Tangible Christmas: Be the Hope, Pastor Daniel Reese

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

Thank you, worship team.

So here we are at the first week of Advent and for those of you unfamiliar with Advent,

let me fill you in on what the season is.

It is more than just the holiday season.

It's more than just December.

It's more than just celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Advent is a time where we remember that we are living in what we call the already not

yet.

According to the Bible, there are two instances where Jesus comes to the earth.

The first one has already occurred.

He came as a baby in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life so that he could

eventually be the final sacrifice that was necessary to fulfill the wrath of God.

Our whole timeline is based on his life.

We are currently in 2024 AD, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

It was 25 years ago and before is known as BC, before Christ.

So our whole method of determining what year it is is based off of the life of Christ.

Now there has been a push to eliminate those letters and make it more friendly to our atheist

friends.

So you might hear CE or BCE, the common era or before the common era, but they both revolve

around the time that Jesus came down from heaven and lived amongst us.

That was his first coming.

That's already occurred, but the not yet is his second coming.

We are currently waiting for that to occur.

And when he comes the next time, he's not coming like a helpless baby.

He's coming riding in on a white horse.

He's coming as the victor over the enemy.

He's coming with a big tattoo on his leg.

This is a completely different picture than baby Jesus.

Your whole life, my whole life has been living in the already not yet.

Advent is a time where we celebrate the birth of our Savior, but it's also a time that we

remember that he is coming again and we better be ready for it.

The awesome thing is that we get to be a part of ushering in his second coming.

Matthew 24 says, the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world

as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.

Now the older I get, the more I am ready for that to happen.

I was at a conference recently and one of the speakers said something that struck me.

He was talking about how we now have to this day every village of the world mapped out.

We know where they are.

We know where the churches are.

We know where the believers are and the non-believers are.

We know what languages still need to have the scriptures translated.

And we know approximately how many believers we have right now around the world.

He said that we will be the first generation since Christ that is able to reach the whole

world but chooses not to.

Other generations had an excuse.

They didn't have the technology.

They didn't have the resources.

They didn't know where to go.

We don't have those excuses.

We know exactly where to go.

We have the training available.

We have the resources but we simply just don't have the desire.

And I think sometimes we think of the loss as being somewhere out there overseas and

not think about the loss in our own backyard.

So what we thought we'd do this Christmas, this Advent season is not just celebrate the

first coming of Jesus but really look at what Jesus brings with his second coming and how

we are to continue to live those things out.

So this year we've called this series tangible Christmas with the hope that you and I will

not just learn more about Jesus but actually apply these things to the world around us.

That we will make Jesus's coming tangible to the world around us.

Now our passage this morning comes from Mark chapter 5 and as we read it you might wonder

Mark 5 · chapter mention

what in the world does this have to do with Christmas.

But I'll do my best to put a bow on it as our time goes on.

I'm going to invite Elena up here.

She's going to light our Advent candle, our first Advent candle, the candle of hope.

As she comes to read our passage this morning, we didn't practice this so okay good.

She nailed it.

Thank you Elena.

She's going to read our passage starting in Mark chapter 5 verse 25.

Mark 5:25

If you're able I'd love for you to stand as we honor the Lord's word together.

Is that too tall for you?

I can't get it down.

There we go.

Is that better?

And there was a woman years, there was a woman who had a discouraged of blood for 12 years

and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and no better

but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched

his garment.

For she said, if I touch his garments I will be made well.

And immediately the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed

of her disease.

Let's pray.

Father I thank you for your word and I thank you for awkward texts like this.

And I thank you for Elena for being willing to read it.

I pray Father that you honor her for it.

I pray that you continue to develop the gifting that she has and give her a strong desire

to follow you in all that she does.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thanks Elena.

All right so we have some work to do.

We have some work to do on this text because there's a lot going on.

And just for the record I'm not going to pretend that I understand what it's like to have a

discharge of blood for a day much less 12 years.

I'm not even going to pretend that I have had to deal with a constant inconvenience

for 12 years.

Now I've had broken bones and that's an inconvenience but it was temporary.

I used to struggle with pretty bad migraines about once a week but that seems to be over

for the most part for me.

The closest thing that I could think of that I have experienced where I didn't know if

it would ever end was a few years ago.

I had this ringing.

I had this ringing in my ear that was constant.

For weeks and weeks I had this high pitch ringing in my right ear that would not go

away.

I heard it every moment of the day.

It affected my sleep.

It affected my attitude.

I didn't want to be around people because it just added to the noise that was already

in my head.

I like to think that I'm mentally strong but that made me realize how quickly things can

change because it affected me mentally more than I am proud to admit.

I felt like I was going crazy.

I felt hopeless.

I had been begging God to take that ringing away but it kept going on.

All I could think about was it drove me so insane all I could think about was driving

my truck into a telephone pole.

It was messing with me greatly.

Then one day I was sitting in my office and it was just driving me crazy.

I was trying to work and I sit in my office and it just started raining outside and the

ringing immediately stopped.

Something I need Andy here but something with the barometric pressure was messing up my

head.

I think that's the right terminology.

But from one moment of feeling hopeless to the next feeling relief and things going back

to normal really stood out to me with how quickly circumstances can change.

The woman we just read about had it so much worse than me because I was able to stay at

my house.

I was able to continue to hang out with my family and friends.

I was able to continue to live my life the way I always had.

I just had this inconvenience, this issue.

This woman had been bleeding chronically for 12 long years.

Her condition made her perpetually unclean in Jewish law.

This meant that she couldn't be around other people.

She had to shop alone.

She had to eat her meals alone.

She couldn't go to church or any other gathering.

She had to stand at a distance from everyone else.

If she was married, her husband could have divorced her since she couldn't have children.

If she wasn't married, no man would want to take her as his wife.

She had to announce her unclean status whenever others approached her.

It was a terribly lonely state to be in, socially unacceptable.

Kind of like the walking dead, if you will.

Not a lot of, if any, hope whatsoever in her situation.

When you are hopeless, you tend to get desperate.

When you are desperate, that's exactly what happened to this woman when she heard that

Jesus was coming.

She says to herself, if only I touch his garments, I will be made well.

So she's faced with this philosophical dilemma.

The heart of a dilemma, like most philosophical dilemmas, or questions, is there's a lack

of hope.

Would you steal food in order to feed your family?

That's a desperate situation.

You know that stealing is wrong, but sometimes you get desperate, right?

And ethics go out the window.

This woman knew that she was unclean.

She knew that she wasn't supposed to touch anyone because it would make them unclean.

But she was so desperate and needed something in her life to change that she was willing

to take the risk.

It is interesting to me, though, that she sets her eyes on Jesus's garment.

This is a prime example.

This text is a prime example of where we lose some of the meaning of this text in our English

translations because when we hear that, I think our minds automatically go to just his

clothing.

But what she was referring to is what we read about in Numbers 15.

In Numbers 15, starting in verse 37, it says, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the people

of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their

generations.

And to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.

And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord,

to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you were inclined

to whore after.

So this garment in the original language that she's trying to touch is referred to.

It's what's called the seat seat.

I have a picture of it right here.

You've probably seen this.

You've been around any sort of Jewish person, you've probably seen these, these tassels

that kind of, they put on their belt loops and they kind of hang down.

You can kind of see them there.

Or if you're a rabbi, they're the ends of the robe.

Jews still wear the seat seat to this day.

If you're not a rabbi, you would tie them on your belt loops.

It was a reminder of the law.

So in her mind, she is saying, let me touch the symbol of the thing that declares that

I'm unclean.

Let me touch that.

But this woman was desperate.

Imagine not being touched by family or friends for 12 years.

She had lived for over a decade in a perpetual state of shame.

She was an outcast from society.

She was excluded from all social events.

She was excluded from having her spiritual walk with her community.

She felt like she had nothing to lose.

So she took a big risk.

When she touched the hem of Jesus's garment, she was instantly healed.

Though Jesus became ritually unclean by her touch, she became clean.

And more importantly, whole again.

Now there are a number of ways we can take this passage.

We know that her faith in Jesus is what made her whole.

It wasn't the act of touching.

So we can talk about trusting in the Lord for whatever is keeping us from experiencing

wholeness, which is absolutely true.

We could go that route.

But what I want us to think about this morning is the law.

Because I have to believe that this woman didn't hate the law.

Because if she hated the law, I don't think she would have wanted to touch this particular

piece.

She could have just grabbed his leg.

She could have grabbed his hand, but she wanted to touch the cites.

So let's talk about why the people of Israel needed a constant reminder of God's commands.

Why do they to this day continue to wear cites on their clothing?

Because they're walking in a belief that it's the law that makes them whole.

The law was there to restore what was broken in the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve, once sin entered into the world, were exiled out of the garden, which helps

us understand that sin leaves us and it leads us to exile.

This woman had been in exile for 12 years because the law had declared her unclean.

Jesus didn't hate the law.

In fact, he said he didn't come to abolish the law.

He came to fulfill it.

I think this woman understands that.

He's the fulfillment of that.

The law declares to us that something is wrong.

It declares to us that something is broken.

But what we know is that it's impossible to follow the law because if you break just

one of them, you're breaking all of them.

This woman living in exile for 12 years sees Jesus, sees the reminder of the law and puts

all the hope that she can muster into going after it.

Because here's what sin does.

Sin leads us into exile in four different ways.

This is why God commanded Moses to put the seat seat on all four corners of a garden.

It leads us to four different types of exile.

The first one is obvious.

The first one's obvious because of sin.

There are many that are living in spiritual exile.

Sin is what separates us.

Sins what separates us from a holy God.

When we fail to keep the law, when we fail to honor the Lord with our lives and decisions,

we are walking in sin.

The law is the x-ray that shows us what is broken.

That's what its purpose is, to show us what is broken.

Here's what I need you to hear me say.

There are so many people living in spiritual exile and don't even know it because they

go to church.

There are so many people living in spiritual exile that don't even know it because they

give money to charity or because they remain faithful to their spouse.

All those are good things.

They're all good things, but the problem is they don't redeem.

If anyone you ask the question, how do you know you are a Christian?

How do you know you're a Christian?

Their answer is because I belong to this church, because I belong here, they are living in

spiritual exile.

They're trying to control what is out of their ability.

Our response to the question, how do you know you are a Christian, has to be because I've

placed my faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

He is my savior from my sin.

That has to be our response.

He alone has the ability to bring me into right relationship with a holy God.

So if you are hearing my voice, which should be all of you, and you believe that you have

a right relationship with God, because you give up your Sunday morning for church, I

want you to hear that I believe you're in spiritual exile.

My encouragement to you, that you would pray that God would save you.

To pray that God would open up your spiritual eyes to the reality that you are lost and

without hope.

Sin leads us into spiritual exile.

The next form of exile is emotional.

It leads us into emotional exile.

We can call this anxiety.

We can call this fear.

We can call it inadequacy.

Are you carrying a burden of not being good enough?

Are you carrying a burden of not being able to control what happens tomorrow?

Maybe you're carrying a financial burden.

Maybe it's an addiction.

Maybe it's a constant worry.

I believe that this is one of the areas that Satan likes to work the most, because our

emotions are fickle.

Our hearts are deceptive, and it's so easy to believe the lies that he puts in our heads.

Now I can give you multiple Bible verses to encourage you, such as Matthew chapter 6,

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

where Jesus says, don't worry about tomorrow.

Tomorrow has enough issues.

Don't worry about tomorrow.

Let's just get through today.

Or where Jesus says that God provides for the birds of the air.

You're more valuable than the birds of the air.

Of course, he's going to provide for you.

There's Romans chapter 12 that says that God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

So if you are fearful, you can know that that's not coming from God.

Something else is working on you.

Those are all great verses to cling to as we navigate our emotions.

But I want to challenge you with Philippians chapter 4, where Paul challenges us.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

He says, in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, we forget that

part, don't we?

Present your request to God.

And it says, and God will give you peace that doesn't even make sense.

All your worries, all your fears, all your anxiety.

Petition the Lord with him.

Pray to God with him.

Give him thanks for how he's working in your life.

And God will give you a peace that you just can't even comprehend.

If you are in emotional exile, my challenge will be to pray as often as you worry.

Give every fear, every anxious thought, every moment of doubt to him.

Because I promise you he can handle it.

And I promise you he can do a lot more with it than you ever could.

Give your emotions to God.

The third exile that we face because of sin is physical exile.

I think when we hear physical exile, we automatically go to a location.

We think of the wilderness.

We think of being away from our homeland like a refugee.

We might not think that we are in physical exile, but David sure felt that way.

In Psalm 32, he says, when I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away.

He continues in that Psalm, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me and my strength

was sapped.

If you are physically unwell, you might be living in physical exile.

Is there some sin in your life that you have refused to acknowledge?

Do you feel like you can barely make it through the day and you don't know why?

Now we know because of sin that the bodies that we have been giving are not going to

live forever.

Now I'm not saying that if you confess all of your sins, that all your pain and your

sickness will go away, but I will say that David experienced some intense sickness.

And he had no energy because of his sin.

And maybe you need to give that some thought.

Maybe this morning you need to confess that sin and lay it at his feet and trust that

he will forgive you.

David continues in that Psalm, he says, therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to

you at a time when you may be found.

He's ready to be found.

He's not hiding.

Confess those things before him.

The final exile that sin leads us to is relational.

And I would be willing to bet that everyone in this room has experienced that at some

level.

Broken relationships, strained relationships with family members, the feeling of loneliness.

Maybe it's because of your sin.

Maybe it's because of their sin, but the end result is relational exile.

And you will stay in relational exile.

As long as you let that sin continue to fester.

Until you deal with that sin, you're going to remain in relational exile.

Here's how I want to challenge those of you who might be a little prideful.

Who might be a little prideful when it comes to making things right in our relationships.

I'll use a personal example.

About the course of my life, believe it or not, I have had some strained relationships

and have walked through relational exile.

I would pray through it.

I did the right thing.

I'd pray through it.

But eventually I would come to a place of peace.

I would just say I have peace about that situation.

I was convicted heavily about that comment about a year ago.

I was listening to a sermon by some guy.

I can't remember.

I wish I did so I could give him credit for it.

But I was listening to the sermon and he was talking about this very thing.

And he was sharing his own example of being in a broken relationship.

But he felt peace about it and he attributed it to God.

So he didn't do anything about it.

He felt peace.

He thought in his head, it must be the other guy's fault and God's going to deal with that

person.

So I feel peace.

Then as he was going through this thing, he was reading through Jonah.

And Jonah after Jonah ran from God.

Remember that God commands him and Jonah heads the opposite way.

He runs from God.

But Jonah had so much peace about what he had done that he was able to sleep on the boat.

This is again why we can't trust our emotions because sometimes that peace doesn't come

from God.

It just simply means you're comfortable living in exile.

The peace from God comes when we follow His ways, when we listen to His voice.

So my challenge to you, if you are walking in any sort of relational exile, is to go

to that person, whether it's all their faults or all your fault, it doesn't matter the situation.

Go to that person and confess your sin to them.

Confess any hard feelings that you have had towards them.

Acknowledge your part in this situation.

Acknowledge the part that you had in the broken relationship.

Repent to them and ask them to forgive you.

Then I want you to see what God does in that relationship.

Will it be easy?

Will it be comfortable?

Will it feel natural?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

But it's what we are called to do.

Walking in the wilderness is not easy.

Living in exile is not easy.

Dealing with sin is never going to be easy.

That's why the cross is so brutal.

That's why we can't take our sin lightly.

The bleeding woman had been living in exile on all four levels.

She had no physical contact with her family and friends.

She could not publicly worship in the temple.

She was isolated and alone and lived in a perpetual state of physical pain.

But she found a fourfold healing by touching one of the four corners of Jesus's garment.

And thus she became an example of the messianic redemption that Jesus offers.

That you and I can experience right now when we reach out and touch Him.

So the challenge, the challenge this Advent season is going to be twofold.

The first is that if you are living in exile, if you are living in exile, what is being

offered to you is to return.

And we are able to return when we deal with our sin.

Confess it.

Repent of it.

Seek forgiveness.

When we're talking about spiritual exile, if that made you uncomfortable, if that kind

of made you squirm, if you felt like the Lord was speaking to you, if you had that gut feeling

that something needs to change, my challenge to you is don't ignore it.

Salvation can come to your life today if you call upon the name of the Lord.

This isn't religion, but relationship.

And the Lord is ready to begin that journey with you.

If you're walking in emotional exile and you are overwhelmed by burdens and struggles,

I want to remind you that you were loved enough for God to send His Son to die for you.

You are worthy.

He understands.

He can help you carry that load, trust in Him and not your emotions.

If you're walking in physical exile, consider that it might be because of some sin in your

life.

I will say this, the Lord brought the people out of exile when they returned to Him.

We just got done going through the book of Nehemiah where we saw God restore what had

been broken when they called upon His name.

Finally, if you are in relational exile, consider what you can do to make it right.

Now I don't know about you, but I get real tired of being told you need to be the bigger

person.

Well, they're older than me.

No, you be the bigger person.

Rubbed me the wrong way.

And I'm telling all of us, when it comes to relational exile, you need to be the bigger

person as Jesus came to us to bring us back and to write relationship with the Father,

go to them.

It cost Him everything to leave the presence of glory to come to this earth.

I believe that He will give you the ability to have an uncomfortable conversation.

Just be obedient to what He's calling you today.

But the fact is, the fact is whether we are walking in exile or not, if you are a believer

in Jesus, He calls you to be His disciple.

And so my challenge is be a disciple of Jesus by being the hope that comes from Him.

That's the second challenge.

There are people all around us day after day that are looking to touch His garment.

There are people all around us every single day that are looking for hope.

They are walking in exile and they need someone to walk by, someone that they can grab a hold

of and that someone can be you.

The season, let's not just internalize this.

What can I get out of this?

What can I learn from this?

And let's not make it all about us, but let's offer hope to as many people as we can.

Some ways that you can be the hope to somebody living in exile this week could be including

meeting a need that's outside your immediate circle.

Think about meeting a need outside of your immediate circle.

Who do you know that's going through a rough time?

What need could you meet for them?

Could you express your love and affection to someone and give them hope?

Who in your life receives love by words?

Could you offer someone emotional support, financial support?

How could a week's worth of groceries change somebody's outlook during this season?

A friend of mine gave me some advice several years ago.

She's a counselor.

She lost her husband to suicide.

She gave me some great advice several years ago.

She said that when someone is going through a difficult time, the best thing that you

can do for them is just to sit on the bench with it.

Just listen.

You know, I think sometimes we struggle with, I don't know what to say.

I don't have any advice.

Just sit on the bench with it.

Your ministry could be that of your presence.

Give them the ministry of presence.

Is there someone who is sick that you can go visit?

Maybe they're living in physical exile.

Maybe they're living in emotional exile right now.

How can you offer them hope?

What about our widows?

Are you able to bless a widow with a card?

Are you able to bless a widow by taking them out to lunch?

See, a lot of these things, they don't cost any money.

They just cost us to think outside of ourselves.

This whole angel tree that we have out here, can you offer hope to a family that has every

single one of those families that are represented on that tree have no idea how they're going

to be able to provide Christmas gifts for their children.

They have no idea how they're going to be able to buy groceries for a Christmas dinner.

Do you know how all those needs came to be?

Because for weeks, I had my antenna up.

Our staff had our antenna up.

We were looking for ways that we could offer hope.

And when we have our antenna up, when we're looking for ways to offer hope, the Lord just

continues to provide those things.

We have a mandate from Jesus to carry on His ministry as we are led by His Holy Spirit.

This has to go beyond the walls of this church.

This has to be bigger than ourselves, be the hope to someone.

Share your story about how God has brought hope to you in the midst of your circumstances.

Nobody can argue with your story.

Nobody can argue with what God has done in your life.

I think sometimes we're like, well, I can't share the gospel because what if they ask

me a question I don't know the answer to?

Nobody's going to argue with their story.

Nobody's going to argue with how God redeemed you and changed you, what your life was like

before Him and after Him.

Share your story to give somebody hope.

Every single one of us this week, the challenge is be the hope to somebody that we come in

contact with.

Let's pray and then we'll celebrate communion.

Father, I pray right now that as we remember and celebrate and focus on what you have done

for us, the greatest act of love that we could ever imagine.

I pray that you'll speak to our hearts.

God, there's so many people amongst us that are walking in exile, including ourselves.

Maybe one form or another, maybe all four, we are walking in exile.

And so Father, I pray right now for conviction.

I pray that your voice will be heard.

I pray that you will give us a boldness to walk in obedience.

So Father speak to us.

Make us uncomfortable.

Help us not take our sin lightly.

Help us find healing and wholeness because of you.

So Father, we thank you for the hope that comes when Jesus came down to this earth.

But help us understand and know that that hope doesn't stop when He rose from the dead.

That hope continues on through us as you're spiritless inside of us.

So God, as we take communion, speak to us.

We ask all these things in your name.