12/1/2019 God With Us Brings Hope

Let us begin with a word of Prayer.

Ord May the meditations of our hearts in the words of my lips be pleasing in your sight. our Rock and Our Redeemer

I'm in.

This morning is the first sermon in a series on God With Us.

This morning. It's about God's hope that is with us.

help isn't necessarily a religious or Christian word. I watch the Iowa Hawkeyes this weekend and and they were tied with Nebraska and the reason why this game matters is because if they won against Nebraska their likely to go to a warmer weather bowl game, and so I had hope in that situation and so

it was tied under 30 seconds left and and there was in field-goal range and Nebraska had all their timeouts and I will had none cuz that's how we play and so they went and any if you want to kick it in right after he kicks at the whistle blows and it's still in the air. So, you know, it's not even going to count because Nebraska is called a timeout and it goes right through the center doesn't count. And when they had even one more time out left and so they're trying to ice the kicker. Right and this guy seems to be like in on the game right like he's got his mind where it matters and

And if this moment where I was like I really hope that they don't do that again like it was really a prayer. but it wasn't really nothing either right and so like hope hope isn't necessarily A Prayer. It's not a wish either.

Kind of like maybe possibly okay. You know in the new in the New Testament specifically in the gospels. Hope is only mentioned one time. And it wasn't a secular form. It wasn't talking anything about God. But in the Old Testament, it's full of Hope. full of Hope Just starting with Genesis. There's Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden. Right and it begins the whole for this Covenant with God and God's people it's kind of like God constantly sending love letters and God's people constantly returning them to Sender.

There's hope you know Advent uses a lot of verses from Isaiah. about the coming Messiah But but Isaiah was written 700 years before Jesus's birth. I don't know. How patient you were but that's a lot of patients waiting 700 years for God's promise to be fulfilled. And we get this benefit because we know that Christ was born and that Christ is raised, but we're waiting for Christ to return and we've been waiting for two thousand years.

And so this Advent is about this with the fancy term about it. Is it it's the already but not yet. The already but not yet. We still have the hope and expectation. I need Assurance of Jesus's Second Coming. But we're left with the the here in the now and what differentiates us.

The god that we serve is that we believe that God is with us. We believe in the work of the Holy Spirit. We believe that God is with us right now in our lives. Into this morning, we're going to talk about Hope and what that means.

I understand. Hope we have to understand hopelessness. We can understand what it means to be without hope. It was the summer of 2017 to commercial fishermen John Aldridge and Anthony. So stinky left Montauk Long Island in the middle of the night. to go fishing John began to prepare for their fishing Expedition and Anthony who is going to be busy later on in the day went down to sleep below deck. John was about 40 miles off of the coast. Pulling on a lever trying to get a a piece unstuck so he could release some things and he pulled so hard and it snapped. e Corrine back went off the back of the boat. He came up just in time to see the boat that was on autopilot. Continue its way forward. The lights going out of the distance.

Immediately knew he was about to die.

So began to try to calm himself. to prepare himself In in in in this moment, he realized that he didn't have a life jacket on.

And so he he understood that his first goal was going to have to be to find some buoyancy. and these These Boots That he was wearing were weighing down on him cuz they were full of water. You're pulling him down any thought, you know, if I take these boots off my flipping weapon the year and I pull them down real quick. It'll create a pocket a tear. And I can put one under each armpit. It'll keep me a little bit more buoyant. So that's what he did. He was all alone. except for two sharks They were swimming about 15 feet away. They weren't bothering him. They were going to let him go with his time. But they were ready.

about 3 hours later Anthony wakes up and goes above deck notices immediately that John is gone and radios the Coast Guard. They tell them that they tell him that they will begin their search, but he has to understand that his friend is probably dead. And they will not be able to find him.

John Anthony looks around and he sees the broken lever and he realizes that they've been together for so long that he knew win. John usually began to pull that lever. And so we knew an ocean depth, you know how deep the ocean would be when John was trying to release that lever. into the search area narrowed John's first goal was to make it through the night.

You did that. He made it through the night. But you didn't know what next. You just kept rolling and riding on the waves. hoping praying at first he thought it was an illusion. But eventually he realized it was real. There's a fishing buoy off in the distance. And he got to it and he climbed onto it and he hung on for dear life.

the Coast Guard was searching and I saw a man clinging to a buoy waving his arms frantically. It's the diver. Jumps into the water and climbs up on the fishing buoy with him and says are you John Aldridge?

John says yes.

And the driver says we've been looking for you for 9 hours. John says I've been waiting for you for 12.

That's hopelessness that moment when he came up out of the water to see the boat that he himself and put on autopilot going in the direction that he wanted it to go and leaving him for dead. That's hopelessness. He could have not thought about another thing and just waited.

There was something in him that wanted more. Something but in him to just wanted to get to the next opportunity. for survival

Maybe some of you this morning are here and you're clinging to that blue yourself. Not sure where the boat is went and not sure where God is in this process, but you just want to make it to the next day and to the next day and to the next.

this season I want you to know that God is with you. Good Hope Hope is alive.

You know. one of the sounds that has all the Hope in the world. Is a baby's first cry? After nine months of expectation that that gap between birth and breath and cry.

endless possibilities that cry signifying life is Hope

we have hope with us.

call in the New Testament really really has an understanding of what hope means for a Christian faith.

That selonians e he talks about hope. You may connect hope with a couple other words. faith hope and love

faith hope and love.

We are assured of Hope in Christ because of three main.

Elements if you will there's three things that point to Hope being alive and how do we know this first? is in Scripture we can look at scripture and we can say this is where hope is right. Hope was radshack Meshach in a Bendigo, right? Hope Was Sarah and Abraham Baron but promised Generations as much as the Stars.

Pope Not only in the Old Testament, but but also in the new. Remember the hope of the woman who is bleeding who who reached out to touch. Jesus is Cloak. out of hopelessness She claimed to Hope.

We can see hope in her woven throughout scripture.

That's not the only thing. We have the Assurance of Hope because we know God's character. We know the character of God.

We know that that God has experienced all that. His son is experienced all

and understand where we are.

There's also

how we can look back at God's covenant with God's people. Throughout time and see how God interacted time and time and time again when people said that they wanted this thing, but then they never quite got it even Jesus's disciples didn't get it, right.

and then there's a saying that we know that we cling to the most of their sense of hope and that is God's faithfulness.

God is faithful.

God is faithful. Doesn't always mean that we understand it. It doesn't always mean that it goes our way. It doesn't always mean that we're happy about it. It doesn't all mean.

That's what we want. the God's faithful and Hope is a lie.

Hope is with us. It's not it's not a wish it's not a desire. It's the deep understanding that Christ loves us and cares for us and offers this grace and forgiveness and mercy.

The God wants us to know. that hope is with us every day.

And so we rest in this hope that God this knowledge of hope that God is with us today. Just like God was with all of those who went before us and God will be with those who come after us. And so we do live into the already but not yet of Advent. But remember that we have hope in Christ. In God's faithfulness in God's character. Got to work.

And we cling to that hope. even in the middle of the ocean

Amon