I know that this season, this time of year, is about waiting. Waiting is hard. It's not easy. And I know one of the things that we're waiting for, and some of us perhaps a little more than others of us, is we are waiting for Christmas. And we're waiting for some presents that will hopefully show up under a tree. [00:02:08] (28 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)






These are promises and hopes that only can come from God. And no matter who you are or where you're coming from, or even what you're hoping for, you can experience, you can know this life-changing joy and peace and hope that comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Messiah. [00:06:36] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)






God continued to send the prophets, like Jeremiah, who spoke of God's faithfulness and a future restoration. Their lives were shattered, yet they held on to the hope that God was going to fulfill his ultimate promises for this people. [00:14:02] (16 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)








Trust God with your present right now as we're waiting, but also trust Him with your future because this is the God who fulfills His promises. [00:23:16] (13 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




One thing that we need to remember, those of us in the church, is to not place your hope in humanity, but to place your hope in the human one. The one who came to show us, to reveal to us what it means to be human. Jesus the Messiah. [00:25:20] (20 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)






Lord, forgive us when we've taken our eyes off of you and just paid attention to the brokenness that's in us and in those around us and in the world. We don't want to be like that. We don't want to be just like the world. We want to be different. We want to be people of goodness and grace, people of love and light, people of hope. [00:27:58] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

I know that this season, this time of year, is about waiting. Waiting is hard. It's not easy.

And I know one of the things that we're waiting for, and some of us perhaps a little more than others, is we are waiting for Christmas. And we're waiting for some presents that will hopefully show up under a tree. And maybe some packages that will have our name on it. And there's some fun things that we're going to open up. I'll probably open some socks and maybe a tie or something like that. But, amen.

But when I was little, one time, one Christmas, I asked for a Stretch Armstrong. Anybody know what a Stretch Armstrong is? All right, we've got a few. We've got a few witnesses.

Let's be honest, guys. It was a doll. Yeah, a guy doll. A doll for guys. But this was a cool doll. You could beat this doll. You could stretch him out. You could run over him with your bicycle. You could do anything to this thing, this little guy, and he would just snap back into place. You could take his arms and just stretch him all the way out as far as you could. As big as your arms were, you could stretch his arms out that far.

If you had a brother like I did, you could stretch out his arms and his legs at the same time, and he would just look crazy and contorted. And I actually did a little research on this. I didn't know what it was when I was a kid. It was this rubberized, rubbery exterior that was full of this, actually, a gel, a sugary gel. I never did open mine up. I never did pierce it with anything. But I guess if you did, it was sweet, but probably wouldn't have been good to eat. I'm just guessing.

But I asked for this Stretch Armstrong. It was all the rage that year. I'm not sure what year it was. And I thought, I thought I'd probably be getting it.

And so before Christmas, now I do not advise any of you younger people out here to do this, okay? But before Christmas, when my parents were gone, and they left us home alone, you already know, I went on an all-out search, and I found Stretch Armstrong. He wasn't wrapped up yet, so I took him out of his box. I undid all the little things that had him pinned in there, and I stretched him and I hit him and I pressed him and I played with him. And then I stuck him back.

But I tried to put all the stuff in the right places and get it back in the box, and I stuck it down at the bottom of the closet. Now I'm ruining all your parents' places to hide things. I put him back in the bottom of the closet.

And then on Christmas morning, when I opened up Stretch Armstrong, I had to fake it. It turns out I was a pretty good actor because my mom and dad never knew. And if she watches this worship service, she's going to find out that I played with Stretch Armstrong before it was time.

Well, people, I think, I'm an adult now, and most of us here are adults, and those of you who are online, most of you are probably adults, and we're not immune to this lack of patience when it comes to Christmas.

In fact, I was in Costco on September the 27th at 3:36 PM is when I took this picture. Big old phone. There's not anything there, but see, it's on a pallet. They're about this tall. All these Christmas decorations in September. That's three months before Christmas.

Now, I get it. I understand, right? You need to buy the stuff before the Christmas season so you can have it put up in your house. But September? September the 27th? I mean, pretty soon it's going to be that you can just go in the store and there'll be Christmas decorations up year-round.

Ros and I went to a store like that one time up in Michigan. It's like the biggest Christmas store in the world. And we went in there. You can go in there in January or March or whenever. June, middle of summer, have your Christmas in July. I mean, it's just good. That's all the stores. Walmart's going to be like that. Costco's going to be like that. Sam's Club's going to be like that. Everybody's going to have their Christmas decorations out early.

I get it. We are anticipating this season of joy and hope and peace. You know, it's a great season. It's a great time of year. Seems like people treat each other a little bit better during the Christmas season. So we look forward to it. We long for it because we need it in a lot of ways. We really do need it.

But what do we do when waiting itself is hard and hope seems far off? How do we hold on to hope when the fulfillment of our hope seems distant or uncertain? We've all been there. Times when promises were delayed or felt completely out of reach. It's hard to wait. It's hard. It's difficult. It's challenging, especially when we're not sure what the outcome will be or how long it's going to take.

And that's why we're doing this series, this Advent and Christmas season. An Advent of hope. An Advent of hope. Over the next few weeks, we're going to dive deep and dig deep into the promises of God and the hope and the peace that only Jesus can deliver.

These are promises and hopes that only can come from God. And no matter who you are or where you're coming from, or even what you're hoping for, you can experience, you can know this life-changing joy and peace and hope that comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Only He can give you this.

So this week, we're starting out with this message today, Hope Promised. You see, before Jesus arrived on the scene in the Old Testament, there were prophets and seers who God gave them a vision of the future, and they shared about Jesus coming and about the Messiah, the arrival of this Redeemer, this one who would come and transform the world and rule as the royal ruler over Israel, but not only Israel, over the whole world.

And they were hopeful about what God was going to do. And if you read through the Old Testament, which I encourage you to do, and you get to the end of it, you're going to notice something: that the Old Testament reads like a story that is looking for fulfillment, a story that's searching for an ending, a plot that is searching for a resolution, a story pointing towards the future. It's not finished. There's something more, and that's what the people of God were looking forward to.

And in Jesus, we find all of our hopes and dreams and the promises of God fulfilled in Him, in the Son of God. I want to read this scripture again that Jim just read to us. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. Jeremiah 33, beginning at verse 14.

Verse 14 and 16 says, "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time, I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. And in those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: The Lord is our righteousness."

You know, this message, Jeremiah's message of hope, it came at a time during a dark period for Israel and the people of God. They were in exile. God had allowed Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, to come and send his warriors and to destroy. Before that, in the 7th and 8th centuries, the northern kingdom fell to Assyria before Babylon took over.

And then the exile really took place in stages for the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom was Judah, and that was, again, by Babylon. And they came in and ultimately destroyed Jerusalem, tore down the city walls, tore down their place of worship, the temple, which was really the central focus of their faith, was this temple where heaven and earth, they believed, came together, where they could go and make sacrifice for their sins every year, and where the priests would pray every day and offer incense and sacrifices on behalf of the people, day in and day out.

And that all came to an abrupt end. The temple itself was destroyed, torn down. And people were killed. But not all the people. The best and the brightest among them were taken into exile. They were taken in chains back to Babylon.

The exile marked a period of profound identity crisis and theological reflection. Why? Why had God allowed this to happen? And in the Scripture, you can see that they came up with some answers because God shared with them. He didn't just do it out of spite; He didn't just surprise them. He warned them again and again. Matter of fact, Jeremiah was one of those prophets who warned again and again, "Hey, this is gonna happen." He wasn't a very popular voice, by the way. Others were saying, "No, no, no, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be great." Jeremiah's like, "It's really not gonna be great."

So they were guilty of unfaithfulness to the covenant. They had ignored God's righteous requirements in the law. They were guilty of idolatry, of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, God, the one who had delivered them time and time again, who had been their God, had created them and delivered them and rescued them, who brought them out of Egypt and took them into the land, fought their battles for them.

And yet, instead of worshiping God, the one true God, they decided to worship the gods of their neighbors and kind of hang out with them. And then they also were guilty of injustice, oppressing the poor, neglecting the widows and the orphans. In other words, Israel became just like the world, almost indistinguishable.

God had called them out to be His special possession, to be His people who would represent Him and His will and His ways in the world. When He called Abraham, He said, "I'm going to bless you. I'm going to pour out my blessings upon you. Your life is going to be magnificent. You didn't think you had a future, but I'm going to give you heirs, and there are going to be as many as the sand of all the seas in the world and all the nations of the earth, all the other peoples of the earth. I'm calling you out so that you'll be a blessing to them."

But you can't be a blessing to them if you're the same as them. And I believe there's a message in there for us in the church.

So God allowed this to take place, this terrible, terrible tragedy, this exile. They grappled with the loss of the temple, their land, their sense of being God's chosen people. Yet even in the middle of their misery, God continued to speak to them. God continued to send the prophets, like Jeremiah, who spoke of God's faithfulness and a future restoration.

Their lives were shattered, yet they held on to the hope that God was going to fulfill His ultimate promises for this people. And this is what we see in the prophet Jeremiah: the promise of God, and the promise of God is fulfilled in a person, this righteous branch of David, this righteous branch of David, an heir of David, if you will.

God promised that David was never going to be without one of his heirs on the throne, and He said that there's going to be a branch that's going to spring up from the old stump. You cut down a tree, and it leaves the stump, and that's exactly how Israel was feeling, like their hope had been destroyed, had been removed. They'd been taken out of the picture, and the stump was dried up and dead, or at least it appeared so.

But there's this branch, this root that's coming up out of this old stump. This is the Messiah. This is this new shoot sprouting from the stump of an old tree, and that's how they had felt.

The normal outcome—this is very, very important—what happened to Israel wasn't so unusual in the ancient world. Empires rose and empires fell, and the way empires rose was that they would go and destroy and take over the property and the land of a foreign people. And they wouldn't kill them all; they'd leave some of them there. Some of them they'd bring back to the main city of that empire, and they would live there, but they would become subjects of this new king.

And what happened again and again and again throughout world history is when a people were conquered, their old way of life, most of the time their old language, and nearly all the time their old religion was lost to the dustbin of history.

And so a lot of people in Israel sitting over in Babylon, they thought that's what was going to happen to them. But Jeremiah promised, "God's not through with you yet. He's not finished with you. He has more in store for your life than what you can see right now and what you're experiencing. The suffering and the pain and the sense of loneliness and disconnection, this isn't permanent. God has a plan."

And so this branch of David, this royal ruler, is going to come, this Messiah, Jesus. And when did He come? He came at that first Christmas, and that's what we celebrate at Christmas.

And this is a time of waiting because we're in an already and not yet time. Jesus has already come, but He's not yet come back. The kingdom is here, but it's not yet fully fulfilled. And so we are trusting that God is faithful.

The people who heard these promises, the people who heard these promises out of Jeremiah's mouth, they never saw the ultimate fulfillment of the promise. That fulfillment came hundreds of years later. But yet God is faithful, and He did reveal Himself through Jesus. He is faithful, and He does fulfill His promises.

And so God's people lived in hopeful waiting, trusting in the promises that they would not fully see fulfilled. And maybe some of us are feeling like that right now. Where are you in your life? What is the promise that you're holding on to? What is the hope that you're hanging on to? And you're going, it might not be fulfilled in my generation. It might be fulfilled some other time. But I'm trusting, I'm waiting, and I'm trusting that God is indeed, He is a faithful God, and He will deliver on His promises.

You know, some people, Christmas time, you know, it's a time of joyfulness. We sing Christmas carols, we have parties, we drink eggnog. Do you all drink eggnog? How many eggnog drinkers do we have? Okay, boiled custard, about as many. I drink both.

We have parties, we're cheerful, we're happy. It's a joyful season, isn't it? Lights are up everywhere. You put the Christmas tree in the living room, you decorate the rest of your house, maybe you do some outdoor decorations to cheer up your neighbors as they drive by.

You know, it's a dark time. It's a dark time of year, isn't it? You know, the sun, we're heading towards December 21st, the longest night. A lot of churches have a service on that longest night. They call it a blue Christmas service.

Because you see, not everybody, not everybody this time of year is cheerful and happy and glad. A lot of people, the Christmas season rolls around, and all it does... It just reminds them what they don't have, who they've lost. The loss can even be in their own bodies, a loss of health. I can't put that tree up anymore because I can't physically do it. Christmas isn't going to be cheerful because fill in the blank, it isn't going to be there with me.

Anyway, Blue Christmas. You know, I looked up the origin of that phrase, Blue Christmas. It's a song; Elvis sang it, but it was written in 1948, before he ever sang it. It was written in 1948 by a couple of guys, Ben Johnson, I think was one of them. No, Jay Johnson and Billy Hayes. And they were inspired by the song White Christmas.

Now, if you actually look at the song, White Christmas, it's not a happy song either. He's dreaming of a white Christmas. It's somebody living in Los Angeles, and they're missing Christmas back home, back east where it snows and there's white. You know, he's living, and his family's there, and he's longing. So White Christmas isn't a happy song.

So they wrote another song, called it Blue Christmas. It's going to be a blue Christmas because I'm away from this one that I love, that I care about. And so that's how some people experience Christmas, as a blue Christmas.

Maybe that's where you are. Maybe you're grieving, struggling, feeling hopeless. Well, the good news is that you're not alone, that Jesus is with us, Emmanuel. That means God with us.

And our ultimate hope lies not in our circumstances but in the incarnation, the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit who ministers to us, the very presence of God, the very presence of our Messiah, and the one who gave Himself for us.

And we are in this in-between time, and so we can live in hope because we know that this in-between time isn't going to last forever. Jesus is coming.

And so how can I partner with Jesus right now and experience the promises of God? So we wait, but we wait in and with hope. Maybe you're waiting for a breakthrough in your life, maybe in your relationships, in your job, in your finances, in your mental health. Maybe you're waiting for a healing, a physical healing or an emotional or spiritual healing. Maybe you're just waiting for things to get better.

Whatever it is, know that you can have hope because God is faithful. Trust God. Here it is. Trust God with your present right now as we're waiting, but also trust Him with your future because this is the God who fulfills His promises.

You know, I mentioned this before, that it's something a lot of us sense at this time of year, that people are just a little more generous, a little more gracious, a little more patient, a little more kind this time of year. Human beings, we just seem to treat each other better during this season.

I'm glad. I think part of it—I haven't really dug deep into this—but I believe that part of it is the source of the person whom we're celebrating, even when people don't celebrate Him. It's Christmas, Christ's Mass. Jesus is the reason for the season. It's centered on Christ, on Him.

It's not about presents. It's not about decorations. It's not about parties. It's about Jesus. And even when people don't recognize that or when they don't acknowledge that, they probably recognize it, but they just don't acknowledge it. They don't acknowledge it with their mouth.

But they often do acknowledge it with their behavior. Because we do. We do tend to love each other more and treat each other better during this time of year. And then January rolls around. And we just revert back, don't we? We just revert back to our old selfish, self-centered, hateful ways.

You know why? Because we're fallen people. And we live in a fallen world. But Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming.

One thing that we need to remember, those of us in the church, is to not place your hope in humanity, but to place your hope in the human one, the one who came to show us, to reveal to us what it means to be human. Jesus the Messiah.

Instead of hoping in the world and hoping that the world is going to change, hoping that people are going to be different permanently, we're called to live as people of hope in Jesus, actively partnering with Him to bring the fullness of His kingdom.

To bring the fullness of His kingdom into the world through our acts, through our living. So in January, we shouldn't revert back to the old ways. In January, we just know we're just—I mean, if Jesus tarries, we might not make it to January, right? But in January, if Jesus tarries, we know we're just that much closer to that day when Jesus is going to come back.

And what's He going to find when He comes back? Is He going to find us sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves because people aren't treating us the way they did in December? Or is He going to find us actively working, being the salt and the light of the world, shining hope, our hope that we have in Christ Jesus?

What would it look like if our church were to be a community marked with hope, a community that faithfully lives out the message of Christ's kingdom even in a world that doesn't fully recognize it and sometimes acts like they don't want to have anything to do with it?

Let's be people who wait with hope, who trust in God's promises, who live out of that hope every day. The world may be dark, but we have a light that will never go out. Hope has come. Hope is here. Hope is coming again. Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus. Be present with us. Make Your presence known. Fill us with light and hope and joy. Help us to live as people of hope.

Lord, forgive us when we've taken our eyes off of You and just paid attention to the brokenness that's in us and in those around us and in the world. We don't want to be like that. We don't want to be just like the world. We want to be different. We want to be people of goodness and grace, people of love and light, people of hope.

We pray this in Your name. Amen.