For the Love of Christmas IV, How to Find Hope for the Future

When the time of their purification, according to the law of Moses, had been completed, Mary and Joseph took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the law of Israel, a pair of doves or two young pigeons. There was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel. Not dissimilar to what we did this morning, presenting a child, and yet God filled it with a prophetic moment. Well, we've been talking in these weeks in December about the virtues of Christmas. We talked about joy, peace, love, and this final message is going to be on hope. How do you define hopeless? Think in your mind, what would be a hopeless circumstance that you could find yourself in? Five finals on the same day, and you haven't prepared for any of them. That might be hopeless. How about this? It was reported in the AP, and this is just one year before last, a British yachtsman by the name of Tony Bollinger had a boating accident as he was trying to make his way around the world. He encountered a severe storm in the ocean off of Antarctica. He was a little off course, hit a terrific storm. His yacht split in half during this storm, and he barely had time to send off an emergency signal, but he did so, and they were able to vector their way to find where the ship had been when the signal went out. The rescue team was sent out, and they scoured the area for a couple of days, didn't find anything, but kept hearing a strange signal that they couldn't quite isolate. After three days, they were about to leave, and the signal was weakening, and they knew that it probably belonged to the boat, but they weren't able to find it, and a diver went down and tapped on the hull of this broken yacht, and the signal came back. Tony Bollinger survived a total of five days underwater, and a little air bubble was created when the yacht went upside down. He had a wetsuit on from the storm. He was frostbitten, miserable, and nearly dead, but the divers were able to bring him up out of the water and revive him. And when he was asked, where did you find the hope to survive for five days in total blackness in nearly sub-freezing temperatures, he said, quote, I prayed and ate chocolate. Well, there's a good system for the New Year. How about that? Pray and eat chocolate. That's my message. Take that home with you. I fulfilled half of that, I can tell you right now. But for most of us, really, finding hope is a crucial issue in our lives, isn't it? The days after the birth of Christ in the Bible are very full of prophetic significance, and I wanted to take some time to develop that, but just suffice it to know this morning that each of these encounters that the baby Jesus and his parents have with different people are loaded with significance for those of us who are looking to see what Christ is going to do in our lives. Simeon, the person we're going to focus on today, we don't know much about him except that he was a person that the Bible says was just or righteous and devout, and that he was longing in his heart for a fulfillment of a promise. I want to stop right there. How many of you here today could identify with Simeon in that you have something in your heart that you're longing to see fulfilled? You have one promise. You go, you know what, if God would do this one thing in the New Year that would so make a difference. How many of you have something like that? I hope that you do. If you don't have anything you're looking for God to do, then you need to, because he wants, he's looking for people who are trusting him. And so Simeon is in the temple, much in a similar kind of way as what we did today. People would bring babies in on a daily basis and present them to the Lord. That was part of the ritual that the ceremonial law required. So Simeon was watching day after day as people brought in babies, looking for a reason to say this is the one. What made Simeon say, ah, this is the one. This is Jesus. Well, let me say this, number one, because God's word to Simeon was personal. God's word was personal. Put that in your notes. God's promises are personal. And I want to jump right in here and say this is going to cause a few of you some discomfort this morning. If I say to you, well, I believe in God, and you say, well, that's fine, I do too. I believe in Jesus, I do too. I believe the Bible is like a really special book inspired by God. You say, I do too. But if I say to you, I believe that God does speak to people today. Well, then I'm sure I'm going to have some people this morning are going to say, well, you're really pushing it there. I'm not sure that I believe that. And I could take you to churches all around this city and certainly all around America that would say, well, we don't think God speaks anymore. He spoke. When he finished speaking the Bible, he finished speaking. And if you believe that, then friends, you've cut God off from his primary means of communicating into your life. This skepticism is founded most likely through some kind of negative experience. I don't know if you've had somebody say something to you that was weird like, you know, God told me to tell you to sell all your stuff and give it to me, you know, or God told me to start a ministry to people in country clubs and you need to buy me a membership. Things like, you know, really strange things like that. Or just maybe you've never really honestly sensed that God has been speaking. Now, when I say speaking, I don't mean audible voices, it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, when I mean speaking, it can be an impression to your soul. It can be a circumstantial thing that you just know it's God communicating to you. It may be a dream or sort of a vision that kind of forms in your thinking that you say, I just, you know, it keeps coming back. It can be that you're reading scripture and something jumps out at you like, this is for you, you know. That's what I'm talking about. You know, be careful. If you've never had anything like that, be careful to say, well, then that means it doesn't really have to happen. Many people make the mistake of basing their theology on experience. Now, this is what I'm going to say. When in fact, the mature thing to do is to build your theology and then gauge your experience based on what you believe about God, not the other way around. In other words, if what you believe is just what you have experienced, then you may not believe the right thing. For example, I've been told that the best steaks in the world are Ruth Chris Steakhouse, but I've never eaten there. So I don't know. So does that mean that those of you who say that are wrong because I haven't had that experience? That would be foolish, wouldn't it? I can't base my judgment of that on my lack of experience of it. By the way, I'm available right after the service, but likewise, you should not say, well, if I haven't experienced it, then it's not real. Are you following me here? You should say, first of all, what is real according to God's word, and then follow it up with, well, God, then speak to me in that way. On your outline, notice what it says. Jesus Christ said this, I know those who are mine, under Roman 1, and they hear my voice. That's John 10, verses 14 and 16. The Lord is speaking today. His promises are personal. Why? Because you and I need hope, friends, and God wants to speak hope into our lives. It's very important for some of us today that we enter this new year with some hopefulness about certain circumstances. If we don't, we might just fold up our tents, so to speak, spiritually speaking, and walk away from God. All during the football season, we kept hearing, well, the Steelers are going to turn it around. And there were people who hoped that it would happen and hoped it would happen all the way up until the three games from the end. Well, if we win those last three games, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, and Jacksonville, we'll still be the champs. And we lost to Tampa Bay. And then there was those few people who still believed that mathematically, if six teams lose this and four teams do that, we could still get in. But when we lost to Cincinnati, the curtain closed, and all hope of making the playoffs was lost. Unfortunately, Bill Cowher had the foresight to say he wasn't going to jump off the Fort Pitt Bridge, thereby stopping the onslaught of about 300 fans who were going to do it, as if life was about to end. I want to make a recommendation. Hope doesn't end when the football season's over. You might want to change teams. Yeah, I'm changing teams for the playoffs. Here's my new, I'm supporting the Fleety Flakes team, okay? I've got my box here. This is where I'm putting my support. I have hope. Not really in him, but I have hope. Thanks, Deb. So where is your hope? Because we have to have some. And we need to have some in a personal way. Because otherwise, life has its way of washing over us and robbing from us the possibility of going on. I know personally how important that is. Years ago, when we were looking for property, we tried, those of you who were with us, remember, we tried so hard to build on the property down in Wexford. For three and a half years, we tried to acquire property. And when this property became available, I remember praying, I said, Lord, somehow show me that this is it. I need to know. I can't go through another three and a half years of trying to work this out. And you know, God, in 30 days, in 30 days, we were able to close on this piece of property. I had never seen anything like it. You can't even buy a Hershey bar in 30 days anymore, it seems like, in Pine Township. It was a miracle. And I knew it was God. And that's how he had spoken to me that this is where he went. Simeon had a word from the Lord, a personal promise that God had said, this was the one. He knew it from the Lord. And those longings in your heart, those dreams of possibility, those desires for significance, the thought that you could have a good marriage, that you could have a happy home, that you could have a life free from crushing debt, that you could be fully involved in your vocation. These things come from God. Look at Psalm 37, verse 4. The Lord promises that if you delight yourself in him, then he will give you the desires of your heart. That's not on your outline. You might want to jot that down. Why? Because God cares personally about what happens to you. So first of all, his promises are personal. Second, God's promise is powerful. His promises are powerful in your life. Simeon is, he stands up and he says, this man is going to be, this little one is going to become a light to the Gentiles and the glory of the people of Israel. You see, we need to have a promise that's so strong that it overcomes our own self-doubt. I want to say something very tenderly here. Some of you, the greatest problem that you have is believing about yourself what God believes about you. Some of you are hung up on believing too little about yourselves, that you could really matter. You haven't seen how God's inscribed your name on his heart, that you really matter to him. It reminds me of a story I heard just recently, a true story of a pastor in Northern California. Thomas Dooley is the pastor's name. He pastors a church up near Eureka, California. He has a hobby of restoring Harley Davidson motorcycles, not a bad thing to do. One day he stopped a few years back now, stopped in an old garage in a small town, and there he saw in the back of the garage an old Harley, crusted over, rusted, broken down, obviously hadn't been ridden for a while. The only thing he could tell about it was it was a circa late 50s model Harley Davidson. He asked the owner of the garage how much to buy the bike, as is. The owner kind of laughed it off, said, you know, that thing's been sitting there for ten years, hadn't been moved. He said, I can't sell it to you, it's not worth anything. And they haggled back and forth, and he couldn't tell if he was, he ended up buying the bike for $100. So he went and got his pickup truck, brought it back, and started to work on it on his weekends, and finally got to the point where he was needing to really get down to the nitty gritty of it. He scraped the grease off the engine and got the serial number off, and called Harley Davidson of America, and said, you know, could you send me a shop manual and a few engine parts for the engine with this serial number? And they put him on hold, and they checked on the computer, and so on, and the gentleman who was talking to him came back and said, sir, could you hold for just another moment? He said, well, sure, and so he's holding, and another man comes on, he says, sir, I'm the vice president of customer relations of Harley Davidson. The guy said, well, that's nice, I just need a few parts. He said, well, I need to verify something. Would you read the serial number back to me one more time? He said, yeah, it's this, and read this long number. He said, sir, can I ask you to do something? I know it's a little strange, but would you take the seat from the motorcycle? Could you unlock it, you know, unscrew the seat, and he said, well, yeah, it's a little rusted, but he got some lubricant and the right wrenches, and it took him about three or four minutes to get the seat off, and he said, no, sir, could you look up underneath the seat, and he did that, and it was kind of full of crud and dust and all of the stuff from the motorcycle. He said, scrape it off. What do you see there? And he scraped it off. There, embroidered on the underside of the seat, it said, the king, the king. The man on the other end of the phone said, sir, that motorcycle belonged to Elvis Presley, and I'm authorized right now to give you $300,000 for that motorcycle. Now, he was a smart pastor. It's a true story, and he got a half million dollars for that motorcycle from Harley Davidson. Why? Because of an old broken down, no, because of who it belonged to, and friends, your life is that way. You may feel broken down, you may feel that life's done nothing but hit you over the back of the head, and yet, if you belong to the Lord Jesus, you have great value because of whom you belong to. You belong to the Lord, and his promise in you brings power to cause you to well up in life and to make a difference in your life. You need to lay hold of that. People live life in one of three levels. I write this often. I'll say it again. You might want to fill these in. A lot of people I know live life on the survival mode, weekend to weekend, paycheck to paycheck, little or no purpose or direction. How many of you work with people like that? All they're looking for is trying to get to the next weekend, the next big party, the next big blowout, the next big event or concert or whatever it is. Most of you in this room today live life at the second level, the level of success or perhaps the third. The success level is where America shoots for. That's where you've got enough to kind of make some choices, kind of set yourself in the right place financially so you're secure and independent, success enough to have your own home, a couple of cars, maybe a getaway place for vacation, a couple of country club membership here and there, stuff when you want it. I mean, that's the American dream, right? But if that's where you stop, you've missed what life's about because life is meant to live, number three, at the significance level, at the level of where you are supposed to be and the purpose of God exactly where he has you. And I want to submit to you, how can you know what significance you've been given if you've not been with your creator to determine that? First and foremost, you have to know what God has put you on this earth to do. And may I just submit to you, seek that with all of your heart because God's promises change you. Simon took the baby in his arms and said, verse 28 of Luke chapter two, Lord, as you have promised, now dismiss your servant in peace. In other words, when he saw the baby, when he received the promise, he knew his life was changed. He knew he'd received the fulfillment of what he was looking for. And this is what I want you to see. This is the crucial point really of the whole message today is this. How did Simeon know that this little one was the fulfillment? I mean, how did he know this was the promise? What gave him this ecstatic outburst of saying, you know, God, this is it. Take me home now. What made him able to say that? Because he wasn't looking at some general. He wasn't looking at some, you know, military power that was going to overflow, overthrow the Roman rule. He wasn't looking at some brilliant financial or economic or political strategist that was going to extricate the Jews from their bondage. He was holding, what, a baby, a little one. And that was the seed of the promise. And what I want you to grasp today is just this. Even if you have a little bit of hope today, a little bit of promise that the Lord is at work, listen, just a little bit of faith. That's all you need to rise up to lay hold of the purpose of God for your life. It's the same as Paul in the prison saying, it's no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. It's Christ in me, the hope of glory. As he sits in this prison, by all external circumstances rotting away. It's the same as Elijah standing on Mount Carmel and saying, look out there and what do you see? And I've stood on Mount Carmel between the Mediterranean Sea and the huge plain of Megiddo where the final war will be fought. And you can look out there and see for miles and miles and miles. And Elijah said, what do you see out there? And he said, we see a cloud the size of a man's fist. You know, what is that? One thousandth or so of the whole sky, just this tiny cloud. And Elijah looks at it and says, that's it. That's it. God's sending rain. And I want to say to some of you today, you just have a little bit of promise in there, just a little bit of hope that something's going to happen, but that's it. Hold on to it. It's from the Lord and it's powerful. It's a seed that will rise up and change you by working inside of you. Number three, God's promises are peaceful. God's promises are peaceful. Simeon then says, now let your servant depart in peace. In other words, I can go now, Lord. I can go now. What an incredible thing to say. How many of you are ready to say, I can go now? Did you watch Billy Graham on Larry King Live the other night? Larry King Live, I think it was Christmas night, had Dr. Billy Graham on there. And I've never heard Dr. Graham say this. I've been watching him for years. I never heard him say he's ready to go. And Larry King was saying, you know, you've been really sick lately and you're having a hard time. And he said, you know, how are you feeling? He said, I'm ready to die. I'm ready to go home. Come on, bring it on, let's go. What a great way. I mean, I'm not there myself. I hope I'll be ready when it's time, but I heard him say it on national TV. I'm ready to go. What a great perspective on life, isn't it? I mean, Simeon holds this baby and said, now, Lord, you fulfilled my deepest dreams. And I pray that all of us can say, no matter what we're facing in life, you know what, Lord? With you in my life, I can face anything. I've got peace. God's presence brings peace. Say that with me. God's presence brings peace. And his promise is the assurance of his presence in your life, no matter what you're facing. And I have to say, the problem that most of us have is we try to force God's promises into being. I've had people say to me, you know, I've been praying for family members for years to come to know the Lord, and they just keep, you know, they just keep brushing it off. And I'm just so, I just don't know if they'll ever come to Christ. And I want to say to some of you today, you know, trust God. If he's given you a promise that they'll be touched by his spirit, then believe him for that. Do you know how many funerals I've done where people have been praying for folks, and it was at that funeral, their own funeral, that the person came to Christ they've been praying for? The Lord even used the death of the person. I've seen that happen. So never give up. Trust God. Simeon gives us such perspective here on what's really important in life. And I pray as you go into this new year that you're laying hold of some promises that are going to bring you closer to God. I was just doing a little bit of reading about resolutions. I don't really do a lot of New Year's resolution stuff because most often in my life, resolutions lead to repentance. I don't usually get it done the way I say I'm going to. McCall's Magazine I think is, we have an overhead, they did a study of the top ten resolutions. Here's the top four of the top ten. Number one, improve your personal financial circumstance for 99. I've often said to you, we talk about money here at North Way and all that because it's the number one stress producer in most households. Here's people who are saying, hey, help. Second thing was to stop smoking, number three, lose weight, and number four, to exercise. Those are the top four of the top ten. The rest of them really were kind of meaningless to me. But it's interesting, most people do not have in their list of resolutions, you know, get closer to God, understand His will for my life, change how I'm relating to God or His people. And I want to say, if you want to affect your life, then get something in order with God first. Make that your highest priority and that will be the key to the fulfillment of His purpose and peace in your life. And finally, God's promises are prophetic. You know, not only did the arrival of Jesus fulfill a prophetic word to Simeon, but it birthed one as well. Did you hear what I said? Not only did the promise fulfill a word to Simeon, but it birthed a word as well. And follow me on this because it's important. I want you to make sure you understand what I'm about to say. We are led to believe that if we just trust God, everything will be fine. And you know what? Sometimes it's fine and sometimes it's not fine. Sometimes it's painful to trust God. I'm sure there were days when the Apostle Paul said, you know, Lord, if I knew that trusting you meant that I was going to be beaten with thirty-nine lashes five separate times, shipwrecked, thrown into prison, suffer, torment, I'm not sure I would have signed on for this. But in the end, he said, but it's all worth it because of who you are. Simeon holds up this baby Jesus and it's the fulfillment of his promise, but then he turns to his mother, Mary. And if we could put that up, please, Donna. Here's what he says to Mary, Luke 2, 34, Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, this child will be rejected by many in Israel and it will be their undoing, but he will be the greatest joy to many others. Let me just pause there. Isn't that still true today? Jesus is still the great divider. Some still reject him and some still receive him. For some, he still makes them angry and for others, he's the greatest joy they'll ever know. Thus, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And he's looking at Mary, now the mother of Christ, and he says, and a sword will pierce your very soul. What was he talking about there? Come on. What was he talking about? He was talking about the cross. He was talking about the time that there would be 33 years later when Mary would be bowing at the foot of the cross where her own son was being pierced for our transgressions. And it would be like a sword in her soul. And I'm sure this startled Mary. That was the first thing that I read in the Bible where something difficult was spoken to her about this baby. But friends, that prophecy, think about it, 33 years later, Mary's now at the cross and Jesus is there. Do you think the Holy Spirit reminded her, Mary, remember I told you this was going to happen? And it was a comfort to her 33 years later that she had that prophetic word. I want you to know, there's some of us that have had prophetic words that we've been carrying, haven't we, for 20, 30 years. And they're a comfort to us that God has it under control. And one day he'll fulfill his word to us because his promises are prophetic. And it takes the wisdom of God to hold on. Moses was promised to go in to take his people to the promised land and he led them all the way to the brink, but he didn't go in. David was the greatest king that there was, but he ended up having a divided kingdom because he couldn't control his passions. Jonah spent three days in the well because he resisted God's promises and his summons to obey him. Jesus gave his life to be our Redeemer. I mean, there is a cost to following Christ. And then Hebrews 11 talks about all those people that have preceded us, all of them who had great faith in the promises, but didn't receive them when they thought they would. And Hebrews 11 closes and turns to Hebrews 12 and says, now consider this great cloud of witnesses. And I want to read it with you out of the message translation because I think it captures it most powerfully. Here's what it says in the message verse, and read it with me. Do you see what this means? Read it with me. All these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on. It means we better get on with it. Strip down, start running, and never quit. No extra spiritual fat. What does that mean? Huh? In other words, just don't sit there and, you know, listen to tapes and read books and go to Bible studies and never give out to people. But be a person who's giving out all the time. No parasitic sins draining a life. Keep your eyes on Jesus who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it because he never lost sight of where he was headed. That exhilarating finish in and with God. He could put up with anything along the way, the cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there in the place of honor right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls. I love that. Just remember the Lord, what he did to fulfill God's promise to him, and it will shoot adrenaline into your souls. Friends, as we face this new year, God wants to give you promise, hope. Hope that's personal for you. God's speaking to you. Hope that's powerful, even if it's a small seed. Hope that's peaceful because it's God bringing his rule into your life. And hope that's prophetic. Hope that brings with it the power to fulfill it because it's the word of God. How many people need that kind of promise from 1999? Would you stand with me and let's ask the Lord to do that in our lives. Lord, as we conclude this message, I thank you today that I stand as one who needs the touch of your grace and of your hope and of your promise in my life and my family. And I stand with these that have gathered here, Lord, from all around this city, and we ask you, Lord, to pour out grace and promise in each of our homes. Help our homes to be a place where your promises come alive, where hope, Lord, is fresh every day, and where we find great strength because of the promise and the power and presence of God. For we prayed in your name. Let's sing this as sort of a prayer to the Lord. Come and fill our homes with your presence.