The Hope that Awakens You

Introduction

Provoked introduction…. I played football growing up - very talented but lacked a natural killer instinct. My coaches figured out that in order to get the best out of me they had to figure out a way to tick me off. When i was angry i played with a ruthless, singularly focused clarity that i just couldn’t conjure up on my own…I wonder if the Holy Spirit used that truth about me a little bit this week….

So if i come across grouchy…i’m sorry.

“It’s the Hope that Kills You” analogy.

‌- Ted sitting at his table contemplating the coming game and the consequences surrounding it….May telling him about how they have a saying “its the hope that kills you…”.

The year that was 2024…

Global Conflict

Domestic Division

The Election….

Area population growth and growing pains

Church growth at Middleton Grace

Some have had babies, some have started new jobs, some have had life changing events - both good and bad.

All of us had expectations. All of us sat here during this time in 2023 and had a vision in our head as to how this year would go. And now we’ve blinked and we have less than three days left.

‌We all had hope for this year.

We feel like we have time…but then summer hits…now we have to hold on tight to get through that, and one we got through the craziness of summer trips, then the fall hits and school, sports, activities, and everything else happens. You blinked and its the middle of November…time to plan for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the all-consuming nature of this time of year hits you.

It is so easy to get lulled into a spiritual slumber by the ever increasing pace of life. Going through life in this sleepy, apathetic, one-thing-after-another existence we often fall into is NOT what we have been called to.

The Advent of Hope - Sleepers Awake

The advent season calls us out of this dazed mindset, out of our slumber, and bursts into our world and calls us to stay awake (maybe thats why Christ came as a baby…). You see, as Jason said a few weeks ago, Jesus came as a baby, but he came as a baby with a mission. A mission that he fulfilled and then passed onto us.

Mark 13:33-37

33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Mk 13:33–37.

Hope is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Many of us approach the word hope in the same way that May does…it’s the hope that kills you….

As Christians, what is our hope?

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Heb 10:23.

I wonder if the writer of Hebrews had Peter’s confession, known as the Great Confession, in his mind when he wrote these words.

The Great Confession:

Peter and Jesus

“Who do you say I am?”

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”

“On this rock Rock will I build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail”

If Christ is who he says he is then he is the ONLY one deserving of our hope.

But we don’t do that! We run around chasing lesser things because we have lost sight of the reality that our hope is in Christ and nothing else! If you don’t believe me take a good hard look at 2024 and TELL me we as the Church at large haven’t taken our eye off the ball. Tell me we haven’t put our hope in things destined to let us down!

I just lived through the same election season you did. The amount of hope within the church placed in singular person not named Jesus Christ is staggering to me. The amount of hope placed in the comfortable life we have had as Christians in America is indicative of exactly the kind of slumber the enemy wants to lull us into. Oh how easily we have become satisfied!

CS Lewis put it this way:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - CS Lewis “The Weight of Glory”

Hope properly placed awakens us to three things:

Hope Awakens us to The Gospel

‌When we properly place our hope in Christ, this awakens us to the Gospel - that we are more broken and sinful than we could ever imagine, but more loved than we could ever dream. That Christ came to this earth and lived the life we could could never live, died the death we should have died, and was raised to life again, and he WILL come back.

What hope exists in that truth!

Hope Awakens us to Growth

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. Heb 10:24–25.

Hope Awakens us to the Great Commission

Spurgeon Quote:

"Hope in Christ, and in His coming, and in the victory of the truth. If the storms lower, believe that there is fair weather yet ahead; and if the night darkens into a sevenfold blackness, believe that the morning comes despite the darkening glooms. Do you have faith and trust in Him who lives, and was dead, and is alive for evermore? Let your hope begin to hear the hallelujahs, which proclaim the reign of the Lord God omnipotent; for reign He must, and the victory shall be unto Him and to His truth. Hold fast your faith. Hold fast your hope."