Advent : Hope
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Advent : Hope
Advent : Hope
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! 2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! 3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
A reading of the OT will give you many stories but always seem to come back to a theme. This idea of waiting. Waiting for something to happen that will make right all that is wrong. In fact one of the reasons why I think we love to read the OT is because in some ways we are still waiting for all that is wrong to be put right.
When I say, Waiting for God to make right all that is wrong, What do you think of? What is wrong with this world? What is it that plagues the human heart? What is all this tension we feel in the world? And do we recognize that those who came before us felt it too?
If scripture is a divine revelation of God in which we are meant to know him, then why is so much of it showing us all that is wrong with the world? Let these questions roll around in your mind for a few moments as we prepare to look at God’s word for answers.
This week marks the beginning of ADVENT, which is the word that the church uses to mark what the world simply calls Christmastime. The word Advent “means the coming”, it comes from the Latin word ADVENTUS.
How does the idea of advent come together with the theme in the Bible of “waiting for all that is wrong to be put right”?
Well, this will not come as a shock to most of us today, but that thing that we are meant to see in the OT ,that all are waiting for, isn’t a thing at all, it is a person.
But before we can get to that, we need to see this theme of waiting for the Lord to make things right a little more.
Let’s start by taking a closer look at Psalm 130. It is broken down into 4 parts -
1 - A cry for help in vs 1,2
2- Prayer for forgiveness in vs 3,4
3 - Hope for divine intervention vs 5,6
4 - encouragement for others vs 7,8
Let’s take a quick look at it, as I am making to case that much of the OT holds a similar pattern with that common theme of waiting for God to put things right.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! 2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
Notice the psalmist is in a dark place. The cries for help to God often come at times of darkness and confusion over his plan.
It is also helpful to hear the psalmist ask for God to hear him and to not ignore his pleas… The acknowledgement of God being there in difficulty is the most calming truth we can have.
But this cry for help is coming from a place of distress.
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
Now this psalm has become a prayer in which the psalmist understands that we have no hope if God was to ‘mark our iniquities’ or keep track of all of our sins. So what else could be asked of a God that would keep track of all the sins of his people?
Forgiveness. Listen to the psalmist declare that with God there is forgiveness.
So imagine you are in a dark place, you know God will hear you, you also are aware that he sees all wrongdoing and yet with him is forgiveness. This is a God to be feared.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
Here is this idea of waiting, but it is balanced in the only way which waiting does not become empty or a let down. It is paired with Hope.
Or what the Hebrew words Yakhal and Qavah mean to describe. More on those words in a moment. But notice where the psalmists Hope comes from? God’s word.
To wait for the Lord to put things right that have long been wrong is a place that we only get for, from God’s word. Because God’s word is a revelation of God to us. And in his word we find out that the supreme ruler over all, God, will not allow things to stay this way indefinitely, but he will be glorified and he has a plan.
And so the psalmist says he will wait because he has hope and this will cause him to be more anxious than a watchman waiting for morning to come. The watchman is up all night while it is dark and watching because attack happens in vulnerable moments like this, and yet when morning comes you can see clearly, the day sun warms everything up, and his shift is over, so he gets relief.
Can you feel the turn this has taken from starting at such a dark place of crying out?
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
And finally there is now encouragement for others. The psalmist knowing that the while nation is in a dark place where they will stand before God and need their sins to dealt with.
It is time for them all to repent and trust in the redemption of their God. And notice that where their true redemption needs to come to them is not from under an oppressive regime that may rule over them, but from all their iniquities.
Listen to the psalmist give counsel to others with these simple words
Hope in the Lord… He is the object of our hope
Hope in the Lord… He is the object of our hope
The entire OT is telling of the greatest need for God’s people is to Hope in the Lord. That in their waiting, their greatest need will someday be met in redemption from their sin, because of the steadfast Love of their God.
And the story within scripture that teaches us of who God is, tells us of how his people had made it through life so far. And a word begins to surface over and over.
Hope.
What is the idea of hope? The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary describes hope this way - Confident expectation, ranging in degree from an ordinary desire felt with eager anticipation to a defining characteristic of those who seek God and experience his grace.
I think, confident expectation with eager anticipation is sufficient for us.
And I think breaking hope into 2 categories will prove helpful to us here. First is the object of Hope and second is the activity of Hope.
Well we have already seen the object of our hope, as put so simply by the psalmist. Hope in the Lord. God is the basis of our Hope. We could hope for a lot of things but only when that hope is build on solid ground, does it give us assurance. God’s word reveals the solid base of hope, it is in the Lord.
Next we need to think of the activity of hope. This is where those Hebrews words I mentioned earlier will help us understand the biblical meaning of Hope. There are actually a bunch of different Hebrew words used to describe what we quickly translate into the word hope.
The two that I want o focus on are Yakhal and Qavah.
Yakhal means - “to wait with hope, or to endure”
this is the word we see used in the story of Noah’s ark when he was waiting for the flood waters to recede. we also see it in scriptures like this one...
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
‘on those who YAKHAL in his steadfast love’… Those who endure in his steadfast love, those who wait with hope in his steadfast love.
Other word commonly used for Hope is QAVAH
QAVAH means - “to wait and expect, or look for in expectancy” It is a term that implies tension. It comes from the Hebrew word QAV which is a term for a cord. When you pull a cord so tights that the strands begin to break, there is a QAVAH. It describes the feeling of tension and expectation while you wait for something.
Look how it is used in scripture...
22 Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things.
Can you feel the tension in waiting and expectation there? Or how about these?
18 I wait for your salvation, O Lord.
I ‘QAVAH’ for your salvation, O Lord...
Translated to wait here it means waiting with hope, tension in expectation.
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
They who ‘QAVAH’ for the Lord… those who are waiting in hope in the midst of tension, who have expectations, they will renew their strength.
This is the activity of Hope as described in scripture, especially the OT. So the biblical Hebrew for Hope is about waiting in expectation. But waiting for what? Again to echo where we started this morning, in the awareness that things are wrong in the world and we desire for God to put them right.
Because Hope is in the Lord it is different from optimism. The optimist looks at a situation, and because of circumstances, they think it will be ok, which is re-assuring to them. But hope is different because it is something we experience when there are no favorable circumstances that will cause us to be optimistic.
Hope exists without good circumstances because it is based on God. In fact that is everything that the OT teaches us about hope. The waiting in expectation of God, where there hope is.
When the prophet stood before the people of Israel and had little encouragement because of their sinfulness he said this…
17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
The prophet says, since God seems to be hiding his face, I will QAVAH for him, I will ‘wait in tense expectation’, I will hope IN HIM.
The only hope that Isaiah had, was the hope in God himself. This is where the bible lands when it talks about hope. All through the psalm hope is expressed in God himself. In fact one psalm that is especially helpful to me in this season expresses such Hope on our God.
3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; 7 who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free;
Notice verse 5… “whose HOPE is in the Lord”
If ever there was a time we should be reminded not to put our trust in men, or politicians, or princes as the scriptures call them, it is right now. Notice who their hope was in?
Who is your hope in today? Biblical hope is in a person not in circumstances.
The person hope is found in is God. That is exactly why we preach through through the scriptures, and talk about the ugliness of life and the realities of sin and judgement. When we put our attention on God in the midst the worst that life deals us, we find hope.
This happens when we look back to the faithfulness of God to people who put their hope in him. This is the activity of Hope.
The activity of Hope - looking back at God’s past faithfulness to have Hope for the future
The activity of Hope - looking back at God’s past faithfulness to have Hope for the future
So ,the activity of Hope looks back in order to look forward. In this season everyone wants to have hope, but if you are just trying to be optimistic it will not last long, because the circumstances will not help sustain such an outlook.
We need to have Hope, and we need to recognize that this has always been the answer to God’s people in every season of life, no matter the circumstances, because it is based on Him.
7 “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.
And now, O Lord, what else can I QAVAH for, you are my YAKHAL...
And now, O Lord, what else can I ‘wait in tense expectation’ for, you are my ‘hope of waiting to endure’.
The answer to having hope in life is simply to make sure the Object of your Hope if God and the Activity of your hope is looking to his faithfulness for your assurance on tomorrow.
But how is this an advent sermon? Remember I said that Advent meant ‘the coming’. And that what everyone is waiting for and now what we are to put out hope in is a person. That person is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This is part of the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.
Let us turn our attention to that wonderful story that we are all too familiar with, yet in light of everything we have just heard, knowing that their hope was in God. Does the Advent story of Jesus being born fit the theme of waiting for God to put things right?
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
The birth of Jesus is all about God being with his people… He is Immanuel - God with us!
And while I wish we could just talk about this scene more, it is so important for us to know the rest of the story. Jesus grows and shows himself to be divine in nature and yet a son of man. He is known as the God man, being fully God and fully man. He does amazing things that testify to his divinity, and still evil sinful people will kill him. But ,the story still does not end there because God raises him from the dead in bodily form, to prove that he is God with us always.
And so when Peter described to us why we now in the church should have hope, there is a different way to see it
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
We celebrate Jesus not just because the way he was born into this earth was miraculous, but because he is alive still and we now have hope in a person who lives. We have a living hope.
We have a living Hope!
We have a living Hope!
Because we have a living hope, we have power and protection for our Christian life. Jesus Christ is alive and he is able to guard us and protect us by his Spirit. This is a hope of the personal salvation that is protection for those who trust in him.
8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.
Helmets protect you in battle, and ours is the Hope of salvation. But more than that, the hope we have in Jesus is a corporate hope that binds the church together.
4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—
Our hope is what gives us commonality between otherwise totally different types of people. We have the same hope and it is One Hope. In Jesus Christ our hope is complete it encompasses every area of our life.
It is the hope of righteousness
5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
it is also the hope of resurrection, and the reason why we don’t grieve like the world does at death.
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
It is known as the hope of eternal life…
2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began
and…
7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
And the life we inherit is eternal but it is also full of splendor and riches…
18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
In this hope we have access to the Glory of God…
2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Our hope is found in the gospel which tells us it is heavenly hope…
5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel,
Hope has become so important to the themes of scripture that it has become more than just a substance, or something you have, but it is active in the believer.
When you hear the gospel story, how God came in the man Christ Jesus and took our sins just penalty in his death on the cross, how he was raised again and gave his Spirit to those who believe and repent of their sin… Then Hope is something that becomes part of you. It is active in you as it is part of your spiritual makeup. Have you ever met a believer in Jesus Christ that didn’t have deep abiding hope… a Hope that will lover rule any angst of the day that might be pressing on the people in oppression.
Our hope is a living Hope that binds us together, and this season is the beginning of realizing that God has done all he needs to do to sustain his people.
And god will use all these current hardships to produce more Hope than we had yesterday, as we look back to all he has done and remember there is coming a day of another Advent when Christ will return. But un til then, our hope is not put to shame by the craziness of our world… in fact it only shines brighter in us as we point to Jesus in this season as the only Hope for humanity… Don’t believe me? Listen up brother and sister in Christ, and let your hope be renewed.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
And this whole hope story starts for us one that night when two very humble people held a baby that was to be known as Immanuel, God with us. And he still is to this day.
In the Bible people who have hope are very different from optimists! In this video, we’ll explore how biblical hope looks to God’s character alone as a basis for trusting that the future will be better than the presen
