Hope in Christ

Introduction

Today marks the first Sunday of Advent. Advent counts down the four Sundays before Christmas. It is a time of joyful expectation of the celebration of the coming of the Lord. It is a time of conversion and renewal, a time of watching and waiting, a time of new beginnings. All of these find their expression in the Advent prayer: Marana tha, which means Come, Lord Jesus.

The heart of the Advent message is above all, hope, peace, joy and love. It is a message which must filter through the preaching into our daily lives. If we can capture the hope, be ambassadors of peace, bringers of joy and demonstrate God’s love in Action, then we will have fulfilled the spirit of the Advent season.

One of the most beautiful symbols used by the church, and most especially the advent season can be found in the parable of the wise virgins who kept their candles burning in anticipation of the coming groomsman.

Traditionally candles are lit as a symbol of the presence of Christ. During the advent season, and as a sign of our watching and waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior. The candles also signify the time of preparation, a time of looking into ourselves and recognizing the need for the coming Christ into our lives and the joy we know because God loves us so much that he sent Jesus into the World.

Wreaths are placed on doors and they also carry many rich symbols. The circle represents eternity. A Circle has no beginning and no end, just as God’s love is everlasting. The evergreen which is always green, symbolizes life, growth and hope. The traditional lesson on the first week of advent is hope. Not just hope for hope’s sake, but hope in someone specific.

Romans 5:1–5 TLV

Therefore, having been made righteous by trusting, we have shalom with God through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah. Through Him we also have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and boast in the hope of God’s glory. And not only that, but we also boast in suffering—knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Ruach ha-Kodesh who was given to us.

Do you see that? It is hope that gets us through the tribulations we face in life. And conversely the tribulations we have in life produce hope in us. Hope does not disappoint, it says, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit!

So the hope that we have is what makes us able to get through the day, but let’s face it, sometimes we lose our hope. We tend to despair when we look at the world around us. After all, think about the world into which Jesus came. The people of Israel were living under the rule of an evil tyrant who would kill all the male children because he lived in fear of Jesus.

Matthew 2:16–18 TLV

Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became furious. And he sent and killed all boys in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding area, from two years old and under, according to the time he had determined from the magi. Then was fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and loud wailing, Rachel sobbing for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

So even though the prophets proclaimed the greatness of the King to come, they also foretold the great pain and suffering that would befall the nation.

Hope like an Axe Head

Hope can be likened to an axe head. In Bible times it was not uncommon for an axe head to come right off the axe and cause problems.

Deuteronomy 19:4–5 TLV

Now this is the case of the one who kills, who may flee there and live—whoever kills his neighbor unintentionally and did not hate him in the past— as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to chop wood, and his hand takes a swing with the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron flies off the wood and hits his neighbor so that he dies. He may flee to one of these cities and live.

There’s a story in Kings where one of Elisha’s talmudim has a problem with an axe head.

2 Kings 6:3–7 TLV

Then one of them said, “Will you please come with your servants?” “I will go,” he answered. So he went with them. And when they came to the Jordan, they began to cut down trees. But as one of them was cutting down a beam, the axe-head fell into the water; and he cried, and said, “Ah, my master! It was borrowed.” Then the man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it there, and made the ax head float. Then he said, “Pick it up for yourself.” So he reached out his hand and took it.

But just like Elisha’s miracle, Jesus came to help us find our lost ax head! He came to restore our lost hope.

How We Lose our Hope

Well, let’s take a look at how we lose our hope to begin with. I have a nice modern camping ax with me today. This is a safe axe, I’ve used it many times to provide a warm fire for s’mores making and other similar critical functions. But let’s take a look at axes in Biblical times:

An Ax from Biblical Time

Don’t forget. Not only is this axe head tied to a piece of wood, it is banging up against some hard stuff. Constant vibration courses through the handle and at a certain point when the worker swings the ax backwards. Whoosh! This is where we get the expression don’t go flying off the handle!

Here is a modern axe. The handle is made of fiberglass and well it does a very good job of hanging on to the head. It is not likely to go flying off. So how do we keep this kind of grip on our hope?

Get a Grip

We need to make sure that we have a good ax. We need to be sure that we have a firm grip on the edge. So we must then go to scripture to see how to hold fast to hope.

Hope comes from being in the scriptures.

Romans 5:4 TLV

and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

There is a patience and comfort that comes from reading the scriptures. When you begin to feel anxious, one of the best things you can do is open up the book and start reading what the lover of your soul has written to you.

Hope comes from prayer and rejoicing.

Romans 12:10–12 TLV

Be tenderly devoted to one another in brotherly love; outdo one another in giving honor. Do not be lagging in zeal; be fervent in spirit. Keep serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, enduring in distress, persisting in prayer,

What often happens is that instead of rejoicing and praying without ceasing, we stop and complain about our lot in life. Notice he doesn’t say give thanks for just the good things. He says, IN TRIBULATION

Hope Comes without Striving.

The problem is that when you have hope, you wield the power of God, but to do so in your own strength is exhausting! In the end it is not hope at all, it’s just giving lip service to God, your hope is in the strength of your own will- and that is a misplaced hope that will only lead to disappointment.

One of the nice things about these modern axes are that the handles on top of being resilient and secure, are very light- this allows the weight of the head to have momentum and the work is much easier.

Hope works much the same way. If hope is the axe head, then all we need to do is swing it. It has momentum.

Galatians 5:4–6 TLV

You who are trying to be justified by Torah have been cut off from Messiah; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Ruach, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Messiah Yeshua, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any meaning—but only trust and faithfulness expressing itself through love.

Jesus came to free us from the curse of the Law. The law was man’s attempt to be righteous by his own strength. If we try to do things by the power of our hand, then we will not accomplish anything. Hope isn’t stoked by being obedient to the law or being “good enough.” Hope is stoked because we know that God loves us, and that love came in the form of Jesus, and that Jesus came specifically to give us hope. Take Him at His own words:

Matthew 11:29–30 TLV

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and ‘you will find rest for your souls.’ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

When we forget to rest in Jesus, we can lose our edge. Hold fast to Him, and you’ll see that the work is much easier.

Let’s go back to our Elisha story. We see the panic in the man who lost the axe head. Why was he freaking out? It’s because he was using a borrowed ax. You can borrow someone else’s faith for a while and you may be able to coast during some trouble times, but in the end, you won’t be able to stand. You’ll wind up needing that particular person around in order to stand. While this is okay until you learn to get your feet underneath you, in the long run it makes you dependent on the person rather than on Jesus.

Getting the Edge Back

As if losing an iron ax head was not enough to cause panic, the ax head was lost in the water. You know, iron and water don’t really mix well- plus how can you find an ax head that’s fallen to the bottom of the lake? Well, I’ll tell you how.

First Step

Realize when you have lost your edge. Sometimes we are so busy plugging away at life that we don’t even realize we have lost our edge. We go along beating on the tree to no avail.

We work and work and work but nothing happens. You know, this describes us to a T toward the end of our time as Hope Chapel. We did the same thing we’d always done, but the results were very different. We had no fruit. We were not making progress; we were simply beating the tree with a stick.

At a certain point we need to acknowledge to God that we have lost our edge.

Next Step

Next we have to remember where we lost it. We need to take God to that place and tell Him. “God, here’s where I lost it”. It is important to know where we lost it because if we’re not careful, we can lose it again in the same place.

Next, the Miracle

Once we have showed God where we lost our edge, He does something miraculous- He causes the ax head to float. Isaiah did this by throwing a piece of wood in the water. Jesus did the same thing. The wood Jesus threw into the water was the cross at Calvary. The only way to get our edge back is to go back to the cross. Back to the place of repentance, back to the place where the real work was done. You see, the only reason we have an edge at all is because of the work Jesus did on the cross. Without his redemptive work, our lives are just a bunch of sticks beating against the trees. This was the hope the prophets were proclaiming. They weren’t proclaiming a hope where the trees would be cut down for us, they were proclaiming a hope that floats with the love of Christ.

Finally - Our Part

Our story doesn’t end with a floating ax head. It ends with the man of God telling the young man to take the edge back. It is not enough to simply have God do the miracle for you. You must claim it as your very own! You must reach out and take hold of it. Instead what most of us do is sit there and cry when we see the floating ax head. We beat ourselves up because the iron has gotten wet. “Oh my! It’s going to rust now, what ever shall I do?” We sit looking at the troubles and trials in our lives and we lament the fact that we are going through them and that things are not perfect.

To do this is an affront against the Almighty. You cannot sit there and look at the floating ax head and keep complaining about your lot in life. You need to reach out and take a hold of your edge. If he has delivered you before, He’ll do it again? Why is this time any different than last? Why did you believe last time and not this? We have such little faith, that we cannot go through one more trial, or that we cannot stand one more failure. God’s mercies are new every morning. He is the faithful one, why do we doubt Him each time we go over a speed bump in life? No, we must cling to Him and know that He will get us past this as well.

Conclusion

Now I know things have been tough for some of us lately. It’s all part of being in this spiritual battle. The good news is that we can make it through- we have that assurance.

Hope is the cutting edge that we have that gets us through life. And we have a sure hope. An assurance of what God has done for us. He is ultimately faithful beyond compare. Hope will carry you through, trust God and see that He will most certainly carry you through.

The question is, will you trust Him? Do you still have your ax head? If not, where did you lose it? Tell God, He’ll take you to that place and restore your hope; all you have to do is take hold of it. Christmas is not just the story of the baby in the manger, it is the story of the man of God, God Himself, restoring our hope.