Well, good morning, and again, Merry Christmas. It’s good to be with you at the end of 2020.
But the best way, I think, to end any year, whether you think it’s a good year or a bad year, is to celebrate Christmas and what Christmas means.
I want to look with you just at a passage this morning here. In Romans chapter 4, verse 18. If you want to look there with me. Romans chapter 4, verse 18.
And this is what the Apostle Paul writes. He says, He says in hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of men and women of God. And he said to so many nations, as he had been told, so shall your offspring be. You’ve probably heard it on Radio L. And they say something like this. In these uncertain economic times, you need to diversify your portfolio. Diversify your portfolio. Maybe you’ve heard that. And I guess what they mean is, have more than one stream of income and have more than one source of security. Security for your future. There are stocks. There are foreign stocks. There are bonds. There’s fixed income. There’s foreign fixed income. There are commodities such as gold and silver and precious metals and fuel. And there’s so many things you could put your money in. And quote unquote, it’s always these uncertain times. That’s always their leading phrase, isn’t it? Diversify. Diversify your portfolio for your security. And maybe that’s good advice in the here and now. Maybe that’s good advice for this life specifically in financial security. Perhaps it is. But it’s always the case, isn’t it, that what makes perfect sense in man’s kingdom is kind of an upside down reality when we think about the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. Because when it comes to your eternal security, when it comes to your soul, friends, we have one source of peace, one source of love, one source of joy, and one source of hope. Just one source. And Christmas is a reminder, a wonderful reminder for us that we have just one hope. Just one hope.
In verse 18, Paul says of Abraham, in hope, he believed against hope. In hope, he believed against hope. Now you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible. There are these people living in Ur and living a happy, prosperous life. And God says to them, hey, I want you to leave it all behind and you’re going to go to a strange man’s land and you’re going to be a stranger and you’re going to inherit it. And hey, even this, you’re going to have a son and you’re going to be the father of many nations. It’s an amazing thing that He says. But if you’re Abraham, there’s this reality. Well, I’m 75 years old and my wife is 65 years old and she’s barren. But God says it and so they go. And you know what happens as many, many, many, many years pass. And now Abraham, he’s 99 years old.
Sarah, 10 years younger than him. And God comes and says to this 99-year-old man, hey, in one year, in one year’s time, you’re going to have a son. Some of you think you’re old in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. How would you like to at 99 be told, hey, in one year, when you’re 100 and your wife is 90, you’re going to have a child. But verse 19 after 18 says this though, he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was, Paul’s not shy about it. Good is dead since he was about 100 years old or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. You know what the meaning there, the Greek rendering of that word barren is deadness. Deadness.
Abraham had no good reason to believe God when he looked at this situation, did he? He was as good as dead and her womb was dead. I think dead plus dead equals dead. Dead and dead. That’s all Abraham can consider when he considers his own body and his wife.
He doesn’t have a good reason to believe it’s going to happen. He doesn’t have, friends, a good reason to hope for it. Doesn’t have a good reason to hope for it. And I think that’s so often, isn’t it, akin to your Christian experience and mine. In other words, despair is never in short supply when we’re following Jesus, is it?
If you look back over 2020,
if you had to be honest, perhaps you probably couldn’t say you were the spiritual giant you wanted to be. You weren’t the prayer closet warrior you know you should have been. You didn’t beat on heaven’s gates for the things of God. You didn’t beg God, to fill your heart more. You didn’t beg the Spirit to do a work in you and shape you into Christ’s image as you should have. You didn’t get into the Bible. You didn’t root out greater truths as you wanted. You skimped. You stayed up too late. You woke up too late. You probably didn’t become all that you would have liked to see yourself become. And perhaps you weren’t the disciple maker in 2020 you wanted to be either. You were probably a little selfish with your time and you could have given more away, but you got in the way and general aimlessness got in the way and it didn’t happen the way you wanted it to. And perhaps you didn’t share the Gospel as much as you know you should have and you were a tad cowardly a time or two and you felt the Holy Spirit prompt you to share the Gospel.
And I think oftentimes, like Abraham, we’re looking in the mirror faced with our… with our own weaknesses, with our own failures, and our own fears. And you know what we try to do sometimes just like Abraham and Sarah did? Diversify.
Sarah said, I know what we’ll do since God’s not coming through. I got this maidservant. You knock boots with her. We’ll get a kid. And that kid will be like our kid. That’s like the same thing. Right? It’s the same thing. And what did that… What did that do? It created all kinds of havoc in Abraham’s life. It created romantic havoc. It created all kinds of division between Hagar and Sarah. Sarah, a maidservant she loved, she sent her away to die for all she cared. And Abraham’s left now with the turmoil of realizing he’s disobeyed God. He’s no more closer to having a son and his wife is a wreck.
It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, does it? When we try to do the things that only God can do and we drown ourselves in despair and what do we do? We lose hope more. But I want to submit to you something that I think oftentimes we lose hope because you and I have a fundamentally unbiblical view of hope. We don’t live with a biblical robust understanding of hope. What is hope?
Hope is not well-wishing. Hope is not optimism. Hope is not desiring that the probability and chances fall in your favor. I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow. I hope I get a promotion. I hope I really, man, I hope I don’t get coronavirus. I don’t know. I’ve been lucky so far. It’s what you desperately want, but there’s really no guarantee it’s going to happen. That’s not Christian hope. That’s not Christian hope at all. What you and I have, we have in Christian hope
is sureness.
Our hope of what we desire to come to pass, it is as sure as if it has already come to pass. So I love this phrase. I mean, all the Bible’s good, but there are things in the Bible that are, I think, special treasures. And I think this is one in verse 18. It says, in hope, he believed against hope. In hope, he believed, he believed against hope. Now, how can you believe against hope? That sounds contradictory. If I’m hoping, I can’t believe against hope. If I’m not hoping, I can’t hope. So what does this mean that Abraham in hope believed against hope? It means this. It means he chose to have the kind of hope that only God can give against the desire and temptation his flesh gave him, which was to have a human kind of hope. He decided to be sure about the words God had spoken to him rather than about the bleak circumstances in which he lived.
He had his optimism, which was all but dead. Remember, dead and deadness.
But he said, you know what? God has said it is so. God has said it will come to pass. I’m going to hope against hope. I’m going to know against my knowing. I’m going to believe against belief that God has said it to be so. And so somehow, though it makes no sense to me, God will bring this thing to pass. Because God has spoken it to be. And what did God do a year later? Well, He brought Isaac and Abraham and Sarah. They had a son. God did it. But I want us to see this Christmas morning really the power of that passage. As wonderful as the thing that was that they got a biological son, that wasn’t Abraham’s greatest hope. Remember, not optimism. It wasn’t his greatest sureness. Jesus tells us Abraham’s greatest sureness in John 8, verse 56. Jesus said this to the people. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.
It wasn’t just about Abraham and Sarah getting a son. It was about this belief that somehow, some way, God was going to raise up a descendant of Abraham. From Isaac and Jacob all the way down and this greater son to come. He would be a savior, not just of God’s people, but this son to come. He would be the savior of the whole world. And friends, you and I are so much greater than Abraham. We don’t just have the promises of God, which we do have in the Old Testament. You and I live on this side of the cross and we know that that son showed up. He came in, remember, a slop trough. We talked about last week. He met us where we are. He washed our feet. He loved us and sinless and pure. He went to the cross and He died. And three days later, He got up out of that grave and He walked out so that Peter can say, Jesus Christ is our living hope. You see, it’s a sure thing. The promises of God are sure. They’re yes, they’re amen in Christ Jesus. This Christmas, all the mistakes and all the failures and all the weaknesses that stare you in the face, friends, don’t look at those.
Look to the cross. Look to the empty grave and see the sure hope you have in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is your righteousness. He is your goodness. He is your salvation. He is your power. He is all that you need. He is the fullness of your heart’s desire. This Christmas, look to Jesus. He and He alone is your sure hope. He is your sure hope.
Paul says in Romans chapter 5,
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. You see how the whole of Advent in that one verse, because God loved us, He sent Christ, and when we by faith receive Christ, we have peace with God. And because we have peace with God, we have joy unspeakable and we rejoice in what? Our sure hope. Our sure hope. And it’s the glory of God in the face of Jesus, friends. So that’s your hope this Christmas. All that happens around you, all that will happen in 2021, let Jesus be your one sure hope. Hope. Jesus is our hope. Let’s pray together.
Father, we just bless Your name for this Sunday. We thank You for…
We’re not Christmas just because it’s a holiday.
It’s so much more than that. It’s the birth of Your Son, Jesus. It’s light and it’s life breaking into darkness and death. It’s life raising up our deadness to new life.
It’s Your goodness coming in where we don’t deserve goodness, Lord.
It’s hope where we had no hope.
Father, my desire this morning is for every person in this room that, Lord, is despairing as we may feel about things going on or… failures we look at, sins we look at,
brokenness in our lives and things that go on. I pray that we would not look to how great our sin is, how great darkness is, but we would see how bright the light of Jesus is and how wonderful our hope is in Christ. And that would be all we need to sustain us and see us through. And Jesus, we know You’re more than enough. You’re more than enough.
And my prayer for you this morning, if you’re here and you’re not sure you have that hope, Paul makes it very simple and clear if you don’t know Christ, is just receive the gift. Believe Jesus. Take Him at His Word that He is life and He is light and He is all the forgiveness of sin that you need and He will be your living hope. Just repent. Turn from your sin. And receive the life. The life of Jesus Christ. That’s the meaning and that’s the gift of Christmas.