Following the Revised Common Lectionary for Advent Year C, this four week Advent sermon series encourages your congregation to celebrate the promises God has kept, and also to keep faith in the promises God has yet to fulfill. Living in between kept and unkept promises takes great trust, and developing that trust is the major spiritual discipline of Advent.
Week 1: “A Promise to Put Our Hope In”
Scripture: Psalm 25:1-10 + 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
For Christians, Advent is not just about the promise God has already kept in sending us the baby in Bethlehem, but about the promise God has made us of Christ’s return, when we shall see a new heaven and a new earth. It’s easy to get impatient and even cynical while we wait for God to keep that promise. When we are tempted to give up on God’s promises, the poet of Psalm 25 reminds us to turn to God with our frustration and lament. When even God seems too far away, Paul reminds us of the witness of the church: the community of saints who hold faith for each other with their love, their joy, and their commitment to each other. With God and with each other, we hold our hope in Christ’s return.
Week 2: “A Promise of Peace”
Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4 + Luke 3:1-6
The prophet Malachi wrote to a people whose faith had grown tarnished from disuse and disappointment. The Israelites had returned from exile and rebuilt their temple, but everything hadn’t gone back to the glory days they remembered. Malachi, heartbreakingly, sees that his people don’t even believe in God’s love anymore. So he promises them a messenger to refine them with fire, to melt away anything that keeps them from loving God and each other. We think of peace as something soft, but it will only come through this kind of hard work. Do we have the courage to let the refiner’s fire work in our hearts?
Week 3: “A Promise to Rejoice In”
Scripture: Zephaniah 3:14-20 + Philippians 4:4-7
Few preachers turn to Zephaniah with any regularity, but God’s promise found in verse 20 is one of the most beautiful in scripture. God promises the people of Israel that God will bring them home. Home is a word that echoes through our secular Christmas music, and yet it can be painful and complicated. God promises us a home of warmth and safety, of welcome and joy. We trust that we are, one day, going home to God. Yet we also believe that in Christ, God comes home to us, to dwell in our hearts and lives, to serve with our hands and feet. Do we have the strength to be the home God comes to for Christmas?
Week 4: “A Promise of Love”
Scripture: Luke 1:39-55
Much of the Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise to God, is written not in the future tense, but the past. Mary trusts God to see her through this life-changing pregnancy because she remembers how God has cared for her people in the past; God is trustworthy not just in theory, but has proven God’s love for God’s people. Our gift to God in return is loving God before God has fulfilled every promise; loving God both because of our certainty in what God has done, but also our trust in what God will yet do.
Ministry Resources
Promises Liturgy
- Advent Wreath Candlelighting Liturgies
- Weekly Call to Worship
- Weekly Confessional Prayer
- Weekly Affirmations of Faith from the PC(USA) Confessional Statements
Promises Graphics (editable Canva templates)
Deep Well Worship 