Five Reasons You Should Celebrate Advent

5. It’s the Antidote to the Commercial “Christmas Season”

We all know it, and most of us have said it: modern culture has commercialized Christmas and replaced the babe in a manger with an ever growing list of products for sale.  The very name “Christmas season” has morphed into “holiday season” in many quarters. What better way to keep the truth of Christmas in the center of our minds than to intentionally focus on Advent, as untold millions of Christians have done over the centuries.

Read “What Every Christian Should Know About The Season of Advent”

4. It’s An Opportunity To Rehearse and Emphasize The Whole Gospel as Part of the Christian Year.

To know the seasons of the Christian Year is to know the milestones of Christ’s earthly ministry — from the promise of His coming at Advent through His resurrection at Easter and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  The Christian Year teaches the gospel, just as the basic liturgical pattern in many Christian worship services teaches the gospel each week.

Read “Elements Of A Christian Worship Service: Why We Do What We Do At Sojourn”

3. It’s A Way To Live In Hope (Even In Perilous Times)

Advent is about anticipation and hope.  It’s about putting our faith in God’s promise to send a messiah, a savior, a deliverer and Prince of Peace.  In the United States, after each election cycle we invest hope in the coming of a new presidential administration, a new congress, a new state governor — fallible people who may or may not be able to keep us relatively safe and secure for a short while.  To what greater degree should we invest hope in the coming of the one for whom “every knee will bow and every tongue confess” that He is Lord?

Watch Sojourn Pastor Daniel Montgomery’s Sermon, “Christ For President”

2. It Provides A Place And Structure For Lament

As the great advent song cries:

O come, o come Emmanuel – and ransom captive Israel

This world is filled with suffering and injustice.  Christians must acknowledge it and even be saddened and outraged by it.  This does not show a lack of faith.  It is, in fact, what the Bible teaches us to do — particularly in the Psalms.

Read “How To Plan A Worship Service When The Congregation is Grieving Or Hurting”

1. It Reminds Us To “Watch and Pray” For The Second Coming

Just as God’s people waited for the first coming (advent) of the messiah, we await His promised return.  And we aren’t literally awaiting a baby in a manger.  Rather, by rehearsing the expectation that saints of old experienced before Jesus came, we are reminded that Scripture has promised one more “coming.”  And this one will end in final, blessed victory and “peace on earth, goodwill to men” for all eternity.  Because Advent is the time in which we “let every heart prepare Him room,” our spirits cry “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!”

Read “Is Joy To The World only a Christmas Song”

and

“New Joy To The World melody lets the text speak”