[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], November 2020]
Advent Episode 1
Hope seems to have a sense of uncertainty about it – we hope it’ll happen, but we’re not too sure. Is this the same for our hope in Jesus?
This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent and the thing we’re going to be looking at as a Church for this Sunday is hope. My question to you is ‘what do you hope for, what do you put your hopes on?’
[00:28] See, hope by its very nature involves waiting. Waiting for something to happen that you hope is going to go the way that you want it to. It can be something as simple as ‘I hope the weather’s nice tomorrow.’ ‘I hope I don’t get wet on this dog walk’. It could be something broader like ‘I hope these vaccines for covid work’. It could be something more serious like ‘I hope I don’t catch covid’ and it could be something a lot more personal like ‘I hope my life goes back to how it was once all this is over’, but in all of these things there’s a certain amount of uncertainty, particularly with the weather. You know we’re not quite sure what the outcome is going to be, just got to wait and see.
[01:27] See, Advent is all about waiting, it’s a period of waiting. It’s a countdown to Christmas unsurprisingly as the chocolate Advent calendars suggest but it actually is a much bigger thing than that. It’s about waiting for the return of Jesus and this is a part of the Christian faith that is a little bit hidden, unfortunately perhaps due to the over-excitement that the ‘Left Behind’ series created in the 70s and 80s. We tend to hide the fact that we are waiting for Jesus to return.
[02:13] Actually, it’s fundamental to our Christian faith; we hope, we have hope that Jesus Christ will return again and this time it won’t be to obscurity to take on a human form as a little baby in a stable somewhere in the Middle East. No, this time Jesus will be returning as King. He will show once and for all that sin and death and Satan are defeated, that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. It won’t be a matter of choice, it will just be fact, there will be no other option. God has taken this world back.
[03:20] But is it a hope like those hopes about the weather that are really based on uncertainty? We hope it will happen but we’re not sure it will. Well, the Bible says that through Jesus we have a sure and certain hope. In the original language this word ‘hope’ doesn’t have the same uncertainty that it does in English. This is definitely going to happen.
[03:48] This period of Advent is a reminder of that. It’s a countdown, not into Christmas, but also pointing towards that time in the future. It could be today, could be tomorrow. Who knows when Jesus will return again? It also reminds us that we have a hope that goes beyond vaccines or good weather or that life will be good. As followers of Jesus Christ we have an eternal hope. We are anchored, our soul is anchored to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of heaven, and that no matter the uncertainty of life, no matter how shaky our foundations may be, however bleak the outlook may become, we can have hope in Jesus Christ that in the end everything will be okay.
[1] YouTube link: Advent Episode 1 – What Do You Hope For?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © Martin Shorey