SPEAKER_00: As you know, we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and uh in Advent season we take four themes, and I'll post those up.
SPEAKER_00: Uh by the way, the uh uh guest Wi-Fi is up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to dial into that today, we'll be in uh Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love for you to turn there with me.
SPEAKER_00: Today we're looking at Advent Hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Uh our themes include the unconditional love of God in Christ, the unquenchable joy of God that we find in Christ, today the unbounded hope of God that we find in Christ, and next week the unshakable peace.
SPEAKER_00: So if uh if you're like me, maybe you have asked questions like this how can we experience such a thing as unbounded hope?
SPEAKER_00: Um I think we should begin with probably defining our terms.
SPEAKER_00: What do we mean by that word hope?
SPEAKER_00: Um I hope it doesn't rain today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it doesn't look like it's going to, but I've I've got a pretty strong hope.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that all the anger and division will soon come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody say amen.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to travel the world.
SPEAKER_00: Would you like to travel the world?
SPEAKER_00: I like to do some traveling.
SPEAKER_00: I hope the results of the medical test are good.
SPEAKER_00: I hope God still loves me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've thought that before.
SPEAKER_00: Um I hope this sermon doesn't last too long.
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody ever thought that before?
SPEAKER_00: I, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Those of you sitting in the sun right now are going, yeah, please pray.
SPEAKER_00: Um what do we mean by the word hope?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's so important and it's tossed about a bit and uh used for a lot of different uh uh contexts or scenarios, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna throw up on the screen from Erdman's Dictionary of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: This is a biblical idea of hope.
SPEAKER_00: While modern connotations include shades of uncertainty associated with desired outcome akin to wishful thinking, the biblical understanding of hope is a much deeper concept that contributes significantly to the worldview of biblical faith.
SPEAKER_00: Included are an expectation of the future, trust in attaining that future, patience while awaiting it, the desirability of the associated benefits and confidence in the divine promises.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so expectations, those were listed up there.
SPEAKER_00: The expectation of the future.
SPEAKER_00: I think I can check that box.
SPEAKER_00: I've got some of those.
SPEAKER_00: All right, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: Trust?
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, I'll I'll use a pencil on checking that box.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe you would uh identify with patience?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's skip over that one altogether.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just not very good at that.
SPEAKER_00: Desirability of benefits, check.
SPEAKER_00: Love me some benefits, and so do you, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: Uh confidence in God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: All right, I gotta go back to a pencil check.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're like me, I have this kind of wavering faith and this wavering confidence in God's uh you know, design and purposes and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, when I think about that, when I think about how how totally other his thoughts are, totally um uh unsearchable is his wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: When I think about all of that, um I I sometimes find myself struggling with uh the context that I'm living in.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm I'm like a world of darkness, you know, with just a really bright red striped tie in the middle of it all.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so and uh and so here it is.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we are here, the world is as it is.
SPEAKER_00: And all the way back in Isaiah's time, 8th century BC, long time ago, folks, political unrest, religious conflict all over, uh, darkness all over the land, probably intellectual confusion and moral bankruptcy, um describes the world we live in and the world Isaiah lived in as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so we find ourselves asking questions.
SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna talk about things like love and joy and hope and peace, we say to ourselves, we who have grown up in church, we who have grown up maybe coming to church and hearing uh the Bible taught, uh, doesn't Jeremiah 29:11 apply to all of my plans and all of my wishes and all of my hope?
SPEAKER_00: And what is, how do we apply these things correctly?
SPEAKER_00: Is God ultimately trustworthy?
SPEAKER_00: This world is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Some people are selfish, some people are mean, some people don't like things the way I like things.
SPEAKER_00: How am I to get along with them in the middle of all of this?
SPEAKER_00: And can I really place my hope in God?
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, who is always pithy and uh great with a quip.
SPEAKER_00: As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or a platitude.
SPEAKER_00: It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.
SPEAKER_00: So if we were to ask what is hope, and if I were to try to summarize my view of it, I would say this it's the expectation of a good not yet fully realized.
SPEAKER_00: In the biblical sense, hope is waiting expectantly as God accomplishes his purposes and fulfills his promises.
SPEAKER_00: And we really see this clearly in Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_00: Turn there with me, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna fly through the front half of the chapter, making a couple comments, because the front half of the chapter actually answers our question: what is biblical hope?
SPEAKER_00: And in what way can we hope in God?
SPEAKER_00: And the chapter ends brilliantly with a verse that some of you have as a plaque or an embroidered thing on the wall, or maybe you've inscribed it on a uh, you know, your book or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: But the chapter begins this way: Comfort, oh comfort my people, says your God.
SPEAKER_00: Speak kindly to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Call out to her that her warfare has ended, the conflict is over.
SPEAKER_00: That her iniquity has been removed.
SPEAKER_00: And she's received of the Lord's hands double for all her sins.
SPEAKER_00: The idea here is double the grace, double the forgiveness for all your sins.
SPEAKER_00: All of the sins that you and I have committed, there's his grace is so much more.
SPEAKER_00: His mercy and forgiveness so much more.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody think, yeah, he'll never forgive me for that.
SPEAKER_00: I've been there so many times and fallen so many times.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just telling you, this Bible says his grace and mercy are double.
SPEAKER_00: As far as you've run away, as far as you've run into darkness, his grace is so much more brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: It's so, it's like double.
SPEAKER_00: A voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
SPEAKER_00: Let every valley be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low.
SPEAKER_00: Let the rough ground become a plain and the rugged terrain a broad valley.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea here is John the Baptist, prepare a way for the coming of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Get ready.
SPEAKER_00: And take away all of those things that would slow down the approach of God or slow down his coming to you.
SPEAKER_00: Take those all out of the way.
SPEAKER_00: And I love this.
SPEAKER_00: It's prophetic, but it's also poetic.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you songwriters, some of you musicians can relate to those of you who write poetry or prose can see this a little bit better, even than the rest of us.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 5, the glory of the Lord will then be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.
SPEAKER_00: Began talking about Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's all flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see, because the gospel offer that this whole thing points to ultimately finds its fulfillment in, is an offer to everyone, not just Jerusalem, not just one nation, not just one people.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I can make the claim that the Christian faith, the Christian gospel is the most inclusive of all world religions, because the offer goes to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean everyone accepts it, but it is made as an offer to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: So the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: All flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord is spoken.
SPEAKER_00: A voice says, Call out.
SPEAKER_00: So Isaiah, who is a man that we all know, has visions, but he also hears voices.
SPEAKER_00: But not in this strange, wacky, weird kind of way, because you want to listen to what these voices are saying.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to tell you that this chapter is about the greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, we who trust God, we who wait on the Lord, we who put our hope in God can have hope.
SPEAKER_00: Hope must have an object.
SPEAKER_00: And so here he is telling us who that object is.
SPEAKER_00: Call out, he answered.
SPEAKER_00: What shall I call out?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's a little reality check.
SPEAKER_00: All flesh is grass, all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
SPEAKER_00: The grass withers, the flower fades.
SPEAKER_00: When the breath of the Lord blows upon it, surely the people are grass.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the breath, just the mere breath of God, is so powerful that he literally could wipe it all out.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we just studied the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Where God created everything out of nothing by the power of his breath, his word.
SPEAKER_00: Let there be light, and there was light.
SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8 the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have actually come back to this thought, this idea, this notion.
SPEAKER_00: You have seen kings and kingdoms come and go.
SPEAKER_00: And you have seen that the word of the Lord remains true.
SPEAKER_00: You have seen trouble, trauma, tragedy all come and go.
SPEAKER_00: And you have seen that the word of God is true.
SPEAKER_00: I keep going back to it over and over again in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I keep forgetting, and that's why we come together on Sundays to remind one another of the things that are true about God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news.
SPEAKER_00: Lift up your voice, madly, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
SPEAKER_00: Lift it up, do not fear, says, say to the cities of Judah, here is your God.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the idea.
SPEAKER_00: If you're wondering where hope is, here is your God.
SPEAKER_00: Not here is a method, a psychological method for hope.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: Here is your God.
SPEAKER_00: This is interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the Lord God will come with might, with his arm ruling for him.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him.
SPEAKER_00: Like a shepherd, he will tend his flock in his arm.
SPEAKER_00: He will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom.
SPEAKER_00: He will gently lead the nursing ewes.
SPEAKER_00: And there are this is the image of God now as a shepherd, which we see Jesus even in the Gospels saying, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: I know my sheep, they know my voice.
SPEAKER_00: When one of them strays, I will go and find him.
SPEAKER_00: Or her.
SPEAKER_00: That's a beautiful image.
SPEAKER_00: It does mean that we're sheep, and we're kind of referred to as sheep a couple hundred times throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, sheep aren't all that smart.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like you can teach a sheep to catch a frisbee or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: But they are vulnerable and they need a shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the idea is that we we aren't our own, we belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: We're his people, the flock uh of God.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the word of the Lord will come with might.
SPEAKER_00: I love these images.
SPEAKER_00: His recompense before him.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's the righteous judge.
SPEAKER_00: But like a shepherd, and that's so different from a judge, like a shepherd, judge.
SPEAKER_00: He will tend to his flock, and in his arms he will carry us.
SPEAKER_00: Gently lead the nursing ones or the young ones, the vulnerable ones.
SPEAKER_00: Now the unique greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even think we know how much water there is in the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I think we can guess and get a rough estimate.
SPEAKER_00: But God could hold that in the hollow of his hand.
SPEAKER_00: And marked off the heavens by the span, calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is the answer is nobody has done that.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Or the mind of the Lord, some of your translations might say.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's the NIV that has it that way.
SPEAKER_00: Who has directed?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, who is it that can be God's counselor and inform God?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is nobody.
SPEAKER_00: These are great rhetorical questions, right?
SPEAKER_00: With whom did he consult?
SPEAKER_00: And who gave him understanding?
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: This God is unique.
SPEAKER_00: That's the greatness of this God.
SPEAKER_00: 14.
SPEAKER_00: With whom did he consult?
SPEAKER_00: And who gave him understanding?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: Who taught him in the path of justice and taught him with knowledge, and formed him in the way of understanding?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.
SPEAKER_00: Now watch the description of God's consummate ease in controlling human history.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what this is describing.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket.
SPEAKER_00: They're regarded as a speck of dust on the scales.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, he lifts up the islands like fine dust.
SPEAKER_00: Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
SPEAKER_00: All the nations are as nothing before him.
SPEAKER_00: They are regarded by him as less than nothing and meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: Now think of that.
SPEAKER_00: What is God saying here through the prophet Isaiah?
SPEAKER_00: That God is so great as to put us in the position that if we trust and believe in him as he reveals himself to us, we won't fear what happens with the nations.
SPEAKER_00: We won't fear what happens with human history.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because God is so much greater than all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is a chapter that gets our perspective right and leads us to the God in whom we can place our hope and our confidence.
SPEAKER_00: To whom then will you liken God?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say, Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the folly of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: To whom will you liken God?
SPEAKER_00: Who's like God?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: Or what likeness will you compare with him?
SPEAKER_00: None.
SPEAKER_00: As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, a goldsmith placed it with gold.
SPEAKER_00: A silversmith fashions chains of silver, but he's too impoverished for such an offering.
SPEAKER_00: Selects a tree that does not rot, seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman to prepare an idol that will not totter.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that no matter how many of our little gods we make, and we make a lot of gods.
SPEAKER_00: And these ancient folks would actually make actual little statues and fall down and worship them, have a little shrine.
SPEAKER_00: In our day and time, we make idols out of things, sometimes out of people, sometimes out of opportunity, sometimes out of possession, sometimes out of just being right.
SPEAKER_00: And we make an idol out of that.
SPEAKER_00: And those idols crush us.
SPEAKER_00: Those idols fail us, is what Isaiah is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, have you not heard?
SPEAKER_00: Has it not been declared to you from the beginning?
SPEAKER_00: Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
SPEAKER_00: It is he who sits above the vault of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
SPEAKER_00: Every time you open your curtains in the morning to let the sun in, just think, God simply can do that with all of his creation.
SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: How other he is from his creation, yet how he participates in his creation.
SPEAKER_00: And yet how Advent hope is him invading his creation, becoming one of us in the person and work of Jesus, so that we might know that this God of the Bible loves sinners so much.
SPEAKER_00: He has sent Jesus Christ with the joy of salvation for us, the hope of eternal life, that the peace of God might rule our hearts and minds forever.
SPEAKER_00: God, who treats the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in, he is the one who, verse 23, reduces rulers to nothing.
SPEAKER_00: He makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: Just when you think, oh, if only the party I like would be in power.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, if only this person would be our authority here on.
SPEAKER_00: Just when we start to put our hope and confidence, and those of us who've been on the planet a little bit longer have seen rulers and kings come and go.
SPEAKER_00: Presidents come and go.
SPEAKER_00: And we start to get a little bit more of an understanding for how meaningless they ultimately are.
SPEAKER_00: And how it doesn't do us any good to put our hope and confidence in them.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean we sh we shirk back from our responsibility to be good citizens or to vote.
SPEAKER_00: It just means we keep it all in the right perspective.
SPEAKER_00: God is so much bigger.
SPEAKER_00: 24, scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he merely blows on them and they wither.
SPEAKER_00: The storm carries them away like stubble.
SPEAKER_00: And I know some of you are going, blow on it, God, blow them away, God, please, this is the time, blow them all away.
SPEAKER_00: And in Isaiah's time, oh my goodness, you guys, you know, 8th century BC, even in the time when this is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, the oppressive Roman government, heavy taxation, lots of confusion.
SPEAKER_00: Where's God in all this?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the hope?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the Messiah who was gonna bring us the hope of advent, the hope of God?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 25, to whom then will you liken me that I should be his equal?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, who's equal to God?
SPEAKER_00: says the Holy One.
SPEAKER_00: Lift up your eyes on high.
SPEAKER_00: See who has created these stars, the one who leads forth their host by number.
SPEAKER_00: He calls them all by name because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power.
SPEAKER_00: Not one of them is missing.
SPEAKER_00: I love the little app that you take outside of the night sky and hold it up.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that little bright light up there that's kind of not too far from the moon there.
SPEAKER_00: I had some folks here from TVC call me, they know I like this kind of thing, call me this week and said, Look, look at the look at the moon, and that's Venus up there.
SPEAKER_00: And if you take that app and you hold it up there, you can actually all the name of that star or that planet or whatever it is comes up on that app.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: I just marvel at all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the God who says, I put that there and I hold it in its place.
SPEAKER_00: Just like I brought you to life and hold you in your place.
SPEAKER_00: And you can trust me.
SPEAKER_00: Not one of them is missing.
SPEAKER_00: I love the statement I heard when I was in seminary that God hasn't, the the creator God hasn't uh misplaced one atom of his creation.
SPEAKER_00: He knows right where it all is.
SPEAKER_00: You're going, I'm not, I that would take a really big computer.
SPEAKER_00: Look, he created the mind that created the computer.
SPEAKER_00: And infinite means infinite.
SPEAKER_00: It means it will blow your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Because you and I, we are finite minds.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the greatness of a God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Now to the section, the text that I really want to talk about today, the hope that we can find.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you say, O Jacob, in assert o Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: The justice do me escapes the notice of my God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here he, this prophet who has been speaking poetically, now speaks pastorally.
SPEAKER_00: And he asks questions.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Why are you at the place in your life where you're actually saying that my way is hidden from God?
SPEAKER_00: God, do you not even see what's going on with me?
SPEAKER_00: And that the justice do me escapes the notice of God.
SPEAKER_00: That where is God?
SPEAKER_00: This injustice I'm suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Where is where is God?
SPEAKER_00: And all of great questions.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet knows, and the Lord knows, speaks through the prophet, knows that we will ask those kinds of questions in our darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And speaks into our darkness in the darkness of Isaiah's time with a word of hope about the greatness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know?
SPEAKER_00: Have you not heard the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired.
SPEAKER_00: His understanding is inscrutable.
SPEAKER_00: Some of your translations may say, unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: His wisdom, his understanding is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_00: It will blow.
SPEAKER_00: Our minds the closer we get to it.
SPEAKER_00: He gives strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_00: Are you weary today?
SPEAKER_00: Are you wrestling and struggling intellectually today?
SPEAKER_00: The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, doesn't become weary.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't faint.
SPEAKER_00: His understanding is unsearchable, it's inscrutable.
SPEAKER_00: He gives strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_00: To him who lacks might, he increases power.
SPEAKER_00: Though youths grow weary, even the ones that wouldn't, you wouldn't think, would ever grow weary, though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, and here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is such a beautiful verse.
SPEAKER_00: Look at your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: This is worth memorizing.
SPEAKER_00: This is worth paying attention to.
SPEAKER_00: Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength.
SPEAKER_00: They will mount up with wings like eagles.
SPEAKER_00: They will run and not get tired.
SPEAKER_00: They will walk and not become weary.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the object of an unbounded hope.
SPEAKER_00: Described all through the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: The object is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And here in verse 31 are the effects of an unbounded hope.
SPEAKER_00: Those who wait for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, who could that be?
SPEAKER_00: Who is that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that you?
SPEAKER_00: Is that me?
SPEAKER_00: You might be thinking, I thought this was going to be about hope.
SPEAKER_00: You seem to be preaching a sermon about God.
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is, you are right.
SPEAKER_00: I am.
SPEAKER_00: I think there is the most important thing about you, the most important thing about me when it relates to our religious thoughts is what we think about God.
SPEAKER_00: And I would even go so far as to say the most important thing in total about you is what you think about God, because that will affect the way you face this chaos in our world, the tragedies in our world, the darkness in our world.
SPEAKER_00: That will affect all of that.
SPEAKER_00: What you think about God will affect all of that.
SPEAKER_00: There is a bit of tension in times of waiting, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: What will happen?
SPEAKER_00: What can we hope for?
SPEAKER_00: Times of hoping are by nature times of waiting.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not, in the biblical sense, just about the tortuous waiting time, you know, the what will happen, and as if we're in this darkness.
SPEAKER_00: It's wondering about who's in charge of the outcomes.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah reminds us who is ultimately in charge and how this God, who with great ease directs human history and the flow of his creation, he can indeed be trusted.
SPEAKER_00: Hoping in God is about having a tenacious trust in the God who is sovereign over all.
SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating to me that that last verse begins with, Yet those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.
SPEAKER_00: The word wait there, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, I'm not a Greek scholar, but occasionally I know how to use the tools and look something up.
SPEAKER_00: And that in the NIV, it says, those who hope in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so I looked up this Hebrew word wait, that it's translated wait in my Bible, and I found that it's kava.
SPEAKER_00: It means to wait eagerly.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the same kind of just passing of time, you know, sort of interminably sitting there waiting for the doctor's office for them to call you back, you know, or whatever, where you can go and sit on that cold aluminum table and wait for whatever's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that.
SPEAKER_00: Waiting on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There's 140 occurrences and a half dozen other Hebrew words to translate, waiting with hope.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: What is hope then?
SPEAKER_00: Again, I want to go back to my uh my little definition I gave you.
SPEAKER_00: It's the expectation of a good not yet fully realized.
SPEAKER_00: And in the biblical sense, it's waiting expectantly as God accomplishes his purposes and fulfills his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Here in verses 27 to 31, we see the foundation of our hope, the object of our hope, and the effects when our hope is placed in God.
SPEAKER_00: It's very beautifully, very clearly stated there in these, this little section of verses here.
SPEAKER_00: Fleming Rutledge says we need to understand the difference between optimism and hope.
SPEAKER_00: Optimism often arises out of denial of the real facts.
SPEAKER_00: Hope, however, persists in spite of the clearly recognized facts.
SPEAKER_00: Because it is anchored in something beyond.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have a foundation of our hope, and we see that very clearly in verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: Um, why is it that you think your way is hidden from this God that's just been described in the preceding 26 verses?
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of an awakening to the fact that this is the foundation of our hope.
SPEAKER_00: It's this God who hasn't misplaced one of his planets, who can literally and make nations rise and fall.
SPEAKER_00: That's who your hope is in.
SPEAKER_00: So the foundation of your hope is that God.
SPEAKER_00: What is the object of your hope?
SPEAKER_00: More clearly defined in verses 28 through 31.
SPEAKER_00: The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't become weary or tired.
SPEAKER_00: His understanding is inscrutable.
SPEAKER_00: He gives strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_00: That right there, I could just, I love that promise.
SPEAKER_00: He gives strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_00: How many of us are weary for so many reasons right now?
SPEAKER_00: And weariness isn't just a physical thing, it's an emotional thing, it's a psychological thing as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's a spiritual thing sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Are you weary?
SPEAKER_00: Are you tired?
SPEAKER_00: Come to Him.
SPEAKER_00: His offer is peace, his offer is a drink of living water.
SPEAKER_00: And it comes from Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: The object of our hope, and then the effects of our hope that we see there.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that's that's not just, I love the way verse 31 is actually, I think it's building climactically.
SPEAKER_00: Would you look at that with me?
SPEAKER_00: He says, those who wait on the Lord, those who hope in the Lord will gain new strength.
SPEAKER_00: Has that ever happened to you when you're just really, really tired and all of a sudden you feel that it's like Scooby-Doo.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you kind of come back to life all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a fresh breath of air or fresh wind in your sails all of a sudden, and you were really, really exhausted, and all of a sudden you're ready to go again, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's like God just renewing your strength, right?
SPEAKER_00: You mount up with wings like eagles, and again, looking at the original language, it's to it, it could be translated this way: you sprout wings like eagles.
SPEAKER_00: Because occasionally we need to fly.
SPEAKER_00: Occasionally we've got to be able to rise above whatever's happening.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, they'll run and not get tired.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever run?
SPEAKER_00: I ran the half mile in high school.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was fairly good at running because I had to practice it a lot because I was so small and all the other kids were big.
SPEAKER_00: So I did a lot of running away, you know, running away from.
SPEAKER_00: So you think you're gonna be, and you think you're gonna be good on the team and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I always came in dead last, but I felt good about the you know, running around the track and that I could run a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And even now, I like to I like to go out and and I'll be at Radner two, three times a week if you if you're ever there and you see a weird guy that kind of looks like your pastor, that's probably me.
SPEAKER_00: Um stop and say hi, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it'll give me a kit a chance to catch my breath, which I need desperately, and you'll be ministering to me.
SPEAKER_00: But running and not getting tired, walking and not becoming weary, I think, is the climax.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: Once in a while we need to fly and rise above.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe a little more often we do need to run, but every day I need to walk.
SPEAKER_00: And I really need him to help me not become weary.
SPEAKER_00: Everyday grace is the most needed and it is the most provided.
SPEAKER_00: Again, back to uh N.
SPEAKER_00: T.
SPEAKER_00: Wright, who I've quoted so many times here before, when we look at the true God and wait on him, we find that when there's mounting up to be done, we can do it with eagle's wings.
SPEAKER_00: When there's running to be done, we can do it without weariness.
SPEAKER_00: When there's walking to be done, we can do it worthy of the Lord without fainting.
SPEAKER_00: As our fellow TVCer Phil Keggy put it in a song a long, long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: Disappointment, his appointment.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I take it then as such, like the clay in hands of potter, yielding wholly to thy touch.
SPEAKER_00: All my life's plan is thy moulding, not one single choice be mine.
SPEAKER_00: Let me answer unrepining, Father, not my will, but thine.
SPEAKER_00: So when we need to fly, when we need to run, and every day when we need to walk, we're walking in his appointments for us.
SPEAKER_00: And it changes the way you look at everything, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And so we place our hope and our confidence as we in the Lord, as we wait on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This beautiful phrase that we hear over and over throughout the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke 4, we read about how Jesus went to the synagogue one day.
SPEAKER_00: He read aloud from the scroll of Isaiah, a different chapter, but nonetheless Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: And then he told everyone there that Isaiah's prediction was about him.
SPEAKER_00: It was fulfilled in their presence that day, and he sat down.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine the room or the synagogue went quiet.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: How dare anyone claim that! Well, the Christmas message, according to Packer, 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.
SPEAKER_00: And he was born in a stable so that 30 years later he might hang on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: And he did that to come to bring us the hope of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so we find the hope of God when we place our confidence, our faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's no one like him.
SPEAKER_00: He was there in the beginning, John's gospel tells us.
SPEAKER_00: So when God created everything out of nothing, Jesus was there.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit was there, hovering above the waters, we're told in Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: And so a full-on Trinitarian effort there at the creation event.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think about the offers of the Christian faith, as Keller describes them here, they're unsurpassed.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering that a meaning that suffering cannot remove.
SPEAKER_00: Satisfaction, not based on circumstances, a freedom that does not hurt, but rather enhances love.
SPEAKER_00: An identity that does not crush you or exclude others.
SPEAKER_00: And think about that.
SPEAKER_00: We're searching, so many people searching for their identity.
SPEAKER_00: And if your identity is crushing you, that's because it's not the one that God gave you.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't exclude others, that identity of being in Christ either.
SPEAKER_00: He also brings us a moral compass that does not turn us into an oppressor and a hope that can face anything, even death.
SPEAKER_00: In Advent, we're reminded that because of the love of God for sinners, he sent his son Jesus to bring us the joy of salvation, the hope of eternal life, as I said, and the peace of God to rule our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: These four things that we symbolize with these four candles around this white candle, the Christ candle that will light at Christmas or on Christmas Eve, these four things that the Lord Jesus brought to us are not mere ornaments placed on a Christmas tree.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what they should be thought of like.
SPEAKER_00: They're actually things that we find in the person Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And then they become a deeper love, a deeper joy, a deeper hope, and a deeper peace.
SPEAKER_00: We who are meant to be branches that find our life in the true vine of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Over the past couple of years, some have felt like all hope is lost.
SPEAKER_00: Some have felt deep loss.
SPEAKER_00: And their faith has been shaken, their hope has been stretched thin.
SPEAKER_00: What should they do?
SPEAKER_00: I reach all the way back to that French theologian of the Reformation period of time, John Calvin.
SPEAKER_00: He says, we should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, to awaken it when it is dormant, to confirm it when it's wavering, to strengthen it when it is weak, and to raise it up when it is overthrown.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God wants to do for you and for me as we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher or perfecter of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: This quote and the others will be uh up on this uh uh website in just a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I have uh some of you have been to Paris, some of you are familiar with Rodin.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is the sculpture uh called The Defense.
SPEAKER_00: It's also called the Call to Arms.
SPEAKER_00: Kim and I were uh so excited to get to go to the Rodin Museum there in Paris and to see this thing in person.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I get choked up when I look at it.
SPEAKER_00: I get I was very choked up.
SPEAKER_00: We both were in the presence of this statue.
SPEAKER_00: Not because statues are always all that awesome, it's just what this represents.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the angel, the victory shout with the fallen human, wounded, weak, weary from the battle.
SPEAKER_00: See how eager the Lord is to be your hope, your strength when you are weary.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's so beautifully depicted there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm moved by it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll close with this uh scripture that I have uh been marinating in over the last couple of uh months.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to read aloud with me.
SPEAKER_00: I think this would be really beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: This is from 1 Peter chapter 1, uh verses 3 through 5.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll close uh reading this aloud together.
SPEAKER_00: But this is uh the kind of hope that's on offer to you and to me as we place our faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read together.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.
unknown: Man.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I'm so glad that God is at work, that he is mighty to save, that the one who created everything out of nothing has his eye on you and his eye on me, that he never is so far removed, and you can't run away so far that he won't be able to hear your cries for mercy and help.
SPEAKER_00: That's cause for great hope for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Because God is infinite and sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing and no one is too small or insignificant for him to somehow or another look past us.
SPEAKER_00: No one is too weak for him to help.
SPEAKER_00: He is not only powerful in himself, but he gives strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_00: And those who hope in him never do so in vain.
SPEAKER_00: They will soar on the wings of eagles.
SPEAKER_00: They will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is secure because of who our God is.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as we have read earlier, Lord, fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.