TITLE: THE HOPE THAT TRANSFORMS
SCRIPTURE: ROMANS 8:24-25
All eyes in Christendom have turned upon celebrating Christmas. In fact, this is what many Christians make of Advent, if they have even heard of it or think of it at all. The reality is advent is only distantly related to Christmas. It was celebrated long before Christmas in the church. Instead of centering on the birth of Christ and making sure the church is decorated properly and the proper dishes prepared, advent centers upon the second coming of Christ. Advent has been called a “mini-lent” by some as it centers around making sure we are ready for the day of His appearing.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the insanity of our times. If you only read the news headlines every day, it’s nearly impossible to keep from being sucked into the hopelessness that fills the lives of so many around the world, especially this time of year.
• We need Hope to Live
• We need Hope to fulfill our calling to the world
• That’s why I love the Advent Season
• It’s all about Hope
• Jesus Christ came into the world that we might have the hope of eternal life — with Him, in Glory, forever!
We as Christians share in the desire to be hopeful. What is different is what our hope is grounded in.
• It is not based on the next election
• It is not based on some government intervention
• These may or may not improve things
We might hope for a better job, or at least the prices go down at the grocery store. We are bound to be ultimately disappointed if we place our hope in anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ and His promises to us. Hope is transformational. We know all too well that we are not yet what we should be. We also despair that we are in ourselves powerless to change the situation. We seem to cry out with the APOSTLE PAUL “O WRETCHED MAN THAT I AM. WHO SHALL SAVE ME FROM THIS BODY OF DEATH?” But as soon as we say this, we realize there is an answer. “THANKS BE TO GOD THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST - THERE IS HOPE.”
In the text for examination we are pointed to the fact - we are saved by hope.
• Hope and Faith are closely related to each other
• HEBREWS 11:1 tells us that Faith has an unseen dimension to it - just like Hope
• Faith, like Hope, has the expectation that what is unseen will become visible reality
• I CORINTHIANS 13:13 pairs Faith and Hope along with Love
• So we are saved by Hope as well as by Faith
• Faith provides the grounds of our Hope which is in Jesus Christ
Soren Kierkegaard once described “faith” as “a leap in the dark.” He felt one needed to deny the ground he stands on and leap into the dark.
• But this is not faith at all
• Faith has content
• We do not deny reality and make a desperate leap into the abyss, hoping that there is someone up there to catch us
• HEBREWS tells us that faith is a “Substance”
• Something that is Substance is a Something
The Greek word used there is, “Hypostasis” has the idea of foundation or ground.
It is where we get our Theological Term -- Hypostatic Union which is a technical term in Christian theology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one personhood. What we need to do is to build faith upon this foundation. Paul tells us more about this foundation, which is Jesus Christ. This foundation became visible to us in the incarnation. The word became flesh.
• What the Jews had hope for had become reality
• To those who believe and believed, that hope has become reality
• This is no longer a Hope
• John tells us that the Apostles had SEEN, BEHELD, HEARD and TOUCHED this Word of Life
• This is why Advent is not Christmas
• We do not hope for a baby in a manger
• We do not prepare for the coming of the Christ child, even if it is understood as making room in our heart for Him
• We believe that Christ has come
We also believe that Jesus lived in Palestine some two thousand years ago, teaching about the Kingdom of God and doing many mighty works.
• We believe that He was rejected by His own people - suffered under Pontius Pilate - was crucified for our sins – died - and was buried
• We believe that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day - and was seen by many witnesses over the space of forty days
• We believe that He ascended back to the Father on the 40th day to the right hand of God where He now intercedes for us
• We also believe that He shall return to judge the living and the dead
• Somebody aught to shout Hallelujah
Even though we have not personally seen these events, they were seen and witnessed to, by those who had walked with Him.
• But we also believe that the Father sent the Holy Spirit into the believers to testify to the truth of these events
• Faith is not blind
• It is certain and stands on solid ground
So when we look at Hope, we could perhaps describe it as faith that has not yet been realized.
• We do not see it with these eyes
• It is invisible
• There are no human witnesses we can enquire of when the Day He shall return will be or what will be served at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb
• ST. MATTHEW 24:36 “BUT OF THAT DAY AND HOUR NO ONE KNOWS, NOT EVEN THE ANGELS OF HEAVEN, BUT MY FATHER ONLY”
Scripture does inform us to some degree, so even here we are not entirely blind like those who are without this hope. We do admit with Paul that we see through a glass darkly. But Hope says that what we now see dimly we shall experience face to face.
• Hope is a floodlight on a dark night which gives us comfort
• But this light also anticipates that the sun shall rise in the morning to dispel the gloom
• It is a leap in the dark - but it is not a blind leap
We put our hope in the myth of progress -- But very few of us feel up and better this December over last December.
• We put our hope in politics to solve the problem of the human condition -- but D.C. is a mess
• We put our hope in secular humanism to end injustice, in particular racial injustice, in our nation that goes back hundreds of years -- but it cannot deliver on its promise
• We put our hope in the church -- but it turns out, we too are human and fragile
• We put our hope some two years ago in a COVID Vaccine -- While the vaccine has done much good -- it cannot offer “salvation for humanity”
Therefore, our hope is not passive. We don’t just continue to look at our wretchedness and wallow in it. hope is active. We are aware that we shall be changed at some point into a new and glorious body. But this isn’t just something for the sweet by and by. We don’t know exactly how we shall appear in that day, but we trust that by the Lord’s Grace we will get there. We are promised that we will be like him and that we shall see him as he is.
• Have we not wondered what it would have been like to have walked in Galilee with Jesus
• What an awesome privilege the Apostles had
• They beheld Him
• They saw His works
• They heard His teachings
• They handled the Word of Life
We cannot but read the testimony of the Apostles who knew Him from the beginning of His earthly ministry. Even though we have not seen, we are beckoned to believe on Him. But we also have the indwelling of the holy spirit which confirms the message of the Prophets and Apostles of old. This is the reminder to us that advent is for us the believers. This is the season to give our faith a workout - in which to exercise our hope muscles.
• Some years make that exercise more difficult than others
• But it’s Advent now, and, as people of faith, we are called upon to exercise our Hope
If hope isn’t created for times such as these —
• When countries are divided
• When civil war annihilates whole communities and sends refugees fleeing
• When hungry children are ignored because their interests are of no interest to powerful entities
• When human beings are trafficked by the thousands to be used for sex or cheap labor
• When industry and wealth win over the health of the planet and all its creatures and the global community
• When the hungry cannot be fed because we cannot satisfy the rich
• If Hope isn’t created for times such as these, then why have Hope at all?
So let’s try advent once again. Let’s practice a hopeful way of being in the world. I know it can be challenged in this world and times in which we live. We live in a world in which bigger and better define our expectations for much of life. We have become so enamored by Super Size - Super Stars - High Definition that we tend to view life through a lens that so magnifies what we expect out of the world that we tend not to see potential in small things. But as the PROPHET ZECHARIAH 4:10 reminds us, WE SHOULD NOT "DESPISE THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS," because God does some of his best work with small beginnings and impossible situations.
It is truly a humbling experience to read back through the Old Testament and see how frail and imperfect and seemingly impossible all the "Heroes" God used actually are.
• ABRAHAM, the coward who cannot believe the promise
• JACOB, the cheat who struggles with everybody
• JOSEPH, the immature and arrogant teen
• MOSES, the impatient murderer who cannot wait for God
• GIDEON, the cowardly Baal-worshipper
• SAMSON, the womanizing drunk
• DAVID, the power abusing adulterer
• SOLOMON, the unwise wise man
• HEZEKIAH, the reforming king who could not quite go far enough
• And finally, a VERY YOUNG JEWISH GIRL FROM A SMALL VILLAGE in a remote corner of a great empire
It never ceases to amaze me that God often begins with small things and inadequate people. It certainly seems that God could have chosen "Bigger" things and "Better" people to do His work in the world. Yet if God can use them, and reveal Himself through them in such marvelous ways, it means that He might be able to use me, inadequate, and unwise, and too often lacking in faith that I am. And it means that I need to be careful that I do not in my own self-righteousness put limits on what God can do with the –
• Smallest things
• Most unlikely of people
• Most hopeless of circumstances
• I think that is part of the wonder of the Advent Season
I am convinced that one of the main purposes of the incarnation of Jesus was to provide Hope. While most people today want to talk about the death of Jesus and the Atonement of sins, the early Church celebrated the Resurrection and the hope it embodied.
• It was a proclamation of a truth that rang throughout the Old Testament
• That endings are not always endings but are opportunities for God to bring new beginnings
• The Resurrection proclaimed that truth even about humanity’s greatest fear, death itself
Both the season of advent and the season of lent are about hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it.
• It is more about hope that human existence has meaning and possibility beyond our present experiences
• A hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be
• It is not that we have possibility in ourselves
• But that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible
God's people in the first century wanted Him to come and change their oppressive circumstances and were angry when those immediate circumstances did not change. But that is a short sighted view of the nature of hope. Our hope cannot be in circumstances, no matter how badly we want them or how important they are to us. The reality of human existence, with which the Book Of Job struggles, is that God's people experience that physical existence in the same way that others do.
--Christians get sick and die
--Christians are victims of violent crimes
--Christians are hurt and killed in traffic accidents – bombings – war - and in some parts of the world, famine
--If our Hope is only in our circumstances, as we define them to be good or as we want them to be to make us happy, we will always be disappointed
--That is why we Hope, not in circumstances, but in God
--MY HOPE IS BUILT ON NOTHING LESS THAN JESUS BLOOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS
--Yes, my Brothers and Sisters – THE HOPE THAT TRANSFORMS
