Hope in the Darkness.

Remember who Jesus was, what he came to bring, and that it is yet still more to come. The first candle of Advent today that we lit is the candle of hope. And that's what we're talking about today. We are talking about hope.

If you have your Bibles with you, you can turn to Matthew chapter 1. I'm going to start in verse 17 and then we'll pick up in Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.

There were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile of Babylon, and 14 from the exile to Christ. This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she came pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly. So he decided to break the engagement quietly. As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Joseph, son of David, the angel said, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord's message through his prophet. Look, the virgin will conceive, a child. She will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relationships with her until her son was born and Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:17-25

We're talking about hope. There are two different types of hope that you read about in the Bible. In the Old Testament, there's this word yakal, which essentially is this hope. This is to wait. Hope is to wait. You're waiting for something. And then there's a second one that's commonly used as quava.

This one has a little bit different of a meaning and translation. This verb also has to do with this idea of waiting in anticipation. But this one, when it's described, it's described as this. It's a verb that has to do with the tension of anticipation and waiting for something. Like when a cord is pulled tightly and becomes tense until it snaps and the tension releases.

Like a cord that is pulled tightly and so tense that it snaps and is released. So you see this first definition is this idea of longing and waiting and anticipating. But this second one, it's a little bit different. It's talking about this idea of being pulled so tight, so tense that it snaps and it breaks. I don't know about you today, but sometimes in the waiting and the longing, I feel like I can relate a lot more to that second one. Where there are things that I'm deeply longing for or waiting or anticipating for God to do that it feels like the waiting isn't just this. I'm sitting still and kind of just waiting to see what's going to happen. But there's some tension there. Maybe there's some frustration. Maybe there's even some disappointment or some deep feelings of mourning and grief and not experiencing what you hope to receive.

A psalmist in Psalm 130 verses 1 through 8 kind of sums this up in beautiful words:

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can with reverence serve you. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. More than watchmen wait for the morning, Israel, put your hope in the Lord. For with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

Psalm 130:1-8

The words here, I put my whole being into this waiting. I wait with all that I am, more than the watchman wait for night. This type of hope and waiting, it's deep. And there's a lot of emotions that are attached to it.

Now, people waited for Jesus for generations. I read in verse 17 there, in the beginning of Matthew, you can read the entire genealogy of Jesus. And things like this, I think it's easy sometimes for us to read and skip over and be like, that's a whole lot of names, but there's so much meaning in the lineage of Jesus. So much meaning.

And that last verse of the genealogy there, where it says from generations they waited. It says fourteen generations from Abraham to David. Abraham was the one that God gave the promise to that he says, through you, I'm going to bless all nations. Now I want you to think Abraham. There was fourteen generations then to David. So Abraham got this promise and he put his hope in the Lord and he was faithful and obedient to walk in the promise, but he never got to be there to see Jesus, the Messiah, Jesus, who died on the cross and was raised back to life.

And then you get to David and it says from David, there was fourteen generations into the exile of Babylon. So David too had a role to play in this lineage and leading and making way for Jesus and waiting for Jesus, but he still wasn't there to see it.

And then from the exile, there was fourteen generations to then Christ. People have been waiting for Jesus to come for generations to generations. And where we find ourselves in this story is that Jesus came, that we get to now read about the life that he lived. And we get to hope that there is still more to come, that he will return someday and welcome us all into eternity. So there is so much that we can find hope in today. Hoping that Jesus came, that he is Emmanuel, God with us, that hope is with us in our midst, and yet there's more to come.

Hope comes in the midst of darkness

Hope comes in the midst of darkness, in the midst of disappointment and in the midst of despair. That's our so what. Our now what is, we need to ask the Lord to come and through his Holy Spirit, fill us with hope so that hope can flow from within us.

When we read about the story of Joseph, we're going to look at his life and this encounter that he had with the angel of the Lord in his dream and what we can learn from his story today.

When I think about this encounter that Joseph had with God, all I can think of is moments in life when you say yes to one thing and it does not go as planned. Has anybody else found yourself in a situation where you said, "I signed up to do this and then I get there and it looks nothing like I thought it ever would." I see heads nodding, right? Like you're with me. Like I don't even have to really give you examples. You're all probably thinking of five times in your life where you showed up to something and you had this expectation of saying, "This is what I committed to." And then it turns out to be nothing. And sometimes it's way more than you ever thought.

And that's what's happening to Joseph in this. And what happens then is sometimes when our expectations aren't met, we face disappointment. And we see that hope came in the midst of this disappointment.

Joseph didn't necessarily sign up to raise the Savior of the world. Like, think about that for a moment. He didn't sign up for that. He signed up to marry Mary. He signed up to, culturally would have been the one to provide for her and for their family and all of those things at that time. He did not sign up when he said yes to being pledged to marry Mary. He did not sign up to then raise the Savior of the world. And again, we can relate to that.

When the jobs don't go as planned, when the relationships don't go as planned, when the provision doesn't come in the places that we thought it would? And what do we do with that? Joseph, even once he understands what happens and that he was going to be the one that helped raise the Savior of the world, that still I can imagine he probably placed some expectations on that. But it still didn't go as planned.

We don't know much about Joseph. The last time that he's actually mentioned is in Luke. It talks about Jesus going to the temple and we read about Joseph and Mary. It's a story where they couldn't find him and they found him in the temple. That's really the last time that we hear about Joseph. So we hear about Mary later in Jesus' public ministry, that she was around, that she got to see it all come to fruition.

But from what we see in scripture, it looks like Joseph may have died before any of that ever happened. There's no records of him being there and being present with Jesus when he was fully functioning and doing the miracles and doing all the things that you would have been like, proud dad, this made it all worth it now that I get to see it happen. And that to me points so much to Joseph's character into who he was because he continued to say yes and to be faithful and obedient multiple times when things didn't go as he maybe had hoped or planned, but he continued to be obedient in those moments.

So again, he signs up to marry Mary and he doesn't know what's going to happen next. And now he finds himself in this situation where Mary, who was a virgin and pledged to be married to him, is pregnant and he's faced with this decision of this would have been a dangerous thing. And so you can even see his heart and saying that he was going to divorce her and break the engagement quietly as not to hopefully put her life in danger or at risk.

And after he's made this decision, an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream. Joseph did not run when things did not go as planned. We should not run when things don't go as planned. Because just because it wasn't how you thought or you hoped that it would turn out does not mean that God does not have purpose for that or that he is not fulfilling a promise through the very thing that, in the very plan that you may think is going wrong or not as it should.

God's greater story

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Now, this was a prophecy that people would have known about. They knew that this was how the Messiah was going to come.

So Joseph's plan was to marry Mary, but God's plan was to have him help usher in the Savior of the world and to have promises fulfilled through his faithfulness and obedience. Now, we have the story that we do today because Joseph decided to stay and surrender his plans to a greater story. Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had said, and he gave him the name Jesus.

You see, in the waiting, in the midst of disappointment, in the midst of expectations not met, I wonder what would it look like if we too asked for the Lord to come and to appear to us and to speak to us and to give us that clear vision of what to do next, of to give us that hope. See, there are moments in our life when we're faced with disappointment and expectations unmet that we just need an encounter with God that we can cling to so that we too can continue to have hope and be faithful in the midst of disappointment.

We see that that hope comes in the disappointment and that hope can also come to us in the midst of darkness. Now, as I talk about this today, I'm not necessarily talking about like darkness as in like sin or evil, although that is a form of darkness that there's so much sin and evil. And even like the stories that we watched in this video today, there's so much darkness in this world, but I'm talking about more today about the darkness of the quiet, the darkness when it feels like you can't see where to go next or what's happening around you. The darkness that requires like deep faith because you're like, God, I just can't see anything around me right now.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. And through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

John 1:1-5

This is a really simple thing for us to understand, right? When it's dark, you can't see, but you turn on the light and it illuminates everything and you can see even the smallest light can pierce through the darkness. But we like the light. We like clarity because it's easier to see. It's easier to find things.

I regularly like to play the game with myself where it's like I'll turn on my lights as I walk into my bedroom and it's like pitch black and I'm like, I know the way. I know where I'm going. And then I'm like tripping on something. It's like, you still don't know. You need the light to see. It's easier to walk in the light. It's more comfortable. You can walk more confidently in the light.

We like the light, especially this time of year. We miss the light in Wisconsin when it's four o'clock and you're like, is it bedtime yet? And then it's six o'clock and you're like, I feel like I'm pulling an all-nighter. You're like, I should probably stay up another hour, hour and a half, maybe 7:30, done, right? The light, it wakes us up. It keeps us alive. It helps us to see and walk confidently.

But here's what I want you to catch here with Joseph. It's not only was it in the midst of this like disappointment of things are not going as I had hoped for. As I'm like about to marry this woman and start our family. And I also want to point back to recognize it says like Joseph was a righteous man. And so I think we also have this common, like this common understanding of you're like, well, if I did things right, then everything's going to go as I wanted or as I planned.

It says he was a righteous man. He was following God and then all of a sudden he's faced with all his expectations not being met and he's in this tough situation. But now I want you to notice that it was at night in the dark when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. What happens at night in the dark? It's the time when we sleep. It's the time when we rest. It's the time when we dream. God appeared to him through the angel of the Lord in the night, in the darkness, through a dream.

And I truly believe that for many of us in this season, that maybe you find yourself in a place where you're like, I don't know what's next. Maybe you feel a little hopeless. Maybe you feel like you found yourself in situations that you just don't see a way out. Maybe you have been faced with disappointments and life has taken twists and turns that you never expected.

I believe that in the same way that God sent an angel to appear to Joseph in a dream that through the power of his Holy Spirit, because of Jesus' death and resurrection that we have access to that, he wants to continue in the dark, in the night where we think nothing good can take place to show up and give us dreams and to reveal himself to us in such clear and intimate ways that we can once again find hope in him.

And so my encouragement to you today is don't let the darkness steal your hope, but instead say, God, would you help me dream again? Would you come and would you appear to me again?

Hope in the midst of despair

The next thing I want to talk about is hope in the midst of despair. The opposite of hope is generally considered to be despair. While hope is like this positive, optimistic, it's that usually we talk about this like excited anticipation. Despair is this deep sense of gloom. It's this deep sense of pessimism and this belief that this situation is beyond repair.

Theologian G.K. Chesterton says this: as long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude. It's only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. Often it's only in the darkest of nights that the light can really shine through. Despair is a deep felt emotion. It's something that you don't get to lightly, yet many of us have probably found ourselves there and maybe even there today.

Things that can lead to it are loss, grief. Maybe you've had one of those years where you've experienced personal loss. Maybe it's chronic illness or pain or prayers that have just felt unanswered. Maybe there's financial struggles in your life, mental health things that you're walking through, faced with isolation and loneliness, traumatic experiences that you feel like you just can't heal from, whatever it is.

Despair is something that even though it's hard to get to, we find ourselves there more times than we would like. Now, I don't know if this is exactly how Joseph felt because we don't really know much about him, but I know that it's something that many of us do face and do feel. But what I love about Joseph is that we see that when he encountered God, he left that place from that dream in a place of surrender to saying, God, I'm going to put my hope in you and not my circumstances or my situations. I'm going to surrender to the greater story that's going on around me, even if it doesn't look anything like I hoped or planned. I put my hope in you.

Misplaced hope

As I mentioned, Advent is a season of waiting and anticipation and reflecting on who Jesus is. But what I want us to focus on as a church in these next few weeks is that we would not put our hope in who we think Jesus is, but the reality of who Jesus is. Because sometimes we can hear things and we start to make assumptions, but I want to encourage you, would you lean in? Would you start to spend time in your word reading the Bible? Would you start to spend time praying and talking to God, encountering him, getting to know the reality of who he really is, because he is the only one that we can confidently put our hope in. Nothing else will ever satisfy.

I find that often it's not that we have really lost hope, but that we've misplaced it. I am known for misplacing a lot of things in my life. Those who know me best here are laughing because you know it's true. The amount of times where it's like I lacked my keys in my car again, I almost really should have someone on speed dial for it. So much so that like I got a very generous gift from my father mailed to me last week where he got me an Apple AirTag keychain for my keys because I misplaced my keys that often. I was like, oh my goodness. I was like, you shouldn't have, but really thank you because maybe now we'll make it a few months without losing my keys and misplacing them.

But here's the thing. It's not that my keys are gone. It's just that I've placed them in the wrong place. They're still there. They're just misplaced. How often in our lives are we in situations where something's not gone? It hasn't left. We've just misplaced it. When we place our hope in people or in circumstances, and then we feel disappointed and we start to blame God, but it's not that we lost hope or all hope is gone. It's that we placed it in the wrong things. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that we should be placing our hope in is not who we think Jesus is, but the reality of who he is.

We need to place our hope in Christ, not our circumstances or anything else. Maybe today you've misplaced hope. Maybe you feel like it's darkness and it's despair and it's disappointment. And it's so overwhelming that you're like, I can't see a way forward right now. I can't see a world where hope could possibly exist. Jesus came in the midst of darkness to be the light of the world. He was and is and forever will be the hope to the hopeless, the one that can truly restore. And he isn't afraid today of your disappointments. He isn't afraid today of your deep feelings of despair. He came to be Emmanuel, God with us. Hope with us. He came to be with you in it no matter what you're feeling this Christmas season.

So what would it look like if we placed our hope in Jesus? If we got to know who Christ was in such a way and we waited for him in a way that said, even in the tension, even in the longing, even in the darkness and the unknown where I can't see what's ahead, I place my hope in you. Could it be that not all hope is gone, but that it was just misplaced.

Closing

The reality is that waiting in the darkness can often lead us to weariness and despair. And waiting also reveals to us where we have placed our hope. It reveals to us, have we placed our hope in our circumstances or have we placed our hope in Christ? When we hope in Christ, we can live and we can walk in confidence. We hope in Christ and who he is, but we have to make sure that we're putting our hope in who he is and not who we want him to be.

You see, Jesus did not come as people expected him to come. And maybe today you even hear that and you're like, I don't know, like, who is Christ? Like, I don't know if I've experienced him in that type of way. Can I encourage you to open up the word of God. We have Bibles that we would love to give you to get to know who he is, to pray, to encounter him, to ask him to show you more of his heart for you. Because he came to be Emmanuel, God with us, to have relationship with you not just in eternity but today. He wants to have relationship with us today, in the here, in the now, in the present.

But so often we even hear that and we start to place all these expectations then on who we want him to be. But Jesus didn't come the way that people expected him. I can imagine the disappointment when he did not come to a married woman, but to a virgin unmarried woman. When he did not come to a wealthy woman, but an oppressed woman. When he did not come in this perfect, holy, righteous situation, but something that appeared to be so scandalous that he was going to divorce Mary in quiet to try and cover it all up. Like this was nothing like people expected, yet it was everything that they needed.

And it was part of God fulfilling the things that he promised for generations and generations and generations. When Joseph was saying yes and surrendering his reputation to being a part of this greater story, I can imagine the disappointment. I can imagine the fear. But he said yes in faith and he put his hope in who he knew that God was bringing. And that's Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the light of the world, the Savior of the world.

What does it look like for us to say yes in the midst of darkness and disappointment and to have the faith to say, God, I know that you sent your son Jesus and he came and he's with us now through the power of your Holy Spirit. But yet there's more to come. There's more to come.

So I want us to take time. Because I know that specifically with Christmas and holidays and family dynamics and all of those things that there's in the end of the year and you're starting to think about New Year's resolutions that there's a lot to process sometimes. Where maybe you are in a place where you're like, I'm living the life I always dreamed of. This is exactly where I thought I would be. Or maybe you're more like me and there are a lot of areas in your life where you're like, this wasn't exactly how I expected it.

And maybe this year you've faced some disappointments. Maybe you've had a job that didn't go the way that you thought. Maybe you had a relationship end before it even really started. Maybe you lost someone close to you and the healing that you wanted to take place didn't and you still don't understand why. And there's longing and there's disappointment and there's despair.

And sometimes the only thing that we can do is say, Holy Spirit, will you come? Will you give me hope? Because I don't have anything left to give at this point. Will you come? Will you appear to me like you did through the angel to Joseph? And will you give me hope? I need hope. I need certainty. I need you to reveal yourself to me.

Where are you feeling disappointment today? Where are you feeling disappointment? And the worship team is going to lead us into a moment. So if you want to write the question and then continue to think about it, you can. But maybe you already have the answers. And you're like, yep, this is where I've been disappointed. I want us to begin to name these things so that we can surrender them to the Lord. But also to invite the Lord into this. So where are you disappointed?

And that next is just where or who have you put your hope in that let you down. Where or who have you put your hope in and you've been let down? And then the final question to process and pray is where do you need to put your hope in the reality of Jesus? Where do you need to put your hope in the reality of Jesus?

Our now what today is to be filled with hope so that hope can flow from within. Be filled with hope so hope can flow from within. We know that there's darkness, that there's disappointment, that there's discouragement, that there's despair, that there's so many people that need to experience the hope of Jesus.

And sometimes we have to take moments to say, God, this is where I'm at. And I'm going to lay it down and I'm going to say yes, come, show me, give me hope in a way that only you can. You see, today we can have confidence as followers of Jesus when we say yes to his kingdom, yes to his way. We can have confidence that someday all sickness will be healed, that all suffering will be gone, that pain, it will be no more. The sadness, the disappointment, the despair, gone. For all of eternity.

Sadness, depression, anxiety, done. As followers of Jesus, we can put our hope in him as Savior, as Messiah, as Son of God, living hope, Emmanuel, God with us. This is what we look for. That hope is here. That hope is coming. Hope is in Jesus.

And so I want to invite you to stand today and to continue. If you need a moment to continue to process and to pray through those questions, do that. But tonight, as we near the end of the year, and we're in this time of waiting and anticipation and celebration, I believe that God wants you to find hope in him, the reality of who he is.

And sometimes we just have to come and say, God, would you give it to me again? Would you come, Jesus, and give me hope? So I want to pray and read these scriptures over you. If you're comfortable, would you just hold your hands out in just a posture of surrender?

Israel, put your hope in the Lord. For with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption. He himself redeemed Israel for all their sins.

Psalm 130:7-8

So today, God, would you come and would you give us your hope?

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

So Holy Spirit, we come to you with our disappointments, with our longing, with our waiting, and we say, come Lord Jesus, come. Fill us with hope. Fill us with hope today, we pray. Holy Spirit, come.