Anticipate Hope

Introduction: A story in Focus on the Family tells the tragic stories of teenagers Heidi, Christopher, Amber, and Alicia. Early one March morning, Heidi, 15, and her boyfriend, Christopher, 16, decided life wasn’t worth living. After a short hike down a rugged path on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, the teenage couple ducked through a hole in a chain-link fence to get to a narrow concrete spillway known locally as “the diving board.” There, before dawn, the couple jumped, falling 150 feet into the crashing surf below. Their bodies were found by a jogger at sunrise.

According to an article published on November 6 of this year among teenagers suicide is the second-leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults.” Research shows that one of the key reasons for suicide attempts is having the feeling of hopelessness. Focus Journal published the findings of research that shows that hopelessness “was significantly related to eventual suicide.”

Two months later and just a few miles down the coast, 14-year-old Amber and her 15-year-old friend, Alicia, also decided they’d had enough. After tying their wrists together, the two teens walked to the edge of a cliff and jumped. Friends and family knew that Amber and Alicia had been using drugs. But they also said the girls were making progress and seemed happy.

According to an article published on November 6 of this year among teenagers suicide is the second-leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults.” Research shows that one of the key reasons for suicide attempts is having the feeling of hopelessness. Focus Journal published the findings of research that shows that hopelessness “was significantly related to eventual suicide.”

Life’s problems can often lead people down a path of depression and hopelessness. Many people who fall into this state of mind believe that life does not matter anymore.

No matter how hopeless we believe our circumstances may be, hope always exists when we are in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

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But I am here to bring you great news! There is an answer

Whether this mindset matches you or someone you know and love, I am here to bring you great news this morning! There is an answer for those who have lost all hope and His name is Jesus! He is the great hope giver. You just have to be willing to accept what He’s offering.

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In the midst of life’s greatest disappointments

Verse 2 informs us that the Israelites were “walking in darkness.” They found themselves in darkness because they had:

When Isaiah was given the prophecy regarding the coming Messiah, the Jews were a divided kingdom. The Southern Kingdom of Judah was led by an unfaithful man named Ahaz. During his reign, Ahaz participated in and encouraged the Jews to worship the pagan gods of Baalim and Molech. Molech’s followers built a great fire under molten images of the false diety, and when the it was red with heat, they would throw their children into the arms of the god. The Chronicles tell us that Ahaz was known to sacrifice his own children to Molech and he reintroduced this type of worship to the Jews during his reign.

It’s no wonder then that Isaiah equates the Jewish rulers to “the rulers of Sodom” (), and the Jewish people to the “people of Gomorrah” (.)

It was during this time that the king of Syria and king of Samaria came together and decided they were going to war against Judah, remove Ahaz from the throne, and replace him with a puppet king they could control. Because of his lack of faith in God, Ahaz turned to the king of Assyria for help in dealing with the coming threat.

We read in where God sent Isaiah to confront Ahaz and encourage him to not make this deal with the ruthless Assyrian king, but instead place his faith in Jehovah God.

: “‘Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands...’”

: “thus says the Lord God: ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass.’”

But Ahaz had already made up his mind that he was going to make a pact with Assyria and that’s what he did. We learn in and that Ahaz had already committed himself and the southern kingdom to the brutal Assyrians. In fact, the Bible tells us that he “took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD and in the treasures of the king’s house and sent a present to the king of Assyria.”

Ahaz then went on to remove the Lord’s alter in the Temple, replaced it with an Assyrian alter and instructed the priests to begin making offerings to Assyrian gods.

Assyria did come to Ahaz’s aid. They wiped out the threat from the Syrian and Samarian kings, but four times they came and plundered Judah leaving them desolate and hopeless.

You see, just like God grew tired of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, he grew tired of the ways of the Jews. We know this to be true because God tells Isaiah to inform the Jews that:

Just like God grew tired of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, he grew tired of the ways of the Jews. We know this to be true because God tells Isaiah to inform the Jews that:

The Jews

B.

‘I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts...

‘When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you: even though you make many prayers, I will not listen…’() And unless they repent and return to Him they will:

‘be eaten by the sword...’ ()

In , the prophet informs king Ahaz that because the Jews placed their trust in things of this earth for salvation instead of having faith in Him, they will find themselves in “‘distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish.’” And that’s what happened. Assyria did come to Ahaz’s aid. Not only did they wipe out the threat from the Syrian and Samarian kings, but four times they came and plundered Judah leaving them desolate and hopeless. Ahaz’s decision to lead the Jews to place their trust in the godless and unforgiving Assyrian kings, and the Jews decision to go along with it, led them to be overtaken and left desolate.

How many of you here this morning are currently in a state of mental and spiritual anguish? How many of you feel like you are in a state of hopelessness?

While others are celebrating Christmas, there’s no capacity for you to celebrate because there is no joy in your life. Maybe you feel abandoned by family. Maybe you are suffering through the loss of a loved one. Maybe you are suffering through a broken relationship.

What a hopeless world we live in when we place our trust in the things of this earth to fill and satisfy us.

Are you seeking a more personal relationship with God this morning to help you endure and get through this season of life, or are you turning to different things this world offers?

Many years ago, one of my best friends started dating this young lady in the latter part of their high school years. We all believed they would one day get married because they were a perfect fit. And man, did he love her. Everything he did during college was to prepare for their life together after college. Not long into their senior years of college, they got engaged. However, by the time graduation came around everything changed. One thing led to another and they eventually called off the engagement and broke up. This sent my best friend crashing down into a time of mental anguish, hopelessness, and anger. At first he turned to Christ, but the amount of anger and despair he had led him down a path of alcohol abuse and horrible decision making. All of this culminated when less than a year after the engagement was broken off, he met another a young lady at a bar, and within six months of meeting her they were engaged and married. I recall trying to convince him that he was moving too fast and needed slow down, but he was determined he was going to marry this girl that he’d only known a few months. They went on a got married, but less than two years into the marriage they divorced because she started having extra marital affairs.

Too often when we turn to people and things in this world to save us from our despair we find ourselves in a worse place than we were when we started. All because we placed our trust in this flawed and messed up world and not in God. Ahaz placed his trust in the Assyrians to rescue him and Judah from the Syrians and Israelites, only to be betrayed and almost completely destroyed by the very people he was hoping would save him.

We cannot turn to drugs, alcohol, pornography, other people, money, possessions, power, anything of this world and expect it to save us from our despair.

No matter how hopeless we believe our circumstances may be, hope always exists when we are in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Speaking in the prophetic perfect tense -a literary technique used by Biblical prophets that describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they already happened-Isaiah informs the Jewish people that even though they may feel all is lost and everything is hopeless, God has a plan of salvation for them.

- “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”

Charles Spurgeon, known to many today as the “Prince of Preachers”, was an English Pastor during the Victorian Age. He once commented on this passage by saying how it reminded him of a scary experience he had while on a boat at sea. He said it was a “dark, dark, terribly dark night” and the boat he was on was being “tossed” and thrown about during a really bad storm. The winds were high, the waves were as tall as mountains, and the skies were “black like ink.”

Quoting Spurgeon he said, “In the midst of the violence of the waves, and the howling of the winds, and the tossing of the ship, and the flash of lightning, and the roar of the thunder” he saw on a “distant horizon…a gleam of light on the edge of the storm. The clouds had parted, and the rays of the moon where shining through.” Spurgeon went on to say, “The prophets are like that: around them the storm of war, and fury, and death, and darkness, but beyond they could see the promise of the glorious light that was yet to come.”

No matter how dark the season of life may be or the sense of hopelessness we may have, God promises that light and peace will come for all who believe in Jesus.

God was promising the Jews that the darkness they were experiencing was not going to last forever, and He makes that same promise to you today.

David writes in :

“I will exalt you, LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths…LORD my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. You, LORD, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit…weeping may last for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Those of you who are here this morning or knows of someone who is in a state of hopelessness and despair, God promises you and them it’s not going to last forever as long as you repent from trying to dig your way out of the pit of despair using the flawed tools of this world, and commit to a personal relationship with Him.

The question that remained, though, was how was God going light up the darkness the Jews found themselves in?

: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end...”

There are five descriptions Isaiah gives us regarding Jesus:

The word “wonderful” is used thirteen times in the Bible to describe how marvelous and miraculous God is. For example, says, “You are the God who works wonders.” Never is it used to describe mankind. “Counselor,” as it is used here, means to advise. Again, whenever we find ourselves longing for relief in our despair, we tend to seek out the answers from people and things in this world. We can never forget that the counselor of this world is still Satan.

And just as he deceived Adam and Eve, he still deceives so many today. What a great relief it is to know that God sent the marvelous miracle Jesus Christ to live among us and advise or counsel us on how to live in this world full of sin and darkness. Jesus’ wisdom is unending and unmatchable. In , the Disciples say this about Jesus, “‘Now we know that You know all things…by this we believe that You came from God.’” The mere fact that the Marvelous Miracle whose wisdom is unending stands ready and waiting for us to reach out to Him at all times should give us great joy and is worth celebrating this Christmas season.

Daniel Akin is the President of the Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. He writes concerning this text, ““We live in the day of the counselor, the psychiatrist, the Psycho-analyst, and the therapist. It was by a counselor that we fell into sin. Satan got Eve involved in psycho-analysis. She got Adam involved in group therapy, and together they plunged the whole world into insanity.” And just as he deceived Adam and Eve, he still deceives so many today. “

What a great relief it is to know that God sent the marvelous miracle Jesus Christ to live among us and advise or counsel us on how to live in this world full of sin and darkness. Jesus’ wisdom is unending and unmatchable. In , the Disciples say this about Jesus, “‘Now we know that You know all things…by this we believe that You came from God.’” The mere fact that the Marvelous Miracle whose wisdom is unending stands ready and waiting for us to reach out to Him at all times should give us great joy and hope.

In its original language, “Mighty God” means, “hero-God,” or “warrior-God.” This gives us the image of a great warrior and hero waging war against Satan on our behalf. The battle wasn’t waged on a battlefield like other wars. Instead the battle was waged at a place called Calvary; the enemy was Satan, death, hell, and the grave; and when all was said and done, all that remained was an empty tomb as a monument showing El gibbor, the Mighty God’s victory.

When I was a kid I used to put red underwear over my pants, wear my blue Superman shirt and tie a towel around my neck so I could run around in my front yard and pretend I was fighting off the evil Lex Luther. This was a major part of my daily routine, so much so that our neighbors jokingly called me Superman! I believe one of the reasons we love superheroes is because no matter how difficult the circumstances may be, in the end they are going to win and the bad guys are going to lose. The same is true with Jesus. No matter how many times in our lives we believe the enemy has won, those who have a personal relationship with Jesus know that in the end, the Victory is His and therefore mine.

I love the words of the hymn that says, “I heard an old, old story, How a Savior came from glory, How He gave His life on Calvary to save a wretch like me; I heard about His groaning, of His precious blood’s atoning, then I repented of my sins and won the victory. O victory in Jesus, My Savior, forever. He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood; He loved me ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him, He plunged me to victory, Beneath the cleansing flood.”

O victory in Jesus, My Savior, forever. He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood; He loved me ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him, He plunged me to victory, Beneath the cleansing flood.

Being Elliott, Sam, and Madeleine’s dad is one of the greatest blessings God has given me. There are no words to describe how much I love my three kids. I can only pray that I will be for them what my dad has been for me. If I had to define my earthly father in a few words, they would be loving, giving, sacrificial, and humble. There are many other words I could use to describe him, but these are the ones that stand out the most. But nothing compares to the amount of love the “Everlasting Father” has for His children.

There is something very special about the fact that God told Isaiah one of Jesus’ four names would be “Everlasting Father.” When we think of the word everlasting, we should immediately be reminded of the meaning behind the word eternal. In , Jesus is the “Alpha and the Omega”, the beginning and the end. declares, “to the Son He says: ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.’” There is no end to everlasting. Now take everything we know a father should be and place those definitions on Jesus. He is a father who is loving, sacrificial, humble, compassionate, good, and so much more. This is who He is and this is who He will always be to His children. Daniel Akin says Jesus “acts toward us as a father, a good father, a perfect father. He is always there, never too busy, never preoccupied, or disinterested in the affairs of His child. He is provider, protector, and forever.” Some have never known the true love of a father. But we can know what it means to be loved by the “Everlasting Father” if we commit our lives to Him.

d.

The reality is we do not live in a peaceful world. Pastor W.A. Criswell once said, “there has never been in the history of the human race peace among the families and nations of the earth.” Most days we can’t turn on our local news without hearing about someone being murdered. In the last several years we’ve seen school shooting after school shooting. People hate other people because of their religious and political views. Nations hate other nations and are constantly threatening war. It’s easy to look across the spectrum of the world and believe that because there is not peace on earth, maybe this portion of Scripture is incorrect about Jesus.

But this description of Jesus is not referring to peace in the sense of this world. Instead, the nature of this peace resides in the conscience of Christ-followers because Jesus’ work on the earth made us right with God. In other words, we are at peace with God because of Christ coming to the earth. Paul writes in , “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Those of us who have been justified by our faith in Jesus can endure the daily conflicts of this life, because we have the peace of mind that one day Jesus is going to return and rescue us from this place. Therefore, the conflicts in this world are only temporary. As Isaiah says in , “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.” This means that we can look forward to the day that all the turmoil in our lives will be swept away and we’ll enjoy an eternal peace with God that only God can give. That is a great message of hope for those who are hopeless. The present circumstances of the hopeless will not last for eternity as long as they are committed to Christ.

I want to circle back to one of the descriptions about the Messiah that I passed over earlier in this passage. Notice that Isaiah opens the prophecy by stating that, “For to us a child is born, to use a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder...”

There are many times in the Bible where shoulders symbolize the place where burdens are carried. Today, we still use phrases like, “let me shoulder this burden for you” and “They must have the weight of the world on their shoulders.” So what Isaiah is prophesying is that the coming Messiah will carry the burdens of the world on his shoulders.

I want to show you some artwork that represents what Jesus carried on His shoulders:

i. Jesus,

“The Good Shepherd” This artwork was painted in the mid 1600s by Philippe de Champaigne. In Jesus tells the story of the Shepherd that owns one hundred sheep and is willing to leave ninety-nine of them to save the one. In verse 5 He says that when the Shepherd “‘finds [the sheep] he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.”’ We are Jesus’ sheep and He is our Shepherd. In He tells us that He is “the good shepherd.” Shepherds carry the burden of watching out and carrying for their sheep. Whenever one of them gets lost, a great weight is placed upon them to find them. And when they do, they celebrate. Jesus carries the burden of seeking and saving His lost sheep.

Here’s a second picture that depicts the burden Jesus carried on our behalf.

This painting is entitled “Christ carrying the Cross” by Tiziano Vecellio. It was completed in 1565. In this painting we see Jesus bearing the burden of our sins on His shoulders in the form of the cross. Paul writes in , “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

I once read a story in the Family Life magazine from a mom of a ten-year-old little girl. She tells how the little girl wrote a letter on her own and hid behind their Christmas tree and at the right time she surprised her mom and dad by reading the letter to them. In it, the little girl expressed great gratitude to her parents “for being her parents” and she concluded the letter telling them “how much she loved” them. The mom says, “It brought many tears of joy…It will forever be the most meaningful gift I’ll ever receive.” Sometimes the best presents are not the ones that cost the most, but the ones that have the most meaning.

There is one gift that came at a great cost and has greater meaning than any gift we’ll ever receive on this earth. It is the “free gift of God…eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Before Jesus bore the cross, all humanity was spiritually dead (, ESV). However, when Jesus took on the cross and defeated death, all who believe in Him as their Savior are offered the free gift of eternal life (, ESV). Jesus paid the cost of our sin with His life and defeated death on our behalf, so the gift of eternal life could be free. There will never be a greater gift than Jesus bearing the burden of our sins on the cross.

It is because of Jesus willingly bearing the burdens of our sins on the cross that we have hope. You see no matter what season of life you are in right now, Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead three days later offers us hope for a future of everlasting peace. That type of hope can never be found in anything this world has to offer.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Without Christ, there is no hope.”

R.C. Sproul said, “The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity–hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory–because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.”

CLOSING: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow tragically lost two wives and a son during his lifetime. Longfellow’s first wife died while giving birth and in 1861 he lost his second wife, Frances, after she burned to death when her clothes caught fire while she was sealing envelopes with hot wax. Longfellow saw the 18-years of marriage he had to Frances as the greatest years of his life. Losing his bride sent Longfellow into a deep depression. In 1862 he recorded in his journal “A merry Christmas’ day say the children, but that is no more for me.”

In November of 1863 the great poet suffered another tragedy when his son Charley was shot in the back while fighting in the Civil War. His son, now paralyzed, would need care for the rest of his life. It was during this time that Longfellow penned what we now sing as a Christmas Carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

A devotional found in the December 2015 edition of “Our Daily Bread” says this about Longfellow’s poem, “The poem begins pleasantly, lyrically, but then takes a dark turn. The violent imagery of the pivotal fourth verse ill suits a Christmas carol. “Accursed” cannons “thundered,” mocking the message of peace. By the fifth and sixth verses, Longfellow’s desolation is nearly complete. “It was as if an earthquake rent the hearth-stones of a continent,” he wrote. The poet nearly gave up: “And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said.” But then, from the depths of that bleak Christmas day, Longfellow heard the irrepressible sound of hope. And he wrote this seventh stanza. “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep! The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men!’”

Are you feeling hopeless this morning? Do you know someone who is in a hopeless place right now?

Anticipate Hope

I. The Hopelessness of the Jews (, , , , )

A. Rejected God

II. Hope Promised

III. Hope Described

Hope will come in the form of a Jewish son ().

He will shoulder the burdens of the world ().

He will have four names:

Wonderful Counselor ()

b. Mighty God ()

c. Everlasting Father ()

d. Prince of Peace (, )

IV. Hope Given:

i. The Lost

ii. The Sins of the World