Tag: hope

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Overflow – Luke 1:39-45

The Incarnation at celebrate at Christmas is an overflowing of the love of God into a real tangible, concrete way. God knows we are not merely intellectual creatures, but need touch, need facts, need reality.

God could have done things differently but the fact that He descended, “became flesh and dwelt with us,” tells us something about His nature, and also ours. The Good News came in embodied form, so that we could encounter it in a personal way.

Scripture also tells us that “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Humanity was made to long for things – want and desire are core to our nature. They are on one hand healthy and good, but on the other hand when left too long will make the heart sick. Hope, when combined with fulfillment, bring healing. The birth of Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment, both as the “consolation of Israel” and as the answer to the “groaning of creation”.

The nature of God is relational – the Godhead exists in trinity, an eternal relationship that we replicate in our own relationships. The coming of Jesus was followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Person by which we enter into relationship with God, and by which we are bound into the Body of Christ, the Incarnation of Jesus now into His church.

Today’s passage is called the “Visitation,” the meeting of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth immediately after the Annunciation when Mary learns of her blessing and challenge. In this passage we get a picture of the physicality of the Incarnation. Jesus could have come like the Terminator, showing up as a fully formed adult but instead He began His humanity as all humans do, as a handful of cells replicating within His mother.

But even in that form, Jesus’ presence has power to bring joy, as the baby in Elizabeth’s womb reacts with rejoicing. This connection – between Mary, Elizabeth, the unborn John and the three unborn Christ is the first stirring of the church. The rejoicing comes in relationship and in community – and in diversity. The two women are in completely different stages of life, but are brought together by the work of God and ultimately the coming of Christ.

This relational aspect extends to our lives today, as we are told that Jesus is also in a way incarnate in the “least of these” around us. When we serve others we ultimately serve Jesus.

This Christmas, let us live out the rejoicing at the fulfillment that the coming of Christ brings – and let us also seek to bring that fulfillment to those around us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, December 22, 2024

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Hope When the World is Shattered – Ezekiel 17:22-24

597 BC was a bad year. That was the year the temple of God in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, and the kingship overthrown. As individualistic Americans it may be difficult to understand the immensity of what this would mean to the Jewish people. Their communal identity was entirely enmeshed with those two institutions, themselves more closely linked than we can truly grasp. Losing both of them in one day would have left the people utterly broken. What hope is there when your world is shattered?

That is the context into which Ezekiel is speaking here, telling the parable of cedar trees – the kings is Judah – and eagles – the kingdoms of Egypt and Babylon. The kings switch their allegiances and are destroyed, a picture of the fickleness of the people themselves, changing their allegiance from the God of their fathers to the idols of the world.

But then Ezekiel speaks to something greater here in verse 22, reminding the people that they are not alone. It’s something greater that calls forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the God of Abraham who is with us in all that we do and everywhere we go. We are never alone.

But God is not only present, but He is active. He is the active force in these verses, hammered home at the end – “I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.” All this, in the midst of the destruction of everything that made up the identity of His people, He promises to act, to fulfill the promise that he made to David.

Note that this is God acting and no one else. Often we feel or behave like any change or success is on our shoulders. But even when He is gracious enough to pull us into the work He is doing, the work and responsibility and success is still God’s. He may work quietly and slowly at times, but He is always working and when He brings it to fulfillment, it is amazing. “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.”

This passage also promises more about the nature of the Christ who would come – “Birds of every kind will nest in it.” More birds than only those of Abrahamic descent, but all kinds, from every land. The kingdom to come will be a global kingdom, fast beyond the boundaries of David and Solomon, fulfilling the promise made to Abraham to bless all nations through his line.

Imagine yourself as a bird in the shade of Jesus Christ. We have been made free through Him, made children of God through Him. Looking back, we have the same hope that Ezekiel had when looking ahead.

How do we practice this hope actively? By seeking joy in the midst of suffering. By persisting in prayer. By seeking the peace of God and resting in him. By patiently enduring trials. Through humility on victory. Hope it’s not merely an attitude or emotion, but it is a discipline, and it is a promise.

As Jeremiah wrote around the time of Ezekiel, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for wholeness and not harm, plans to give you a hope and future.'” That hope came in the form of Jesus Christ and is offered to us if we come and shelter ourselves beneath his branches.

– Sermon Notes, Jeff Sickles, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, November 28, 2021