The Promise of Glory

Hello Church Family!

The great light of the world, long foretold by the prophet Isaiah, has finally dawned. This week marks the beginning of our celebration as we enter the season of Advent, the first step in the Christian year. Advent is a season of waiting and expectation, a time to pause, reflect, and attune our hearts to what God is doing both around us and within us. During this Advent season, we will explore the glory of heaven—promised for generations and revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

This week, we are honored to welcome Bishop Leah-Hidde Gregory, Conference Superintendent of the MidTexas Annual Conference, who also serves in an Episcopal role for the Bulgaria, Northeast, and South Georgia Annual Conferences. Bishop Gregory is a passionate speaker and strategic thinker, and we look forward to hearing her message of hope and promise on this first Sunday of Advent.

Rev. Adam Thornton

Sermon Transcript:

It is a true blessing to be here with you today. I am so thankful for the faithfulness of Dripping Spring Methodist Church. I am especially grateful for your pastor. He serves as one of our presiding elders, and we thank you so much for sharing him and allowing him to pastor some of the other pastors. We don't want anyone doing ministry alone.

And so in the Global Methodist Church, we have presiding elders that pastor the pastors. We also don't want that to be a set-apart role. We want a pastor who is actively serving, who is familiar with the workings of the church, serving in that role. And Adam does that in just an amazing, amazing way. And so we are just so grateful.

If you have your Bible with you, I'd invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter nine, or if you have your cell phones, I realize things have changed since I pastored. Nonetheless, those who were in distress won't be exhausted.

At an earlier time, God cursed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But later, he glorified the way of the sea, and the far side of the Jordan, and the Galilee of nations.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. You have made the nations great. You have increased its joy. They rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest, as those who divide plunder and rejoice.

As on the day of Midian, you shattered the yoke that had burdened them, the staff on their shoulders and the rod of their oppressors, because every boot of the thundering warriors and every garment rolled in blood will be burned for fuel for the fire.

For a child is born to us, a savior is given to us, and the authority will be upon his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

There will be a vast authority and endless peace for David's throne and for his kingdom, establishing and sustaining it with justice and righteousness now and forever. The zeal of the Lord of our heavenly forces will do this.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you please pray with me?

Gracious God, I thank you so much for this congregation, for the light in which it is with cool fire. Just pray that we may be saved to the community of Dripping Springs. I thank you, Lord God, for the ways in which they love this community and they provide spiritual nourishment as well as physical nourishment and then also provide for Christmas needs.

I ask, Lord, that as we come today to meditate upon this scripture passage, upon this prophecy, that you might be with us, that you might make the meditations of all of our hearts and the words upon my lips pleasing to you, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

So I really, really love Christmastime. I was a pastor for many years before I went into church administration. And I have to tell you, there is a different flow to the work in which we do when you become a district superintendent or you serve in church administration.

As a pastor, it was always different for me as a woman, as the mom, the franticness of Christmas. I'm not saying that Adam doesn't do the Christmas cards at his house and he doesn't do the meal prep and all the gift buying, but I'm betting Melanie does a lot of that.

And so for many years, it was my responsibility to make Advent happen for the church and at the same time make Christmas happen for the family. My kids grew up because I had three services on Christmas Eve thinking that the standard normal family had chili dogs for Christmas Eve every single year. That is our meal.

In 2015, Bishop Mike Lowry called me and he invited me onto the cabinet as a district superintendent. And that first December, I was shocked because nobody calls a district superintendent in December. Apparently, pastors are busy doing other things and committees have no desire to meet during the week in the evening.

And so all of a sudden, I found myself with Decembers not nearly as frantic as what I'd ever experienced. And as a result, I went over the top. And I will tell you, I decorate every nook and cranny of my house. I wrap my kitchen cabinets to look like presents.

I put twinkly lights on everything. You know those little fairy lights that come on the long string? I have 55 sets of those that I put all over the house, and I walk around with a remote control, turning them on every day. I love Christmas. I love writing the cards. I love the Christmas music. I love all of that.

But even as a pastor, it's easy for me to sometimes think that's what Christmas is about. But Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah reminds us the purpose that the Christ child plays in this world, in the story, in the story of redemption is not about the tinsel. It's not about the lights. It's not about the kitchen cabinets wrapped as presents.

It's about the people who walk in darkness seeing a great light. That is what we are here today. It is the very first Sunday of Advent. And this is the Sunday where we really start this moment of anticipation of what it's going to be like when the Christ child is born and the light is shined anew in this world.

And we reflect on not just the gift of what happened two centuries ago, but what it will mean to have the second coming of Christ and the illumination that will come and the glory that we will all experience as we move from this world into glory.

There are two kinds of people in this room, just like there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who know they need the Christ child, and there are those who do not. My prayer is that at the end of this service, you might recognize the places where you need to experience the Christ child anew.

I want you to take note. There are three things I want to point out in today's scripture. The first one is, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. Those living in a pitch dark land, light has dawned.

Isaiah was a prophet in the 7th century B.C.E. Everything in every chapter of the book of Isaiah was fulfilled within a hundred years of it being written, except for the first one. The first one is, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.

For this, this text served for the Jewish people to give them hope, to give them anticipation. And they waited seven centuries before the Messiah is born, just as Isaiah has prophesied.

And it is an amazing realization to know that while they, the Jewish people of that time, were surrounded by countries that wanted to overtake them, they had been split apart by civil war, so they were fighting with one another. They had sickness, they had brokenness in their lives, and they knew great darkness.

That just this prophecy gave them hope and anticipation. As Christians in 2024, we wait with that type of anticipation for the Messiah, for the second coming of Christ.

The book, in the scripture, we start in the garden. And at the end of the scripture, we end in the garden. And the redemptive work in the middle is all about helping us get back to our relationship with God, like it was when Adam and Eve walked in the garden with God.

That personal, deep, intimate relationship. Some people recognize that they have to walk in the garden. We live in a time today where there is darkness and there is brokenness, and the world tries to offer solutions, and none of them offer what Jesus Christ offers, which is a transformed life, lived as God intended it.

I'm sure for many of you, there have been struggles and hardships, and there have been conflicts. I'm sure for many of you, there have been struggles and hardships, and there have been things that you've experienced this year, things that you come into this season with that maybe this is the first Christmas without a loved one.

Or maybe your marriage is hanging on by a string, and you're just hoping to get through the holidays before somebody calls it quits. Or maybe you have a child that has gone astray, and you're just praying for them to find their way back to God, and you can't.

Or maybe you're dealing with an aging parent and trying to do the very best you can. And you're just trying to do the very best you can. There is darkness throughout our world.

And we can either live in that darkness or we can live in the light of the Lord, knowing the good news that Jesus Christ has come into this world to set it straight.

I read an article a couple of weeks ago that the new 2024 happiness index is out. It is a worldwide survey that lets the governments know how happy, satisfied different populations within their country are. We are the wealthiest we've ever been in the United States. We have access to more technology, to clean water. We have utilities. We are living a very blessed life.

And yet we are the most unhappy we have been since 1941. I want you to keep that in mind that that means through World War II, we were happier. That means through the Korean War, we were happier. The Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11, we were happier than we are today.

The darkness of the world continues to encroach upon us, and fewer and fewer people are finding their ways into churches and finding that hope. And I believe it's reflected in these types of surveys and our mental health surveys.

Every year since 2018, there have been 49,000 to 50,000 suicides every single year. The highest number since the Great Depression. People are living in darkness and they're trying to find the solutions to bring light into their life through the world, and the world has nothing to offer them.

The world says, buy more. You scroll through Facebook and you get all these ads, these things you can buy. You go on television or you live stream something and you get all these ads of things that if you would just buy, you would be happy, you would be satisfied. Your life would be worth living.

And we buy into the lies of that world and we just continue in our darkness. 50,000 people a year say they don't believe that Christ is alive. They don't believe that Christ is lost or that life could get better. And they decide to end it all.

The holidays are a season where more people commit suicide than any other time of the year. It is this time of the year where the church needs to be the church and to offer real solutions, to offer the good news.

There's a church in New Brunswick, Canada, and it's on Howard's Cove, and it is called the Worship House of the Church of Canada. And for many years until 1960, there were no navigation lights in this cove at all. Instead, the fishermen would line their boats up with the chapel because it sat on a hill and it was lit up, and they would use it sort of as a lighthouse to direct themselves.

And they would line their boats up, and they said as long as they were aligned with the chapel, they knew they could get clear passage to the harbor. There was a time when we knew that if we lined our hearts up with Christ, that we would have a clear pathway to the harbor, that we would know that light, that we would know that love.

That people who didn't even go to church on Sunday morning, they knew the place where they could come to find hope. But now the church has been taken to a secondary place. And yet they continue to get their advice from the world.

The city of San Francisco decided to do something about suicides in their community. And so they spent a half a billion dollars, actually $474 million, but that's pretty close to half a billion. They spent a half a billion dollars, actually $474 million, but that's pretty close to half a billion.

Not on mental health, not on expanding the capacities of hospitals or anything like that. No, their solution was to put in a safety net around the Golden Gate Bridge. The best thing they could do with a half a billion dollars was to put in a safety net to keep someone from being successful.

Isaiah says those people who have been walking in darkness, they have seen a light. We have access to the light. And as a church, we must shine that light.

The second point I want to point out is that in verse four, you have shattered the yoke that has burdened us. The staff that was on our shoulders and the rod of the oppressors, Lord, you have removed all of them.

And you have taken the boot of every thundering warrior and every garment rolled in blood, and you've burned it for fuel in the fire. I want you to hear me say this. God takes what oppresses us and he turns it into fuel for the fire of his purposes.

The worst that this world has to do is not the final word. We serve a God that is a risen God, that prior to the coming of the Christ, this world was ruled by sin and death. And through Christ, through his death on the cross and his resurrection, sin and death have been defeated.

I want you to realize that God is constantly doing a new thing, taking our brokenness and making us new. How many times have you lived through a situation where you have prayed to God for one thing, only to have God give you another, and it turned out to be the very best? Thank you, Lord.

I want you to realize that there is no darkness that you can go through. There is no brokenness. There is no hurt that you can go through that God cannot make something new out of your life.

I was thinking about the story of Joseph. Y'all remember Joseph in Genesis when his brothers were very jealous of him? His dad has favorites. And because he has a favorite, he buys his son his coat of many colors, and it is beautiful.

And the brothers get together, and they beat up Joseph, and they steal his coat, and they throw him into a pit, and they sell him into slavery. This is a pretty rough start to life for a teenage boy, right?

You would think that would be a darkness he might not be able to overcome, except then he gets taken to Pharaoh's house where he kind of has some ups and downs in that story. I'll let Adam teach you that part.

But at the end of the story there, his brothers who have fallen into famine come to him, and he is the person in charge of Egypt's storehouse, all their wealth. They're in famine. They're in need. They're living in a land of drought, and Joseph has access to plenty.

And they come, and they look to Joseph to provide for them. He gives them a little bit, says, go get your father, bring your herds, come back here. We will make a place for you. And that's what they do.

And then when they come back, they realize that Joseph is that brother that they had treated so badly. And they begin to confess their sin and tell him how sorry. And he said, no, what you intended for evil, God has turned to good.

Throughout our life, when someone has intended evil for us, there is no evil that God cannot turn to good. It may not be the way we wanted it. It may not be the way we had always dreamed it would be, but God is in the business of transforming lives and giving us new life, no matter our situation. Thanks be to God.

The final point I want to bring up is from verse six. A child is born to us. A son is given to us. The authority will be on his shoulders, and he will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

There will be vast authority and endless peace for David's throne and for his kingdom, established and sustained with justice and righteousness, now and forever. And the zeal of the Lord of heavenly forces will do this.

Here's what I want you to hear me say today. The kingdom of God is not like our kingdoms. God has this beautiful, peaceful, new life that he wants to offer us through his son, Jesus Christ.

One where, like Adam and Eve, we can walk in the cool of the night and have conversation with him. One like with Adam and Eve, where he was able to provide everything they could ever need or ever want.

God wants us to have that kind of relationship. God wants us to live in a Christocracy. It's been very entertaining—maybe that's not the right word, but maybe amusing—to work with churches who want everything to be democratic.

We've come into this new season as a church, and so everything should be democratic and it should be equal. And I have to tell them we are the church. We are not the government. Everything we say, everything we do needs to line up with Holy Scripture. It needs to line up with the will of God.

We live in a time and a place where we want all things equal, and Christ is saying, come to me. I will make all things new again in the way I want to do it. And we're invited to be a part of that.

Some of us know that we need the Christ child, and others of us wonder if that's even necessary. And yet God continues, even when we say we don't think it's necessary, we're not interested. God continues to offer the invitation.

Come, taste, see that my grace is good. Come, live in me a new life, not one that leads you into darkness, not one that leads you into financial debt, not one that has you running from one end to the other, chasing what this world calls success, but come and be with me, my child.

God is calling for you this day, for you to come and to experience his love anew.

This week, as you go about putting up your Christmas decorations, or you're looking at Christmas decorations and enjoying the Christmas music, I hope you will think about those twinkly lights that you see twinkling and how they shine the brightest in the darkness.

I had a gentleman come to me at the end of the last service, and he said, you know, I just heard a preacher say, there's actually no such thing as darkness. There's only absence of light.

Let those twinkly lights remind you that in the midst of the darkness of this world, God is offering us hope. And may we prepare our hearts with great anticipation of what God will do in us.

It's in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.