Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Good morning to everyone.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: All right.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: I was supposed to preach last week, but was under the weather. So I want to thank Sam for sacrificing the Sunday of his vacation week. I probably should thank him as well since that was a mutual sacrifice for sub inform me last week and doing his sermon on faith, which was outstanding.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: I am really looking forward to following that up with the topic that we have today.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Getting an extra week to think through. This is kind of a blessing and a curse.
I'm. I'm a second guesser by nature and so I can't count the number of times I changed the sermon I was going to give last week to the one that you're going to hear. Today is also an extra 7 days for my subconscious to add content to my traditional Saturday night sermon crisis stream.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Do you have those still? Sam, are you over that?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: It happens every time. I don't know. I figured it was just because I haven't done enough of these to get over it, but maybe not.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: It started wandering into church the Sunday morning I was giving my sermon. Although it wasn't this church, it was the church I grew up in.
For some reason I forgot my Bible and the church didn't have any.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: And for some reason my sermon narrative, which you can see here, was twice as thick as I thought it was. And it was filled with like random Internet printouts and financial statements and I was furiously trying to pull all that stuff out of the sermon without pulling out the stuff that I was supposed to do. And that's how I woke up this morning.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: So I. Yeah, that seven days did not go well. It just. It just didn't.
I should have motored through it last week.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: So.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: I know I. I know I am.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Although. Although some of those friends, I'll tell you, I have a.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: I'm. I'm a history buff. Okay? I'm a total history now. That's one of the reasons I'm so excited about jumping into Luke chapter one this morning. Because it's. It's history. It's a story that. That's central to our story, if you will. History is all around us. It's everywhere. It's in the daily activities that we do. It's in the news that we hear. Obviously it's in the scriptures.
Even. Even this shirt is a historical artifacts. Did. Did you know that?
Yeah.
If you.
If you're wondering what I'm talking about, just ask one of our very kind ladies here about the great Easter conspiracy.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: And you'll find out everything you want to know. About our wives.
Okay.
But I. I'm really looking forward to this. Sam, a number of months ago, was putting together the. Or the guys were putting together the. The quarterly sermon schedule schedule. And Sam gave me a choice on what to preach on this quarter, very graciously. One of those was the Advent sermon on Hope and Hope, which is our topic today. As you've surmised, it has been a real transformative topic in my life, even in my recent spiritual growth. This is a topic that we all need to camp on. It's one that we need to understand and have a biblical perspective about.
If we don't, we're going to be robbed of much of the confidence and power that we have to serve God well in the life that he's given us with the resources that he's given us. And so this topic of hope, obviously is apropos for Advent, but it's appropriate for every day of our lives. And I would argue that it's probably crucial for us to consider the importance of it and the reality of it in our lives.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Hope's one of those words that most of us experience kind of way more often as a feeling than we think about it as a serious biblical topic. It has kind of an emotional connotation in our world today. It's that kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best sort of thing.
I think of the big three, faith, hope and love.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Hope is probably the one that we spend the least time consciously thinking about and making a central part of the sanctifying journey that we take through life. But it's an absolutely crucial quality. It's absolutely crucial to the life of an absure believer.
As I said, the absence of it robs us of the power to serve God in the way that he wants us to. Maybe that's because in our modern world, hope is filled with a different connotation than we take. Maybe it's because our world is filled with so many comforts and conveniences that our longing for a better world is faded.
Honestly, that happens to us from time to time. Maybe it's simply because I find that word in Scripture about half as many times as I find the words faith and love. It's not a topic that happens as frequently, but it's no less important.
Maybe because, like I said, it's because we've adopted the world's definition of hope more than we think, and therefore we fail to see its centrality as the motivating dynamic for everything that we do as believers. It is so important that it is absolutely Essential to what we consider as believers. Biblical hope, not the world's hope, but biblical hope is the confidence that spurs us on to faithful service. It helps us persistently endure in the face of trials of every kind.
And perhaps most importantly, it is the unmistakable mark. It's the unmistakable mark of the child of God which makes the gospel compelling to the unbeliever. Remember, what does Peter say in First Peter, Chapter three? Be ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason. For what?
The hope. The hope that is in you. It's that hope that marks you as unique in the eyes of the world. And we're going to talk a little about why that is.
Of those three again, I can argue that hope is the most distinctive, visible quality of the believer in the eyes of the world.
Obviously, it should be in our eyes as well. It's the most surprising, I think, given the circumstances we find ourselves in our world. It's the most scandalous as well, because of the absolute confidence with which we can hold it.
And it's the most compelling, as First Peter said, given that Christians will sacrifice anything in light of it in service for their Lord.
So what is this hope that we're talking about? We're going to spend some time in Luke chapter one today on a story that's familiar to many of you and for which the topic of hope is central. Before you do that, let's open up in prayer and ask for the Lord's blessing and what we're doing.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Lord, this season particularly, we are grateful and thankful for a gift giving God, for a grace that is ours, undeserved, unlooked for and rejected for a hope that you've offered to us.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Far beyond what we would ask or think.
But we're grateful for the opportunity to gather together as a family, to open your word that you've given to us of your grace, to consider it together. Lord, I ask that the words that would come from my mouth would be beneficial and profitable, that they would glorify you ultimately, that you would spur us on to greater service and thankfulness for what you've done for us. In the light of it, pray that in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: All right.
Luke's Gospel and the Book of Acts obviously are probably our most formally constructed history, history of Jesus and the early church. Luke kind of begins the book, the first five verses that we're not going to look at in great detail today, kind of by describing why and how he went about compiling a well researched historical account.
It almost reads like the introduction to a textbook kind of a textbook will have a preference that kind of explains, this is the approach that I took. This is why I did it. This is why it's important in. Luke kind of goes into that in the first four verses of the chapter in a very interesting way. He does it a bit in. In the first part of Acts as well. It's almost methodological. And so Luke and. And Acts are this formal history that we have of the. The life and ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. And Luke took great pains to explore sources, to interview eyewitnesses, to compile it in an orderly manner, in order that this singular sequence of events would be captured in a way that was the most accurate and understandable. And so he does that. It's almost a technical description of what he's going to do. But, and I love this about this part of Luke. He basically just starts the account with a story.
He just starts it with a story.
And it reminds me almost immediately that history isn't an academically sterile lecture.
It's not a textbook.
History is grounded in human experience. Scripture is grounded in human experience. That's really familiar to all of us. It's about people.
It's about normal, everyday people, mostly. Well, look how he starts. I'm going to read the first part of this passage. Luke 5 or Luke 1, starting with verse 5. In the days of Herod of Judea, there was a priest of Abijah's division named Zechariah.
His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both were righteous in God's sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord.
But they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive. And both of them were well along in years.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: It's kind of funny, but there are always parallel stories at play in the Scripture accounts. There's always this broad, massive, sweeping story of God that kind of was forged in eternity past. And it's carried on through millennia, through thousands of years, towards an inevitable climax at the end. It's the story of all stories. It's broad, it's huge, it's sweeping, it encompasses everything. Luke's account captures the majesty of that story in all its incarnational fullness, because that's obviously the center of his topic. It's big, it's incomprehensible in all of its complexity. And every one of us is just swept along in its large current. That's what we see in Luke. But then we get to these passages like. Like Verse five. And they're just plain people in it.
They're people that few would remember beyond their own deaths.
They have very average circumstances, they have very modest personal dreams.
They have human little challenges. And they're very temporal disappointments.
The contrast between those two stories is really stark. And you see that parallelism all over scripture. There's a reason for that. But here and there, like in this passage, God's big story inhabits the little one.
The vastness of the mind of God focuses attention on individual people, people we can relate to, people that we identify with.
People like Zachariah and Elizabeth. People like you and me.
Not the elite and the illustrious, but the average and the everyday. I love that about scripture. The people are in it that you would least expect because God loves to work that way. So, so basically he just starts this sweeping history by saying, okay, there's this guy named Zach and he was married to Beth, right?
Zach had kind of a semi menial government job and. And there was nothing too special about them. Although he says they were moral people devoted to God and his commandments.
A great commendation.
And that will play into our story. They longed to have children, but they were unable to.
And they probably had given up hope that their dream of children to carry on the family name would ever happen because it says they were well along in years.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: The angel's words to Zechariah in later verses indicate that children were the desire of their heart. It was obviously Zachariah's prayer over and over again.
Beyond being a fundamental purpose of their union, children were considered a sign of God's blessing. We've talked about this before in recent sermons.
The lack of children was often, particularly for the wife, considered by the culture as a sign of God's disapproval.
Shadowless women were naturally excluded for much of married female culture.
The failure to carry on the family name marked the husband as well.
The fact that the biological reasons for infertility were simply not understood made it all the more difficult to explain in terms that didn't implicitly accuse the couple of missing God's will.
That's a hopeless circumstance to be in. That was a burden that Zachariah and Elizabeth bore for many years publicly, no doubt with ever diminishing hope as the childbearing years passed them by him.
A circumstance perhaps some of us have experienced.
I can imagine their hopes for God's blessing may have been in very short supply by this time. I wouldn't blame him for that.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Luke goes out of his way to mention something, says both were righteous in God's sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: That's a phrase we shouldn't stop at. We shouldn't pass by. We probably need to camp on it just a little.
Despite their circumstances, despite the waiting, despite the diminishing hope, what'd they do? They carried on.
They endured.
Brings us to our main point number one, anyway.
My hope My hope in Christ transcends timing and it transcends circumstance.
The positive, awestruck anticipation of God's blessing, which ought to govern both my heart and my public demeanor, is dependent neither on what is happening to me in the moment, nor is it dependent on how long I have waited for the heart's desire of my life.
God's ways with us and how long he decides to tarry while we wait for them are absolutely inscrutable, absolutely incomprehensible. We're utterly unable to discern the mind of God for His kingdom or for us personally. On those bases, if we look at our circumstances, if we look at time, we'll get it wrong. Because God's plan doesn't look like our plan. Our aspirations don't match with his aspirations.
His reason for crafting us isn't the same as our reason for existing so often.
But we don't have to look at those things to understand our hope, because our hope's in grounded in understanding him and his character.
Grace is no less boundless when we're in our lowest failures or our deepest trials.
His intentions for us are no less awesome and miraculous in the times when we struggle to believe that they are.
You can be no more certain of anything than you can of your ultimate redemption and perfection in Christ. There's nothing more sure. There's nothing more inevitable, there's nothing more outrageously true than that.
That absolute certainty.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: That absolute certainty, despite centuries of time and cruel circumstance, should mark you as a child of God. Visibly and verbally and emotionally. Our hope transcends time and circumstance.
It did, apparently, for Zechariah and Elizabeth because of the commendation of God. They did what they knew they had to do, faithfully and obediently.
So we learned a little bit about hope from Zechariah and Elizabeth's lives. What about their story? Let's keep going.
Starting in verse eight, when his division was on duty and he was serving as priests before God, it happened that he was chosen by Lot according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and to burn incense at the hour of incense. The whole assembly of the people was praying outside an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense.
When Zacharias saw him, he was terrified and overcome with fear.
But the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.
Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth. He will be great in the sight of the Lord and will never drink wine or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the Spirit and the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous to make ready for the Lord a prepared people.
So the actual story that we're reading here in the text begins with Zechariah serving in the temple. We'll do a little context here. Tradition from the time of David had divided the levitical priesthood into 24 divisions.
Sixteen of them descended from Aaron's son Eleazar, eight of them descended from his son Ithamar, and Zechariah was descended from Abijah, one of Eleazar's sons.
Each division served two weekly stints every year in the temple.
They divided it up equally among all of them. The remaining four weeks were festival weeks, Passover, etc. Where all of the Levitical priesthoods had to serve at the same time, obviously because of the. The crush of people that were coming to the temple on pilgrimages and sacrificing.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Scholars estimate that the Levitical priesthood at the time of the. Of the text that we're reading numbered between 15,000 and 18,000 priests. That's a lot of priests. So between 600 and 750 priests on duty every week at the temple.
As you might surmise, or as you probably know, the primary responsibility of the priest was to administer the sacrifices that were constantly being brought into the temple. That was a messy, bloody, strenuous affair that required a lot of manpower. All you have to do is put your thinking cap on to kind of visualize the picture, the bloody picture in the temple of the Israelis, obedient, the Israelites, obedience to God's commands to sacrifice wasn't pretty. It was meaningful, but it wasn't pretty. And finally, beyond that, labor, blessed labor.
There was temple maintenance to be done, there were prayers to be said, and there was other miscellaneous duties. So you have hundreds of Priests in the temple carrying out their acquired duties. Finally, this is where we get to our story. Beyond that.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: There'S one high honor that's offered to a priest once each morning and once each evening.
Beyond all that labor, randomly by lot, there were two priests selected, as I said, one for the morning and one for the evening. And their job was to enter the temple into the holy place with incense and burning coals and offer that incense on the altar of incense, which stood just outside the holy of holies on the other side of the curtain from it. It was offered to be a representation or a symbolism of the prayers that were being offered up outside in the temple at the same time, and of the prayers of the people of Israel to God for mercy and grace.
That was a high honor for any priest to be given. As you can imagine, it's an interesting story. We could spend all morning talking about the ritual that was gone through. It's called ketoret, which means incense in Hebrew. And the offering was commanded by God back in Exodus.
There's actually a recipe for the incense that was made specifically for this purpose in Exodus, chapter 30. Go back and look at that if you're. If you're curious about it. God absolutely forbade that incense to be used for any other purpose than the offering in the holy place on the altar of incense. And that violation was at the penalty of death.
So God's commands were serious in that regard.
So that offering offered up by the priest was a high honor. If you do the math.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: What you'll find is that a small minority of the priests that served during their lifetime were ever given that honor. Every priest aspired to it. It was the most highly honorable thing that they could do in that ministry in that career, since it was performed at the altar of incense, other than that one time of year where the high priest entered the holy of holies to offer the sacrifice of atonement for the people. This was the closest anybody could get to the dwelling place of God. It was the closest they could get. And so it was taken with deep seriousness.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: No living person, save the high priest would ever get this close to God, as I said.
Now, trick here is, once you won that lottery, you couldn't win it again.
So you did this one time in your life. Then you were disqualified from that lot for the rest. So every priest has one chance to do this. And again, if you do the math, you'll find out that only a small minority of the priests that served in the temple would have ever been given this honor. So you can Imagine when Zachariah won that lot. This was a singular moment in his ministry as a priest. That was the pinnacle of his priestly career. It was the thing, more than likely, that he and others prayed and hoped for, had that honor be bestowed on them.
And most of them didn't get it.
Most of them didn't get it.
Zachariah had been through hundreds of these slaughters over his career. He was an older man, as the text says. He'd seen this happen for decades, and he'd lost out every single time. But this one time, this one time, he won. On this day, Zechariah's luck changed and a hope long held came to sudden, miraculous fulfillment. I can only imagine a surprise or his elation, probably his fear and his anticipation that followed that sudden realization that he'd won the lottery. We all know that feeling of winning something unexpectedly. This was Zacharias. It was the crowning honor of decoration, decades of faithful service. Now, I want you to join me in just kind of a simple thought exercise. So if you're sitting there at that day, today is the exact day God has selected to announce the coming of the herald of the Messiah, John the Baptist, by his archangel Gabriel, to the very father of that herald. Unexpected.
That man would encounter Gabriel in only one place. And that place was a place he couldn't go under any circumstance, save for his random selection by lot.
And that would be the only time he would ever get that opportunity. So I want to ask you a question. How many of you actually believe that lottery was random?
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Of course it wasn't. It wasn't. And it's so easy to miss the principle. It's in operation there. The hand of God decided the outcome of that lottery explicitly and exactly.
It was foreordained because that's exactly what was supposed to happen.
It was ordained before creation. That day was ordained before Zechariah was ever a thought in anyone's mind. You see, there's no random variation in the plans of God. There's none.
A component of his plan is. Is contingent on the luck of the draw, on human choice, or on the vagaries of weather, fortune, or opposition down to the smallest detail, just like this one. God's plan will inevitably, omnipotently and decisively march on to its fulfillment.
Are you beginning to see what your hope for the future is grounded in?
Triumphant arrival of the incarnate Messiah and savior, heralded by this man's son, John the Baptist. The event we're considering during this season, the event that secured our place In God's plan is simply the singularly inevitable fulfillment of a promise that God made multiple millennia prior to that.
That's the plan you're a part of, too.
If you're in Christ, no random lottery is going to derail God's plan that day in the temple. And if you're in Christ, no random event can derail God's plan for you either. It is inevitable.
That's not a quote from Avengers Endgame.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: It's inevitable.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: So here's Zechariah entering the holy place, carrying his incense, burning coals for the offering. All the people praying outside, anticipating his prompt return. And it was anticipated to be prompt. It was customary for the priest to perform this duty as quickly as he could practically do it. Primarily out of fear that he might inadvertently make a mistake that would incur God's wrath. Just like Uzzah did back in Second Samuel, chapter six, when he touched the ark in good intention, and God judged him for it. Anyway, I'm sure Zechariah is on edge as it is. Anybody would be doing this particular task. And so, lo and behold, he enters the room, the place he's never been. The doors close behind him. He's alone.
And what happens? An angel appears right in front of him. Didn't expect that.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: The text even notes the specific location the angel took to the right of the altar, kind of indicating that this was an actual physical manifestation of an archangel. This wasn't a vision. It wasn't a hallucination. This was actually happening to Zachariah. Now, I'm sure you know this.
There's a very predictable formula in the scriptures for this sort of event. It goes like this. Angel appears to human. Human is reduced to quivering mass of abject terror.
Angel says, don't be afraid.
Human does their flimsy best to not be afraid.
Angel shares message. Human barely makes it through the experience by the skin of their teeth.
That's how these work.
It's a theme in scripture. It's happened that way so many times that I'm confident that's exactly how it would happen to me if it happened to me. It's probably exactly the way it would happen to you as well.
Once again, just a reminder, the plan of God is personal.
It's personal, but it's weighty.
It's holy, and it's terribly heavenly.
We're all Zachariah at this moment, standing in front of the majestic plan of God as an individual who doesn't yet understand his place in it.
Then the angel who turns out as we later read Turns out to be Gabriel. He kind of shares an amazing message. I love this part. Again, because it's the personal intersecting with the profound. The first thing Gabriel says is what God has heard your prayer.
Okay, well, that's nice.
In the context the prayer referred to, I'm sure, is his prayer for his son, an heir and a continuation to his line. That was obviously the prayer of his heart and Elizabeth's as well. I'm sure that God would bless them with children.
And the first thing the angel says to him after don't be afraid, is, we've heard your prayer.
That's comforting.
That's unexpected.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: And that. And that child would be a son.
And more than that, that son would be a joy and a delight for him. A promise of success and blessing. Nice gift, huh?
Not only a quantitative gift, but a qualitative one as well.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: God, through Gabriel, grants Zechariah the desire of his heart. And then so.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Because just flat out, and I know you know this, and I'll remind you of it once again, God is the matches. The matchless giver of good gifts.
Loves to give them to us.
Doesn't need to loves to.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Awake. There's more.
The Son would be a delight not just to Zechariah, but to the whole nation of Israel.
He would be a great man of God who would devote himself to God's service and bring revival to the people of Israel. Whoa, okay. Heady stuff for your average run of the mill temple priest. Priest.
This would be a man of some distinction. And distinction in the eyes of God as well. But wait, there's still even more.
In verse 17, Gabriel quotes Malachi chapter 4 and ties the child directly to what would been very well known to Zechariah as one of the components of the Old Testament messianic prophecies.
He knew that the scriptures prophesied a herald who would announce the coming of the Messiah and his child would be that man.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: You see the intersection here in Zechariah's mind for sure.
Hopefully in ours too. On one hand, there's the unfolding of God's master plan for the entire universe that's coming to light before Zachariah's very eyes. Too big to comprehend. It's absolutely massive. It's unbelievable. It's something that Zechariah has to take time to take in.
And on the other hand, there's God at the same time just giving an old man the simple desire of his heart and then just plain blessing his socks off.
God didn't have to do it that way.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: John could have come from a normal birth to a young couple without fanfare.
The message could have been delivered through someone else, someone. You would have expected it to come through a high priest or an exalted rabbi or something like that.
That's how he could have written this part of the story. That's how we would have written this part of the story. Predictable, logical.
That doesn't work that way.
See, he crafted Zachariah and Elizabeth to perform this role. He made them for it.
To grow up, to marry with all the hopes that are attached to that, and then to suffer the public tame of childlessness for decades, and yet to faithfully persevere through that shame.
It's easy to see this as a story of God graciously remedying a flaw, when in fact it's something completely different.
See, Zechariah and Elizabeth were always going to have child.
They were always going to have a child. They just didn't understand how or when or why until their part in the plan came to fruition.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: What does that have to do with hope?
Well, it's this in part and point number two. Just like God's plan is both communal and personal, my hope is communal and personal.
I know with certainty from Scripture that God will remake his world and preserve and raise up his church in its totality.
I know that I'll be carried along with all of you who are in Christ in the immense sweep of that plan. But I also know that God has specifically designed me to play my part in that same plan that Zachariah and Elizabeth were players in. I know that all my circumstances, all my trials, all my victories, all my blessings, all my tragedies are all highly personalized to me by a Creator who loves me profoundly and gives me nothing less than the perfect role to play, regardless of what it looks like or feels like. In the moment when my prospects look as dim as Zacharias and Elizabeth's, when the price of my faithfulness is the most costly, when my circumstances are the most confounding and nonsensical, the fulfillment of God's plan in Christ gives me absolute confidence that I can move forward, at least to tomorrow, one day at a time, with absolute certainty that God will bless me perfectly in the end, along with all of you.
Wow.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: And we will, on that day marvel not only at how massive and beautiful and incredible God's master plan was, but we will also revel in how tenderly and perfectly he simply loved us through all of our lives.
See, Zechariah was never the same after that day.
You know why? Because that sort of hope is transformative.
That sort of hope changes everything.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: My friends.
If your eyes aren't always fixed towards that end, if your days are filled with doubt about how it'll all turn out, if you struggle daily to understand why your life has turned out not to be what you hoped it would, then I might suggest to you that the problem may be that your God simply isn't big enough.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: You may struggle to hope because you don't understand the immensity and the personalness of the God who saved you for his purposes rather than for your earthly pleasure.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Zechariah had that problem in this passage. Look at verse 18.
I don't read it. Trusting in human wisdom rather than in the messenger of God tripped him up big time.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: He couldn't believe what he heard.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Offer. That suggests three failures on Zechariah's part that might be helpful for us. Number one, he didn't believe his history.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: He didn't believe the history of Israel that was filled with the miraculous interventions of an omnipotent God.
He didn't consider that could happen today.
He didn't believe his theology.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: He knew the God from Scripture, or at least he had it presented to him. He knew the character of the God who loved him and had his best interests at heart and had crafted a plan and prophesied of it to its fulfillment.
Forgot that too.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: And thirdly, he didn't believe his eyes.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Hello?
That'd have been me. He didn't even believe the events that he saw happening that day.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Those are our failures too.
We fail to see the unfolding of God's plan in the past.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Forget our history.
We fail to understand the God of the Scriptures, placing him with the smaller God of our own human wisdom and experience that immersing ourselves in the character of the God we see in those words.
And we fail to see the superintending purposes of God in our own lives and thus mistake his sovereign plans for random misfortune or our own poor choices.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: There's a comforting thing about that, though, and that's point number three. My hope isn't grounded to my performance.
It's grounded solely in God's mercy.
That's a good thing.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: It was grounded in my performance.
I wouldn't have hope.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Wouldn'T have confidence that fate and have loved.
See, without Christ, hope dissolves.
For real, hope dissolves. We see it in the world all around us. Constantly.
Despair is everywhere around us.
It's shielded by the distractions of a prosperous culture.
But There is despair everywhere. It's because hope doesn't exist.
So hope, there's no future to look for.
There's no ultimate resurrection.
There isn't a certain tomorrow and certainly no satisfying explanation even for today, that there isn't even a universal moral compass that I can judge my own life and its quality by.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Without Christ, I'm stuck in 1st Thessalonians 4, 18. I'm a man who has no hope because he doesn't have Christ.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: The foundation of my hope is the mercy shown by the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of the Savior whose coming we're celebrating during the season with Christ. Hope becomes power that drives us forward into a certain destiny. With anticipation, not with fear, with confidence.
Regardless of circumstance or time.
Regardless of circumstance or time, the certainty of my resurrection into the presence of my Savior absolutely changes me, makes my choices more courageous.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Somebody walk up to me today and said.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: This particular stock on the stock market is going to triple in value tomorrow.
And I can guarantee you that 100%. What would you do?
[00:38:20] Speaker A: You take every dime you had, right?
You'd borrow a whole bunch of dimes you don't have.
You'd sell everything you own and you would buy that stock and then you would sell it at the end of the next day. Why? Because there's no risk.
There's no risk.
Your decisions become more courageous and bolder. Because there's no risk.
Folks make the application.
There's nothing more certain if you're in Christ then your destiny. How does that change the boldness of the decisions you make when you serve him?
You have nothing to lose.
You've literally. It's more true of this than anything. You have nothing to lose by spending it all for Jesus Christ. You've got nothing to lose. You've only got upside. That's it.
Are you courageous enough?
You believe that in a way that makes your decisions courageous.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: It makes every night's sleep profoundly sound.
I sleep really well.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: You know why? Because I know what tomorrow's going to bring. It's going to bring exactly what God ordained.
And I know that after all the tomorrows, what it's going to look like is the little I know that it's going to be the blessing of God perfected along with all of you.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Puts a bright smile on my face even in the darkest of my days.
It changes my demeanor because I have confidence, unshakable confidence. In the end, it all works out just right.
Just right.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, it absolutely kills my fear of death.
Kills it.
Death doesn't hold.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: Death, doesn't hold mystery and fear for me at all.
It's not an opaque transformation beyond which I can't see.
I know what it is.
It's reunion with my Savior in a way that I don't have now.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: It's justification and redemption the way that I don't have now.
It's blessing in a way that I don't have now.
Please tell me why I shouldn't look forward to it. In the day that God ordains morning, you know how impactful that is to the way that you live your life, to the way that you describe the God that you serve.
Can you see why.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Peter says that we need to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us?
The certainty that our hope contains is radical.
It's different than the hope the world has.
It's more certain. It's way more certain. It looks arrogant to them, but it's true.
And that's why they come, I think ultimately is because we have a confident certainty. Our hope isn't across your fingers. I hope this will happen. It's an absolute, confident certainty that God will work his plan in our lives and in the world.
Hope makes my message utterly compelling and confounding to those who don't believe.
It's the heart of our effectiveness in the gospel.
My hope in Christ the Savior is my un movable rock.
It's absolutely fixed.
That's a hope I'm willing to bet the farm on because that investment is a good one.
It's an eternal one of my prayers. That's yours too.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: The hope that we have as we consider the work that Jesus did on the cross, the incarnation that we celebrate today, the miraculous coming of that Savior in a way that we would never have expected through people that were utterly normal.
The outcome of that is a certain and confident hope that God's purposes for the world and for my life will come to pass.
Absolutely 100%. No doubt. No doubt that God will give you courage to believe that in a way that's transformative in your life. It changes the people around you and shows them the blessings of a God who loves to give us gifts, the best of which is hope.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: We're going to move on to communion. After I pray.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: My prayer will be exactly for that, for you. So let's. Let's bow our heads. And as you consider the word of God that we've talked about today, and when you're ready, please feel free to. To line up in the center here and take Communion. And thank God for the blessings of the sacrifice of Christ Savior that birth we celebrate today. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful that you didn't just give us a future but that you gave us a confidence certain thankful that you're the God who has all power, all knowledge, who knows the beginning, who knows the end from the beginning.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: And who has placed each of us in a unique place in that plan we are in Christ.
Lord, make us more grateful today than we were yesterday as we consider the kindness and the mercy that's shown to us from the Incarnation of the Son whose sacrifice provided our redemption and our entrance into that hope.
Give us this day we ask the courage to serve you in a way that matches the certainty of the hope that you've given us. Help us Lord to risk all for you, trusting in your blessing and the superintendence of your grace as we do it. Do it we ask. Lord, we pray for your glory and your honor and nothing else.
Ask Christ's name.
Amen.
