Faith and Hope
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Weeks 1 & 2 of Advent
Weeks 1 & 2 of Advent
14 But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.
15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge.
16 With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.
17 O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
18 So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
19 Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?
20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.
21 You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.
22 I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.
24 And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt.
Let’s begin by first looking at the definition of Advent.
ADVENT is Word with Latin roots, meaning “coming.” Christians of earlier generations spoke of “the advent of our Lord” and of “His second advent.” The first phrase refers to God’s becoming incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The latter phrase speaks of Jesus’ second coming.
Grissom, F. A., & Bond, S. (2003). Advent. In C. Brand, C. Draper, A. England, S. Bond, E. R. Clendenen, & T. C. Butler (Eds.), Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (p. 31). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
There is really 3 advent’s we want to focus on during this season. The first we mentioned is the coming of Jesus as a baby, that is the first advent. The second advent that we have yet to mention is the coming of Jesus into our hearts. How important is that? If you want to give the best gifts this year, let’s pray for ways personally and as a church that we can share the gift of Jesus this year. And the third and final advent is Jesus’ second coming.
The three advents of Jesus
Jesus came as a baby.
Jesus comes into your heart.
Jesus is coming agin.
So as we look at the first two weeks of advent this morning, we want to keep all three of these perspectives in mind. So the first week focuses on hope and if your remember form Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s devotion we read this morning he looks at this first week with the idea of waiting. I think Hope and waiting go very well together. Now let’s look at these two Hope and waiting in the context of all 3 advents. First the birth of Christ what was the world like before Jesus came? The Jewish people struggled for thousands of years with periods of obedience and long periods of disobedience.
In the Old testament, how did God choose to speak to His people? Through prophets. Did the people tend to listen to the prophets?
51 “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.
52 Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered,
53 you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”
I find this to be one of the most terrifying passages in all of scripture. You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirt. I find that verse terrifying. I can and I am sure at points have resisted The work of The Holy Spirit in my life.
Let’s look at the final words of the last prophet in the Old Testament. Now realize after we read these words. God went silent for 400 hundred years. Listen closely to His final words.
1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.
3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
There is a lot to unpack in these final 6 verses of the Old Testament. God promises future judgement against the wicked. He promises a Messiah with “healing in His wings” More on that later, We see the promise of John the baptist.
So after God makes these promises, He goes silent for 400 years talk about waiting. How many people here want to wait 400 years for a promise to come true? I will be the first to admit that I struggle with patience. How do you think the Jewish people felt. Could you imagine being Zachariah and Elizabeth? They probably spent their entire married lives praying for a child and yet Elizabeth remained barren. Their story is amazing. Listen to Luke 1 verses 5-7
5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.
7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Zachariah was a priest in the division of Abijah.
13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.
14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,
15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.
16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,
17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
Wait that sounds familiar doesn’t it? These are the final words God spoke to HIs people 400 years earlier. Could you image being Zachariah, He was the one that God broke His silence too. How awesome would that have been? But Zacharias had to wait 9 months before he could tell anyone about his experience that day in the Holy place. Can you image how full of hope he would have been? He had to realize that his son would fulfill the prophecy and that the long awaited Messiah was coming. The Messiah that was predicted 4,000 years earlier. We know that the people were walking in darkness when Jesus came and we that before Jesus comes into our heart we are walking in darkness. And I am sure we all have people we care about who are walking in darkness but let us wait in hope. That the light of the world can shine into the darkest of hearts.
This reminds me of a story one of my classmates shared when I attended an evangelism class in Pittsburgh. We were talking about the fact that no one is beyond the saving grace of Jesus Christ. My classmate was a Pittsburgh city police officer and he shared the story of a drug dealer in his neighborhood. They were just waiting to get enough evidence to arrested this guy. He said he never dreamed of sharing the gospel with this guy he thought he was too far gone. Then one day everything changed. Some one shared the gospel with the drug dealer and he came to faith. I can’t help but think people who cared about him had to be praying for him and waiting with hope that the light of the world would shine into his dark heart and it did. Don’t ever write anyone off as being to0 far gone. The love, grace, and mercy can reach anyone. So during this advent season, let’s wait and pray with hope that the light of the world will shine into the darkness of the hearts of the lost.
The third and final advent is the second coming of Jesus, which is the blessed hope! As we wait patently for our Lord and Savior to return we wait with hope. Amen?
This week the focus is on faith and according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s devotion it also focuses on mystery. How do these intertwine? Let’s explore!
Let’s consider faith and mystery with our first advent, the coming of Jesus as a baby.
The three advents of Jesus
Jesus came as a baby.
Jesus comes into your heart.
Jesus is coming agin.
In closing I want to look at the stories of two women. One Biblical and one modern day. And they both revolve around verse 2 of Malachi chapter 4
2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.
Let’s first look at the Biblical story. It’s found in Luke Chapter 8 beginning in verse 43
43 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.
44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.
45 And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!”
46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.”
47 And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.
48 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
This woman with bleeding for 12 years would have been an outcast separated from God. Her bleeding would have made her unclean which ment she was not allowed to attend synagogue or the temple in Jerusalem. She spent 12 years waiting to be healed and restored to fellowship with God and when she heard about Jesus, the son of righteousness and the fact that He had healing in His wings. She pressed through the crowed to touch Him. She reached for the fringe of His garment. Do you know what that was? It can be argued that “the wings” in Malachi and the fringe of His garment are the same.
Tallit
Most people here are probably familiar with Joni Erickson Tada’d story But incase your are not. In 1967 she was 17 years old. She just graduated high school and was getting ready for college, when she was injured in a diving accident. She broke her neck and was paralyzed from the neck down. At first she wanted to die and actually tried to kill herself by violently whipping her neck around hoping to break it higher where it would kill her, but it didn’t work. I listened to her story on Larry King Live and if you have the opportunity, I would encourage you to watch it. She described her occupational therapist trying to teach her to use her mouth to write. And she would spit the pencil out on the floor and the therapist would patiently pick it up and wipe it with alcohol and put it back in her mouth. The on day when she was in therapy, another patient named Tom was brought in. He was a vent dependent quadriplegic and the therapist was working to teach him to write with his mouth. And Joni was secretly rooting for Tom to spit it out. But to her surprise he didn’t. She was convicted that some one who had it worse off then her had a better attitude then her. She decided she wanted to help other’s with disabilities. In 1979 she began Joni and friends ministry to help others. I want to read you her reaction to the hymn Hark the herald angles sing
“Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings.” Were you singing along with me? There’s a reason this verse from my favorite Christmas carol means so much to me. Every time I sing the part about healing in His wings, I choke up. Many years ago, I thought it meant Jesus would heal me physically. I remember thinking, Surely this Christmas He’s going to raise me up out of this wheelchair! Little did I know that, in due time, God would heal me—but in a way I never, ever dreamed possible. Because two years later, on another Christmas, I found contentment and joy, simply because I found that I could embrace His will for my life. And what is His will? That we put ourselves in the best position, the best place, in which God can be most glorified.
Hail, the Son of Righteousness! Glory and praise to the Prince of Peace! Thank You, Lord Jesus, for coming to me with healing, grace, joy, and the hope of glory. As David prayed, “Keep me as the apple of Your eye; Hide me under the shadow of Your wings.” (Psalm 17:8, NKJV).