Well, we're starting a journey beginning this morning in this Advent season. We're going to explore What Christmas actually offers us? Not the commercial version of Christmas that we started seeing in the stores in the summer and not the hallmark movie version of Christmas that I'm is all over the television screens this time of year But what God is actually giving us as a part of the beautiful Christmas story And so we're gonna be looking at hope and love and peace and joy and Christ And those are not just nice religious words. Those are the actual gifts that God offers us through Christmas There are things that we are desperate for there are things that we very much need in our life whether we realize it or not And so each week we're gonna unwrap one of these gifts and see what the Bible actually says about it and discover how it shows Up in the actual Christmas story and so today we're gonna start with the first of those gifts and that is the gift of hope Because here's the thing about hope Hope is something that lots of people talk about and everyone understands that they need hope but Generally people don't really know how to get it where it comes from or even exactly what it is we treat hope Almost if it's something that we create for ourselves if we're just positive enough We'll find it or if we just work hard enough We'll gain it or if we believe hard enough that we'll discover it We treat hope as if it's something that we can manufacture for ourselves But what if hope doesn't really work that way what if it's not something that we produce But rather something that we receive well This is actually the gift of hope that the Bible describes as a part of the Christmas story Christmas hope comes knocking and so the question for us as we approach this Christmas season is when hope comes knocking for us How are we going to respond one of the beautiful pictures that we see in the Christmas story is this clear comparison between the response to the angel Gabriel to the news of the beginning of Christmas It's a totally different response that comes from two separate people and it's a beautiful way for us to be able to evaluate for ourselves How we can respond to the message of hope and maybe how we have in the past responded to the message of hope in other words Do we demand proof before we allow ourselves to receive hope or do we step into the mystery that is hope?
So we're gonna take a look at that this morning. We're gonna see these two responses to people from the very same angel the same kind of impossible announcement that they received and yet two Completely different responses from these individuals and their responses reveal everything how hope actually works What Christmas is actually offering us and why some people receive this hope and other people don't so Let's dig into these two responses to Christmas. Hope now. Here's the first response that we see and that is that We can reject the hope that that stifles in fact.
We should reject the hope that stifles now What does that mean? Well, let's let's introduce ourselves to our first character in the Christmas story It's a man by the name of Zachariah. He was a priest. He was a faithful priest who worked in the temple and He was literally at work for God.
It's a good man He along with his wife Elizabeth were older past typical child-bearing on bearing years So on this particular day Zachariah is in the temple burning incense doing his duty when something amazing happened I'm an angel appeared to him that the angel on whose name was Gabriel You showed up that'll shake up your day. Well on it an angel appears to you Well, that's exactly what happened and here's the way the Bible describes it in Luke chapter 1 verse 11 to 13 Says while Zachariah was in the sanctuary an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing to the right of the incense altar Zachariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him, but the angel said don't be afraid Zachariah God has heard your prayer your wife Elizabeth will give you a son and you are to name him John Now more than that the angel goes on to tell him that his son John will have a special mission in life He will prepare the way for the Messiah and of course we know this to be John the Baptist who will do exactly what Gabriel describes prepare the way for Jesus now The truth is this and I want us to I want to linger here and I want us to make sure we feel the full impact of this This moment what we just read was the answer to decades of prayer on the part of Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth They have been childless and have been praying for a son. I don't know if there's a more painful Experience in life than for a couple to try to have a child and they're unable to do that my middle son and his wife For several years struggle to have a child were unable to they were finally able to through you know modern Technology things that we can do today that they couldn't do you know in the first century So here we have a couple that have been childless that have prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and here's a part of what makes This so painful you pray and you hope to have a child and it doesn't happen and it doesn't happen and it doesn't happen And it doesn't happen and it doesn't happen and eventually You are afraid to put too much hope and that hope begins to gradually disappear And in fact at some point you just want to forget about it and put it out of your mind because you so many times Built up your hope and then had that hope crash down and so you learn to protect yourself by not hoping and Yet your body won't allow you to forget about it because every single month your body will say nope Nope Nope, and there's maybe no more painful thing than for a couple to go through this for a year upon year upon decade Upon decade now I want to feel that real pain that impacts your marriage and your view of yourself and everything for so many years in Zechariah a faithful priest and his wife have prayed for this for years So on this day Christmas hope arrived at his workplace On this day the very thing that he has prayed for should now lead him to have a cause for celebration in his life a man of faith And yet here's his response in Luke chapter 1 verse 18 So the angel has just appeared to him and given him this message that we read and here's his response Zechariah said to the angel How can I be sure this will happen? I'm an old man now and my wife is also well along in years now?
It doesn't seem Terribly faithless to us, but let's translate it. How can I be sure this will happen to the angel? He says prove it to me to the angel He says show me the outcome first and then I'll open up my hands to receive this hope Now this is a hope that says give me proof. This is a hope that says I need to guarantee The results now I want us to really get a sense of the irony here.
Okay, so Here is Zechariah a man of faith who has a Years-long prayer that is answered here today He is standing in the temple and There is an angel who has appeared to him and he is receiving a direct message from God And he still needs more proof Isn't it a better irony and it begs the question how much evidence is enough? What would it take what level of certainty would Zechariah need in order to be satisfied? Now the interesting thing is that this is something that's repeated every day in our world Sometimes our demands for certainty and we've grown in our world to have this expectation of certainty It's grown out of science and it's grown out of centuries now of an approach to the world where we think certainty is the expectation for us But sometimes our demand for certainty when it comes to faith and to God is really just a sophisticated way of saying no We really can't believe we can't receive hope now Gabriel's response the angels response to Zechariah's question was this Let's take nine months to think about this So Zechariah was given nine months where he could not speak Of course, it's not lost on anyone that nine months is the period of pregnancy You know for his wife and that was the angel's sophisticated way of saying Zechariah shut up Close your mouth and you're not going to say anything for the next nine months now. Here's here's the beautiful part of this story He's still got his son.
So grace still Work for Zechariah, but he missed nine months of joy What's the joy of being a father to be well the ability to tell everyone about it the ability to share it with your friends The ability to be able to converse with your wife and share the joy of the movement of that baby I'm in her in her stomach and all of that joy He lost because he demanded proof before he would be able to receive hope Now it begs the question for us. What are we waiting for? What are we waiting to be certain about before we're able to find hope? You know the relationship that needs reconciliation But I really have to see that that person has changed before I hope or the person who needs forgiveness from us that I really am withholding because I need a guarantee that they won't hurt me again or the situation that feels impossible And I need to see a way for it to work on before I can hope Or the dream I've given up on that I need Certainty on before I'm willing to take that dream up again The reality is that some of us have been hurt by hope and we believed once and it didn't work out We trust it and we were betrayed We had faith and felt like nothing happened and I get that it makes sense but it also made sense to Zechariah and Sometimes that doesn't jive very well with hope What I can tell you is that what Zechariah did is he stifled hope He held a hand up to hope and refused to embrace the hope that the angel brought to him that day And what it cost him is the same thing that it costs us when we stifle hope It keeps us from singing keeps us locked in silence and it makes us watch from the outside Rather than participating from within So we do all of that while joy passes by us we do all that while life happens around us We do all of that while God's trying to give us something and we simply hold out our hand So here's what that looks like in real life.
I'm you've been praying for your marriage to get better and One day your spouse comes to you and suggests counseling God just answered your prayer But you say well, I don't know if it'll work and should we spend all of that money and then in the end did not work anyway And because nothing changes well hope was just stifled. That's exactly what Zechariah did and What if instead you pull that hope close and what if instead you make the appointment with the counselor and you show up to it And you say I don't know if this will work, but I'm willing to try that's embracing the hope that Surrenders rather than stifles now Let me say this plainly as I can because I think it just bears us walking away today and feeling the intensity of it God answered Zechariah's prayer and he stifled hope He sprayed cold water on it. He held up his hand to it God put joy in front of him and he kept it at a distance We do this because it feels safe. It feels like it's Protecting us and what we don't realize is that it's not safe at all and it's not protecting us by any means and Zechariah learned that Lesson the really difficult way But it happens every year that God brings the opportunity for someone to hope and because of fear and because of anxiety And because of past hurts we stifle that hope and choose to live in our pain That's one response to Christmas hope, but there is another and that is number two Our second option is to embrace the hope that surrenders now.
Let's look at the other Response to hope in the Christmas story, so we have Zachariah now. What's fascinating is it's the same angel It's the same kind of announcement, but watch what happens six months later now the scene is completely different where it was Zachariah It was in the temple Now it's in Nazareth, which is kind of no place special. You know, it's like Shudrent, you know, it's a little town that no one pays much attention to it's on the way to somewhere else It's not a priest like Zachariah was it's a teenage girl probably 14 15 years old There's no religious credentials. No authority.
No life experience in fact She's a young girl. She's engaged to a man by the name of Joseph and she's planning what is gonna be an ordinary life She's going to get married in Nazareth and live in Nazareth and almost certainly die in Nazareth because this is the way life worked in the first century But one day Christmas hope arrives at her door So the same angel Gabriel appears and here's what he says You will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call him Jesus He will be great and he will be called the son of the most high and here's Mary's response first You may not see it being tremendously different from Zachariah's, but it really is night and day Her response is this Mary asked the angel, but how can this happen? I am a virgin now literally It is how will this be? Now I want us to see very clearly the the difference because the Bible clearly sets this up as a Comparison and wants us to see the different response of these two Zachariah the older faith Man of God and Mary the young Faithful inexperienced girl that are side by side here in the scripture.
So with Zachariah, here's his response He says how can I be sure of this now Mary's is how will this be now for Zachariah? He took a skeptical posture. He's asking for proof not for understanding Mary's response is more inquisitive and Her posture is one of okay. Well explain to me how I am going to participate in this So is that kariah's is how can I know for sure in the Greek?
He literally is asking for a sign Can you show me a sign because this angel is not enough for me? I need a real sign I I need a direct message from you God and so it it's almost comical in nature where marriage responses How will this happen? It implies a trust that it will happen. She's just inquiring as to how it will happen Zachariah is focused on the obstacles.
I'm old my wife is old and for Mary she's focused on God not Limitations for Zachariah his he needs knowledge before obedience. He wants evidence first where for Mary She's accepting the call without the full details now Here's here's what I want us to see Mary's is the hope that surrenders She's not asking for evidence. She's asking for understanding She's not negotiating. She's participating Mary's is the response of someone who's leaning in to the message from Gabriel It's not convinced me.
This is real. It's helped me understand how I can be part of this now Here's Gabriel's answer which is instructive for us to know The difference between these two in verse 35 Gabriel's response is the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high Will overshadow you so the baby to be born will be holy and he will be called the son of God So when Gabriel says the Holy Spirit will come upon you. It's to say you won't figure this out You won't control it. You won't manufacture it This is something that happens to you.
It's not it's something that you receive It's something that you participate in but don't orchestrate see this was the difference between Zachariah and Mary Zachariah wants to know okay. Well explain this to me. How can I be in control of this and Mary is simply surrendering in once the details for what she needs to do in response So Mary's is the hope that surrenders now. What does it mean to embrace the hope that surrenders?
Well, it's not the absence of fear I think that's important for us to recognize Mary was certainly afraid. This is terrifying to have an angel appear to you But she said yes anyway Notice it's not the absence of questions Mary had questions. It's the heart behind the questions. That's the difference her question was about participation Not proof so Zachariah's will prove this to me and then I'll put my hope in it for Mary.
It was about okay I'm all in and tell me what to do So the hope that surrenders says I have some doubts, but I can move forward with them anyway So the results of the two responses are dramatic and this is what we should take away from the story So the same angel appears with almost the same message to Zachariah and to Mary and what's the What's the response of Mary or what's the result of Mary's encounter with this angel? Well, we have this very long passage here in Luke. I'm called the Magnificat Which is a song Mary sings And look at the dramatic difference with the response from Zachariah. He becomes mute and Can't even speak for nine months So Mary's song points towards her deep joy and opening her hands to hope and receiving the gift of the angel where Zachariah's Silence points to his deep regret that he Even as a man of faith could not place his open hands of hope out to this angel and instead needed proof And so what we see here is a beautiful picture of the way it works in real life for us We don't have to have it all figured out In order to receive hope Mary certainly didn't have it all figured out We don't have to fake certainty in order to receive hope Mary didn't have certainty We just have to be willing to say how will this be?
I'm willing to be part of it and this is where Christmas Hope lives Not in the realm of the explainable in the guaranteed but in the space where we say I'll embrace faith and I'll watch how it works Now Mary's vulnerable Risky yes that we read here changed everything Not just for her and it changed her entire life, but it changed everything for the entire world Now, I'm not sure what it looks like for you to receive the hope that God offers you this Christmas But I've got a pretty good idea that you know What it looks like for you I got a pretty good idea that God's been working in your life And you know the next step that he wants you to take in order to become more fully engaged with him I have a pretty good idea that It's not a surprise to you of what God wants you to do to become engaged in his church family to use his gifts You know in your life and the only question is are you going to embrace that hope with open hands like Mary did? What might change in your life if you reject the hope that stifles? The example of Zachariah and instead embrace the hope that Surrenders the example of Mary Christmas Hope is knocking and The beautiful message of Christmas is to open our hands to the hope that God offers. Let's pray Father, thank you for the beautiful Christmas story and in this beginning of the story that we see through the example of Zachariah and Mary Two ways that we can respond to you and God I pray that we would be people who can embrace hope I'm not stifle it that we can be people who Move towards you and not away from you that we can be people who open our hands to you and not Give you a closed hand.
So God I pray that today you'll help each of us God I don't know the pains and the hurts and the challenges that Everyone in here this morning is facing but God I know that you do and I know that in every situation I'm you offer hope and this is the gift of Christmas the gift of faith and I pray that each of us Will be able to follow the beautiful example of Mary and embrace the hope that you offer and help us to do that Today for it's in Jesus name. We pray