Illuminating Dark Days with Everlasting Biblical Promises

Well, merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Welcome to Madison Church at our annual Christmas Sunday.

We always celebrate the week before Christmas because we know that a lot of people are traveling, a lot of students are heading out of town, and so we want to catch you guys before you leave, and celebrate the birth of Christ the Sunday before, which is what we do.

It's a tradition here.

I'm glad you're here.

If I didn't mention it already, my name is Stephen Feith, lead pastor at Madison Church.

Throughout this Advent series, we have talked about how God's love has turned the world upside down.

God's love is the significant reason we have to celebrate this season.

John, one of Jesus's followers and friends, writes very early on in his account of the life of Jesus for this is how we know God loved the world.

He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life.

In John's words, this is how we know God loves us.

Jesus came to be with us, and while we don't know exactly when Jesus was born it probably wasn't December 25th, historically speaking Well, we don't know exactly when Jesus was born this is the time of year that the Christian Church has historically celebrated the birth of Christ, the incarnation, as we call it, god becoming a man, turned the world upside down and, as we have discussed for the past few weeks in this series called the World Turned Upside Down, there was a woman whose livelihood depended on how many men she could sleep with in a night, and she had her world turned upside down the day that she met Jesus.

Her story showed us that, because of Christmas, the least were loved.

A man whose corruption made him wildly rich had his world turned upside down the day he met Jesus.

His story showed us that, because of Christmas, the lost were found.

A woman who wanted to be as unnoticed as possible in her life became the brightest light in her community, the brightest light they had ever seen that day because she met Jesus.

And her story showed us that, because of Christmas, the lonely found belonging.

Over the past three weeks, we've told these stories of how their world was turned upside down and prior to these encounters, and in addition to them, feeling lonely and unloved and lost, I can also imagine that all three of them felt tired, stressed, exhausted, burned out.

Another word for all those words is weary, and weary is a great word to describe the first century church into which Jesus was born.

The Jewish people were weary of the oppression of the Roman Empire.

They felt like prisoners in their own land.

People were weary of economic chaos.

You can relate to that.

Cheating and theft were commonplace.

People who lived in this time were taxed into poverty.

People were weary of violence.

The threat of punishment for stepping out of line hung over their heads.

Everyone had seen a crucifixion in that time and how they felt is not all that different from how you might feel today, in 2022, in Madison, wisconsin.

You may feel weary from fighting with those you love, fighting with those you're supposed to love.

You may feel weary from having too little and needing too much Particularly, that feels relevant this time of year.

Weary from the aches and the pains that come from growing older.

Weary from putting in too many hours at work and getting too little satisfaction out of it.

Weary of the past, but also weary of the future.

You probably feel weary and it's not just you today, it's not just them back thousands of years ago.

We live in a very weary world.

A senseless war that continues to wage in Ukraine makes us weary.

Another mass shooting somewhere makes us weary.

Inflation and not being able to afford anything makes us weary.

And RSV surge, covid still spreading, and oh yeah, let's not forget that cancer is still killed over a million and a half people since 2020.

And the US alone makes us feel weary.

I know, I felt weary.

I feel weary today, I feel weary this week.

Recently I was earlier this year actually I reconnected with a pastor friend or a friend who is a pastor in Southern California, and while we were talking, he asked me this question that caught me quite off guard and it wasn't a deep theological question, it wasn't deep at all.

He simply asked hey, man, how's your soul?

And I didn't know how to answer him because I didn't know how my soul was.

And it wasn't for a lack of words, because I'm pretty good at talking, as you may have guessed.

It wasn't for a lack of words, it was just simply a lack of thought and a lack of feeling.

Eventually, I told him I guess, blah, I guess that's how I feel Just blah, on top of dealing with everything else that you were probably dealing with and I know that you also have these side stories right, we're dealing with COVID, we're dealing with job stuff, and then there was like normal life, stuff happened 2020, 2021.

I also had normal life stuff.

Megan had a miscarriage in 2021, before we had our daughter Quinn, so she had a miscarriage.

So we're dealing through all that stuff and we had a miscarriage Our first pet, a dog named Lila, got an aggressive form of cancer and then she died earlier on this year.

And there's other stuff that I just simply can't mention in this space because we're recording.

We're recording online and it wouldn't be appropriate to talk about those things.

Stephen, how's your soul?

Blah, and maybe if I were to ask you that question, you would also say blah, and maybe you'd say good, maybe you'd say bad, but I guess for a lot of us we would say blah.

And interestingly, there was a popular article last year that mentioned that blah feeling Languishing was nominated for the word of the year last year by the New York Times and the article, which was titled there's a name for that blah you're feeling, says it's not burnout, it's not depression, we just feel somewhat joyless and aimless.

It turns out there's a name for that Languishing.

So as I look back in hindsight at that question, how was my soul Languishing?

I bet you can relate.

And anytime we go through this languishing feeling, these languishing seasons, we tend to ask the question where is God?

Well, matthew, the writer of a biography of Jesus in our New Testament, he offers this answer.

He says look, the virgin will conceive a child.

She will give birth to a son and they will call him a manual, which means God is the one who is with us.

Where is God?

God is with us.

In the middle of a weary world 2,000 years ago, on one holy night, comes a thrill of hope, and I know you know this feeling, this thrill of hope feeling.

Do you remember the anticipation you felt as a child for that first Christmas that you can like?

Really remember that, just that excitement of that first Christmas and how it felt like forever away.

Remember how you learned how to drive.

You remember getting to drive by yourself after you got your driver's license.

The thrill of hope.

Remember the first time you moved out of your mom and dad's house.

The thrill of hope of what you know your own autonomy and independence and and it's your place.

Remember getting accepted into college or being offered that job that you really wanted the birth of a child.

There is a thrill to hope.

There's a thrill to hope, but hope is more than a feeling.

We need hope to function and thrive as human beings.

It was a meal runner, the Swiss theologian, who said what oxygen is to the lungs, such as hope, to the meaning of life.

You see, without hope our lives suffocate.

Maybe not physically, of course.

Not physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

And since you and I were holistic creatures mind, body and spirit when one area of our lives suffers, the rest of our lives, the rest of our life suffers.

And when it comes to life, we need hope and, like I said, it's more than a feeling.

Someone who has done actual research on the topic of hope, dr Shane Lopez, says hope isn't just an emotion but an essential tool of life.

Well, what's that mean?

Well, in his research, shane Lopez's research, he showed that a hopeful college students got higher GPAs and were more likely to graduate because of hope.

Hope was the difference.

Hopeful athletes performed better on the field and coped better with injuries.

Hope, it made a physical difference.

It made an emotional and an intellectual difference.

It cannot be scientifically disputed.

Hope is powerful and I want to contend with you this morning that, because God is with us, we have substantial reason to have hope.

John, who writes a little letter at the end of your New Testament titled after him.

First, john, he writes three of these little letters, but in the first one he says we proclaim to you this is how he starts we proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have seen and heard.

We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands.

He is the word of life.

John writes we have seen Jesus with our eyes, we have heard Jesus with our ears, we have touched Jesus with our hands.

And as you read these words, as we think about them, can you imagine John sitting in a witness stand in a courtroom swearing a desposition and with a hand raised, he says hope is real.

This really did happen.

God came to earth as the person of Jesus.

We saw him, we heard him, we touched him.

It's not just some feel-good fable that we recount in December.

It really did happen.

I was there.

Jesus is God come to earth, and because Jesus has, there is a thrill of hope.

But John continues the one who is life itself was revealed to us and we have seen him.

And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life.

He was the father and then he was revealed.

He was with the father and then he was revealed to us.

Now notice John doesn't say that Jesus has life or gives life.

He says Jesus is life, eternal life.

John declares that to know Jesus is to know eternal life, which means hope brings life, and I believe that's good news for all of us here, but I believe it's probably good news for some of someone specific today.

I gotta believe that there's good news.

It is good news for just about every one of us in here today, but for someone, this is really good news that Jesus is life.

I mean, I know it's the Christmas season.

A lot of people traditionally go to church in December, around the Advent season, around Christmas Eve.

It's the Christmas Eve.

It's, you know, service.

It's what we're supposed to do.

We go to church, we check it off our box and maybe that's why you're here, but I'm not so sure it is.

I think you might be here.

You're watching or listening online because God wants you to know that there is hope because of Christmas.

There's hope for everyone who's weary from trying to prove themselves.

There's hope for everyone who's weary from trying to measure up.

There's hope for everyone weary and exhausted from trying to be good enough.

There's hope that Jesus is here to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

The hope in Christmas means that you are saved by grace.

You don't have to earn it, you don't have to work for it, it's just given for you.

The thrill of hope is knowing that eternal life is yours just by accepting the gift that was given to you by our God on Christmas.

And not only is our hope real, not only does our hope bring eternal life, but John continues, we proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, jesus Christ.

Jesus came on that very first Christmas to be in fellowship, to be in community, to be part of our family and to establish that amongst his followers, the hope is us, hope is us.

It's a fellowship.

It's Christian community.

It's the church in which we can know other people and be known by people, where we can love other people and be loved by people.

It's a fellowship, a community in which everyone college students, business owners, single moms, elderly windows where everyone belongs, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, where we can all belong.

It's a fellowship that gives us hope and, like I said, you might be here because it's the Christmasy thing to do, but I would also guess that you're here because God wants you to see that this is a place where you could belong.

That Madison Church is a place where you could belong.

Madison Church is a place where you can find friendship in the middle of a weary world.

That Madison Church can be a community that will help you discover, or rediscover, that thrill of hope, and that's what church is meant to be.

That's what John writes right off the beginning of his letter that the hope is us.

Look around you, behind you, in front of you, the people sitting around you.

We are the church and we need each other to hold on to hope.

Maybe, in the weariness of all we've been through these past couple of years, you have found yourself asking where is God?

I want to answer that for you.

God is here, god is with you, god is around you, god is working through you and you were never alone.

He is a manual.

He is God with us and even when I felt weary, languishing blah, I look back at my life in 2020, since 2020, and it hasn't been all bad.

Yes, we had a miscarriage, but in 2021, we also had our first daughter, quinn.

She was born and she's healthy and smiley and great.

We also bought a house in 2021, which was a prayer that we had been praying for years and years and years that we would be able to save up enough money for a down payment and be able to afford a mortgage in Madison, wisconsin, and in 2020, with one, god answered that prayer and I really believe that throughout this hard, difficult season and some of the things that I mentioned that I can't mention, that I became a better leader and a more compassionate person because of all I went through.

So even when I look back at my life and I say, how's your soul blah, languishing, I can't look at you and say that God wasn't there, even though I was asking where is God?

God was there.

God was with me, which meant that even though bad things were happening, god was still at work doing some really cool good things around me.

Biblical hope doesn't mean that bad stuff isn't gonna happen to you.

Bad stuff will continue to happen to you because you're a sinful person, you live in a sinful world.

It's just the reality.

Okay, it's never promised that if we just find and follow Jesus that all the bad stuff goes away.

If not, we would all find and follow Jesus very quickly.

Bad stuff will continue to happen, and biblical hope means that, besides that, in spite of the bad things that are happening, we still have something to look forward to.

We can still look forward to God's promises and what he is going to do.

God was with me and God can be with you too.

There's hope for those who need love, there's hope for those who are lost, there's hope for the lonely, there's hope for me and there's hope for you.

And this Christmas, that's what God is offering.

God is offering us all what we need the most hope.

And in the middle of a weary world, he is offering us not just hope, but the thrill of hope, that feeling of anticipation of what God is going to do next.

It's real, it's eternal and it's all around us.

God's prayer.