Advent 2022: Hope

Main Point

We can hold fast to hope because there is a sovereign God in heaven who keeps his promises, which are fulfilled in Christ.

Introduction

Understanding Biblical context is not a tool merely to highlight our differences with the author and audience, but it often helps us understand how we are connected.

Daniel’s Context

Exiled to a foreign land from a destroyed homeland

Things were certainly not going his way

Jeremiah’s Context (In Lamentations)

A ruined city full of death and evil

The mercy and promises of God seem far away

Our Context (right now)

Christmas time is often difficult for us for many reasons

Loved ones who have passed on who are no longer around to celebrate with us

Christmas often brings with it good memories, but that often makes the loss heavier

Financial struggles that prevent us from giving the gifts we would like to give

The guilt that comes with that

We feel the strain in relationships with family

This is why HOPE is something we emphasize during the Advent season. Many of us are feeling the weight and heaviness of things that Christ has promised us relief from (easy yoke, light burdens). We need to be reminded that there is a hope that reaches beyond our burdens. A hope that reaches beyond earthly success, security, and comfort which do not last.

Hope what you please; but remember, that hope without truth at the bottom of it, is an anchor without a holdfast. A groundless hope is a mere delusion.

Charles Spurgeon

Nebuchadnezzar Reaches For Hope

Whether he fully realizes it or not, king Nebuchadnezzar is reaching for hope.

His dream greatly disturbed him, so much so that he could not sleep under the burden of uncertainty

It was common in this culture for dreams to have significance, and they were often ominous.

He doesn’t want trickery or false hope from his false gods, he is reaching for something real.

He threatens the wise men and astrologers (Chaldeans), and they despair

No king has ever asked such a thing (to tell the dream itself)

They know it is not possible for them, and therefore they have no hope to offer.

App: We could learn from this Pagan king here to refuse to be satisfied with false hope.

Daniel Receives Hope

Daniel Learns What Is Happening

The king sentences the wise men to death (this included Daniel)

The kings impatience was connected to how disturbed the dream made him

Daniel asked questions and requested to see the king

Daniel gathers his friends to pray to God for help

God answers their prayers and reveals all to Daniel

Daniel breaks out into doxology

The proper response to the revelation of God is worship

God truly is sovereign over all things, and Nebuchadnezzar was just one of many kings he has established; a footnote in his sovereign work.

App: A hopeful truth given in Daniel’s proclamation of praise we must wrestle with is the sovereignty of God.

God not only owns, but proclaims the fact that what happens only happens because of him.

Again, remember Daniel’s context and Jeremiah’s

Again, remember our own context

We can either respond in bitterness over the fact the we are not in control, or we can respond like Daniel with doxology.

Daniel Proclaims Hope

He takes not credit as a wise man, but points to the God in heaven who is able.

“Daniel in a respectful manner was actually telling the king that the paganism of Babylon and of all pagan religions was worthless. Only Yahweh exists and is able to help.” -Stephen R. Miller

Daniel proclaims to the king what others said was impossible

Nebuchadnezzar Pronounces Yahweh as the God of gods

App: But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries

There will always be things that God knows that we don’t

But it is his good pleasure to give revelation to us as he will (both special and natural)

We are not Daniel

But God has revealed to us great mysteries in his word

Particularly Advent as a point of focus, which we are about to get too.

God reveals these mysteries, not to make much of us, but to make his name known. TO MAKE MUCH OF CHRIST

Christ Is Hope

Examine the words of the hopeless Chaldeans in Daniel 2:11

Daniel 2:11 ESV

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.”

Our hope is that Christ, who is God, has taken on flesh and dwelt among us. God of all mysteries has revealed himself in the person of Jesus. Daniel even catches a glimpse of this in Daniel 7:13-14

Daniel 7:13–14 ESV

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Not only that, but isn’t it interesting that in our text today the wise men (astrologers) proclaimed that the gods do not dwell among flesh and do not get this personal with us must have learned something.

Because the wise men, the astrologers in Matthew 2:1-12 followed a star in the night sky just so they could gaze upon the child king to worship him.

The Mystery of the Gospel Revealed

Hebrews 1:1–4 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Main Point: We can hold fast to hope because there is a sovereign God in heaven who keeps his promises, which are fulfilled in Christ.