Are You Prepared This Christmas Season?

This clip is part of the sermon “A People Prepared" delivered by Kevin DeYoung at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC on November 30, 2025

How can we be prepared to receive the Christmas story in this Advent season? How can we be prepared for his second advent? Well, surely part of it is this turning – to turn to the true God, to turn from your sins. Notice there to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Malachi says, “And the children to the fathers.” You know what one of the signs – people talk about, are we having revival? Well, let’s pray for it. Here’s one of the signs from Spirit-wrought revivals. Families are reconciled. Fathers and children, husbands and wives. It’s more than an emotive worship service. It’s more than a vague spirituality. Children and fathers, parents and children, husbands and wives who were at each other’s throats turn to each other. And it says the disobedient turn to the wisdom of the just. The foolish are turning aside from their foolishness, saying, “We’ve been believing the wrong things. We’ve been turning from the people who have wisdom, from God’s messengers, from the aged, from the wise,” and they turn to them. That’s what it looks like to be ready.

And it means, as Luke’s gospel will tell us, blessed are the poor. Matthew’s gospel: blessed are the poor in spirit. Luke chapter 4: Jesus’ first day of ministry, he preached good news to the poor, which is not so much an economic designation as it is a spiritual designation, that you are brokenhearted enough to believe it. You can be brokenhearted and yet not believe. Zechariah and Elizabeth, no doubt they were brokenhearted. This was probably the singular pain in their life. And when the angel announced the good news, it was still too good to be true, and he could not immediately believe it. To be prepared, in this Christmas season, for this Advent and for the Advent to come, is to have the humility to receive the good news with joy and gladness. Gabriel was not very impressed with Zechariah’s reasons, just like God is not impressed with your reasons for not believing in the good news. Yeah, but you don’t understand what’s happened to me. You don’t understand the hurt in my life. But I’m old. But – no, no, no, no, no. “I’m Gabriel.” And Jesus can say, “I’m the son of God.” Don’t you want to believe the good news? The good news that there is a way for your sins to be forgiven. The good news that the end of this life is not the end of your life. The good news that everything in history has changed. Whatever pain you encounter, whether God will answer the prayer in this life or in the next, there is a light shining in the midst of the darkness. This is glad tidings, found only in Christ. May we have hearts to receive it humbly and gladly.