A Message of Hope to the Hopeless

Love this time of year celebrating the birth of Christ and looking forward to his coming again.

We're going to talk about what Advent is.

If some of you maybe never celebrated before, don't know what it actually means.

We'll talk about that in just a moment.

But my name is Justin, and I'm one of the pastors here at Missio.

And it's my privilege to be able to bring God's word to you this morning.

We're going to be in Luke 1, like we read from this morning.

So if you want to get your Bibles and get there, we've got some free Bibles in the back.

If you don't have one, we'd love to give you a Bible as a gift.

We believe everybody should have God's word at home to read.

If you have a smartphone, there's apps that you can download.

In fact, even our app, shameless plug, but we do actually have fill-in notes on our app so that you can follow along in the sermon and that you can go back to those notes at any time in your study that you'd like to utilize that.

So we'll have some screen slides with yellow words that are on there, and they're kind of filling the blank and a great tool for you to utilize as you uh do personal devotions and study God's word.

Before we get into the text, I've got two things I want to talk about.

So we're growing at Missio, and it's a wonderful thing to see God bless this work and see it grow.

We've got almost 50 kids every Sunday that come to Missio.

That's awesome.

And we love kids, like, right?

We we believe that God's first declaration of obedience command to his people was be fruitful and multiply.

We take that very seriously here at Missio.

And so uh we love discipling children and loving on them and telling them about Jesus.

So what we've done is we've actually restructured some of the rooms.

So it's kind of a little public service announcement for you.

We've restructured some of the rooms.

If you're a parent, here's what we need you to know.

First off, is in this wing, we still have our infants and toddlers room that are gonna be here, but they're bigger.

So we move them to be into bigger rooms to create more space, and we reopened the parent lounge with a nursing mother room.

So in the middle of there, there's a room where we live stream the service.

If you're a parent with a restless little one that you need to take in there for a little bit, we've got the service streaming in there so you don't miss anything.

You can take them and hang out in there for a little bit.

It's got a nice couch and set up in there, and also in that room is a little room for mothers who are nursing.

And so if you want privacy for while you nurse your child and take care of them, we have that provided for you there in this wing.

Our uh big worship room for kids is still in the old sanctuary in the back.

But then our uh kind of discipleship learning teaching time room is now upstairs, and so we move them up there so all grade schoolers will be picked up after the gathering upstairs now.

Uh that's where they'll be ending out their session.

We're gonna probably make a few more adjustments as we understand how to best use this building resource that God has blessed us with as we continue to grow here at Missio.

And so we'll be on the lookout for some more announcements.

Just so you know, this morning, grade schoolers are upstairs, parent lounge is reopened for your guys' convenience, and we are excited about the challenges that we continue to face in a like 200-year-old building in the front, in a uh this was built in the 50s or something like that, um, uh building as we continue to grow here in this space, uh, how we can accommodate the growth that God is bringing.

So that's that.

The second thing is this we are partnering with Mason Cares for a Christmas gift initiative.

Now, some of you might think, what in the world does families in Chris uh Mason need help with for Christmas, right?

We live in a very our our our context of where we have our church plan is a pretty affluent context.

However, let me tell you this.

I was shocked at the numbers that I was presented with on how many families struggle.

Here's kind of a thought process.

So in the summertime, they're already planning uh to be able to feed kids who are typically on the free meal plan at Mason City School.

And here's what they're having to do they're having to pack over 1,200 meals every weekend to feed kids in the city of Mason.

That's a lot.

That was way more than I thought.

The amount of kids that are on free meal programs and so forth in this city is pretty um pretty high given to what you would perceive it to be in the context that it's in.

So, this is what we're going to do as a one-year-old church plant.

We are going to sponsor 10 kids and give them a great Christmas this year.

So, on this tree in the back, in the welcome booth, there's a little tree with ornaments on it.

And they have these little ornaments all over, and there's two ornaments on each one.

One of them is the actual gift.

So it'll have the child's number, their age and gender, and what they're requesting.

Each child has requested three different gifts, all$25 or less.

So that's kind of your budget.

Uh, don't be that guy that gets the iPod at the White Christmas.

You know I'm talking about any office fans in here.

Anyway, uh uh we're gonna do$25 or less, and then next Sunday, you're gonna bring it here, wrapped, with your tag on it.

You're gonna send this tag to us.

You're gonna are gonna tear this one off and give it to us today with your name, email, and phone number so we know who's got who, and we can help remind you to bring it to church next Sunday.

So there's 30 gifts on that tree.

We can easily make this happen and give 10 kids a better Christmas than they would have this year.

If you want to take more than one tag, feel free, however generous you want to be.

But I want that tree empty of ornaments after this gathering.

Uh, and so we're going to bless these uh children.

Next Sunday, you'll bring them packaged and wrapped here, and we'll drop them off uh at this uh middle school where uh all the presents are gonna be dropped off, and we're partnering, like I said, with Mason Care's uh initiative to make sure that this happens.

This is a way for us to bless our city.

This is a way for us to be uh, like I like to say, Jesus with skin on him a little bit.

And so we want to make sure that we uh truly are working to spread the gospel.

One thing Katie and I are gonna do is we're gonna get at least one gift, and in that gift, when we package it and wrap it up, we're gonna slide a little card in there that just tells them about the gospel and tells them how much we are thankful for them that uh they are able to receive this gift, and that uh, but ultimately the gift of God to us is Christ Jesus, and uh, we're gonna give them information about how they can find us at uh our church if they want to.

So, just a little idea of what you could do for your gift.

So when they open it, they can see um the gospel message being declared to them, not just uh objective money-bought things sat under a tree.

So make sure you go back there at the welcome booth, grab an ornament after the gathering.

All right, so Luke 1.

Here's where we're at.

We are celebrating Advent.

What is Advent?

Well, Advent is part of the church's annual liturgical calendar.

What does that mean?

Liturgy is just order of worship.

Every church has liturgy.

It's just are they actually thoughtful about it or not, right?

Some churches are too thoughtful about it, and some churches aren't thoughtful about it at all.

We like to be in the middle.

That's kind of like where we like to play in the middle.

So we are a liturgical church, as you guys have already seen.

Some of you read things off a screen, and we have different parts that we uh participate in, and we're our work in liturgy is to tell the story of the gospel through our worship.

And so the church, globally and historically, has had a liturgical calendar that Advent sits on.

You also have Easter on there and other different liturgical holidays.

And so what we do is we celebrate these four Sundays at the beginning of the Christmas season to reflect on the coming of Jesus.

So we have to realize that the coming of Jesus was promised before the beginning of creation.

We see that in John 3, uh Genesis 3.16, we see this proclamation that this Messiah would come, right?

We see after that Adam and Eve had fallen and God had cursed them, he, as he's dishing out these different curses to the woman and to the man, he looks at the snake and he says, You serpent, you there will be a seed who will come from the woman.

You will bruise his heel, but surely he will crush your head.

So this coming of Jesus, this advent is really what we're reflecting on.

And what we see is that God had promised and spoke through his prophets throughout time that this Messiah, this seed would be born that would deliver his people.

And then from the end of the Old Testament to the beginning of the New Testament, we have 400 years of silence where God did not speak to his people.

He used no prophet or priest to communicate with his will and word to his people.

And so in the New Testament, we see this breaking of silence.

And that's what we're gonna be reflecting on in this sermon series this month.

But Advent is not just looking back to a historical date of this little baby who came born in a manger, all the story and narrative that we understand and know.

Advent is also looking forward to Jesus' coming again.

You see, Jesus' coming again is promised to us through Jesus and his word.

And this, just like this message of hope that Old Testament Israel held on to through hundreds and hundreds of years, that this one would come who would liberate them and set them free out of bondage and oppression.

We hold on to this promise for us that Christ has come, but yet that he is coming again.

So it's a hope that we cling to.

And in many ways, in many ways, you and I are sitting in the midst of silence.

We're sitting in the midst of silence.

And so we are looking now, reflecting not only on the fact that Jesus has come, but with anticipation, hope, looking forward to the truth that he has promised he is going to come again.

So let's look at this.

Verses 26 through 27.

This is kind of the summary of this passage is that God sent a messenger to declare hope to a hopeless people.

God sent a messenger to declare hope to a hopeless people.

Here's where we're at, right?

We have to kind of understand where we're at in the story of Luke as he's unpacking this.

So Luke is a physician by trade, very detailed in his work and skill.

He's been hired by a rich man named Theophilus to give to him an account of what has happened with this man, Jesus.

Theophilus wasn't a believer, he was investigating the faith, and he had hired Luke to go forth and put down a chronological investigative uh report of all the events that has supposedly happened with this man named Jesus.

And so Luke is very detailed when we're looking at his account of the life of Jesus.

We want to pay close attention to the tiny details that Luke leaves in.

You can imagine that he has talked to Mary herself.

He has actually interviewed certain eyewitnesses to get their side of the story to make sure that things are lining up before he documents it and presents it to Theophilus.

And so where we're at is this Gabriel has already come to a woman named Elizabeth.

He actually came to her husband, Zechariah.

Now, Zachariah was a priest, and he had told Zechariah that Elizabeth, his wife, is going to conceive a child.

Now, this was a miraculous declaration already, because it was believed that she was actually infertile and she was already old in age.

So she had these two things coming against her for her to be able to give birth to a child.

She was perceived to be barren, and she was older in age.

And Gabriel said, No, trust me, she is going to give birth to a son, and you're going to name him John the Baptist.

Now, some of you might know John the Baptist, a familiar name for anybody who's familiar with the Bible, but for those of you who might not be, John the Baptist was this man who was born, a relative of Jesus.

And he actually was the forerunner of Christ.

He was the one who went before him proclaiming that the Son of God was coming.

He's also well known for eating wild locusts and honey, living in the wilderness, kind of a wild-haired man who came out proclaiming these bold messages of repentance and faith in the Son of God, the Lamb who would be slain.

And so Elizabeth is now, she's actually pregnant now with John.

We're six months into her pregnancy.

And the same angel, Gabriel, was now sent from God to give a message of another miraculous birth.

So let's ask this question Who's Gabriel?

Well, Gabriel's an angel, commonly understood as an archangel.

Now, see, Gabriel's actually only ever mentioned in the Old Testament in the book of Daniel, and then in the New Testament, in the book of Luke here.

He's mentioned twice.

He's only one of two angels actually called by name who are good angels.

There's other bad angels who are called by name, but good angels, the ones who still obediently and faithfully serve God of all creation.

It is him and Michael.

They are the only two.

Now, he's an angel who always carries a message.

He always carries a message with him that has benefit for the people of God.

And so he is coming and he's declaring to Mary a message of hope.

Now let's ask this: where is he going?

He's going to a city called Nazareth.

Nazareth is a no-place city with no-body people.

Nazareth is never even mentioned in the Old Testament.

It's only ever mentioned in the New.

And it's a city kind of between two cities.

It's a really a pit stop to something better.

Me and my wife were currently traveling.

I was preaching in a city on the east side of Ohio, and uh we stopped in one of these pit stop cities.

And if you've ever been traveling, you've stopped in one of these pit stop cities.

And here's how you know it.

In today's day and time, here's how you know one of these cities, because they have a gas station with at least three or four fast food restaurants lined up in the same state.

This place had a Popeye's.

Glory be to God.

I'm just telling you, it's better than it's better than Chick fil A.

I'm just gonna say it, it's true.

It's true, it's true.

The service is horrible, but dear Lord, that chicken sandwich.

Uh they had a Popeye's, they had a uh a Sabaro, and they had um, oh Lord help me, something else.

Anyway, this is when you know there's nothing good in this town except that gas station with like three or four different fast food places.

Nobody lives there, nobody wants to live there.

It's just this pit stop place on the way to something better.

You see, it's mostly poor working class.

In fact, it had such a reputation that in the book of John, in John 1.46, we see this.

Uh it says, Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

And Philip said to him, Come and see.

So what's happening here?

Philip is being called by Jesus to be a disciple, to come and follow him.

And he says, Go grab your brother, Nathaniel.

And so Philip runs over and he goes to Nathaniel.

He says, Listen, the Son of God, the Messiah, he's calling us to follow him.

And Nathaniel's only response is, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Just where Jesus was from almost caused one of his apostles and disciples to not follow him.

Just where he was from.

Now imagine Gabriel, this angel, this messenger, passing over powerful, influential capitals and metropolitans to call a nobody from no place.

He passed over Jerusalem.

He passed over these uh epicenters of culture and influence to call a nobody from no place.

And Mary is that nobody.

Mary's a virgin.

Mary's a virgin because she's probably only 12 to 14 years old.

Most historians place her uh in that age range, and there's two extra biblical writings that actually hand to us uh these pinpoints.

You see, there's two apocryphal writings, which we don't hold as authoritative or true, but uh we have in the gospel of the birth of Mary and Joseph the Carpenter place her in this age.

Now, what's an apocryphal writing?

Well, it's a story of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated among people.

So we don't hold them as authoritative, we don't hold them as true, but if for having any historical context of how old Mary might be, these are the only two places that we find writing.

And we see that one points are at 12 years old and the other points are at 14.

And so we believe because of the Jewish culture and customs that of when you became an adult, right?

You uh went through that rite of passage right around the age of 12.

It was very soon after that that you were being married and expected to have children and to start a family of your own.

And so she's betrothed to a poor labor worker named Joseph.

Now, Joseph is mostly believed to be a carpenter, but from the text, it actually literally is defined as just a worker of his hands.

So it could be a number of different artisan trades that Joseph was skilled in.

However, he was a poor laborer.

And this is the man who she was betrothed to.

But we do see that he was a poor boy, but from a royal descent, from the descendant of David.

And so you have this virgin, junior high, 12 to 14-year-old girl.

Just imagine that picture.

Put a face to that profile.

I have an 11-year-old daughter, Addison.

Next year she's gonna be in junior high.

She'll be 12 in August, and I can't even I won't give her a phone, let alone a baby.

Right?

Like, like we won't let kids drive or do other responsible things.

And here is God Himself coming to this virgin 12 to 14-year-old girl in a no-place town, declaring a message.

R.

Kent Hughes, a pastor, author, professor, and commentary writer, describes Mary's life and fate like this.

From all indicators, her life would not be extraordinary.

She would marry humbly, give birth to numerous poor children, never travel farther than a few miles from home, and one day die like thousands of others before her.

A nobody in a nothing town in the middle of nowhere.

This is the scene that we have set before us.

Verses 28 through 30, we see this this summary of this passage of scripture is that gracious favor is given to the undeserving.

Gabriel's introduction brings troubling concern to Mary.

You see, it's not his presence nor the message itself, but it's how he actually greets her.

So when Gabriel presented himself to Zechariah, Zechariah fell silent.

He was so struck by Gabriel's presence that he fell silent.

And this creature, this terrestrial being that stood before him.

Now, we can imagine through the text that maybe as he was approaching this 12 to 14-year-old girl, he kind of toned it down a bit, right?

He kind of was like, hey, look, I'm not here to hurt you.

It's okay.

And we see this that Mary's not actually shocked by his presence.

She's shocked by his introduction.

What is the introduction that she is so shocked by?

Greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you.

And it says, but she was greatly troubled at the saying.

You see, even Mary understood her demographic implication.

Favored one?

Do you know who you're talking to?

The Lord is with me.

Do you know who you're talking to?

And you see, her comfort over this troubling introduction from Gabriel is that she has been given gracious favor.

This is how he comforts her.

Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

So she's troubled by this introduction.

Me?

Favored one?

God with me?

Do you see my circumstances?

I'm a 12 to 14-year-old girl who's uh has been betrothed to this poor boy.

Do you see my future?

Do you see what's in front of me for what I my destiny and fate looks like?

Favored one, God with me?

But then Gabriel responds to comfort her.

Don't be afraid, Mary.

You found favor with God.

What does this mean?

This word favor is just grace.

God, grace.

In his grace, he has poured out and set upon you.

His favor and blessing.

It had nothing to do with who Mary was.

It had nothing to do with what she had accomplished or would accomplish.

It had nothing to do with her circumstance.

It was God in His grace had determined in His heart to place upon her His affection and favor that she could be introduced to an angel, one of His messengers, as a favored one.

That was her comfort.

Mary, God knows you.

God knows your situation.

God knows your circumstance.

God knows your fate.

God knows everything.

And let me tell you, Mary, God says you're favored.

Verses 31 through 33, we see that a miraculous birth is given as a sign for the eternal king.

So a virgin junior high teenage girl is going to give birth to the Son of God.

And this would be a sign for all to know exactly who he was.

This had no supernatural, special things about his personhood or what would happen to him as he grew older and in stature, but this was simply a sign.

And we see this back in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14.

Isaiah 7:14

As God is looking to kind of display and demonstrate his power and might, he actually asked his people, go ahead, go ahead, you call it out.

Whatever you think the sign might be, go ahead.

Search the heavens, the heights of heavens, search the depths of hell.

Whatever you think could prove to you a sign would be, give it to me and I'll do it.

And they were speechless, couldn't find one.

God said, That's fine, I'll give you one.

And this is what he says through his prophet Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14.

Isaiah 7:14

You want a sign?

Here it is.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.

So when God wanted to flex, because he had these people who doubted him, who said, Who how could you be God?

He said, If you want a sign of who I am, that what I speak is true and unfailing, give me a sign.

And when they were silent, they could not even respond to him, he said, I'll give you one then.

A virgin will bear a son.

A virgin will bear a son.

Imagine the scandal of the whole situation.

This situation, we have a young Jewish girl, a nobody in a nowhere town, 12 to 14 years old, betrothed to a blue-collar labor worker who was going to stay probably stay in poverty their whole life.

She was going to give birth to numerous children.

We see that she actually does continue to give birth to children as we see the New Testament, but after Jesus is born, after this virgin birth happens, but we see the hopelessness of these circumstances, and she's going to give birth to the Son of God.

I mean, first off, think it was common practice in law that if you broke your betrothal, which could only be broken legally by a declaration of divorce, it wasn't the way that we understand engagement these days.

You had to provide an authentic certificate of divorce to break off a betrothal.

And if you were going to be caught in infidelity for the reason of why that was being broken, you were put to death.

And so a poor woman who had no hope for her future was going to be giving birth to this boy.

Imagine the scandal.

And this scandalous birth would follow Jesus all of his life.

You will see in the narrative as we preach through this that Mary made it out alive.

Thank God.

And so did Jesus.

And Joseph steps up and bees a man, and he actually takes care of Jesus as his own son, and he raises him, and he stays faithful to Mary, and they stay faithful to one another.

But this would not just stop after the birth of Christ.

This scandalous birth would follow Jesus all of his life.

In John chapter 8, verse 41, as he's confronting some religious leaders of his time, he is calling them out for their false practices and their false doctrine.

John 8:41

He says, You follow your father.

He's speaking of the devil.

You follow your father.

And this is their response.

He says to them, 8 41, you are doing the works of your uh the uh the works your father did.

They said to him, We were not born of sexual immorality.

We have one father, even God.

So Jesus, in his 30s, in his public ministry, as he is proclaiming the kingdom of God, as he is telling them about the commands and wills of God the Father, as he's revealing who he is, the image expressed of God himself, he is met with this.

Oh, you say we're doing the works of our Father there?

We weren't born in sexual immorality, like you.

The scandal would follow him his whole life.

And to think that this child will be the eternal reigning king of all creation, the hope of the world will come in such perceived, hopeless circumstances.

Verses 34 through 38, we see that the impossible circumstances are met with a possible God and a faithful submission.

Mary understood the impossibility of the situation.

I mean, she was a virgin junior high teenage girl.

And think about Gabriel's answer to her.

When it says that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, it's the same type of visual language that we see when in Genesis that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the water, and from this power and might, life came forth.

And for a glimpse of proof that Gabriel was authentic in his message, he says that even your relative Elizabeth, she has conceived.

If he can make barren women pregnant, he can make virgin women pregnant as well.

And packed into the response of Gabriel some critical, robust theology for the Christian faith.

When you just look at what Gabriel says to her in his response of what God is going to do, we have to understand the theology that's actually in this.

And this is just a caveat I want to say.

Theology matters.

If you are a Christian, you are a theologian.

The question isn't, do you do, uh, are you a theologian?

The question is, are you a good one?

Because our understanding and study of God is so valid and important.

If we say one thing, well, well, Jesus isn't the Son of God, people would flip their lids who would call themselves not theologians, but the very thing that they're getting angry about and contending for is theology itself.

And so we as Christians have a responsibility to be good theologians as we seek to understand God rightly for how he has received, revealed himself to be.

We don't get to dictate who God is.

He's already told us through his word and through the person of Jesus.

And so we have these robust theological truths.

We have the Trinity.

We see that the Father, the Spirit, and the Son are all mentioned in Gabriel's response.

That God is one God expressed in three persons.

We see the incarnation, that God would be made flesh, that he would come and be among his people in their likeness.

And we see the truth and beauty of the second Adam.

That we needed one who would come after him to save us from our sin.

Christ is the second Adam.

Christ is the incarnate one.

Christ is the Son of the Trinity.

He is the one who is coming to save and redeem his people.

But then we also have to look at the faithful submission response of Mary.

Look at what Mary says.

Let it be according to your word.

She was just given a possible death sentence.

For all she knew, her marriage was over.

They were gonna call her scandalous, full of sexual morality.

She had no idea what tomorrow brought.

But God didn't come and say, I'm gonna bless you by giving you everything you've ever wanted or desired.

I'm gonna bless you by making you wealthy and prosperous and influential.

No Mary, 12 to 14-year-old little girl, I'm gonna make you pregnant.

And her response is, Yes, Lord.

Let it be according to your word.

Mary understands her relationship between the God of all creation and her own being.

He is the master.

She is just the clay.

Whatever you would have for me, I will submit and follow.

Like I said, her marriage, her future, her standing with her family was all just dealt a death sentence.

But this is God's blessing to her.

Bringing God's blessing to us all.

Try to put yourself in this story.

Try to understand and see it from the perspective of young Mary.

This perceived hopelessness would carry all through the life, death, and burial of Jesus.

You see, he'd be constantly doubted of his identity, mocked and ridiculed, scoffed at.

He'd be betrayed and abandoned.

He would continue to work to drive the reality of hope through hopeless situations.

This wasn't the only time Jesus encountered this.

Every time he tried to stand up and speak hope and speak truth, he was met with doubt, scoffing, ridicule, mockery.

And in the end, when he said, This is the only way that this can happen, is if I die, if I am killed and crucified and buried, this is the only way for my kingdom to truly come.

Even his closest followers said, You're crazy.

If this truly was the blessing of God, his followers said it would look like this.

You see, they were dictating what God's blessing should look like.

They were dictating what God's hope should look like.

They were dictating the truth and proclamation of God Himself, but they had no authority to do so.

And every time Jesus comes on the back end of that and says, You're wrong.

It has to look like this.

It has to look hopeless.

You see, we struggle so desperately with this even today.

We look at our culture, we look at our very lives, and we only see hopelessness.

Even though God is powerfully at work, often his work is masqueraded by our own inability to see past our circumstances.

And we find ourselves in the midst of silence once again and ask ourselves, where is our hope?

You see, we too often believe our circumstances determine the actual measure of our hope.

And I think we do this in one of two ways.

Some of us have false hope in the midst of hopeful circumstances.

You see, we mistake the blessing and favor of God for having good things.

And so we have false hope in the midst of perceived hopeful circumstances.

We equate money, home, job, spouse, children to being blessed by God.

Most people today would not have looked at Mary's circumstances with a response of, she's blessed.

In fact, they didn't.

And if you and I were alive, then we would look at her circumstances from our ivory tower and say, that's not God's blessing.

That's a young, poor, illiterate child that's caught in sexual immorality.

What about the blessing of God that the Bible tells us about?

You see, we try to define, just like Jesus' followers, what God's blessing should look like, but then Jesus flips the whole thing on its head.

You see, not fully absent of having good things as being blessed by God, but also not absent of seemingly hopeless circumstances.

These are statements of blessing, contrary to what we so often believe.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man?

But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

What if the blessed life actually looks starkly contradictive to the one you envision it to be?

What if God's blessings bring you ridicule, mockery, shame, trials, temptations, sufferings, but it brings you Him.

Some of us have an absence of hope in the midst of hopeless circumstances.

We struggle to believe God loves us.

We struggle to believe that He is good.

We struggle to believe that He even exists because of the things we have or are experiencing in our lives.

We look at our circumstances and can never believe that this might actually be the blessing of God in our life.

You see, the church has allowed the culture to shape its view of blessing.

You can walk into any department store and find language on clothing on little farm shabby chic signs that you hang in your little coffee nook or whatever it might be about.

Blessed.

College scholarship, blessed.

Unexpected raise, blessed.

Wonderful family?

Blessed.

Husband did the dishes, blessed.

Wife mowed the lawn, come on.

I'm blessed.

Let me tell you something, church.

The world doesn't have God, so they cannot be blessed.

We foolishly mistake good things for God's blessing.

But I'm telling you, the world cannot share in the same blessings as the righteous.

God's children cannot share in the same thing.

Or the wicked of this world cannot share in the same blessings as the children of God.

They cannot, because every blessing should cause us to have Him more deeply.

Both positions place more trust in their circumstances than in God's word and work.

The condition of your life, hear me, hear me when I say this.

The condition of your life has absolutely no bearing on the favor and love God has for you.

Nothing that you are going through, no circumstance that you are experiencing.

There is nothing in your life that will dictate whether God loves you or he doesn't.

God establishes his favor out of his gracious goodness.

When he says, I love you, it's because he has set forth from eternity past to choose to love you in spite of every circumstance you'll ever face.

So when we seek to understand what is blessing, I love this simple statement by Vanitha Rindel Risner, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Desiring God, says it like this: Blessing is anything God gives that makes us fully satisfied in Him.

Anything.

Sickness, death, persecution, trial, suffering, a raise, a child, a home, anything that God gives us that makes us fully satisfied in Him.

And in this article where she was writing about her experience and suffering, she says, and we you can ask anybody this, it's often in the lowest valleys of our life do we find the greatest joy and satisfaction of who God is.

It's when God strips us of all the distraction that we can focus on Him.

And what if, what if the blessing of God was to fully give you Himself?

Ultimately, our hope should be solely rooted in the Word and Work of God alone.

We will face seasons of silence, seasons of trials and perceived hopeless circumstances, but church, take hope, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And this is the beauty of the gospel this morning.

That Jesus is the fullness of our hope who overcomes our hopeless circumstances.

Jesus is the fullness of our hope who overcomes our hopeless circumstances.

Listen, ultimately, at our core, we are hopeless people.

At our core, we can do nothing.

We can do no work, no striving, no labor to get us in right standing with God.

There is nothing that we can do in our own merit to tip the scales of justice, to cause God to shine and put forth his favor and love on us.

There is nothing, nothing that we can do.

Ultimately, we are hopeless.

And no matter what our life circumstances are, we have no hope left to ourselves.

Jesus is the only one who can ultimately change our circumstances because he's the only one who can give us God.

It is only through Jesus.

Jesus is the one who makes it able for God's favor to be shown upon us because in his perfect life, in the midst of hopelessness, mockery, trial, persecution, he stayed faithfully obedient to the laws and commands of God.

And he earned the righteousness that we all so throw away in our own sin.

And then in his death, burial, and resurrection, God says, I'll give that righteousness of yours, the first raised from the dead, Christ the Son of God, I'll give that righteousness to those who place their faith in your gospel.

And so his righteousness becomes accounted as our own, and then we can stand just, upright, and faithfully before God.

You see, it is only through Jesus that any of our circumstances can actually change.

Church, it is only through Jesus that we can actually be blessed.

He's the only one who can give us God.

And so if we were to live this out this morning, we would live hope-filled lives based fully upon God's word and work.

Hope-filled lives based solely upon God's word and work.

Our hope would not be built on our circumstances.

I love the hymn My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

There is nothing upon our circumstances to build our hope.

It is shifting sand.

Our hope would only be built upon Jesus.

And we would engage our world not through what we see and experience, but through what he has said and done.

Because surely, church, if you find yourself in the midst of silence, if you find yourself in hopeless circumstances and you're wondering, where is this God that you speak of?

I look around me in the world, I see destruction and chaos.

It doesn't look like anything good is coming out of this creation.

We're left hopelessly scraping to understand what we can do next to change the tone.

Look at how our culture is so divided and aggressive at what the solution is to make this world right.

We're all scraping to try and understand it, and we're fighting and devouring each other just to try and give an answer of hope because we look out in our culture and everything seems hopeless.

But church, understand this: Christ has overcome.

Christ has risen from the dead.

Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, and Christ is returning for his church.

That's our hope.

Not in legislation, not in politics, not in anything that we can muster up to try and create some fabricated false solution that will break apart the moment our own sin and depravity wants to express itself in rage, in vengeance, in greed, in lust.

No, Christ is the only hope that we have.

Church, let us not be like those who murmured, complained, and lived in disbelief in the midst of perceived silence.

Let us walk in a faith filled hope because God has spoken, and his word is yes and amen.