A Promise of Hope
Advent 23 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Many times we don’t even realize that the story of Christmas began long ago. The story is much older than the birth of Jesus …And I want to tell you that story today
and as we do I want to ask you what will seem like a stupid question...
Can God be trusted?
Can God be trusted?
Some of you are sharpening your pitch forks as we speak...
And I ask this question because there is both an academic and a practical answer...
Academically:
Of course God can be trusted!
If God wasn’t trust worthy then he wouldn't be God…This is self-evident!
God is truth!
God is goodness!
God is Beauty! So yes of course God is not only worthy of our trust but its foolish not to trust in God...
But practically its easy to say we trust in God but not abandon the outcomes to God’s will!
Here is what I mean...
God I trust you but you dont get any say over my relationships
God I trust you but I’ll do the politicking in this house, thank you very much
God I trust you but its fine, I’ll just handle my own finances...
It becomes so easy to say we trust in God, but practically its easy to assume the control of all these little things in our lives rather than abandon the outcome to the Lord
As we begin our first sermon in our march toward Christmas, I kind of want to tell most of the story of scripture today…the narrative Arc of how the whole entire Old Testament races us toward the manger
And in doing that…This question will come up....Can God be trusted? Is God who he says he is?
Ok if you like to follow along in your Bibles I will be in Genesis 12 for a few minutes this morning
So flip with me there...
This will be familiar to many of you. It is God’s promise to Abram to make him a great nation
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Now in the narrative Arc of the Bible
There is Adam and Eve: They sin and are exiled out of the Garden of Eden....But in that punishment there is a promise that one day there would be a “son of man” who would crush the serpent of sin
Well after Adam and Eve the world descends into Chaos...
There is a Spiritual Rebellion in Genesis 6
Violence rules the earth and God literally floods the earth and uses Noah to re-populate the world
But guess what…Just a few generations later humans would come together and make this tower called the tower of Babel.
Now this is a sinful thing yet again, but it is a picture of Humanity trying to unite together under humanity…and not under God
So God confused their languages so they couldn’t unite and they scatter...
Well one man named Terah lived in Babel and left Babel and he had a son that he named Abram
So when the story picks up Abram has literally come out of one of the most sinful places
A place of false unity...
a Place where God wasn’t at the center of their community, but human ingenuity was at the center
So now God Calls Abram out of all of this and makes him a promise
That Out of Abram a great nation will come
That he will be blessed
Abram’s name will be made great
That God’s protection will be with him
And that somehow all of the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram!
This is a huge promise!
In fact God will go on to not just make a promise with Abram but to make a covenant with him
Well 10 years passes and in that 10 years. Abram doesn’t have any children…he moves around a lot, he has to rescue Lot his Nephew...
And God shows up to Abram again and this time he doesn’t just call him or speak to him he actually makes a covenant with him.
Abram becomes the Lord’s Covenant partner, he is known in the Bible as a friend with God
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”
But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
So 10 years have passed since God told Abram to go where he would show him
And somewhere in the back of his mind Abram must have been thinking…Can I trust God?
He said he will make my name great....
He said he would make me into a great nation...I don’t even have any kids?
And Sari and I are getting up there in age!
So God shows up and re-assures him
Even though, Abram has clearly already made plans at this point to have kids with a servant in his household…
Then God re-assures him that he will have his own child as an Heir.
God takes him outside and he has him look up at the stars and he is like…You can trust me…You will have this many descendants...
Abram I can see your future when you are stuck in the moment
See that is the thing with hope and trust...
Sometimes it is hard to have hope and trust in the lord when you are stuck in a difficult moment of life...
So at the end of Chapter 15, God makes a covenant with Abram...
And to our 21st century eyes it will seem very strange but here is what happens
So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.
this is how Bronze age blood covenants were made…
You cut open these animals and you you arrange the pieces across from each other in order to make a bloody corridor
It’s called a blood covenant,.
Each of the covenant partners are supposed to walk through the bloody corridor and as they do so it symbolizes a number of things
It is a peace treaty: You swear to live at peace with one another
It is a reminder of the failure to uphold your end of the covenant will result in you ending up like one of these sawed in half animals
Lastly: An exchange of identity
So the idea with this is you become family, you take on one another’s family identity and therefore you swear to protect one another for the rest of your lives
Now a couple of chapters later Abram would get circumsized and give him a new name
so finally
No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.
Well for Years Rabbis as early as 300ad have taught that Abram’s name change was as a result of the promise. of Genesis 12:2, “And I will make your name great”
Rabbi Abbahu in 300ad taught that the re-naming of Abram was as a result of God taking both of the H’s out of his name Yahweh…and giving one to Abram and one to Sari
Making them Abraham and Sarah
So literally what God did is took letters out of his Name Yahweh and give it to Abram and Sari
So they would become Abraham and Sarah
Literally God’s name was written into their names and they began taking on the identity of Yahweh…as covenant partners
They must have thought, Ok I get what it means for humans to take on the identity of God....But a true covenant goes both ways...
What could it possibly mean for God to take on my identity?
The promise Continued
The promise Continued
Well if you know the story....Abraham’s family would eventually go to Egypt
They would become salves for 400 years and
There must have been this question...
What about the promise of God?
What about the covenant?
Are we ever going to become a great nation?
But Israel came out of that and they would get their land back and eventually Israel had its greatest king
and he was in a position to grow the the kingdom in such a way to bless the rest of the world
David would settle the disputes in Israel
He would protect Israel
Israel would follow God’s laws
and when David Died, his son Solomon would take over and all would seem well
He would build God a temple and they were really in the greatest position of wealth and prominence that they had ever been in
They could finally bless the world the way that God had intended
But as the leadership goes…so goes the nation
Solomon would marry many foreign wives and they were wealthy and influential
And instead of Solomon blessing the nations he would be influenced by them and Israel’s progress would begin to crumble
After Solomon’s death this once great nation would fall into political strife and division and the kingdom would split in two between the northern tribes and southern tribes
They would go after foreign gods
they would act selfishly
They would oppress the fatherless and the widows
Israel would fall in love with false prophets
Israel’s enemies would begin to grow
and in 722BC this massive power from the north would come in and take 10 of the 12 tribes of israel off to exile
These tribes would never be heard from again
In 597BC the remaining two tribes in Jerusalem would be carted off to Babylonian Exile
This would usher in about 300 years of chaos for Israel
And all the while if you were a Jew in Israel you had to be asking yourself....How is God going to fufill his promise to Israel?
How will God bless all the nations on the earth if we just keep getting defeated and carted off by the other nations
We are a laughing stock of the nations not a blessing to them!
During this time you start to see bleak verses popping up in the Bible
Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself,
the God and Savior of Israel.
Ouch..>Where are you God?
What about the promise to Abraham?
You get these passages from lamentations:
Jeremiah the author of Lamentations would sit and look at the smoldering city of God in ruins as he writes the next things
How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
has now become a slave.
Do you get the heart behind this?
Israel has become a widow…In the old testament world, a widow was at the mercy of everyone else...
Now widow’s have assets and retirement acounts but back then this was a hopeless thing
Jeremiah is saying, we were once on a trajectory to bless the whole world…Our father Abraham shared his name with God!
Now we have become slaves to the nations!
Can God be trusted?
where are you God
Jeremiah continues
You have made us scum and refuse
among the nations.
Literally: God’s chosen people are now the scum of the earth
This verse speaks volumes about the state of God’s promise to israel
One of the last books of the Old Testament Malachi is interesting too...
Because in the first chapter the people complain that their nation is in ruins and that they are a laughing stock among the nations
But God says no…my name will be made great among you
Then there are 400 years of time between the Old and New Testament...
And in this time, Alexander the Great dies and the Greek empire splits into many empires and one of the leaders of Greece conquered Jerusalem...
They slaughter a pig on the alter and there are these massive wars that break out famously called the Maccabean revolt
And for a second the Jews are free…but just for a second...
But then the Jews are conquered again by Pompey in 63Bc
And the Roman rule in Israel was brutal
So you had to ask the question...
How could all of the nations of the world be blessed by a people who are so conquered?
I mean the promise started out great but now it was deader than dead
Two exiles! then when they came back two more conquering armies! Holy cow
Israel was just a shadow of what it had formally been
On top of that…This time that was the inter-testament time between Old Testament and new…This was know as a period of silence! When God didn’t speak at all
Israel was out of power
Israel had no more influence
Their people are scattered around the world
And that is what makes the story of Christmas so remarkable
And that is what makes the story of Christmas so remarkable
When things were as hopeless as they could possibly be…When it couldn't possibly get any worse
An angel shows up to a teenage girl and has a conversation with her!
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
GREETINGS YOU WHO ARE HIGHLY FAVORED!!!!
WHAT dont you know we are a conquered people…a people whit a huge tax burden to the Romans
a people who are slaves
we are still the scum of the earth!
But God tells Mary
Your son will sit on the throne of David! and he will reign over Jacobs decedents and his kingdom will never end
The angel tells Mary that she will have a son who will be a king!
And how does Mary respond to all of this?
And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
She sings this song and at the very end she sees all of this rightly....
This is the way that God had kept his promise to Abraham...
Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham...
Abraham takes on the identity of God by taking his name
And God take on the identity of humanity by becoming human in Jesus
And this little teenage girls sees this for what it is...
Finally after all of this pain
After all this defeat
after all this brokenness
God has kept his promise
This is why Christmas is remarkable
Because when everything was hopeless! when Israel had become a laughing stock
Well the apostle Paul puts it this way
Galatians 4:4-6
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
When the time had fully come!
In other words…When it couldn't possibly get any worse!
God stepped out of heaven into his people who were slaves and utterly conquered
Obviously the question is
Do you trust God?
Maybe you have walked through periods of your life when you have felt like israel...
Just the lowest of low
Maybe you are walking though one of these times right now
Stuff is broken
Your marriage is broken
Your relationships are broken
Your finances are broken
Your reputation is broken
Your hope is shattered
Can you trust God?
What I find remarkable about the christmas story is that it was in the time that Israel was broken
It was in the time that Israel had lost its prominence
it was in the least hopeful time for israel ]
That Paul called “Just the right time”
Sometimes it is hardest to trust God in our brokenness but that is when God had deemed that the time had fully come!
We can have hope in the promise keeper!
The story of Christmas reveals that God is a promise keeper
As Jeff and the Band lead us in this next song I want to invite you to think about these things..>Can God be trusted with my life…and then I want to come back up and lead us in communion
COMMUNION
COMMUNION
In the same way that God made a covenant with one man....
Jesus makes a covenant with all men
And this is a point of decision
Jesus has a meal with his disciples and what he is doing is saying…Look…You have to eat this meal...
and this meal means that I am going to walk through death
It will look more hopeless then you can imagine!
But you have to walk though hopelessness to come out on the other side
Do you trust me?
On the night that Jesus, the promise of Israel, was betrayed he had a meal with his disciples
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Taking this meal is an acceptance of the Grace and hope that Jesus wants to extend to you!