Advent Episode 3: Hope and the Nice List

What if the arrival of Jesus was more than just a historical event, but something that can shape our lives today? That's what we, Chris and Matthew, are exploring in this episode of the Real Friends podcast. We delve into the Advent season with the theme of hope, closely examining the transformative power of Jesus's birth. The arrival of Jesus brought the world an astonishing gift - the promise of forgiveness for our sins. By reflecting on the biblical account of Jesus's birth, we shed light on how his arrival has instilled hope in a world riddled with darkness.

Now imagine a world where the primary problem isn't the life issues we grapple with every day, but sin. In this episode, we take a stroll through the book of Matthew, mulling over Israel's anticipation of a Messiah and their misconceptions. We unravel their expectations of a worldly military savior and introduce a different kind of Messiah - one who came to address the fundamental problem of sin. We also discuss how Christianity, unlike other religions, levels the playing field, offering hope and redemption to all. So, join us as we journey through the Advent season, exploring hope, forgiveness, and the message of Jesus's birth in a fresh, insightful way.

Transcript

Chris May: 0:19

Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in again to the Real Friends podcast. I'm, Chris, here with my buddy, Matthew, and we are bringing you another Advent devotional helping you keep your eyes on Jesus throughout this Advent season Exactly.

Matthew Ridout: 0:34

Last week. Well, we're on the theme of hope, of course, for the first week of Advent, and in our last episode we talked about the arrival of hope, specifically in Jesus's birth. That's the one of the two arrivals that Advent is all about, and the first one was, of course, jesus being born into the world.

Chris May: 0:51

That's great, and today we're going to look at one of the greatest facets of the hope that we have in Jesus because of his first Advent, his first arrival, namely the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew Ridout: 1:02

Yeah, we talked about darkness last week, and the darkness is from the sin of the world.

Chris May: 1:06

That's right. So why don't you read Matthew 1, 18 through 21.

Matthew Ridout: 1:10

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way, when his mother, mary, had been betrothed to Joseph Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband, joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Chris May: 1:47

As you read a passage from Matthew, a lot of our church people are probably making jokes about it.

Matthew Ridout: 1:53

Hopefully, yeah, they've got some familiarity with it.

Chris May: 1:54

That's right, but, as we've seen throughout the book of Matthew, israel had been looking for this Messiah. We talked about this last episode, this great deliverer king who would bring God's kingdom again to the earth. But when Jesus showed up, he did come as the Messiah. This was the arrival of hope, but Israel missed it.

Matthew Ridout: 2:13

Yeah, not quite like they thought he was going to come or how he was going to grow up. He was not. They thought that they were getting a worldly military conqueror. That's right.

Chris May: 2:22

They were. You know, in the first century, israel was under the bondage, you know, of the tyranny of Rome and they wanted a Messiah who would come in and obliterate their enemies. But that's not the point of Jesus' first coming. What Israel didn't see is that they had a greater problem than Rome, namely the problem of sin.

Matthew Ridout: 2:40

Yeah, and it was a problem throughout the entire Old Testament that they realized over and over was a bigger problem than they realized or was a problem at all.

Chris May: 2:48

And you know what's interesting Matthew is still today. Sometimes people forget that our greatest problem is sin. You know, people come to God and you know, for reasons like fix my marriage, fix this relationship, fix my finances, and God cares about those things. But those things are not our greatest needs. No, we have one great need and that is the issue of our sin, because sin separates us from a holy God.

Matthew Ridout: 3:11

That's what? Yeah, that's what. The spirit, that is, the spiritual darkness that we talked about last time, and I, in my mind, tend to think of it as a bridged chasm that we could not have ever gotten across on our own. That's right.

Chris May: 3:24

And what's interesting is, in every other religion in the world what they say is if you want to get to God, you want heaven. You know whatever they're offering, not the band, but they say you know you do 123, abc, xyz what have you. If you can. If you can, and which means only the most moral and upright, you know, and disciplined, can actually get to God, which is crazy to think about. But Christianity is quite unique in that it says it levels the playing field and it says none of us can get to.

Matthew Ridout: 3:58

God, yeah, and so the hope that we have ends up being it's not of our making and is not our responsibility, if that's the right word.

Chris May: 4:06

So, in light of the Christmas season, we can think back to when we were children and you remember the naughty or nice list, right, and your goal as a child was to be on the nice list, lest you get what for Christmas.

Matthew Ridout: 4:20

Oh, coal in the old stocking. Did that ever happen to you? Not that I'm going to tell you about.

Chris May: 4:25

Oh yeah, one of my favorite scenes and one of my favorite Christmas movies is in the movie elf. You know, buddy elf is at the North Pole and he's talking to Santa and he finally realizes Santa shares with him that he's actually not an elf, that you know his father is still alive, but his father doesn't even know that. You know he was born. So he wants to meet. You know, buddy wants to meet his dad. He wants to make this trip to New York. I want to meet my father. So anyway, santa says hey, there's something I need to tell you. Your dad is on the naughty list. When we think about the naughty list, you know, the goal was is to get ourselves off of the naughty list and onto the nice list by being really good. And now they have, like the elf on the shelf.

Matthew Ridout: 5:15

Uh, abby, I remember having a school project involving uh, I believe an elf on the shelf.

Chris May: 5:20

This is a brilliant idea, by the way, because it gets kids to behave. But you know, the idea is you have this elf always watching you and maybe, if you're good enough you can, you can get on the right list. So this might be a cheesy analogy, but essentially we are all on the naughty list. In other words, we have all sinned and fall short of God's glory. But the thing is, matthew, that nothing we do can get us from the naughty list to the nice list, because the chasm, as you mentioned, it's too great.

Matthew Ridout: 5:49

Yeah, it's unbridgeable.

Chris May: 5:50

No, in a million lifetimes we could not get back to God because of our sin. But great news in the Christmas story, hope arrived. And one facet of that hope, as we read in our text, the angel said to Joseph Jesus will save his people from their sins. Sin has separated us from God, but through Jesus hope has arrived because he paid the penalty for our sins. We have the sure hope of forgiveness.

Matthew Ridout: 6:19

I love that part that we don't generate the hope. The hope starts with God and it starts with Jesus, amen, amen.

Chris May: 6:25

Thanks for listening and we'll pick up again on the theme of hope tomorrow.