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Good morning, Gateway Chapel!
Prayer
What do you want for Christmas?
When I say that, what comes to mind?
Does a Maria Carey song start playing in your head?
What images pop into your mind?
I think about those old Toys ‘R Us toy catalogues.
And now Amazon makes them because us millenials are having kids and we love our phones but boy do we love a toy catalogue.
What do you want for Christmas?
Did you just remember you told someone you would give them your wishlist, but you can’t think of anything?
Or maybe you’re panicked because you have no clue what to get your wife, your husband, your mom, your dad for Christmas?
You drew your Uncle Mike for Christmas gift and you don’t even remember what he does for work and you’ve known him your whole life…I guess get him a gift card?
What do you want?
Stuff comes to mind, things come to mind.
But we know that while there might be a few THINGS we would like, there are deeper desires present.
Once Christmas is all said and done, you’re sitting at home, you’ve got a cup of coffee, you take a slow exhale, and you say, “You know what, that was a good Christmas.”
What happened?
Is it because you got a Nespresso?
Or a nice sweater from Costco?
What makes this season truly successful?
What do you want?
Some of us may be feeling hopeless.
You’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.
You don’t know when this season of sickness will end and you’re just tired.
You would love to be renewed with hope.
Maybe you’re feeling anxious.
Whether it’s a money reason or a relational reason or maybe a reason you can’t put your finger on, you can’t shake this feeling of tightness in your body.
What you would give for peace.
Perhaps you’re feeling lonely.
You’ve got friends and family here but people don’t really know what’s going on and you feel like you’re the only one in your shoes.
You want love.
Or you’re feeling depressed.
It’s been a while since you’ve laughed til your cried and life just seems like an endless January…overcast with a good chance of rain.
You want joy.
We all crave HOPE, PEACE, LOVE, and JOY.
As we move into the Christmas season, also known as Advent, we’re going to do a four week sermon series on the 4 Gifts of Advent: HOPE, PEACE, LOVE, and JOY.
Advent means coming, just as Jesus came as a baby to Bethlehem and will come again as king.
When Jesus Advents, he brings more than good feelings but true HOPE, PEACE, LOVE, and JOY in himself.
And so each of these weeks we’re going to look at how the Bible describes these gifts and how they point to Jesus.
This morning we begin with Hope.
My main point this morning is this: Christian hope is about someone and not something.
Christian hope is about someone and not something.
We’re going to do a brief tour through the Bible and talk about some practical ways to live into hope this season.
Prayer
What is hope?
According to Wikipedia hope is:
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.
Hope is the mindset that no matter what things are going on, something might change.
The power of positive thinking, some might say.
When I think of hope, here’s what comes to mind.
That little snow icon gets me really hopeful.
I can’t wait for snow, especially since I don’t have a commute.
I’m hopeful because I have expectation based on what my iPhone told me of a positive outcome with respect to the weather in the next week.
I’m looking forward to Tuesday and if I don’t get snow, I’m going to be seriously bummed.
When we have hope, there is almost nothing we can’t do.
I will endure a rainy sad Monday for snow on Tuesday.
Without hope, life becomes unbearable.
We need hope to survive.
Hope, according to Wikipedia, is about someTHING changing, like the weather.
How does the Bible describe hope?
Shoutout to the Bible project for a lot of the bones of this sermon and sermon series.
Theda and Marissa put together artwork for the sermon series as well out in the hallway.
There are multiple Hebrew words for hope, and the first of which appears in the story of Noah and the flood in Genesis 8:11-12.
You know the story…in the beginning, God created everything…and everything at some point was kind of like a teenager’s bedroom…a chaotic wasteland, and God took that wasteland and made it good.
But humans sinned and preferred the wasteland to the garden, and so in the story of Noah and the flood, we see God giving the people what they want…a return to chaos.
Maybe you’re like the flood isn’t a Christmas story what’re you talking about?
We’ll get there...
This is a great image of hope.
If anyone had a reason to be hopeless, it was Noah.
He’s on a boat with a ton of animals, and he’s looking out on nothing but water.
It’d be like if the Lahar happened and you survived on a piece of metal and you looked out and all you saw was mudflow.
But Noah waits…he hopes…why?
Because the dove brought back an olive leaf.
It’s a sign to have hope.
What is Noah feeling at this point?
Likely tension.
Anticipation.
Excitement.
Noah waited 7 days to send out the dove, depending on what you’re waiting for, 7 days can feel like 7 minutes or 7 decades.
To hope is to wait with great anticipation and tension.
So is Christian hope the same thing as Wikipedia hope?
Waiting for someTHING to change?
What are we hoping for?
Christian hope is not in someTHING but in someONE.
As I mentioned, there are multiple words for hope in the Old Testament, and we see another in Isaiah 8:17.
What is Isaiah hoping for?
He’s waiting and hoping for God.
Christian hope is firmly fixed not in a someTHING but in a someONE.
Even though things look bleak, Isaiah puts his hope in someONE.
In Isaiah 8, things are dark.
Israel is on the brink of national destruction.
As it says in the verse it says that even though things look terrible right now, God will come.
In fact, just a few verses down we have one of the most famous Christmas passages in the Bible.
Isaiah is putting his hope in God, not in a series of events.
The Psalms use this language all the time.
We prayed these verses just a minute ago.
Or is Psalm 39...
Christian hope is not the same thing as optimism.
Optimism looks at the future and says, “I can see how things might change and get better.”
In a recent interview, Pattinson, opened up about career choices: “I don’t want to make a mistake on what to do next ...
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