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.

At James’s baptism last night, Garry asked the question ‘What’s your profession?’ Most of us are often introduced to others by our name and profession (‘This is Garry; he’s an engineer’), and so often our identity is bound up in our jobs (nurse, teacher, shop assistant, lorry driver) or roles (parent, grandparent, husband, wife.)  There is another meaning to the word ‘profession’, however: a profession can tell you about what someone feels, believes or intends to do. As Christians, we are making these kinds of professions all the time and in baptism, we declare (or ‘profess’) that we are followers of Jesus Christ.

In everyday life, we make professions all the time. For many, there is a belief that God does not exist and that science has proved this. Science cannot prove the spiritual, since it only deals with the material world, but one of the proofs of God’s existence is in the transformed lives of people from different times, countries, cultures, backgrounds and circumstances, all declaring that God’s love and life have transformed them. At a baptism, we declare our belief in the transforming power of God to change the direction of our lives entirely.

Another profession is that the Bible is a fairy tale, written by men with no more worth than any other book. Christians believe the Bible is God’s word, that it is historically accurate (corroborated by other sources such as the Papyrus Anastasi 6 which talks of the ‘Semites’ coming for water and grain, just as the Old Testament testifies to the Israelites going to Egypt during a famine or the 1906 archaeological discovery east of Ankara that the Hittites really were an ancient people as described in the Bible.) It contains statements which made no sense at the time of writing (e.g. about the valleys of the deep oceans in Job 38:16 when ancient society believed the ocean bottom was sandy and saucer shaped), but which have since been corroborated by scientific discovery. Statements about the numbers of stars being countless (Gen 22:17) have also been demonstrated through modern astronomy. Christians believe the Bible is God’s inspired word to us and gives us direction and helps us to understand spiritual truths.

At a baptism, we are professing faith in Jesus Christ, the One who came to save us from our sins. As we are immersed in the water, we identify with His death for our sins and wrongdoing and as we rise from the water, we identify with His resurrection from the dead. Many people may believe Jesus was crucified, but to believe in the resurrection is to believe in a God of miracles. The Bible confidently affirms this miracle, reminding us that the Jewish authorities could not produce Jesus’s body to refute this claim and that the lives of fearful disciples were transformed by His appearances to them. We are excited to have the opportunity to tell others that God forgives our sins, that we have decided to follow Jesus and that our obedience to Him is shown in getting soaked through baptism! (see Acts 2:38)

This is our profession. What’s yours?

All the Advent sheep are now out in shops in Bolton-on-Dearne, Thurnscoe and Goldthorpe and all the leaflets have been distributed to local schools (Robert Ogden school leaflets will be given out early next week.) Please do encourage people to get involved in this trail, where the names of the sheep are filled in on the leaflets for the chance to win a wonderful Christmas hamper (kindly sponsored by the Co-op in Bolton-on-Dearne) and a knitted sheep. The prize draw will be made on Saturday 15th December at the ‘Churches Together’ Christmas Sheep Celebration (between 2 and 4 p.m. at the Salvation Army) Come along to that meeting to take part in craft activities, bun decorating and to find out the role of sheep in the Christmas story. We’ll be singing Christmas carols, having a puppet story and learning more about the significance of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t forget also the baptismal service for James, which will be on Saturday 1st December at 6 p.m. Join with us to rejoice with James as we celebrate the new life God has given him and pray for him as he continues his Christian journey. Refreshments will be served after this service.

Advent starts officially on 2nd December, so do join us on Sunday for our services (10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m.) which will focus on the theme of hope.

We have received a newsletter from Fredrick and Reeba this week and are thrilled to hear that the new church building will be opened on Friday 21st December. Here is an extract from the newsletter:

“We are so glad to inform you all that our church construction is progressing well and ahead of schedule. By God’s abundant grace and by all your prayers and love, we could complete the plastering work for the interior and exterior walls, main door frame and outside window frames, plumbing and sanitary works; only the fixture works need to be done.”

Flooring, wiring, fixing doors and windows and painting still need to be done and finances are still needed for this, but Fredrick is confident all will be finished for the official opening.

As Christmas approaches, the annual street children feeding programme and Christmas Gospel ministry are going ahead, with sketches, songs and plays about Jesus teaching the children the truths of the Gospel. Please continue to pray for this ministry, for Reeba’s tailoring ministry and for Fredrick and Reeba, their three children and Fredrick’s mother, who is doing well.

Watching 4FontTheatre set up for the ‘Job & Jingle’ show was an education in itself. First of all they brought in huge poles which had to be screwed together:

Then various bits of carefully painted polystyrene had to be attached to the poles in order to make the castle:

All the castle parts had to be slotted into place before the castle could be opened and closed successfully:

All this construction made me think about our Christian lives and how we need to have a framework and solid foundation on which to build. We need God’s Word to give us direction and to hold us together, shedding light on our path as we walk. We need the conversation of prayer to satisfy our need for communication. We need the sacraments, especially Holy Communion, to direct our gaze constantly to the cross of Christ, to remember afresh all God has done for us in Christ Jesus. We need the fellowship of the saints to encourage us and to broaden our ‘tunnel vision’ so that we learn to see the world through God’s eyes.

What was truly amazing to me about the set of ‘Job & Jingle’ was that it could be packed away in a transit van in less than an hour. It’s a fully portable set, built by the cast members, so that this show can move around the country. We too need to have portable lives, solidly built on the foundation of Christ Jesus, fully aware that wherever we go, His Spirit goes with us and we are His ambassadors, carrying the presence of God with us.

 “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” (Col 2:6-7)