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.
Isn't that a good feeling? Just take your shoes
off or maybe you turn off the lights, right?
You're grabbing your favorite blanket, you're
cuddling up. Mine, it's this black and white
one that has a smooth side and the other side
is kind of fuzzy. All right? And you're watching
a movie that you've already seen a million times
because you don't really have the energy for
plot twists. I mean, Marty McFly is always going
to go back in time and always going to try and
fix his family and everything else. And it's
amazing. And I don't care how many times I see
it, it's still great. Hokeiest science in the
world, but it's amazing. Or maybe sometimes peace
is just simply trying to make it through a day
without having somebody tell you, hey, we need
to talk. You know, we often imagine peace as
the absence of conflict, everything going our
way, having control, being quiet, or even just
the chance to finally relax when the world stops
bothering us. Basically, peace is when everyone
and everything cooperates with our plans, right?
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 attain peace,
look serene on the outside, pretend everything's
okay, and meanwhile paddle frantically under
the water and hope that nobody notices the chaos.
But that raises a question. If there's paddling,
pressure, fear, uncertainty, does that mean that
peace has disappeared? Does peace only exist
when nothing is wrong? Because the truth is the
world around us has never really been calm, right?
Especially, I would say, coming from the experience
of being an exenial. Exenial? What is that? Well,
you've heard of Generation X. You've heard of
Millennials. Well apparently there's this little
pocket right there, right in the middle between
the two, about six years of people who grew up
with the old way of doing things in the world
that Gen X understood, but had to also learn
about computers and the internet. You know, those
of us who had the little Frogger bloop bloop
bloop and the number munchers and Oregon Trail
and everything else. Well, I started making a
note of all the things that exenials like myself
have had to go through. And some of them include
1984, giving us the first Apple Macintosh and
launching us into the age of personal computers
at home. 1986, where we were so excited to watch
the space shuttle going off into space, only
to see the Challenger exploding while we were
at school. 1989, watching the Berlin Wall fall.
But that same year, Tiananmen Square, in dealing
with what was seeing with China and its communist
party and the people there. The Exxon Valdez
spill and all the ducks trying to get away from
it. The collapse of Eastern European regimes.
91 having Operation Desert Storm, the end of
the Soviet Union, and Rodney King in LA followed
the next year by the riots. 93 being the first
World Trade Center bombing. How many of us forgot
about that eight years before 2001? and the Waco
siege with the Branch Davidians. Or in 94 with
the Rwandan genocide and watching O .J. Simpson
being chased down the highway while many of us
were saying, who in the world is O .J. Simpson?
The thing is is that that's the world that we
grew up in. Today's world? Not really all that
different. If peace depends on calm circumstances,
let's just be honest. None of us have experienced
that since we started going to school. So maybe
our expectations of peace are just too restricted,
too simple. Maybe we think peace is a mood or
a setting, a temporary ceasefire or an escape
from other people's expectations. But you know,
Advent, it asks this 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 isn't the absence of trouble? What
if instead it's the presence of God in the middle
of it? But that question opens the door straight
into Isaiah See Isaiah shifts the camera for
us the devastation It's still fresh in their
minds the superpowers of the ancient world that
were all around them these massive empires that
looked immovable They're being felled over like
trees in a storm Assyria swollen with its arrogance
and boasting of its strength where it had brought
down Israel, it's going to be cut down as well.
And Judah, the southern kingdom, God's own people,
they're not going to escape from discipline.
They're going to fall as well. Their kings, their
pride, their defenses, all laid low. See, picture
the landscape after a hurricane has torn through.
Trunks snapped, roots exposed, the silence of
judgment lingering in the air. That's the scene
that Isaiah gives us to feel. But in the middle
of the ruin, he says something very strange.
A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse.
Not from a palace with banners still flying,
not from a throne room still humming with life.
Not even from the stump of David. The famous
king that everyone remembered. This is out of
the stump of Jesse, his dad. Why Jesse? It's
sort of like saying, go back before the glory
days. Strip away the nostalgia of David. Start
from scratch with his father. And go back into
that line. from a dead stump, from forgotten
roots, from a people who have been through judgment,
loss, exile, shame. It's like whenever you try
to recover a plant that's at your home that doesn't
seem to be doing well. When I moved into my home
four years ago and the owners told me this bush
died during the winter storm of 21, well, did
I dig it out? Did I pull it out of the ground?
I broke off all of the dead limbs all over it
and left the base stump sitting there for two
years. And now it's beautiful and thriving again.
See, that's God's pattern. When people expect
peace to come through strength, God's peace comes
through weakness. When God expects peace to come
through victory, God grows peace through humility.
When people expect peace to come through domination,
God grows peace through righteousness and justice.
Some of you know what that feels like. You may
have given up on the very idea of peace a long
time ago. Maybe you're already telling yourself
there's no point in hoping or even trying. Just
count the days until this is over. Judah was
living under that cloud for over a century. watching
as Israel had fell already and feeling that weight,
wondering if they were going to be next, all
trying to appease the little idols that they
had adopted from all the other countries, imitating
powers all around them. They were exhausted,
they were anxious, they were spiritually numb.
And right there, in the long ache of waiting,
God whispers, Watch the stump. Don't look for
another David in the mirror. Don't look for him
to come in his armor. Don't look for a savior
who fits the old mold of success, power, force,
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 see that 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. This is peace that rewrites
creation. A kind of peace the world has never
imagined. Is it any wonder that people weren't
ready for it? You see, for a moment there in
Israel's history, some people might have wondered
if the next king was the one who was going to
fulfill Isaiah's promise. And Hezekiah, he did
bring reform. He tore down the idols. He redirected
the nation to trust God again. And for a brief
season under his leadership, there was actually
hope. A little green shoot breaking through the
soil. But Hezekiah was only a taste, 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 with the Babylonian envoys
showed that even he wavered, revealing his wealth
instead of relying on God's wisdom. His reign
may have been good, but it wasn't the promised
peace they were waiting for. See, God gives his
people these little previews so that they learn
to expect more, not settle for less. Hezekiah
whetted the appetite. He reminded Israel what
it looked like when someone walked in the fear
of the Lord. But he was not the promised king.
That longing, that ache, sets the stage perfectly
for John the Baptist. And so we go to the wilderness
to hear John, who is preaching repentance. not
just to scold everyone and not to just bring
shame, but to prepare people. He's clearing the
space. He's leveling the ground. He's pulling
the weeds out of people's expectations so they
can recognize the Messiah when He appears. See,
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. See, the thing about
anchors though, there's something that we oftentimes
go through that's called anchoring bias. It's
the tendency to let the first thing that you
hear, the first voice that you trust, the first
explanation that you receive become your default.
Once the anchor is dropped, everything new gets
interpreted through it, even if the anchor is
wrong. And Israel had plenty of anchors. We have
anchors. John was trying to reset them. There
were three ways that people could have looked
at Jesus when he was coming along. If people
were coming from the anchor of the Pharisees,
if they were expecting peace through rule -keeping,
priority of purity codes and moral superiority.
Well, the problem is that Jesus was just going
to disappoint them. If they started with an anchor
of Rome, well, you expect peace through force
and economic strength and political dominance,
then Jesus was going to confuse you. But if your
anchor is John, if you expect peace through repentance,
openness, humility, readiness, Jesus will fulfill
you. See, this is why God, again in mercy, he
sent John first. John is not the peace. John
is 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, they actually came out of John the
Baptist's inner circle. And it matters because
they were ready when others were not. You see,
John had trained them to expect humility instead
of power, truth instead of comfort, repentance
instead of defending yourself, God's surprising
work instead of their own assumptions. See, John
didn't just preach repentance. He was reshaping
the expectations. He was trying to loosen their
anchors to the old so they could find something
entirely new. See, the ones who followed after
John, they had begun unlearning the beliefs that
would have blocked them from recognizing Jesus.
So when Jesus appeared with a peace unlike anything
they had imagined, they didn't resist it. They
recognized it. See, this is a crucial insight
is that you cannot receive unexpected peace while
holding on to unexamined expectations. You cannot
receive unexpected peace while holding onto unexamined
expectations. It's sort of like that classic
sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, long, long time
ago, where Ted would have never been able to
meet Robin if it weren't for Barney coming in
and saying, have you met Ted? See, sometimes
we're open to the next voice when someone we
trust introduces it. John is the, have you met
Jesus? Of the New Testament. Pointing toward
beyond himself so that people could meet the
one who truly brings the peace. But you see the
tone shifts like it so often does. Matthew 3
moves from a warm invitation to a sharp warning.
John says the axe is already at the root of the
trees. Why does it have to get so sharp? Because
false peace must be cut down before true peace
can grow. False peace says everything's fine.
I'm not a problem. If everyone else would change,
then I would be happy. But you see, false peace
is denial dressed as serenity. Calm built on
avoidance. The illusion that we can keep everything
the same and still experience God's kingdom.
But you see, the true peace that Isaiah is bringing
says, Lord, start with me, even if it burns.
Prepare my heart. Cut down what is dead in me
so something alive can grow. See, this is the
collision here that the shoot growing out of
the stump and the axe at the root of the tree
have to go together. Because to bring real peace,
God often begins by cutting away the dead, the
diseased, and the deceptive expectations that
we have leaned on, because we cannot get the
new shoot without letting the old tree fall.
See, now we move, though, to the center of Advent,
because Jesus is fulfilling the vision of Isaiah,
a peace that the world has never known. Peace
that's not through force, but through compassion.
It's not through victory, but through vulnerability.
It's not through domination, but through righteousness.
It's not because of a throne, but because of
a manger. You see Jesus being the shoot from
the stump. He is the new David who is not in
armor. He's in swaddling clothes. His strength
is in gentleness. His authority is in love. But
maybe this is the deeper issue for us. Maybe
we expect too little from God It's too simple.
It's too straightforward. Maybe we're just expecting
the wrong things or maybe Peace is moving in
the wrong direction We expect it to be from the
outside moving in instead of the inside moving
out See we expect a Savior who often fits our
preferences instead of transforming them Jesus
though He confronts our expectations. The real
Messiah presents a peace that doesn't bow to
our assumptions, but redefines them. You see,
Advent, it's not just about waiting. It's about
preparing. This season is not just waiting for
Christmas. This season is that we need to prepare.
If John the Baptist prepared people for Christ's
first coming, then we... are called to prepare
people for his presence now, and that he's coming
again. We do not, however, we do not prepare
people for a Jesus that fits whatever politics
we like. We do not prepare people for a Jesus
who protects us and feel comfortable. We do not
prepare people for Jesus that never confronts
us and never disagrees with us. He is not just
the really nice looking guy sitting at the campfire
waiting to sing Kumbaya. Because that would be
false, safe, expected. Instead we prepare people
for the Jesus who grows peace out of places that
looked dead. Restores what sin has damaged. Brings
justice to the poor and burdened. heals creation
itself, challenges every false anchor that we
cling to. You see, we prepare people for the
unexpected Jesus, the Jesus who brings true peace,
not the peace that we invent inside. So this
is why the baptism of Jesus had to be different
from the baptism of John, because John's baptism
asked, have you repented enough to enter the
water? But Jesus baptism says something very
different You belong to me because my father
has claimed you Peace is not achieved through
your effort. It is received because of my presence
You see the Prince of Peace is not waiting for
us to prove ourselves He comes to us. He claims
us Restores us and sends us out So what do we
need to hear as we are closing today's Advent
message? The same voice that echoed in the wilderness
in a world chasing the shallowness of the peace
we want in a culture that's anchored by Pharisees
and Rome God still sends a voice that says prepare
the way of the Lord make his path straight Because
the peace that's coming the peace born in Bethlehem
promised in Isaiah proclaimed by John It's better
than what we expect. It's more surprising than
what we ask for. It's more beautiful than what
we imagine, no matter how hard it may be to get
there. So come Lord Jesus, bring your peace,
not the peace we wanted, all to ourselves. Thanks
be to God.