Sermon Tone Analysis

Christmas is a Season of Hope

Kids tell what they hope to get for Christmas before leaving for Children’s Church

Hope is an unwavering belief in the expectation of the fulfillment of a desire.

Something that is hard or difficult to attain on our own.

Hope looks ahead to what is or may be coming with the wish for our preferred outcome.

There is a confidence displayed that our actions may have some effect on the outcome of our hope.

Like children believing good behavior can help guarantee the perfect gift is received.

Christian hope is no different.

The confidence that, by integrating God’s redemptive acts in the past with trusting human responses in the present, the faithful will experience the fullness of God’s goodness both in the present and in the future.

However, hope may be misdirected.

Sometimes people place their hope, their confidence in things that will only let them down.

Walt Disney - death in 1966

unwavering faith in technology

rumor began that he was cryogenically frozen

Reasons for Hope

Hope for deliverance - Psalm 33:18-19

Hope for Provisions - Psalm 33:18-19

Hope for Protection - Psalm 33:20

Hope gives purpose - 1 Tim.

4:10

Hope grows deeper in us when we commit to being ministers of hope to others.

Hope grows when it is shared, it blooms when it is given away.

This is why Christian hope must be understood as both a gift and a calling.

Because God has given us hope, we are called to bless others with hope, especially those who are struggling, those whose lives are bereft of meaning or any sense of purpose or those who for too long have felt estranged from anything promising.

It is important to stress this lest we think that hope focuses so much on the promises of the next life that it distracts us from the work that needs to be done in this life.

Rather, it is precisely because we are confident of the hope God holds out for us that we can attend to the needs of others and do what we can to work for the world’s healing.

Far from allowing us to turn our backs on the world, hope commissions us to bring God’s love, mercy, justice and compassion to life in the world.

Hope gives us work to do.

Pope Benedict XVI said, “All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action”

Hope is renewing - Isaiah 40:31

Hope, it would seem, is a psychological necessity, if man is to envisage the future at all.

Even if there are no rational grounds for it, man still continues to hope.

Tasker, R. V. G. (1996).

Hope.

In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.),

New Bible dictionary (3rd ed., p. 479).

Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

There are two kinds of hope

Anticipated Hope - Israel anticipating the Messiah

Realized Hope - Christian hope is realized through Christ

Anticipated Hope

Most Optimistic Thought

Though hope helps to transcend fear, but interestingly, misdirected hope is the cause of all fear.

We put our hope in the fallible soldiers of this world.

We put our hope in our own abilities and abilities of others.

But what hope is there?

Can anything or anyone in this world save anyone from death?

By the power of time, everything and everyone is destroyed.

Does it mean that one should wait for the hopeless situation to be fearless?

Not really.

Actually it is hope in the wrong thing that creates fear.

Somehow or other if we get the association of godly men, if we cry out for God, then that is a greatly fortunate situation.

We all need hope.

No matter how bad the situation is, if a person has hope, a person has life, a person has meaning, a person has the spirit of joy that's in that hope.

But for most of us, until we are quite materially hopeless, we do not really take it very seriously.

It does not have to be that way, but often it is.

We can just understand with good intelligence, where our hope really is.

But if we do not act accordingly, then eventually we will be brought to that situation.

Everyone is brought to that situation in due course of time be it rich or poor, man or woman, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Jain, Parsi, atheist, Ph.D., or illiterate.

Everyone without exception is brought to a point in life where everything material becomes hopeless.

It is at the time of death or before.

But if we cultivate within our life with all sincerity, finding hope in the eternal love of God, we will get the full shower of God's mercy.

Once a person came to his mentor and said, "I am feeling hopeless."

The mentor replied, "Very good."

The mentor then gave an example.

"There was a music teacher and he would charge certain fee for people who did not know anything about music, and for people who did, he will charge double.

Because he had to unlearn them before he can teach them the right thing."

So, before we could really learn how to find hope in God, we have to realize how everything else is hopeless.

That is not a pessimistic thought.

That is the most optimistic thought.

Radhanath Swami

Realized Hope

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,  because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”  (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son.

And he gave him the name Jesus.

Hope gives believers confidence and reassurance in this present life, allowing them to lead effective lives for God.

It also reassures them of the reality of eternal life, allowing them to face death with confidence.

Hope in God is reliant on His unfailing love!

God provides hope that will bring joy and peace - Ro. 15:12-13

Hope provides motivation

In Scripture, a confident expectation for the future, describing both the act of hoping and the object hoped for.

When grounded in God, hope provides the motivation to live the Christian life even in the face of trouble.

Hope gives confidence

Unrealized hope causes grief - Proverbs 13:12

Absence of hope brings despair and loss of direction

An absence of hope leads to a loss of vision, a sense of despondency and ultimately to despair.

This contrasts sharply with the Christian hope.

Like any friend, God desires our happiness and seeks what is best for us, but the good that God wants for us is the richest and most fulfilling of all, namely God and everlasting life with God.

And, like any friend, God accompanies us, blesses us, steadies and encourages us so that the absolutely best thing we could ever hope for will be ours.

This is why hope is not something we achieve through hard work, grit and determination.

Hope is inescapably a gift.

Hope is the gift God bestows on us so that we can turn our lives to God, seek God, grow in the love and goodness of God and someday know the unbroken beatitude that comes from living in perfect communion with God.

If hope arises from the desire for something good, then Christian hope is naturally audacious because Christian hope reaches for an unsurpassable good we already, if imperfectly, possess: the very life, love, goodness and joy of God.

Christianity infinitely expands the horizon of hope because, as the whole of salvation history testifies, the scope of Christian hope is determined not by our own power or resources or ingenuity but by God’s inexhaustible love and goodness.

Christians should never be anything other than bold and daring with hope because they know that God is both the object of our hope and the means to attain it.

To live in hope is to want nothing less for ourselves than what God wants for us.