Misplaced Hope

Sermon Big Idea: In a culture that has it all, what do we have to offer in this season of giving? We have a message of hope to offer the world, however; our conception of hope is so skewed that it often falls on deaf ears. This failure to land the message of hope happens because many do not see the need for hope, or because their view of what hope is is so messed up. Even though many today would agree that we need hope (especially in these times), they do not see biblical hope as the solution. How does Genesis 11 and the Babel storyline show us the familiar places we are often caught looking for hope that won’t endure? The whole Babel narrative is about God saving us from our own desperate pursuit to find hope elsewhere. Define hope as our culture sees it.

Family Discipleship Objective: Gather our families around our true need for hope in this season. Help families look across our world and even our own broken lives to wake up to our need for hope. Give families (whether young with kids or older without) a few talking points and practically driven questions to work through to lead to this concept.

Worship: 1 Song & Active Worship Diagram (Psalm) & Invite to send a picture in for next week.

Kids Curriculum: The Fall (sharefaith kids)

Me: As Danielle and I were walking through walmart the other night, I commented to her that Christmas is always a super stressful season for me. Not for any of the super typical reasons but its honestly just because I am terrible at picking out gifts. **Ask who the good gift giver is in the family.** Danielle’s gifts are always super thoughtful and incredibly surprising. I never expect what she gets me and it is always obvious that a lot of thought, time, and love went into the gift. She will remember something that I mentioned in passing back in June and will totally surprise me with some awesome thoughtful gift.

If that is you…let me ease a little pressure off of you at least from the parental standpoint...I remember two gifts I got on Christmas when I was younger (super nintendo & trampoline). I didn’t ask for these gifts and neither of them were on my radar screen when I got them. I still have my Super Nintendo and some of my fondest memories from my childhood were made jumping out on our trampoline - we would jump for hours at a time. Had I not gotten these, there is no telling how much fun and excitement I would have missed out on. My trampoline came before the days of the net…which essentially meant if you jumped for more than a few minutes, you were going overboard. I bear more than one scar because of my trampoline.

Isn’t that how it works though, the best gifts are the amazing gifts that you never knew you wanted. That is my problem…I have a hard time giving that type of gift and it stresses me out.

We: We are in the season of giving. Maybe you feel a lot like I do in this season…a bit stressed about trying to find the perfect gift for the special people in your life. Maybe not. Perhaps you are more like my wife and giving gifts is like a second language to you that you speak fluently. No matter which camp you fall into, one thing is certain; if you are a follower of Jesus, we all feel the same way about Christmas gifts in a certain way.

I think though we can all feel a little like I was feeling this past week as I walked through walmart discussing my gift giving disability. We can look around our world and see needs all around us (people made in the image of God who we are supposed to care a lot about). We see a broken world full of hurting, lonely, and disadvantaged people and wonder how in the world we are supposed to actually step into those needs and give something that truly matters. Something that really makes a difference.

The issue is that it seems like everything is actually working against this desire to make an impact. Whether because of the rampant consumerism, the bad side of people that often comes out during this time of year, or the fact that a man in a red suit has become the central figure and for many, has hijacked the true meaning of Christmas and can seemingly take away from what Christmas is supposed to produce in us.

Because of this, we get left in this really weird space as Christians. On the one hand, we realize this is an awesome season of giving when people are more charitable than they would normally be. Through this charity, we have the opportunity to see a tangible difference made in the lives of hurting and hopeless people. On the other hand, we don’t want to perpetuate the rampant consumerism that is so pervasive and drag the focus of us or our children away from the thing that matters most.

What can we give as Christians in this season that puts the focus back where it is meant to be and simultaneously makes the greatest impact in the lives of those needing charity the most?

I believe the answer is hope.

Hope is a word often associated with Christmas and yet is rarely explored. Hope is the gift that turns our focus back to Jesus and moves our hearts to worship as we stop to consider the reason for the season. Hope is the gift that many people don’t even know they wanted and yet if they got it, it would be the best gift they ever received. Hope is the gift that changes lives and eternities and that hope is the only thing that can change our city.

The fact that I said hope is the gift that many people don’t even know they want might actually be a little confusing if you stop to think about it. If you have lived through the year 2020 then you know what I mean. Our country (and the world over for that matter) is like a little kid writing letters to Santa ever single day, seeking hope through whatever means necessary. The world is actually begging for hope.

The world is looking for hope amidst a global pandemic and some feel the hope is found in a treatment or a vaccine while others see our hope as coming from another avenue like herd immunity. The world is looking for hope in an election (but we already talked about that a little last week). The world is looking for hope in the throws of loneliness brought on by families scattered abroad with no hope of coming together for the holidays. The world is looking for hope in the area of their finances that have been drastically upended in this season. The world is looking for hope to return to normal and yet in all of these areas…hope seems like the gift we know we aren’t going to get this year.

No, the problem is not that we aren’t looking for hope (because the world is starving for hope)…the problem is we are looking at all the wrong areas to provide hope in all of those very legitimate areas and because misplaced hope is actually no hope at all.

Meanwhile, the true story of Christmas actually screams of real hope that answers all of those cries. The greatest gift we have to offer the world as Christians is the real gift of Christmas itself…hope.

For the next few weeks I want us to look at the topic of hope as seen in the Bible. As we are going to see, our definition of hope is incredibly different than the Bibles definition, and it is as we connect with the real hope offered in Jesus that our worlds cries for hope are answered. This series will culminate in God’s ultimate gift of hope as we gather together on Christmas Eve for a candlelight service.

I want us to start this week off by exploring our need for hope. We can see our need for hope by exploring all of the areas we and our culture often misplace our hope.

God: If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Genesis 11

Genesis 11:1–2 NASB95

Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Give context behind Genesis 1-11.

Study on human nature and sin (pre-redemptive history)

Do pre-flood and post flood issue. (mankind left in unchecked rebellion against God without the hope of redemption devolves into chaos and ruin within just a few generations)

This story comes right on the heels of the flood narrative. Every major culture in the world with roots going back to the three major families of Noah all have a flood narrative.

Almost all of the Native American tribes have a flood narrative…to include the Nisqually tribe.

There are over seven different flood accounts in South America all detailing roughly the same events (with difference in characters and the role their own gods played in bringing the flood)

The Sumerians have the Sumerian creation & flood account that mirrors closely the account given in the bible.

All of the Islamic countries hold to the biblical creation flood account

There are three different flood accounts in Chinese religions and a dozen or more different flood accounts in other far eastern countries.

Even the seafaring Polynesian countries have their own flood accounts.

The Tower of Babel story has to be seen in light of the recent flood. The flood is a major part of what drives the babel story.

Wrap all of these together. (Human sin nature/mankind left unchecked/flood narrative)

The Babel narrative is about the hope of avoiding world cataclysm.

This is us in 2020. Our world is facing cataclysm on many fronts. Whether it is the cataclysm of political unrest here at home or diplomatic tensions that are ever increasing, bringing us to the brink of war with some major world powers. Perhaps it is the cataclysm of a global pandemic. That cataclysm, as you know, goes far beyond the immediate health issues and has secondary issues in the areas of finance, business, domestic violence, depression, mental illness, and the unrest it is causing in our society. It is the cataclysm of social unrest and racial tensions or over freedom of religion issues or gun rights. It seems there is no domain in our society that we can turn to at this point and not find on the brink of cataclysm.

So what does that do for us? Well being on the brink of cataclysm is obviously not where anyone wants to be and so we we put our hope in a number of different solutions in all of those areas (an act that we have seen, only brings us closer to the cataclysms we are actively trying to avoid).

Let’s continue our story…

Genesis 11:3 NASB95

They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

Genesis 11:4 NASB95

They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Ancient cosmology is actually really simple. Down here is where we live…and up there is the realm of the gods. The gods are able to send floods and droughts and cataclysm. If we are able to reach them, we have some say over our circumstances. I challenge you to do a study of ‘high places’ in the Bible this week and what you will find is that we always build our temples of idolatry on high places. The idea is that if we can be closer to the gods, we can better effect our own destinies…we can change our circumstances. In the instance of the Shinar settlers, if they could just build a tower high enough they could reach the gods. With every level higher they built, they were that much more certain to never be wiped out by a flood again.

Did you notice what they build their bricks out of? They are water resistant. They had uncured bricks and concrete type mortar before…tar for mortar and fire cured brick was a new invention of cutting edge technology for them.

They had put their hope in technology and science.

Do we ever do this? Is this something our culture regularly looks to in hopes of making our world a better place? How does that work? We have effectively closed the six degree of separation gap with social media and yet it is destroying us. We have more advanced medicine than ever before and yet worldwide, our life expectancy is nowhere near commensurate with where it should be given our ability to fight infection and disease versus where we were 200 years ago.

Another consistency across all of the flood accounts is that the only people saved in those are those who have a name. It is the nameless masses that perish in the flood. It is the ones who know God or are favored by the gods that are rescued. The idea being that if we can curry favor from the gods by offering the right sacrifices, living a moral enough life, or doing great enough deeds, we can earn a name of renown for ourselves and effect our circumstances and avoid cataclysm. There was a pre-assessed entitlement that if we are good enough in one of these areas, we will be ok and avoid cataclysm.

They had put their hope in morality, works, and deism.

Do we ever do this? Do we ever push for more moral societies in hopes of a better future for us and our children? Do we ever put our hopes in the entitlement our nationality, skin color, family of origin, or religious background as though those things will somehow ensure blessing and save us from bad circumstances (or at least, if they come to us, they have done so unjustly)?

Do parallel between city - scattered & tower - name.

Now, we have already talked about the link between the tower and the name. But what about the city and being scattered across the face of the whole earth. Did they know that God was going to do what He does next? If so, why don’t we hear that part of the story?

I actually think they do know. Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 9:1 both say essentially the same thing and are what we call the Divine Mandate.

Gods plan for the world from the beginning was a diversity of nations, peoples, and languages. We know this because these exist in the New Creation. We don’t all just become one people group there but retain a sense of individuality.

The people at Babel were not interested in this because, as we are about to see, this made what they were attempting to do impossible…and so they built a city. A city where everyone spoke the same language and all people were united.

It is in unity and social progress that the people at Babel put their hope.

They were not a group unified around worship to God and we know this because they had rejected the only command He had given mankind up to this point in the story (to be fruitful and multiply and FILL THE EARTH). And so, their tower did not stand as a monument of worship to God but as a giant middle finger on the plains of Shinar of their own ability to save themselves and rule the world apart from God.

We are not so different from the people at Babel. Remember, I told you, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are essentially a case study of what we are capable of if left unchecked by God.

We live in a broken world on the brink of cataclysm at all times and we are willing to place our hope in any number of different things for salvation from that cataclysm.

Hope as defined by the world:

A feeling of desire or expectancy for something good to happen.

The only thing missing from this definition is the object of hope. Much like faith, hope cannot exist without a direct object. We can hope for all sorts of things. You can hope to be a millionaire but nobody in their right mind thinks that money is simply going to drop into their lap. No! Maybe it is through the lottery that you place your hope and so you buy lotto tickets and hit the casino every chance you get. Maybe you realize your hope of being a millionaire will never happen if you don’t get out there and grind to make it happen for yourself and so you place your hope in your own efforts and job. Maybe you hope some rich aunt drops dead and leaves it all to you…the point is…hope isn’t just the expectancy for something good to happen, hope is always placed in some direct object.

Genesis 11:5–6 NASB95

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.

Honestly, if you just give this a cursory reading, it sort of seems like God is playing their game. Did you notice that God is operating within their cosmological framework here in that He came down. Did you notice that He doesn’t even dignify them with a name but calls them the sons of men. Perhaps most confusing, God says that unless He stops them, they will succeed. What?!?

Not only do they all speak the same language but God is speaking their language too. God operates within their paradigm because He knows we are a slave to our nature. Because our nature is in rebellion to God we will always put our hope in other sources to avoid cataclysm. There is no end to our creativity in the things we will place our hope in…its just who we are. If you don’t believe me, go talk to a neighbor this week (christian or not doesn’t matter). Ask them what the hope of our political conundrum is. Ask them what the hope for the pandemic is. Ask them what the hope of our societal, moral, and issues of justice are and then go ask a different neighbor and you will likely hear totally different responses.

NO! God knows that unless He comes down and intervenes, nothing will be impossible for us and we will find ourselves back to where the people in Noah’s day were…on the brink of extinction at our own hands from the cataclysm that we bring on because of our attempts to rule the world apart from God.

And so He does come down.

Genesis 11:7–9 NASB95

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

God knew that if He didn’t save us from ourselves, we would bring about the very thing that we dreaded all along. God knew that our unified effort wasn’t going to lead to salvation (we had already seen that played out once in the Noah story)…no unified effort apart from God only unites us in our march towards destruction all the more quickly. God knew that if He didn’t deliver true hope that there wouldn’t be any; because:

Misplaced hope is no hope at all.

And so God forces them to carry out the Divine Mandate to scatter across the earth and fill it. This is essentially a length of runway long enough for God to carry out His redemptive work; to fix that thing that is broken in us that causes us to build a city…no…a kingdom apart from him.

The very next story is about how God picks one man out of the scattered nations and offers him hope. God shows that He is the true object of hope by offering hope where there was none…in giving a child of hope to two parents far too old to have children. He tells Abraham that through this child and the children after Him I will bless the world.

Step through the Old Testament and all the ways we failed to grasp God’s hope.

It becomes evident as we go through the story that the hope we need is for something to fix that thing that is broken in us that drives us to misplace our hope in any area that isn’t God.

And so, the Old Testament ends with the threat of the curse on the brink of cataclysm and scattered across the earth.

But then…Jesus comes. He doesn’t really look like the hope we had imagined though. Sure, he heals a few people and brings some people back from the dead. Sure he has power over creation and can do untold miracles. But then he dies and is gone.

He spends all of his time talking about a kingdom that sounds like everything we hope for but we never see it. It seems like hope is lost again…and it is if we expected him to fix all of those things (sickness, death, our broken world, messed up political systems, injustice, etc.) But what if that’s not ultimately why He came. What if all of those things he did were simply to show the hope of a future kingdom. What if He ultimately came to fix that thing that is broken inside very single one of us that leads us to look anywhere else besides at God for our hope. What if God used the one thing He knew He could count on us for (to reject Him) and He turned it on its head to bring us salvation…salvation from our own selves and our own attempts to rule our world and our lives apart from Him?

So there are two questions I want to leave you with this morning:

What are the areas you have misplaced hope in?

Give invitation to believer and those far from christ alike.

Who are those around you crying for hope?

Call to the church.

Takeaway Statement:

We are the vehicle that proclaims that hope has been born and has a name.

If we can’t give hope then we haven’t got hope ourselves.

Hope isn’t something you can keep to yourself…it burns a hole in your pocket and begs to be given.