Advent Series: The WORD Made Flesh November 28, 2004
The Word “Hope” Made Flesh
John 1:1-5, 14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
When John writes, “the Word became flesh,” he is talking about the very Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, the “Logos,” God became human.
In this Advent season, I want to play with that phrase a little and talk about how Jesus is the word “hope” made flesh, The Word “PEACE” Made Flesh, The Word “JOY” Made Flesh, The Word “LOVE” Made Flesh.
Today I want to talk about how Jesus is hope incarnate.
O Little Town of Bethlehem
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in Thee tonight.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in Thee tonight.
Hope is a word that gets bandied about a lot at Christmas time – Christmas cards with the lone word hope on the front, songs about hope, marketing campaigns that use the word hope to illicit good feelings about a product so it will sell.
Hope in the manger
In Luke 2, we find two elderly people who have true hope – it is days after Jesus is born and his parents bring him to the temple to present him there. Vs 25-38
21On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived.
22When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23(as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord"[2] ), 24and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons."[3]
25Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss[4] your servant in peace.
30For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
32a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."
33The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."
36There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37and then was a widow until she was eighty-four.[5] She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
Almost any child born brings hope – we begin dreaming about the future of this little one, and hopefully it is a bright future, but this child born homeless & in poverty has more to be hopeful about – he has come miraculously, Angels have told the parents of his coming through dreams and visions, they heralded his birth to the shepherds, and now Simeon is prompted by the Spirit to meet him in the temple, and he rejoices before God because he recognizes that this child will bring the consolation of Israel.
This child of prophesy is a child of hope
We only get one glimpse of the child of Hope as he is growing up, he is 12 years old and in the temple where the teachers of the law are amazed at his understanding and his answers
This amazing adolescent is a child of hope
The picture of Jesus as an adult is a much fuller picture – he is a healer, healing people with only a touch or a word, hi teaching is like nothing anyone had heard before, his compassion is mated with miracles.
This miraculous man is a man of hope.
With all these signs of hope in his life, we might baulk at the prophetic word that Simeon had for Jesus’ parents
We might see Jesus as hope in his birth, his childhood, his ministry, but the picture that we have of him on the cross is about as hopeless as you get. The hope is gone, he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But this is where Jesus truly is the incarnation of hope
When Christ dies he is buying our hope.
The veil in the temple is torn in two
Jesus is Hope for a new life
We are meant to live in relationship with our creator, in fact, without God we do not have life, so to be separated from him is a very hopeless situation. But we are separated from him. The things that we do wrong, the things that our ancestors did wrong have separated us from our God – Paul writes of our hopeless situation in Ephesians 2:12-13
12In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from God’s people, Israel, and you did not know the promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. 13But now you belong to Christ Jesus. Though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought near to him because of the blood of Christ.
He says it this way in his letter to the Colossians: 1:21Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[6] your evil behavior. 22But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-- 23if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
A few weeks ago problem gambling was in the news because there was a study done that showed that the government made 30% of their gambling revenues from people who are considered problem gamblers. In those news items they talked about the number of gambling related suicides that occur every year in the province. People gamble far more than they can afford, and they get so deeply in debt that they have no hope or ability to pay their debts. They get into a pit that they can’t dig their way out of and their situation becomes so hopeless that they can see a way to continue living and they kill themselves.
Our situation before God is similar – we are born owing God all the good we could ever do. When we do something wrong, or do not do something good that we could have done, we create a debt to God – we did not give him what we owe him, so we are in debt. It is not like we could pay him back by doing more good now, because any good that we have the ability to do, we already owe him. We are in dire straights, but Jesus pays what we owe so that we can be free of that debt, and we can be free to live in hope in relationship with God – he is the only hope we have of seeing God.
Peter writes to us: "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 1 Peter 2:22-25
Hebrews 10:19-23 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
1 Peter 1
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, 5who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Jesus is Hope for a New Self
When I loose hope in my life, or get discouraged, it is not usually over my outside situation, or because of other people – it is usually because of my own failings. Jesus is not only our hope for a new life in God, but he is our hope to be better people.
In Romans 7, Paul is musing on his own personal failings & he says: 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Jesus is not just our hope to get out of the pit that we dug for ourselves, but he is our hope to never get back into that pit again.
If you had a bunch of money, and had a good friend that had got themselves into such deep debt from gambling that they could never get out, you might, our of compassion pay off their debt. But if you were wise, you wouldn’t pay their debt with out a guarantee that they would not get back into that debt again! You would require them to get into a program for gambling addicts, have the banned from the casinos…
Jesus goes many times better that requiring a guarantee that we won’t dig our selves into the pit again – he himself, by his Spirit is that guarantee!
In Colossians, Paul tells us that the hope that we have of glory is Christ in us by his Spirit.
Galatians 5
5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. …16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
God doesn’t have a “program” to keep us out of debt – he has a relationship through his Spirit, as we live in the Spirit, allow Him to have sway in our lives, keep in step with him – he will grow the good fruit that we want, and he will kill off the bad weeds that we hate in our lives.
Jesus is Hope for a New World
Although we need hope for a new self, we also need hope for a new situation. When we turn on the news, and hear about all the pain and tragedy that goes on in the world, as we hear about ecological degradation, disease, war… we might loose hope. But Jesus is our hope for a new world.
Matthew quotes Isaiah when he says of Jesus “In His name the nations will put their hope.” 12:21
Paul writes to the Romans
Romans 8:18-27
Future Glory
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
We have this hope that God is bringing a new heaven and a new earth – Just as we arte new people in Him, he is not in the midst of destroying this creation, but he in the midst of redeeming it! And we have a part to play in that redemption!
Christ In Us – We Are To Be Hope Incarnate.
Did you catch that line? – all of creation awaits, not for the return of Jesus (Iused to think that that is what it said) but for the revealing of the children of God.
All of creation is hoping for the day when we reveal ourselves as children of God and start acting like it!
Just as Jesus is hope incarnate, now, by his Spirit, Christ is in us, and we are to be hope incarnate!
Do you get that? You are to be hope in your office, factory, agency, school, friendships, family, neighbourhood!
You are to be Hope for a New Life
1 Peter 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
You are to be Hope for a New Self
As we life the fruit of the Spirit through the power of the Spirit, we give hope to those who are mired in their own wrong doing, and when they say “I could never be live you.” We can give them hope that they can because it is not under our own strength that we have the fruit of the Spirit – they have hope if they have the Spirit!
You are to be Hope for a New World
I have a woman who comes and sees me regularly. She is in dire straights – when she comes I often give her a food voucher, but what she really wants is for me to pray for her. She wants prayer because she has seen God answer when we pray together, but she also wants prayer because it gives her hope that God will help her through her hopeless situation. We must pray for people 1. because God answers prayer, 2. because it gives the people hope!
Some of you who are dragged down by the state of the world, or by the state of your own situation may have asked “If God is so loving, why doesn’t he do something about the suffering that is going on?” I have said before, and I’ll say again – he has done something – he sent you, he sent us. We are to bring hope to a broken world.
By having compassion and walking with people through hardship
By seeking justice where injustice is causing suffering.
By making peace where chaos is reigning in every situation that God leads us into.
By feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked
By protecting the environment (God’s creation) where we can.
By bringing relief to those who need it!
We bring hope by being revealed as a child of God!
Benediction:
Romans 15
"Therefore I will praise you among the nations;
I will sing hymns to your name."[3] 10Again, it says,
"Rejoice, O nations, with his people."[4] 11And again,
"Praise the Lord, all you nations,
and sing praises to him, all you peoples."[5] 12And again, Isaiah says,
"The Root of Jesse will spring up,
one who will arise to rule over the nations;
the nations will hope in him."[6]
13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
