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Hope of Deliverance
Jeremiah 33:14-16, Luke 21:25-36
Last week, we enjoyed a Service of the Greens, and I hope that was an edifying experience for you.
Because of the special service, though, I didn’t get to talk about last week’s theme … one of the most important topics of Advent: Hope.
So, today, I’d like to combine last week’s theme: Hope and this week’s theme: Peace.
Let’s start with hope:
Several years ago, I was invited to a conference in Fort Lauderdale … in November!
It was really a struggle to leave chilly Indiana for the warm shores of Florida, but somebody had do it, right?
One day, I was walking to a local restaurant for lunch and a stranger approached me and asked for directions.
We are on a sidewalk on the beach.
I am not tan at all!
I’m wearing long pants!
Some people just can’t read the room!
I gave him the best directions I could and he was greatly relieved that he now had a path and the knowledge of how far he had left to go.
I may not have been much for him … but I was a source of hope!
Our scriptures today also speak of hope.
They both promise a deliverance.
The Old Testament reading speaks of Messiah’s coming, and the New Testament passage speaks of Messiah’s SECOND coming.
The Christian story begins with Creation in Genesis.
There are many theories about God and the origins of the universe.
Simply put, those who have a firm belief in God are more hopeful than those who do not.
Psalm 25:4–5 (CEB)
4 Make your ways known to me, Yahweh; teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth— teach it to me— because you are the God who saves me.
I put my hope in you all day long.
The world doesn’t give much hope for anything positive.
We, the Church, stand as a Champion of God’s plans and that gives us reason to hope in the middle of the worst calamity.
Hope of Deliverance
Whether the world believes in a literal 6-day creation, or a figurative 6-days, or even if they believe we evolved from swamp blobs … the world was created with order.
How it was created and how long it took may be debatable, but Christianity and science both agree that this world was created with order and intention.
The world calls this ‘intelligent design’ … we call it Genesis 1.
Why is that so important?
The Christian story really has four movements … four distinct segments.
We believe God created us and the universe around us.
We believe humanity invited sin into the world when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command.
We believe that Jesus Christ came as God With Us, lived, died, and was resurrected for our redemption.
We believe that God is in the process of restoring our world through the work of His people and complete restoration will come in Jesus’s returning.
When telling the Christian story, we often misfire in one of two ways.
The Christians we would label liberal or progressive typically err by only telling the bookends of our story.
They tell of the wonder of Creation and our partnership in God’s restoration.
These types of believers tell the Truth of the Gospel, but only a portion of it.
They are known for only telling the pleasant parts of God’s Truth.
The Christians we would label conservative typically err in the exact opposite way.
They tell only the two middle parts of our story.
The story begins with the Fall of Man and concludes with Redemption.
The story sounds judgmental and unpleasant because it begins in the middle.
It is the Truth of the Gospel, but it is an incomplete version of the Christian story.
God created the world with order, created man to have dominion (not domination, but dominion) and we were given the job of tending the created order.
Genesis 2:15 (NASB 2020)
Then Yahweh God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it.
God created the world with a purpose and intent.
If God created the world with meticulous intentionality, don’t you think He would have the same intentionality with the ending?
Today, we celebrate hope and the byproduct of hope: peace.
Genuine hope comes when we embrace the entire Christian story.
Hope comes when we realize how meticulous God was in His creation work.
Psalm 139:13 (NASB 2020)
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:14 (NASB 2020)
I am awesomely and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.
Friends, our society has moved.
We’ve lamented and bemoaned the reality, but we haven’t really acknowledged it.
People are no longer expected to be Christians in our society.
There isn’t a social awkwardness toward those who aren’t involved in a church anywhere.
In fact, there’s more of a social awkwardness toward those of us who DO regularly attend worship.
We often mourn this shift, and that’s appropriate.
However, wallowing in the past has not brought us to the end of the story.
We will NOT gain restoration by lamenting the past.
We can only gain God’s restoration when we embrace His design in our world and in our experience.
Today, we celebrate what I consider the ultimate act of hope.
In Holy Communion, we don’t just embrace Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
• We embrace the God who designed and created us all.
We embrace the God who sent Jesus so that all who believe would not perish, but have life eternal.
We embrace that our redemption comes through Jesus.
And we embrace that we are partners in God’s restorative work, that will culminate in Jesus’s return!
The Christian story weaves through our sinful choices and Jesus’s sacrifice, but the story is incomplete if we begin at that point.
Hope … real hope and the peace that passes understanding … exist only because God began His expression of deep desire for us and for our good in the creation.
We were made with a purpose, and part of that purpose was to be made His.
But Jesus’s service to humanity was not just a redemptive service.
His ultimate goal is restoration.
And that is what we celebrate at this table.
Do you remember the mystery of faith that we declare as a part of our liturgy?
Christ has died
> Christ is risen
> Christ will come again
This seems like an appropriate time to dust off one of our Creeds and declare our faith together:
I BELIEVE IN GOD
THE FATHER ALMIGHTY,
MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH;
AND IN JESUS CHRIST
HIS ONLY SON OUR LORD:
WHO WAS CONCEIVED
BY THE HOLY SPIRIT,
BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY,
SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE,
WAS CRUCIFIED, DEAD, AND BURIED;
THE THIRD DAY
HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD;
HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN,
AND SITS AT THE RIGHT HAND
OF GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY;
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