Sermon Cloud

TEXT

 

Luke 2:25-32: "Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.  27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law,  28  he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,  29 ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word;  30 for my eyes have seen your salvation  31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,  32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.'"

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Advent

 

From around the fifth to sixth century, the Christian church has celebrated what was called Adventus which was a Latin word for "coming".  This was a time when Christians would begin to reflect more intensely on the coming of Jesus into our world.  It was a time of preparation before the feast of Christmas.  Of course, the day of Christ's birth was unknown, but the church picked the day of Dec. 25^th as a day to celebrate His birth, or rather, His coming.

 

We join the historical church during this time of year by taking the time to prepare for the great feast we'll have as we enjoy and celebrate Jesus' birth. 

 

It is, like our brothers and sisters in the faith prior to us, a time for us to consider how the coming of Christ into this world should change us and why it is a celebration. 

 

We'll be keeping with the themes of hope, peace, love and joy during advent.   My prayer is that this will be more than a nice reminder of why we celebrate Christmas, but rather the coming of the King becomes a power for our lives.

 

The True Story of the World

 

As we said last week, the Bible dares to claim that it is the true story of the world.  When we enter into the Scripture, we are entering into the way things really are, a public truth that is to be published on the front page.  This is much more than a simple story of a few people way back when.  This is a story of God's redemption of all things which has unfolded for thousands of years. 

 

The Jews believed that God was the Creator of all things and the Ruler of universal history, the Redeemer who was reclaiming and restoring creation itself.  After sin entered into the story through the cosmic treason against God by Adam and Eve, God set out to fix His world and to bring His children to live under His gracious rule once again. 

 

The Christmas story was never intended to be a seasonal story that we told while sipping hot cocoa in front of a fire with a house full of presents.  That image has been burned into our memory and is difficult to shake.  The Christmas story is the story of reality, the true story of God breaking into human history as promised and hoped for by God's people for thousands of years.  All the way back in the Garden, after sin came into creation, God promised He would send One to come and defeat His, the world's, and our enemy by crushing his head.  The Messiah now arrives.  The hope for the world has come.  The promise of old is here!  The in-breaking of the promise is happening!

 

This story is our reality.  It is all of human and nonhuman reality and we find our place in this story.  Everything that we see and hear can only be understood as part of the sequence of God's unfolding drama. 

 

Stories we read or movies we watch allow us to enter a world of adventure and fiction as an escape to the real world.  When the story ends, we close the book or leave the theater to the real world to resume our day-to-day lives.  It's a pleasant escape.  We might learn a thing or two to give us some little nuggets of wisdom, but those nuggets have to be worked into our real lives. 

 

But this is not how we're supposed to read the story of the Bible.  The Bible lays claim to us and is trying to awaken us to the real world.  This story claims to tell the whole truth about the way things really are.  We are meant to find THE meaning for our lives.  We are called to find our place in God's story and experience this life the way the Story tells us. 

 

This is not some private religious experience.  It's not about some disconnected, other-wordly salvation promised one day to escape our evil bodies and to float up and live as spirit beings on fluffy clouds.  This gospel is God's message about how He is at work restoring His world and all of human life.  It's a story that tells about the goal of all our history.  It's a story that calls us to live with the sure hope that was it promises will most surely come to pass and we are invited into this true story.

 

Other Stories

 

The questions we ask ourselves when it really matters-Who am I? What am I supposed to do?  Why am I here?-can only be answered by understanding what story you see yourself part of. 

 

Most of us live with the tension of competing stories.  All of human life is shaped by some story.  When we think of our lives we think of it in the context of our story.  Where we come from, who our parents are, what our national or racial identities are, what things we like, why we like them, our past hurts in various relationships, our past successes, our siblings, our friends, our town, city, state, and country, our economic past and current status, etc.-are all parts of the greater story of our lives and how we see ourselves.  This story shapes and molds us and gives us a sense of cohesiveness.  We are usually able to tell this story when someone sits with us and wants to know who we are. We don't tell them random but important facts: name, age, social security, place of birth, current job, etc.  We tell those things as part of a story, a telling of how we got into our job, where we live etc.  We make sense of everything by story.  Often times the story we've come to believe about our identity is contrary to what we're told in Scripture and we're faced with this tension.

 

Two Stories Colliding

 

Every culture and community shares a story that shapes its life.  As Americans, we share a particular history and story that has powerfully and radically shaped us.  So much so that we come to believe that it is THE story by which the world is ordered, not realizing that every culture in every time before and after us has its own sense of itself, its own story that shapes its life.

 

These stories are not neutral and each culture tells how the world came to be, what is wrong with it, what its hope is, and where it's all going. 

 

The story that has shaped Western culture, of which we're part, is the story of progress, of moving toward greater and greater freedom through material prosperity, or what we might call the American Dream-you know, the house, the kids, the car, the job, the retirement. 

 

The way we are achieving this dream is through our human effort by using science and technology as a way of lengthening our life, fixing our children and ourselves through medication, using technology to give us a social life, the science of economics to give us a financial security, and the hope we have in politics to give us a bright future.  Of course there is more.

 

And, like the biblical story, the American story claims to be the true story of the world.  So much so, that any other story that competes with it is pushed off to personal opinion and called "religious."  It claims to embrace all of life and is centered upon the individual self and our own individual wants and desires. 

 

It is incompatible with the biblical story because it attempts to swallow up the biblical story and make it simply part of our history. 

 

This story of progress, science, technology, and now despair and hopelessness still calls us to believe it and order our education, work, relationships, family, spending, free time and living standards according to its gospel.

 

We start to worship these things and they become idols to us.  They become the golden calf to which we bow down and give our allegiance.  And yet, as we have seen this last year in our politics and economy, these idols can't satisfy us.  They only fail us and we feel empty and alone. 

 

We live at the collision of these two stories and the church's mission is to make known the true story of the world over and against the false story of human progress and self-determination.     

 

As people who have embraced Jesus and His gospel, we have become members of the family of God who believe that the Bible is the true story of the world.  But as people living in this world, we are members of our cultural community and we live in a culture shaped by this other story for a long, long time.  In fact, we were born in it and it has become the very air we breathe. 

 

To be faithful we are to live at the collision of these two stories which both claim to be true and claim our whole lives.  This is no easy task and can be overwhelming for most of us.  We one the one hand have the hope of what God promises, and yet on the other hand we experience the hopelessness of the idols we've come to worship.

 

The Death of Hope

 

Our cultural moment is one that is experiencing a kind of death of hope in this Western story and yet at the same time clings tightly to it for its security. 

 

We buy t-shirts that show our disdain for overconsumption and economic abuse, yet on the way to buy it, we stop to get an expensive drink at Starbucks, fill up our nice car, and then head to a chain store called Urban Outfitter to get the shirt, of which we have 50 more at home!

 

It is a weird time, a time that needs the gospel of hope to break in and speak the truth of God's Kingdom and grace which is already at work. 

 

This also gives us a kind of numb feeling towards hope.  It causes us to shrug it off as if it's not important.

 

The Importance of Hope

 

How you live now is an outworking of hope.  Your hope is shown in your life.  It's that simple. 

 

The biblical concept of hope is difficult to grasp because the word translated from the Greek isn't served all that well by our modern or popular usage of the word hope.  The Greek word is used some 88 times in the New Testament and is always translated as "hope."  The problem is that the English word gives the impression of wishing rather than a kind of certainty without site.  In other words, when asked whether or not this or that thing is going to happen, you may say "I hope it does," meaning that you are wishing it does.  It has uncertainty mixed in.  But the Biblical definition of hope is a life-shaping certainty about something that hasn't happened yet, but you know it will. 

 

I asked a question on a site called LinkedIn which is a social networking site primarily or business and asked how they defined hope.  Here are some comments:

 

v  It's perhaps the only thing in life you can promise in the knowledge that you cannot deliver.

 

v  Imagining more positive things happening in the future...

 

v  In my opinion hope can be a desirable object or a yearned-for outcome. The object could be a person, a thing, a movement or a cause. At the root of it, hope has more to do with one's outlook or perspective than anything else. The same object or outcome may look differently to different people, or even to the same person, given the circumstances or the preoccupation of that person. Hope begins with an attitude that can look past the negative situation (not necessarily in denial) and find the positives and possibilities in the object or the result that one looks forward to.

 

v  Handing people the spiritual means to find their own answer

 

v  Hope is the thing that prevents you from giving up after the naysayers have left you lying in the mud.

 

v  Hope, as a noun, is the same as faith, to me. Hope is the knowledge that tomorrow may be a better day than today. Hope is not about wishing. It is not something you put in a place, thing, person or relationship. It is, like peace, love and joy, an essential building block of human life. With hope, we are open to positive change. Without hope, there is no true peace, love or joy.

 

v  Hope is self-perpetuating emotional power allowing people to be powered from "intrinsic stand-by emotional batteries" when other sources of (positive) emotions are not available.

 

v  Hope is a mental thought process of what you want to happen and you think about it everyday and it helps you to keep your attitude positive, your mind working towards what you need or want, and your life continuing to move into the future with aspirations that everything will turn out just fine. It helps your entire body and karma to be positive thereby allowing the universe to take over and ensure things are going to work out. Now, that is not to say that you will get what you want, however it will help you to get through the day with attitudes that help you to find smiles and laughter that you need to keep you hopeful and everyone around you having a positive feelings for you too.

 

v  Hope is the little light that you choose to believe in when surrounded by darkness. Your choice, your blind choice. If you chose fear, that little light would not exist. It is a strange thing: it exists only because you chose to believe it and it disappears once you stopped. But still, once you believe there is light behind you, you start walking towards it. It takes you there.

 

v  Hope is a feeling of what is wanted will be had; set a goal, dream the vision of owning the goal and hope will make it happen. Hope is also an expectation. I don't make a point to set my expectations on anyone, this way I am never let down. Hope is also something to look forward to something with desire (I hope that ice cream tastes as sweet as it looks). I, personally, put my hopes on goals that I set rather than expectations or wishful thinking.

 

There were more, but this is a good sampling from people of whom I have no idea whether they believed in the Scriptures or not. 

 

For example, imagine you are in the midst of a great battle.  Your friends fighting with you are dropping all around you.  You see your frontline being pushed back and what appeared to be an even battle has turned, and you realize opposing forces are overtaking your squad.  Then, in the distance, just over the hill, you hear the trumpets of your army and the song of victory as an entire regiment is coming in just moments.  This awareness of their arrival ensures your victory.  You begin to feel your heart swell with joy and your arm seems stronger for the battle.  You let out a rally cry to your comrades and the men that were about to cave in to the oncoming enemy now push back with renewed vigor.  What just happened?  The knowledge of what's going to happen actually changes how you're fighting now.  You're connected so closely to the coming victory that you actually experience change in the moment, even though the battle scene looks exactly the same. 

 

We underestimate the power of hope in our lives.  Even within the Christian family, we don't think much or deeply about the subject because we're not really sure what it all means.  Yet day by day, we are placing our hope upon something.  We are living moment by moment connected to what we see for our future, and it shapes everything.  Each of you here this morning, whether with joy or despair, is living out of your true hope.  We are unavoidably shaped by our belief in the future.  It's how we process and make sense of our lives.  We all do it. 

 

Think about this with me. Two friends are hired to work for the City of San Diego doing the exact same job, and the job isn't pleasant.  One is told they will be paid minimum wage and will be able to keep his job at the end of one year.  The other is paid minimum wage as well but is promised a $500,000 bonus at the end of twelve months.  The first friend may or may not finish the job, and grumbles each day at every turn.  The other, though not unaware of the difficult work, has a spring in his step and works hard each day and actually is joyful and does his work without grumbling or complaining.  Why?  Because the value of what's to come is greater for the one friend than the other.  The future certainty of his bonus makes the daily inconveniences, just that, inconveniences. 

 

You see, it isn't the daily circumstances that cause us to quit; it's our confidence in what's to come that makes the difference.  It isn't the circumstances that make us feel how we feel.  It isn't the circumstances that affect the way we live, at least how we respond to living; it's our vision of the future, it's our hope that determines how we process and live our lives in the everydayness of life. 

 

We are simply not designed to live without hope.  When you have no hope in a relationship, you end it.  When you have no hope in your job, you leave it.  When you have no hope in your life, you can't live.  It simply is a kind of fuel we're animated by daily and we all have it, even if our vision of the future or the measure of our hope differs.

 

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish doctor who was placed in the German prison camps during WWII.  He survived and wrote a book about despair and hope called Man's Search for Meaning to explore and help those who are in despair.  Having been stripped of himself and ground down to naked existence, Frankl had to ask some penetrating questions of himself.  He noticed that there was a common denominator that those who died while in death camps and those who survived had running through them.  It was this idea of hope.  Some of the prisoners quickly withered up and died while in these camps; while others, though outwardly wasting away, stayed strong and endured the camp to the end of the war.  As the day-to-day things that offer people a sense of meaning-work, family, the small pleasures of life-were taken from a prisoner, his future would seem to disappear.  Frankl said:

 

"Man can only live by looking to the future...The prisoner who had lost faith in the future-his future-was doomed."

 

Frankl then gives an example.  He says:

 

"I once had a dramatic demonstration of the close link between the loss of faith in the future [hope] and this dangerous giving up. F., my senior block warden, a fairly well-known composer and librettist, confided in me one day: ‘I would like to tell you something, Doctor. I have had a strange dream. A voice told me that I could wish for something, that I should only say what I wanted to know, and all my questions would be answered. What do you think I asked? That I would like to know when the war would be over for me. You know what I mean, Doctor-for me! I wanted to know when we, when our camp, would be liberated and our sufferings come to an end.' ‘And when did you have this dream?' I asked. ‘In February, I945,' he answered. It was then the beginning of March. ‘What did your dream voice answer?' Furtively he whispered to me, ‘March thirtieth.' When F. told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and convinced that the voice of his dream would be right. But as the promised day drew nearer, the war news which reached our camp made it appear very unlikely that we would be free on the promised date. On March twenty-ninth, F. suddenly became ill and ran a high temperature. On March thirtieth, the day his prophecy had told him that the war and suffering would be over for him, he became delirious and lost consciousness. On March thirty-first, he was dead. To all outward appearances, he died of typhus.

"Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man-his courage and hope, or lack of them-and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect."

 

This illustrates powerfully that our belief in future has life and death consequences to how we live today.  Hope is far more important than you could have imagined.  We can see this in the immediate future of the man who died in this story.  We know this from our experience, from heartbreak and loss.  Our view of what's to come in the near future radically affects our relationships.  If you feel like things will get better in your marriage as you mature over the next few years, it has a lasting impact for how you deal with the argument you're having right now.  If you feel like there is no hope, things will never change, and you're both doomed to repeat the same actions in an unbreakable cycle, then the argument you're having is blown way out of proportion.  It simply is determined by how you view what's to come.  But it's even deeper than this.  Much deeper.   

 

Our existence is dependent upon our ultimate hope.  Frankl makes these observations about those in the camp who not only died quickly, but also those who were willing to become informers and traitors compared to those who refused to be unfaithful to their fellow inmates and friends:

 

"Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its [foundations]...Only a few were able to keep their full inner liberty...Life only has a meaning in any circumstances if we have a hope that neither sufferings, circumstances or death itself cannot destroy."

 

If you place your ultimate hope into anything in this life-whether family, job, education, looks, health, or any other thing-you'll always be unsure, you'll always feel like you're living with hope that has an expiration date.  You're never quite sure if it will last, so you're never fully hopeful, and therefore, you'll never fully live. 

 

Something will capture your trust, and if it is something less than what you were designed for, anxiety will continually creep up in your life and the effects will most definitely be experienced.  If it is what you were meant for, the ultimate hope in what is promised because it is placed upon the character of one who never lies, never changes, and never leaves or forsakes, this too will creep up in your life and the effects will likewise be experienced.  The real question left is what are we placing our hope in?

 

Jesus breaks into history and calls us to believe in what His Father had promised would come as the Hope for the world.  This time we celebrate is a time where we look at what God has done in sending His promised Redeemer and Restorer into the world. 

 

A Community of Hope in a World of Despair

 

What will this community of Hope look like to the world?  Let's examine:

 

Psalms 42:5:  "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation."

 

Psalms 62:5:  "For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him."

 

Psalms 65:5:  "By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas."

 

Psalms 147:11:  "but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love."

 

Matthew 12:19-21:  "He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets;  20  a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory;  21  and in his name the Gentiles will hope."

 

Romans 5:1-5:  "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  2  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  3  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  4  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  5  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

 

Romans 8:18-25:  "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  19  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  20  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope  21  that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  22  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  23  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  24  For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  25  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

 

Romans 12:12:  "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer."

 

Romans 15:13:  "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."

 

2 Corinthians 3:12:  "Since we have such a hope, we are very bold."

 

Ephesians 2:12-13:  "Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  13  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."

 

1 Thessalonians 4:13:  "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope."

 

1 Thessalonians 5:8:  "But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation."

 

1 Timothy 4:10:  "For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe."

 

Titus 2:11-14:  "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,  12  training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,  13  waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,  14  who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

 

Hebrews 6:11:  "And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end."

 

Hebrews 10:23:  "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful."

 

1 Peter 1:3:  "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."

 

1 Peter 1:13:  "Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus."