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Good morning. It's good to see everybody. Don't you guys have a good Thanksgiving? Good deal. Good deal. We had a great time with my family. It was just very relaxing, really chill. The only thing that was bad was the football. So uh it was pretty ugly. But that's okay. Um thankfully my hope's not in the longhorns. So, well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about, sister. There you go. Well, uh, I'm excited today as we get started with a new series as we come close to Christmas. Uh, anybody like Christmas time? We put some yes, that's what I'm talking about. There we go. A little excitement in the crowd this morning. Uh I love Christmas. In fact, we put some Christmas lights up on the house this this week, and uh now the lights are on and did some decorations in the house, and man, it just feels good. There's something about Christmas time and the food and the smells and the lights and all those things that we do, traditions, and I love Christmas, but you know, the thing about Christmas, when you're a kid, you can't wait for Christmas to get here, right? You're anticipating, you're like, come on, can Christmas, come on, and you get to Thanksgiving, and you're like, you just can't wait because you know there's presents, you know there's gonna be this big party, we're gonna have blasts, it's gonna be great. And as something happens when you become an adult. Something happens where all of a sudden there's a switch, and you're like, instead of anticipating, like wanting it to get here faster, you're like, whoa, slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down. You know, it's like don't get here too fast, right? You gotta get everything ready, got all these logistics to get done so that you can host people, or you can go up somewhere and be with some other family members during the holidays of travel, or some maybe uh you've got to get all your gifts ready. Uh and I know all of y'all have already purchased all your gifts, right? Yeah, y'all did that on Black Friday. Um, man, this thing has gotten out of hand, by the way. I just we went to a couple of stores, it's insane. Uh, but uh anyway, that's that's a whole other conversation. We can have that offline. But you know, the thing is, I love Christmas, but I remember also as a kid growing up that there were a couple of Christmases, and my parents were awesome. I love my parents, they're great people, and uh, and and we didn't have a lot when we were growing up. Uh we had God took care of us and we always had what we needed, but we didn't have a lot. And I remember there were a couple different Christmases, and I didn't want my parents to feel guilty uh about not being able to give me something that I wanted for Christmas, so I didn't tell them what I wanted, but you know, I had Santa to go to, and so in secret, you know, I'm kind of like, hey Santa, this is what I really want for Christmas, and uh, you know, write them a letter. I don't know where that letter went, uh, you know, give them a phone call or whatever. And and so basically let my list be made known. And I didn't get what I wanted. And I can remember the disappointment. Anybody ever been there? There was something you really wanted for Christmas. Am I alone on this? Nobody else has ever had that problem? So, yeah, okay, there's one honest person there. You had something you wanted for Christmas and you didn't get it, it's disappointment. It was like, oh, come on, man, I really wanted that for Christmas, and I didn't get it. But you know, the thing is that that's that's kind of a silly thing in terms of being disappointed that you don't get what you want for Christmas. But the truth is, is that there are a lot of us in this room today who are fighting disappointment. And it's not just about a Christmas gift, it's about life and things that you're confronting and dealing with on a daily basis because disappointment uh it plagues all of us. We get disappointed when things don't turn out the way that we want them to turn out, when things don't work out in the timing that we want them to work out, when the life that we had painted for ourselves, this life we had dreamed up, doesn't look like it was supposed to look. You ever been there? I think a lot of us in this room, if we're honest, there's multiple parts of our life that just haven't turned out exactly like we'd hoped. And we're disappointed with that. And the truth is today, it's okay if you're disappointed, but I want you to know there's hope even in disappointment. That you can look beyond that disappointment and you can actually find something that is transcendent, that's greater, that's gonna last. In fact, we're gonna look at a story today, and it's gonna be a series of stories over the next four weeks, characters that are in the story of Jesus coming onto the scene for the first time into human history. And when he comes in as a baby in a manger, uh we get these stories recorded in the Gospels, these first four books of the New Testament. And I want to look in the book of Luke today, chapter one. So if you have your Bible, I want you to go ahead and ask, ask you to go ahead and pull that out. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one under the seat around you. And uh you can use that. There'll also be some scriptures on the screen. And while you're doing that as well, if you guys happen to be on the end of the row, my left, your right, if you pick up that little black connection pad and just fill that out. And uh, over the course of this next few minutes, if you just fill that out and pass that down, that just lets us know who was here with us, and uh, we can follow up with you and just say, thanks for coming. So as you guys are doing that, we look at Luke chapter 1, and this is a story that in some ways gets overlooked in the Christmas story. Okay, we kind of jump straight to this the time when Mary uh is uh approached by an angel and she's told you're gonna have a son. That's kind of the way we do it. We kind of jump right to Luke 2. But I want us to back up and look at Luke chapter 1, verse 5, at a story about a man named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. So, verse 5, this is what it reads. In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest of Abigail's division named Zechariah. His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Now, first just make, I'm gonna make some comments as we go, so we're gonna move slowly through this passage, but let me just start here. Uh, we see this is this man named Zachariah, and he is a priest, and we see he has a wife, her name is Elizabeth, and it says in this passage that both of them are from the lineage of the priests uh in the the people of the people of Israel. Now, maybe that doesn't make sense, or maybe you don't know much about that, but there were two particular tribes that were the ones who would focus on doing all the priestly duties, and God had set them apart from that, and the Levites particularly. And what would happen is that you became a priest if you were born into that family. Like that was part of, that was just kind of part of the deal. You were you were a member of that tribe, that group of people that were part of the bigger group of people, the Israelites, and your job was to to perform all of the uh acts of worship in the temple, okay? And so Aaron or uh Elizabeth and his or Elizabeth and her husband both, they were both preacher's kids, basically. So they're already in trouble, right? Because uh I know I'm I'm a PK, and my my wife, she grew up in a preacher's kid's home, and so you know we got all kinds of issues, right? Some of you want to think that's funny. If you were a preacher's kid, you understand, right? But here's the thing uh we we know that they were both they were both preacher's kids, they both, their grandparents were, their grandparents' grandparents, and then it just keeps on going all the way back down uh for many, many years. They were all part of this thing, and um, and so they'd been part of this long enough that they had experienced a lot of things in the worship context that we find them. Now the verse 6 says this both were righteous in God's sight, living without blame, according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord. Now, anybody in this room say that that could be said of you? Okay? It says that both of them had were righteous, they were upright, and they were living according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord. That's pretty incredible. They were righteous people, which just means that when God looked at their life, he's like, these people are doing the right thing, right? They're doing the right thing. So that's their story to this point is that they're part of this priestly tribe, they're leading, they're being faithful, they're doing what God's asked them to do, they're obeying all the laws. And then verse 7 takes a twist. It says this but they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive. So they're barren, they they they don't have any kids. And we can guess that they're roughly in their 60s, right? They're older, they're up in age. We hear more about that here in just a minute. Now notice it's interesting that they point out Elizabeth as the culprit. It's kind of not fair, is it? But you know why? Because in that culture, women really weren't valued highly. In fact, most of what women were good for was to make babies and to uh basically take care of things at home. They couldn't do much else, they couldn't be a part of political processes, they didn't have a whole lot of value. So when when uh they weren't able to have kids, they would just automatically blame the woman. Just put it on her. Thankfully, times have changed, right? Jesus lifted up the women and uh he gave them some value. And so don't ever think that Jesus suppressed women, he actually raised their value. But that's what it says here in the passage that Elizabeth could not conceive. Now, this sounds very similar to another passage we find in the Old Testament about a faithful man of God named Abraham, and how he and his wife Sarah could not have children. They were barren, and this is the thing when you were barren, that was considered a curse from God. It was considered to be something that God not only were you having physical issues, but spiritually, you were cursed by God if you could not have a child. All right? And so this is what Zechariah and Elizabeth had lived with for years. Because it says, and both of them were well along in years. So that's the scene that we find Zechariah in this morning and Elizabeth is people who are doing the right thing but are facing hardship. Can I just say to you this morning, just uh right up here up front, that just because you do the right thing doesn't mean that everything is gonna go well for you. Just because you are an upright person, a good person, or a kind person, or a loving person, or a gracious person, or a person who's moral, it doesn't mean that life is gonna just all come out great for you, that everything's gonna be comfortable or easy. There are no guarantees that it will, right? The Bible doesn't teach us that. If anybody ever says to you that if you follow God, everything will be easy, they are lying. Because think about what Jesus had to endure, and he was perfect, he suffered more than anyone, right? His disciples who followed him, they ultimately ended up giving up their lives. They became martyrs and they followed Jesus. They did what was right, they obeyed him, they followed his command to go into the world and tell other people about him, and yet they lost their lives. And so I could make case after case after case, but I just want to make sure that you understand we don't stand up here and say, look, if you follow Jesus, your life's gonna be all good. That's silly talk. That's not what the scripture says. And here's another situation where we see an upright couple honoring God and yet dealing with hardship, ultimately dealing with disappointment. Now, notice what it goes on to say. When his division was on duty, this is Zachariah, and he was serving as priest before God, it happened that he was chosen by Lot according to the custom of the priesthood to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and to burn incense. Now, the way this worked is that you had a group of priests, and they would get chosen to be on duty, to actively be a part of the worship process. And once in their lifetime, typically, they would get actually uh chosen by the casting of lots, which was, you know, just they they believed that God kind of led this process as they would throw these dice and they would basically uh land on who was going to be the person who would go in and perform this priestly duty. And so they would go not to the Holy of Holies, but actually to the sanctuary outside of the Holy of Holies, and they would burn incense to God. And so it was a really, really cool thing to be able to get to do this. In fact, it was an honor for Zechariah to get to go and to perform this act of worship on behalf of the people to burn incense to God. And so he gets picked and he goes in, and here's what it says At the hour of incense, the whole assembly, all the people are outside, they're praying. And verse 11, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. So the scripture says he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's burning the incense. It's this powerful moment for him, it's once in a lifetime opportunity, and an angel shows up on the scene. Now, again, we've said this before, but what would happen if you were worshiping God at your house or in some service and all of a sudden an angel showed up? I think we would all like probably need to go change our pants, right? Uh, this is this is serious business, right? Because this angel shows up, scares the daylights out of him. And so he's he's afraid, he's overwhelmed. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled, he was overcome with fear, and all of us in this room would be as well. Okay? When they saw these spiritual beings, the assumption was God is here. God had shown up. They didn't just think of an angel, they thought, no, God is actually shown up and he is here. And so they were afraid, they were fearful. But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Now I'm gonna stop there for just a second. I want to back up. I'm really blown away this morning as I reflect on the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, because here's the deal. There were two major issues that Zechariah and Elizabeth had to overcome to be faithful in their walk with God, to living out their faith. And I'll be honest, these same things plague us today. They're the same things that drive a lot of disappointment in our life. The first one was this the reason Zachariah could have been really turned off by God and actually walked away, and many of the Jews of that time had walked away from God, is because 2,000 years prior to this scene, 2,000 years, okay, you're tracking two millennia back, God gave a promise to a man named Abraham. And he said to Abraham, I'm gonna choose you, I'm gonna bless you, and I'm gonna get your family and your descendants be a blessing to all the nations. That's what he said to Abraham, okay? I'm gonna bless those who bless you, I'm gonna curse those who curse you, and your people, the nations, the descendants are all gonna be blessed through you. You're gonna have great influence, great leadership, it's gonna be awesome. God blessed him in that way. Now, that's what God said to Abraham, but what had actually happened from that time forward was that they had gone through a lot of hardship. In fact, if you know the Bible at all, if you've read it from beginning to end, or if you've kind of read bits and pieces through the Old Testament, you get these weird stories, and it's it's a little bit hard at times if you just kind of jump into the middle of the story to pick up and go, okay, well, how does this fit in the context? But if you've ever really read the whole story, you see that the people of Israel, that mean the descendants of Abraham, things hadn't always gone well for them. Even though they had some exciting times, like when King David sat on the throne and King Solomon sat on the throne, from that point forward, that the Israelite people who were supposed to be blessed by God and supposed to like influence the world, were actually dealing with being taken over by people group after people group. The Syrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks. And even when we come to this scene, 2,000 years after that promise, we find that they're under the rule of the Roman Empire. That the Romans had come in and taken over, not only that, but they'd literally come into their temple and desecrated it by walking right into the Holy of Holies and saying, Well, I guess there's no God here, and walked out. And I mean, that was a big, big deal because if you were a priest like Zachariah, no one went into the Holy of Holies, right? No one went in there because if you go in there, you could die. And yet the emperor walks right on into there and just says, Okay, looks good, and walks out. Now, do you think that would have messed with their faith? You think it would have messed with their belief that God was actually going to follow through on the promise that he had made to Abraham? Absolutely, it would have messed with them. It would have messed with us. And many of the Jews at that time walked away from God, but Zechariah didn't walk away from God. Even though the timing of God's promise was hard to deal with because they were waiting, they were believing, they were trusting, they were operating in faith. Now let's be honest. Do you ever struggle to be faithful in your personal walks with God? Do you ever struggle to obey when his timing doesn't match your timing? If you're like me, you do. There's multiple times in my life where I look back and I see that I that I sensed God was saying something to me, He was going to do something, and then the timing just didn't seem to match my agenda. And I became disappointed and frustrated. But the other thing that you had going on here, and I already alluded to this a while ago, is the fact that Zachariah and Elizabeth were barren. They were viewed as cursed by God. They didn't have children, even though they were doing the right thing. Now, again, I don't know all the thoughts here because we don't really know the whole story of Zachariah. We don't get behind the scene, we don't really get to get into their heads. I wish we could. I wish we could ask them more about what are they really feeling? Are they just surface level, kind of doing what's right no matter what? But despite all that, you got to give them props, you got to give them major respect because they continue to walk out their faith in light of the hardship they were they were dealing with, right? They did that. But here's what I think happens to us in our life, if you're not careful, if I'm not careful, sometimes we will assume the promises of God. Sometimes we will assume that God's gonna give us certain things or that we deserve certain things or that we're entitled to certain things. In fact, that's one of the things that plagues the United States is that we are entitled as a people. We think we deserve certain things. And as Christians, we're no we're not exempts to this. Sometimes we can look at God and say, God, I you you do uh you owe me this. I deserve this. And when you get into that mode and it doesn't happen, guess what? You become disappointed with God. But you're disappointed about something He never promised. You're disappointed about something that you in your mind have decided God owes you. And maybe that issue is, God, you you owe me a marriage with no conflict. Right? God, you owe me children. I'm not making light of that if this morning, if you've pleaded before God. In fact, in this passage it says, Zachariah and Elizabeth had prayed to God and asked for children. Is it wrong to pray for those things? No, but we need to be very careful that we don't move beyond prayer to saying, okay, God's promised me this, now I deserve this. And if he doesn't give this to me, I'm gonna be angry, I'm gonna be disappointed and be frustrated with him, right? And this passage goes on to say this the angel makes this prophecy to Zechariah. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son, and you will name him John. Anybody know who this John is? John the Baptist, this is the one who've been prophesied, would come to prepare the way for Jesus. That's this is his parents. There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and will never drink wine or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb, which we get a picture of this later on, because when Mary shows up to tell Elizabeth about Jesus, it says that John was in her womb. She didn't know he was going to be John. He literally leaped in her womb, like started moving around. So some of you moms have felt a baby inside of you. And it says that that in that moment that literally Mary knew, uh Elizabeth knew that the baby leaping inside was leaping because there was something supernatural happening inside of her womb. That's crazy, right? But even from the womb, John was full of the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the sons of Israel and their Lord to their Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, and to make ready for the Lord a prepared people. So this is the prophecy that the angel gives to Zechariah while he's in there burning incense. That's pretty awesome, isn't it? They've been praying. I mean, think about this. They're in their 20s and they're praying. God, would you please give us a child? No child. They get to their 30s, they're praying. God, would you give us a child? Please, we ask for a child, but no child. They get to their forties, maybe now she's the only one praying, right? Give us a child, God, we would will on a child, no child. They get to their 50s. Are they praying here and there? Maybe, God, would you bless us somehow? 60s, it's like, okay, God, we get it. And disappointment can settle in. And then in a moment, the scripture says that this angel says, You're gonna have a baby. And the next verse is exactly what every one of you men in this room would do. And say, It says in verse 18, How can I know this? Zechariah asked. For I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years. Anybody think you would ask that question? Seems pretty logical, doesn't it? And I love the reply that the angel gives him. The angel answered him, I'm Gabriel. Hello. I mean, God sent you an angel to tell you that you're gonna have this child. It's like, you know, God's saying, you know, what else do you need? I'm gonna send a divine being, a divine angel into the presence where you're we're where you're doing this incense burning, and I'm gonna tell you this. I mean, come on, get this, get it, get get with it, come on, buddy. And so he says to them, I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. And then he goes on to say, now listen, you're gonna be silent, and you're not gonna be able to talk at all until this baby comes. So literally, from that point forward, Zachariah, and in fact, I'll summarize for you for the rest of the passage, he comes back out of the room, and he'd been in there a while, and everybody's like, What's going on? And he comes out and he can't talk. And so basically they start to put all this together that he's had this encounter with God, and he's unable to speak until John is finally coming to the place where they're gonna name him, and the words come out of his mouth later on and says, His name is John, because that's what the angel had told him, right? So until that point, he couldn't speak, and some of your women are like, I wish my husband couldn't speak for that long. That'd be great. Right? I need how how did that work? I need to figure that one out, right? But he couldn't speak for that entire time. Now here's the thing. As I said a while ago, the reason why their story could be our story is because Zechariah and Elizabeth had to deal with disappointment with God. The reason we can connect with it, the reason we can resonate with it, even though. We haven't had an angel show up on the scene, even though we're not priests doing priestly duties. We can understand what it means to be human and to be disappointed with God. I mean, that's the truth, is that sometimes our disappointments with our circumstances can very quickly, very easily drift over to disappointment with God. And so we can come to a worship service or and or we can avoid church altogether because God hasn't delivered on what we expected him to deliver. Somebody in our family was sick, we prayed for them and they didn't get healed. That was God's fault. We were supposed to get this job, we didn't get the job we wanted. That was God's fault. We're struggling with an addiction to drugs or alcohol or pornography or whatever it is, and we're not getting any better. That's God's fault. God used to be getting me over this. We deal with hardship in marriage, and our marriage was not meant to be this marriage that fell apart five years in and yet it did. And God, that's your fault. I prayed, I asked for a marriage, and then this is the marriage I get? This is the spouse I get. Listen, this morning I want you to know that God's heart breaks for those of you that are hurting today. Don't let this come out harsh. I'm just saying I know that some of you in this room, you're disappointed, and it's okay to get honest about that. I, as your pastor, as a pastor of this church, I am not exempt from the disappointments of this life. There are hardships that come. My emotions are even stirred because I remember sitting at Round Rock Hospital six years ago. And I remember having prayed over our fourth child that was going to be born. And I remember praying every night, just like we always have done with all of our kids, that when they were born that they would be healthy, that Jada would be healthy, that life would be all good, and we'd be able to celebrate the arrival of our child. And I remember when our daughter was born, and I remember looking at her and saying, There's something not right. You know, you count toes and fingers and you do all those fun things that dads get to do when you see a new child. And I remember like hearing this weird noise that she was making with her mouth, and I'm like, what is that noise? And Jada was trying to nurse her and she wasn't nursing. And we said, Hey, can you just look at her real quick? And they kind of took her off, and we didn't hear from them for a little while. And they came back in and they said, Your daughter was born with a cleft palate. She's not gonna be able to eat like a normal baby, and there's gonna require a lot of surgeries, and um, there's some things that are gonna have to happen. We're gonna give you a specialist to walk alongside of you in this. And I just remember in that moment that the pastor part of me said, I'm good, I'm tough, no big deal. Like people are gonna come and they're gonna ask, and I'm gonna say, Listen, like God, God knew this was gonna happen, and I'm gonna give them a spiritual answer, and God works everything for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. I'm gonna give all those nice spiritual answers, and it's gonna be an opportunity to point people to Jesus. But inside in my heart, I was disappointed in that moment. I was disappointed with God. I was frustrated. God, I prayed this entire pregnancy that this baby would be healthy. And now I've got a child who is not gonna be able to eat like a normal baby. And believe me, her issue, she's been great, she's awesome. We prayed she would talk, and now she won't stop talking. But I tell you that story this morning because listen, we we aren't exempt from the hardships of life, that things happen. This isn't something I'm I'm not I'm not manipulating, I'm not conjuring. This is in my heart because we deal with disappointment, and some of those things are still real and raw, but we put our hope in God. We put our hope in God. And some of you have been trayed betrayed by a friend or a spouse or a family member, some of you have lost a job, some of you have been surprised that your parents got a divorce, some of you have dealt with sexual abuse or and suffered through that and you can't get over it. Some of you have prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed for something and it hasn't happened for you. And you're just disappointed with God. And that disappointment robs you of the hope that we were intended to live with. Anybody feel that this morning? And I want you to know you don't have to live in hopelessness. You don't have to live in hopelessness. I can't give you a magic pill to go home and take this pill and all of your problems will go away. But I can tell you that there is hope beyond what this life has brought you. The hand that it has dealt you, the issues that you are facing. There is hope. But what is hope? Because the next four weeks we're gonna talk about hope, but I want to give you some handles this morning so that we actually know what we're talking about when we describe and discuss this word hope. I want you to first know it's not wishful thinking. It's not just wishful thinking. Like, I just wish things would get better. When we typically use the word hope, we typically use it in the sense of possibilities. What may happen. I'm hoping that it gets better. I'm hoping that they do this. I'm hoping that this happens, right? But that's not actually how the Bible uses the word hope. Um, we went this weekend, we had the opportunity to go with my um brother-in-law and sister, and uh we went over and watched a high school football game. We haven't got to watch any games in recent days, and we went and watched this playoff game, and it was a lot of fun and kind of just brought back all these memories and emotions of being in a football game. But we pulled up and we got there late, and like the score was already 12 to nothing, and right after we pulled there, they scored again, so it was like 18 to nothing. And uh this poor little school, you know, had driven up to play this game from way down South Texas, and they're they're kind of doing their thing, and like we're walking up, and like we we we got over here, this game's pretty much already over, right? At the end of the first quarter, it was like 32 to nothing, and you just kind of almost feel bad for the other school. But it was kind of funny and sad all at the same time because the other team, they're over there, and of course they got their band playing, they're trying to get them all hopped up, they got their cheerleaders cheering, and they got them chanting. And my kids are like, you know, they haven't been in a football game like that, and they're like, What are they saying? One of my sons, like, what are they saying? And they're saying this chant. Maybe you've been in a football game, they're saying, we believe, we believe. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, like, you can believe all day long, but you're getting spanked, okay? I don't think belief is gonna fix this problem. I think your your kids need to like, like, maybe you should just say, it's okay, it's okay. You know? Or let's head to the bus. Something else, but we believe, I don't think it's really getting them anywhere, right? Listen, I'm not telling you this morning that you just have to like figure this thing out and just say, we believe, and like, Jesus, you're great, and like go over, get over it, okay? That's not Christianity. That's not gospel life and gospel living, is just ignoring the emotions that we feel and the hardships that we're dealing with. Christ endured suffering himself and he identifies in our suffering, he identifies in our weakness. Okay? But here is what, again, hope is not. It's not, I think I can or I think it will happen. It's not if only. It's not the sun will come out tomorrow. It's not that kind of thinking. That's not hope. No, biblical hope is something much bigger, it's much better. It's similar to faith. Faith is the evidence of things unseen, the things hoped for. That's what Scripture says in Hebrews 11, 1. But hope is actually a part of faith. It's the future part of faith. So if faith can say, I believe in God, what he's done, what he is doing, and what he will do, hope is the piece of faith that says, I believe he will follow through on what he has promised. And the best track record or the best way to know that God's going to follow through on his promises that have yet to come to fruition are what? To look back and to see how he has answered his promises time and time and time again in the past. And I want you to hear me say this today. Whatever it is that you're going through, whatever hardship, whatever difficulty, God has promised not that he will fix it all right now, but he has promised there will be a day where all of the pain and suffering will end. Where all the issues that you're fighting right now will get fixed, where all the marriages and all the struggling between siblings and friendships and work and all those things that you've got to feel, the tensions that you feel, the addictions, that all those things will ultimately be made right. In fact, to give us a definition for hope this morning, and this is something that we could put handles on as we go forward, I just want to give you this definition. Hope is confident anticipation that changes the way we live today. Okay? It's confident anticipation that changes how we actually live today. Confident anticipation in what? Confident anticipation that God will do what he says he will do. What he has promised he will do. Tim Keller says it this way: Biblical hope is life-changing, certainty about the future. Being certain about the future in a way that affects how you live now. You and I are unavoidably and irreducibly hope-based creatures. We are controlled how we live now by what we think will happen later. Christian hope has to do with the ultimate future, not the immediate. So let me just say this to you this morning. Our hope as Christ followers is not in just the here and now, it's in what's ultimately going to happen. If we put our hope in the here and now, we will constantly be disappointed. We will. Now, I'm not saying life can't be good now. There are beautiful things in life now. Even talking about Emery, who I shared earlier, when I when she was born with that cleft palate, God has used that story powerfully in our life. We've been able to connect with people that we wouldn't have connected with. We can understand suffering in a way we wouldn't have understood before. In fact, Romans 5 even tells us that it's through that suffering and that hardship and that difficulty that God grows us in our perseverance, and that perseverance produces hope, and that hope does not disappoint. Isn't that great? The hope that comes out of hardship is a hope that won't disappoint. Why? Because when we go through hardship, go through difficulty, go deal with disappointment, we are pressed to look beyond that to something that's greater. Now here's the thing. I realize that in a room this size, there's probably some folks who don't believe in God, don't believe in Jesus, don't believe in the Bible. But I want you to know, first off, it's a safe place to be here to ask those questions because we have friends and lots of friends who don't believe in Jesus and don't believe in God and don't believe in the Bible. And we love having conversations with them. And what I can tell you is that if you choose not to believe in the Bible, choose not to believe in God and all the Jesus and all the things that we're talking about today, you're gonna put your hope in something because we are hope-based creatures. We can't not put our hope in something. And all I am challenging you to do is to consider putting your hope in something that is bigger than you. Hope in something that is bigger than the here and now. And to ask God if you are real, if there is something to this, that God would reveal that to you. That's all I'm asking. I can't change your mind. I can't make you believe in God, but what I can say is that I have experienced a supernatural hope personally because I know that there's a God who loves me, who made me, who has a plan, and his plan, even though it doesn't always make sense to me, is working itself out, and one day he's gonna fix all these broken things. And I'm thankful for that this morning. Thankful for that. Yeah. But here's the great thing is that that future hope, that ultimate thing, it changes the way I live now. So let me give you an illustration of this. Imagine with me for just a second that there were two men, and I gave them each a room to work in, and the room was set up exactly the same way, exact same environment, exact same setting, and in that room there was a crank to turn. Okay? And I told each of those men, I want you to go in that room every day. I'm gonna hire you, every day you're gonna go in that room and you're gonna turn that crank for one year. Okay? Now here's the thing: everything's exactly the same, except for one of those men, I say to them, at the end of this year, I'm gonna give you $10,000 if you do this every single day for the next year. And the other man, I go to him and say, I'm gonna give you one billion dollars at the end of the year. Now, just a guess. When you talk to the man about turning the crank who is gonna get $10,000, there's probably some motivation there, but I'm guessing not a lot. In fact, if you talk to the other guy, he might be thinking, I think I'm gonna give up, I think I'm done, I think I'm gonna quit. But the one who's gonna get a billion dollars at the end of the year, you think he's gonna quit? You think he's gonna give up? No, why? Because he knows what's coming at the end. And that's how we live our lives, is because we know what ultimately is coming. Is turning a crank every day hard? Absolutely, but our attitude about turning that crank changes when we know what's coming. So remember that today, that our lives should look drastically different than those who have no hope. Or those whose hope is in temporary things that constantly change. Because people sometimes put their hope in materialism, and then that stuff doesn't satisfy, they need more. Some people put their hope in a relationship, that relationship doesn't satisfy, they want more. Some people put their hope in their work, that work gets boring, they want more. When we put our hope in God, we can enjoy all those things because we know those things are only temporary, and they're pointing us to an eternal reality, eternal desire. When people do not have a proper view of hope, we're always going to be freaked out and disappointed with life. So, how do we actually have hope and disappointment? I said it well ago. We put our trust in Jesus. Romans 15, verse 12 says this. And again, Isaiah, this is the prophet Isaiah, 600 years before Jesus comes on the scene, prophesying under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he says, The root of Jesse will appear. Who's the root of Jesse? Jesus. Jesus is the root of Jesse, okay? He says, The root of Jesse will appear, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles, the Gentiles will hope in him. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let me just give you a phrase to lean on this week. Hope is not found in the gifts. Hope is found in the giver. Hope is not found in the gifts that we get from God, it's found in the giver, who we trust is bigger than the life that we face and greater and more powerful and more awesome. And I hope you know I'm not just like making some cheesy statement that doesn't have any depth to it. The reality is that God is the greatest giver. Because it says in Scripture that He loved the whole world so much that He gave His only Son. He is the giver, and He's the one who we can trust our lives with. We can trust our eternity with. So my challenge to us as a congregation is over the next four weeks, we would memorize verse 13. We would memorize verse 13. It says, Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And when you face hardship and when you are struggling with disappointment, you would ask God to bring that scripture to mind. God, would you fill me with hope so that it would be full of joy and peace? I want this to be the most hope-filled, joyous, peace-filled Christmas you guys have ever experienced. That's my prayer. That we would experience that. But that's not gonna happen just by us like trying harder. God's gonna have to fill us with hope. He's gonna have to fill us by the power of His Holy Spirit, like it says, and that will overflow on other people. And it won't be just about the presence or the traditions, the lights, the food. It'll be about the person of Jesus because it's not about the gifts, it's about the giver.