Finding Hope in the midst of Despair - December 1, 2024

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Praise the Lord. I'm so glad you're here today.

It's a great day that we have to worship because it's the beginning of the season of Advent.

And on the season of Advent, it really gears us up for what's coming ahead.

And it's interesting for more liturgical churches, or I don't know if you want

to say proper churches. That doesn't sound right.

But it's the beginning of the new Christian year, I guess I should say.

And so this marks day one of the church new year as they look ahead.

And there's something about a new year that's always great.

And for the church, for our church anyway, there's kind of a change in our tone

or our rhythm of worship.

And, you know, we have these candle lightings. We have these different things

that happen, you know. We're having a candy sacking.

Our young adults are kind of taking the lead on that with some of our board

members to create these sacks of candy and goodies in there that we'll give out.

And if you'd like to help toward that, there's a sign-up sheet out there.

We could always use help with that.

And, you know, we have these special services like a Christmas Eve candlelight service.

All these different things signal the start of something new,

a new life, and it all points to the culminating factor of our church year,

and that is the birth of Jesus.

And then that special season from when we celebrate Christmas all the way to

when we celebrate the Savior who gave His life for us, it's special times, special moments.

And in this Advent moment, we have one candle that we lit today.

And as the Kirsch family said, this is the candle of hope.

And today we do celebrate the hope that is found in Jesus Christ.

And I think it's fitting today that it's just one little single candle that's

burning, one little candle that is attempting to put light into darkness.

Have you ever felt like that before? Like, oh, Lord, I feel kind of like Elijah

felt after the battle on Mount Carmel, you know, I'm the only one out here trying

to shine this little light of mine in a dark world, in a world of despair.

And of course, we know that God kind of did a little bit of correcting with

Elijah there and said, you ain't the only one, buddy.

I have reserved many, many others. But it's a single solitary light that I hope in our own lives,

when we're faced with darkness, when we're faced with moments of despair,

that we can look and remember this one little light that shines.

One little candle that burns, maybe even in your own life, is just one little

flicker of hope that you have.

And maybe it's that one little flicker of hope that you can just hold on to.

And I know that us as believers in Jesus Christ, we realize and we recognize

that things don't always go as they should,

that things aren't always as they ought to be, that there is,

in fact, brokenness in our world, that there is, in fact,

sin in our world that causes God's plans to be derailed, that causes us in our

thinking, even in our best intentions, maybe to throw a little wrench in the

gear works of life sometimes.

And so we realize that we're kind of living in this tense moment, in this tension.

Sometimes we feel it. It's like, okay, God, I know you want to do this in the

world, but I really want to do this in the world. and we're kind of stuck in

this in-between moment.

And I had a friend that plays a guitar reminded me that tension is good.

Tension is good. Now, tension can be healthy.

When you want to play a guitar, you have to have those strings tuned just right.

It means there has to be just the right amount of tension in those strings for them to be played.

And, you know, I think about that with regard to life, and I know that we are

people that are people of hope. And even in the tense moments,

even in those moments where we're tempted to despair, we can have trust in God.

And I want to remind you today that we who have Christ, we are people of hope

because we are people who know who God is.

And we are people of hope because we are people that know who God has always been.

And we are people of hope because we know who God continues to be and who God

will continue to be. What I'm saying is, folk, we're people of hope because

we trust in a God who gives us hope.

And I pray this morning as we look at these different things that we have to

cover, the hope that God has given you will stir up inside you.

The hope and the trust that you have in God will continue to grow.

You know, we live in the reality that things aren't as God really planned them to be.

And in the midst of all the brokenness sometimes that we find ourselves or our

loved ones in, We can trust that even in this reality, that God is still with us.

And maybe even as his beautiful instruments with the tension that life brings,

he's going to play a beautiful song in your life.

He's going to make a great symphony out of your brokenness and your troubles.

He's going to create this masterpiece within you in the midst of your tense situation.

And in doing so, each one of those things, he's going to bring hope to somebody else.

Not only to yourself. And so this morning, as we think about this hope and that

we are promised hope, just like in the reading this morning in Jeremiah,

we are promised that one will come to set things right, the Lord,

our righteousness, the Lord, the righteous one.

We can trust in the hope that the righteous one brings this morning.

And so we're reminded of this promised hope in Psalm 25, which is our text this morning.

Psalm 25, verses 1 through 5.

Psalms 25:1–5

I'd like you to hear the word of the Lord this morning.

In you, O Lord, my God, I put my trust.

I trust in you. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those

who are treacherous without cause.

Show me your ways, O Lord. Teach me your past, guide me in your truth, and teach me.

For you are God, my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from old.

Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways according to your

love. Remember me, for you, Lord, are good.

Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, he instructs sinners in his ways.

He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

All the ways the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. We read five more verses than I

intended, but Lord, it's good because that is the text that you've given us today.

Father, thank you for your grace, for your mercy. Thank you for the hope that you provide for us.

And Lord, we just submit ourselves to you in reflection of your word today in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, I want you to know this morning, there's hope, even for this preacher up here.

There is hope. And first and foremost, that hope is found in a connection with God.

We think about what the Psalms are. The Psalms are created not just to give

voice for what the Psalms were feeling, were going through, but really to make

a space of connection with God.

I don't want to say necessarily a safe space because it wasn't always a safe space.

People cried out in the Psalms and lamented times, just crying out because their

situations were not safe, their situations were horrible.

But when we think about the various kinds of Psalms, there's times when you

read the Psalms and it's just praising God.

Oh, God, I praise you for creating this universe that we lived in.

I praise you, God, for what you've given me, how you've saved me,

how you've taken care of me.

Sometimes there's hymns that are in the Psalms. They're just declaring the qualities

and attributes of God in a great praise to him to say, God, you are God,

and I know who I am in relation to you.

We think about the thanksgiving psalms, the psalms where we just are pouring

out our heart to God. We see that in the Psalter here.

We see psalms of remembrance, psalms of wisdom.

We see royal psalms that talk about not only the royalty of the person that's

writing the psalm, but also the royalty of God himself.

We know that this hope that we find is in this connection that we have with God.

And folks, I don't care what you're going through. If you read through the Psalms

long enough and there's enough of them in there, you can find something in there that connects with you.

Just like a song on the radio, some of them you're like, oh,

turn this radio station, man, this song stinks.

I hate this song. But you might find one that you really connect with.

And so you're just singing to the top of your lungs as you're cruising down the highway, right?

And people are looking at you like, does he need medical attention or is everything okay?

I mean, sometimes they just connect right there with us.

And when we think about what songs do, what Psalms do, they connect with us

because it shows us that we're like everybody else. We're human.

We struggle. We go through things.

But even as we go through things, there's still hope in the Lord.

There's still hope in God.

We think about Psalm 25, where we've read from today.

This is attributed to King David. And Psalm 25 is an acrostic poem.

It means in the Hebrew, each of those letters that begins the verses,

it starts with like A, B, C, D.

Of course, that's English, but not in the Hebrew, it's Aleph and so on.

And so when we think about.

This. Why did they do that? Well, because they wanted people to remember it.

What do we do at Crosstix? Why do sometimes preachers make all their sermon

points spell a word or spell some kind of phrase? It's because we want you to remember.

We want you to remember what's going on. The Psalms is like that.

Why do we want to have these things to be memorized?

Well, quite simply, it makes a space so you can connect with God.

It makes a place where you remember the Word of God, And so you say,

oh, yeah, God wants to meet me here in this verse.

He's got something to give me. He's got something for me.

And so I want you to know, you can connect with God, especially when you connect

with God through His Word.

And that's what we have today is this connection.

And, you know, perhaps the Psalms not only help us to connect with God so that

we can see that hope, but hope can also be found in a life with God.

I want to tell you, if there is a connection you have with God,

it's going to lead to life. I remember what Jesus said in John 10.10,

the thief comes only to kill, to steal, and to destroy.

But Jesus said, I have come to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly.

If we have a connection with God, then there is life that can be had as well.

And we can have hope because we have life with God.

In Psalm 25 here, it talks about the events that shaped David's life as he's going through.

It's not just like a one-time event. Like, I'm writing this psalm because King Saul tried to kill me.

There are those psalms in there, but not necessarily this one.

But it's accumulation of everything that David's been through,

expressed in this psalm here, this Psalm 25.

And it's all these events that speak of the totality of living a life with God, the ups and downs.

And I don't know about you, but I kind of got a little tongue-tied starting

to read this from the NIV, because I learned a song that goes from the King

James Version, I'm not going to necessarily sing it, but I will quote it to you. How about that?

Unto you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

Oh my God, let me not be ashamed. Let not my enemies triumph over me.

And when we think about the power of this, it means that when we have life with God,

it's not just a one-time event where we had a good time in church together and

maybe we came down, we gave our life to God and an altar of prayer,

or we came down, we just gave everything to him because we knew that God needed

all of us because we were holding back.

Those are great experiences, but God wants more than just a one-time experience with you.

That's why he gives you life and breath. And that's why you wake up in the morning

because he's not done with you yet. He's got a plan for your life.

And if we're going to connect with God, we're going to have a life with God.

We know that's going to look at the span of our entire life.

We're going to see how God worked on us before we became gods.

We're going to see and have hope in how God is going to use us as we submit

ourselves to God. You see, when we think about hope, it's not just a wish of

what things will be like.

It can be that. But hope is seeing what God calls you to be like and what God wants you to do.

When we think about Advent, Advent is not just about one Sunday,

but it's a series of the whole church year leading up, pointing to Christ and

really seeing that God is always stories about you exercising your faith in him.

Living your entire life out in faith.

And for us as a body of Christ, for us as the church to live out our faith together

as we reach out to others, as we serve others, as we share the good news,

and of course, as we fellowship together.

I want you to know that as we have this connection with God,

as we grow in our life with God, That can happen because of this third point here this morning.

In the midst of our waiting, in the midst of this tension between what is and

what should be, and the beautiful music that's played in that tension,

we can find hope because we surrender to God.

And in that surrendering, we are transformed by God.

In the opening verse, Psalm 25, again, in you, O Lord, my God, I put my trust.

David doesn't call on anyone else.

Oh, mama, help me. I need your help, mama.

Papa, please come to me and show me the way. It's none of that.

He says, unto you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

What is your soul? It's the very inmost being of who you are.

It's that part of you that lasts for all eternity.

It's that part of you that God wants to deal with. It's the inner core of who you are.

David cried out to God and to God alone unto you, O Lord, do I lift up my innermost

being of who I am. Talk about surrender.

Talk about trust in God.

David wasn't holding anything back. David knew that he was admitting he doesn't know everything.

David knew that he was admitting that he wants to know God in new and better and different ways.

David's willingness to give himself to God and to be transformed really was

an expression of what we read in verses 8 through 10 here.

Again, in Psalm 25, good and upright is the Lord.

Therefore, he instructs sinners in his way. He guides the humble in what is

right and teaches them his way. In verse 10, all the ways of the Lord are loving

and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.

David was surrendering himself because he knew the character of God.

And he knew he wanted that character of God to be his character as well.

He lifts up the innermost being of his soul to God.

He says, I want to reflect who you are, God. I know who you are.

We think about God and how he transforms us.

Reminds us that that transformation leads to action. So if God is good and upright,

what does he want us to be?

Good and upright. Now that doesn't mean, you know, sitting up in bed all the

time, but I'm talking morally, to be morally pure, to live a life of holiness.

I'm glad that all of you are sitting up today because you already know,

have a first step of what it means to be upright.

That you're awake and you're alive and you're looking for what God is wanting you to do.

God is good and upright. He wants you also to be good and upright.

It says, God guides the humble in what is right.

The Lord, our righteous, will show us what righteousness is all about.

That right standing with God, that doing what is right in God's eyes,

that's what we want to be reflected in our lives. That's what David wanted.

We said, unto you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul?

He wanted to live in the ways of righteousness.

And if you know about David's life, if you go back in the Old Testament and

read, you see he always wasn't the perfect example of righteousness.

But yet the scripture still declares that he was a man after God's own heart,

that he sought out the character and the qualities of God, that he wanted those

to be reflected in his life.

Folks, we can see from David's life that there's a great grace and there's a

great mercy that's available to everyone.

So we can thank the Lord, and that stirs up hope in our heart.

We know that God loves the faithful. He is loving and he is faithful.

So, folks, are we going to be that way?

If we want to live as people that are good and upright, we're going to walk

and be guided and humbly in what is right.

If we're going to be loving and faithful, well, that's going to stir up hope

within you because you're trusting God.

We want to be a people of hope, folks, in the midst of despair.

When everyone is saying doom and gloom, doom and gloom.

We can say grace, mercy, peace, and love because our hope is not in our circumstances.

Our hope is in the one who is above and greater than our circumstances, and we can trust him.

But how do we cultivate this hope? How do we really stir this up,

plant it in our life, and help it to grow?

How do we nurture it along, especially when the world around us,

like I said, seems to give you so many reasons for despair?

I still chuckle as I look back at news clips from before the election versus

after the election and all the things that were supposed to happen once a certain person was elected.

I haven't seen any of that happen. I haven't seen the gloom and doom that they spoke of.

I haven't seen nearly as much as was predicted.

I haven't even seen some people moving out of the country yet as was promised.

Perhaps they're waiting until January. I'm not quite sure. Pray they find Jesus.

So how do we cultivate hope in our lives? Well, the first part is what I just

spoke of, and that's surrender.

Again, in verses 1 through 3, unto you, O Lord, do I put my trust. I trust in you.

Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come to those

who are treacherous without cause.

Like David, we have to have our hope fully placed in God.

It doesn't mean we ignore the realities of the world. Hey, we know there's still Satan.

There's still an enemy that works against God and his people.

We still know that things don't work like they're supposed to work because of

the brokenness of our world.

But even in that brokenness, we can find some beauty. Even in that brokenness,

we can find how God is sovereignly working and bringing about goodness,

in the lives of people, how God is even using you to bring about redemption

in other people's lives, to bring hope to situations that seem hopeless.

Folks, I want you to understand when you give, and I know we have a ton of offerings.

We could have a special offering every single Sunday.

We won't, but I'm just saying we could. I guess every offering really is special,

but we think about all the needs when you give,

how that blesses other people in nations where the dollar is still worth a lot

more than their currency, and how when that help is sent through the Church

of the Nazarene, how it brings about a great blessing.

I'm still amazed when we give those nickels, dimes, quarters,

and the alabaster offering pennies, how all that change adds up and it helps

people build locations, build structures in other countries.

How some of that money has even come back to the United States to help older

churches that are aging, that are in need of repair, to continue to be a single

shining light in a dark world.

So when we think about what it means to surrender to God, it means we give him

everything. Palms down.

We say, God, I'm trusting you

and your goodness and your mercy to do whatever you would want with me.

This morning, have you surrendered completely to God?

Have you given him everything? I don't mean just your sin and brokenness.

He'll take that and he'll deal with that. He'll bring about redemption in your life.

But that true redemption comes when you've given everything to God,

when you dedicate your life to God.

That doesn't mean you're necessarily going to become a preacher or go on the

mission field or this, that, or the other thing, but it means that you say,

okay, God, my life is yours. Take it.

Now you take the wheel and you direct my life and where I should go.

We can also cultivate hope in our life by seeking guidance.

Again, back to the scripture in verse four, show me your ways,

O Lord, teach me your paths.

Part of surrendering to God is to say, I don't know everything, God.

I don't have it all figured out, and I need you.

That can be humbling. For some, it can be humiliating.

But sometimes some people are in need of humiliation in order to bring them

to the point to where all they can see is their need for God.

We think about seeking guidance. We are called to humbly seek God's direction,

acknowledging that His ways are not our ways, that his plans are not our plans,

but we should submit ourselves to those plans.

It's that posture of learning and openness that is necessary to cultivate that

hope within you, to say, God, I just need you to pour that into my life.

When that happens, when we seek God's guidance, he begins to teach us about his character.

He begins to show us and develop that character within us, God's character.

Remember, and I've already read it before in 6 through 8, the psalmist reminds

us of his goodness, God's goodness.

About God's love, we're reminded about his faithfulness, that God is one who

never leaves us nor forsakes us, that he's a friend that sticks closer than

a brother, that God will be there with us.

We remember that those attributes of God come from time being spent with him

if we want to develop those in our lives.

Now, I know what they say, don't pray for patience because then life gets difficult, right?

I'm going to say life's always difficult, but whose vehicle are we riding in through life?

If we're riding even on the best roads, some backcountry roads,

there's always going to be bumps. I don't care how good your shocks are or your tires or anything.

You're always going to hit some good potholes out there.

But it pays to have an experienced driver leading the way, doesn't it?

You want to make sure that we are with God when we're going through the toughness

of life, as He does develop that patience.

We think about the fruit of the Spirit that comes from a connection with God,

life with God, fully surrendered to God, as God develops that love, peace, joy, patience.

All those fruit of the Spirit in our life, when we think about what it means

to cultivate hope, all that wells up with hope.

Well, excuse me, all of that wells hope up within us because we know,

we have confidence that God is doing something in our lives.

And that as Philippians 1 says, he will be faithful until that work is completed.

God starts something in you. He's going to make sure it gets done.

There's one thing I hate is when I tell my kids to go do something,

they did a little bit and they say, okay, I'm done.

And I come and inspect and it's not even halfway done. That drives me bananas.

Get over here and finish it.

Man, we missed a trash pickup a couple weeks ago. That drives me bananas.

The same time every single day, but when the little can doesn't get out there,

they're not going to pick it up.

They're not going to come to my yard and go and get my trash can and put it

out there. It's a half-finished job.

God's not like that, though. He's going to finish the work that he started within

you. I want you to have hope in that.

What evidence do you have of that? Well, it's the fruit of the Spirit that's

being developed in your life.

You might be patient, but maybe you can still see there's some more room for

patience to be developed in your life.

You can be loving and kind, but something's going to happen in your life that's

going to show you need a little bit more love and a little bit more kindness in your life.

We think about all these things that work together.

God's not done with you, so don't give up hope in yourself. Folks, we might stumble.

We might fall. I don't believe we have to fall. I don't believe we have to stumble.

But sometimes life gets dark, and we need to look out for this little flicker

of light so we can see the way that God is leading us.

Sometimes that way is brightly lit up like a super highway at night.

Other times, it's like your headlights are barely even working out on some dirt

road out in the country, and you're just going slow trying to find your way.

But don't give up trying to find your way.

Hope in God, because he is bringing about a great work as you're remembering his character.

If we're going to continue to cultivate hope, the last point this morning is

this, and that is from verse 10, act in faith.

All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keeps the

demands of his covenant.

That's a powerful verse, that God is always loving, that God is always faithful

toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. He didn't just say benefits.

The psalmist just didn't say blessings, but he said demands.

But I love what Jesus, the spin he put on following him.

He said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me or learn from me,

for my yoke is easy and the burden is light.

Hey, if we're yoked up with God, you guys know what a yoke is?

Not talking about the egg, okay? Not an egg yolk.

But if you go to Pueblo Lindo in McCall, that's a Mexican food restaurant as

you're going out toward New Meadows, right?

They have a yoke right there in the Mexican food restaurant.

I've been tempted so many times to say, hey, can I borrow that? I'm preaching a sermon.

But you know, it's this big wooden thing that they put on two oxen or two cows,

and they're hooked up together so they can pull the load together and have more power doing it.

What Jesus said is, hey, I'm connected with you.

Remember we talked about having connection with God. You're living a life with

God. And so you're not pulling all the weight of this life by yourself. If you.

It's not burdensome. It's demanding. You have to take a stand.

You have to stand for what's right.

You're not just going to coast through life, but God is with you right through it.

Jesus is with you, helping you pull the weight in whatever circumstance that you're in.

He just needs you to act in faith, to trust him, to say, God,

I know if I do these things your way that it's going to work out.

It may be difficult, could be easy, but I'm just going to go with you, God.

Hope is not passive, but hope spurs us to action, to live out these qualities of God.

Folks, I want you to know, God calls us to be good.

God calls us to be upright, to live a pure and a holy life.

God calls us to be loving and to reflect his attribute of being faithful.

And thank you for your faithfulness to attend worship this morning.

But I want us to know that Psalm 25 is a reminder that we worship God and that we can trust in God.

And in this Advent season, we're waiting.

Boy, I know the kids are waiting for Christmas morning to tear open those presents

as they start appearing on the tree that hope will build.

I want us, just like the children, to have that excitement, that enthusiasm

to begin to well up inside us.

Not necessarily as we're looking to open the gifts on Christmas Day,

but as we look to this new church year especially as to what God's going to

do within us, as to what God is going to do through us,

as to what we're going to partner with God to see accomplished in our own lives,

but in the life of this congregation here.

Advent season is a great time to look back and reflect. You know what you do

at New Year? You look back and you reflect on the year that's gone before.

Part of that is saying, thank you, Jesus, that I'm through those trials.

Thank you, Jesus, that I don't have to look back at 2024 anymore.

We'll say that in about a month or so, right?

But we also get to look forward with expectation. They have these things,

I'm told, called resolutions that people write down at New Year's and a lot

of times break in the first week.

We have goals that we set, and we want to see those accomplished.

Advents this time will reflect on where we've been with God,

but where God wants to go with us.

We think about this little light.

What little light is flickering in your heart this morning? What little hope do you have?

Maybe God's called you to something great, something that's beyond you.

It means it's going to have a lot of faith to get you from point A to point

B to complete the journey that God has you on.

But follow the little light, the little light of hope that says, hey, this way.

You know, Jeremiah was speaking when he said, the Lord, our righteous one is going to come.

He was thinking about the hope that would come several hundred years later to

bring deliverance to his people, the one that would come to set everything right.

He was thinking about Jesus, the Lord, our righteous one.

And it may have seemed impossible with Israel in captivity that things would

be made right, but yet one came, and we're going to celebrate that one.

Folks, remember, hope is not passive, it's active, and God is calling us,

his people, to be the hope of Christ to our world, to be that little light that

shines in their darkness to show them the way out to the light of Jesus Christ.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy of today's sermon,

as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today on our church's

website, www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.