The Promise 1: HOPE
The Promise • Sermon • Submitted
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· 3 viewsGod was offering His people hope in Isaiah 9:2 by promising a light that would come to expel the darkness. Simeon’s encounter with the baby Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to bring salvation to all people. Simeon had the audacity to hope that God would come through, even after years of waiting.
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 2:25-35
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to Family Worship here at Eastern Hills on this wonderful holiday weekend. I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor, and I’m so excited to be at the beginning of the Christmas season! Yes, I know that it doesn’t particularly look like Christmas around here yet, but that’s coming this Saturday. Anyway, thanks for being here this morning to worship and praise our Lord and Savior together, both to those of you in the room, and to those of you online. If you’re a guest of this church family today, we’d really like to have the opportunity to send you a note of thanks for being here, and I’d like the chance to meet you for just a moment after service. If you could fill out one of the Welcome cards that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you, you can drop that in the offering plates by the doors as you leave at the end of service, or you can bring those to me directly at the end, as I have a gift I’d like to give you. If you’d rather fill out something on your phone, you can just text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a link back to our digital communications card. That works if you’re joining us online today as well.
If you weren’t able to be here last Sunday morning, I just want to encourage you to go back and watch the message that we were able to hear from missionary Lance Borden, who shared about the concept of “future missions” in northwestern Europe. It was a great Sunday, and a great meal afterwards. I want to thank Deanna Chadwick, our church family services chairperson, and the team that she put together for our church-wide Thanksgiving meal. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and food, and I’m blessed to have been a part of it.
Announcements
Announcements
Next Sunday night, December 4, we are planning a special church-wide celebration in honor of Joe’s 15th anniversary as our associate pastor of children & families. We’ll be meeting in Miller Hall at 5:30 for that fellowship, and we hope that you’ll make plans to attend to thank Joe for his faithful service to Eastern Hills for a decade and a half.
Then, on the following Sunday 12/11, in our Family Worship service, we will have a special time of musical worship with our choir, led by Michelle Smith. We’re doing a musical called “One Small Child,” and it’s going to be a great morning of praise and worship together. Plan to be here and to invite someone who would be blessed to hear about the truth of Christmas.
You saw a video about this earlier, but this week we will begin our annual focus on the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. I’ll explain a little more about the offering in the weeks to come, but for now, I just want to make it clear that each year, the Lottie Moon Christmas offering represents 50% of the support of Southern Baptist missionaries throughout the world. Our goal as a church this year is $35,000. You can use the special envelopes in the pews, or you can designate your gift online for Lottie Moon as well.
Along with our focus on the offering, this upcoming week is our week of prayer for International Missions. There are several events that you can be a part of to join in prayer for our international missionaries. You can find those listed on the back of the bulletin this morning, or on the sheet on the Get Connected table in the foyer. Very quickly, there are dessert prayer fellowships at three locations tomorrow night; a day of prayer here at the building on Wednesday, and a prayer brunch on Friday morning. If you have questions about that, please let us know.
Opening
Opening
Today we begin a brand-new sermon series for this Advent season called The Promise. As the church celebrates the four themes of Advent over the coming weeks, which culminate on Christmas Day, we will discover a God who keeps His promises. The promises give us hope, peace, joy, and love. Our focal passage this morning comes from Luke 2, verses 25-35:
25 There was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, looking forward to Israel’s consolation, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he saw the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, he entered the temple. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him up in his arms, praised God, and said, 29 Now, Master, you can dismiss your servant in peace, as you promised. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation. 31 You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples— 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel. 33 His father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and told his mother Mary, “Indeed, this child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed—35 and a sword will pierce your own soul—that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
PRAYER (FBC West Albuquerque, Pastor Stephen Baum: that God would guide the church to minister in unity; that his family would be healthy, and that he and Nikkie would have energy and strength)
It seems to me that each holiday we celebrate is barely over before we start to think and prepare for the next. For some holidays, like Christmas, stores start putting things out in like August. This morning, we are literally still weeks away from Christmas Day. Christmas is coming. But I know there is a good contingent of you in the room who began the countdown to Christmas almost as soon as last year’s Christmas was over. You know the kind of people I am talking about: They start their Christmas list on December 27 and start shopping for people 12 months in advance. The kind who keep their lights on their house year-round and pretend it’s because it’s too much work to put them up and take them down each year, and they become “holiday lights.” The kind who play Christmas music all summer long, like Trevor. You are a dedicated group. I’ll give you that.
Maybe you aren’t that extreme, but most everyone can relate to the feeling of the anticipation of Christmas. I remember as a child making a paper ring chain out of green and red construction paper in elementary school. It was supposed to be a countdown to Christmas, breaking off one of the rings each day until Christmas Eve finally arrived. It seemed as if that chain was a mile long, and each time I’d break a link, two would grow in its place, so I got impatient and quit breaking them off. Oh, and those presents that would sit under the tree just begging for me to shake them and precisely weigh them to determine what on earth awaited me on Christmas Day. Trying to sleep on Christmas Eve? Forget about it. But that is part of the magic of Christmas, isn’t it? The anticipation of the holiday is (almost) as enjoyable as the day itself.
The truth is, waiting isn’t easy. But waiting is at the very heart of the Advent season.
This time of year is about more than presents and holiday cheer. This season is known as Advent—which comes from the Latin word adventus meaning “the coming” or “the arrival.” During these four weeks leading up to Christmas Day, for hundreds of years people have celebrated both the birth of Jesus Christ in His first coming, and also the promise of His future arrival or second coming. At the center of our faith is the belief that when Jesus Christ was born in a stable and placed in a manger, He started something beautiful and new right in the middle of our human mess. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He would restore the world to the way God first intended. With His arrival came the four themes of Advent: hope, peace, joy, and love. And, as we make our way toward Christmas Day together, we will be celebrating these powerful themes.
Today, we want to visit the theme of hope. Hope is a word we use often during the Christmas season. I hope this tree fits, I hope I get what I want for Christmas, I hope I don’t burn the ham, or I hope it snows this year. We have lost the depth of the theme of hope when our hopes are really just wishful thinking about trivial things.
This, however, is not Scripture’s understanding of the word hope. In 1 Peter, the writer uses the word hope over and over. In chapter 1, we are given a bit of a summary of this word:
13 Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be sober-minded and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Most of the time, when we talk about hope, it is in terms of the future, but it also has a lot to do with the present. Peter uses the phrase “with your minds ready for action”—this is translated literally “gird up the loins of your mind.” This phrase comes from an ancient form of dress for men in the Middle East. Men would wear a long outer shirt that would stretch all the way down to their ankles. This made it pretty hard to move quickly or to respond to a treacherous situation or fight in a battle. So, to “gird up your loins” meant you would literally grab up your long outer shirt, hike it up above your knees, then pass it back through your legs, bring it back around to the front, and then either tie it or and tuck it into your belt so you would be ready for action. So, for us to “gird up the loins of our minds” is to say that we are to always be mentally ready to do what needs to be done—it’s a question of focus. If we have Christ, then our confidence—our hope—is to be fully set as far as the future is concerned. And because the future is fully set, it should have an impact on how we live in the present. This is why our first point this morning is:
1: Hope is a certainty about the future that impacts the present.
1: Hope is a certainty about the future that impacts the present.
Our hope is not set in some ambiguous optimism for no reason. Our hope is set in specific moments in history. For example, the arrival of Jesus Christ as a baby and His life, death, and resurrection were moments in history. Hope is about living right now in the light of a future promise. This hope is about restructuring the way we look at the world, not as it is right now, but as it will be when Christ comes to set all things right.
To illustrate this, we just finished our focus on our Endeavor campaign. We sought to cast and capture a vision for the future of Eastern Hills Baptist Church that called us to action in the present that would impact the future, and now through the faith and generosity of this church family, we look forward to the future with hope—certainty—that we will be able to make the needed repairs and upgrades to our building so that it will continue to support the church for future generations. Nearly two weeks ago, we held Charles Clark’s memorial here on a morning after it rained. And as I walked from the foyer into the Crosscourts for Miller Hall, I noticed the familiar roof leak. But instead of being annoyed or frustrated by it, I instead looked at it and smiled: because I know that that leak is going to be corrected. It was like I thought: “We’re coming for you, leaky roof...” I could find joy in the present because the future is certain—that situation is going to change.
A mark of almost every person within the Christmas story is that they were full of hope about the fulfillment of a historic promise—A promise that God had given hundreds of years before to the prophet Isaiah:
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.
The Old Testament holds many promises, or prophecies, about the coming of Jesus. Each one helped sustain the Jewish people. Because they believed rescue was coming, it helped them live day-to-day. In a world that was full of deep darkness, there was a light coming.
In our focal passage this morning, we find an old man named Simeon. Simeon is a wonderful Advent character as he is a perfect example of someone who has oriented his entire life around a future promise given to him by God. Isaiah 9:2 would have been kind of a centering prayer for Simeon, reminding him of where his hope was found.
After Jesus’s birth, Mary and Joseph, Jesus’s parents, took their newborn son to the temple to participate in the traditional Jewish customs of the day regarding a firstborn son. One of the main reasons to travel to the temple was to dedicate and consecrate baby Jesus to the Lord. When they arrived at the temple, Simeon was there as well.
Some traditions believe that Simeon may have been around 112 years old. According to Luke 2, Simeon was promised that he would not die until he saw the Messiah in the flesh. His life would be spared until he set eyes on the Anointed One. By the prompting of the Spirit, Simeon is at the temple at the time Jesus and His family arrive. When Simeon sees Jesus, he knows immediately who He is. He is overcome by joy and hope as he realizes that this is the One he has been waiting for, the one the world has been waiting for. Simeon takes the baby Jesus into his arms and recites this beautiful prayer:
29 Now, Master, you can dismiss your servant in peace, as you promised. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation. 31 You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples— 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel.
Can you even imagine what Simeon would have felt? To know that the thing he had hoped for so long had finally come to pass? Simeon, in his many years, had seen many painful times in Israel’s history. He saw the Romans conquer and occupy his people and his homeland. He saw a bloody civil war. He saw multiple revolutions by the Israelite people be crushed. Yet in the midst of these and other difficult moments in his history, Simeon held out hope. He still believed that God was not done and had not quit on them. He believed the Messiah, the deliverer, was still on His way. And in Luke 2, Simeon stands at the temple holding the promised Christ: the One through whom the world would be rescued, the one he had watched for and longed to see for his entire life. He held held on to hope, and that hope had come out of great difficulty, which is our next point this morning:
2: Hope is birthed out of deep longings and desperate need.
2: Hope is birthed out of deep longings and desperate need.
Simeon shows us that hope is birthed out of a deep longing and a desperate need for God’s presence and God’s comfort. Luke tells us that Simeon was waiting at the temple for something very specific. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel. This word consolation means “encouragement” or “comfort.” This didn’t mean he was waiting for God’s pat on the back or a few nice words or a prize for coming in second. This phrase was in reference to chapters in the book of Isaiah. For hundreds of years Israel had been defeated and subjugated by many different nations—the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and then, in Simeon’s time, the Romans. These chapters in Isaiah were written right in the middle of those difficult times. When these promises in Isaiah were written and they pointed to a coming comfort through the Messiah that God would send, many would look around and be discouraged because that was not the situation at the time. But these were promises that one day things would change. They could have hope, comfort, and encouragement that God would come through.
The word that Luke uses for “looking forward” in this passage is the Greek word prosdechomai. It pictures the giving of yourself to the welcoming of what you’re waiting for —it’s the kind of waiting you do from the deepest parts of yourself—it’s a waiting that involves a sort of pain—an awareness of our deep need for something. It’s a sort of longing that almost hurts. Simeon’s hope—his expectancy—was birthed out of his awareness of his deep need for God’s comfort and healing for both himself and for his people. Because of his hope, in a way Simeon spent his life welcoming the coming Messiah even before He arrived at the Temple that day.
During these weeks leading up to Christmas, we need to step back for a moment and realize the deep need we have for Christ. Many of us, when we start to get a sense of how needy we really are, just try to fill it with shopping, accomplishments, parties, busyness, denial, or addiction. Instead of leaning into our deepest need for God’s comfort and healing in our lives, we simply try to distract ourselves, even right now in this room: we look at the bulletin or the screen or our fingernails or our phones, and in the end, we miss the message of hope that is offered in Jesus Christ, because we either don’t want to face our need, or we’ve somehow grown weary of hearing the truth of the Gospel. This is perhaps the saddest response we can give to this message, because when we distract ourselves, we don’t realize that without our deep need, we have no reason to cling to hope.
We celebrate Christmas not simply because a baby was born, but because God has chosen, out of His great love for mankind, to give us hope through that Christ child. The Scriptures tell us in Romans 5 about that incredible love that springs forth into hope for humanity:
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.
Because of our sin, we are God’s enemies. But God sent His one and only Son, born of a virgin, to live the perfect life that we couldn’t live, so that He could take the punishment that we deserve, dying on the cross in our place so that we could be justified—have a right standing with God—because of His blood shed for us. And He defeated our greatest enemy—death—so that we can live forever with Him. When we stop living in rebellion against God by surrendering to Christ in faith as our Savior and Lord, we are given this forgiveness, justification, and confident hope of eternal life. If you’ve never trusted in Jesus, surrender yourself this morning, even right now, and God will give you this hope!
For those of us who already belong to Christ, maybe the message of the Gospel isn’t ringing with hope right now because of what’s going on around us. Our world is not in a state that we view with much hope at the moment, is it? War in Ukraine. Inflation. Rising interest rates. Moral corruption and some would even say moral bankruptcy in our society. If these painful and stressful life situations are where we place our hope, then we certainly have much to fret over. Brothers and sisters, this fact should drive us to our knees, calling out to the only One who can provide the remedy for our pain and longing, with the anticipation that He will deliver us.
The ancient prayer of Advent is “Come, Lord Jesus, come.” In fact, nearly the final words of the Bible in the book of Revelation echo this cry:
20 He who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
How badly do you want that? How aware are you of your need for God’s comfort and God’s healing in your life?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says of Advent, “The only ones who can celebrate Advent are the people who carry restlessness around with them . . . whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come.”
May this Advent season be different than ever before. Don’t allow yourself to distract or self-soothe. Wrestle with your pain and come face-to-face with the brokenness of the world, and realize that it is only in Christ that that brokenness will be made right. It is only then that we see fully the emptiness of our normal Christmas hustle and bustle. We have been settling for less than is available to us. Out of a deep longing can come the comfort and hope of Jesus.
Hope is born out of our deepest longing, but our hope ultimately is found in a Person.
3: Hope is found in a Person.
3: Hope is found in a Person.
In 1 Peter we are told that our hope is not set in some kind of empty wishful thinking. This is amazing news, because if it was, then our hope ends in despair or disappointment. But our hope is set in Jesus Christ. Not our 401(k), not some relationship, not a job, not some president, not a good medical report. Our hope is in Jesus and His promised arrival in the future to restore all that is broken.
As you read through the New Testament, many people who came into contact with Jesus missed the significance of who He really was. Even though the writings in the Old Testament pointed to Him, the Jewish people still missed the Messiah when He arrived. But not Simeon. Simeon knew when he saw Jesus, even at just a month old, that he was the Anointed One who was promised to come and bring hope, peace, joy, and love.
So why did Simeon get it right when so many got it wrong?
In short . . . because people were looking for something Jesus wasn’t. Jesus wasn’t what most people were looking for in a Messiah. They wanted a political warrior King who would overthrow the oppressors of the Jews and put them on top. They didn’t expect the Messiah to be a tiny baby would who would come and, instead of exerting His power, would give Himself up on a cross. For the people who missed Jesus, it was because their hope was in THEIR specific expectations. Their expectations were all about what they wanted God to do, how they wanted Him to look, and for things to change in their favor. When Jesus failed to meet these expectations, they missed Him altogether. You see, Simeon had a different hope.
When our hope is placed in anything other than the promises of God and the fulfillment of these promises in Jesus, we tend to settle for hope in lesser things. These things always fail and always lead to frustration.
This morning, in the midst of whatever you are going through. . . where do you find your hope? How you answer this question makes all the difference. Is your hope based on something you want God to do or is it based in God Himself?
Here are the beauty and the dark side of the holidays. It is during this time of year the good of life and the bad of life are both amplified and exaggerated. In no other time of the year are we more aware of the problems we can’t solve, the people we can’t control, and the expectations we can’t meet. There are problems that are decades in the making that you won’t be able to fix overnight. There are people in your life whom you won’t be able to save during the holidays, and there are expectations that you will try so hard to meet for someone else in your family and you will never be able to do it.
That’s not where your hope is.
While we might struggle in this life, if we have Jesus, our hope stretches beyond the confines of this world. And so our pain and struggle can well up in a grateful anticipation of what we have to look forward to, because Jesus has overcome and will overcome the world, and we have and will overcome the world in Him:
33 I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”
5 Who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
There is a difference in being hopeful FOR something and being hopeful IN something. Choose this year to face your deep longing and come to believe that there is one specific source from whom you can derive hope—and that is the Person Jesus Christ.
Application
Application
During this Advent season, we don’t just idly wait and hope. In fact, when we sense our deep longing and know our source of hope, then we can live every moment believing the best is before us. When we begin to embrace the anticipation and the expectation, we free ourselves up from the urgency of having to fix things now, and know that our God is at work. The question is, how do we join Him in that work? It is an active anticipation.
As I thought about this active anticipation concept, I thought about when Melanie was pregnant with each of our girls. Both times, when we found out Mel was pregnant, we had months to wait. At times, it seemed like she would just be pregnant forever (I’m sure it felt more that way for her than for me). In a way, all we could do was wait on the arrival, the coming of our girls, but then again, we had plenty to do to be prepared when each baby finally came. We had to paint the room, buy the clothes, buy and set up furniture, get some sleep. We had things that we could be about in the meantime, anticipating our daughters’ arrival.
When we have hope that Jesus is going to show up in our life, we find we have plenty to do to join Him in His work, because the promise of the future should drive how we live in the present.
While we wait on the Lord, what would set us up perfectly for when He arrives in our lives? For some of us, this means this season of Advent is perfect for forgiving someone, for seeking forgiveness, for pressing into God, for repenting of sin, for serving people, for loving others. We wait. . . but we wait actively.
Closing
Closing
I want to close today by inviting all of you to join me in engaging in this season of Advent by reflecting on and even praying the lyrics of the hymn “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” It’s hymn number 176 in the red hymnals in front of you. I decided not to put the lyrics on the screen so we could look at the music together.
Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation, Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear desire of ev’ry nation, Joy of ev’ry longing heart.
Born Thy people to deliver, Born a child, and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever, Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit, Raise us to Thy glorious throne.
—The Baptist Hymnal Hymn #176, “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”, Words by Charles Wesley, Music by Rowland H. Pritchard
Amen, and a merry Christmas season to you, my beloved church family.
This morning, my prayer for those of you who do not know Christ, who have never experienced the hope that we’re talking about, would believe the Gospel, turn from your sins, and surrender to Christ as Lord and Savior. If you have questions about the Gospel or about salvation, please don’t hesitate to let us know. I’ll be here at the front, as will Joe And Kerry. We would love the opportunity to talk with you about Christ. You may have already surrendered to Jesus just this morning. Come and share that with us so that this church family can celebrate with you! If you’re joining us online, and you have something you have a question on or have surrendered to Christ this morning, please let me know that as well by email at bill@ehbc.org, so we can help you.
Eastern Hills is a wonderful family of people who love Jesus and each other, and if you believe that God would have you become a part of this family in a formal way by church membership this morning, please come and let us know that as well. We’ll set a time to sit down and share our testimonies, go through our Statement of Belief, and answer any questions you have about Eastern Hills. If you’re online and you’d like more information about Eastern Hills, please send me an email as well.
If you are in need of prayer this morning, you are welcome to come and pray with us, to come and pray at the steps, or to pray in your pews during our invitation song.
Finally, this is also a good time to give your tithes and offerings if you’d like to do so. You can give online at the website or through the mobile app.
Let’s stand and pray together as the band comes.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading - 1 Chr. 24
Pastor’s Study tonight on Ephesians 2:8-10. 5:30 in Miller Hall.
Prayer meeting this week, where we will be focusing on praying for our international missionaries together
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
What a blessed message of hope that we have to share with the world. Go, and tell the world of what Christ has done for you.