Well, Christmas anticipation is thick in the air. Christmas music dominates the airwaves, and the smell of pumpkin spice permeates everything. Beautiful lights brighten the night sky, and in less than one week from today, Christmas will be done. All the gifts will be unwrapped and worn or played with, or returned to the store for cash or credit.

And we're going to take the trees down and the lights down, and we'll toss them out or we'll box them up for another year. And it happens every year. There's this subtle sense, this subtle pang of letdown. And you can call me a Scrooge to bring it up this time of the year, but I find this sensation rather predictable.

Perhaps it's because we have overspent and underslept and maybe overeaten. Whatever the cause is, Christmas never seems to live up to the buildup. So why is that? To answer this question, a couple of years back, Pastor Matt Chandler preached an Advent sermon on Zephaniah 3, verses 14 to 20, in a sermon titled "God's Protection and Delight." And the sermon includes an insightful and helpful meditation on this point to ready us and to steady us for this season.

Here now is a little clip from Pastor Matt Chandler, a survivor of brain cancer, preaching from Zephaniah chapter 3. In verse 15, the text says, "Why do we sing and shout and clap and rejoice with all our hearts? Because according to verse 15, our punishment has been removed." And that's awesome.

Like our punishment has been removed. We are lawbreakers. We have rebelled against God. And in Christ, all of our punishment has been removed. That's true right now. That your judgment day, Christian, has already occurred. Now you will stand in front of God and you will give an account. And I don't know, for illustration points only, when they open up that file and pull your file out and slap it down, it will be dripping with the blood of Christ.

And when they open up the first page, it will say, "Holy, spotless, blameless." Not because of you, but because of Christ. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Yeah, I'm preaching. You can clap. Right? This is what God has done. This is why we look back upon the first coming of Christ and we sing and we shout and we rejoice with all our hearts in the God of our salvation.

And because there is no punishment for us, we will never again fear harm. Now again, we're in the space between. We're in the already, but not yet. It's a scary thing to live in a Genesis 3 world. I had to go get an MRI this past week. It was nerve-wracking.

Why though, right? I mean, if I die, don't I gain? Yeah, but I was still nervous. I had no control over it. I was still nervous. Met with a woman last night and her teenagers whose husband died Tuesday morning. There's some fear there, right? So we're in this space between.

We're in the already, but not yet. We know what Christ has purchased. He's refining us, working us, moving in us, revealing in us, churning our hearts, stirring up affection. And so we look forward to the second coming of Christ where all of this has been consummated completely. So we rejoice because punishment has been removed and we will never fear harm.

And then I love the verse 17. Our God is a mighty warrior who saves. I love the imagery of God being a mighty warrior. Think about that. God killed death. That's incredible. What enemy could you and I have that the warrior God of the universe wouldn't smirk at? Our God is a warrior.

He takes great delight in you. According to the text, he will no longer rebuke you. And then I love this. I've just got a question about it. It says God rejoices over us in singing. So quick question. I don't have an answer to but it's a great question. If the spoken word of God created the expanse of the universe, so powerful was the let there be light, that the universe continues to this day to expand in every direction.

What does the singing of God do over the hearts of men and women? In verse 18, we see that there'll be no mourning. In verse 19, there's no more oppression. The lame will be rescued. The exiles will be gathered. And then in verse 20, we will all be brought home.

I love verse 20. See, if we're honest, that all of us have a bit of a restless heart, right? We have this anticipation that one day that restlessness will end. And so we've been paying it forward our whole lives, have we not? You just can't wait to get to high school.

And then you can't wait to get a car. And then you can't wait to get out of high school. And then you can't wait to get to college. And then you can't wait to get out of college. And then you can't wait to get a good job. You can't wait to find a man or a woman to marry.

You can't wait to make a certain amount of money. You can't wait to buy your first home. Can't wait to have a kid. Can't wait for that kid to go to school. Can't wait for that kid to get out of your house. Can't wait to, right? You just keep paying it forward.

And yet, that I'm not quite there yet is persistent. And it just doesn't go away. Like Bono nailed it, didn't he? And I still haven't found what I'm looking for. And then some Christians grabbed that and brutalized great theology. They sang, "And I finally found what I'm looking for." No, no, no.

You're ignoring the theology of the song. The theology of the song is that we're in the space between. That all this is true about us right now in Christ. And yet in the space between, the refining fire of God's love is purifying, transforming, working for our good. What we long for is the second advent.

And in the coming of Christ, his life, death, and resurrection, our hearts have found their home. They breathe. They rest while we anticipate the coming of Christ. And listen, this is what Christmas is all about. So we're Chandler Manor is decked out. All right, stockings are up. Trees are up.

Trees, plural. Lost that fight about eight years ago. I don't even get in anymore. I'm just like, "All right, how many? Just two? Okay, let's go get them." And so trees are up. It honestly looks like Christmas vacation vomited in my house. So we're ready to roll. And my 10-year-old, for whatever it's him right now, is just geeked out of his mind.

A couple of times a day, we'll get asked, "How many more days?" So there's a couple of presents wrapped. They're under the tree. Every little movement forward kind of ratchets up the anticipation. And so we're not far. Come up here. Do around 6,000 services. Collapse and sleep. Wake up.

We'll open up presents. Family will come over. We'll laugh. We'll have a great time with them. And then everyone will go home and we'll—not that night, but we'll start to take everything down. And nobody's allowed to say this, but we all feel it. There'll be a tinge of disappointment.

That was it. That was it. Since Thanksgiving, we've been gearing towards this. We've been amped about this. You'll be frustrated with your kids because they're a little selfish heart. They'll just do something with a present that you spent good money for. And they're like, "Well, really, I wanted the one, not the 360." And you'll do what godly parents do, which is threaten.

"I'll take all your presents back. I'll start a fire, if you know what I'm saying." So what's wired into this season is a sense of anticipation. It's almost magical what occurs if you're really into Christmas. I mean, we were slated this week to go out and look at lights.

We're already three deep into Christmas parties. Got another one tonight. On Thursday, the Flower Mound Campus and Elders. We're going to go around this neighborhood and sing carols and hand out Advent guides. And I mean, we're all in. My kids are all in. There's this great anticipation for what is to come and we're all going to be disappointed.

Okay, so apparently you're not following me. The reason we're going to be disappointed is because all of this is a shadow of a greater reality. What's going on right now is meant to dial me in to an anticipation for that day that being disappointed is impossible. Like so rich and deep is the love of God that at the consummation of all things, 10 billion years from now, it'll be just as fresh, just as beautiful, and just as freeing as it's ever been.

That's the inexhaustible well of God's grace. You know, you experience some of the first time, it's just incredible. And then the more you experience, the more it kind of loses its luster. Well, according to the Word of God, according to what happens at the consummation of all things, that the Apostle Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians, that it'll take the coming ages, millennia, for us to even get a sense of how deep the love of God is for those he loves, the treasures of his grace.

And so I don't know how you're wired. I think of 10 billion years, I'm like, I don't care what it is, I'm going to be bored out of my mind. Right, I can't even now do something more than a day or two before I'm like, all right, what's next?

And yet so deep is the inexhaustible well of God that for eternity, our delight increases, our joy grows. This is what Christmas is all about. We look back upon the coming of Christ, and we rejoice in what's true right now. We sing, we shout, we rejoice because these things are true right now.

Our punishment has been removed. That's true right now. Fear is losing its power over us right now. We've moved farther. We've grown. We've seen God work in us, all right? God is a mighty warrior who has saved and continues to battle on our behalf. There is a loss of power of mourning over our lives.

We mourn, but don't mourn like those who don't have hope. We mourn like those who have hope. The woman last night we met with, Michael and I did, who lost her husband on Tuesday. She felt guilty for not sobbing and breaking down in our conversation. I'm like, sister, like everyone's praying for you the peace that passes understanding.

Don't feel bad about this. Rejoice and be glad that you're mourning like someone who has hope. This is true right now. Yes, no more oppression. Oppression is losing its power. The lame rescued disease losing its power. The exiles will be gathered. Brothers, sisters, we are aliens, strangers, exiles in this world.

And yet Christ, the great rescuer, the great redeemer, gathers, and that we have been brought home now. And so we sit in that and we rejoice in that while looking for the second coming, pleading for the second advent. This is why John ends the book of Revelation with, "Come, Lord Jesus, Maranatha." I'll end the clip here.

It's such a great reminder. Christmas is wonderful as it is. It's not the thing. This season will never satisfy our hearts. There's a second advent coming, and that should rivet our hearts like a child waiting for some Christmas morning that hasn't yet happened. In other words, we have a longing that remains and cannot ever get pacified, even in our best holiday celebrations.

That is so helpful. Matt Chandler, thank you, brother, for that reminder and for pressing us to think about it. Again, that was from his advent sermon titled, "God's Protection and Delight" on Zephaniah 3, verses 14 to 20. You can find it online at the Village Church website. Well, Christmas draws closer, and we have one final Christmas episode.

And it's a question about the marvelous fact that Jesus learned obedience as a boy. Scripture tells us Jesus as a boy, "Increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men." Huh? So how on earth did Jesus grow in maturity and why? And how will this give substance to our Christmas celebration this year?

That's the next episode, and it will be launching on Sunday night at 7 p.m. Central Time, which is Christmas Eve, or you can listen to it Christmas Day or later on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and we'll see you then. . .