Longing for Hope (2)

Introduction:

So, I just came back from a trip I had to take in North Carolina, and while I was there, on a break from training, I walked past this occult bookstore. And I decided to go in, and I checked it out, and I saw this book that was a book of spells, so I opened it up, I was checking it out, and as I read a few, I thought, “oh, these are really fascinating!” So, I did something, I decided to bring it here this morning, and I figured I’d read a few of them—I just want to see what some of you might think about them; see if they come across to you the same way they did to me. Now, before you say anything or burst up on out of here, I just want to take a second to acknowledge that I see some of you in obvious discomfort. So, I want to say, before you get too upset, I did not buy a book of spells, alright? But some of you in this room thought that if I were to read out of a book of spells, that some sort of dark power would be unleashed in this room and might come after you. But every week, we come in here, and perhaps we approach the Word of God thinking it’s not going to have any kind of effect at all.

In all honesty, that’s actually an illustration I borrowed from a Pastor named Bill Vanderbush. And I want to come back to that, but today we began this year’s Advent series, the celebration that literally means ‘arrival.’ It is a time of waiting and preparation. A period of spiritual preparation for the arrival of our Savior. It is observed through 4 distinct qualities, each with its own respective Sunday and corresponding candle; Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace.

‌Our journey begins with a single candle lit on this advent wreath. It represents the darkness we enter into. Picture a Christmas Eve candlelight service, which of course, is an allusion to the darkness of the world, the darkness of our weaknesses, of our sin. But the wreath represents the light of the Lord, and it gets brighter and brighter until, on Christmas morning, we sing, ‘Joy to the World, our Lord has come.’

‌We are in a time of waiting as the psalms speak, as the Gospel tells us, as you will hear throughout the readings and the messages of this series, and we ought to be in a time of longing; that’s what advent is.

‌In more orthodox traditions, before any feast, there is a time of fasting. In that respect, advent is comparable to the Lenten season, the 40 days which precede Easter. The purpose of the season is to prepare us for the great feast, in this case, the nativity of our Lord. But I want to challenge you in that if we begin our celebration too quickly, what will be the significance of the feast? What will be so special about the nativity? We’re longing for the delight that’s offered to us at Bethlehem. So, friends, I invite you to long with me, because if we do not long, how do we have hope? If we do not long, how do we affix our eye on the star of the Magi, Emmanuel, God with us? —Not just during advent, but throughout the year—If we do not long, how will we ever be satisfied?

‌John the Baptist longed, he waited, he went out into the wilderness, he fasted and lived unadorned of the world’s delights and allurements; he is a perfect example. If we’re completely honest with ourselves, not many of us live ascetic or spartan—especially this time of year; we find escapes, little silver linings. All I’m saying is we’re not lining up for camel hair clothing and locusts with honey for breakfast, trying purposely to further deny our earthly desires.

‌And I’m not standing before you telling you to abstain from the hallmark channel, reject the decor, or playlists consisting of covered Christmas classics—the originals, of course, being perfectly acceptable to Christ. I am not saying you must give up nice things. I am simply speaking to myself just as much as I am speaking to any one of you. We must not neglect to stoke the flame that is to long. It is important we rightly prioritize, that is, to not create idols.

‌Because whatever it is in our life we value more than God,

‌or think about more than God,

or love more than God,

‌or desire more than God,

‌or fear more than God,

‌or hope in more than God,

‌or aspire to enjoy more than God,

‌or delight in more than God

‌or that we are more thankful for than God... that is an idol. The result of which is always despair.

The difference is one is an unbridled craving—a never filling, ever and always insatiable need. The other is a chastened desire, bridled by gratefulness and thanksgiving; in a word, worshipfulness.

Transition:

You see, in my opening illustration, I alluded to a discrepancy that some of us sometimes have, that normalization of our God’s very real presence, because he makes us wait, even though we read in Romans 5:4 that “patience produces character, and character produces hope.” So, patience creates hope. Having to wait, if we stay the course, that is, keeping ourselves from the temptations that would have us forsake the prize, builds character. Whose parents didn’t give them that line, huh? But they weren’t wrong, were they?

Next week we’ll focus on love, so I don’t want to camp out on fear, so, for now, let suffice that 1 John 4:18 says that “perfect love cast out fear,” but I do want to address fear quickly because it can be useful. Let me explain: I often ask about the hope someone has when I counsel. I’ve found that people often struggle with precisely what that is; however, when I reframe the question, inversing it, people are often rather precise in their ability to articulate their fear. I bring this up to offer one warning, it’s often said that you get what you focus on, so focus on what you want, and if we affix our focus on fear rather than the object of our hope, what is the end result?

Scripture:

Psalm 119, beginning in verse 9, says 9How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your word. 10With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me stray from Your commandments. [That sounds like prayer] 11I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You. [That sounds like someone who’s in the Word] 12Blessed are You, O LORD; teach me Your statutes. 13With my lips I proclaim all the judgments of Your mouth. [Sounds like worship to me] 14I rejoice in the way of Your testimonies as much as in all riches. 15I will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways. 16I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.

Interpretation:

Prayer, study, and worship sound to me like how the Psalmist discovered to keep his way pure. Now it’s a means to an end; purity is a means to developing character, purity, obviously in abstaining from the alternatives our world has to offer—but it’s not the goal itself, but rather the means to our goal, which is Christ. Character and patience produce the longing that is that proper prioritization that will enable us to have hope—a hope that endures, a hope that protects that worshipfulness.

Point:

D.L. Moody once said, “our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t matter.”

Illustration:

So, there’s this story about a regular guy; he’s not special in any way, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill ordinary. That may actually be a favorable portrayal of him; he was not what I would call typical, but a slacker who couldn’t hold onto a job since he’s always drunk or sleeping off a hangover. He doesn’t care about too much either; he’s never even voted, his name not even appearing on a registered voter list until his daughter, who becomes civically and socially minded as she learns about politics in school leading up to a presidential election. His daughter, however, is one thing he does care about, and when he realizes he’s become an embarrassment to her, he tries to change, but not before letting her down on a promise he made to get out to vote. That’s the point when a rather ingenious plot twist brings an entire election down to one man’s vote. The storyline of the Kevin Costner movie Swing Vote portrays a political system that doesn’t encourage politicians to tell the truth but to say what they think voters want to hear and portrays the press as a bunch of jackals, complicit in their process on the campaign trail.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, that, too, is the world we live in, and in a similar way, it all comes down to the choices we make.

Explanation:

There’s a term for many of the day-to-day choices we’re faced with. A zero-sum is a term in economics that describes a situation in which one person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss, so the net change is zero. A zero-sum game, therefore, is a game in which it is impossible for any player to help themselves without hurting another player. The name comes from the fact that in such a situation, the gains and losses of all the players amount to zero. For example, if players A and B are playing a zero-sum game, and player A chooses a strategy that wins him $1, his earnings could also be described as causing player B to lose $1. Whatever goes up—but also comes down hasn’t effectively changed; it can only go back to where it started. In other words, there is nothing new under the sun, sound familiar? —Whatever came from dust returns to it. Very little we do changes anything if anything at all. Nations fight and divide up a limited supply of resources amongst themselves, whatever their prosperity; excess resources for one impoverishes the other.

I use the example of a zero-sum game to illustrate our real life, alluding to and highlighting the point in the same way the author does in the sermon series we just finished, Ecclesiastes, through the use of his character, the Teacher.

Conclusion:

Previously, I referenced Romans 5:4 that, “patience produces character, and character produces hope.” I should have started that quote with verse 3 because it says, “not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.” If hope is what keeps us going, then the believer’s call is to guard that above all else because it is our hope that faithfulness is rewarded.

‌It is our hope, the confident affirmation that God is faithful, that he will complete what he has begun. It is, therefore, that confident expectation that waits patiently and passionately—produced through longsuffering—for God’s purposes to be fulfilled; that final resurrection, the delivery from sin which he has taken upon himself, paying our debt which we could not, ourselves pay, that final sacrifice bringing about an end to our enslavement to the sin offering and ritual purification and meaninglessness we were left in after the obscuring of our purpose and likeness in the garden. It is our certainty of this blessed future that is guaranteed through the indwelling of the Spirit, for whom Jesus said it is better that I go, that in so doing, he would send another to be with you forever.

James instructs us in chapter 1, verses 2-4, “to count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

This is the closest to hell you may ever have to come, brothers; for others, this is the closest to heaven they will ever be. Prayer, study, and worship are how we stoke that flame, but they are not the point themselves. They point us toward our purpose. If our aim is to have an impact, to do something that matters, rather than succeeding at the multitude of things that inevitably do not, in that case, we must consider that only two things will endure forever. It’s not rhetorical or a riddle or joke or anything. In fact, it’s the brutally honest reality we’re left with and the conclusion Solomon alluded to, whom Scripture tells us was the wisest person ever to live. I don’t think I’m bursting anyone’s bubble here that got up early and came to chapel, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy got it wrong; “The answer to life, the universe, and everything” is not 42!

First, we’re told in Isaiah 40:8 that though “the grass withers and the flowers fall… the word of our God stands forever.” Second, we learn from Matthew, in chapter 25, verse 46, that “[some] will go away to eternalpunishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” God; His Word, promise, provision, and the souls of men. That’s it. So, if you missed our last sermon series, that’s the CliffsNotes of the 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes: that if everything passes away, withers, and returns to dust, burns, or perishes, it’s probably best to invest your time and energy in things that are eternal. God and the souls of men.

Close:

In so many more words, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So many people are speeding through life, paying attention to the wrong things, the things that ultimately don’t matter. And, make no mistake, our hope is not that our names appear on some mystical ‘Nice List,’ we ourselves having merited. Our hope is that our names, indeed, are on the naughty list and it is nailed to the cross!

Willingly laying aside all the glory of heaven to physically enter this world so that we can share in his glory; it is the hope of his church, the object of our longing, that he come again and that he makes all things new. So, in this time of longing, church, will you join me in taking on an attitude and posture of worshipfulness for this advent season—with a chastened desire for the gift giver rather than the gift. Doing the inverse isn’t just wrong; although it is, it is also unsatisfying. It causes brokenness and meaninglessness. Nevertheless, the temptation is that we continue to do it because we think the next thing will bring us the satisfaction we so desire.

Our satisfaction comes instead from the fulfillment that accompanies true joy. That joy, of course, we know as a fruit of the Spirit and comes only from aligning ourselves with our purpose and calling, keeping our way pure through prayer, study, and practicing patience through worshipfulness while maintaining our focus on God and the souls of men.

The aim of longing is not to drive out all desire and craving but to tune our passion. In the same way that a fast draws us close to the Lord because we are reminded to pray at the ever-increasing onset of our hunger pains, we become aware of our hope by paying close attention to our unmet need.

My prayer is that this season will be life-giving to you not because of the comforts you receive from the giver of gifts but because you’ve shared in the joy that is to have fulfillment in Him by adopting a heart of worshipfulness.