Hope + Expectation
How many of you already have your Christmas decorations up? I think all the stores had the Christmas stuff on display as soon as Halloween was over. It seems like it happens earlier and earlier every year. It probably won’t be long until you’ll see Christmas trees for sale after the 4th of July!
Why is that?
Maybe it’s because…
We live in a world that needs a little Christmas!
We can laugh about how the stores put out the trees and decorations earlier and earlier every year, but I wonder if it doesn’t point to a need deep within our culture for Christmas.
We need the songs, we need the joy, we need the peace, the faith, the love, but maybe most of all what we need is…
HOPE.
I don’t know about you, but for me one of the best parts of Christmas is the hope that resides in every kid waiting with expectation for Christmas morning!
I see it in my kids and I remember the feeling I had when I was a kid… you know what I’m talking about? That hope and eager expectation for Christmas morning when you finally get to open the presents under the tree?
Hope + Expectation is a powerful combination!
I remember when I was growing up, my sister and I were so excited every year for Christmas. Christmas was a big deal at our house and our parents went all out for Christmas. Every year on Christmas Eve my sister and I would make a deal. Whoever wakes up first wakes up the other one. Then we would go into mom and dad’s room and jump on the bed until they woke up… it didn’t matter what time it was… 4AM? 5AM? We couldn’t wait to open up the presents under the tree.
I always thought that was hilarious and so much fun until… Until I had kids! Now I just want to sleep on Christmas morning! But my kids… they have that same excitement!
Hope + Expectation is a powerful combination!
We Need Hope
We live in a world that needs a little Christmas. We live in a world that needs a little Hope.
I was reminded of that recently when I came across this prayer by Ted Loder in his prayer book entitled, The Guerrillas of Grace.
He prays…
Sometimes It Just Seems to Be Too Much
Sometimes, Lord,
it just seems to be too much:
too much violence, too much fear; too much of demands and problems;
too much of broken dreams and broken lives;
too much of war and slums and dying;
too much of greed and squishy fatness
and the sounds of people
devouring each other
and the earth;
too much of stale routines and quarrels,
unpaid bills and dead ends;
too much of words lobbed in to explode
and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;
too much of turned-away backs and yellow silence,
red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.
Sometimes the very air seems scorched
by threats and rejection and decay
until there is nothing
but to inhale pain
and exhale confusion.
Too much of darkness, Lord,
too much of cruelty
and selfishness
and indifference
Too much, Lord,
too much,
too bloody,
bruising,
brain-washing much.
Or is it too little,
too little of compassion,
too little of courage,
of daring,
of persistence,
of sacrifice;
too little of music
and laughter
and celebration?
O God,
make of me some nourishment
for these starved times,
some food for my brothers and sisters
who are hungry for gladness and hope,
that, being bread for them,
I may also be fed
and be full.
— from Guerrillas of Grace, by Ted Loder
Hungry for Hope
I know many of you are hungry for gladness and hope.
Some of us have had a hard year. Some of us are grieving a loss. Some of us are filled with anxiety by all the stories on the news and across social media… one after another… of tragedy, violence, hate, and pain. Some of us are dealing with sickness. Others are facing uncertain times. We could go around the room and share what it is we’re in the middle of but all of us need hope.
The good news is that we have hope. Not only do we have hope, we have Hope + Expectation.
And hope + expectation is a powerful combination.
We have the kind of HOPE + EXPECTATION that has the power to change everything if we let it.
We have the kind of hope + expectation that kept the people of God going for some 400 years when there was no word from God, no prophet of God, when God seemed absent and distant even though He was always near.
We have the kind of hope + expectation that kept Mary and Joseph going as they made the long and difficult trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It was hope + expectation that led them to a stable provided at just the right time and a manger that was just the right size to hold a child that we now know is the hope of the world.
This hope + expectation gave birth to faith and love in a world of darkness that desperately needed and still needs the Light of the world.
And this Hope + Expectation is what followers of Jesus for more than 2000 years have held onto when hope seems hopeless.
In Colossians 1.4-5 the apostle Paul once wrote this to the Jesus followers living in the ancient city of Colossae, words he could also write to Jesus followers living in DFW in 2022!
For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.
5 Words We Need this Christmas
As Paul talks you hear these five words rise to the surface… faith, love, confident hope, heaven, and expectation.
FAITH:
Paul begins with FAITH… For we have heard of your FAITH in Christ Jesus…
For these believers their hope begins with their faith. And their faith, watch this, wasn’t in the Bible. They didn’t have the Bible. This letter that they were receiving from Paul that was being read aloud to them as they gathered for worship would one day become a part of the New Testament and what we call, “The Bible.”
But their faith wasn’t in the Bible, it was in a PERSON. Their faith was in JESUS CHRIST!
The reason they had placed their FAITH in Jesus was because they believed something happened in and through Jesus that changes everything. And it all started with the incarnation, when God became one of us, put on flesh, and dwelled among us.
They believed that Jesus was the Son of God and that He was the Son of man and this FAITH in JESUS as the CHRIST, God’s Messiah, produced in them… LOVE.
LOVE:
Paul says… For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your LOVE for all of God’s people…
Faith = What you believe.
Love = How you live out what you believe.
What they believed changed the way they lived and the way they loved. This word love, it’s the word agape, and it simply means a selfless, unselfish love. It’s loving others the way Christ loved us. And how did Christ love us? He stepped down from Heaven and came to Earth and became one of us.
If you keep reading just a few verses down Paul says this about Jesus, this is how He loved us…
For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.
Colossians 1.19-20
Their faith in Jesus produced unselfish, sacrificial love in them, the same love they saw in the life of Jesus was now being cultivated in them!
And this faith, this love, it’s rooted in…
CONFIDENT HOPE:
Paul says, For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope…
Because we believe what we say we believe, that Jesus is Lord, we have confident hope. We know how the story ends. We truly have nothing to fear.
Without confident hope it would be impossible to live with faith OR live lives of love.
Hope gives birth to faith. The MANGER changes everything! Christ is the HOPE of the world and his birth gave people someone to believe in, God’s Messiah.
Hope gives birth to love. Without hope people are left in darkness. True darkness is void of love. Darkness is the opposite of love. Yet in the light of the presence of Jesus we experience the love of God.
And our HOPE that gives birth to FAITH and LOVE is not just any hope, it is a confident hope because we know how the story ends.
Next, Paul speaks of our promise…
HEAVEN:
For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, 5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven.
I don’t know what you think about when you think about Heaven but you might want to change your mind about Heaven. You may wonder why I would want you to change your mind about Heaven.
Here’s why.
Some of you are scared to die. Can I be honest with you for a moment? You wouldn’t be afraid to die if you believed in the Heaven God has prepared for you.
Some of you are worried about what you will be leaving behind. You wouldn’t be worried about what you’re leaving behind if you understood what God has waiting for you in Heaven.
Some of you aren’t sure you’ve been good enough, done enough, or that you’re worthy enough to go to Heaven. But you wouldn’t be worried about getting into Heaven if you understood that Jesus, your confident hope, has already paid the price, made a way, settled your debt, and prepared a place for you!
The devil spends all his days trying to convince us that we are separated from Christ and that we’ve got to do something to be united, or reunited, with Christ. That we have to earn our way back into his good graces. That we have to achieve some unachievable standard or cross some uncrossable void but the gospel, the good news, is that our HOPE has a name and His name is Jesus and we have confident hope of what God has reserved for [us] in heaven.
This is why we need a little Christmas. Because Christmas reminds us of our confident Hope!
It is the hope of what is reserved for us in Heaven!
And we have Hope plus…
EXPECTATION:
Hope + Expectation is a powerful combination!
For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this EXPECTATION ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.
This EXPECTATION, the confident hope we have of what God has reserved for us in heaven, changes the perspective from which we live our lives!
Theologians call it living from an eschatological perspective. All that means is that we live with the end in mind.
Because we know how the story ends, because we know that when all is said and done we will live forever in Heaven with Jesus, everything changes.
A Story of Hope
If you need a little hope, can I just take a moment and remind you of the Confident Hope and Expectation you have today?
Last year I was reminded in a powerful way of the hope we have through the story of Jane Marczewski.
Our family was watching the show, America’s Got Talent, one night when Jane stepped on the stage. Jane came on the show to sing an original song but Jane wasn’t your ordinary singer appearing on the world’s greatest talent show. Jane was a cancer survivor.
As she stepped on stage she told the panel of judges that her name was Jane but that she goes by, “Nightbirde.”
Howie Mandel asked her what she was going to sing and she told him she was going to sing an original song called, “It’s Okay” which was a song about the last year of her life. A song that told part the story of her struggle.
Before she sang her song, Simon Cowell asked her, “How are you doing now?” That’s when Jane shared that as of the last time she checked she had cancer in her lungs, spine, and liver.
Howie said, “So you’re not okay?” And Jane said, “Well no, not in every way.” Then she sang this song.
“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”
– Jane Marczewski
On February 19, 2022, Jane passed away. The second song her brother led at her Memorial Service was the song we sing so often here in worship, a song called Living Hope.
You see, Jane was a believer in Jesus. And she had hope that transcended this life. She had the same hope you and I have, a Living Hope.
Unparalleled Hope, Unshakeable Foundation
Maybe what we need this Christmas is a little hope. A reminder that we have unparalleled hope built upon the unshakeable foundation that is Jesus Christ our Lord.
This same HOPE that Christians have had for some 2000 years. This same CONFIDENT HOPE + EXPECTATION that carries us through our darkest days when there is too much pain and darkness, selfishness and indifference, confusion and sickness.
Hope that reminds us that there is life beyond the grave. We have confident hope of what God has reserved for us in heaven.
We have Confident HOPE + Expectation because we believe in Jesus.
We know how the story ends. We truly have nothing to fear. Death, where is your sting? We don’t have to be afraid to die because Heaven is our home.
Our HOPE leads us to sing. Our HOPE compels us to worship. Our HOPE has a name and it is the name above every other name!
Confident Hope + Expectation is a powerful combination.
We have Hope, we have Jesus, and we have great expectation.
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