ATTN: When I asked my Chinese students if they celebrated Christmas in China, they said “no.” As a matter of fact, they don’t even get a break on Christmas Day since it is not a holiday. Those of us living in the U.S. find it hard to fathom not celebrating or even recognizing Christmas. At my home, the day after Thanksgiving, my wife and kids were urging me to put up the Christmas tree and they count down the days until Christmas literally with their Lego Friends Advent Calendar set they got from their uncle and aunt. And I must admit, it is also my favorite time of the year as I look forward to getting into the holiday spirit. And I will do my best as we do every year to keep the main thing the main thing – the reason for the season. Not the gift but the giver, you know…. “But I’ve heard it all, Pastor!” I know. But the sermons are not not about hearing something new but they are about being reminded because we are a creature that forgets again and again. Sermons are like eating. Eating the word of God. How often do we eat food? Three times a day, right? But we don’t complain, “Well, I ate steak last week. Do I have to eat it again today?” No. And we also don’t complain “Well, I don’t even remember what I ate two Mondays ago. So it must not have done any good.” Even if you don’t remember what you ate, if you ate, then it did your body good. So with sermons. You may not remember what the message was about two or three Sundays ago, but that’s alright. If right then and there, you decided to worship Christ because of it and applied it to your life, then it served its purpose.

So, until Christmas, we will be observing Advent. Advent is a latin word that means “coming” referring to the coming of the Messiah. It typically begins 4 Sundays before Christmas, which for us should have been last Sunday, but since we observed it as our Thanksgiving Sunday, we will observe today and the next 3 sunday   as Advent Sundays. God willing, what I want to do is to take a few phrases that the angels used in announcing the arrival of the long-waited Messiah and share their blessings with you. Today the phrase that I want to take is “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” in Luke 2:10.

So, Jesus is the good news of great joy that is for all the peoples. I will break this sentence into three parts: Jesus is 1) Good news, 2) of Great joy, and 3) That is for all the peoples.

1. Good news

Jesus is the good news. Think about the nature of news. 10 o’clock news for example. The news doesn’t tell us what to do, does it? It tells us what happened. What was done. Jesus is the good news. Very good news in that he came to do the work that you and i couldn’t do – mainly the work of salvation. He earned our salvation for us – dying the death we should’ve died and living the life we only dreamed of living. You see, Christian faith does not begin when we decide to do something about it. It begins when we hear something that was done on our behalf. And what is the good news? It’s Jesus Christ himself.

ILL: Imagine you are a mother of a soldier who is at war. Think WWII or Vietnam war where so many of the American soldiers died daily. This mother does not know whether her son is alive or not. But she hears a word that her son’s battalion has been ambushed and his status is uncertain along with the rest of his battalion. What is the news she’s waiting to hear? What would be the best case scenario? A messenger from the army coming to her door telling her that her son survived and is on the way home? That’s good news. But you know what would be better? If her son was standing at the door. That would be the best possible news.

That’s Jesus Christ. He came. He did not send us a messenger. He did not come to simply deliver us the message, but He IS the message. He doesn’t just give gifts. He IS the gift. He did not come to give us bread. He came to be bread. He gave Himself to us. God with us. Emmanuel!

Jesus is not a decree that we must follow. Jesus is not teacher whose lessons we must follow. He is first and foremost a good news. He has done something for us. Jesus did not come to earth to tell us to do something but rather to do something for us so that we may be saved.

2. Of Great Joy

Jesus is the good news of great joy. Not just some joy. Not just good joy. But a great joy. Being a christian, we must be overcome by the joy that we have in Jesus. Will be have sorrows in this life? Of course, but our joy ought to be so great that it outweighs all other competing emotions and circumstances. Ravi Zacharias said, “For people without Christ, sorrow is central and joy is peripheral.” Yes, there will be spots of joy, but in the end death and sickness will end all joy. But for Christians, joy is central and sorrow is peripheral. Yes, there will be sorrows in Christian’s life, but ultimately we have the hope of being with Jesus forever. So Paul writes, “Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” (2 Cor. 6:10) Having Jesus is the most joy-producing act. Why? Jesus joy beneath all other joys. He is not just one of many joys. He is not even the greatest joy we can have. He is actually the joy that gives rise to all other joys. He is the basis of our joy that is so deep that nothing can ever knock it off. Not our loved one’s death. Not losing our house or business, and not even our own death. Nothing or no one can guarantee that kind of joy. Luke 6:22 Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven

And what is the reward? It is Jesus! Jesus is the treasure that when a man found it in a field, in joy, he sold everything and bought the field.

ILL: I see my friends living large – enjoying life, traveling, acquiring expensive things – instead of getting envious which I think I used to do in my younger days, I puzzle over their lives. How can they be satisfied with that? How can they be okay with having these earthly things when it is so obvious to everyone including them that they will lose it all when their health deteriorates or when death comes? Why don’t they go for something that will give them a greater joy? Why won’t they go for Christ?

Our life is like a bubble that little children will blow. When my girls were a little younger, I used to buy them these bubble wands and they would blow bubbles and chase after them. And as soon as they try to grab them, what happens? Pop! The things we chase after are like these bubbles. They look pretty and bountiful, but as soon as we possess them, they pop! Our life is just a mist. It is here one day and the pop and so are the things we are chasing after. But Jesus is eternal. He is the source of all joy – a joy beyond all joy that gives sustenance to joy. He is the sun behind the sunbeam. The lake that gave rise to the mist…

Tell me one thing that would bring you joy when you are lying in a hospital bed facing death. Doctors gave you two weeks to live. What would bring you joy at that point? More money? A bigger house? Secure retirement account? No. only Jesus.

            Jesus said, “do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20  

1. That is for all the peoples.

Consider to whom this message of good news was given. It was to the shepherds – the low lives of the day. We should find it fascinating that this proclamation was not given to the kings and queens and dignitaries, but to the lowly shepherds that no one cared about. Imagine when Trump won the election, no one found out about it except a few homeless people in the backstreets of New York. That’s not the way to do it. As a matter of fact, when Trump won, he announced it on national TV and made the acceptance speech. The whole world heard his speech. But when the king of kings and lord of lords was born, only a handful of nobodies – the shepherds – heard about it. The way Jesus entered the world signified what kind of messiah he was going to be. Jesus is not going to be the top-down type of king, but bottom up. He will love and associate with the “little” people. This good news of great joy was not just for working class Americans. It truly was for all the peoples. Not only the important people but especially the downtrodden, lowly, underdogs, immigrants, undocumented, unattractive, marginalized, “sinners”!

Will all people receive Jesus? No. But jesus is not only for a specific type of people. He crosses ethnic boundaries, generations, eras, social constructs, political systems, etc. 1 tim 2:4-6, “God our Savior, 4who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man^a Christ Jesus, 6who gave himself as a ransom for all,

Do you realize that what we are doing right now is a very fulfilment of what Jesus said? We are 2000 years removed from Jesus. None of us are Jews (I don’t think) and yet we are following a Jewish rabbi half-way around the globe. We do not even speak the same language as Jesus did. He spoke in Aramaic. We speak English, spanish, and Korean. Even though we are small, we come from all different backgrounds – if you want to get a good picture of our church, just try to guess the ethnicities of our children in Sunday school. And yet we gather together every week sitting under the teaching of this guy Jesus – 2,000 year old, Jewish rabbi who never set foot in America who knew nothing of internet and iPhones. What is this? How do you explain it? He is the good news of great joy that is for all peoples. In Israel in year 0 and in America in year 2016 and in Africa in year 3016 if He doesn’t come back by then….

APP: During this year’s advent, would you let Jesus be the focal point? Don’t drown out the Messiah in the midst of family get together and gift shopping and festivities. A little discipline may be required. Perhaps you can change your ritual a bit in the next three weeks. You can set your alarm to get up 30 minutes earlier than usual and read and meditate on the gospels. You can listen to good Christ honoring carols rather than about jingle bells and santa claus. It could be that the first thing that you do every morning before you even get out bed is list 5 things in your head that you are thankful for. Or even imagine if the bed you are lying on is your death-bed and what would matter most if you only had two weeks to live and focus on those important things.

My prayer for you and myself is: Open my eyes lord that I may see you more clearly. You don’t have to improve my conditions. I just want Jesus to be more of a reality to me. Let Him become real to me! Let my heart feel what my head understands. Let Jesus be a good news of great joy that outweighs all my competing desires and wants. Let me see Him as the great Treasure that gives rise to all other treasures. 2 Cor. 3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,^e are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.