Sermon Tone Analysis

Told my doctor that yoga was the best antidepressant, he said that sounded like a little bit of a stretch.

I ordered a thesaurus recently, and it arrived blank.

I have no words to describe my anger.

Advent, the arrival… themes… hope faith joy and peace,,, what dos that mean for us… and its one thing to know about it, but something totally different to actually do something about it… and that is what its all about...

If all of this actually happened that what does it mean for us, and what do we do with it...

THis week the candle symbolizes Hope… the expectation of a thing that will happen in the future…When you have a child coming… there is so much expectation… any day now… or so it seems… for the world before Jesus there was this expectation.. the e belly was growing and there was like this feeling of lets go…the whole world was a mess and full of evil...

Think about this… 700 years before Jesus arrive on Earth… and it was describing the state of life before Jesus… and he is saying there was darkness and they were without hope… and the Jewish people were in misery… they were waiting and there was no answer from God…400 years between Malachi and Jesus… and here is what we can see… sometimes God is just like that, he takes too long for us...

He is what theologians call, the three mile an hour god.. and we are waiting for that break in life… to be healed… or successful and wait and it seems to take forever… but God is going to get it just right… and his aim is not to give you what you want… but what you need… and there are seasons of pain and isolation that we all Go through.... and we see that in the life of Jesus and admire it, but we dont want that for ourselves

THey walked in darkness,,, that is us… that is our world… that is all you hear when you turn on the news… here is the thing, when you are in darkness… you just want to see… all we need is a light so we can see… and sometimes when we hear this news over and over again all we wonder is can it get better...

The world seems like narnia… always winter and never christmas… isaiah says that is the state of our soul… we have running water and great homes and jobs, but loneliness and depression is on the rise… the average rate of living has started to drop… because its dark.... why… because people are osing hope

You know what causes darkness… having no hope… remember the begiinng of the pandemic and how for a few weeks we had no idea what was going on and they were scaring us… imagine living in australia…

1 Cor 13.... right at the end… in the end there is faith hope and love… and the greatest is love… what is the second… he doesnt say… it has to be hope… because it is what he;ps us to keep going in the day… hope gives us life.

its like a future reason to keep going in the present...

In isaiah it is dark, but there is a light coming… and the question is what should give you hope in this life… for some of you its beauty… if I could just be more beautiful… if I could just be smarter… if I could just be richer… it gives you the hope for the good life...

One of the first indications of the christmas season in our lives is when there is the appearance of lights on homes…its darker earlier… so you can see them earlier in the day./…

WHen you are totally down knocked out and hopeless… all you need is light..maybe your job is rough… youve been single too long… and what is the answer… not buying a dog… what is the light here in this text and in this season… the light shines in what is the light… to us a child is born he tells us.... one day a child will be born that saves us...

and the only way we will ever get saved is if a child comes into save us… it isnt a perfect marriage or job… it is a child being born and his name is Jesus… if you are really young it mayh not have hit you yet

Tim Keller....recently diagnosed… knows he will die in the next couple years… I dont want to be relating to Jesus in the way that I was before this suffering… I want to hold onto him as tight as I have to now… before it was too shallow I dont want to go back to what it was like before this

WHAT!

Jesus gives the ultimate peace that we all need...

ALl philosophy is born out of the question of our death… and Jesus even answers that fear.....

Jesus is the one that gives life,…Isaiah 9:6

Your job will never give you the peace that you need… it can never die for your sin… your rep cant give you peace… only Jesus can do that… and not everyone believes that… becasue we dont all see the difference that he made.... and people think if God showed up hed make it special.... and JEsus didnt even start ministry until he was thirty

He entered as a baby, poor, to scared teenagers… why because he was the prince of peace.... he brings something… peace… a lot of preaching is about Jesus around Christmas as it should be but its also about what he is doing for us… counselor… prinmce of peace//// the ultimate solution to any of our problems isnt a circumstance… but a person… and what form did that come to us… it came in our spiritual situation....

HOPE IN GOD!

That is the best sermon you could preach this week to youyrselve....

Maybre thats what the title of this shouold really be the title of this sermon

IF you dont know Jesus you have no hope in this world.. and there is no point because you are just going to die… but Christmas breaks in and changes EVERYTHING.... if you arent a believer… was tehre an advent that gave me hope… is it tgrue that life is bigger than just watching netflix and having money to be happy for a while… is there anything to give me more in life.... there is only one who brings us hope in this world… there is only one that gave us life and everythign… or there is nothing.... the first story makes me want to go after it every day… the second makes me want to sacrifice nothing

SPurgeon most rich text Romans 15:13

Hope only happens through God… even in the face of what scares us the most, CHristmas comes in and says it is only found in him… you dont have to be scared at all....

“The best moment of a Christian’s life is his last one that is the nearest heaven… The only people for whom I have felt any envy have been dying members of this very church.”

Charles Spurgeon

Hope is used for a desire for somethign good and the future, but all of those thigns the biblical idea of hope is in the person of work in Jesus and is about certainity… abd when we express hope in the world… its just a desire.. .we

hope it happens but biblical hope is CERTAINTY.. there is no doubt

IT does not mean cross your fingers… it means expect them.... it is a confident expectation for something good in the future...

How do we fight for holiness… the hope of thigns to come…

The bible says it is about certainty… it is the thing that goes opposite to shame .... if you know walking into a room you are going to win a game…becasue you are going to cheat you will walk in with a swagger… thats what biblical hope is going to ggive you.... what solves a kids fear if you lie in bed with them at night… presence yes but the idea that you are going to be there…d

Phillip Yancey,,, JEsus I never knew

I know a woman whos grandmother lies buried under 150 year old live oak trees in teh cemetery of an Episcopal Church in rural Louisiana.

In accordance with the grandmothers instructions, only one word is carved on her tombstone, ‘Waiting.’”

That is hope in a nutshell.. waiting.. not for the first advent.. but waiting for the second coming...

Not jsut CHristmas, but he accomplishes what he came to do… and its all about something done for us...

John Newton Hymn...

Let us love and sing and wonder, let us praise the saviors name, he has hushed the laws loud thunder, he has quenched mount sinais flame he has washed us with his blood, he has brought us near to God.”

OPf course… it is a miracle… he suffered for my sake when we want to be practical, we have to put it to work

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope.

It is harder as you grow old,

for hope must not depend on feeling good

and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

of the future, which surely will surprise us,

and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

anymore than by wishing.

But stop dithering.

The young ask the old to hope.

What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit

our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded,

the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned.

Hope

then to belong to your place by your own knowledge

of what it is that no other place is, and by

your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this

knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.

It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask

for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land

and your work.

Be still and listen to the voices that belong

to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.

The world is no better than its places.

Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them.

When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.

–Wendell Berry