The reading this morning comes from Titus chapter 2 and starting in verse 11 we read,
for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright
and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our
great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness
and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
This is the word of God.
Great.
Thanks, Angeline.
Okay, a nice short scripture reading this morning.
And let me pray for us and then we're going to dive in a little bit.
Heavenly Father, as we come before your word this morning, as we come before you,
we pray that you will speak to us from your word.
God, we want to hear what you have to say to us.
In the midst of a world that is full of so much pain and turmoil, a war-torn year that we've had,
God, we long for the hope of heaven to break into our lives and into our city.
God, this morning as we contemplate how Christmas speaks to us about a true and abiding hope,
we do pray for our city, God.
We pray for the great city of Hong Kong.
We pray that the city which is so starved of hope, which so many people do feel hopeless,
we pray, God, that the gospel really will go out in our city.
We pray for all the churches of Hong Kong, the English churches, the Chinese churches,
Cantonese, Mandarin, all the various languages.
We pray, God, that whatever denomination, background, language, or culture,
that the good news of Jesus, the hope of Christmas and the hope of the gospel will go into our city
and bring hope to restless hearts.
And God, we pray once you start with us this morning, come and let your word find good soil in our hearts,
let your word come and anchor our hearts.
And as we lead it to Christmas, God, we pray that really the wonder of Christmas and the hope of Christmas will be true to us.
As we look at your word this morning, won't you speak to us?
You know where each one of us are at.
You know our fears and our joys.
You know the things that are on our hearts.
God, won't you meet each one of us in the room today?
Through your word and by your spirit, we pray.
In your great and wonderful name.
Amen.
Okay, so everybody knows we're one week out from Christmas.
If you don't know that, I'm not too sure what to say.
But Christmas is a wonderful time of the year.
Lots of great things to enjoy about Christmas.
For many of us, it's a time when work kind of slows down.
Some of us may be able to travel.
Some of us maybe are going to see loved ones you haven't seen for a long time.
Either you're going to go to them or they're going to come to you.
It's a time of connecting with friends and meals and good food.
It's a time we think about those that are precious to us.
And maybe we buy gifts for family or loved ones.
For those that have children, it's a real magical time of year.
It's full of wonder and fantasy and amazement.
It's a wonderful time of the year.
There's another reason why Christmas is so wonderful.
Why I love Christmas.
And maybe this is because I'm a little bit more Western.
But it's also the end of the calendar year.
I know obviously the Lunar New Year is a few weeks later.
But it's kind of the end of 2023.
And it's a time to reflect and think back upon what's happened.
But it's also a time to dream and hope for a new year.
It feels like every year Christmas comes and it feels like a blank canvas lies before me.
A chance to dream again.
To hope for all the things that this year didn't materialize and I hoped would have happened.
It's a time to think about what could possibly be.
One of my favorite lines from the Christmas carols is from O Holy Night.
It says,
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices.
Or the weary world at the end of a weary year rejoices.
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
A thrill of hope.
The hope of a new day.
A new year.
A new realm of possibilities.
For a weary and tired world.
A worn out world.
A war torn world.
Like we've had this year.
A world that's full of brokenness and pain and sin.
And there's something about coming to the end of the year and coming to Christmas.
That as we look into the future and to the year ahead.
We're able to say,
The future still has hope.
There's still possibility for goodness to happen.
Joy is still possible.
Hope is not gone.
At Christmas we often talk about joy and peace and love.
But Christmas promises hope.
Hope beyond a break.
A new and glorious morn.
But hope is a funny thing, isn't it?
Because hope is immensely powerful.
And it can draw you through difficult and hard times.
I think of Victor Frankl.
The Jewish psychotherapist who was a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany.
Concentration camps in World War II.
And he analyzed and he watched his fellow prisoners.
And he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning.
And he recounts in this book how those prisoners that had hope.
Hope that they would get through.
Were much more likely to survive the concentration camps.
Listen to what he says.
He says,
The prisoner who had lost hope in the future was doomed.
With his loss of hope in the future, he let himself decline, becoming subject to mental and physical decay.
And yet he analyzed that those that were still able to find some kind of hope were much more likely to survive the hardship and the difficulty of the camp.
And so hope is a really powerful thing.
It draws through the hard times and the difficulties.
But hope is a double-edged sword, isn't it?
Because hope can also be disappointing.
How many of us here have really hoped for something?
Maybe for a loved one's health to improve.
Maybe to get through a cancer.
And then they didn't.
How many of us have hoped for a promotion at work?
Or to land that job?
Or to get into that course?
Or to start a family?
And things haven't worked out the way that you had hoped.
Hope can be immensely powerful.
It can also be really disappointing.
So here's the question.
Is hope another one of those empty Christmas gifts that we open up only to find empty on the inside?
Kind of like when somebody gives you socks for Christmas for the 10th year in a row, right?
It promises so much.
And you unwrap, open it up.
And it's like, oh, okay.
Here we go again.
Friends, what's so hopeful about Christmas?
And how can thinking about the old, old story of Jesus in the manger give us hope?
Not just for this week, but this year.
And in fact, beyond this year, the decades to come.
Has the reality and the message of Christmas, how's that going to help us this year when life gets tough?
And when life isn't always that rosy?
Okay.
To think about this, I want us first to think about the difference between the way that we talk about hope in kind of modern culture and the way the Bible talks about hope.
And the Bible has a very different contrast to the understanding of hope from the ways we use it in modern culture.
In modern culture, when we talk about hope, we tend to think about some wish or desire that future circumstances will be different or better off than they are now.
Right?
So we talk about, oh, you hope that your kids will get into some school.
You hope to get that promotion.
You hope that your mom's health improves.
You hope that your boss approves your leave application.
It's some kind of wish or desire that the future circumstances will improve or be better than they are now.
And so the way we talk about it, it's kind of this desire that the outcome or circumstances will be better, but it's very uncertain.
There's nothing guaranteed about it.
When the Bible talks about hope, it talks about hope in a very different way.
The way that the Bible talks about hope of Christianity or the hope of Christmas or the hope of the gospel, it doesn't refer to a subjective wish or desire.
I hope I pass my exams.
Tim.
Rather, it refers to a settled conviction, a confidence that even though things may still get difficult, and in fact the circumstances may not get better, that somehow my life is in the hands of a good and a sovereign God.
Sovereign means in control of everything.
And that this good and sovereign God will carry me through.
Okay?
Do you see the difference?
When the Bible talks about hope, it's this settled confidence, this conviction, that actually despite the circumstances, the circumstances may not get much better.
Despite that, my life is in the hands of a good and a sovereign God who will carry me through the circumstances that I face.
And therefore, that kind of confidence is rock solid.
It's secure.
The first one is rather fragile.
I hope I pass my exams.
Well, maybe, maybe not.
The second one is based on character and the track record of who God is.
The first one is very subjective.
I hope I get a promotion this year.
Maybe, maybe not.
But the second one is based on an objective reality.
This is who God is.
And He's not going to change.
And so you can bank your life on it.
Let me give you a very silly example.
Okay?
Let's say you are a sailor.
You like sailing.
Okay?
And so you take your sailboat out into the water, and your worst nightmare comes upon you.
The weather turns suddenly.
The wind comes.
The waves rise.
And the worst thing that could possibly happen, your boat capsizes.
And you're in the water, and you're all on your own.
And you are hopeless.
Your only hope is that somebody comes and rescues you.
Well, in the distance, way out there, you see a ship.
And so you climb on top of the last kind of semblance of your boat.
And you take off your shirt, and you wave it around.
And you hope against all hope that just maybe, just maybe somebody will see you.
That's the first kind of hope.
But what happens if you hear a helicopter coming over the horizon?
And it comes, and it sees you.
And they throw a circle, you know, ring to you in the water.
And you hear them saying over the megaphone, we see you.
We're coming to get you.
We're coming back for you.
Two very different versions of hope.
One is, I hope somebody sees me.
But it's very uncertain.
It's not guaranteed at all.
The other one is something, the concrete that you can hold on to.
They've seen me.
They're coming back for me.
Friends, one kind of hope is optimism that things will turn out okay.
The other is a conviction that your life is in safe hands.
The message of Christmas, the message of Christianity,
the message of the gospel,
is that, is one that abounds with hope.
Not a subjective feeling.
Not a vague anticipation that maybe things will get better.
The hope of Christianity is an objective reality
that you can bank your life upon.
Because it's based on the nature and the character of God.
So, how does Christmas help us to live with hope?
Well, let me give us a couple of things we're going to look at this morning.
Five things.
Most of them from the scripture.
A few others just thrown in for.
Fun.
Okay.
Five reasons why we, or those of us that are Christians,
can live with hope as we go into 2024.
And if you're not a Christian here this morning,
so glad that you joined us.
I want you to listen to this through the lens of,
what would happen if I were to become a Christian?
How would this change my life?
So, let's look at it.
First thing is coming.
Okay.
They've all got one word.
Coming.
Look at our passage.
If you've got your bulletin, your Bible open,
look at our passage.
We're looking at Titus chapter 2 and verse 11.
And just the first few words.
The Apostle Paul writes this.
He writes this to this young man called Titus.
He's leading the church in Crete.
And he says,
Titus,
The grace of God has appeared,
bringing salvation for all people.
Okay.
Let's just pause there for a second.
The grace of God has appeared.
Now, when Paul says the grace of God has appeared,
he's not talking about,
just talking about a religious concept.
What's he talking about?
He's talking about Jesus.
He's talking about a person, right?
Jesus Christ has appeared.
He's talking about Christ coming.
What is Christmas all about?
It's about God coming into our broken and hope-starved world.
God has come.
That's the point of Christmas, right?
God himself has come.
In John's gospel,
John writes that Jesus was the light
that came into a dark and broken world.
A hope-starved world.
A world that had lost its way.
Obviously, Christ had come to bring a sense of life,
a sense of hope.
But when God came to save us,
he didn't just send an email.
He didn't just send a messenger or a message.
He didn't just send a helicopter with a Coast Guard,
you know, someone that throws a ring.
God himself came into a hope-starved world.
And if you've been in church for a long time,
that sounds very familiar,
but I want us just to think about that for a second.
Or maybe before we get there,
imagine the scenario.
Imagine you're at work one night,
and things at work have gone really badly, right?
There's some client account.
There's some financials that are in a big muddle.
Things, you're in some mess.
And your boss says to you,
you better sort this out before tomorrow morning, right?
And so you're at work.
It's way past midnight.
You're all alone in your office
trying to sort out this big mess,
trying to fix this problem.
There's nobody else with you.
You're alone at your desk.
For some of you,
you don't need to imagine this too much, right?
This is your reality.
And suddenly, the lift doors open,
and out steps the president of the company.
And he says,
hey, I heard you're in trouble.
I know how to fix this problem.
I'm here to help you.
Okay?
None of us can imagine that situation, right?
That doesn't happen.
The president doesn't come to the junior employee
and say,
let me help you with your problem.
It's a silly analogy.
Friends, at Christmas,
the being,
the divine being
that created galaxies
and cosmos
and solar systems,
however many billions of years ago,
who knows how many billions of years ago,
hundreds of trillions
of billions of light years away,
this galaxy that's ever expanding,
that we've only discovered
maybe 1% of,
we don't even understand
most of how this thing works,
this divine being
who brought it all into existence
out of nothing,
this being whom we call God,
this being
has clothed himself in humanity
in flesh and blood
and entered into our world
so that he can speak our language,
so that we can know him
and comprehend him
to come and fix the problem
that we got ourselves into
called sin
and brokenness
and depravity.
We rejected him
and said,
no thanks,
we'll do life our own way,
got ourselves
in all sorts of mess
and this,
to say president
of the universe's sacrilege,
this divine being
has stepped into our world
and said,
I'm here to help.
God
has come.
It's astounding.
Friends,
I don't know what troubles
you're facing,
what challenges you have
on the horizon,
what 2024 looks like for you.
Okay,
the economy's not good.
Okay,
the Hang Seng is,
who knows where it is.
But this God
has come,
Emmanuel,
to be with us.
The hope of Christmas
is not just a new leaf,
a blank slate.
Let's hope next year
is better than the last.
The hope of Christmas
is that God has come
and willingly
because he loves us.
This is the hope of Christmas.
But Christ's coming
was not arbitrarily
or out the blue.
In fact,
it was the fulfillment
of a promise.
A promise,
that's the second thing.
I don't know what you think
of the Old Testament.
Next year,
we're going to spend
quite a lot of time
in the Old Testament
and our Bible reading plan
and our preaching calendar
for next year.
Many people think
the Old Testament
is harsh,
it's difficult,
it's boring,
it's full of laws
and regulations
and let's just skip over
and jump to the New Testament.
But the Old Testament
is actually full of promise.
It's brimming with hope.
It's promise
that despite the brokenness
of our world,
God has not left us
to ourselves.
God is going to come.
And the promise starts
in Genesis 3,
the first gospel,
and it picks up again
Genesis 12,
Genesis 15,
and Genesis 25,
and then it gets to Exodus,
which is all about promise,
and then Leviticus,
Leviticus 16,
the day of atonement,
and then Numbers,
and Deuteronomy,
and Joshua,
and Judges,
and all the way through
Isaiah,
and Jeremiah,
and Ezekiel,
the whole way through
the Old Testament
is promise after promise
after promise
that God has not left us.
And the Old Testament
tells us a lot
that God is going to send
a Messiah King,
a Savior,
a Deliverer,
a Redeemer,
who will come into our world
and heal us
and put right
what we have messed up.
And the Old Testament
tells us a lot
about this Messiah King.
He'll be born in Bethlehem,
the town of David.
He'll be born
to a single teenage mom.
He'll be a descendant
of King David,
Israel's greatest
but still deeply flawed king.
The Old Testament
promises us
that he will come
and be humble
and poor,
nothing attractive,
no status in society
that we should
naturally want to follow him.
The Old Testament
tells us that
he'll be betrayed
and rejected
and denied
by his own people,
put to death
and he will die
but he won't stay dead.
He will rise again.
And of course,
the Old Testament
predicts that he will bring
goodness and salvation
and hope
to a world that is lost
and without hope.
Friends,
you see the point?
Christmas
is not just
a cultural holiday
like Mid-Autumn Festival
or Dragon Boat Festival.
It's not just
a remembrance
of a good day
in the past
like the 1st of July,
Hong Kong Day.
Christmas is not just
Christ randomly appearing
out the blue
like an unwelcome
Christmas guest.
He rings the doorbell
and says,
Surprise,
I'm here.
Christmas
is God
being good
to his word,
being faithful
to his promise.
Christmas
is God
being faithful
then
he will be faithful
now.
Friends,
God really did come
into our broken world.
Born in Bethlehem
to a single teenage mom
a descendant of David
in poor and humble circumstances
in order to be rejected,
denied,
betrayed by his own people,
put to death
and rise again
and to bring hope
to our world.
The hope of Christmas
is that the same God
who was faithful
to his people
through thousands of years
of ups and downs
and exile
and Egypt
and all the problems of life,
that same God
will be faithful
to those
who trust him.
The hope of Christmas,
the promise fulfilled.
But that's not all.
Look at, again,
this passage with me
in Titus.
Look at how Paul
describes Jesus.
He says,
how does he describe Jesus?
He says,
For the grace of God
has appeared,
bringing salvation
to all people.
Christmas is about
coming.
Christmas is about
promise.
Christmas is about grace.
grace.
If you're new to church
or you're kind of
newish to Christianity,
grace is one of those words
that Christians
throw out a lot.
It's one of those
very Christianese words.
I'm sorry,
we do that a lot.
We use these really weird words
that nobody knows
what you're talking about.
Grace is one of those words.
But the reason is
because grace is really
at the heart
of Christianity.
It's what the whole Bible
is all about.
Grace means
a gift
that is undeserved
or unmerited.
It's a gift
that somebody gives you
that you didn't earn
or deserve.
At the heart of Christianity
is the fact that
God himself
has come to us,
the Lord Jesus Christ,
not simply to teach us
or give us wisdom
or give us some advice
or how to live.
God has come to us
to give us a gift
that we could never earn,
never deserve,
never merit
by our own favor.
The gift of,
what does he say here?
The grace of God
has come bringing salvation,
bringing forgiveness,
bringing grace,
saving us from our sins
and our moral debt
that we could be brought back
into relationship with God.
Again,
imagine the scenario with me.
I've got lots of silly
examples today.
Imagine 2019,
you leave the family business
and you decide
you're going to go out
on your own,
and you're going to start
your own business.
So you put together
your whole business plan,
but you need some money.
And so you borrow
tons of money.
You mortgage your apartment
as max as you can.
You borrow other money
from the bank.
You borrow money
from friends and family.
You borrow all the money
you can.
And you put together
your business plan
and look sound
and you launch your business.
All you need to do,
you need to travel a bit.
You need to get some clients.
And you launch your business
November 2019
and January 2020,
COVID comes.
And COVID messes up everything.
And your business plan
sinks.
Can't travel.
Can't go anywhere.
Can't do anything.
And suddenly,
all those clients
you hoped to attract
disappear.
And you're up to
your neck in debt
and you're in deep,
deep trouble.
Right?
You're in deep trouble
and you have no hope
of repaying your debt.
And suddenly,
someone appears.
Someone comes to you
bringing salvation
in the form of a checkbook.
Right?
Some family member
or benefactor
appears and says,
I will write off your debt
and save you.
They come
and they bring a salvation.
They save you
from what you could not
save yourselves.
Friends,
the Bible says
that every human being,
all of us,
have a moral debt
that we could not pay back.
A moral debt
to the God of the universe
who made us to know Him
and love Him
and be in relationship
with Him
and live trusting Him
and live on Him.
And yet,
we've rejected Him
and said,
actually God,
we think we're going
to go our own way.
We think we know
better than you.
And so,
we've rejected Him,
which is what the Bible
calls sin,
and we're in deep,
deep trouble.
We were dead
in our sins.
But look at what Titus says
Christmas is all about.
He says,
the grace of God
has appeared
in the person
of Jesus Christ,
God Himself,
bringing salvation
and forgiveness
for those
who will trust Him.
Christmas
is about God
not giving up
on us
even though
we had given up on Him.
Christmas
is about God
not giving us
what we deserve
even though
the history
of humanity
is that we have
not given God
the worship
and the adoration
that He deserves.
Christmas
is about grace.
Grace.
If you've got your Bible,
look four verses down
from the scripture
we read.
In chapter 3,
verses 3,
Paul says the same thing.
Listen to what he writes here.
He says,
For we ourselves
were once foolish,
disobedient,
led astray,
slaves to our passions
and our desires
and our pleasures,
passing our days
in malice and envy,
hated by others
and hating one another.
Can I say,
oh that sounds
a bit overboard.
That doesn't really
describe my life.
Doesn't that describe
much of our world?
I mean just think
of the office politics.
Think of our war-torn world
we've lived in this year.
Israel,
Gaza,
Ukraine.
Hating one another
and hated by one another.
Led astray,
slaves to our passions
and desires.
Spending our days
in anger and envy.
But then verse 4,
But when the goodness
and the loving kindness
of God our Savior
appeared,
when Jesus came,
the loving kindness
of God,
He saved us,
not because of works
done by us
in righteousness,
not because we earned it
or deserved it
or merited it,
but according
to His own mercy.
Friends,
Christian hope
is not based on
wishful thinking
or optimistic mindfulness.
It's not based
on the vague idea
that God helps
those who help themselves.
It's based on
a historical event
that when we were
neck high
in our own
moral debt
and sin,
the loving kindness
and mercy
and grace of God
stepped into our
broken,
sin-infested world
and came to
heal us
and bring grace,
not because of
what we deserved,
not because we are
good people,
but because of
His mercy and grace.
The grace of God
came in flesh
and blood.
And look what Paul says.
He says,
this grace
changes us.
Go back to our
original passage
in verse 11.
The grace of God
has appeared,
bringing salvation
to all people,
training us now
to renounce
that former life
ungodliness
and worldly passions
and to live
self-controlled,
upright,
godly lives
in the present age.
Friends,
here's the point.
What is the basis
of your hope
next year
or maybe
for your life?
Viktor Frankl
reminded us,
you've got to
live with hope.
You live without hope,
you're doomed.
Mankind can't
live without hope.
But what is the basis
of your hope?
Is it that God
helps those
who help themselves?
Is it if I'm
a good person,
God will surely
pay me back?
Friends,
or is it
the mercy of God,
the undeserved
grace and kindness
of God himself
who came into our world,
the person of Jesus Christ?
Jesus offers us
something far more
substantial,
something far more
objective and concrete.
It's a hope
that's rooted
in a historical
fact of history
that 2,000 years ago
God came to us
to die on the cross,
to deal with our
moral debt,
to save us
from the slavery
of our sin,
to change our hearts,
to give us
fresh hope.
But that's not all.
The fourth thing
is resurrection.
Now,
when you read
the story
of the early church
and the book of Acts
and the history
of the early church,
one thing that
always astounds me
is these Christians
lived with,
yes,
remarkable hope,
but unbelievable
courage and confidence
in the face
of circumstances
that were largely
far worse
than what we are
facing.
So why is it
that the early
Christians could
face the lions
with such confidence
and boldness
and conviction?
Why is it that
they could allow
themselves to be
burnt at the stake
and not deny
their faith?
Why is it that
many of them
were martyred
and suffered
immeasurable pain
and yet did so
with such conviction
and assurance
and hope?
One of the reasons
is that we see
is that they had
seen and experienced
the risen Lord
Jesus Christ
and they knew
that his claims
must have been true.
Jesus Christ claimed
to be the long-awaited
Messiah King
that the Old Testament
had spoken about,
but Jesus Christ
also claimed
that he would die
and rise again.
And so when the disciples
saw that he did die
with their own eyes
and that he did rise again
with their own eyes
as he said he would,
it also gave them
fresh confidence
that he really was
who he said he was,
the Messiah King.
Because what it meant
for them
and what it means
for those of us
that are Christians,
in this world,
this world is no longer
our home.
And the things of this world
and the people of this world
are not the ones
that define our hope
and our status
and our identity.
Your future
is not based
on the things
of this world
but on the God
who died
and rose
from the grave.
Listen to how
the Apostle Paul
writes it in
1 Corinthians 15,
a very famous passage.
He says,
if Jesus Christ
has not been raised
from the dead,
then our faith
is futile.
We're still stuck
in our sins.
In other words,
there is no such thing
as good news.
The good news
is a farce,
a joke.
Then those who have died
as Christians
have truly perished.
If in this life
only we have hoped
in Christ,
if there's no such thing
as the resurrection,
we are of all people
most to be pitied.
He's saying,
if the resurrection
is not true,
Christianity
is wishful thinking.
This Christian faith
is just a farce,
it's a delusion,
it's a crutch
just to help weak people
get through life.
But in fact,
Christ has raised
from the dead
and is the first fruit,
that means the first sampling,
of those who have died
and will rise
also with him.
Friends,
Jesus Christ came
not just to give us
this fragile,
subjective feeling
of I hope next year
is better than this year.
Jesus came to give us
something concrete,
something real,
something of hope
and conviction.
He conquered the grave
and said,
now those who trust in him,
we don't need to fear
the grave
or the worst
that the world
can throw at us.
We really can live
radically different lives,
full of hope,
full of confidence
that if God,
this God,
this resurrected,
death-defying,
grave-conquering,
cross-conquering,
sovereign God
is for us,
what do we have to fear?
I mean,
if Christmas isn't real
and the resurrection
isn't a historical fact,
let's just say
it's some kind of parable,
some kind of moral,
folklore story
about being gentle
and kind
and turning the other cheek
and not getting back
at your enemies.
If that's all Christianity,
is why should we live differently?
Why should we live
upright,
self-controlled,
godly lives?
But how does that give us hope
when life gets tough,
when the economy sinks
and the job market is hard
and your kids
are not doing well,
how does that give us hope?
Some fabled event
about a man
who lived many years ago.
No friends,
Jesus was born to die
but he didn't stay dead.
he rose again
and he came
just as he promised
bringing life and salvation
and he died on the cross
just as he promised
and he rose again
just as he promised
so that now our lives
can be full of hope.
Prince Christmas
and Christianity,
the hope of Christianity
is rooted
in a historical event,
an event of history.
It's not just some
pie-in-the-sky philosophy
or moral teaching.
It's a historical event
that the history books
affirm
that there is reason
for hope
because Jesus came
as he said
and died as he said
and rose again.
One final thing.
Look at our passage again
in Titus chapter 2.
Paul speaks to Titus
not only of the hope
of Christ's first coming
but even more so
of the hope of his return.
He says,
For the grace of God
has appeared
bringing salvation
to all people.
Just by the way,
when he says all people
he doesn't mean
absolutely all people.
It means all those
who hope and trust in him.
All people as in
not just the Jews,
not just the one race,
all people
whether Jews
or Gentiles,
black or white,
Chinese, rich or poor,
moral, immoral,
all those who come
to trust in Jesus.
The grace of God
has appeared
bringing salvation
to all those
who trust in him.
Training us
to renounce ungodliness
and worldly passions
to live self-controlled
upright godly lives.
And then verse 13.
Waiting for our
blessed hope
the appearing
of the glory
of the great God
and our Savior
Jesus Christ.
Friends,
next week
we're going to celebrate
Christmas proper.
Christ's coming
and Christ appearing
at his first coming.
But Christmas
also points us forward
to another coming.
the second coming.
When Christ
will return.
When Christ
will come
to our war-torn
depressed world.
Christ's imminent
return
calls us
to live lives
of hope
and courage
and faithfulness
and conviction
now
in light of the fact
that he will soon
come back.
And when he does,
we will be with him
in a renewed creation.
A creation
where there is
no more suffering,
no more pain,
no more tears,
no more longing,
no more faith
and no more hoping
because all our
deepest longings
will have been realized.
Christ will bring us
to be with him
in a perfect creation
forever.
Christ said that he
would come
the first time
and he did.
But Christ
is coming again
and he will make
all things new.
Think back
of that
person
bobbing in the
waters of the sea.
They're there
wondering,
is there any hope?
And suddenly
a helicopter comes
and flies overhead
and throws them
a lifeline
and they said,
here is a ring,
here's a life raft,
hold on to this,
we're coming back
for you soon.
The person's
going to live
with a very different
kind of hope.
But their hope
is not just
in the first coming,
the hope is
in the second coming
that soon
they'll be brought
back to a world
where all things
will be put right again.
Friends,
Jesus Christ
has come
but he's coming again.
And Jesus
didn't just come
to tell us how to live,
he came to save us,
to rescue us
and he's coming again
to make all things new.
Long lay the world
in sin
and brokenness
and pain
and error pining
till he appeared
and our souls
felt its worth.
A thrill of hope
the weary world
rejoices
for yonder breaks
a new and glorious
more.
So fall on your knees,
hear the angels' voices,
O night divine,
the night
when Christ
was born.
Friends,
what this all
comes down to
is that Christmas
is real.
Christmas hope
is real.
It's not wishful thinking,
it's not positive
mindfulness,
it's concrete.
It's a conviction
and assurance
that you can bank
and build your life upon.
Because ultimately
Christmas
is about a person.
It's about God
himself coming to us,
grace and flesh
and blood.
it's about Jesus Christ
coming to bring healing
to a broken world.
So what about you?
What are you hoping in
for 2024?
What are you hoping in
for the next decade
to come?
What are you trusting in?
And where does
your confidence lie?
Is it just wishful thinking
that next year
will be better
than the previous year?
Or is it based
on the concrete reality
of the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ
who has come once
and is coming again?
Christmas is about
a real person
coming to a real world
to deal with real problems
to bring us real hope.
Christmas is about Christ.
Let's come to him now.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus Christ,
one of the great dangers
of Christmas
is that we've heard
this message
a hundred times,
so many times
that we can become
so blase,
so familiar.
Lord Jesus Christ,
I pray that this
Christmas,
by the power
of your spirit,
you will write
fresh hope
in our hearts.
God,
for some of us
we are really facing
hopeless situations.
And God,
maybe we don't know
where our hope will lie.
We don't know
where to turn.
God,
I pray that you
will come and minister
to us
and lift our eyes
off of our
current circumstances
and help us to see you,
who you are,
the hope of heaven,
the hope of Christmas,
the hope of our lives.
Jesus,
I pray,
won't you make us
a church community
that is brimming
with hope
because we are
banking our lives
on you.
I pray this
in your great
and wonderful name.
Amen.