your effort. It is received
through my presence, through my word. through
my spirit. The Prince of Peace doesn't wait for
us to prove ourselves. He comes to us, claims
us, restores us, and sends us out. So how do
we close this message for the Peace of Advent?
With the same voice that it echoed in the wilderness.
In a culture anchored to Pharisees and Rome,
God still sends a voice today to say, Prepare
the way of the Lord, make His path straight.
Because the peace that's coming, the peace born
in Bethlehem, the peace promised in Isaiah, the
peace proclaimed by John, it's better than what
we expect. It's more surprising than what we
would ask for. And it's more beautiful than what
we can imagine. So come, Lord Jesus. Do not bring
us peace that we hope for. Bring us your peace.
that we need Thanks be to God