The Advent of Hope

Amen.

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

What a joy it is to celebrate Advent with you all.

I hope you guys had a great holiday week.

As I know my family did, we uh celebrated four different Thanksgivings over a week.

And so I am done with turkey and stuffing and gravy and all that stuff.

And I don't want to see it ever.

I think I'm gonna do like Chinese for Christmas or Mexican or something like that.

I've just I'm done with that.

But uh nonetheless, we hope that your holiday week was joy-filled and full of family life, uh goodness, right?

Um, we are in uh this season called Advent.

And Advent is a time where the church has historically reflected and celebrated uh the reality of Jesus' first coming.

Uh, but one of the main focuses of Advent that has kind of been lost throughout the years is this expectation and anticipation of the church to see Jesus come again for his people, where he will make all things new and the fullness of his promises will be realized to us.

And so we want to set our eyes not just back on Jesus' first coming, right?

But we want to set our eyes forward with this hope-filled anticipation of his coming again.

You see, on this first Sunday in Advent, we light the candle of hope to remind us that Jesus truly is our only hope for all that is good and beautiful.

And so we're gonna look together from this passage in Hebrews to see Jesus as the substance and object of our hope.

Now, in this letter of Hebrews, the writer is working to try and encourage his audience to remain faithful in patient endurance, right?

He's worried about them in the state of their soul, the reality of their faith seems to be fragile and weak, and he wants to encourage them to remain faithful in patient endurance.

You see, his primary concern is that in the face of these current struggles and hardships that they are facing, that they would shrink back and be destroyed, he says, that they would fail to preserve their souls to obtain the promise of God before them.

So he writes to give them the remedy for such a dreadful plight.

And the remedy that he provides for them is the perseverance of faith in the promise of hope.

Let's examine this remedy and the passage together.

Verse 1, he says this.

Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Now, I don't believe that the writer is trying to give a comprehensive definition of faith here in the text.

Throughout the scriptures, we see faith explained, right, and described in a variety of different ways.

But instead, here the author is defining faith in relation to the risk that he discerns the congregation is facing.

If they risk failing to preserve their souls, it would be because they had made shipwreck of their faith.

And so his definition of faith is rooted in the remedy for those who seek to endure to the promise of God.

Here in the text, faith fundamentally deals with the future.

It is future-oriented in its essence.

It's understood as having a fully persuaded belief that God's promises are true and that we will attain them if we endure to the end.

This is how the writer actually sets up his functional definition for what faith is.

If we go back into Hebrews 10, 35 and 36, he says, Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, right?

This persuasion of heart, which has a great reward.

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised by him.

He then goes on to say that the fundamental substance of faith is the confident expectation of God's promises.

You see, the very word faith here in the passage means to have this persuaded belief.

That by hearing and receiving the promises of God, your heart has been convinced of their authenticity and their guarantee.

And so this persuaded belief is the very confidence of expectation.

This is what he means by defining it as the assurance of things hoped for.

See, the word for assurance there in the text is this language of hypostasis.

And it has quite a few different meanings that we can observe that's just rich with depth and intentionality.

One of the ways that we could take this word is to mean substance.

So we look at this language of hypostasis, it could mean substance or its very nature.

This same word would be used in describing the Trinity theologically, historically throughout the church, but this is actually the way that the writer of Hebrews uses this exact same word in chapter one to communicate the very radiance and glory of Christ Himself.

In Hebrews 1:3, he sets this up as he being Christ is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, his hypostasis.

Hebrews 1:3

And he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

So, to understand it this way would be to see faith as that which lays hold of what is promised and therefore hoped for as something real and solid.

God's promises have substance to them.

There's something that we can actually reach out for and grab hold of for ourselves.

They are absolute and tangible, even though they remain unseen.

By faith we take hold of the substance of hope and it becomes real in our experience.

But another way to take this word is for it to mean foundation.

So we think of this word hypostasis, it can also mean foundation.

Meaning faith is the foundation upon which we step to reach for the hope of the promises of God.

Think of faith.

I remember this last week we set up our Christmas tree, right?

And it's always this big ordeal who puts the star on top of the Christmas tree.

If you can imagine, I have four children and they all fight to be able to be the one.

The problem is none of them can reach the top of the tree.

And most of them have gotten too big for me to actually lift up like I used to and put them on the top.

So this year we had to get a ladder out so that they could actually climb up it and reach for that which could not be obtained by them.

Faith is like that ladder.

It's what we put our foot up onto that we might actually reach for the promises of God that He has given to us.

John Calvin, the reformer from the 1500s, he talks about it this way.

Faith, he says, is the prop or the foundation on which we plant our foot.

The prop of what?

Of things absent, which are so far from being really possessed by us that they are far beyond the reach of our own understanding.

So if we try to understand what the writer is communicating through both of these meanings together, we would see faith as the foundation by which we step to take hold of the absolute promises of God hoped for yet not seen.

This is how he actually leads us into the second part of his definition of faith.

It is the conviction of things not seen.

You see, the writer's working to help us understand that we're able to have proof in our hearts concerning God's promises, though they remain unobservable.

We can't see them.

We can't get out a microscope and examine them by natural means, but we can be persuaded of them.

Faith has no significant regard for the present things, the circumstances that we face now, what is in front of us in our visible sight.

Faith has no regard for such things, it is fundamentally future focused.

That is why hope is its object.

So, faith driven by hope is the remedy.

It's the remedy for the current struggles and trials that we face.

This is what the writer's working to have his audience actually understand, to equip them to patiently endure through the hardships of life.

So here's how I would define hope for us as a church this morning.

Hope is this: a persuaded heart's confident longing for a future beauty.

Hope is a persuaded heart's confident longing for a future beauty.

You see, it's a future beauty that we do not fully possess now, but we do get a foretaste of because of Jesus himself.

That is why ultimately Jesus is hope.

You see, there is a call being made to our souls.

Be patient.

Endure through these hardships just a little while longer.

Do not get restless in the absence of the fullness of God's promises in your life.

Do not become troubled at the sight of present ugliness around you.

Patient souls are willing to endure because by faith they long for the promise of beauty.

Think of it this way: Faith lives on patience.

Patience is willing to endure.

Endurance is sustained by the promise of beauty, and beauty is the object of hope.

Faith lives on patience, patience is willing to endure, endurance is sustained by the promise of beauty, beauty is the object of hope.

You see, if because of present ugliness, we risk shrinking back and making shipwreck of our faith, then you and I need a remedy to cause us to endure, to receive the fullness of beauty promised to us in Jesus.

And so faith in hope gives us patience to endure.

Faith in hope gives us patience to endure.

This is verse 2 of Hebrews 11.

For by it the people of old received their commendation.

Throughout the rest of chapter 11, we're walked through the famous hall of faith, beginning with Abel and walking all the way through the prophets.

What we are shown is how patient endurance through faith and hope has always been how God's people obtained the fullness of his promises unseen.

One of my favorite passages that the author gives to explain this case that he is making is that of Moses.

When he says in Hebrews 11, 24 through 26, he says, By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

He was looking to the reward, the promise of beauty.

And he saw that promise greater than all of the treasures of Egypt.

We can't fathom faith like that.

Moses considered the hope of future beauty as a greater treasure than the reality of his seen and observable present circumstances, and so he patiently endured.

He goes on to speak of those who experienced victory and those who encountered tragedy and defeat.

Some received blessings and others suffered unimaginable pain.

But they all remained faithful and they patiently endured, even though in this life they never fully received what was promised.

And I love what he says about him at the about each one of these people at the end, of whom the world was not worthy.

Each one receiving their commendation because of their faithful, patient endurance of their heart's longing for future beauty.

You see, they all had faith in hope.

They all had a persuaded heart's confident longing for a future beauty.

But what is interesting about the writer's case that he's building for the remedy of which he offers is that he doesn't actually start with the testimonies of God's people.

The writer instead starts with the testimony of God's power.

Look at verse 3.

By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

You see, here he's appealing to the very Word of God as the object of our faith.

If God's word was capable of creating the universe out of nothing, then undoubtedly the same word is a firm foundation for our hope.

If God's word was able to bring all that is into existence, it is also able to give me all that I truly need.

Because this is what God's word does.

It takes no substance and it gives it substance.

Every one of his promises are that which is unseen, observable by our natural means.

They have no substance in them now, but when he speaks and he makes the promises to his people, all of a sudden there's substance around it.

And it's able to be obtained by us through faith.

The nature of the universe, the creation or beginning of all things, it cannot be explained by evidence that is observable to our human eye.

Without faith, without faith, you and I cannot even explain the world in which we exist.

So we believe.

We believe the word of God because it is the word of God who made all things.

And who, as Hebrews 1 3 tells us, upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Surely God is able to take no substance and give it substance.

Because God created what is seen out of what was unseen by the power of his word.

If that is true, then he is able to fulfill the promise of beauty that he has given to us, even though it is unseen in our present ugliness.

But see, you and I often we only see the present.

Our eyes only take in what is observable to them.

And instead of by faith looking to the reward, we fail to patiently endure.

And in that we cause our faith to suffer.

You see, many of us can relate to this reality that we impatiently abandon hope.

We impatiently abandon hope.

You see, we fail to see that true beauty is actually before us.

And we fall to the ugliness of the now in our lives.

You see, our faith seems weak and unstable, right?

Maybe you can relate to this that it seems as though it has more fragility than it actually has substance to it.

Because oftentimes our faith isn't future focused in the way that it should be.

It is now focused.

It is what is seen and observed by our human eye, and that causes us to lose sight of the future beauty that's promised to us.

Many of us, we abandon hope in the presence of immediate gratification.

We hate waiting to be satisfied.

And this is a growing problem within our culture.

You see, many of us see the gratification of now as more valuable than the hope of God's promises to come.

We despise delayed gratification.

We're impatient for the better that awaits us.

And so we choose what the Bible calls the fleeting pleasures of sin.

I love how honest the Bible is.

Sin is pleasurable.

That's probably its most dangerous attribute.

And when it's right there in front of us, it's so easy to grab hold of it to be gratified in the moment.

Though what we're really reaching for is present ugliness in front of us, and we're forsaking future beauty that awaits us.

We cannot wait to be satisfied.

We must be satisfied now.

And in that insatiable thirst, we continually reach for the ugly things of this world rather than hold out for the beautiful things of God.

And we wonder why our faith seems to be so feeble and immature.

We fail to see how our lives are more focused on the gratification of the now than the hope of the future.

You see, church, our faith is in poor health because we continually reach for the junk food of this world rather than wait for the feast.

Of heaven.

That's why our faith seems so weak.

Many of us we fail to be like Moses, who the writer of Hebrews said refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He had everything.

He had joy, gratification, pleasure, satisfaction in every worldly mean imaginable before him.

But he saw a greater beauty than to just reach out and grab hold of what was in front of him.

He patiently endured for a greater reward.

Some of us, though, we abandon hope in the presence of temporal ugliness.

We abandon hope in the presence of temporal ugliness.

We don't ever want to dismiss or deny the reality of ugliness in this present world.

Many of us, though, we see the ugliness of the now and the way it affects our experience of life, and we fail to see that any hope, that any true beauty could ever truly be had.

And many of us abandon hope because we have experienced the pain, the suffering, the affliction of this fallen world, and many of us have even suffered at the hands of fallen people.

And we can't imagine that anything beautiful could come from this ugliness.

You see, we allow our pain to determine our perspective, and we lose sight of future promise.

Some of us have even walked away from the faith entirely.

Some have walked away because they were unable to see past the ugliness of political tragedy, of social suffering, of church hurt, of the sins of others.

Our hearts got to a place where we could not imagine that anything beautiful could ever come out of such ugliness that we see that we've experienced, that others around us that we love have experienced, and so we abandon hope and we make shipwreck of our faith.

You see, all of us do this to different degrees in certain ways.

There are moments within our life and experience that we impatiently abandon hope.

We often get frustrated in our present circumstances and we fool ourselves into blaming them for the condition of our lives, right?

We love to do this.

We love to look at our present circumstance and say, that's the reason of the state of which I am currently in.

But what if, rather than looking at the condition that we face, the circumstance in front of us, what if we took an internal investigation of the very condition of our faith?

Of our faith for the way that we actually experience and engage the circumstances before us?

What if life wasn't as hard as you're imagining it to be if you had greater faith?

If you had a more clear sight of a hope to come.

In walking with God, a man will go just as far as he believes and no further.

His life will always be proportioned to his faith.

His peace, his patience, his courage, his zeal, his works, all will be according to his faith.

Not the circumstances he faces.

Many of you are wondering why you haven't gone any further in your walk with God, why your relationship with God hasn't seemed to flourish, or why it seems like you keep facing these present circumstances with failure.

And most of the time I would put forth, we don't just do an honest reflection about the condition of our own faith.

Maybe you're not waiting on God, maybe God's waiting on you.

But our hope is not in us.

Our hope is in Christ Jesus, who by faith Jesus endured the cross for the hope before him.

This is how the writer of Hebrews brings us to the summit of his remedy.

We have to fix our eyes on something or someone other than the present circumstances that we face.

So what do we do?

We look to Jesus.

Look at Hebrews 12, 2.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy, the hope of future beauty that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You see, Jesus saw a future beauty, joy that was set before him, that he was able to see past the shame, the scorn of which he faced.

He was able to see past the suffering he endured.

He was able to see past the cross.

Because that vision of future beauty caused him to endure present ugliness.

A vision of what was unseen enabled him to persevere through what was seen.

You see where we impatiently abandon hope?

Jesus patiently endured to the end.

And we put our confidence in that.

We put our confidence in that.

And now the promise of future beauty is actually ours to be had by faith because Jesus patiently endured.

You see, the advent of Jesus, the reality of his resurrection is the guarantee that our hearts actually need to place our foot on the foundation of faith and reach for the hope that seems just beyond us.

1 Corinthians 15, 19 through 20 says this if in Christ we have hope in this life only, if we only have hope by what we can see, is what he's saying, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits or the guarantee of those who have fallen asleep.

You see, he's causing us to look to Jesus, who is our guarantee of future beauty because of his advent, of his coming and being with us, of his living in perfect obedience to the will of the Father, of his suffering, death, and glorious resurrection.

We can look to that, to persuade our hearts to be confident in the longing of that which is promised to come.

Because promise to us is eternal life.

But church is promised to the dead.

We are assured of a resurrected life, but you and I we wrestle with corruption.

We are proclaimed justified by the Father, but we war against sin.

We are given invincible joy, but you and I face so many miseries.

Nothing good is withheld from us by our Father, but we still often suffer.

Jesus promises that he will come quickly, but he seems distant from our prayers.

It's no wonder we would shrink back and be destroyed without hope.

Without the promise of future beauty, our souls would succumb to the present ugliness that we face.

But we have persuaded hearts, confidently longing for a future beauty, because Jesus, the Word of God, has made the unseen promises real and tangible to us through his life and resurrection.

You see, our eyes need a place to look.

So let us look to Jesus.

And in looking to him, may our faith become strong and relentless because we behold him as the very object of our beauty.

To have him is to have everything.

We long for that.

So my prayer for us, church, is that we would be a people who by faith patiently endure for the hope before us.

This life is going to be filled with present ugliness.

It's just inevitable.

Some that present themselves as beautiful and satisfying now, but are just fleeting pleasures.

And others of those ugliness, they will present themselves as something incapable of ever moving beyond.

But a future-oriented faith cannot be dictated by the present.

It must be established and strengthened by a hope that is presently unseen.

So I pray that none of us will shrink back or be destroyed.

I pray that will not be a testimony within this body of believers.

It must be established and strengthened by a hope in Jesus alone.

That we would patiently endure to receive the hope that is promised to us in him.

And so I want to leave us with this quote from Watchman Ni.

Watchman Ni was a Chinese pastor who was martyred for his faith at the age of 69.

Communists arrested Ni in 1952, and he spent the next 20 years imprisoned in a Chinese labor camp.

Although offered release, if he promised to leave the country, Ni refused and died in prison in 1972.

Some accounts even say that he died after authorities had cut out his tongue in an attempt to stop his preaching.

He was a man of faith whose hope was beyond his present experience.

He says this: faith is always meeting a mountain.

A mountain of evidence that seems to contradict God's word.

A mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact.

In either faith or the mountain has to go.