Advent 2023: Hope

As a Christian, we inherit a 2,000 years of church history, Christian history, and part of that is this calendar.

And so there's a season of Lent, and depending on what tradition you're from, you have this 40 days leading up to Easter.

And for us, we're celebrating this idea of Advent, and Advent has this idea, it's a season where we're anticipating the Advent of Christ.

There are these three pieces to it.

We reenact the Jewish anticipation for a Messiah.

We celebrate the arrival of that Messiah and all of its implications, and we now anticipate the second coming of Christ.

And so this is week three of Advent, and we're going to talk about this idea of hope.

Last March, when it was still cold and wintry, my wife and I went to Home Depot and we bought a seed starting kit that looked kind of like this.

We picked out the seed packets of the vegetables that we wanted to plant, and we dropped these tiny seeds into the moist soil of this seed dome.

And then we waited.

And within a couple of days, you could see these little tiny green shoots emerging from the shell of the seed.

A week later, it was starting to form an inch-long blade that would become the earliest branches of the leaves and for the plant.

Throughout this process of purchasing the seed dome, planting the seed, watering the seed, protecting the seed bed from our dogs, there was this experience of hope.

There's this anticipation.

What is this plant going to look?

Is it going to grow?

Right?

The act of taking a dead, tiny, almost like so tiny microscopic seed and laying it on most moist soil is a bizarre act because nothing happens.

It's not like you put it in the microwave and it comes out hot.

You're laying it there and you're wondering, will this thing come alive?

It's almost mysterious, it's almost magical that something happens with this seed.

It's an experience of hope.

When we planted the seeds, there it was an unseen potential within the seed, and the quiet, persistent push toward life, waiting for the right moment.

For the Christian, there is not just hope is not just a wishful thinking.

Hope is this confident expectation for the future based on God's promises.

Again, hope is a confident expectation for the future based off of God's promises.

When you look on a map of Eastern Avenue and Broadway, there is what we call an intersection, right?

The two streets intersect.

And the same is the case as we read our Bibles throughout this week and our own life, the Bible intersects with our life.

And the more we spend time hearing God speak through his word, and we're chewing on it, and we're meditating on the Bible, there is this experience of the Bible coming true in our own lives.

And sometimes there is this wrestling of like, Lord, which verses are true for me now?

Sometimes the work of God's Spirit as we're reading the Bible is that he's convicting us, like, hey, listen, this needs to get right in your life.

Sometimes it's this encouragement towards a future.

Other times it's this, hey, you need to hold on to these promises.

Many times it's wisdom.

It's like, hey, this is the right way to think about systems in life.

And there is this idea of our life intersecting with Scripture, and hope is formed.

Another way of considering hope is it's something that is forged in our hearts as we experience God's faithfulness in our lives.

I don't know, I was thinking as I was preparing this message, I don't know if I've ever felt more hopeful.

And I that is a direct result of walking with the Lord and seeing him fulfill his promises in my life and be true to his word.

And so we're gonna consider this idea of hope and the idea of the Messiah coming into the world and fulfilling the hopes of the nation.

And our text that we're gonna open up with is Micah chapter 5, verse 2.

Micah 5:2

Micah 5, verse 2.

Micah 5:2

It says this Bethlehem Ephrata, you are small among the clans of Judah.

One will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me.

His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

A unique scripture.

We will unpack this a bit and look at it in its context some more.

But before we do that, let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for giving us uh your holy word.

We know that this scripture is a scripture that uh Jesus read and was familiar with, and it speaks of his coming, being born in the city of Bethlehem.

And we pray that as we consider this text and this idea of being a people of hope, uh, that you would stir in our hearts by your spirit this morning, you'd teach us about hope.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this passage is from Micah, who is a prophet that we find in the Old Testament.

It's just one of the messianic seeds that are planted by the prophets.

Now, if you look at your Old Testament, um you have you have in your Bible, you have the Old Testament and you have the New Testament.

The Old Testament store uh tells the story and tracks the spiritual journey of the nation of Israel, and God is working through the nation of Israel to bring to the fore the idea of a Messiah that's gonna come and save the world, who's gonna bring his kingdom to earth and is gonna reign as the perfect king.

And so Micah is one of these Old Testament prophets in your Bible who has a specific message in a specific time.

And we'll talk just for a minute about this guy, Micah, and his prophetic prophetic message.

What was the context in which it was delivered?

The prophets were contemporaries to the king from King Solomon all the way up to about 400 years before the time of Christ.

So the prophets were speaking to the nation of Israel from right after King Solomon's death through hundreds of years of the split nations.

You had the northern nation of Israel and the southern nation of Judah.

Micah was a prophet during the 8th century BC.

He was a contemporary of Isaiah, who we've looked at over the last couple of weeks, Amos and Hosea.

His ministry occurred during the reigns of Jotham and then Ahaz.

That's the name that keeps coming up.

It's almost like Ahaz has been a part of our Advent journey as a church.

King Ahaz in Judah, and Hezekiah and uh who were the kings of Judah.

This period was marked by social injustice, rampant idolatry, and moral decay amongst both the uh the region in northern.

This is a, I'm sorry, the the proportions here are bad.

This is squeezed for some reason, but there's the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.

This is a better map.

And Micah is prophesying into this area.

And there's a lot of judgment and rebuke throughout this um throughout this book.

There's political corruption.

Let me just show you one of his judgments against um against Judah and the political corruption that existed at the time.

We'll come back to that chart in just a second.

Um he says in these four verses, he says, now listen, leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, aren't you supposed to know what is just?

In other words, don't you aren't you supposed to know what's right and just you hate good and you love what is evil.

You tear off people's skin and strip their flesh from their bones.

In other words, the the systems that you're supporting, the social systems, the systems of justice, the way that the government is set up, is dehumanizing.

It does not value the flesh and blood of people.

You're you're taking away the body, the embodiment uh characteristics of the people that you govern.

You eat the flesh of my people after you strip their skin from them and break their bones.

You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.

Then they will cry out to the Lord.

This is the the rulers are going to cry out to the Lord, but he will not answer them.

He will hide his face from them at that time because of the crimes they have committed.

Such a grotesque picture, a depiction of this corruption.

It's beautiful to see that the God of heaven looks down, he cares about government and politics.

Sometimes you you've been on the raw end of a political system or a governmental system where it's just not fair.

Early on when I was um working in the compassion center and I had a little bit more time on my hands, we would um I would take people to court um for different things that would come up.

Like homeless guys that would come through, and um there's two in particular that I remember.

And uh one was had this accusation that seemed like there's no way that that it could have worked, the timing of it could have worked out, um, because I knew him and knew where he was at at the time.

And and then there was another guy that um uh I can't even remember what his charge was.

I think it predated me knowing him.

And so I would go with him to, I would go that with these guys to court, and I just would watch the system.

And um it was amazing to me how if you're poor, um, the system is unfair.

Um, you are relying upon a um public defender who's you know overwork overworked, and um it's just a system or the justice system is designed to favor people who can afford a good um uh per uh somebody who can represent them well in court.

And God cares about those kind of things, and that's what Micah's speaking to.

He's not speaking necessarily politically, but he's saying, look, God's word to you as a nation is that there's a broken bentness about how society is working.

You're you're eating uh for dinner these people that are corrupt.

He was delivering a message on behalf of God, dealing with political corruption in Judah, in Israel, and he's articulating the basis of God's judgment.

He's like a lawyer.

Micah's acting like a lawyer on God's behalf, giving the indictment.

The spiritual leaders, though, were not much better.

Look at how the spiritual leaders were behaving.

Micah 3, 11 and 12.

Her leaders, speaking of Judah and Israel, her leaders issue rulings for a bribe, her priests teach for a payment.

In other words, I'll teach you whatever you want to hear, uh, just pay me.

And her prophets practice divination for silver, yet they lean on the Lord, saying, Isn't the Lord among us?

No disaster will overtake us.

Therefore, because of you, Zion, will Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become ruins, and the temple's mountain will be a high thicket.

So just imagine if both the spiritual leaders and the political leaders are corrupt and they're using, you know, we can't imagine this ever happening in Baltimore, right?

But imagine them using their positions of authority for their own advantage, and God cares about it, and he raises up this um prophet to speak into this setting and to say, this is God's indictment of judgment against you.

I pulled um this diagram, kind of looks like a comic strip, but this is um the Bible project's um outline of the book of um of Micah.

The black outline here is the judgment sections.

So this is one and two, and then these are the sections about hope.

If you go and watch the video that's six minutes long about Micah with the Bible project, the amazing thing, and they didn't do this on purpose, the amazing thing is over and over again they use the word hope because Micah is speaking into this dark spiritual climate, but then he comes through with the hope, these words of hope.

And so the prophecy that we look at here about Bethlehem being the place where the Messiah is born is found in this section here, right?

The or is it found there?

Yes, five, yeah, chapter five, Bethlehem.

You have a leader born in Bethlehem, and he's raised up to become a ruler in Jerusalem.

So we have this pattern, indictment, judgment, and then these words of hope, and um the fact that God is not going to leave his people who need to be judged, he because he's just, he's not gonna leave them in this place of, well, what's the opposite of hope?

That's right.

He's not gonna leave them in a place of despair.

We live in an age of great despair.

There are many people who are dis feeling a sense of worthlessness for a number of reasons.

Some people I talk to feel a sense of despair because they cannot they can't identify how their work connects with their personhood, right?

And so they they feel unfulfilled in the work that they're doing.

Some people are feeling despaired because the as much as they try to do good, they are incapable of um producing change in the world, and they feel um overpowered by it.

There's other parents, there's parents that despair because it's like, look, you know, I've done this for my kids, and yet their kids are just struggling in the place as they're they're getting into their young adult years and trying to do life.

Some people are facing despair because it's like, where did this illness come from?

Other people are are facing despair because they went to war, they went to they got an education and they played the game, and yet the game is not reciprocating back to them with their career or um uh with the monetary expectations that they had.

We're going, we're we're heading towards more despair, just so you know.

As um as computers and technology advances, there is this sense of humans being replaced more and more by technology.

And what that does is it if you don't have a framework to think about the world, as technology gets better, it causes an overall sense of what purpose does my life have?

If you don't have the Bible coming along and saying that you're created a little higher, as a human, you're created a little higher than the angels, and that you're designed, according to Genesis 1 and 2, to reign and rule with God over the created order, and that someday you'll judge the angels, then if you're left without that meta-narrative, that grand arc of the story, and that there is a second advent of Christ, then you're gonna look at the world as it progresses technologically and with corruption and broken systems, and you're going to despair.

And so Micah is speaking into this and he's calling out, speaking truthfully, to what is so upsetting, and upsetting probably to these citizens who feel like their flesh is being stripped off to them by systems, and they're hearing Micah say, There is this hope.

There's going to be somebody born in Bethlehem.

Let's look at that passage again, Micah chapter 5, verses 2 through 4.

Micah 5:2–4

Bethlehem Ephraim, you are small amongst the clans of Judah.

Now remember, Judah is the smaller southern nation.

And he says, This city, this little town, Bethlehem, was small amongst the clans of Judah, and one will come from you to be a ruler over Israel for me.

So this is coming 800 years.

This is being spoken 800 years before Jesus is born.

And when Jesus grows up and he is being identified as the Messiah, one of the knocks against Jesus is his birth story, his origin story.

One that he's born without an identifiable biological father, but also just the fact that he's born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth.

You know, it's like, well, who could come from that?

It's like that's a small town.

That's not where the leadership of Israel necessarily would come from.

Oh, but it is.

It's found in this very inconvenient book.

That if you're a uh, well, I guess we'll get into it in Matthew here in just a second, but it's this fascinating little verse about somebody, this future ruler coming from being born in Bethlehem.

And then it says, Micah continues, he says, Therefore, Israel, be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor has given birth, then the rest of the ruler's brothers will return to the people of Israel.

Very poetic, symbolic, general, probably maps on really beautifully to the birth of the Messiah.

Maybe maps on to the second advent of Christ.

And then verse 4 He, this leader, this future ruler born in Bethlehem.

He will stand and shepherd them in the strength of the Lord, in the majestic name of the Lord his God.

They will live securely, mind you, no longer having their flesh stripped off of them and being eaten by the rulers.

No, they will live securely, for then his greatness will extend to the ends of the earth.

These are the type of prophetic messages that Micah has, that Isaiah has, that Zechariah has, that Daniel has.

These prophets that were raised up by God's Spirit and given this message to speak into the midst of a spiritual winter.

Let's fast forward.

Let's go to Jesus' time.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem.

And they said, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

For we saw his star at its rising, and we've come to worship him.

So they're associating this star with the king of the Jews.

My personal conviction is that these wise men, these magi, are in the lineage of Daniel and are carrying with them some of the prophetic messages from Daniel, Daniel's time, when he and his compatriots are there in Babylon, and Daniel has all these prophetic words about a future Jewish king who's going to have this amazing rule.

Just a guess.

So it says, then King Herod heard this and he was deeply disturbed, and all of Jerusalem with him.

So he assembled the chief priests, he pulls together.

So here we have politician, spiritual leaders, they get together, and they are asking where the Messiah would be born.

That's a good discussion right there.

Let's get the political leaders together with the religious leaders and talk about the Messiah.

Fortunately, it's not with good intention.

But these religious leaders are inconveniently aware of Micah.

They say it's in Bethlehem of Judea, they told him, because this is what was written by the prophet.

And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

Because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, who will shepherd my people, Israel.

This is eight hundred years a prophetic word coming to the front of the stage, being fulfilled.

The people who we would say were just victims in the day of Micah, who kind of held on to Micah's words.

They didn't get to see it fulfilled.

They got the effect of feeling encouraged, but they didn't get the um ability to feel the encouragement, or they didn't get to see the day of it being fulfilled.

But these spiritual leaders, these political leaders, it was in their day.

And how did they respond?

They responded, um, Herod responded by saying, We've got to kill him.

He's a threat to my authority.

It is amazing as you see God's work through history.

Take that, map it onto your life, and know that God has told his story in a written account so that your your hope can be fed.

I'm gonna go a little bit off script here, a little bit off script, and I won't have a passage, but I just love this from the beginning of Romans chapter, Romans chapter 15.

Romans 15 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible, you can look it up there.

I'm believing it's Romans 15.

Romans 15, 4, it says, for whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction.

So whatever was written in your Bible in the past, it was written for our instruction.

So that, so when you have a so that, what does that mean?

It's it's a ca it's causative, right?

It's it's it's showing, it's an instrument, it's it's coming forward.

It's written so that you have instruction, so that we may have hope.

The Bible is written so that you have instructions for your instructions, so that you might be and have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the scriptures.

You see, it's a it's a circle there in the way that Paul writes it.

You have instruction, hope, endurance, encouragement from the scriptures.

I love that.

And I think that that that is in a verse what I'm trying to show you from the book of Micah.

All right, let's let's wrap this up here.

The um the reality is is that we go through spiritual winters, personal struggles.

So this may be Christmas time where you feel like I'm supposed to feel happy, but maybe you don't.

It could be that maybe you're experiencing a conflict in a key relationship that you can't get resolved.

Maybe you're facing an illness or chronic pain.

Maybe your finances are tight, you feel discouraged.

Maybe you're looking for work and you're just struggling to find that work that just lands and it's the right place for you.

Maybe you're lonely, maybe you feel stuck, maybe you have questions that are not resolved.

Maybe you feel like evil is winning.

And the reality is that God is often speaks of hope and promises in the midst of our darkest times.

Jesus, born in Bethlehem, as foretold by Micah, is the embodiment of hope, not just for Israel, but for all humanity.

We have, as we go through our own seasons that are difficult, we are we have a person that is named hope.

Jesus is our hope.

Christ's life, death, and resurrection fulfill the deeper longing for redemption, justice, reconciliation that is expressed throughout the Old Testament.

And so let me encourage you on this third Sunday of Advent to find hope in Jesus amidst your current situation, injustice, societal injustice, personal trials, just as Israel would have found hope in those prophetic words of Micah.

Cultivate hope through prayer, meditation, meditation on scripture, participation in your church family.

And then anticipate that second advent.

Do you see how Micah's prophecy transcends the first coming of Christ into our day and beyond?

Because he talks about the reign and the knowledge of this king being this universal reign.

We need to live in a way.

The reality that should develop in us as Jesus followers is that we have this personal relationship with Jesus.

Hope is being formed in us, forged in us, and it is embodied in us as we look forward to the second coming of Christ.

Peter says it this way in his epistle.

Who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good?

Who can harm you if you are devoted to what is good?

But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed.

Do not fear them.

This is Peter's remix.

You know how you take music and you remix it?

This is Peter's remix on the Sermon of the Mount.

He's saying, You are blessed, you're suffering, you're blessed.

Do not fear them or be intimidated.

Then look at 15.

But in your hearts, regard Christ.

This is that's the word esteem.

Esteem Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time, so you're ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason of the hope that is in you.

So Peter paints a picture where you're opposed, you're suffering possibly, and he's saying, hey, look at you're still blessed.

Not only are you hunkered down, enduring, marching forward, not getting distracted, not off your game because of that suffering, but you're like ready to answer people who are like, where's the hope coming from?

How come you're so hopeful?

How come you are going through all this stuff and you have so much hope?

Remember he talked about at the beginning of his book?

The alien hope.

It's this hope that just invade your life because it's it's birthed in you by the Holy Spirit.

Literally, the hope of heaven is something where you say, God, I just give you permission to work in my life.

Take away the despair, fill me with your hope.

And that is what the Spirit of God wants to do in each of us.

And so you may feel like you're living in a dark spiritual time where even the things that ought to work, government, spiritual leaders, whatever it may be, the things that ought to work maybe are not working.

And yet God speaks and he says, I care about injustice and I will judge.

And you need to know that there is this hope in the Messiah.

You can sink your teeth into it.

It's the anchor for your soul.

Let's pray together.

Lord, thank you for coming and fulfilling Micah's strange prophecy about you being a ruler and coming from this obscure town of Bethlehem.

That you fulfilled your word after 800 years, and you fulfilled your word in our lives.

God, I pray that as we do life and um through this week, I pray that you would just encourage us with your word and that you would continue to form in us hope.

This this would be a season where we can have that sense of hope in your second coming.

We love you.