Today, we are all still waiting in hope for the Lord. (Ps 33:20) We all have longings and dreams still to be fulfilled. In some ways, that’s the definition of hope: waiting for something to be fulfilled. Paul says to the Romans, ‘hope that is seen is no hope at all.’ (Rom 8:24) But hope is not something vague and unsubstantial; it is energy and power to keep us going steadily and steadfastly towards the goal, the dream. Paul goes on to say, ‘if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.’ (Rom 8:25) Advent is a time when we learn to wait patiently, opening the doors of the calendars with alert expectancy, with growing anticipation, with excitement and joy.

Advent, I think, is an easier time for us than others, because there is a definite timescale involved. We are counting down to December 25^th. We know when the Christ child is going to arrive!

That first Christmas, no one knew that. And no one knows when the Lord will come back again. No one really knows when the Lord will step in and fulfil His promises to us. Waiting is not easy in those circumstances, when we really don’t know the timescales. That’s why so many of the Psalms ask God, ‘How long?’ The psalmist in Ps 6:3 says, ‘My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?’ David, in Psalm 13, says, ‘How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?’ (Ps 13:1-2) When you are going through trials and sorrows, suffering and anguish, it can be the not knowing ‘how long?’ which makes them particularly difficult to bear. But hope says to us, ‘you may not know how long, but you know the One who has made the promise and He is faithful.’ The certainty of God’s character acts as an anchor for our souls. (Heb 6:19)

Hope can be an anchor for us, the thing that roots us in God, trusting that He who has promised is faithful. The One who sent His Son at just the right time (Gal 4:4) will fulfil His word to us at the right time. We may face uncertain timescales, but our times and our very lives are in His hands.

The hope of the Messiah is one of the great themes of the Old Testament. God’s people were told that God would send a deliverer to rescue them and they were longing for this deliverer. When the New Testament opens, there had been the long period of four hundred years from the last word in the Old Testament, the so-called ‘silent years’, when it seemed that God was doing nothing. Yet still, hope was keeping the people of God going. Then, out of nowhere, it seemed, God sent angels to Zechariah and to Mary and spoke to Joseph in a dream, all telling them of the special children to be born. Zechariah, at the birth of John, his son, rejoices: ‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.⁶⁹ He has raised up a horn of salvation for us  in the house of his servant David ⁷⁰ (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago.)’ (Luke 1:68-70).

Mary rejoices in the fulfilment of God’s promises: ‘He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful ⁵⁵ to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.’ (Luke 1:54-55)

Simeon, when Jesus is presented at the temple, says, ‘For my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹ which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: ³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”’ (Luke 2:30-32) All of these people were fully aware of God’s promises and rejoiced because they were able to see the fulfilment of these promises and participate in God’s great story and salvation. These people were all very different. Simeon, and Anna the prophetess, were very old. Zechariah was probably quite old: certainly, he and his wife, Elizabeth, were past the age when they could reasonably expect to have children. Mary and Joseph were younger, probably still teenagers. No matter what their age or circumstances, however, they were fuelled by hope and they had to walk by faith. They show us all that no matter what our age or circumstances, we too can be fuelled by hope and walk by faith.

Advent is a time of anticipation, as we look forward to remember the coming of the Christ child. In remembering that, however, we also look ahead to the rest of the story of salvation. We look ahead to Jesus growing in wisdom and stature, growing in favour with God and man. (Luke 2:52) We look ahead to His ministry of healing and teaching and preaching. We look ahead to His death: why else do we think about those gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh at Christmas time? We look ahead to His resurrection. All these things are essential elements in the gospel story and many of our Christmas songs and carols keep this balance, not simply focussing on the birth of Jesus, but also what else He went on to do. And Advent, that time of coming, of arrival, always looks ahead too to the completion of the story, to the part which is not yet fulfilled: the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are still waiting for the ‘day of the Lord’ which will come like a thief in the night. (1 Thess 5:2) We are still waiting for the Lord to come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God. (1 Thess 4:16) We are still waiting to be with the Lord forever, for that marriage feast with the Lamb. Paul urged the Thessalonians to encourage each other with these truths (1 Thess 4:18), and hope is the fuel that helps us to do that.

The opposite of hope is discouragement and despair, and it is so easy for these things to be the predominant factors in our lives. We are discouraged so often because we don’t see what God is doing. We are called to live by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7), but it is very hard at times to believe in the invisible.

Naomi, in the book of Ruth, is how we so often feel when we cannot see God working, when we are waiting for His promises to be fulfilled. Naomi had travelled with her husband and two sons to Moab during a period of famine in Israel. There, she had gained two daughters-in-law, but her husband died shortly after they arrived there and within ten years, both her sons died. (Ruth 1:1-5) Now Naomi was left alone in a foreign land, a widow, and she felt very bitter. She planned to return to Israel, for she heard that the famine was over, but she was totally discouraged. When she got home and people greeted her, this was her response: “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. ²¹ I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (Ruth 1:20-21) Naomi meant ‘pleasant’; Mara meant ‘bitter’. Naomi felt that there was nothing good left for her; she was disillusioned and hurt. We can often feel like this when it seems that our plans fall apart and we don’t understand God’s ways. We may well feel the Lord has afflicted us, that He has brought misfortune upon us, and our natural reaction is to ask God ‘why?’ Why has this illness come upon us? Why has this trial come? Why did God let this tragedy happen? When these things happen, we can be like Naomi and can allow discouragement to erode hope, but hope is actually the thing that can keep us going through those times of confusion and hurt.

Paul reminds us of this in Romans 5:1-5, urging us to glory in our sufferings because suffering produces character, and character, hope. Hope is an alert expectancy that God has not finished with us yet. The ‘now’ – with all its suffering and misunderstanding and sheer heaviness – is not the final story. Advent reminds us that what we see is not the whole story. At the beginning of December, we do not see Jesus. We see what everyone else sees around us: a world in darkness, a world struggling with poverty and injustice and fear and despair. We hear the news about Brexit and wonder what 2019 will bring. We read the news about crime and mental health issues and the NHS in crisis and we may feel bewildered. But hope reminds us that this is only part of the story.

. Isaiah prophesied during a time of doom and distress (Is 9:1), but through God’s Spirit spoke out words of hope: ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.’ (Is 9:2) At Advent, we proclaim these words again by faith: that we are looking ahead to Christmas, when the Light of the World stepped from heaven to our world, when the Son of God put on human flesh and came to rescue us.

Dave continued our look at hope this evening, basing his sermon on Is 40:25-31. Hope helps us to cope with all the seasons of our lives. No matter what the season, the single most important attitude we can have is hope, for hope offers us a confidence (Biblical hope is not synonymous with ‘I wish’, but is a steadfast confidence in God.)

Hope ultimately rests on the fact that God is in control. Without this hope,we easily become depressed and discouraged. Hope helps us in different ways:

1. I can get started. Hope is like a starter motor, which helps us to be motivated and to get going every morning! Our attitude matters and hope helps us to be plugged in to God’s eternal purposes, adding meaning and purpose to our lives.
2. I can live with whatever burdens are in my life. Paul knew all about pressure and feeling overwhelmed (see 2 Cor 1:8-9), but he also learned how to endure and how to rely not on his own strength but on God’s.
3. I can go on. Florence Chadwick, the Channel swimmer, once failed in a swimming attempt because the fog obscured her vision of the shore. When she attempted the swim again, she succeeded because she did not let the fog distract her. So often, we are derailed by doubts, fears and insecurities (rather like the fog prevented her from completing her swim), but hope ultimately keeps us going, enabling us to persevere.1 Pet 1:6 reminds us that our suffering and trials are only for a little time when viewed in the perspective of eternity.
4. I can slow down. So often, we feel compelled to continue hurrying on, even if we’re not sure of our destinatin! If God is in control, however, we can slow down; we can afford to rest, because we know God doesn’t.  Ps 62:5 tells us to find rest in God alone and to look to Him for hope.
5. I can say ‘no’. Hope is the foundation of integrity and wholeness, being the motivation for purity (1 John 3:3) and the thing that enables us to resist temptation. 1 Pet 1:3 reminds us that we have been given new birth into a living hope.

The word ‘hope’ appears only once in the New Testament before the resurrection (Matt 12:21), but appears 70 times after the resurrection. The cross reminds us that God can turn the darkest place into a place of hope. The resurrection of Jesus Christ testifies to the power and light of God and reminds us that we have an eternal hope, not bound by death or the present age. We can have hope in every situation because of the Lord’s love and mercies (Lam 3:21-22). Is 49:23 and Rom 5:5 remind us that those who hope in the Lord will not be disappointed (or put to shame.) Hope does not disappoint us because Biblical hope is rooted in God’s character, which is constant, faithful and true.

Hope is a fuel that keeps people going. The people of God had been fuelled by God’s many promises in the Old Testament and by His acts of deliverance for them. Abraham had been fuelled by the hope of a son: the promise God had given him – ‘a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir’ (Gen 15:4) – had kept him going through many years of journeying and many challenges. Paul, when commenting on Abraham in the New Testament, says, ‘Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”’ (Rom 4:18) Abraham kept on hoping and believing, reminding us that there can be many years between God’s promises and their fulfiment. Hope is a powerful antidote to unbelief. Even if we cannot yet see what God is doing or how His promises to us can be fulfilled, hope refuses to give up.

Joseph is another Old Testament example who had to wait a long time to see the fulfilment of his dreams and the promises God made to him when he was only a teenager. He was sold into slavery by his brothers, who pretended to their father that he had been killed by wild animals. He worked for a while as a servant to Potiphar, and whatever he did, he did well and prospered, but then he was tricked by Potiphar’s wife and ended up languishing in prison. There must have been times in prison, especially when the cupbearer forgot about all the help Joseph had given him and did not remember him to Pharaoh for another two years, when Joseph could easily have given up hope altogether and felt as though God had forsaken him. In everything he did, however, Joseph showed trust in God and kept going; he served God wherever he was and worked faithfully for Potiphar, in the prison and for Pharaoh. When he finally met up with his brothers again, he could say, ‘do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. ⁸ “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.’ (Gen 45:5,7-8) Hope in God was the fuel which sustained him through those years of loneliness and confusion, through the long, long years of waiting for God to vindicate him. Sometimes we too need that hope in God as we wait for Him to act, to fulfil and to complete what He has promised to us.

Mark spoke this morning on the first Advent theme of hope, using the acrostic below to explain this:

Heaven

Opened

Please

Enter

The Christian view of hope is not a desperate wish that God would do something, but a sure conviction, a positive action of our mind, that God is already doing something. Ps 33:18-22 reminds us that hope brings down God’s blessings on us. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, leaving us feeling forsaken and abandoned, but God wants to fulfil our longings and heal our brokenness. (Prov 13:12).One of the difficulties we face with hope is not knowing God’s timescales, but there are many examples of God opening heaven in the Bible and each time, it is to reveal His desire to bless.

In Gen 28:12-14, Jacob had a dream of an open heaven, with angels ascending and descending on a ladder. When God opens heaven for us, it becomes a tree of life to us. Jesus said to Nathanael that he would see heaven open and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51), God sends His angels to guard, lead and provide for us. The ultimate opening of heaven is seen at Christmas, when Jesus is given to us as the hope of all mankind.

In Acts 11:5-9, we see another time when God opened heaven for Peter, resulting not only in new dietary laws, but an assurance that what God has called clean should not be called impure or common. This vision, which led to the greater evangelisation of Gentiles, resulted in much blessing and in salvation for many.

God invites us to feast on His many blessings which are poured out for us. Ps 23:5 paints the picture of a table of God’s blessings stretching farther than the eye can see. The picture here is of overflowing blessing, of anointing for service and of unstoppable blessing, even if enemies abound.

We often talk of the heavens opening when we are referring to deluges of rain. God invites us to enter the deluge of blessing he has for us, wanting us to be soaked. Rom 15:13 reminds us that God is the founder of hope (He is the ‘God of hope’) and He wants to fill us with joy and peace as we trust in Him so that we too can overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. This overflowing is an abundance, an excess, and hope is able to motivate us and sustain us through periods of uncertainty and despair.