Song Of Hope

Well as we launch this brand new series, let me just kind of explain what it's all about by explaining the title first the word Advent say that with me Advent. Now you may not have come from a church that regularly talked about Advent. So what even is it? Well Advent is traditionally the four weeks leading up to Christmas and I don't know if it's freaking you out a little bit like it is me, but we're in that right now. This is the very first day of the Advent season.

Now Advent in English simply means Arrival, but when it's used around Christmas time it refers to two Arrivals or Advent's: the first Advent when the Messiah is born when Jesus was born two thousand years ago and the second Advent when the Messiah returns. All through scripture both Advent's are talked about a lot in a lot of songs and prophetic words and stories, and usually the Advent's are discussed in a time when the first readers of the Bible are in a time of crisis or war or catastrophe or famine. The idea is this darkness will not last. Whatever darkness the country is going through, God's still working behind the scenes and there's going to be the advent of the Messiah.

So say this phrase out loud with me: this darkness will not last. No, really say it out loud because you got to claim this: this darkness will not last. That's more like it. I loved hearing that. Let's say that one more time: this darkness will not last. In other words, there's hope, right? There's something to look forward to, and this is part of the tradition of Advent. Every day families or individuals will read a little one of the Advent passages of the Bible.

And then what they do, in fact, you'll see let me just jump over here for a second. You see this is our Advent candle wreath, and you'll see during the worship services during the Advent season one of the worship leaders will light one of these candles, as you saw during a come-become Emmanuel today. Families all throughout the church all across the world are doing that, lighting a candle every night, and it all culminates in the candlelight services on Christmas Eve when we all get together and light candles together. It's such an emotional time if you've been preparing yourself for this throughout Advent.

In fact, at the little book nook in the lobby, we have all kinds of Advent things for you, and I want you to know that it's not a profit center for the church. We just make stuff available for what we get it for. We just want to have some stuff for you to have access to resources. We've got Advent candles and wreaths and all kinds of Advent devotional books like this one, and they range from like two bucks to seven bucks most of them. In fact, who would like this one right now? I'll give it to somebody. Here you go. Thank you so much. The rest of you have to pay for yours, but it's only two dollars.

So that explains the word Advent. Now, what do I mean when I talk about a playlist? Well, music has always been a huge part of the Christmas season, and my guess is most of you have some kind of a Christmas playlist of holiday music that you love. If you do not already have a playlist, Apple Music, Spotify, the other streamers are happy to come up with one for you. In fact, I was looking the day after Thanksgiving at all of the Christmas playlists that Apple Music curates, and they've got so many different ones. I just kind of wrote them down, just the first like 20 that I ran across.

Depending on your preference, they have classical Christmas carols, classical Christmas essential, Christmas sentimental, Christmas acoustic, Christmas jazz, soulful Christmas, modern country Christmas, merry up to Christmas, very ending Christmas, children's Christmas, Christmas dinner, Christmas crooners, and many, many, many more. I know this because I was looking for a Christmas playlist for me to play, and after an hour of looking at all the options, I went paddle boarding. I just gave up.

Would you like to know the top streamed songs of 2021, right? Because Spotify and Apple Music, they all put it together. What would you imagine they would be? Just shout out some of the songs that you think would be among the top stream songs. You're all wrong because here's what they were: Number five was this most wonderful time of the year by Andy Williams. Anybody remember Andy Williams? Anybody? When you were little kids used to watch the Andy Williams Christmas special on NBC every single year? He was the king of the Christmas sweater, right?

Number four was white Christmas by Bing Crosby. Number three, jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms. Number two, Rockin' around the Christmas tree by Brenda Lee. Let me just pause there for just a second to say what do you notice about all of these? They're all old, right? So this is an interesting little tidbit: the people who love to download, stream, and buy Christmas music the most, like by far, are Millennials, the millennial generation, I think age roughly 18 to 35 or so right now. And those Christmas songs that the Millennials love the most are Christmas songs from before 1970. Isn't that interesting? You see that evidenced here.

However, that is not true of the number one most streamed Christmas song last year. This was streamed over 1 billion times last year. What do you think it was? All I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey. Did you say that? Now I won't take a vote here, a show of hands, but my guess is some of you are really sick of this song right now. Somebody once said Christmas songs are kind of like Brussels sprouts. They only appear in December, and you either love them or loathe them, right?

Well, the good news is with this series, we are doing an Advent playlist for you, but it's not any of those songs. These are five other songs that are all found in the Bible. Did you know that there are lyrics to Christmas songs in the Bible? All of these are found in the gospel of Luke or initially referenced in the gospel of Luke at least, and really the theme to all of them is there is hope. Again, this darkness will not last.

And here's why it's so important for us to hear that message. I saw a survey just this week, and the survey was called hopeless nation, talking about us. In this survey, this was all up from questions that they elicited back in July, but this is all just relatively recent after they crunched the numbers. Two out of three Americans now don't think they will ever see positive social change in their lives. I mean, that is a lot of people feeling hopeless right now.

Another survey said that 51%, just over half of young Americans right now feel down, depressed, or hopeless. And here is why hopelessness is a big, big problem. Hopelessness leads to all kinds of negative effects, like hopelessness excuses inaction, right? If you feel like there is no hope for your marriage, are you gonna go see a marriage counselor who could make it better? No. If you feel like there's no hope I'll ever get out of debt, you're gonna try to get out of that? No, of course not. If you feel like it's hopeless that I'll ever overcome my addiction, you're never gonna get help to try to overcome your addiction. That excuses inaction and it excuses bad behavior big time.

Excuse me, because for example, it excuses cynicism. It excuses rudeness. It excuses even violence because what's the hope? Just everything is absolutely hopeless, and it creates what they call negative thought loops where you're actually looking for evidence that it's all hopeless. It's all going to pot. It's all useless. The world is against me, right? So hopelessness is a big problem for society. On the other hand, hopefulness changes everything.

One study found that hopeful people are more productive, which totally makes sense to me because they think that their actions actually can make a difference. Hopeful people are less affected by stress because they're convinced that something better is down the road. Hopeful people are more compassionate. And let me just talk about this for a second because, you know, as a pastor, I want a hallmark of our congregation to be our compassion. This is why perhaps you're a visitor. We encourage all of our Bible study groups and families to do acts of kindness in their neighborhoods and in their towns.

One group that I just heard about went to a house and cleared brush. Look at the before and after pictures here. This was a neighbor's house. They also painted, did dump runs, moved a fridge. Hopeless people do not take those kinds of actions, right? My wife was out early yesterday morning doing our yard sale for the food drive, and I have to give her total credit: raised over $500 for the food drive. I'm so proud of her. She's awesome. But listen, hopeless people don't do that. Hopeless people just go, wow, you know, inflation and food prices and so many people are going hungry. It's all just so stupid, and then they just sit and don't do anything.

I think that this is why so many social movements historically were spearheaded by Christians: hospitals, abolition, civil rights, and much, much more. Because Christians typically believe that the long arc of history is on their side when they do these hope-giving things. Hopeful people are even physically healthier, have lower blood pressure. I mean, look at this list. You know what this means? This means one of the best things you can do for yourself is to boost your hope level.

This means one of the best things that you parents or grandparents can do for the littles is to give them a sense of hope about their own future. This means one of the best things you can do if you're a teacher is give hope to your students. If you're an employer, give hope to your employees. Hope is so important. And the good news is there are three ways that the Advent song we're gonna look at today gives you hope.

Now here's how it gives you hope. It doesn't give you hope in sort of like here's seven keys to living a more hopeful life, which I'm glad because who needs a longer to-do list, you know, during Christmas season, right? What this does is give you a concept, a truth, an idea that if you grasp it and let it capture your imagination and your heart, it's just gonna resonate, kind of vibrate inside of you, just give you a sense of hope about the future and about your own personal future too.

So let's dig into this. This is first talked about in the book of Luke, or rather it's mentioned in the book of Luke chapter 3, the gospel of Luke, and it's referring to John the Baptist's ministry when John is announcing the Advent of the ministry of Jesus Christ. But Luke says that he's actually quoting a prophecy back in Isaiah 40, which was written 700 years before Jesus was born. These are poetic lines or song lyrics that Luke is quoting, and you have probably heard these many, many other places. For example, in Handel's Messiah, they are the opening lines of the Broadway musical Godspell.

These are the opening lines when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. A lot of people don't realize what happened at that speech. He actually, his sermon for the first 12 minutes, he's reading from a manuscript, and it is going nowhere, much like my sermon this morning. Then he actually closes his prepared manuscript and he quotes from memory some lines from Isaiah 40, and then he just goes off on a riff, and then his speech really, really took off.

So what is it about these lines that gave all of these people hope? Let's dig in because these lines clearly work. They were given first to the Jewish people when they were in a time of warfare and calamity, and they rallied around the idea in these verses, and they have given hope in all those different forms for centuries. So they'll probably give you hope too. So are you ready to dig into these verses right now? Well, my time is up, so no. Let's look at Isaiah 40. If you have your Bibles open to verse 1, and if you have your message notes, you can follow along that way. If you're joining us on the live stream, you can download those notes at TLC.org/notes, and it opens like this. Let's read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you: comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

So the first thing that you notice if you're analyzing this is you've got a repetition of the word comfort. Why? What is he comforting the people about? Why do they need comfort? Well, you gotta understand the context, the literary context of this verse. The book of Isaiah has 66 chapters. It's a long book of the Bible. Chapters 1 through 39 major on severe judgment and warning against the nation of Israel and prophecies of destruction against the nation and not just the nation of Israel, other nations of the world. God's judgment in this case is always, you know, of course, it's always based on judgment. This is justice, rather. This is really God's reckoning against these nations for injustices and cruelty and idolatry. So it's just judgment.

But by the time you get to 39 chapters of this, it's really like, wow, not much hope for the future. It's all just doom and gloom. And then chapter 40, and you read comfort, comfort my people, and it is this dramatic shift in tone. It's like a shock, a plot twist, a jump cut. It's so different than almost anything in the first 39 chapters. And it keeps going in this vein. Keep reading next verse: speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, her sin has been paid for. The judgment is over, war is done, payment has been made. Again, this sudden shift.

What happens here in terms of the book of Isaiah is chapter 40 launches the rest of the book through chapter 66, and the tone has changed from judgment to salvation and from warning to a sense of encouragement and from destruction to celebration. The big idea of all these chapters is that God's ultimate purpose is not judgment. God's ultimate purpose is salvation, not destruction but redemption. That is the truth that brings hope number one: when I am guilty, God's grace is greater. Amen.

Whenever I'm guilty, God's grace is greater. Guilt is probably the number one drainer of a sense of hope about my future. You know, I messed up. I'm just a bad person, and there's no future for me. Those are my true colors. I'm just terrible. You know, I failed at this, failed at my marriage, or I failed at having integrity in this way. I'm just kind of doomed. This summer, I heard a pastor being interviewed on a podcast, a pastor who's now about 70 years old, and for a whole generation, for 40 years, he's been going around to different college campuses and talking and teaching to college students all across the country.

He always does an open forum, a Q&A where college students can ask him anything they want to ask him. So the podcaster I was listening to asked him a very interesting question. He said, "What is the main topic that you are being asked questions about right now as a pastor?" Now just think about that for a second. What do you imagine would be the primary topic the college students right now would ask a pastor about? Well, he said there's no question that the absolute top sort of group of questions that I am asked has to do with guilt, shame. He said especially if the students kind of get me to the side, it's usually often a question like, "I did this thing and I feel guilty," or "I do this thing and I feel ashamed," or "I feel like God couldn't possibly love me anymore." So he said what I realized is now more than ever, people need to hear about the grace of God.

You know, human nature doesn't change. You might feel like culture has changed in so many ways. Yeah, but human nature doesn't change. And human beings still feel guilt and shame about mistakes that they've made in the past. And so now more than ever, he says we need to hear the message of God's grace. That's what Isaiah says: good news. I hear a voice calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him. Kind of a poetic way of saying people get ready because here he comes. I love this riff: every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

You know what this section always reminds me of? There's a song, and I'm a pastor, so it probably should remind me of that worship song we sang earlier. You know, there's no mountain he won't climb up, and there's no shadow he won't light up, and so on. But what it reminds me of is that Marvin Gaye song: ain't no mountain high enough. Do you know what I'm talking about? Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep me from—what?—getting to you, babe, right? Guess what? That's kind of what God is saying here. He's saying there isn't—I will overcome every single obstacle to come down and reach you because I love you. Amen.

And that is exactly what happened at Christmas time. And Isaiah goes on and he says, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. Now, what is he talking about there when he says glory of the Lord? Well, you remember the Bible makes a lot of the glory of the Lord. In fact, we did a whole series about this last summer. It's explained back in Exodus. The slide says Genesis, but it actually is Exodus chapter 33 when Moses says, "Now show me your glory, Lord." And in the next chapter, chapter 34, God goes, "Okay, here it comes." This is the glory of God. Here's how God defines his glory. That's like his innermost sort of engine. This is what makes God tick.

He describes himself this way: the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. That's the glory of God. The glory of God isn't judgment. The glory of God isn't, you know, destruction. The glory of God is his mercy. And Isaiah is saying when he says the glory of the Lord is gonna be revealed, he means the compassion and the grace and the patience and the love and the faithfulness and the love and the forgiveness of God that's gonna be revealed in some finishing way, not just to the Jewish people, not just to Jerusalem, but literally to the whole world. And that happened when Jesus Christ left heaven, overcame every single obstacle, and we saw his glory when he died on the cross for us to forgive us of all sins.

This means you may have walked in feeling guilty today for something years ago or something last night. And Isaiah is saying absolutely there are consequences for our foolishness. Who could argue that? But God still has love for you and still has a plan for you and still has a future for you and still has hope for you. And this message of hope keeps building. The second thing here that gives me hope is this: when I'm weak, God's power is stronger. When I'm weak, God's power is stronger. Maybe you didn't walk in feeling guilty; you're feeling weak and overwhelmed and so worried about the world or about your life. Watch this verse 8: God says, "Yeah, no doubt about it. We get weak. We die. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flowers fall. We die, flowers fall, grass dies. But the word of our God endures forever."

Now why do you suppose the original readers of this needed to hear that message? I want you just to think about this here as my kindergarten teacher used to say, put your thinking caps on. Remember they were enduring the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. And as the prophet warned in those first 39 chapters of Isaiah, and they're sitting there, they're seeing their whole nation fall apart. When they look at their enemies, they look like they're gonna last forever. Babylon looks like it's built of stone and metal and massive monuments that are absolutely going to outlast everything. But God is saying, look, those nations, those conquering empires that all look like they are here to stay, they'll fade, and they did. They are all mere ruins today. But guess what has lasted? The words of God are still here, and they are just as effective and just as powerful as they were back before any of those ruins were ruins. They are still working.

And maybe in your life right now, you know, the promises of God sound like mere words on a thin piece of paper in your Bible, and it's the problems of life that have substance for you, flesh and blood. But the reality is God will have the final word. This is a theme that's repeated all throughout scripture: Assyria, Babylon, they do not have the final word. God does. And your sorrows and your tragedies, your illnesses, inflation, layoffs, relational problems, those things do not have the final word for you. No matter what your life looks like right now, God's promises outlast every problem. Say God will have the final word out loud with me: God will have the final word.

And this is repeated all throughout Isaiah from here on out. Let me just show you one example. Talk about hope. This is from Isaiah 65:17, and Isaiah says, "Here's how long my will is gonna outlast all these other empires: I will create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered nor will they come to mind." In fact, skip to verse 25: the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. What a beautiful image. You know, last week there was a kind of a trending article you might have seen about a family that has two dogs, bull terriers, and they went for a walk and found an injured bird, a magpie, in the park. They brought it home and nursed it back to health, and now that it can walk and fly again, it doesn't want to leave because this magpie and the two bull terriers are now all best friends. Every morning they sit on the porch and watch the world together. They take naps together. They roll around on the floor and play together. How great is that picture right there?

This is the picture that Isaiah is painting, right? And we love that imagery. Why? Because we long for that future: natural enemies now friends. Are you kidding me? No more division? Wow! That's the point of these verses. It's not just about animals. This is poetry to say, you know, the elephant and the donkey will feed together. Imagine that! It's saying longtime enemies will live at peace. I mean, imagine a world with no more war. There's no more injustice. There's not even any death. This is exactly the kind of thing that Isaiah is saying: that world's not just an imaginary world; that's actually the new heaven and the new earth that God is prophesying that someday Jesus will return and restore the world. That is where history is going. That is so hope-giving, and that Jesus showed us, gave us a hint of all this through his resurrected body. What you have to look forward to is that God will have the final word. Amen.

If you listen carefully to a lot of Christmas carols, you'll hear that they're not just about the first Advent; they're about the second Advent too. I mean, just one example: joy to the world. One of the verses: no more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. For he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found. That's the promise of hope. That's the promise of the second Advent. When I am weak, God's power is always going to be stronger.

And then there's a final way that hope is boosted here very quickly: when I'm discouraged, God's love is deeper. I love this part so much. Verse 9: you who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. This is where we get that line, go tell it on a mountain from. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, by the way, what phrase is repeated there twice? Say it. If our message in church is not good news, there is something seriously wrong with our message. I want always to be about good news here because that's how Jesus characterized his message, not a bunch of bad news.

So what's the good news? Well, he says lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid, say to the towns of Judah, "Here is your God." And that sentence is crucial because see, this is how sins can be forgiven. This is how hope can be given. You know what happened to the first 39 chapters of Isaiah? Did God suddenly decide I'm not gonna make a big deal out of sin anymore? Who cares about injustice? Or maybe the people suffered enough so that they burned off all their bad karma? No, God shows up to take care of the problem himself and give his life as a ransom for our sin and rise from the dead to give us new hope. He plunged into our world because he cares about us. That brings hope.

You know, one of my favorite—and well, not favorite, but I would say lingering memories about Christmas I think about every time this time of year, especially when I go shopping, was something that happened in a mall years ago in our family when our first two children were very young. Elizabeth was just a little baby, and Jonathan was about two and a half years old, and Jonathan got lost while we were Christmas shopping. Now my wife would say, "René, Jonathan didn't get lost; you lost Jonathan." So let me just tell you the story quickly, and then you be the judge; we'll take a vote.

We were at the Meadowood Mall in Reno. We were at the central court, and here's a picture of it from the 80s. Just seeing that photograph is kind of triggering for me. But here's what happens: we're here in the middle courtyard, and Laurie says, "René, I've got to go do some secret Christmas shopping for you, and I'm gonna take the baby in the stroller. She's asleep; you watch our firstborn child. Do not get distracted." And I said something like so silly that you'd think I'd get distracted. So she leaves, and 60 seconds later, where's Jonathan? He was just—he's gone.

And I start to panic. I get frantic. Of course, I'm imagining the worst. And then I see a crowd of people laughing around a display window of a clothing store, and they're pointing because in the display window what had happened, it looked very much like this. There were mannequins wearing costumes, and in the display window, they'd put up a little Christmas train. You see this model train there on the floor? There were mannequins and everything around it, and Jonathan is sitting inside the display behind the glass, watching the train go around. Everybody's pointing and laughing at this little boy like, "Who's the clown that let his kid in there?" Right?

So I try as inconspicuously as possible to go inside the store, and I discreetly open the little door that leads to the display area. No way! Like this is a dream come true for me, or you gotta be kidding me! Oh no! So I'm reaching my hand in there trying to grab him; he's evading me. So eventually I had to crawl in to the display window, and I'm toppling over mannequins, and Jonathan's evading me. At one point, I glance out the display window. We're now the main attraction at the mall; people are taking pictures. Someone's probably selling popcorn. Finally, I grab his heel. I drag him out, screaming. The rest of the display falls over. Hard to believe that this sweet child, who's showing so much love to his dot, his sister in this next picture, which I'm sure Adrian's going to click any moment now, hard to believe that he could behave like that, right?

So let's vote, and I hope all you dads have my back. Having heard that story, how many would say I saved my child? How many of you would say I lost my child? Traitor! I can't believe it! Here's my point: I had to go into his world to rescue him, and that's the Christmas story. We were the lost children, and God had to climb into our world to save us. So shout out that good news, tell people about it, invite your friends to hear the good news this Christmas.

Look at verse 10: see, look, the sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. The people are thinking, "Oh, here we go. We've heard it for 39 chapters now: power, strong arm, back to judgment." But Isaiah says, "Here's what God's gonna do with his strong arms." Next verse: he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. He's going to hold the lambs in his arms. I think of those Getty's photos of powerful arms holding little babies. That's God to us.

And I love that phrase: carries them close to his heart. See, that's God's end game—not to get you to behave, but to love you. When Jesus came to us, he didn't come to give you religion; he came to give you himself. Not to condemn you, but to save you, and that brings hope. So let's bring this home. Look at the very last verse of Isaiah 40: but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint. God's gonna strengthen you, but not just in this life. This goes further than that. He's gonna give you one day so much strength that you never get tired again, so much strength that you can actually soar like eagles. When's that gonna happen?

This is a promise of resurrection and renewal, a promise about your eternal future. Talk about hope! The key is to hope in the Lord. Don't put your hope in, you know, your finances or in some politician or even in your country or in Bitcoin or anything else because eventually it'll let you down. The key to hopeful living is to put your hope fully in the Lord because then you'll know whenever I may sin, his grace is greater. Whenever I'm weak, his power is gonna strengthen me. Whenever I'm discouraged, his love is deeper than anything I'm going through, and this darkness will not last. Amen.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your love for us. Thank you for the hope that Advent brings. And as we light our candles leading up to Christmas candlelight, help a little flame of hope to constantly be lit in our hearts too, and help our message always be to the world: comfort and good news. Sin has been paid for; the Messiah paid for it on the cross, and that's just the start. He will make all things new. And so God, may many people find hope and faith to your glory this Christmas here at Twin Lakes Church and around our county. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.