Advent, Waiting On God - Hope
This week marks the 1st week in advent. The word advent comes from the Latin word meaning Adventist and means coming. During the advent season, we look back and we celebrate the moment Jesus came into our world. But we also look forward in anticipation of the fact that one day Jesus will come again. And when he comes, he will set all things right.
Speaker 1:Today, we light the first candle of the advent wreath, the candle of hope. We look towards Jesus as our sure and steadfast hope. With Christians around the world, we use this light to help us prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of God's son, our savior, Jesus Christ. May we receive God's hope as we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 9 verse 2, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.
Speaker 1:On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly father, help us turn our eyes up from our current circumstances and look towards you. Prepare in our hearts a place of anticipation for the coming of your son. Grant in us the light of hope.
Speaker 1:Might we see the world how he sees it? Help us see beyond what is, and help us to see what is to come. Grant us the courage to be lights of hope in a dark world. Grant us faith to pray confidently for those who are facing trials of various kinds. Help us to carry the hope of your glory in our hearts.
Speaker 1:Set us firmly on the hope that never disappoints, the living hope of your son, our savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Pastor Cameron:Heavenly father, we do believe that you are good. We do believe, lord, that your love endures forever. We do believe, lord, that your faithfulness extends through all generations. Lord, and as as we are living in a season and with a lifestyle of gratitude and thanksgiving, father, we pray that these promises for who you are would remain on our hearts. They would become our song.
Pastor Cameron:They would become the thing that anchors us when life seems out of control. That, that your name is worthy of praise. That your love endures forever. That you that we are yours. We are the sheep of your pasture.
Pastor Cameron:Lord, that your faithfulness to us extends throughout all generations. Lord, we trust in you for these promises. We thank you, Lord, for your goodness to us, for us, and in us in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
Pastor Luke:Thank you, Cam. This morning, we are gonna be talking about hope. That was the candle that we lit was all about hope. And that's the theme for this week. And as I was thinking and reflecting on hope, I was, you know, thinking about just Christmas and how Christmas kind of changes.
Pastor Luke:Over the course of your life, like, when you're a little kid. Right? And you're like, alright. Thanksgiving's over. Christmas is coming.
Pastor Luke:Christmas is the one that's got the presents, and and, you know, and you're waiting up, and then there's that last week of school before, before Christmas break. In the last couple of days, the teachers don't really care. They just turn on something, or at least that was the way it was when I was in school. And then you're done with Christmas we're done with school, and you're on Christmas break, and you've got those fun traditions and things you used to do when you were a kid. My family, one of the things we used to do was my parents would take all 5 of us boys, because there was 5 of us, and shove us into a van, and then we would drive around passerbid time, which was a decision.
Pastor Luke:And we would go and we'd look for all these cool Christmas displays and people, you know, synchronize light shows and things like that, and we'd eventually come back exhausted. In that whole season, as a kid, I was just so excited, so hopeful. You know? I it's like, oh, this is my Christmas list. What am I gonna get?
Pastor Luke:You know? There was just a lot of anticipation all around all of that. And then as you get older, it kinda shifts a little bit. And when I talk to people about their holiday season, the Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that, I hear more I'm more likely to hear the word busy than I am hopeful or joyful. More I hope more common to hear just like, you know, well, gotta go see this family and gotta go do that thing, and I gotta get to get gift for the gift exchange at that one place and then a different one, and then there's the work white elephant, and then there's the this and the that.
Pastor Luke:And then I gotta find that one little thing that's out of sleep that my kid wants for Christmas, and I gotta, you know, figure out what am I gonna cook for my meal. And when, you know, I'm gotta make the, you know, the best mac and cheese, or the best pumpkin pie, that you need in sorry. That was shots fired at Cameron. You can talk to him about his holiday, food preferences. But you've gotta make that best food for your family.
Pastor Luke:Right? That was not a that was not planned. Alright. It's the worst fault of mine. Alright.
Pastor Luke:But all of those things, that giant to do list of all those things that come up on our list, do we feel joyful? Do we feel hopeful? Or do we feel more of a kind of angst and stress? And I do think that there is an element of which we still kind of get hope. Right?
Pastor Luke:We we we really, really do want the family to get all back together and for this season to be different, and we want for the next year to be different. But I don't know about you guys, but I've I've noticed even a trend in the last, like, 4 years or so. I think it really kind of started with 2020 because everybody remember that year. And there's this kind of personification that goes on with the calendar years where we're just like, oh, what did 2024 do to me? Like, oh, it just came with so many bad things and so many tough things and da da da da da.
Pastor Luke:And maybe 2025 will be different. Right? We just kind of attribute all these negative things to the year that happened that's behind us, and while the next year, because it's a different number, will be better. And, yes, that that is supposed to be funny. And, like, that's this kind of that's the kind of hope that we have as adults, and it's so different from the kind of hope that I feel like we had when we were kids.
Pastor Luke:Proverbs chapter 13, verse 12 says this. It says that, a hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. A hope deferred makes the heart sick. A hope that doesn't come to fruition, a hope that doesn't work out just sits. It's a place it becomes a place of bitterness.
Pastor Luke:It becomes a place of frustration. But a longing, a desire that is fulfilled becomes this tree of life. It's a place that gives life and joy, and we just can't help but celebrate and tell everyone about it. Hope is essential to the human experience. To be alive is to have the capacity to hope.
Pastor Luke:But I think that so often the type of hope that we are given in the world by default is just left wanting is a little bit empty. I was thinking about hope and hope specifically in our community. And I know that this is not necessarily everyone's experience, but having moved here, I really encountered a lot of people who just didn't have a lot of hope for this area. Like Chautauqua County and Jamestown and surrounding area, I've just I just met a lot of people who are just like, nothing good happens here. We can't have anything nice.
Pastor Luke:That won't work out. Nothing good ever happens to me. I've told this story before, but it just merits being said again because I've had these interactions over and over again, was the 1st night I had moved here. I had moved from Columbus, Ohio to come here and be part of this community. And I came and I got in my apartment and I forgot that, you know, when you move into a new place, you need a shower curtain and a couple other things.
Pastor Luke:So I went to Walmart and was checking out and making casual conversation with the cashier. And, you know, I was like telling her, oh, I forgot these things. I just moved here. I'm new to town. She was just like, you moved here.
Pastor Luke:Why? I was like, oh, well, I got got this job. I'm really excited. And, you know, she's like, did you buy or rent? And I was like, oh, I I rented.
Pastor Luke:And she was like, good. You can leave quick. And I was like, jeez, it's nice to meet you too. That was my first night here. Right?
Pastor Luke:And it's not that she was kicking me out, she was just like, this is a terrible place to live, why would you move here? And I was like, yikes. Yikes. And, like, it's not not everybody feels that way, but I meet a lot of people who can feel a little like, what's good here? What's so special about this?
Pastor Luke:There is just this malaise that I think can creep into any community, but I think is maybe unique to us here where we just really struggle to have hope, to believe that good things can happen, that things can change, that the old patterns and cycles don't have to stay the same. And that's what today's sermon is really about is what if there is a better hope? A better hope than the hope we're given by the commercialism and the holiday and the marketing that we're given around Christmas? What if there's a better hope than just me, hoping that the next year, because it's 1 year farther, will be oh, so much different? What if there's a better hope that we can all carry as a community?
Pastor Luke:One that's firm, one that's changing in our lives. And that's what I wanna talk about. So we're gonna turn to Luke chapter 2. We're gonna turn to the story of Christ in Luke chapter 2. This is after his birth.
Pastor Luke:I wanna look at 2 individuals who show up in the story of Christ who, I think, don't get very much airtime. They're very brief. And if you don't pay attention, you could miss them because they're in and out of the story so quickly. But I think they're a model for us. Luke chapter 2 verse 22 is where we're gonna be today.
Pastor Luke:If you don't have a bible, by the way, we have bibles in the pews and we have bibles in the back. You are more than welcome to take and keep that bible. If you don't have a bible, we want you to be able to have one of your own. So Luke chapter 2 verse 22 says this, when the time came for the purification rights required by the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him, meaning Jesus, to Jerusalem to present him to the lord. As it is written in the law of the lord, every firstborn male would be consecrated to the lord and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of the lord, a pair of doves and 2 young pigeons.
Pastor Luke:So this sacrifice to bringing Jesus after he's born, this would have been maybe, like, 40 days, you know, like, a month and a half or so after he was born, after that night in Bethlehem. And time has passed, and their tie it's time to bring him because he's the firstborn and make these sacrifices. Verse 25 says, now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him, and it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
Pastor Luke:Moved by the spirit, he went into the temple courts. And when the parents brought the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God saying, sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. The child's father and mother marveled at what he what was said about him. And then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, this child is destined to cause the falling and rising in of many in Israel to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too.
Pastor Luke:That's kind of a crazy story when you think about it. Like, Joseph and Mary, carrying little baby Jesus, he's a month and a half old and coming in. And then this man, Simeon, just comes up to him and says, can I see the child? And he lifts the child up and says all of this amazing things about who Jesus is and what he's going to do. Some of it fantastic.
Pastor Luke:He's salvation. He's the he's the glory of Israel, but he's also a sign that's gonna be spoken against. And there's gonna be suffering, and it's gonna cause division. Even at this early stage, the cross of Christ was still in view. And so can you just imagine Mary and Joseph just kind of, like, taking that in there?
Pastor Luke:It's like, we were just trying to make the sacrifices we were supposed to do. And then almost immediately after that, this next thing happens. Verse 36 says, there was also a prophet Anna, the daughter of Penuel in the tribe of Asher. She was very old. She had lived with her husband 7 years after her marriage, and then she was a widow until she was 84.
Pastor Luke:She never left the temple, but she worshiped night and day fasting and praying, coming up to them. At that very moment, she gave thanks to god and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom and grace of God was upon him.
Pastor Luke:Can we see what their hope was in both Anna and Simeon? What was their hope in? Their hope was in the salvation of the Lord in the coming of the Messiah, of the deliverance of Israel. Their hope. Right?
Pastor Luke:Because and how can we tell that? Because the word hope is never mentioned in the passage, but I think it's pretty clear that both Simeon and Anna had a hope inside of them. And the reason we can tell that is because they had oriented their whole lives around that hope. They had both had this whole bent as a person and as their life, they had dedicated themselves to pursuing the Lord. And they had this hope.
Pastor Luke:Hope orients our lives. When we have hope for something, we orient ourselves. We orient our thoughts, our time, our speech, our efforts are around that particular thing. Makes me think of, a kid, you know, a young kid who knows it's their birthday. Right?
Pastor Luke:Or figures out that their birthday comes every single year with some predictability. And they're just like, how many more days between before my next birthday? 364, dear. Right? And then you you get a little bit closer.
Pastor Luke:How close to my birthday now? 30 days, honey. And, you know, and every couple of days or multiple times a day, right? The kid wants to know, is it any closer to my birthday? Right?
Pastor Luke:All of their thoughts and feelings and emotions are oriented around the hope of their birthday, and it affects what's going on inside of them. Hope orients our lives. When I think about hope and when we're talking about this hope, I was looking at the words in the bible that are used to describe hope. And there's a bunch of words in the old testament. And when we read the old testament in our bible, it was originally written in ancient Hebrew, and it's translated here into English.
Pastor Luke:When you read the word hope, there's a whole bunch of Hebrew words that that could be. There's I think there was, like, 4 or 5 that I remember seeing of different words that are sometimes translated hope. And as I was looking at all of those, almost all of those words have some relation to the idea of waiting as well. Hope is intrinsically tied to waiting. We don't hope for what we have.
Pastor Luke:We hope for what is coming in the future. What we have right now is what we manage to rejoice in and celebrate in. Hope is future oriented. It's something we wait for. And there was one particular Hebrew word, kavah, that is this word, it has hope, but it also had this secondary meaning or it could sometimes translate it to bind up.
Pastor Luke:So it was kind of related to a rope. So, like, if you were to take a bundle of sticks, you could bind it up and tie it tight. And that was kind of related to this idea of hope because hope puts us in a place of tension, puts us in a bind, in a place of waiting where everything is kinda just bound up like a cord being pulled tight. I was thinking about this, and I was well, first, hope puts us in the tension of expectation while we wait. It's hope is this desire that puts this tension on us, this excitement, this anticipation while we are waiting for what's going to come.
Pastor Luke:I was thinking about this and how this shows up, and I was reminded of my my wife, Oksana, and she loves surprises. She is one of the my favorite people to surprise in the world because she just loves surprises. But there is, like, a there's a trick to surprising her, or a detail that I've learned. She needs to not know that there's a surprise coming. It it's it's the worst.
Pastor Luke:If she's, like, trying to make plans, she's like, oh, well, I'm gonna go do that. I was like, maybe don't do that. She's like, why? Because I got a surprise for you and, like, we need to go to da da da. That's the worst.
Pastor Luke:Because now she knows there's a surprise coming, and she just wants to know. Right? She's like, well, what are we doing? Where are we going? What did you plan?
Pastor Luke:Right? And she just becomes like an FBI investigator. Like, she will just like like it and it's rough on me. It's it's it's a lot of fun surprising her. But that that tension, right, she just gets into that place where she wants to know.
Pastor Luke:She wants to get there. She wants to surprise her field now. And that's that tension. It's a display of that tension we all feel when we have hope or excitement, and we're forced in this place of waiting. And so that's tied into it.
Pastor Luke:And as we talk about hope, we're getting a clearer picture of what it is. It's got something to do with waiting. It orients our lives. It's something that just creates this element of joy when it's fulfilled. But I wanna make sure that we're not thinking of hope the same way, or at least we're not thinking of biblical hope the same way that we kind of think of hope when we use it in common language today.
Pastor Luke:Right? Because if we kinda just walk around in how we use hope day to day, right, gee, I hope the bills win today. I Right. I do. Right?
Pastor Luke:Or I hope that it doesn't snow too much, or I hope everybody makes it on time. What we're kind of saying is, gee, I wish. Right? Or I really wish or I would really like if it was this way. And so when we say hope often and just the way we kinda think and talk about it, is it does is it very different than, like, just saying I desire or I want or I wish?
Pastor Luke:But is that what biblical hope is? Is biblical hope just my desire, just what I want? Is it just wishful thinking? Well, I wanna look at, a couple of passages. 1st passages we're gonna go to is Lamentations chapter 3.
Pastor Luke:So, that's in the old testament after Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. You'll see Isaiah and then Jeremiah. And right after Jeremiah is Lamentations. Lamentations chapter 3. Lamentations is, well, it's a book of lament or a a book of crying.
Pastor Luke:It was written by Jeremiah who was described as the weeping prophet. He was really fun to have at parties. But he was weeping for for good reason. He when he was ministering and doing his ministry, he was the prophet who was witnessing the downfall of Israel and Judah. They were getting ready to be carried off into, exile and they were being conquered.
Pastor Luke:And so Lamentations is written out of these really difficult circumstances. And Jeremiah, if anyone who you would maybe give a pass, okay, Jeremiah, I understand you saw some really awful things. It's understandable that you don't have hope, but Jeremiah mentions hope specifically here in verse or in chapter 3 verse 21. And I wanna see where his hope is from and what his hope is like. Verse 21 of chapter 3 says this, yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
Pastor Luke:Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the lord is my portion. Therefore, I will wait for him.
Pastor Luke:Do you hear that? It's Scott mentioning both he has hope, but he's also mentioning this waiting for the Lord. But why? Why does he have hope? Is it just that he's desiring?
Pastor Luke:No. It's rooted, says here. In in verse 24, it says it very clear. The lord is my portion. Therefore, I will wait for him.
Pastor Luke:Because the lord's love is great, because his compassions compassions never fail, because they're new every morning, because his faithfulness is great. Those are the reasons I have hope. See, biblical hope isn't rooted in human desire. It's rooted in the character of God. Hope isn't just something we desire.
Pastor Luke:Hope is changed. It's formed. It's made firm by what we are placing our hope in. My hope is not just in what I want or what I wish to see. My hope is in the confidence that I have in the character of god, of his goodness, of of his faithfulness, his compassion, his loving kindness, his forgiveness, of how he is just gentle and lowly.
Pastor Luke:This is how we can have a hope that isn't just swayed by what I feel or what I want, but is rooted in who God is. Let's go to the other end of the bible. We're gonna go to first Peter chapter 1. It's towards the end before you get to Revelations. 1st Peter chapter 1 is a fantastic, section.
Pastor Luke:I think it ends up in a lot of my sermons because I love this portion of scripture. Peter is, again, he's writing to believers in the church, and they're being persecuted severely. They're enduring danger and trouble, and Peter is seeking to encourage them, and that's where he starts in chapter 1 verse 3. He says, praise be to the God and father of our lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope, a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.
Pastor Luke:Peter takes this idea of hope, and he's rooting it still in the character of God, but he's rooting it in the testimony of Christ's resurrection from the dead. Jesus, one of the most historically attested and, factual people to have ever existed. We have so much evidence that Jesus was real, that he existed and that he died and that he rose again from the dead. When this was written, they weren't talking about somebody. You, like, you could have gone and seen his empty grave.
Pastor Luke:Right? People had seen him die. They'd seen a spear shoved into its side. They had seen him suffocate on a cross, publicly crucified, taken down, and buried. And then 3 days later, he rose from the grave.
Pastor Luke:He was alive. And he came in and he appeared to 100 and 100 of people saying, I'm alive. And Peter here is saying, we can look at the resurrection of Jesus. The fact that God became flesh, dwelt among us, died for our sins, and then rose again from the grave, ought to give us confidence, ought to give us not a hope that's dead or wishful, but a living hope because our savior lives still today. Amen.
Pastor Luke:That's the type of hope that gives us a way to orient our lives in a way that's different than the rest of the world. This is one of the reasons that testimony is so important. Cameron talked about this in the past couple of sermons when he was talking about sharing our faith and mission and all of that. We need to be willing and able to give testimony, to say, this is what the Lord has done and is doing in my life, and share that with one another so that we can be encouraged, so that we can see the character of God and his faithfulness, so that that hope might be made all the more certain and vibrant in our lives. This is kind of the best way I know how to talk about hope is to say that hope is faith in God that allows us to wait for him in the middle of our circumstances.
Pastor Luke:Hope is this faith. Right? It even is in Hebrews chapter 12 says faith is hope in things yet unseen. It's this hope is this when it's placed in the Lord is placed in his character, in his goodness, it's this confidence that the Lord will come, that he will show up, that he will be faithful to his promises. And that allows us to wait.
Pastor Luke:It allows us to wait in the middle of our circumstances. What I mean when I say wait for in the middle of our circumstances, I think that's a really key part here because our whole theme throughout Advent each week, we're gonna cover hope, peace, joy, love, leading up to Christmas. But the overarching theme is this idea of waiting for the Lord. And I want us to get clear what we mean when we're say we're waiting for the Lord, because if we've missed this point, it's a subtle shift, but I think we could end up in a place that's not where we want to be. So waiting for the Lord, waiting for God puts presence over circumstance.
Pastor Luke:Waiting for the Lord puts god's presence with us over or more superior than our current circumstances that we find ourselves in. Illustrate this by going to Exodus 33. Exodus 33 is a not often talked about passage. It's in that story of Moses. Right?
Pastor Luke:We know Moses. There's been those movies that were made and, you know, Moses was born and he came back and he came to Israel and they were slaves in Egypt and he the 10 plagues and delivered them, brought them across the Red Sea and they came to Mount Sinai and god gave them the 10 commandments. That's usually what ends up in movies if it's made. And but this story, this part of the story happens after that. Because what happens at Mount Sinai is Moses goes up there.
Pastor Luke:He gets the 10 commandments. He comes back from getting the 10 commandments, and Israel's managed to break all of them already. And and he smashes the 10 commandments because they created an idol and were worshiping it as Moses was literally talking with God and bringing down the 10 commandments. And God says he is so frustrated with them. He's so angry with them because they're stiff necked and stubborn people.
Pastor Luke:He's like, I can't go with you. I can't go with you because I might just destroy you guys. You guys are so stubborn. I can't be with you. And so God gives Moses and the people of Israel.
Pastor Luke:He's gonna give them an offer. He says, I'll tell you what, you guys will still get everything I promised you. You guys get the land flowing with milk and honey. You can go to Israel. You get all of it.
Pastor Luke:I'm just not gonna go with you guys. I'm gonna send an angel. 1 of my angels is gonna go in front of you guys. He will go before you. He will drive all the people out of the land.
Pastor Luke:It'll all be yours. I'm just not gonna go with you guys. So you'll get everything you want, just not me. And Moses's response to that is here in Exodus 33, and you can read it in verse 15. Moses said to him, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.
Pastor Luke:Now the rest of the story is that the Lord does indeed listen to Moses's plea and does go with his people. What does he say in verse 16? How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the Earth? If you don't go with us, there's nothing different about us.
Pastor Luke:We can't be your people if you are not with us. Do not send us from here if you don't go with us. And I think it's tempting or I think it it might be easy sometimes when we read the story to say, oh, of course, that's the right decision. But can you imagine being offered all that you want? Right?
Pastor Luke:Your circumstances being fixed. Right? We're talking about a people who were slaves, didn't have their own property, were in Egypt and under oppression. They're wandering in the middle of the wilderness, and god says, you know what? I'll give you your own land.
Pastor Luke:You won't even have to fight for it. The angel will go in front of you. It'll be all yours, and you guys can have a great fairy tale ending. I'm just not gonna go with you. All your problems and all your things fixed.
Pastor Luke:I'm just not with you. Would we have the same passion, the same resilience to say no to that in order to have the Lord's presence? And that's what I mean when I say that waiting for God puts his presence over our circumstances. We're actually, we're waiting for god himself, his presence with us, more than we're waiting for god to come and fix our circumstances. More than God to come and just wave a wand and give me exactly what I want.
Pastor Luke:Because what we're doing then is we're worshiping a vending machine and not God. I think that's really important. I think we could get into a place where we're just like, oh, well, I want God to show up and do x, y, and z, and I'll wait until he does that. He may or may not. And God absolutely answers prayers and shows up and does fantastic things.
Pastor Luke:That's what his character is about. That's what testimony talks about. But the thing that must be important before that is our desire to have him with us no matter what. And then secondly is that waiting for God requires that we slow down, that we stop, and that we listen. We can't wait for God if we're just busy, if we're just running from thing to thing.
Pastor Luke:If we don't have time to stop and pray, if we don't have time to stop and listen, how can we wait for God? Jesus was actually the perfect model of this. He said that he did nothing apart from the Father's will, that he was always aligned with what God the Father wanted. When you think about Jesus and his story and his ministry, the very first thing he did in his ministry was what? To be baptized.
Pastor Luke:He gets baptized by John the Baptist. The sky opens up. The holy spirit, like a dove, ascends and lands on him. And there's a voice from heaven that says, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased. Wow.
Pastor Luke:Right? That gets a pretty amazing miracle and sign. I could imagine everyone who was there was just like, okay. What's he gonna do now? And Jesus gets up out of the water and then turns and walks into the desert.
Pastor Luke:Like, wouldn't you expect him to just, like, get up out of the water and, like, okay. Well, here's my first sermon. Here's my first miracle. But no, instead, he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days, and he fasts, and he seeks the Lord, and he endures temptation, and then he comes out and he enters into his ministry. And what does he keep doing every so often and consistently throughout his ministry?
Pastor Luke:He keeps retreating in the quiet places, places of stillness of prayer so that he can be with the father, so that he can wait on his father and do what his father is telling him to do. That's the type of life we're called to live is a place of hope, but a place of patient waiting for the Lord. And that's where we're going this Christmas season as a community. So I wanna ask the question is, what if this Christmas, we as a community waited on God? What if we, instead of just saying, well, this is the tradition and this is the thing, and we just live this life of busyness and hurry and commercialism, what if we were intentional in saying, we're gonna wait on the Lord?
Pastor Luke:What if our hope this season wasn't just in sentimentality or traditions or the changing of a calendar year? What if our hope is in the coming of Christ? See, Christ came once. He came and he was born in Bethlehem, and he lived and he did his ministry and he died on a cross and he rose again from the dead. That is absolutely true.
Pastor Luke:That's his first coming. So in Christmas and in in Advent, the season of waiting, we are remembering his first coming, but then we're also looking forward to his future coming, his coming again, because he's promised that he will come again. He will redeem the world. He will bring his church to himself, and he will make all things right. That's a future coming that we look forward to.
Pastor Luke:And then we can also, I think, even on a smaller scale, in our individual lives, say, we need God to show up in the middle of my life, in the middle of the darkness I experience. I I don't think it's an accident that we celebrate Christmas in the middle of winter, the darkest season of the year, because the world is dark, not physically, but spiritually. We are in need of a savior, and Christ is indeed that light that has come into the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. He is indeed the word, our hope, our living hope. I think that's what we're called to do is to perhaps say, Lord, this year, before I make plans for what my next year's gonna look like, before I make resolutions, before I move on to what's next, or maybe before I host my Christmas dinner, or before I go and do x, y, and z, I would rather sit and know that you're with me in what's next.
Pastor Luke:What if we waited on God's leading before we made plans? What if we waited on his presence before we did anything? What if prayer wasn't just a thing that we did to signal the beginning of something, but it was a way of pausing and waiting for the Lord and saying, Lord, you need to be here with us before we do anything. And that's where I want us to lead into and go into this Christmas season is a place of living in that tension, living in that hope because that's a kind of hope we can carry with us. So we, we were just talking pastor Cameron last week talked about Psalm 100, and, encourage you to still memorize those 5 verses, but we're also, during this Christmas season, gonna be looking at Psalm 130.
Pastor Luke:And we're gonna kinda set this as the Psalm that's sort of defining this season for us. It's not your traditional, Christmas passage. It's a Psalm in, and but it it's a prayer that cultivates the heart we wanna have as a community as we go into Christmas, as we're hoping and waiting for God to show up in our lives, in our community. Psalm 130, I would encourage you over or once you've memorized Psalm 100 to memorize Psalm 130. It's only 3 verses longer.
Pastor Luke:So, Psalm 130. I just wanna take a moment. Wanna read it for us and and see what it says for us. It says, first, before we go any before I read the first verse, it says, a song of a sense. So that should be underneath the title, and before verse 1 in your bible.
Pastor Luke:That is part of the scripture, and it just tells us that this is a psalm that would have been sung or recited while they were traveling to the temple, while they were coming to church, kind of. It was something that they would have been singing to prepare their hearts to be with the lord and to worship him. And that's what this psalm is. Verse 1 says, out of the depths, I cry to you, Lord. Lord, hear my voice.
Pastor Luke:Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you, there is forgiveness so that we can, with reverence, serve you. I wait for the lord. My whole being waits, and in his word, I put my hope.
Pastor Luke:Verse 6, I wait for the Lord more than the watchmen wait for the morning. More than the watchmen wait for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. Notice how that Psalm just weaves back and forth between hope and waiting and mentioning the Lord's character and his faithfulness.
Pastor Luke:The part that has always stood out to me from this passage is verse 6, where it says, I wait for the Lord more than the watchmen wait for the morning. Watchmen is kind of a, not a LinkedIn profile that you can sign up for that. Right? Like, there's no job hunt. I'm looking for night watchmen.
Pastor Luke:But, like, a night watchman in this kind of sense is somebody who would have stood guard at the camp or on the city wall. And they would have looked out, and they would have been looking to make sure that nobody was going to attack the camp or the city at night. They would have been looking for making sure there were no, clusters of torches making their way towards the city to have an attack or something like that. Now that wasn't what they wanted to see. Right?
Pastor Luke:They did they were looking. They were looking out, and they were seeing and making sure there was no attack or enemy coming, but they didn't wanna see those things because that meant war, it meant a fight, it meant a battle. What they wanted to see, the thing that they were hoping for, the thing that they were excited to see was the little bit of orange that came up on the eastern horizon, the little bit of yellow that begins to peek through. They were waiting for the sunrise because the sunrise meant that they had made it through the darkness, through the evening, and that they had there nothing nothing evil had befallen them, that the morning had come, that their shift was over and all was safe. And the passage repeats that phrase twice.
Pastor Luke:The bible doesn't just repeat things because the scribe, like, made a mistake. They were emphasizing something, saying our hearts ought to long and wait for the Lord so much even more than that watchman is waiting eagerly for sunrise. That's the kind of heart I wanna have, and that's the heart we wanna cultivate here. 1 where we're waiting with anticipation and hope, knowing that the Lord is faithful, that no matter how dark my circumstances might be, there will come a sunrise, that the Lord will come and be with us if we merely stop and wait for him. Season of Advent is a season of waiting.
Pastor Luke:It's participating in all of this ritual. We're in order to kind of help facilitate some of this, we've put together, advent devotional. We've done this in in the years past, but this is a devotional. It's also on our website. If you go to Conduit Ministries dot com, it's there.
Pastor Luke:If you have our church center app, it's on the first page there as well. You can download a PDF of your own there. I also have a handful of print copies. Please come and take these away today. And these are devotionals with scriptures for each day of the month leading up to Christmas.
Pastor Luke:So each week, we're gonna have a different theme, hope, peace, joy, love. And each week, this little devotional has a few words about that theme, and it has a selection of verses that correspond with that pat with that theme. And it has a few instructions or suggestions on how you might use how you might do a devotional time over these passages, either by yourself or with your family. And that our hope, our hope with this tool is that you could take this and it would could be part of your tradition, part of what you're doing with yourself or your family during Advent to pause at some point in your day and to remind yourself that you are waiting for the Lord, that there's something bigger and more hopeful than the presence under the tree or the gathering of the family, but that there's a savior who is with us and among us as his church and wants to do something in your life and our lives together. So let's take a moment.
Pastor Luke:Let's pray and ask the Lord to be here with us. Heavenly father, this morning, I ask that you would help us to pause, to wait. Lord, I help ask that you would build into us a heart that does not wanna run ahead of you, but wants to wait for you. That wants to abide in you, wants to do nothing apart from you. Lord, I ask that you would grant us this sure and living hope, not a wishfulness, but a hope that is sure and firm.
Pastor Luke:Lord, that you'd help us to carry that hope with us into our communities, into our families, that people would go about and ask us, why are you so hopeful? And we might have an opportunity to tell about who you are and how our hope is rooted in you. Lord, this morning, I know that there are people here who are hearing this message and are in the middle of a dark season, who are experiencing difficulty, who wish their circumstances were different. Lord, I pray that you would meet them in the middle of that, that your presence would give a peace that surpasses all understanding, that you would give them a faith that knows that you are a good father who gives good gifts, who will sustain them in the midst of any season and circumstance. Lord, we ask that you would help to make us a community, make us into families, into people who wait for you, who abide in you, who wants more than anything, more than gifts, more than blessings.
Pastor Luke:We simply want you with us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
