Simeon's Song - All I Want For Christmas Is Hope Series

All I want for Christmas is Hope

Luke 2:25-32

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

12-21-2025

In 1952, Florence Chadwick attempted to swim the twenty-six miles from the coast of California to Catalina Island. After swimming for hours, the fog set in and she became disoriented and discouraged. She finally motioned to the boat that she couldn’t go any further and they pulled her in. She was less than a mile from the Catalina shore.

But she couldn’t see it. She lost hope. Maybe that’s you today.

You may be able to relate to the words of an article in the Atlantic Journal:

“The world is too big for us. Too much going on, too many crimes, too much violence and excitement. Try as you will, you get behind in the race…it’s an incessant strain to keep pace and you still lose your ground. Science empties its discoveries in you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political news is seen so rapidly you’re out of breath trying to keep pace with who’s in and who’s out. Everything is high pressure. Human nature can’t endure much more!”

This was written on June 16, 1833!

Hope Floats

As a counselor, I know that this season is one of contradictions. While it’s billed as the “most wonderful time of the year,” many are experiencing a first Christmas without a loved one.

In the month of December, calls to the suicide hotline will skyrocket and more people will attempt suicide than any other time of the year.

Dr. Gary Collins writes,

“Christmas…may not be a time of joy and happiness for people who are separated from loved ones, without friends or the money to buy presents, worry about relatives who drink too much at the holiday celebrations, pressured by the demands of the season, or reminded of deaths or other traumatic events that took place in a previous December.”

People are looking for hope. They are desperate for hope. And many have lost hope altogether.

There are two types of people in the world. Those that fill up their gas tanks when it hits half full (like Maxine) and those who drive until the low fuel light comes on (like me).

Maxine has never run out of gas. I have…several times.

The solution to an empty gas tank is easy - fill the tank at the gas station.

Running out of gas is frustrating but can I ask you another, more personal, question?

Have you ever run out of hope?

Maybe it’s a financial situation, a health issue, an addiction, a wayward child or grandchild, depression/anxiety, fear of the future, hurt from your past, an unfulfilled dream, or a lingering question of whether you want to keep living at all.

Maybe you are wondering where God is and if He cares about the craziness that is going on in your life.

What do you do when your hope tank is running on fumes?

Where do you look when you are sick and tired of being sick and tired?

There is hope. Hear me. There is hope. It’s not in a program or a plan. It’s in a Person - Jesus Christ.

The word “hope” is used 52 times in the New Testament - enough hope for each week of the year.

In Scripture, hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is a future certainty grounded in a present reality. Or another way of saying it - hope is waiting for God to do what has already promised us.

Paul told the Christians at Corinth:

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:16-18)

To Paul, it’s about where your eyes are focused. This morning we are going to meet a man whose eyes and heart were laser-focused on hope of the coming Messiah who would bring comfort to his people’s hurting hearts.

We are going to look at his heart, his hope, his faith, and his song.

Turn to Luke 2 and we will pick up the story at verse 21.

Prayer

Joseph and Mary’s Obedience

“On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:21-24)