Advent: Hope 2024
Advent Dox
Call to worship / OT reading:
pastor bobby owens
Isaiah 7.10-14
NT reading:
pastor michael champoux
Matthew 1.18-25
song:
Joy to the world
Historical reading:
dr. brett eckel
advent collect BOCP
song:
What child is this?
Confession & Pardon:
pastor zachary mcguire
song:
O little town of Bethlehem
Sermon:
Dr. alex loginow
Advent: Hope
Introduction
What do you think of when you hear the word hope? Hope is in vogue every Christmas season and today is the official start of the Christmas season. I know some of you have had your decorations up for a while now; maybe you’ve been listening to Christmas music since November 1st, but today is the official start of the season because today is the 1st day of Advent.
Advent is the beginning of the new church calendar year and is the season of anticipation, which leads us to the season of Christmas, which lasts for 12 days – Christmas to Epiphany (Jan 6th. The church calendar is both arbitrary and immensely beneficial – the church calendar is arbitrary because the only calendar required in Scripture is that the church gathers for worship on the 1st day of the week. God commands us to remember the Sabbath day and the New Testament reveals that after the resurrection of Christ that Sunday is the Sabbath so the only required calendar is to gather for worship on Sunday. But the church calendar is also immensely beneficial because it collectively structures our lives around God himself. Advent and Christmas are about the Father sending the Son; Lent and Easter are about the Son redeeming God’s people; and Pentecost and Ordinary Time are about the Holy Spirit filling and empowering God’s people.
Advent is from the Latin adventus, which means, “coming or arriving.” So Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of the Son of God – His 1st coming in the incarnation, celebrated during Christmas, and His impending 2nd coming to raise the dead, judge the world, and make all things new. And that is why we begin Advent thinking about, reflecting on, meditating upon, sitting in the idea of hope. So today we ask ourselves: what is hope?
The Greek word for hope in our Scripture passage is ελπις. The biblical notion of hope (ελπις) differs from how we often use the word hope today – meaning wishful thinking. If you look up ελπις in BDAG, which is the most respected academic Greek lexicon, this is the definition: “The looking forward to something with some reason for confidence respecting fulfillment.” Hope in the Bible is not wishful thinking, but hope is looking forward to something with confidence that it will be fulfilled. So with that definition in mind, let’s look at this passage to see what God has to say about hope – should we have hope? If so, what are we hoping in? And what is the reason or benefit of hope?
Hope for the Glory of God
The first thing we see here in Romans 5.2 is that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. St. Paul has already spilled much ink on the depths of human depravity in the 1st 3 chapters of Romans. Then in Romans 4 the apostle used Father Abraham as the example of how we can be right with God in spite of our sin and the answer is faith alone. Paul continues the thought in chapter 5 declaring that since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through Christ. Through faith in Jesus we have obtained access into God’s grace and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
The glory of God is the meaning of existence. God created everyone and everything for His own glory. So that means the reason we exist, the meaning of our lives is the glory of God. It’s like on The West Wing how all of the advisors to the President say, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” Whatever the will of the President is, they dedicate their time, energy, emotion to that will, and they consider it a privilege, an honor, the most important thing they’ll ever do – to give themselves to the pleasure of the President for 4 or 8 years is the 1st line of their obituary, it’s the meaning of their life. How much more true should that be for us who serve, not at the pleasure of the President, but at the pleasure of the King of kings, the creator of all things, the 1 true and living God? We exist for the glory of God.
God’s people have understood this throughout history. The 1st ever written Scripture, the 10 commandments, written by the finger of God himself is all about how we live for the glory of God. The Protestant Reformers declared soli deo Gloria as the great summary of the 5 pillars of Reformed theology. The WSC begins with the question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” We could talk all day about how the church has believed and understood God’s glory to be the meaning of existence, but the most important question for you today is do you believe that and do you hope in it?
Do you rejoice in hope for the glory of God? Remember hope means looking forward to something with confidence of fulfillment. Do you rejoice looking forward with confidence in the glory of God? Do you serve at the pleasure of God? Do you pray Your kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
That is the truth so you must reflect on whether your life aligns with that or are you living a lie? God will be glorified in the salvation of His people revealing His grace, God will be glorified in the condemnation of the reprobate revealing His justice, God will be glorified in the recreation of the world and in the summation of all things in Christ. Do you live your life for the glory of God? If you want genuine hope, you should. Reorient your perspective to reality; it will change everything and you will have hope.
Hope for our Good
But St. Paul also tells us here that 2nd hope is for the good of humanity – the glory of God and the good of humanity. Verse 3 begins not only that…not only do we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also this…we rejoice in our sufferings. Why does the Bible say this? How can we rejoice in suffering? And let’s get past the platitudes here and have some real talk – most, if not all, of us have experienced legit suffering: death, sickness, broken homes, messed up parents, adultery, divorce, chronic pain, anxiety – how can the Bible have the audacity to say we rejoice in our suffering?
Let’s follow the logic here; St. Paul explains – we rejoice in our suffering knowing suffering produces endurance. When we suffer, when we experience resistance to comfort, we either fold, give up, quit, give in, or we endure. The fight to – believe the gospel, to obey Jesus, to love God and neighbor, to serve the church, to flee temptation, to be humble, to confess and repent – when we keep going, when we keep trusting Jesus in the midst of suffering, our suffering produces endurance. God uses suffering to create spiritual endurance athletes, so that we don’t give up the moment things get difficult, but we learn how to persevere, to endure.
And that endurance produces character. The more you cling to Jesus and obey Jesus through suffering the more those individual occurrences of endurance shape who you are. Your endurance becomes your character. You are made more like Jesus because that’s what Jesus did – Jesus endured suffering with zero character flaws. Jesus was righteous, without sin, and He voluntarily endured the suffering of the world and the devil.
And then as that endurance creates Christ-like character, that character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame. Why? Why does hope not put us to shame? St. Paul says because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. When we’re more like Jesus because we’ve developed His character by endurance through suffering, we have hope, which will never put us to shame, it will never be proven to be a waste of time or energy or resources because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
What is God’s love? The answer is in both verse 6 and 8. Verse 6 says, for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. That word for (postpositive γαρ) is a conjunction. Do you know what a conjunction does? Do you remember School House Rock? “Conjunction junction what’s your function?: hookin’ up words, phrases, and clauses.” So the word for here in verse 6 is hookin’ up these ideas – God’s love = Christ died for the ungodly.
Verse 8 makes it clear: but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The point Scripture is making is that hope is for our good. Just like we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, we also rejoice in suffering because it produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope, which does not put us to shame because God’s love has filled our hearts and God’s love is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hope: the Gospel
Paul’s teaching that the gospel is shameless doesn’t originate here in Romans 5. In fact, if we had been reading Romans from the very beginning we would have already come across this idea. When St. Paul writes that hope does not put us to shame he’s calling back to the thesis statement of the book of Romans – for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom 1.16). Those 2 words – in Romans 1.16 and 5.5 (not ashamed in 1.16 and put us to shame in 5.5) have the same Greek root. St. Paul harkens back to the beginning here – the hope that will not put us to shame, the love of God, is the same thing Paul is not ashamed of in Romans 1.16 – the gospel.
And in verse 2, just like Romans 4, he made clear that we access this gospel by faith. The Reformed definition of faith will help you discern whether you have genuine faith or not: faith is comprised of knowledge, assent, and trust in Jesus Christ. Faith begins with the knowledge that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. We are sinners who justly deserve God’s wrath in hell but Jesus lived, died, and resurrected in our place to reconcile us with God.
Knowledge of the good news of Jesus is the 1st element of faith, but there’s more: you must also assent to this good news. You must confess it and not deny it. You must submit to the veracity of the gospel. Yu cannot merely know what the Bible reveals about Jesus Christ, you must also embrace this good news; acknowledge its validity.
After you assent, the key and final element of faith is trust – you must transfer your trust to Jesus alone. You must sit in the reality that there’s nothing you can say or do to be saved. All you can do is trust that what Jesus did is what you need. For some people the reception of faith happens instantaneously. For most people it happens over time as knowledge, assent, and trust slowly permeate their heart and mind.
Regardless of how quickly or slowly faith develops, once it takes root, the fruit of faith is repentance. Repentance means to confess our sin and then turn from our sin. This happens initially when the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds to reveal that we’ve received faith, there is an initial confession that we are a sinner and an initial turning to Jesus, but repentance is also a lifelong discipline. Until the resurrection we are still in the flesh, we still sin so we must always repent – we must confess our sin and turn from our sin.
To confess your sin means to acknowledge that whatever sin you’re committing is sin against God, don’t redefine your sin, don’t justify or explain away your sin, don’t blame shift or embrace a victim mentality, no! Confess your sin. And then turning from your sin means to stop doing it, to change your practice, your habits, your actions, your words, thoughts, and deeds in light of what God says is right. Repentance is not faith and it cannot save us because it is one of our good works, but if you have faith, you will repent.
Conclusion
And if you have faith you will have hope. You will rejoice in hope of the glory of God. It will bring you joy that you have confident expectation that God will be glorified in all things. And you will rejoice in your suffering because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, which will not put you to shame because God’s love – the good news of Jesus – has been poured into your heart along with God Himself, the Holy Spirit. Hope is for the glory of God and the good of humanity and we begin Advent thinking about hope because advent is our hope: Advent means, for the glory of God and the good of humanity, Jesus is coming.