The Hope of Christmas – God with Us
The Legend of the Three Trees – Read by Joe & Joy Kelley
Thank you Joe and Joy.
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I enjoy that story because it helps to reveal how God perfectly works things out for His glory and our ultimate good, even during times when we can’t see it or maybe even lose hope.
Have you ever been in a situation where you may have lost hope that God was going to work? In this story, for each of the trees, the situation started out not at all like they were hoping it would and it didn’t seem like things would get any better.
But God worked in their situations, and used these trees for His glory and their fulfillment.
Christmas is a time when people can experience a lot of different emotions.
We feel joy at getting together with family, and
sadness that we can’t be with those who have passed away.
We feel good being able to give gifts, but guilt when we can’t afford to give.
We see a new year approaching and feel excitement for a fresh start, or we may feel that we are about to enter another year of the same mess we have been in and no way out so we feel hopeless.
If you are here tonight feeling discouraged with life or maybe even hopeless, it is my hope that you are going to leave tonight with hope and encouragement, a hope that brings joy into your life, not matter what you are facing.
This is really one of the things that Christmas is all about. Jesus came to give hope to the world. He is the hope of Christmas, the hope of glory.
Paul, who was one of the greatest missionaries of all time and who wrote most of the letters of the New Testament was a man called by God to share the truth of God with the world.
In one of his letters, the letter to the Colossians, Paul talks about this calling and he says in Colossians 1:25-27
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that he has become the church’s “servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The Mystery that he is proclaiming is Christ in us, the hope of Glory.
The Hope of God’s glory is available to each of you here tonight.
The hope of Glory came to us in the most unlikeliest of ways, in the form of a babe in a manger. But, it is in this hope we can rejoice because it is, just as the angels announced to the Shepherds,
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“good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” (Luke 2:10)
The good news is that God entered the scene to be with us and give us hope.
Matthew tells us that one of the names Jesus is called by, Immanuel – means God with us.
God came to be with us and provide hope where there was no hope.
What is the hope that He provides?
Well, this evening, I want to talk briefly about 3 areas that we can have hope in, when we are in a relationship with Jesus Christ, believing in God putting on skin and being born as a baby, living perfectly and dying for your sins.
Because Jesus was born and lived and died…
…we can have hope for the Present
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Tonight you may be here in a situation that seems hopeless.
Perhaps you have been unemployed for what seems like forever.
Maybe your marriage has been anything but good and you think there is no hope for it getting better.
Maybe you are facing financial issues that seem insurmountable.
If you are in a situation that seems hopeless, you need to know that God is powerful enough to change the situation and to change you!
And often he changes the situation through changing you!
As he changes us, He helps us to have a godly, eternal perspective as we continue to grow in Him.
And as we read His word, and see how He works, we see that God is able to take any situation that we are facing and turn it to our ultimate good.
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Romans 8:28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
God can take the bad medical diagnosis and use it to lead someone into a relationship with Him and change their eternity.
God can take that job loss and help you learn dependence on Him and wise stewardship and even lead us to a better job that we would not have had if we were in the same job as before.
There are things that are gained only when we go through the furnace of suffering.
But even as we suffer, we know that God is with us.
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Paul tells us that because of this relationship with the Lord, we can “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:2b-5)
When we know that God is with us, and that He loves us and that He is at work in us, we can rejoice and have hope right now, no matter what we are facing.
Transition
But we can not only experience hope for the Present, but also,
we can have hope for the Future
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Because Jesus came to be born and live and die and because of the relationship that we can have with God through Him.
As a general rule, as we live in relationship with the Lord AND FOLLOW HIS WAYS, we experience a better life. Not always easier, but better.
And that is the problem. We associate easier with better. Most of the time, the easier way is only easy for the short term.
It is after we have been on the easy path for a while that we find out that things can get much harder than they would have been if we had followed the better, but perhaps more difficult path early on.
But no matter if you have made poor choices in the past or are at a crossroads right now, you can have hope for your future. That hope begins in relationship with the Lord and in following Him.
Listen to what the writer of proverbs tells us
Proverbs 3:5-6
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5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Now this does not mean that follow the Lord and you will be wealthy and healthy and have no problems. But God’s path will lead to better outcomes generally speaking, and will always lead to having a greater peace and better options going forward in life.
Application
Perhaps in your marriage the easier way is divorce, but I will tell you that for both spouses, the better way is to place Christ at the center of your marriage and to work at it in his strength.
Maybe in your financial situation, the easier way is to keep charging whatever you want and worry about paying later, but the better way is to reign in your spending and begin paying down your debt. It may take a while, but your future will look better the moment you make that choice.
Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
We can have hope for our future when we follow the newborn King.
Transition
And as we follow and have hope for the present and the future,
We can also have hope for Eternity!
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For the follower of Christ, our future does not end or get worse when our time on earth is done. For the follower of Christ, we can look forward to a future that is eternal, spent in glory with the King of kings and Lord of lords!
Listen to what Paul says regarding death
Philippians 1:21-23
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21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;
Better by far he says.
When we receive Jesus, we have hope for eternity. It is a hope we are sure of, but that we don’t have the fullness of just yet.
Illustration
Have you ever known you were going to get something for Christmas, but you had to wait for it?
Maybe you snooped around and found what your parent or someone else was going to give you that Christmas.
Dan Baumann, in the book Dare to Believe, illustrates what it is like to know that something is yours even though you have to wait for it.
He says that when he was young he always did a lot of snooping at Christmas time, trying to find his gift and figure out what was in the wrapped packages which his Mom hid. One year he discovered a large package with his name on it that he knew was a set of golf clubs. One shake of that box revealed the unmistakable sound of clubs. He says, “When Mom wasn’t around, I would go and feel the package, shake it, and pretend that I was on the golf course.
He was already enjoying the pleasures of a future event. It was his, but it would not be handed over to him until Christmas morning. Then he would see with his eyes what before he had only seen with his heart.
Christmas means that Christ has given us the gift of His presence for eternity in heaven.
At this point it is still wrapped, but the package has our name on it. We know what awaits us. The promise of Eternal life is ours, to those who have believed in Jesus for their salvation.
2 Corinthians 1:20-22
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20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God. 21 Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22 set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Our hope is not just wishful thinking but is guaranteed to those who receive Christ.
If not for Christmas, if not for God coming as a baby to this earth, to be born, to live and to die, we would not have the hope of Christmas.
And even though we do not yet experience the fullness of this gift, we can know the greatness of it through the word of God and rejoice in it now as we continue to look forward to the sure hope we have in Christ!
Do you have that hope?
If you have not received Jesus Christ as your Savior, believing in Him, that He is “God with us,” the God who put on flesh and was born as a baby in a manger, who lived and died for your sins, and rose again to never die again, then you are without hope.
If you have never received Jesus as your Savior, then don’t leave here tonight without hope.
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The Bible tells us in Romans 10:9 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
If you don’t recognize a time in your life when you turned to the Lord and confessed your belief to Him, then won’t you do that tonight and experience the hope of Christmas?
I am going to pray and if you desire to receive Him and you believe in Jesus Christ as the God who was born as a baby, lived in perfection and died for your sins and rose again, then pray with me and receive the free gift of eternal life and the hope that is found in him.
Pray
Candle lighting
We are going to close our service this evening with a candlelighting while singing Silent night and O Holy night.
The Bible tells us that Jesus came into this world as the light of the world and for those of us who have received Jesus as Savior, we are supposed to let His light shine through us so we can bring light to the whole world.
Let these candles signify the light of Christ in you if you have received Him and as the candlelight passes and the light grows, thank God for the hope He has given us in His Son.
Silent Night
O Holy Night
