The Promise of Hope
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
My Son Jacob is a huge Star Wars fan.
It’t funny because Star Wars kind of skipped a generation for me…
The originals were kind of my parents generation then they started coming out with more of them in the 90’s.
So I never really got into it…
So he is really the only one in our household who just loves the whole series…
Well Jake had this hope that one day he would go to Disneyland and experience in person the whole star wars land deal…
So he asks us…How much for a ticket to Disneyland?
A few years ago…And he begins to save…and save…
I mean money burns a hole in this kids pocket so bad if he gets $5 he wants to spend $10
but not when he has a goal…It’s like he gets a dollar for something and then he put it in his wallet above the fridge…He had to keep it out of reach just in case he ever got the desire to spend it on something else…it had to be out of reach…
So a one day Disney ticket is $160…And of course he is not thinking about parking, food and mom and dad having to go to Disney too…
So my wife and I kind of see this perfect opportunity….I have to be in southern California for meetings…My flight is taken care of, I have built in childcare there because we stayed at my in-laws…Jake has southwest credit from a few years ago…We just decided that we were going to bless him with a day at Disneyland
So I wake Jake up at 4:30 in the morning on a random Wednesday in October and say Jake you’re coming with me to Southern California..>And he is all confused…So then I tell him…And we are spending all day today at Disneyland….
As you can imagine…He flips out
We end up getting to Disney at 10am and we leave at 10:45pm
He has the most epic day of his life…
We went on every star wars ride multiple times…
Every time we were in a different part of the park he asked if we could go back to the star wars area…
And the best part of it was when we got there, I gave him his wallet filled with his savings and said…Mom and Dad bought your ticket, your flight and your food…You just get to spend this on souvenirs
It was a really great time…and so fun for us to watch him diligently save and wait…
He never abandoned hope…He never said…This isn't going anywhere, he always kept his eyes on the prize…
Even when he would only save a dollar that month, he always had the trust and the faith that one day he would go to Disneyland
As his dad, seeing him with this goal that he had, this hope that one day he would get to experience Disneyland…Seeing him keep that faith and be diligent in saving…It made it really easy for me to bless him.
Those who cannot embrace the joy of hopeful waiting will never know the blessing of a hope fulfilled.
Those who cannot embrace the joy of hopeful waiting will never know the blessing of a hope fulfilled.
Now just as much as this applies to Jacob’s desire to be in the promise land of Disneyland…It applies to our walk with God too.
Hope involves waiting…It just does…And our world tries to engineer waiting out of our world…
Hope involves anticipation…and even though our world tries to get rid of the waiting around…Waiting is good, it forms you, and it shapes you.
I am sure that probably all of us right now have something
The question has often been asked…Why so much time between the old testament and new testament?
Why did God let his people go in to exile and then be silent for 400 years!?
Maybe because there is something about hopeful waiting that shapes them….
I am sure that all of us have something that have someone or something that we are hoping in or hoping on and the thing that
Maybe there is something about hopeful waiting that will shape us!
Maybe your here and there is something that you have been hoping for or someone you have been hoping in and all you can do is to wait
Lets look back to the Scripture that was read this morning:
“ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.
“ ‘In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved
and Jerusalem will live in safety.
This is the name by which it will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’
let’s break this down
What is the good promise?
What is the good promise?
Now in the context of Jeremiah there is an interesting thing that is going on here…See as christians at Christmas time when we read…
“The Days are coming…When I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah” what is it that goes through our heads?
What is the promise we think about?
Well we think of the ultimate promise…Jesus…
But lets read Jeremiah for a minute the way it would have been better understood at the time…
You see at the time…The people of God, Israel is living in Babylon…In Exile…
Their land had been ransacked…Many of their friends and family had been killed by the Babylonians…
Their temple had been destroyed, the walls of their city are down
They are all that is left for the Jews..
So what is “the promise”
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.
The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their ancestors to possess,’ says the Lord.”
The promise is to return them to the promise land…
So what we have to understand is that Jeremiah is building up to this moment where he is saying…You are all going to be able to go home
As far as the Jews know this is their great hope at the moment…
You will go out of the land of your enemies
So this is a huge thing to hope for and to hope in…Because it means that they will be vindicated and restored
But Jeremiah then says something much bigger than just returning to your land is coming…
But you’ll have to wait for it
Bigger promise than they could imagine
Bigger promise than they could imagine
Jeremiah says, in those days I will make a Righteous branch from David’s line sprout…
And then he goes even further and says that this branch will be called a Righteous Savior
I can only imagine that there must have been a gasp at hearing this read
There has been no king of israel in centuries…
No one from the line of David on the throne for centuries
I mean for Jeremiah to say this…It’s like…he must be a false prophet
This promise that God will raise up a king in the line of David, seems like a long abandoned promise.
To be a little more precise…It’s an over 500 year old abandoned promise!
and here it is
When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.
Israel would have seen this…That the David line kept going but God kept speaking on King David
Lets look at Psalm 89…
The Davidic Hope
I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever;
with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
through all generations.
I will declare that your love stands firm forever,
that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one,
I have sworn to David my servant,
‘I will establish your line forever
and make your throne firm through all generations.’ ”
I will establish his line forever,
his throne as long as the heavens endure.
So not only will David’s immediate decedents take the throne…But
There is an established Davidic hope, that is eternal!
And it had seemed like it seemed like it was dormant for 500 years
It seemed like the promise was broken…
It seemed like with the exile, all hope was lost!
It’s like: Ok God we are waiting!
Do you ever feel that way? Like God we have been waiting forever but it seems like you have forgotten about me!
He has not forgotten about you, if there is something that is impossiable for God it might be forgetting how much he loves his people
Keep Waiting, he is shaping you! He is forming you!
But here is Jeremiah resurrecting hope…
He is saying dont look at our present circumstances…Keep your eyes on the hope
Often times our circumstances can blind us from the future hope
Often times our circumstances can blind us from the future hope
We will often confuse our present circumstances with our hope
When we look at our world through what is happening vs what God can do then we let our circumstances blind us to the true power of God
What is happening to us at the moment seems to have a huge effect on our attitude and what we believe about God but here in the book of Jeremiah, God is allowing his people to go through a rough time
Not just a rough time, Hell on earth…
Living in exile…Away from their home, their land, their God….
Families torn apart…people dead…
So why is God allowing this in his people?
I think the answer is something like the need of weaning his people off of their own harmful dependance on self…
I think he needed his people to cultivate hope in God rather than hope in themselves
Have you ever experienced this where it just seems like whatever you were going through, you couldn't see past the pain…You couldn't see past the hurt? You couldn’t see past the brokenness?
Don’t let your circumstances blind you from the promise of God in your life! Never will he leave you, never will he forsake you!
God’s promises transcend our circumstances
God’s promises transcend our circumstances
This is a tough lesson to learn
A few weeks before I took Jake to Disneyland…
we were on a walk and he was really in the dumps about ever going to Disney…I’m never going to be able to afford to go…
Dad…When do you think…even when I get the money that we will be able to go to Disneyland
And I had the tickets on my phone when he was saying that…The flights has been booked…He had no idea that his dream would soon be fulfilled
Why? Because I’m a pretty good dad…I have plans for my son…Plans to prosper him and not to harm him
But his circumstances were causing him to lose hope in the whole thing…
He has limitations as a kid…You know…No job, he can’t drive, he needs an adult with him everywhere he goes…
He was allowing those circumstances to affect his hope
But what he didn’t realize is that he has a mom and dad who love him and have planned in advance to bless him
How much more do you have a heavenly father who is planning on blessing you…On walking with you through your circumstances
Well for the jews…They had this great hope that one day a righteous ruler would come in the line of David
And look they understood what this meant
They know their history
David was a man after God’s own heart
Even though he sinned he repented…
He shepherded Israel toward the Lord
But every decedent after David went further and further away from righteousness
And eventually, the promise of returning to Israel that Jeremiah would give would happen…
The Jews would return about 100 years after Jeremiah…
But even though they were home they still were a conquered people,…by the Persians then the greeks and then the Romans
So the question would have to come up…
Is this ruler ever going to come?
New Testament
New Testament
I want to show you have verse 1 of Chapter 1 of the new testament starts
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
What is the point that Matthew is trying to make here?
That this hope…This righteous ruler
The king in the line of David is now here..>in the flesh, on the earth!
And there are countless examples of Jesus operating in righteousness and what does that mean?
It simply means, setting the world right!
I want to look at three verses back to back here:
As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”
As Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him. Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
Do you hear the Messianic hope!?
Do you see that they are just saying what Jeremiah’s hope was?
Is this the one we have been waiting for?
What I want you to see is that this is ruling in righteousness
It is setting things right that were wrong and this is what Jesus did everywhere he went!
In healing the blind and mute, in having mercy on the crowds…Jesus is setting the world right
And he will set it right even more when he dies for the sins of humanity…Because he gives us the opportunity to be made right with God…
And what I love about these new testament passages where you have a variety of people calling out, “Son of David”
Is that you have these religious leaders looking for the messiah every single day…but the messiah wont fit into their mold…He is much bigger than that…The ordinary people recognize the messiah…The out casts, on the highways and byways, the recognize him…
Not the religious elite…
They recognized that Jesus is the actual one that has been talked about from generations ago
That Jesus is the one who had been prophesied about…
The phrase “son of David” becomes a confession of Faith!
I know who you are! You are the promised one! The one the scriptures talk about…
What is interesting in all the gospels that when people call out “son of David” they are saved!
And what I love about Jesus is that he breaks all the molds!
let’s look at one more story here
Hope for all people
Hope for all people
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
A Canaanite woman! WHAT!
my fellow Bible nerds, Mark and Luke use the term Syrophoenician woman…>Meaning that she was half Syrian and Half Phoenician…They want you to know that she is not a Jew…
But Matthew wants to be a little more exact here…She is a Canaanite! Not just , not a Jew, but the historical enemy of the Jews!
Like if you have read your Old Testament…She is the decedents of the people God kicked out of the promise land…
And there is a very famous exchange here where in Jesus heals her daughter and says she has great faith!
Because she had the audacity to have the hope…She had the audacity to say….”Son of David” The phrase that her enemy neighbors used for the Messiah!
The hope that this woman had is actually barrier breaking
We might look at it as just another story…
But where the Jews saw themselves as the covenant people, the ones who belong to the covenant promise, the seed of Abraham, the land of Israel…The ones who had the Torah of the Lord….These were the people who were perfectly equipped to receive the promised messiah
But this woman was totally outside of that…Saying..>is there hope for us too?
Are you our messiah as well!
Jesus seeing her daughter’s affliction and the woman’s hope expressed through faith healed the little girl
What are you waiting on?
Who is your hope in?
Some of the last verses of the Bible are of Jesus revealing who he really is
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”
Ladies and gentlemen
As we begin now…toward christmas
Toward the manger
Where is your hope parked?
Who do you have your hope in?
If it is anything less then Jesus Christ, the son of David, you hope is in shifting sand…
So this morning as we take communion
Communion is open to all who call on the name of Jesus as their savior…I want to ask you what are you hoping for?
Jesus I hope in you to intervene in my marriage
Jesus I hope in you to intervene with my wayward kids
Jesus I hope in you to help me in this season of doubt…
Jesus I hope and trust in your for financial breakthrough
What are you hoping for in the lord?
As you take the cup and the bread this morning as a physical act of hope I want you at sometime during communion to take the bread and the cup and say out loud…Jesus I hope in you for _______
On the night he was betrayed…Jesus took the bread and he broke it…He said this is my body…Take and eat
He passed the cup…This is a new covenant in my blood!
