Wonderful Anticipation - The Spirit of Hope
This past Sunday we concluded our Christmas series called Wonderful Anticipation, a series that followed the Church’s tradition of Advent. There are many different things that Advent represents. Pastor Robbie spoke about the Spirit of Hope, speaking from Luke 2. If you were not able to make it to our Gathering this past Sunday, know that we missed you and hope to be able to see you this upcoming Sunday!
Where in your history does Christmas and hope collide? Has there ever been an explicit connection between Christmas and Hope in your mind? Christmas, the day we remember the birth of the Messiah, should have a very defined sense of hope assigned to it. From the earliest times in Scripture, we see God promising that He will send a solution to the severed relationship between Him and mankind. Throughout history, we see God maneuvering events, people, and actions all of which were needed to lead up to Jesus of Nazareth, from the line of David, to be born of humble means to live a perfect life, die, and then conquer death itself. Because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we have life, and we have a relationship with the Lord and Creator of our world; all of which, begins at Jesus’ birth - on Christmas, the day we celebrate this event. The fulfilled Hope of the Messiah coming is the greatest hope of all!
Reading from most, if not all of Luke 2, Pastor Robbie speaks immediately to the actuality of what this Hope is, saying, “You see, this wonderful thing happens in the Christmas story. God our Father, in all of his awe and majesty, sees us in our weakness and He decides to crouch down, to come down on our level, and He gets down and He sends his Son into this world to look us in the eye, to affirm us. Then He does something right there, He decides to give us hope...and it’s not just this delusional hope; it’s not this hope that is focused on self-centered desires, this is a hope that can only be fulfilled in an all-consuming God. It is a hope to give us strength in the middle of our mess. And when we receive this hope into our lives, something happens. That hope is only in the person of Jesus Christ. Something happens in us and we change. It’s a change that comes within us. It is not a change in our circumstances, but it is a change in the way we perceive our circumstances.
The process that families go through to have children, is very simple, while equally complicated - this is true for our time and in the time of Mary and Joseph. In Luke 2:22-24 we learn that Mary presents 2 turtledoves for part of the necessary cleansing rituals for having a birthing a child; we learn uniquely that Mary would have been of humble means, to put it kindly - she and her husband would have been quite poor. I think a lot of us here find ourselves in the place where we are ashamed or embarrassed because we don’t feel like we are living up to be the person that we could or we should be. We feel like our life is insignificant and we come to this moment in Scripture. We come to this instance when the woman with the least to give gives the greatest gift of all; when the woman with little or no means gives the greatest meaning to the world. I don’t want to stop short on this point right here, this is a powerful point. The greatest gifts in our lives are not the biggest gifts, are they? All of us can attest to this idea.
There are three things that we can learn specifically about Hope from Luke 2, and several other passages addressed in this sermon. 1) Hope Always Brings Peace; 2) Hope Fulfilled Usually Comes in a Different Form than Hope Prayed For; 3) Hope Always Starts in the Infancy Stage. All of these points bring about a unique sense of tension in Scripture because Hope ‘realized’ is different than Hope ‘to come’ - they’re not contingent on each other. Is. 43:19 says ‘See I am doing a new thing…Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” While 1 Peter 1:3 states “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” In the first verse speaks to what is to come, the hope of the Christ that is coming - while the second is a come to pass truth, the fulfilling of the hope actualized into salvation for many.
True Hope has no end, and the hope that we have been given through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most eternal hope available to us. As we spoke about earlier, many of us may not think of ourselves as hopeful or ‘Christmas’ to be most pleasant of times, however, The point is this – all of us, when confronted with the presence of hope and the presence of Jesus Christ, our challenge is to rebuild hope within us. Then we are challenged before God to actually hope, that hope is deferred, but if we are willing to hang on, there can be this explosion of life. Christmas is coming, and a celebration of hope is necessarily what this day is about - not family, or presents, but the arrival of the Messiah!
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays - You Are Loved!
SOME KEY TAKE-AWAYS
Wonderful Anticipation - The Spirit of Hope: The primary culmination of Christmas itself, is the anticipation of the Christ-child that will bring about hope for a renewed relationship with God, available to all people.
Main Scripture Passages: Luke 2; Isaiah 43:19; 1 Peter 1:3
Hope Always Brings Peace: Hope without assurance for something to come, it not peace at all - peacefulness comes from Hope, especially the Perfect Hope of Christ.
Hope Fulfilled Usually Comes in a Different Form than Hope Prayed For: The People of Israel long thought that their Messiah would be a military leader, to save them from their enemies - Christ came for different reasons, but saved them and us nonetheless.
Hope Always Starts in the Infancy Stage: The Peace that Hope brings is not always immediate, dwelling on God’s promises allows us to lean into what the Holy Spirit desires for us to know - the seed of Hope is powerful and can develop into something unwavering.
If this topic piques your interest or if you would enjoy listening to this sermon in more depth, check out Legacy City’s Podcast, available here, or on Spotify and Itunes.
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