Week 1: Simeon - HOPE

SLIDE: Scripture

Isaiah 9:2 (NLT)

2  The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.

SLIDE: Welcome

SLIDE: Title

Introduction

Today we begin a sermon series for the Advent season called The Promise.

As the church we will celebrate the four themes of Advent over the coming weeks, which culminate on Christmas Day, we will discover a God who keeps His promises.

SLIDE: The Promises Give Us:

The promises give us hope, peace, joy, and love which all lead us back to the manger, where we meet our savior, Jesus.

Story: It’s kind of sad, but each holiday we celebrate is barely over before we start to think and prepare for the next. We are literally weeks away from the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas is coming, and I know there is are some of you who began the countdown to the Christmas season as soon as last year’s Christmas season was over. You know the kind of people I am talking about. They keep their lights on their house year-round and pretend it’s because it’s too much work to put them up each year. The kind who play Christmas music all summer long...You’re a dedicated group. I’ll give you that much.

Maybe you aren’t that extreme, but most everyone can relate to the feeling of the anticipation of Christmas.

What are your anticipatory memories as a kid:

What about the presents sitting under the tree just begging to be shaken and weighed to determine what on earth was waiting for Christmas morning.

Or as a kid trying to sleep on Christmas Eve? You have as much luck doing that as fitting back into your jeans on the first day of January, after all the holiday meals.

But that is part of the magic of Christmas, isn’t it? The anticipation of the holiday is as enjoyable as the day itself.

The truth is, waiting isn’t easy. But waiting is at the very heart of the Advent season.

That’s the season we’re heading into now, it’s known as Advent—

Today, we want to begin with the theme of hope.

SLIDE: Hope (graphic)

Main Teaching

Hope is a word we use often during the Christmas season.

I hope this tree fits,

I hope I get what I want for Christmas,

I hope Grandma doesn’t burn the ham,

or I hope it snows this year.

We have lost the depth of the theme of hope when our hopes are really just wishful thinking about trivial things.

This, however, is not Scripture’s understanding of the word hope. In 1 Peter, the writer uses the word hope over and over. In chapter 1, we are given a bit of a summary of this word.

READ 1 Peter 1:13

1 Peter 1:13 (NLT)

13 So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.

Most of the time, when we talk about hope, it is in terms of the future, but it also has a lot to do with the present.

Peter uses the phrase “with minds that are fully sober”—some translations say “prepare your minds for action” and this is translated literally “gird up the loins of your mind.” This phrase comes from an ancient form of dress for men in the Middle East. Men would wear a long outer shirt that would stretch all the way down to their ankles. This made it pretty hard to move quickly or to respond to a treacherous situation. So, to “gird up your loins” meant you would literally grab up your long outer shirt and tuck it into your belt and be ready for action.

SLIDE: Hope’s Impact

So, our hope is not just meant to be something that only impacts our future, but it should impact our present as well.

POINT #1: HOPE IS A CERTAINTY ABOUT THE FUTURE THAT IMPACTS THE PRESENT

Our hope is not set in some ambiguous optimism for no reason. Our hope is set in specific moments of history. For example, the arrival of Jesus Christ as a baby and His life, death, and resurrection were moments in history. Hope is about living right now in the light of a future promise.

This hope is about restructuring the way we look at the world, not as it is right now, but as it will be when Christ comes to set all things right.

In a world that was full of deep darkness, there was a light coming. There is an old man named Simeon within the pages of Scripture. Simeon is a wonderful Advent character as he is a perfect example of someone who has oriented his entire life around a future promise given to him by God.

After Jesus’s birth, Mary and Joseph, Jesus’s parents, took their newborn son to the temple to participate in some of the traditional Jewish customs of the day. One of the main reasons to travel to the temple was to dedicate and consecrate baby Jesus to the Lord. When they arrived at the temple, Simeon was there as well.

READ Luke 2:25–35

Luke 2:25–35 (NLT)

25 At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him 26 and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 That day the Spirit led him to the Temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required, 28 Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and praised God, saying, 29 “Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. 30 I have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared for all people. 32 He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel!” 33 Jesus’ parents were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them, and he said to Mary, the baby’s mother, “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. 35 As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.”

Some traditions believe that Simeon may have been around 112 years old. According to Luke 2, Simeon was promised that he would not die until he saw the Messiah in the flesh. His life would be spared until he set eyes on the Anointed One. By the prompting of the Spirit, Simeon is at the temple at the time Jesus and His family arrive. When Simeon sees Jesus, he knows immediately who he is. He is overcome by joy and hope as he realizes that this is the One he has been waiting for, the one the world has been waiting for. Simeon takes the baby Jesus into his arms and recites this beautiful prayer.

Can you even imagine what Simeon would have felt? To know that the thing he had hoped for so long had finally come to pass. Simeon, in his many years, had seen many painful times in Israel’s history. He saw the Romans conquer and occupy his people and his land. He saw a bloody civil war. He saw multiple revolutions by the Israelite people be crushed. Yet in the midst of these and other difficult moments in history, Simeon held out hope.

POINT #2: HOPE IS BIRTHED OUT OF DEEP LONGINGS AND DESPERATE NEED

SLIDE: Hope Birthed

Simeon shows us that hope is birthed out of a deep longing and a desperate need for God’s presence and God’s comfort.

Luke tells us that Simeon was waiting at the temple for something very specific. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel. This word consolation means “encouragement” or “comfort.” This didn’t mean he was waiting for God’s pat on the back or a few nice words. This phrase was in reference to chapters in the book of Isaiah. For hundreds of years Israel had been defeated and destroyed by many different nations—the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and then currently the Romans. These chapters in Isaiah were written right in the middle of those difficult times. When these chapters in Isaiah were written and they pointed to a coming comfort through the Messiah that God would send, many would look around and be discouraged because that was not the situation at the time. But these were promises that one day things would change. They could have hope, comfort, and encouragement that God would come through.

During these weeks leading up to Christmas, I would encourage you to allow yourself to feel the deep need you have for God. Many of us, when we get a sense of our need, just fill it with shopping, accomplishments, parties, denial, or substance abuse. Instead of leaning into our deepest need for God’s comfort and healing in our lives, we simply try to distract ourselves, and in the end, we miss the hope that is offered in Jesus Christ. When we do this, we are living but we are not really alive. Look around you, engage with the Advent season, and allow yourself to hope that your current circumstance that brings pain can be changed and restored by the arrival, or the coming, of Christ into our lives.

May this Advent season be different than ever before. Don’t allow yourself to distract or self-soothe. Wrestle with your pain and come face-to-face with the brokenness of the world. It’s only then that we see fully the emptiness of our normal Christmas hustle and bustle. We have been settling for less than is available to us. Out of a deep longing can come the comfort and hope of Jesus.

SLIDE: Hope is a Person

Hope is found in our deepest longing, but our hope also comes from a person.

POINT #3: HOPE IS FOUND IN A PERSON.

In 1 Peter we are told that our hope is not set in some kind of empty wishful thinking. This is amazing news, because if it was, then our hope ends in despair or disappointment. But our hope is set in Jesus Christ. Not our 401(k), not some relationship, not a job, not some president, not a good medical report.

SLIDE: Promised Arrival

Our hope is in Jesus and His promised arrival in the future to restore all that is broken.

As you read through the New Testament, many people who come in contact with Jesus miss the significance of who He really was. Even though the writings in the Old Testament pointed to Him, the Jewish people still missed the Messiah when He arrived. But not Simeon. Simeon knew when he saw Jesus, even at just a month old, that he was the Anointed One who was promised to come and bring hope, peace, joy, and love.

So why did Simeon get it right when so many got it wrong?

In short . . . because people were looking for something Jesus wasn’t. Jesus wasn’t what most people were looking for in a Messiah. They wanted a political warrior King who would overthrow the oppressors of the Jews and put them on top. They didn’t expect the Messiah to be a tiny baby who would come and, instead of exerting His power, would give Himself up on a cross.

When our hope is placed in anything other than the promises of God and the fulfillment of these promises in Jesus, we tend to settle for hope in lesser things. These things always fail and always lead to frustration.

This morning, in the midst of whatever you are going through . . . where do you find your hope? How you answer this question makes all the difference. Is your hope based on something you want God to do or is it based in God Himself?

Here are the beauty and the dark side of the holidays. It is during this time of year the good of life and the bad of life are both exaggerated. At no other time of the year are we more aware of the problems we can’t solve, the people we can’t control, and the expectations we can’t meet. There are problems that are decades in the making that you won’t be able to fix overnight. There are people in your life whom you won’t be able to save during the holidays, and there are expectations that you will try so hard to meet for someone else in your family and you will never be able to do it.

That’s not where your hope is.

There is a difference in being hopeful FOR something and being hopeful IN something. Choose this year to face your deep longing and come to believe that there is one specific source from whom you can derive hope—and that is Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

During this Advent season, we don’t just idly wait and hope. In fact, when we sense our deep longing and know our source of hope, then we can live every moment believing the best is before us. When we begin to embrace the anticipation and the expectation, we free ourselves up from the urgency of having to fix things now, and know that our God is at work. The question is, how do we join Him in that work? It is an active anticipation.

Illustration: Benjamin Bear active anticipation

While we wait on the Lord, what would set us up perfectly for when He arrives in our lives? For some of us, this means this season of Advent is perfect for forgiving someone, for seeking forgiveness, for pressing into God, for repenting of sin, for serving people, for loving others. We wait . . . but we wait actively.

SLIDE: Hope with Anticipation

Come, Lord Jesus, Come