Advent: Hope & Promise
Text: Isaiah 9:2, 6–7
Advent
Today marks the first day of Advent. Perhaps you didn’t grow up in a church that celebrated Advent. I certainly didn’t, but I have learned to love the attitude and heart behind Advent. Advent simply means arrival, usually of an important person or event. For the Christian church it is a holiday season leading up to Christmas mixed with many different pieces and traditions.[1]
At some point in the early church Christ’s birth was fixed at December 25th, though it was unlikely he was born this time of year. The idea that the light of the world came into darkness made much better sense to a northern European continent when December was almost all darkness. These same northern Europeans used to take wheel-shaped bundles of evergreens to symbolize ongoing life and placed candles on it throughout the winter. The candles gave light and hope as the people looked forward to the longer days of spring, much like our savior coming into a dark world.
The first real record of Advent is from fourth century Spain, around 380 AD at the Council of Sargossa. They were combating a heresy called Priscillianism that split everything dualistically—light vs dark, soul vs body—so focusing in the season up to Christ’s birth on the Word made flesh (the two coming together) and the Light of the world coming into darkness made theological sense to combat this heresy.
By the fifth and sixth centuries we have many more records about what was done. Like Easter, the church had a season of preparation, usually with prayer and fasting, to prepare for the Christmas holiday—the Eastern Orthodox Church still celebrates an Easter lent-like season right before Christmas. By the sixteenth century, much of what the church practices as Advent was fairly similar to what you will see today. The broader Christian church had taken the evergreen wreaths and combined them with several purposeful candles. Three purple candles—purple being the color of royalty—to symbolize hope, peace, and love. A rose candle that symbolized joy. Sometimes a white, fifth candle is lit on Christmas day to symbolize angelic announcement of Christ’s birth.
The word “Advent” also came to have a particular meaning. When the main language of the church became Latin, adventus was the word used to translate the Greek word parousia, meaning appearing or coming, and is used of both Christ’s first coming and his second coming. Often the first two weeks of Advent were spent looking forward to and anticipating the second coming of Christ, and the last two weeks turned to remember and celebrate the first coming of Christ.
I share all this so you know a little more about the history of Advent and to remind us that our holiday heritage is often mixed. We often steal and borrow from other cultural traditions and use them in connection to our Christian beliefs. It is part of what has allowed Christianity to connect so easily with whatever culture it is in. Christmas trees are a great example of this. We don’t expect that any particular method of celebrating a holiday season is guaranteed to grow us closer to God, nor are they God ordained and sanctioned ways of celebrating him, neither do we think that coopting traditions and infusing them with Christian meaning and remembrance is wrong or necessary. What matters more is the content of what we are remembering and celebrating.
This Advent we would like to invite you follow along with us through our Advent booklet. This is our attempt at remembering Christ and preparing our hearts before Christmas this year. We have chosen to group this year’s Advent weeks into four topics which we will preach on each Sunday: Hope & Promise, Preparation & Waiting, Joy & Peace, and Love. We will then follow up with a post-Advent sermon on Adoration. The goal of each Sunday is to set the tone for each week’s readings. To whet your appetite for more—and then to give you helpful verses to ponder and pray over each day as you prepare your heart for the Christmas holiday. We pray that you will be reminded of God’s wonderful gift to us in Christ Jesus at his incarnation, and look forward expectantly to his second coming.
Introduction: Hope & Promise
Our Advent series starts this Sunday with the idea of hope and promise. These are such appropriate ideas as we are in the midst of the Black Friday/cyber-Monday onslaught. So much of Christmas in American culture is wrapped up in hope and promises. For children and adults alike, it is the hope of joy with a toy, electronic item, or anticipated bauble written on a list many weeks ahead of time. It is a promise that they are valuable, that they matter, and that others think highly of them.
Hope and promise drives much of our endeavors as humans. We hope that a certain school or college, outfit, sports team, job, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, or spouse will bring us everything we ever hoped and wanted. When we don’t have everything we have hoped for, we look for promises. Promises that tell us if we just buy a certain item, say the right thing, engage with the right people, then our hopes will be fulfilled.
Hope and promise have this intertwined dance they play together. We hope and seek the promise that will deliver what we want. Scripture is also filled with hope and promise, but in a vastly different package than the commercials are selling us this season. God’s story of his love for us—his children—has always been filled with great hope and an amazing promise, all wrapped up in a living gift for us. While it is no toy or electronic item, it is exactly what we have always needed! It is the first question we run into this Advent: do you have this hope? And do you know and need the great promise of God found in the manger this Christmas season?
The Dark Backdrop to Hope and Promise
Isaiah brings this question out in a unique way in our passage this morning. He starts this way in Isaiah 9:2:
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isaiah 9:2 ESV)
Isaiah is prophesying to the kingdom of Judah, the southern kingdom that broke out of the united kingdom of Israel. After Saul, David, and Solomon, what became the northern kingdom was the part of Israel that would not recognize Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, as their king. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin stayed under the house of Solomon, and became the southern kingdom of Judah.
Isaiah starts by describing the sad state of the people upon whom great hope has shone. These are people who are “walking in darkness” and “who dwelt in a land of deep darkness.” Earlier, in Isaiah 2:5 he has begged the people of Judah and said to them,
“Oh house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2:5 ESV)
It is these people, the people who have not listened that will see a great light, on whom the light will shine. This isn’t how you would expect him to start. We would usually expect that those who receive a great hope and promise have some sort of great value. The movies, plays, stories and music we have always hint at a redeemable and good part of the person who is eventually saved or given a wonderful promise. They never use totally wicked people as the one who has good happen to them in the end.
Surprisingly, Isaiah describes the people who receive the light as those “walking in darkness.” These people are choosing it willingly, they stay on its path, and they accept its destiny. So much so, that he can also say they are “dwelling in a land of deep darkness.” They don’t just walk the dark paths, they setup their house. They stay, live, trade, and have a life in this darkness. It is exactly this description that helps us know he is not only talking to the people of Judah, but to you and me as well.
He is remembering the curse, how Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden (Genesis 3:15). It was not a people who walked with God well who needed a Savior, it was sinners. This is exactly what our Lord said in Luke 5:32:
“I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32 ESV)
Surprisingly, the news of the hope that we have and God’s amazing promise starts here, in seeing how dark our situation is. Do you believe this is, or was, your situation? Do you believe you are a sinner?
Paul tells us in Romans 3:23 that:
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 ESV)
Is that you? We can’t even begin to examine the hope and promises of God if we don’t start here. As a church that has just finished a series on Job we should be the first to admit that God can use any dire moment to point to himself. God promises that he will work all things for good and his glory (Romans 8:28), and he can even do that out of your sin. In the darkness of sin the red-yellow fingers of a dawn or God’s mercy and grace in Jesus Christ shine resplendent across our lives. It is like the black velvet pad of a jeweler upon which God’s amazing work shines as the radiant reflectiveness of a diamond.
This was one of the hardest aspects of the gospel for Martin Luther to grasp. He was reading Romans 1:17 and was shocked. That passage says:
“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is being revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:17)
Knowing that the gospel showed us God’s righteousness was not the most joyful thing for Luther. The gospel revealing how righteous God is also forced Luther to acknowledge how far away he was from that righteousness. How dark his life was in sin and apart from God.
This is the backdrop to this great story of hope and promise—our life as sinners. If you aren’t starting here this morning, if you don’t yet believe you are a sinner, then this message of hope and promise won’t sound like much good news. Who needs hope and a promise of God’s mercy and grace if you don’t need it? And for those of us who treasure Christ, do you still see yourself as one who is in need of this great light? One who, outside of God’s grace, could still never clean yourself up enough to be in God’s holy presence? Both groups, believers and non-believers need to hear the same message from Isaiah 2:5—“come and walk in the light of the Lord!”
Hope & Promise: A Child
And what is that light? What is the illuminating mercy of God’s grace showing us, showing the people of Judah in Isaiah’s prophecy? Isaiah continues in chapter nine verse six:
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; (Isaiah 9:6a ESV)
Isaiah goes back to a very specific promise to describe the hope that he has. His hope is in a child because one of the first promises of God was about a child. Remember what God said to the serpent in the garden as he proclaimed punishment on him and the man and woman:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [seed, children] and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”” (Genesis 3:15 ESV)
It is this promise that actually gives Adam and Eve, and you and me, hope. What was started by Satan in the garden will one day be rectified. This offspring, this seed, this one male child will bruise Satan’s head—kill him. In the process he will be wounded, but not mortally.
We are meant to turn every page in our Bible after this promise and have hope. Every time you see the phrase, “So-and-so beget so-and-so, and So-and-so beget so-and-so,” (Genesis 10:1–32; 11:10–32; 1 Chronicles 1:1–9:44) these long lists of men, you are meant to mentally insert in between each of those statements a hope filled question: “Is this the one?” Is this the one, is this the male child we were promised? Is this the one in whom all my hope rests?
This promise of a child was given to you and me, to “us” as Isaiah says, to bring us hope.
Hope & Promise: A Child—God
But you may be wondering, why a child? Why should the arrival of a child be such good news? And even if you aren’t wondering that, would you have gone where Isaiah goes? He says this next:
“and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6b–7 ESV)
This is a peculiar and very specific child he is describing. What does that mean: the government shall be on his shoulders? Look down to Isaiah 9:7:
“Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.” (Isaiah 9:7 ESV)
I think our American exceptionalism sometimes causes us to miss the amazingly great news this would be. We think democracy is the only way to go. Only when things don’t go your way in elections do you perhaps rethink that hope in an elected official. But Isaiah promises a child who will be a king to bring you hope. A king, who holds all the governance of all people in his hands and on his shoulders and can promise real peace. A king who sits on the throne of David and establishes the kingdom and upholds it in justice and righteousness.
Think about what this really means. No doubt we can all look out at this world and see areas we want to see true righteousness and justice rule. But I’m sure we can also see areas within our own lives we would like to see justice and righteousness rule. An area you feel you have been wronged unfairly. Someone who has accused you unjustly, treated you poorly, or not cared for you the way you would have liked. Imagine, instead, what Isaiah is describing. A King who makes sure that never happens. A king who rights all wrongs against you and rights all wrongs you have committed against others. Whose kingdom only knows one thing: peace. I don’t doubt that is what many of us are looking for: a peace like this that transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7).
I’m sure you have a glimpse of this. The Sunday afternoon where no child is screaming as you quietly drift off into a wonderful nap on the couch. The moment you sit on a mountain top sipping hot coffee with a great friend by your side as the sun peaks through the clouds. A simple evening out with friends laughing around a table. But it is fleeting. What kind of child can bring this permanently? Whose kingdom there will “be no end” and “from this time and forevermore”? Our best attempts are stopped and hindered. Even the best kings ever described like David and Solomon didn’t fully achieve this. Surely no president or elected official of America has even come close.
“his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Mighty God. There is only one way this child can do this. Only one way his counsel will be pure and holy, only one way he can truly be the Prince of Peace. He must be God himself, almighty God, Everlasting Father. That is a promised child that can bring you and me hope!
Your Hope & Promise
Is this the promise you are holding to this Advent season? Is this the child of hope you come to through faith in wonder and adoration? Don’t let your sin, the black backdrop of this bright glory of hope and promise in light, hold you back. Whether it is for the first time of the thousandth time, come to your God as one who is a sinner and needs his grace to break into your life and meet you in the person of Jesus Christ!
If you are not yet a believer, the Christmas story is calling you to only one hope and promise—Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, God himself who came and lived a righteous life for you and died for the penalty of your sins. This hope and promise requires you to look at your sin and acknowledge that you don’t meet God’s righteous requirements. Don’t let that stop you. Every Christian here acknowledges the same thing, and is being called again this morning to remember it: we are sorrowful sinners who need a Savior. We did not clean ourselves up before we came to Christ, and we cannot clean ourselves up apart from his work in our life. Come and love this hope of a child born in a manger, and cherish the promise that not only was he our mighty God, but still is today and will be seen visibly as king over his kingdom again.
[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-history-of-advent/ last accessed 11/30/2019; https://www.infoplease.com/calendar-holidays/major-holidays/advent-dates-traditions-and-history last accessed 11/30/2019