"In Those Days"
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Sunday, December 3, 2006

Introduction: A couple of weeks ago Tami and the kids were in Target, when a woman came up to them and told her how adorable our kids were. She then handed Tami a card that said Kids TV! on it, and invited her to bring the kids to a screen test in Beverly Hills. So that Sunday we took the kids, and after their screen test they met a talent counselor, who asked us some questions and told us she would be calling us if the kids were in her top 20. Well, 2 days later we got the phone call telling us they were chosen, and asked us if we could come to Santa Monica on Saturday to meet their main talent coordinator. We said we could, and put it in our schedule.

As we talked to the kids, they were very excited, very hopeful about being able to be on television. But we reminded the kids we didn’t know what this meant, and that we would take it one step at a time./ On that Saturday we showed up and were ushered into a room where they gave us a presentation of how they helped kids move into doing background shoots, get training, meet agents, and possibly be able to move into doing speaking roles. Our hope went up……..until the kicker. To get all of this we would have to pay a membership fee of ONLY……$1400.00!!!

Our hope for getting the kids on TV was dashed. And yet, after we thought about it for a while, we realized that this isn’t where we wanted our hope to be anyway.

I. Hope Is… (Psalm 118:24; 2 Peter 3:9; Isaiah 40:31; Genesis 1:10; Jeremiah 33:16)

Last week Mary Uht took some time to ask people to finish the statement “Hope

is…”, and it was interesting to see what people think that hope is.

a. What people had to say- This is what some of the people had to say: “Hope is….something within you; like seeing the glass as half full.

“….for the future; for peace and harmony in the world.”

“Hope is beautiful.” “Hope is success.”

“Hope is ….trust; if you don’t hope, you can’t trust anything.”

“Hope is….an answer.” “Hope is ….necessary.”

“Hope is…finding out there is a medical treatment for your disease.”

“Hope is….what makes life worth living.”

Some people understand hope, but many people don’t really have an understanding of what hope is, especially the hope of the Bible. As we are starting our advent season today, we start with HOPE. And in the next few minutes, I want us to be able to have a good sense of what God wants us to understand about hope; especially the hope that Christmas brings to us.

b. Pictures of hope- I want to show you some pictures and scriptures, and

have you help me brainstorm what these pictures and scriptures have to say about hope. PICTURE 1- Sunrise (Hope of a new day); Psalm 118:24- “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”/ Hope is understanding that every day is a new day to make a difference with our lives, and in the lives of others. It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, today is a NEW DAY!

PICTURE 2- Clock (Hope of a better time); 2 Peter 3:9a- “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness…”/ When we hope on the Lord to intervene in our lives, to answer our prayers, we often expect it to happen quickly. Hope is understanding that God will work His will and way in our lives; and He will do it in His timing!

PICTURE 3- Ocean (Hope is powerful and expansive); Isaiah 40:31- “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength…”/ There are many things in life that can tear us down and make us feel weak. But in the Lord, when we hope on Him, we can know that His power is at work in us, and that “all things are possible to those who trust the Lord.”

PICTURE 4- Mountains (Hope stands tall and strong); Genesis 1:10- “God called the dry ground ‘land,’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas.’ And God saw that it was good.”/ Hope is knowing that God is above all, and beyond all, and over all, and that God can lift us up and do good things in our lives, even through the bad.

PICTURE 5- Baby Jesus (The hope of new life; Jesus’ birth); Jeremiah 33:16- “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.”/

II. In Those Days- (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

a. Fulfill my promise- As we look at the main text of the morning,

Jeremiah 33:14-16, we see the passage starts off with God reminding us that He will fulfill His promise. And what God says that He will do, God will do. It is not like your promises, or my promises. Because if we think about it, we realize that we have all broken promises. Maybe we told our children we would do something with them, or for them, and then something came up that we couldn’t control, and we couldn’t fulfill our promise. Maybe you told a friend you would be there for them, but when they really needed you, you couldn’t be there for them.

However, if God says He will fulfill His promise, we know that our hope in this happening/ is sound. We can know that it will happen as God says that it will happen. And what is the promise?

b. A righteous branch- The promise is seen in Jeremiah 33:15- “In those

days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land.” This is a promise of the Messiah to come. This is a promise that was fulfilled in the coming of God in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. This is a promise that when He came, He would bring justice and righteousness to the land. Now the problem was that when Jesus came, the people thought the justice would be Jesus overthrowing the Romans and setting the Jews into power. The Jews would then be the ones who would bestow justice and would be in the right. But the justice and righteousness that Jesus brought would be how we, as followers of Christ, would treat others justly, and how we, as Jesus followers, we seek to act rightly.

c. Will be saved- But ultimately it would be seen in Jesus’ saving His

people; all those who believed in His name. As we are told in John 1:12- “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”/

EXAMPLE- There is a story of how 4 blind men happened onto an elephant. The first blind men touched the elephant’s leg and reported that it was a pillar. The second blind man touched the elephant’s tummy and said that it was a wall. The third blind man touched the elephant’s ear and said that it was a piece of cloth. The fourth blind man touched the tail and said that it was a piece of rope. And all of them ran into a hot argument about what they had run into.

They did not see the truth because none of them had the whole truth. Those who are saved are the ones who come upon the truth, hear it, and believe. In Christ, we have the whole truth. Christ gives us hope, because we have truth itself before us.

And so we see that the hope comes in trusting in God, whose promise is sure. The hope comes from seeing the promise come true in Jesus Christ. The hope is experienced when we believe in Jesus, and live in the justice and righteousness that Christ sets forth for us. The hope is known in re-living time and time again, the birth of Jesus Christ, which secures for us all that God has promised to come true.

Conclusion: Every Advent season, we have the wonderful opportunity to live “in those days.” We live in the days of God choosing to take on flesh, and live among us. We live in the days when we can remember from of old how God has shown His love to us; the love of presence. We live in the days when we can truly receive hope, because our hope comes from God Himself. And so as you live in these days, from now until Christmas, I pray that you would not let the world around you/ overwhelm you/ with the secularism of Christmas. I pray that you would hope for what Christmas truly brings: joy, love, peace, and God’s presence in your life. Amen.