Thanksgiving takes planning, or you’ll fill the plate and miss the pie you were waiting for. Advent works the same way. The Gospel of Mark skips the manger and the angels and jumps right to the one the Gospels proclaim: Jesus. Do we get caught up in the details or get to Him in our own preparations?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor emphasizes that Christmas is about the “beginning of the gospel” rather than the beginning of Jesus himself. How does understanding Jesus as eternal God—rather than as a figure with an origin story—change the way you celebrate and reflect on Christmas?
The sermon uses the metaphor of planning what to eat at Thanksgiving so you have room for dessert. What are some ways you might be “filling your plate” during the Christmas season that prevent you from focusing on the spiritual significance of Christ’s coming?
The pastor states that “the end is already here” in reference to Satan’s reign, even though we still experience sin and suffering. How does this tension between Christ’s victory being already secured and our current reality shape how you live out your faith during Advent and beyond?
John the Baptist’s call to repentance is presented as the starting point for preparing for Christmas. Why do you think confession of sin is uncomfortable to discuss during Christmas, and how might embracing repentance change your experience of the season?
The sermon contrasts “looking at the launch pad” versus “following the trajectory of the rocket.” How does connecting Christmas to Easter and the cross change your perspective on what we’re celebrating, and how might that affect your witness to others during the holiday season?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
We find ourselves in Advent. If you look outside, the Christmas lights are starting to come on all over the place, so it’s getting brighter. But if we think of this as a time of preparation, it’s actually a time when it should be dark, at least initially. Because as we go through this time of preparation for Christmas, while the secular world is busy playing all the secular Christmas songs, feeling like this is the time of joy, the time of joy is to come. And we’re anticipating. That’s true in the overall picture of the story that we’re going to be going through over the next few weeks—the familiar story of the Christmas story. But it’s also true in our lives. We need to ask, what plan do I have?
Before we get into anything too deeply, I’d like us to just think for a moment about this past week. We had a big day this past week, Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving Day is a day that requires planning. Would anyone agree with that? I mean, you have this meal, all this food, far more than you can possibly eat. And you need to figure out, what is it that I’m going to eat? Because you can’t eat as much as you might of everything that you’d like to eat, right? We have all these different vegetables, casseroles, turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, different pies maybe, different cookies perhaps—all these different things that we can find ourselves drawn into. The question is, am I preparing well so that I can get to where I want to go? This is something we need to take serious time preparing and planning because you don’t want it to end up being that you miss out on what you were really looking forward to.
What’s everyone’s favorite thing on Thanksgiving? Sweet potatoes? Turkey? Stuffing? Cranberries? Desserts? Oh yeah, now we’re talking. Whose favorite thing on Thanksgiving is the pie? Thanksgiving is made as an excuse to eat pie as far as I’m concerned. The journey through the turkey and all the other wonderful things—they’re all wonderful—but I’m gunning for the pie. We need to plan out which pie, right? Because usually there’s pumpkin and pecan, and you have to figure out which one. I realized I just made a decision that will aggravate some people because I decided how to pronounce pecan. That’s a point of contention, maybe, around your Thanksgiving table. How many are on team pumpkin pie? And how about team pecan pie? Oh, okay, chocolate pecan—if you’re going to do pecan, chocolate pecan. Oh, now we’re talking. Yeah, that’s good.
So here’s the ideal in my mind: a nice slice of chocolate pecan pie right next to a big old slice of pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream on top. I mean, that is Thanksgiving. It’s good. You have to have a plan, though. I remember my grandma was great at this. Whenever she’d have dinner, she planned what she was going to eat as far as the meat, potatoes, and the vegetable—how much of it she wanted, what she wanted—to make sure that she was ready for the dessert. She had a plan in mind she was going towards and didn’t want to get too dessert and realize she couldn’t enjoy the dessert. You need to have a plan.
As we turn to the Gospel of Mark tonight, as the first Gospel we’re going to look at, we’re going to look at all four Gospels over the next four weeks, looking at how they introduce us to Jesus coming into the world. As we look at the Gospel of Mark, I believe what He is going to be encouraging us to do when it really boils down to it is have a plan—know where you’re going. This is a wonderful encouragement, I believe, to start out the Advent season because we’re going to have a lot of things pulling at us over the next few weeks. Is this going to be where I’m going to be planning and focusing my energy? That’s what He’s going to encourage us to have—a plan.
Let’s come before our God, ask that His Spirit would guide us, and then we’ll dig into the Gospel of Mark. Let’s pray.
Father, we come before You grateful that we have the opportunity to come before You at all, that as we’re reminded on Thanksgiving, but should be every day, that we have so much to be thankful for. And how much more than all else are we thankful that we get to come before You as those called into Your family because of the miracle that we celebrate at Christmastime—that the Son of God would come into the world, that God Himself would dwell in the world, that we might be renewed and brought to You, taken away from the sin that ensnared us.
Father, as we read Your Word tonight, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, would You guide us and direct us and apply Your truth to our hearts? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, verse 1:
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and honey. And he preached, saying, ‘I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’”
That’s what Mark has to say about the Christmas story. Anyone notice anything missing? No Bethlehem. Yeah, no Bethlehem. No herald angels up on high, no wise men, no shepherds coming. We don’t even see Mary and Joseph. What in the world happened here?
Well, I think a lot happens in what Mark chooses not to say. The Gospel of Mark is fascinating for all sorts of reasons. If you’ve compared it to Matthew and Luke, which cover many of the same events, what you find in the Gospel of Mark is that Mark wastes no time getting right to the point. He is on a mission; he’s speeding through, and nothing’s going to stop him.
Traditionally, and I believe this tradition has a lot in its merit, the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, but Mark was discipled by the apostle Peter. I think that fits somewhat both with Peter’s attitude and also Peter’s understanding of what’s truly important as he thought about the ministry of Jesus that he got to be an eyewitness to. And I think about him thinking, okay, now what am I going to relay to this disciple of mine, someone who’s going to carry forth the message after I’m gone? What do I want people to know? Well, several things, and we see them here in the Gospel of Mark.
The first part of it is that it’s the beginning of something. Well, that’s obvious enough, right? It’s the beginning of the book. But do we really think about, if we read this, I think usually at Christmas, if we turn to the Gospel of Mark, what we do is we flip over there, open it up, see this, go straight into John the Baptist, and think, oh, I really want Matthew or Luke. And we turn over there. But do we think about why Mark actually chooses to begin his gospel by saying, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ”? Why does he start with those words?
Many who have reflected have noted that it bears a similarity to the very beginning of scripture: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I believe that here, Mark, as he has us read those words, is not just simply saying the obvious: “Oh, I’m starting my book now. I’m starting my letter now. You’re going to read this. Oh, what do you know? It started.” I don’t think he’s expecting that we need to be told that. I believe what he’s seeking to do is to say, this is the beginning of something big. Something’s happening here.
It comes down to what Christmas is all about. What is Christmas about? What is the point? What is the plan as we approach Christmas that we have? Are we ready for what we really want to take off the table and enjoy? Are we just throwing things on and not really understanding where we’re going? Mark wants us to think about what is the real beginning here. What’s the crux of why we’re going to talk about the miracle of Christmas at all? What’s the beginning of the good news of Jesus?
It’s not just that a person was born, even a foretold person, even the Son of God. It’s the gospel that Jesus brings that starts here—the good news of salvation. For Mark, as he’s explaining this to Roman Christians who may have, as they heard about Jesus, kind of started to disassociate Jesus, the historical person, from the miracles, they kind of think about some spiritual concepts of Jesus. He wants to say something is happening here. He wants you to see that, and he’s going to take us through that.
But the first thing you need to know is that there’s a beginning here. And it’s not about the beginning of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t start at the Christmas story. Jesus—yes, we celebrate His birth—but we don’t celebrate His beginning at Christmas. The Christmas story isn’t about how He began. He already was. The Christmas story is about how we began to become God’s family, how He brought His good news into the world.
So Mark starts with, what’s beginning here? It’s the gospel. Take a look again at verse 1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” If the beginning that Mark wants us to hold on to is that Jesus brings good news, He’s not going to go into all those other details. It’s not that those other details aren’t important—we’re going to look at those in the coming weeks—but what Mark knows is that the people He’s writing to need to be re-centered, and what He wants to do is start with, what’s the point of this all? Where are we going? Where are we going? What’s your plan?
Have you put so much stuffing on your plate, you’re not going to have time or room in your stomach for the dessert that you should be waiting for—the gospel?
And for some Roman Christians that he’s writing to, they’re presumably not at least majority Jewish. They don’t necessarily need to hear about Jesus’ relationship to King David. They don’t need to hear as much about the fulfillment of prophecies—although he’s going to get to that in a moment. What they need to know is that this person hundreds of miles away across the sea or a longer way around the land actually ties into this idea of redemption that they’ve been hearing about.
There’s a starting point here that Jesus comes into the world, and the starting point that happens is their salvation. So it is an origin story. We’re used to those now, perhaps more than ever. Does anyone watch superhero movies ever? It’s almost impossible to avoid them nowadays, right? The Marvel Cinematic Universe—that’s the biggest movies that show up at the theater every year. And what do we find in those movies? Typically speaking, every time you introduce a new character, you have the origin story. Maybe the first movie about that character—what’s going to happen? Something’s going to happen to them so they can become a superhero.
I just finally saw, and I know I’m way behind—I finally saw Doctor Strange, not the new one, but the original one from six or eight years ago. And I finally saw that the other week. What’s it about? It’s about this man and what happens to him that causes him to gain the superpowers that are going to make him Doctor Strange and be the superhero that’ll show up in the other movies.
You think about, over and over again, whether you watch the Batman trilogy from 15 or so years ago or watch the first Captain America or any of these movies, what are they doing over and over again? They’re telling the origin story—how does this superhero come into existence? Sometimes I think we can approach Christmas a little bit that way: here’s the origin story of Jesus, here’s how He comes into existence. We fall into this trap where we’re thinking of Jesus as starting in the manger. Yet what we see throughout Scripture is that Jesus is eternal. Mark doesn’t need to tell the story of how Jesus comes into existence because He simply is. There is no origin for Jesus. He’s God.
So what is He going to do instead? With these people they’re wrestling with—how do I apply this new faith that I have? How do I make sense of this Jewish teacher in Palestine that allegedly has something to do with it?
Mark says, “Well, I’m going to show you.” So he races right on. He doesn’t stop and spend a long time in the Christmas story like we see in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. He races on right into Jesus and John the Baptist and their encounter together and so on. He does that because he wants to get right to, here is who it is that you’re going to come and approach. Here’s who Jesus is.
What he wants us to be thinking about is not baby Jesus in a manger, not the wonderful shepherds or the cattle lowing or anything like that. What he wants us to be thinking about is that this is the God of the universe coming into the world to save us. That’s where this is rooted. It’s in what Jesus does. We see revealed in what He does who He is. And who He is is not one who begins at the beginning of the Gospel but one who always is.
So what begins is the Gospel itself—the good news that God is coming to the world. Do we see Christmas primarily as the birth of a baby? Or do we see Christmas as primarily the story of how God brings rebirth to all of His people? I think that’s the question we need to ask ourselves.
What am I seeing at Christmas? The birth of a baby? Well, that definitely happened. It’s a true historical event. It happened, but that baby, God incarnate, was always God. Why is there a birth of a baby? What’s beginning in that moment? It’s that baby coming into the world that God’s people might be reborn.
It also then challenges how we approach our whole celebration of Christmas. So often, it feels like as Christians—and you’ll hear me harp on this year after year, and some of you are probably sick of me harping on it—but I’m going to harp on it again because it’s so important—we need to make sure that we aren’t the sorts of people who imply that after December 25th the only thing left of Christmas is the clearance sales.
It’s one of the reasons—and the Bible doesn’t say we need to put up a Christmas tree or decorate our house with Christmas lights or anything like that. It’s not that. But I think with those decorations we imply a little bit of how we’re approaching Christmas. It’s one of the reasons I always encourage people: leave them up. We always have a 12 Days of Christmas devotional series that we do, and we’ll have that to download again once again this year. The reason we do that is to think: the miracle that we’re celebrating isn’t something that happened on Christmas Day and then is over. It’s the joy that we carry well beyond Christmas, and we carry it all the way with us until we come back and celebrate it all again because it’s eternally good news. It never leaves us.
Christmas can feel a little bit like one of those origin stories. Here’s how Jesus comes into the world. But what we need to remember is the origin that’s being told here, the beginning that’s being told here, is our beginning—our re-beginning. God restoring us.
But as Mark notes, this gospel is going to be a gospel that as it starts is about a beginning, it’s also about an ending. We see that in verse 3—an ending to the devil’s power. Let’s actually start at verse 2.
We quote a lot more from Isaiah and the other prophets. The gospel writers certainly do. And what do we see consistently in that? This telling of the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the Son of God, the suffering servant, all these different pictures that we find in the Old Testament speaking about our God.
What do we find in them? We find that what happens at Christmas is the culmination of God’s promise that He’s going to defeat Satan, sin, and death. That the devil thinks he has a victory. The devil thinks that he’s torn away people from God and somehow he’s gotten the upper hand. But Christmas, God comes down and puts an end to that.
As Mark tries to help those who may not have this background understand it, he’s taking these prophecies that apply seemingly as if you’re a Roman—just as other people that they really didn’t have that much interest in at best and looked down upon at worst—these prophecies and showing how it strings together and connects together so that when you arrive at the birth of Jesus and arrive at the ministry of Jesus and arrive at the good news that they had started to respond to—that they needed salvation from their sins—all this connects together. There’s actually a historical plot to this.
But this is the culmination of the plot. They’re getting invited in after all the work has been done. They’re not sitting there saying someday the Messiah will come and rescue us. They’re here, and the Messiah has already come, and the salvation He’s offered has already arrived.
In that, it tells them something, and it tells us something. As we think about these prophecies—and we’re going to be doing a companion series on Steadfast on Monday nights looking more at the prophecies—we like to look at them because they’re familiar. They’re part of the Christmas story as well. We hear these every year and they feel comforting, but it’s more than that. It tells us two things.
First, we see that real historical people were told these things were going to happen hundreds or thousands of years before they did. And in that, we’re told something that should comfort us in our own lives and in our own moments of uncertainty, wondering what in the world is going on in our lives, is God doing anything? Is He involved? Is there hope for the future? All these things.
We’re told that the Christmas story isn’t uncontrolled. It isn’t some random chance event. It isn’t something where God finally looked down and said, “Huh, my earth is really messed up. I guess maybe I’m going to have to do something about it.”
It’s not that at all. What do we see instead? From the very beginning, from the very first sin, what had God promised? He promised a Redeemer. Someone who’d come and the serpent wouldn’t win. So when it happens—whether you’re in Palestine and you’re a descendant of Abraham and you’ve been expecting the Messiah, and then it happens; or you’re a Roman living in Rome totally oblivious until relatively recently about what was even going on—no matter where you were and how much you understood it, none of this is outside of God’s plan.
God’s in control.
And it’s interesting when you think about here as these people hear this, they’re in a situation sort of like us. Because we hear about this after it’s all happened and in that sometimes I think we have a hard time figuring out exactly where do we fit into the story?
Sometimes that comes even in the way that we speak about future prophecy. We talk about, well, the end is coming someday. Maybe it’s near. The end is near, right? You see the prophet on the street corner saying the end is near, repent. What are we told? What are we told by Jesus’ disciples?
What are we told? We’re told that the end isn’t near, it’s already here. Take a look at Acts chapter 2. Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost. He’s reflecting back on the ministry that he’s been a part of with Jesus and what’s going to go forward as the church grows. He says—standing with the eleven, lifting up his voice and addressing them:
“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be,’ God declares, ‘that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’”
Peter says, as Jesus sends the disciples out into the world, as He establishes the church, where does that fit into the story? It fits at the end. That might seem kind of funny to us. What did Peter mean that these are the last days and we know that was 2,000 years ago? What does he have in mind? Well, it’s the end of Satan’s reign.
Now, Satan’s still wrecking havoc. Our own sinful hearts are still wrecking havoc. We see these things happening. It doesn’t seem like the end still. Yet what do we know? The victory is already secured. Jesus already conquered death. Death. The plan is already set.
The chocolate pecan pie is already on the table right next to the pumpkin pie, and the cool whip is there. It didn’t get forgotten. It’s all there. We just have to come up to the table and partake of it.
And there’s the challenge. We’re told that God’s plan’s in motion. God’s plan’s connected. God’s plan’s flowing. But what are our plans? How often do our plans get interrupted? My plans got interrupted last night. I was taking some stuff out after we had been working up here decorating out of the van. I walk around the side and I conveniently forgot it was getting dark and I was looking down trying to move too quickly. And I conveniently forgot I still had the lift gate up and walked into it with the top of my head. My plans for the evening pretty much ended at that point. A lot of it involved an ice pack. It wasn’t the most fun.
Now here’s the thing we wouldn’t ever do in a situation like that, though. You wouldn’t say, “Oh, well, that didn’t work.” I would fall down onto the ground. I’m laying there on the driveway. I wouldn’t get back up and say, “Well, that didn’t work the first time,” and then just go right back into it, right? I mean, I hope I wouldn’t do that. And I didn’t, because it hurt too much the first time. That was enough to stop. I was stupid the first time by forgetting the door was up. I don’t need to do it a second time.
But oftentimes in our spiritual life, we keep ramming into the tailgate over and over again. We forget that God’s called us to trust in Him and to let Him work in our lives. We say, “Well, I’m going to sort it out and somehow have enough of a plan. I don’t need to pay attention to that plan.” We can do that even a little bit at Christmastime, I think. We look at the story of the birth of Jesus and turn it into somewhat of a morality tale: here’s the people who did some good things, here’s some people that did some bad things, and maybe we should do some good things and not some bad things. It turns into a story where there’s essentially, for all intents and purposes, merely a human baby in the manger.
We might not say that. I hope we wouldn’t say that. But we can act that way. So we start to approach Christmas, okay, so we have these things we need to read, we have these things we need to do, and then we need to make sure we have plenty of gifts and we have to get the decorations up and we have to go to the parties and we have to watch the classic shows we love or go to the concerts we love or do this or do that. Suddenly, we have all this stuff going on, but we’re loading up our plate and have lots of stuffing, but no chocolate pecan pie or pumpkin pie or chocolate chip cookies or anything. By the time we roll into Christmas Day, we’re too full.
Then we roll into the rest of the year and we’re still too full and we keep eating all these things that life throws at us, but are we paying attention to God’s plan? A lot of times I’m just trying to straighten everything out on my own and keep ramming my head into that gate.
But am I willing to see that Christmas is a call for a turning point? A turning point for our lives. It’s a beginning for the gospel. It’s an end for Satan’s rule. But it’s a turning point in our lives. Am I going to follow Jesus or am I not? Am I going to allow the Holy Spirit to work in my life or am I not? What am I going to do?
Verse 4. Notice what John the Baptist does here. It says in verse 8: “I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” So we see a couple of things here in John’s ministry, but the central thing, if you think about it, the very first real action that we’re going to see in this gospel is a call to repentance—a call to turn from our sins and turn towards God. Then John’s going to baptize them for repentance. Later on in the ministry of Jesus, we’re going to see, as the disciples are sent out, they’re going to baptize to receive Jesus as Lord and to fully experience that. But John’s getting this started.
And the starting point to prepare for Christmas and the starting point to prepare for our lives is simply to confess our sin. We don’t talk about that very much at Christmas, do we? It doesn’t sound very good. The closest we get is if we’re thinking about Santa and his list of those who are naughty and nice, right? And that’s not really about seeking to confess our sins. It’s about making sure that since Santa has a better spy network than the NSA, somehow I don’t end up on a demerit list and get a lump of coal. Although with energy prices, maybe that’d be a good thing right now.
It’s about somehow making my own plan again. What am I going to do then? I’m going to ram my head into that door again and again because what I’m going to realize is, no matter how much I want to be on the nice list and not the naughty list, over and over again, I’m going to fail. How often is it that we think, you know, I’m going to do better today. I’m going to love people better today. I’m going to be more faithful to God today. I’m going to pray more today. I’m going to read more of the Bible today. I’m going to show more kindness to my neighbors today. If someone needs help, I’m going to just be available today. Whatever comes up, I’m going to smile and be pleasant about it.
And then you get out of bed and you realize, wait a second here. Something goes wrong. What does John call the people to? What does he remind us that we should be called to? It’s a life of repentance. Turning away from our sin. It’s a life of repentance, turning away from our sin, but turning to Jesus. Not to doing better on our own, but turning to the grace that comes from Jesus. And that’s what’s so crucial about what John says is going to come.
He says, “Well, I’m calling you to repentance, but I’m not the guy. I’m not the one who can fix this because I’m just a guy that was born just like all of you.” John has an origin story just like you and I do. You need the one to come who is so holy. “I’m not worthy to untie his sandals. I’m not worthy of the task that a slave would do.” I’m so down in the dumps compared to Him that I can’t do the most menial, ugly, smelly, disgraceful task for Him. And what’s he going to do? He’s not going to come and say, “Well, you repented, but you disgraceful slime of the earth, get down and grovel.” No, he’s going to give his Holy Spirit to us. He’s going to call us to be a part of His people.
So we see this disconnect here. Here is the holiness of God. He’s going to give it to us. He’s going to provide His Holy Spirit. So we start with a confession of sin, and that’s the turning point that all of us either have reached in our lives or we need to reach in our lives. If you haven’t yet come to Jesus and said, “I can’t live up to your law. I can’t do it, but I need you,” then tonight would be a great day to do it. This evening would be a great time to do it.
Because here’s the thing. We have our origin story, and we need to get to the point in that origin story where we reach where we’re supposed to be. And as long as we’re trying to do it on our own, we’re not.
That’s one of the interesting things, actually, about Doctor Strange. As much as he’s trying to apply his knowledge to cure himself, he can’t do it. That’s part of his origin story. And I don’t think they necessarily meant that as an insight into how we need God to come into our lives, but in a sense, it’s sort of a picture of that. How often do we try to build our own story? What we need to do is take our story and realize how despicable it is and put it before God and let Him write the story.
Let’s think about a couple of those familiar passages we’ll look at over the coming weeks from the other Gospels.
Matthew chapter 2—King Herod is trying to figure out what’s going on with this prophecy that the wise men are talking about. Ah, there’s the wise men, right? Now we’re starting to get into comfortable Christmas territory. It says, “And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”
Turn to the Gospel of Luke. Here’s another very familiar story. We love this one, and we should. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased.”
Notice what’s happening in those stories we read. They don’t have John the Baptist. Yeah, he shows up later in both Gospels—both Matthew and Luke—but he doesn’t show up in that moment. But by looking at Mark and what he begins with, he reminds us what’s happening, what overlays on top of these things.
When we think about the promise to Bethlehem that this ruler was going to come out of him, well, what kind of ruler? Well, the Messiah. What do we see in all the prophecies? What’s the Messiah going to do? The Messiah is going to take on our punishment for us. The Gospel of Luke makes it a little bit more explicit there as we turn and hear what the angels are saying: good news of great joy, tidings from the Lord, right? Good things are coming. But what is it? It’s God’s favor on those with whom He is pleased. That establishes that we need God’s favor and that He’s going to provide His favor.
What Mark helps us to understand here is how that favor comes. It comes when we come before the Lord and say, “I need you. I need a Redeemer.” So Christmas isn’t just an event. It isn’t just angels appearing in the sky and singing heavenly songs. What an amazing thing that is. Those signify a time for a response.
And the response that the shepherds had to wrestle with, King Herod had to wrestle with (and we have pretty good indication didn’t wrestle with the right determination), the wise men had to wrestle with, Joseph had to wrestle with, Mary had to wrestle with—all the different people that we visit throughout the Christmas story—they all had to ultimately confront what God was doing and not just doing in that moment, not just doing up until what we’d celebrate on December 25th, the birth of Jesus. But what did that mean? Where was that going?
What we see is it keeps going back to these prophecies that say where it’s going is an opportunity to receive God’s forgiveness, to be made part of His people truly and permanently. Too often when we look at Christmas, we’re like someone sitting out watching a rocket launch. We just saw the impressive launch of Artemis a couple weeks ago now, I guess.
If you’re like me—and I love Star Trek, so anything space—I’m dreaming of the day that we have a warp drive. We’ll get there eventually, but at least first we’re headed—we’re working on heading back to the moon—and then we’re going to get to Mars, right? How exciting.
Imagine you were there the day they’re launching this incredibly impressive rocket. It’s going to take off. You see the rocket start to lift off and say, “Wow, I’ve been waiting for this.” You see that rocket lift off and that it’s starting to lift, and as you see it lifting, you keep your eyes sort of fixed at that launch pad the rocket’s on. The rocket keeps going and you’re just looking at the launch pad.
A lot of times that’s what we do at Christmas. We think about these things. We celebrate these things that are God’s redemption launch pad. Jesus has come into the world. He’s going to take on our sins. He’s going to declare this gospel to us. We see now the eternal Son of God in the world doing these things. But we keep looking at the launch pad and we’re not looking at the trajectory of the rocket.
But when we look at the nativity this year, when we look at the Christmas trees this year, when we see the twinkling lights this year, may in each moment that we do, that we don’t just see them and we don’t just see that beloved story of Christmas, but we see the story of Easter too. We see the cross. Because Christmas isn’t just some wonderful spectacle that gives us a reason to celebrate and have our family gather together and eat good cookies and pie and so on. We need another one of those after Thanksgiving. It’s past now. I need more pie. Come on. It’s so much more than that.
It’s not just spectacle; it’s for something. You don’t launch that rocket from the launch pad just so we can see an impressive explosion happening that clears the ground. You launch it so you can get to space, so you can get to the moon, so we can get to Mars someday, so we can get to who knows where someday. There’s a point to it. Maybe to launch some satellites.
Christmas is a launch pad. It’s the launch pad of the miracle that happens in history and happens for our salvation. It’s the beginning of that good news. It’s the end of Satan’s reign.
So where are we going to look? Are we just going to look down here this Christmas or are we going to start looking at what God has done since then and use Christmas as a time to reflect on that in our own lives and also as we speak with others? As we share our joy at Christmastime, are we sharing merely the joy of what happened on Christmas Day? Are we sharing why that’s joyful? Because it’s pointing to the cross.
May we see these pieces tie together and when Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus,” may we think about that and understand what he’s saying there. That God’s going to take that creation that we sinful human beings broke. He’s going to remake it. He’s going to restore it. And that end is here for all who turn to Jesus. For all who turn to Jesus and experience that restoring, that rebirth.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, we love celebrating Christmas. Even those of us who may not normally come to church, who may rarely if ever come to church, we often love celebrating this month and seeing the lights and singing the songs and so on. For many of us, even that come every week, we get caught up in this. It’s a good thing to be caught up in the celebration of this wonder, this miracle that You have done, Lord.
But as we do, may we see where You’re taking us. May we not lose sight of that—that You are the one who restores. The beginning is the beginning of the story of calling Your people fully into Your presence. And that we don’t have to wait for an end someday, but we can rejoice right now, for You are the one who holds the victory in this very moment.
And because You hold the victory, and because You have foretold it long before it even happened, we know that You are in control and that You are in control of everything, including our lives. That we can rest in You. We can have confidence in You—that You are the one who is working, that You are the one who can restore us when we cannot.
We praise You for that this day, and we thank You for sending Your Son, our Savior, Jesus. It is in His name. Amen.
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