Hope

Introduction:

Hope can mean a lot of things to us. Maybe our football team is losing in the fourth quarter, but then they intercept the ball and have new life to win the game. Or maybe you are out shopping and you find that perfect outfit and then realize it’s out of your price range only to get an email with a 40% off coupon for that store. Or perhaps your in school and you didn’t do so great on that test and you’re worried about your grade dropping when suddenly the teacher offers extra credit to the class and it’s something you can knock out in no time…

Or maybe it’s something more serious situation and you don’t know how you are going to pay for rent when your boss calls you into his or her office and says you’re getting a raise, or you have a bad health diagnosis but then your doctor tells you about a new treatment that can help….hope takes lots of different forms, but one thing is for certain hope is something that we all need in life. We all have that desire to belief that things are going to be ok. Pliny the Elder once said:

Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

Pliny the Elder

Today our focus is on hope as we kick off the first week of Advent and our series called “The Promised King”. As we start this holiday season we are reminded in Luke that the world needed hope, and often times hope comes to us in the most unlikely circumstances.

Luke 1:26–33 ESV

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

1. God Uses the Ordinary for the Extraordinary

Today we will study a passage of scripture that is commonly refereed to as the “Annunciation of Christ.” This pivotal moment in history where God sends his angel Gabriel to visit a poor peasant girl, most likely a young teenager, illiterate with most of her knowledge of scripture coming from what she had memorized at home or learned in the synagogue.

Her name itself in Hebrew means “bitter myrrh” and while we don’t know for sure often times in Jewish tradition parents named their children from the circumstances of the birth. We do know that when she was born was a very difficult time for the Jewish people. There was definitely bitterness and poverty as the jewish people struggled under Roman rule and had very little hope.

The city of Nazareth itself was an unlikely recipient of a visit from an angel. First-century Jewish readers would have been astonished that the epicenter of history and the coming Messiah would be from Galilee a land that the Jews held in contempt because it was ethnically mixed. It certainly wasn’t Judea which housed the capital Jerusalem. Instead God chose Nazareth of Galilee which was basically a “nonplace” There is no Old Testament reference to Nazareth, not even in the writings of Josephus, or in any rabbinical writings. One commentary noted that it was “a halfway stop between port cities of Tyre and Sidon and was overrun by Gentiles and Roman soldiers” In John 1:46 Nathanial, who was about as straight laced as they come, notes “Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.””

God could have sent Gabriel to Jerusalem and the temple the most holy place in all of Israel but instead, Gabriel was sent to a town that by all accounts was a corrupt little place that wasn’t much at all.

Martin Luther points out just how unlikely Mary was to be chosen for such a grand task: “And yet this was the one whom God chose. He might have gone to Jerusalem and picked out Caiaphas’s daughter, who was fair, rich, clas in gold-embroidered raiment, and attended by a retinue of maids in waiting. But God preferred a lowly maid from a mean town.”

Despite all of these things God chose this town and this young lady for this grand task. The Latin rendering of these verses is “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” Luther however didn’t like this translation. He said if he were to translate it into German he would use the phrase “God bless you, dear Mary—-Liebe Maria. My German isn’t great but the term “Liebe” in German is one of great affection and Luther is saying that God has found favor on Mary and has this affection for her. He cares for her, and he cares for you and me as well.

Takeaways:

If the incarnation happened today, it would be the same. The Lord would not be born in Jerusalem or Rome or London or New York, but on the ordinary streets of some nameless town.

This reminds us that God uses the ordinary. The simple and humble are the ones that God often uses for great things in His Kingdom.

Nine months later the angels would appear again to a bunch of nobodies in the middle of nowhere when they came to announce the birth of Christ to the shepherds. Luther quipped that “poor” and “humble” were words that described the people as that God looked for in the story of the coming Messiah. The angels would declare to them Luke 2:14 ““Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!””

“As we study the annunciation, we must accept the essential spiritual fact of the incarnation and the gospel: the Lord comes to needy people—those who realize that without him they cannot make it—those who acknowledge their weakness and spiritual lack. The incarnation, salvation, resurrection, and Christmas are not for the proud and self-sufficient.”

This is good news for us…God still comes to the poor and humble. Salvation is not an exclusive club where membership must be bought with money, power, or prestige. The good news of the gospel is a free gift of God available to all and just like in the pages of scripture God still uses the ordinary for the extraordinary today!

2. Jesus Personifies Hope

The second part of our verses today center on Mary receiving the news that she would have a son and that she should “call him Jesus and that he will be great and be called the Son of the Most High”

God sent Jesus into the world at this exact moment to this young lady Mary and he would sit on the throne of David, as a rightful heir, and rule forever. See Jesus was hope in that he would fulfill what was prophesied long ago.

Some OT Prophesies of Jesus:

Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.””

Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Micah 5:2 “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”

God promised his people that a Savior would come. There was hope and it would ultimately be fulfilled through this baby that Mary would birth and give the name Jesus. In the New Testament we see this theme of Jesus being the fulfillment of hope.

Titus 2:13 “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,”

Colossians 1:27 “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

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,”

Romans 15:12 “And again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.””

1 Timothy 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,”

Jesus is hope. He was the hope of the Israelites in the OT, the incarnate Christ was hope for those living in the first century ad Jesus lived among them, and the resurrected Christ who defeated death is hope for all of mankind, confirming his deity and that he indeed was both God and man and had the authority to defeat death. That through a relationship with him eternity with God in heaven is possible by trusting in him. We have hope because of Jesus!

The big theological nugget we can extract from this text comes from Mary’s example…that we can trust God. It must have been overwhelming to think that she was going to give birth to a son, let alone a son who was to be the Messiah. Though at first overwhelming, who wouldn’t respond that way, Zechariah became mute until the birth of his son (John the Baptist) based on his encounter w/Gabriel and Daniel was terrified (his own words) when he encountered Gabriel…she knew the legitimacy of her baby would be questioned and that it ultimately could lead to danger for herself, yet she believed.

Despite all of that Mary trusted that Jesus would indeed be both God and man. She was to call him Jesus-which was a common enough name during that time, but meant Savior and when Gabriel explained he would be the Son of God she would have made the connection that he indeed would be the long awaited Messiah prophesied long ago.

Later in Luke 1:38 “And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.”

From this response we see that Mary responded with obedience to God. She would come to a point of submission, trusting that God was good and though she didn’t understand all that was to take place she knew that God loved her and cared for her. “Liebe Maria” as Luther said. We can trust that God is good and loves and cares for us.

This is a great example for us. We too can trust that God loves us and cares for us. Just as Mary humbly accepts that God loves her and that she will be an instrument for his glory we too can accept that God loves us and sent Jesus for us.

As we celebrate Christmas this year we should reflect on the fact that he will always be the ultimate source of hope in this world. No matter what you are going through or how far away you feel from God, we need to understand that it’s through a relationship with Jesus that we can experience the ultimate hope. As we continue to walk through the Nativity story in scripture we will be reminded time and time again of how God’s love for us is so deep that he sent Jesus to the world.

We need saving and God sent Jesus to do just that. The fact that it all started with a humble servant, Mary, receiving this news from God’s messenger Gabriel is a powerful reminder that God works in the ordinary and will go to great lengths, coming in the form of a baby, to be our Savior.

As Jesus continues to grow and gets into adulthood we see him start his earthly ministry. One amazing thing about his time on earth was that he never made it about his position. Yes he was both God and man but he always emphasized it was all about a relationship with him. Our Savior doesn’t require us to do things, he wants a relationship with us!

Jesus Christ never asks anyone to define his position or to understand a creed, but “Who am I to you?” Jesus Christ makes the whole of human destiny depend on a man’s relationship to himself.

Oswald Chambers (Lecturer and Missionary)

This Christmas Season let’s remember that this baby born in Bethlehem was indeed the Savior of Mankind and we have hope in him. The hope we have is rooted in relationship to him.

Closing:

O holy night is a wonderful Christmas Carol composed 1847 by the french composer Adolphe Adam.The original lyrics to O Holy Night is a french poem named Minuit, Chrétiens – in english Midnight Christians – written by Placide Cappeau. The english lyrics was written by the minister John Sullivan Dwight.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

We all need hope. My prayer for us during this Christmas season is that we will be reminded fresh that we have hope in Jesus who came to us as a baby in the tiny town of Bethlehem. If you’ve never received this hope, my prayer is that this season you will trust in Jesus and receive this hope through salvation in Jesus Christ.

In light of God’s great mercy to us, of sending Jesus to earth in the form of a baby boy in Bethlehem we pause today to reflect on the ultimate mission that he was sent to earth to accomplish, to offer salvation through his death and resurrection. So we will close out our service by observing the Lord’s Supper…

Lord’s Supper

Invitation:

This morning, through our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim the death of Christ. These elements, which represent the body and blood of Christ, are a visible sermon to us; they are the gospel in tangible form. They proclaim to us the great drama of redemption in Christ: salvation in the present (“for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup”), salvation in the past (“you proclaim the Lord’s death”), and salvation in the future (“until he comes,” 1 Cor. 11:26). In light of such a salvation, the apostle Paul warns us, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord” (v. 27). Before we partake of the Supper, let us examine ourselves this morning, recognizing both the gravity of our sin and the weight of Christ’s glorious sacrifice.

As we get ready to partake in the Lords Supper I want to remind you that we believe this is reserved for those that have placed their faith in Christ. If you haven’t placed your faith in Jesus we ask that you sit in as we observe the Lord’s Supper and contemplate the significance of his sacrifice.

For believers I encourage you to spend time with God confessing any unrepentant sin in your life and asking him to prepare your heart for taking part in this special remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as he gave his body and spilled his blood on our behalf. We will prepare our hearts through prayer and then we will play some music and invite you to come up as families or individuals to come and get the elements. You will grab one set of two cups that has both the juice and bread stacked on each other.

Prayer…

Scriptural directives for Bread & Juice:

[Jesus] said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this is remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:24)[Jesus] said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” (Matt. 26:26)

Eat the Bread

Jesus said, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt.26:27–28), and, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:25).

Drink the Juice

Benediction

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer has a beautiful benediction I’d like to speak over us:

The peace of God, that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge of the love of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you, and remain with you always. Amen. Intro & Background to Ruth: