Hey, please turn in your Bibles to Luke, chapter two, as we finish up our teaching series

on Advent.

And thank you to Bethany for the good idea of Advent.

There was every year where we were in need of Advent. It was 2020, right Bethany?

Luke chapter one.

If you are new to Advent, it is based on an ancient Latin word.

If you are extra nerd level, ad is a preposition meaning two and vent is a verb meaning to come.

That Advent we remember that God came to us in Jesus and that God will come again.

We look back to Jesus' first coming and as we have said of last few weeks in the history

of the church calendar, Advent was more about how we look forward to Jesus' second coming.

And at Advent, we get in touch with the felt experience of living in the in between.

On that note, please stand with me for the reading of Scripture as more than just a

first century biography but as the word of God.

Luke chapter one, verse 26.

In the six month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town

and Galilee up in the north of Israel.

To a virgin, pledge to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David.

Now that detail right there is important because in the first century, all Israelites were

waiting for a descendant of David to come as the Messiah and usher in the kingdom of God.

Israel at the time was under the oppression of the Roman Empire.

But hundreds of years before, God made a promise to King David that one of his sons or

descendants would do that job and Israel was literally waiting on pins and needles for

...