Heaven Come Down – Hope is Here

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Today we are in part two of a four or three-part series.

The series is called Heaven Come Down.

And if you missed last week, here's what we said.

We said the Christmas story can be summarized in the most popular verse in the Bible for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son for us, for you, and for me.

That God showed his love by sending Jesus for us.

That's the Christmas story.

Today's message is one of heaven's greatest gifts.

In fact, you just heard it in the video we saw from Children's Cup that we were able to give hope, but Christmas is the reminder that God gives hope to all of those who need it, and it's a gift available to you today.

To get us started today, if you've been a powered part of our church, maybe you've heard this before.

Every summer I do something extraordinary with my two sons that I call mancation.

And it started many years ago, kind of on accident.

My wife was going to be gone for a few days, and I said, Boys, let's go do something.

Like let's use some man time.

And we came up with the name Man Cation.

For the first few years, we did it kind of cheap.

We went to the beach or we went to like an Orlando theme park or something.

But in 2019, something awesome happened.

A really awesome church up in Calgary, which is in Canada.

They called me and said, Would you come up and preach for us?

And it happened to be Memorial Day weekend, 2019.

Well, my boys had just gotten out of school, and they said, When you come, you need to stay an extra couple days because there's a place you need to see called Banff.

I don't know if you've ever seen Banff or heard of Banff.

I had never heard of it up until this point, but it is one of the most scenic, beautiful places I've ever been in my life.

I've been all over the world.

It's way up the list.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

It's one of the most photographed places in all of North America.

I hadn't even heard of it.

So when I looked into it, I thought, oh, this is it.

Like I've got to take my boys with me.

We'll turn this preaching trip into Man Cation, and we won't even call it Canada.

We'll call it Manada, everybody.

It's gonna be awesome.

So we went up there, we ate all the weird food that they eat up there, and we explored places, and I preached on Sunday, and then my boys and I got in the Jeep and we drove.

I want you to see what it looks like there.

This is unbelievable.

It is so breathtaking.

And this was in the summer.

Now, this is important for you to understand, okay?

I want you to try to think like Floridians for just a moment, okay?

I got invited to preach Memorial Day weekend, which is at the end of May.

Think about how hot it is in Florida at the end of May, roughly 2.7 billion degrees here in Florida, right?

So I fly up there with my boys, and this is what it looks like in summer.

But at the end of May, when you could like cook an egg by just dropping it on the sidewalk in Florida, here's what it looked like in Canada.

I told the boys, we are standing on a lake.

Do me a favor, go back because I want you to see this.

See these mountains?

Okay, go back to the picture of us.

It's literally the same mountains.

We're literally standing over one of the most beautiful lakes ever, and the boys loved it.

They had never seen anything like this before.

So they're they're throwing snowballs at each other, they're making angels in the snow, and it was so much fun, it was so cold.

And then there was this really funny moment.

My son Gavin took off running this direction, and as he was running, he ran and kind of jumped down.

And when he jumped down, all the ground underneath him went cracked underneath him.

And I have never seen fear in a person's eyes like I saw it in Gavin's in that moment.

Eyes as big as the state of Texas.

And he goes, Dad, help, help.

And I was like, son, come here.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

I wasn't scared at all.

I didn't think anything was gonna happen, but I you know this.

Sometimes you just gotta be the hero, you know.

And so it's like, son, I grabbed him and I jerked him as hard as I could, and I pulled him into a hug, and I said, Son, when you're with me, you're always safe.

Thanks, Dad, and we hugged, and it was one of the best moments of my dad's life.

Because for a moment, my son thought he was gonna die.

For a moment, he was convinced that he would be a block of ice buried somewhere under the sea in Canada.

It was this amazing moment as a dad where he felt like I rescued him, and in that moment, he felt hopeless, helpless.

Unable to fix his circumstances by himself, he needed someone to rescue him.

I want you to think about this for a moment.

You ever had a moment where figuratively it felt like the ground underneath you was caving in?

You ever you ever put all of your weight, all of your hope, all of your trust into something or someone and they let you down?

You ever had an investment go bad?

You ever have a relationship go bad?

You ever have a marriage end and it wasn't really your fault?

You ever you ever love your kids with all of your heart and they cut and run on you the moment they had the chance?

You ever you ever have a job let you down or a stock underperform?

You ever you ever have life just feel like it's hopeless?

It's out of control, like you can't fix it on your own.

If that's you today or if that resonates with you, the Christmas story is for you because hope is never fully gone.

One of the things I love in the book of John, John is one of four accounts of the life of Jesus that we call the gospels.

And Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when they tell the story of Jesus, it's it's more like factual, it's more like what actually happened.

It's the stories of the shepherd and the wise men and the away in a manger.

It's all of those stories.

John tells the same story and it's more poetic.

It's beautiful how he tells it.

John chapter 1, verse 1 says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

John 1:1

I mean, it's poetic in the way he writes it.

By verse 16, I love how John is translated in the message translation because here's what it says about Jesus.

It says the word, referring to Jesus, became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.

That this is more like not poetic, but I love how he says this.

It's that Jesus, he put on flesh and blood and he moved around us.

Like he became us.

So here's the hope we have in that this Christmas season.

Anything you feel, anything you've experienced, anything you've walked through, anything that feels insurmountable, those things that lead you towards depressive episodes, those things that wake you up at 2 30 in the morning with the heart that's racing out of control, all of those things Jesus understands because of Christmas.

Like, like he came into this earth, he put on flesh and blood, and he moved into the neighborhood, he moved around us.

He gets it.

Some years ago in Germany, there was a medical research doctor who realized that they have all these medical students growing up and becoming doctors, and they were filling all the different needs, except there was a massive gap in one specific area of study that they called geriatric studies.

It's the study of how to help elderly people as they continue to age.

And it's hard to get a 24-year-old residency studying doctor to want to serve in that area.

And so this researcher had this idea.

She came up with this thing that the students had to wear.

She named it the age man suit.

I thought that was a good name.

And the whole idea of the suit was they'd wear the suit for a few days, then it would help them to feel how it feels as you get older.

So the suit did things like they had these yellowish goggles that kind of blurred the sight.

It had things that they wore around their ears that muffled the sound.

It had braces over joints like elbows and knees that made it just a little bit harder to walk.

They had things on their hands that made gripping just a little bit harder.

That they had a Kevlar vest that they wore that made breathing just a little harder.

I think she should have taken it a step farther because then those people would have wanted to move to Florida for no reason, and then they would have wanted to have dinner at Golden Corral at 4 30, but like she's she just like did these things to help these young people understand what it feels like to get older.

But because until you feel it, you can't understand it.

That's the Christmas story.

That Jesus put on flesh and blood for us.

So anywhere you feel helpless or hopeless, here's what you need to hear.

The Christmas story is a reminder that he gets it and he wants to help.

He gets it, he understands what you've gone through, he gets the sleepless nights, he gets the restlessness, he gets all of those things that make us feel hopeless and helpless, and he wants to do something about it.

I love this picture of Jesus.

I love this picture of the Christmas story.

Because the human soul was designed to live with hope.

The human soul was designed not to live helpless and hopeless.

In fact, the the brilliant theologian said this: he said, hope is to our spirits, what oxygen is to our lungs.

Lose hope and you die.

That they may not bury you for a while, but without hope you are dead inside.

Lewis Mead said the only way to face the future is to fly into it on the wings of hope.

Hope is the energy of the soul.

Like without hope, something in you slowly begins to die.

And you can live and you can eke out an existence, but when hope dies, everything in you starts to die around it.

If you've read or heard the story of Dante's Inferno, there's this picture in the story that above the gates that are the entrance into hell, there's a sign above it that reads this abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

This is the picture he has of hell.

It's hopeless, meaning less, helpless, you have no hope.

And I wonder if there's anyone here who would say, like, like I know that that's just a metaphorical picture of what hell is like, but but my life feels like this, like a living hell.

And it's because you've put your feet in fully planted in on something or someone.

You trusted that marriage and they walked out on you.

You gave all of your work energy, you gave the best that you had to the job and they fired you, or they downsized, or they moved on from you.

You invested that money and you trusted that person and they walked out on you and took the money with them.

You you you believed in your family, you believed in your kids, you believed in your sports team, you believed in your kids' sports teams, you believed in my sports team, which is not that good.

Like you believed in things.

And those things tend to let us down.

The ground can crack underneath us.

Here's the question: Is there a hope that can hold you up?

Is there a hope that can withstand the weight and the pressure and the disappointment of this world?

Is there something that you can go both feet in and it's not gonna fall out underneath you?

Well, after many years of doing what I do and working with people, I've noticed that when people walk through difficult, hopeless kinds of situations, there's this pathway.

It's a really dangerous pathway, it's really a slippery slope for them.

And maybe you'll find yourself resonating with one of these places.

If you feel hopeless, the first place many people tend to go is independence.

If I can't trust anybody, well, I'll just trust me.

I'll look out for number one.

I remember Terrell Owens working out in his front yard one time and he said, I love me some meat.

Maybe that's you.

You just feel independent.

And here's the truth there is a place where independence is good in some areas, but I want you to hear this every once in a while, independence runs up against the reminder that you are not in control, doesn't it?

You can be fine, wonderful, life is great, you can be healthy, and then you can get the diagnosis, then you can lose the job, then you can lose the marriage or the relationship or the friendship or the money.

You can lose it, and you're not fully in control.

And this is a hard pill for many people to swallow.

And when this happens, I can tell you the next stage is a little bit of a slippery slope.

We get indignant, we get angry, frustrated, and bitter.

The roots of bitterness take hold and they grow like roots into our heart.

And bitterness has this way of suffocating your soul, making it unable for you to even dream because you're so nearsighted.

And once you get past this level, there's one more level, and it's so dangerous.

It's when you move from indignance to indifference.

Indifference is when you get a case of the so what?

So what?

What am I gonna do about it?

And we just let life tend to happen to us, and so we live these hopeless, dark, desolate kind of lives.

If you can hold on to that idea for just a moment, that's the reason the Christmas story is for you and me.

Some 700 or 750 years before Jesus was born, there was a man named Isaiah who was a prophet.

God would speak to him and show him a picture, and he would he would tell people the picture God had showed them.

The people of Israel, the ones that Isaiah was gonna prophesy to, were walking through difficulties and struggles and hopelessness and helplessness.

And Isaiah prophesies that someday there is coming a person, a savior, a messiah, who's gonna rescue the people from their sins.

Here's how he says it in Isaiah 9:2.

Isaiah 9:2

He says, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.

On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

Here's what he's saying.

No matter how dark and desolate your life seems, there is coming someone who will appear like a great light.

And here's the thing you need to understand about light and darkness.

Light doesn't point at darkness, light invades darkness.

Where there is darkness, when you turn a light on, all the darkness has to flee because light has come.

Friends, that's the Christmas story.

That no matter how dark you feel, no matter how desperate you feel for some sort of help, no matter how depressed you feel or how anxious your soul feels, there is a light available.

His name is Jesus, and when he invades your soul, all the darkness has no choice.

It has to run, it has to flee.

That's what it does.

So the Christmas story is interesting.

Now, imagine your Isaiah.

Okay, this is 750 years before Jesus comes, and he sees this picture, and I believe he sees the Christmas story and what's gonna happen when Jesus comes, but maybe he struggles a little bit with it.

Can we be honest?

Maybe you struggle with it a little bit.

Like you believe in Jesus, but do you believe all the details of the story?

And maybe he's just struggling a little bit with it.

Like here's what he says several chapters down in Isaiah 53.

This is from the message translation.

He says, Who believes what we've heard and seen?

Like who actually believes, like what the picture that I saw?

But who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

I think for a lot of us, we want God to answer our prayers the way we want Him to answer them.

We want God to do for us the things we want Him to do.

And Isaiah's asking the question, okay, so Jesus is coming, he will be the Savior who saves the world from their sins, but who thought it would look like this?

Like, play along for just a moment, okay?

If you didn't know the Christmas story, and I told you the world was dark and desolate and so broken and so in need of rescue, and God was gonna send a savior from heaven named Jesus, how would you write the story?

I would probably write it very differently than the way the story's written.

What wouldn't you?

Like, like if I was authoring the story, I would have Jesus born in Jerusalem, not Bethlehem, a city of influence, not a city that nobody knows of.

I would have Jesus born in a palace, not a stable.

He would probably be born to someone of nobility, like a princess, not to a peasant, a poor girl.

He would be announced to royalty, not to shepherds.

They were seen as nobodies.

They didn't even get to vote because of how low they were on the social totem pole.

If I were God, I would send Jesus to the to the home of a man who's an influencer, not a carpenter.

Like I would want someone who can get the message out about him, not a lowly person who just is a carpenter.

So the question is, why would God do it the way he did it?

I I think the lesson is so easy.

Here's why.

It's because he can.

Like, think about the Christmas story for just a moment.

If God had sent Jesus into a home that was full of wealth, we would look at it the story and say, Well, look what money can do.

If God sent Jesus into a royal home, a royal palace, we would say, look what political power and influence can do.

If Jesus were born into that of an influencer, we would say, look what notoriety can do.

But Jesus is born to a young, poor peasant girl in the backwoods of a little city no one's even heard of.

And from that story, a miracle happens.

And what it does is it points to the fact that God can.

Like He can do anything that you and I need.

Story goes on.

Verse 2 says this.

Isaiah's prophesying.

He says, My servant grew up in the Lord's presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in a dry ground.

He wasn't born to power, he was born vulnerable.

There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.

It's not even like he had good looks to fall back on, he was just average.

It goes on, he was despised and rejected.

Let's just pause there for a moment.

If any of these descriptors sounds like your story, I want you to know that this is the reason we have hope.

That Jesus was despised and rejected.

He empathizes with that which what you feel.

He was a man of sorrows acquainted with deepest grief.

Let me pause here and say this.

If this Christmas feels different for you because there's someone you're missing, if your soul feels incomplete in this moment or in this season, if you find that you are drowning under the waves of depression and grief, he understands.

It says we we turned our backs on him and looked the other way.

He was despised.

And we didn't care.

I thought before, like if I was born in Jesus' time, and I saw what they were doing to Jesus, the one who had done the miracles and who had claimed to be the Son of God, would I have stepped up?

Well, would I have said something in the moment?

And chances are, you know.

You probably wouldn't either, because we are just all conditioned to do what everyone else seems to do.

I want you to see this.

It says, yes.

It was our weaknesses he carried.

It was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins.

But I want you to see this.

This is one of the most powerful verses in the Bible.

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed, all of us like sheep straight away.

Like Jesus does all of this for humanity.

Jesus loves those who will not possibly love him back.

He gives everything, including his own life.

He bankrupted himself of the riches of heaven to step into this world for you and me, and we're like sheep.

Do our own thing.

He goes on and he says, We have left God's path to follow our own, yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

I was reading this and I thought, man, you know, the the Bible uses a lot of agrarian language and farmer language.

It talks about crops and harvesting, and I don't do any of that.

And it often talks about sheep and shepherds, and I don't, I don't really get it.

And then I and then I found this video.

The verse says, We like sheep who have gone astray, which means we think we know better than other people.

We think we know better than God, and we do our own thing.

And it often ends up like this situation.

Check out this video.

This man is pulling a sheep out of some sort of a ditch.

Probably something you did this week.

Um, and I want you to watch what happens.

He rescues the sheep and watch what the sheep does.

Come on, is that your story?

Have you messed up?

Have you tried things your own way and constantly found yourself in the same position?

Ready?

I think this is the reason that the Christmas story is so powerful.

It's the reason the songs we sing at Christmas aren't just songs.

We sing lines like this: a thrill of hope.

The weary world rejoices.

If you were here last week, we said, for God so loved the world.

But but the world means more than the eight plus billion people who called this planet their home.

The world means you.

A thrill of hope.

The weary you and me can rejoice.

In fact, that's my prayer for you today.

That if you came in feeling hopeless, today's the reminder that there is a light that has stepped into the world and pierced the darkness, causes the darkness to scatter and to run.

If you grew up in a more traditional or liturgical style church, maybe you've seen something like this before.

That there are what they call the five candles of Advent.

Advent is an ancient word, which just means the coming or the arrival.

It's the four weeks leading up to Christmas, and we we celebrate the coming or the arrival of Jesus.

One of the candles represents hope.

And it's a reminder that because Jesus came, no matter how dark or difficult your circumstances, you and I have hope.

This candle represents what we talked about last week.

The love of God.

It's the reminder that God so loved the world.

So loved you and so loved me that he did the unimaginable by sending his son for us.

Then there's this random pink candle.

This is what I'm talking about next week.

This candle represents joy.

And because Jesus came, there is this reminder that the light of the world brought with him hope and love, but he also brought joy.

That no matter what your circumstances are, here's a spoiler alert for next week.

No matter what your circumstances, it doesn't even matter because joy doesn't have to do with circumstances, joy is internal.

Joy isn't found based on what's been done around you, joy has been done based on what's been done for you.

Then there's this fourth candle.

This is what I'm preaching about Christmas Eve.

That the promise of Christmas and the promise of Advent is there is a peace available to you that passes all human understanding.

That no matter what you're walking through, you can walk through it with joy and hope and love and peace.

In fact, let me just say this again.

Sometimes I feel like a salesman, I'm like, hey, invite your family and friends to church.

Everybody needs peace right now.

Have you watched the news?

There was another massive shooting last night dominating the news cycles this morning.

The world lives restless and needs peace.

Peace also isn't based on circumstances.

Peace isn't found in security or money, peace is found in a person.

Jesus.

And then there is this fifth candle, the white one.

It's often referred to as the Christ candle.

The reason it's white is it represents the purity of Christ.

And this candle would be lit on the night of Christmas Eve at midnight.

So as Christmas Eve turns to Christmas Day, it would be lit for this.

And here's the reason it's it's lit then.

When the people, the church founding fathers, kind of decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25th, we don't exactly know what day Jesus was born.

If you Google search it, you'll find somebody who claims to know.

Spoiler alert, they don't know.

Like we don't know what day Jesus was born.

But the reason they picked December 25th is this.

They believed that at that time, that day was the coldest, darkest day of the year.

And into that coldness and darkness came a light.

And light doesn't just reflect the darkness, light pierces and it causes the darkness to run.

Here's what I need you to get.

If you came to church today and you feel hopeless, if you came to church and you feel helpless, like the ground underneath you is cracking under your feet, I came to tell you the Christmas story is that there is a light who has come.

That no matter how dark and desolate you feel, help is on the way.

That no matter how difficult your circumstances, you have a hope that anchors your soul, Hebrews chapter 6 says that no matter the wind and the waves and the storms of life, there is something grounding you, and it's not a thing, and it's not something you can own.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

It is a person whose name is Jesus.

So what would it look like if today you walked in feeling helpless and hopeless?

What if today you walked out with a light in your soul, this reminder that our hope has come and it's found in Jesus?

Would you bow your head and close your eyes at all of our locations today?

So Jesus in this place.

We bring to you our hopelessness, we bring to you our helplessness, and we thank you for the reminder that you put on flesh and blood, you stepped into our world, which means you empathize, you understand, you get what we're walking through.

But you're not content just to know what we're walking through.

You can help, you can rescue, you can fix.

So, Jesus, in this place, we declare our need for you.

Would you step into those hopeless situations and would you bring hope?

Would you step into those moments that feel dark and desolate and depressive?

And would you shine your light?

Jesus, may we walk out today feeling different because our hope isn't found in what's happening around us.

Our hope is found in you.

So we love you.

We thank you for that, God.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed at all of our locations.

Maybe you came to church today and you've never experienced that hope for yourself.

Maybe that means you've never made the decision to follow Jesus, or maybe you just feel like you've walked away.

In either case, if today you want to make the decision to experience Christmas and to follow Jesus, I want to give you a moment to do that.

If that's you, you say, Jason, I need to decide to follow Jesus right now.

I'm gonna ask you to have three seconds of courage and raise your hand right now.

Come on at all of our locations if that's you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Wow, wow, thank you.

So many.

This moment's between you and God, but I'm gonna ask you to do something courageous.

When I pray this prayer, don't just think the words in your mind.

I want you to pray it out loud and I want you to mean it with your heart.

I want you to know this you won't be praying alone.

Our whole church is gonna pray out loud with you because that access nobody prays and nobody stands alone.

So, everybody, would you pray this with me and repeat this after me?

Say, Jesus, I give you my life.

Save me, change me, make my life new.

Jesus, I need you to be my savior.

Bring hope to my life.

I confess I've sinned and I need your forgiveness.

So, Jesus, I make this decision.

I choose to follow you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Church fam, come on, let's celebrate those who made that decision.