Hope Vindicated
Hope: Where Appreciation Meets Anticipation • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 27 viewsThe birth of Jesus is the vindication of hope. The faithful children of Abraham had been waiting for centuries for God to fulfill his promises. Of course, his promises seemed too good to be true and it had been hundreds of years since the Jewish people had returned after the exile. So, those who continued to believe the prophets seemed foolish and naive. However, as always does, he kept his word and vindicated those who loyally kept their hope in him. Followers of Jesus today find themselves in a similar period of waiting and one day our hope will be vindicated.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Introduction:
A sugar maple tree takes 40 years to mature, before it can be tapped for maple syrup. So, the person who plants the maple tree is probably not going to be the person who benefits from it. They are planted for the next generation.
That’s what hope looks like….
…acting in anticipation of a particular future.
Review…
What have we learned about (biblical) hope?
Hope doesn’t always know HOW or WHEN, it just knows ___________.
God is worth the ____________.
Continually and confidently assert the expectation, God will keep his __________ and God will __________.
But there has to be an end goal to our HOPE
We have to be hoping towards something REAL
Otherwise it is just empty hope / wishful thinking
Hope has to have a payday.
Hope has to have a payday.
Payday
Reward
End Goal
Something that vindicates / justifies all of our current hope
You wouldn’t go to work everyday, unless there was a payday at the end
We are not just hoping to have hope
We have a VERY REAL future in mind
That payday may not come in our lifetime
But it is coming!!!
And it will make all the waiting and hoping worth it
Biblical Text:
Biblical Text:
God’s people waited for that payday, that vindication for generations…
about 2,082 BC
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 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.”
Abraham
lived and died with this hope
but this hope was not fulfilled in his lifetime
God repeated this promise to Abraham’s GRANDSON, Jacob
about 1,929 BC (When Jacob is a young man)
14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Before he died, Jacob prophesied about his son, Judah…
about 1,859 BC (When Jacob is an old man)
10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Jacob would not live to see this
Judah would not live to see this
Nor would his great, great, great grandchildren
It would be hundreds and hundreds of years
about 1,025 BC
God told Samuel to go to the little town of BETHLEHEM to anoint a king
12 And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Samuel wouldn’t live to see Israel’s hope fulfilled
Even David didn’t live to see all the nations of earth blessed
He ruled as KING, but even he hoped for
another KING…
a better KING
Unfortunately, David’s descendants would cause the kingdom to be...
divided
exiled to Babylon
about 597 BC (when Jews were being deported to Babylon)
5 “For the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David’s line. He will be a King who rules with wisdom. He will do what is just and right throughout the land. 6 And this will be his name: ‘The Lord Is Our Righteousness.’ In that day Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety.
Jeremiah wouldn’t live to see this hope fulfilled
Many more prophets would come and encourage God’s people
keep hoping
God is not done with you yet
about 585 BC (right after the temple is destroyed, Ezekiel speaks this message from the LORD)
15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. 16 I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.
Israel’s shepherds have not done their job
so God promises to come and be their shepherd
Ezekiel doesn’t live to see this hope fulfilled
about 430 BC (Jerusalem is rebuilt and the Jews are growing tired and apathetic)
1 “Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. 2 “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes.
Is YHWH coming or is the Messiah coming?
Malachi wouldn’t live to see this hope fulfilled
For over 400 years, the people…
waited
hoped
not knowing HOW and not knowing WHEN
But, finally, God showed up and fulfilled their hope!
Zechariah, the father of John the Baptizer, said,
after his son was born
shortly before Jesus was born…
67 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, 68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people
Visited - “come to check on”
“make a careful inspection”
“to go see a person with helpful intent”
“make an appearance to help”
Redeemed - Buy them back out of slavery
“Liberate from an oppressive situation” (BDAG)
69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;
God never said HOW or WHEN
But people like Zechariah never gave up HOPE
72 to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
The coming of Jesus means…
God has shown mercy
God has remembered his holy covenant
God is delivering his people from the hands of their enemies
We will talk about HOW in a moment
But we have to embrace this good news
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,
John will be the messenger
Going before YHWH
To prepare his way
To give knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of their sins
Anyone who doesn’t have FORGIVENESS, doesn’t have FREEDOM
If you’re in sin, you’re a slave
Regardless of what country you live in
Regardless of what you own
Regardless of what you drive
78 because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Death is the reason everyone is a slave
If you’ve sinned, you live in fear of death
People use that fear to manipulate and control you
Our culture enslaves us, not by threatening death, but by offering to…
delay the inevitability of our death
distract us from the reality of our death
deny the gravity of our death
Jesus was born to free us from tyranny of death
We no longer have to fear death
So, we are no longer slaves of those who would use that fear to manipulate and control us
Jesus is the SUNRISE.
We get to live in his light
All of God’s people longed, waited, and hoped for this day.
Application:
Application:
The arrival of Jesus is the payday of hope.
The arrival of Jesus is the payday of hope.
The hope of…
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
David
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Malachi
Zechariah
Their hope was VINDICATED when Jesus was born
Jesus’ first arrival or his second arrival?
YES!
There is a sense in which we no longer live in the shadow of death
But there is also a sense in which we are still waiting and hoping for the ultimate fulfillment of hope
That ultimate payday is still in the future
Invitation:
Invitation:
Hope should be the reason we do everything we do…
The reason we’re baptized
The reason we get out of bed in the morning
The reason we love our neighbors
We are loyal, because of our hope in Christ.
