My title “We Are the World’s Hope” is not in any way meant to discount, disregard, degrade or undermine the Hope we have in Jesus Christ.
Over the next few weeks of Advent I want to show you how important it is that we, the Christians, understand God’s message and how important it is that we take serious our position as God’s Royal Priesthood.
If you were to walk up to someone on the streets of America today and hand them a New Testament Bible, What’s the chance that they would get anything out of it?
Let’s open our Bibles to Matthew Chapter One.
Matthew 1:1
This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham:
Here’s what I believe the man on the streets reaction would be. “I’ve heard the name Jesus but what’s a Messiah and who are David and Abraham?”
I’m serious! We have just handed a man on the street a book about a bunch of Hebrews that will probably never be studied about in an American school room. The man on the streets reaction is this is irrelevant to my life.
Many people in our community today would tell you that the book you have just handed them is antiquated, old fashioned, out of date and has no significance in our world today. The term irrelevant has taken the forefront.
Matthew chapter one verse 2-16 contains one of the two genealogical histories of Jesus’ family.
I’m not going to read the whole genealogy but I want you to take note of the names, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah, Joseph and Mary.
In this list is Abraham the father of faith. We see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Remember how Moses knew it was God speaking to him when God said, “I am the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” You’ve probably heard the phrase, “The Lion of the tribe of Judah”. Samuel went to Jesse’s house to anoint the future king of Israel. You may have heard of “David’s Throne”. King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem. Hezekiah and Josiah were the great Jewish reformers. Manasseh was the evilest king ever.
Oh yeah! Let’s not forget Joseph and Mary. These may be the only two names on the list to be recognized, if, the man on the street, went to church on Christmas as a young boy.
You would need to be a life long church attender or an Old Testament Scholar to have heard about the other names listed in Matthew’s record of Jesus’ ancestors.
Matthew would have been very excited to have written Jesus’ linage. Matthew was Levi, the tax collector’s, Roman name. His Hebrew name, Levi, would tell you that he was probably a descendant of the Levites who were the priests of Israel.
As a descendant of the Levites he would have grown up with the stories of all the people listed here. Now his Sabbath School teaching makes sense. All those people I had to learn about were the family tree of Jesus the Messiah.
Matthew 1:17
17 All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah.
I couldn’t find any thing about the significance of the fourteen generational pattern but once again Abraham, David, the Babylonian exile and the Messiah are Hebrew history and the man on the street would be led to ask, “What does all this have to do with me?”
Let’s think for a moment. The majority of people on the street could not tell you much about American history that took place in the late 1700’s let alone Hebrew history that goes back to Abraham who was born around 2166 BC.
So, what I am about ready to read to you has great significance in our world and yet most people don’t know anything about it and what they do know is, for the most part, totally and completely distorted.
Matthew 1:18-25
18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man (some versions use the term righteous man) and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”
24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.
This is an important message that has been given to the church. The Church, God’s chosen people, His special possession, His royal priesthood, is the keeper of the message of salvation from sin.
Do you realize that God has decided to spread His message to the world via us, the church? This is why I titled my message “We Are the World’s Hope”.
We have come to know and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sin. We know Him as Lord, King, Master, Messiah and God with us.
How will the man on the street come to know who Jesus is if we are not led to tell about the Christ.
To the man on the street Christmas is a costly holiday filled with a lot of shopping and eating. To the Christian it’s a holy day not just a holiday. It’s a Birthday in which God gave us the present. It’s a day of remembrance of the salvation God bought for us with the blood of His Son. Are you starting to see why it’s a Merry Christmas and not just a happy holiday?
We know something the whole world needs to know. Jesus came to save people from their sin not just the Hebrews.
I want to reread our passage for today.
Matthew 1:18-25
18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man (some versions use the term righteous man) and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”
24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.
Let’s start with Jesus the Messiah.
According to the dictionary Messiah is the expected king and deliverer of the Jews. The second definition is a professed or accepted leader of a hope or cause.
So, if the man on the street is not looking for a leader or is not a Jew, the word Messiah is a bit out of touch with his reality.
I’m not trying to discount the importance of the Christmas message. What I am trying to do is adjust your thinking so you will have a better understanding of the difficulty we are having introducing a hopeless world to the hope they are so desperately seeking.
Mary and Joseph are engaged to be married. Mary turns up pregnant and Joseph has not had sexual relations with his fiancé. The story line in the Bible tells us that she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now let’s go back to the guy on the street. He is probably a physical thinker that doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see, feel or touch. The spirit realm is non-existent or at the most not very powerful.
He has probably heard from the different documentaries that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier or the story was a covering for their premarital sex.
And now we are going to try to explain to this person that God’s miracles override physical science.
With Joseph, the righteous man’s reaction, we know the child is not his. But now the Angel of the Lord gets involved by appearing to Joseph to tell him the truth.
Once again the man on the street is going to question our sanity for believing this wild, unreliable, insignificant story.
So we will now point him to our Old Testament and tell him how this was prophesied by God through Isaiah
Isaiah 7:14
14 All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).
Joseph is told in the dream that he is to name this child conceived by the Holy Spirit Jesus. Jesus, although not an uncommon name, had great significance. Jesus actually means Jehovah is salvation.
Jesus would have been given his name eight days after He was born during a ceremony at the Temple where He would have been circumcised to fulfill Jewish traditional laws. We’ll see more about this when we look at Looks writings.
Now, if God is going to come and live with us, He should have a name that signifies who He is.
Jesus became know as the son of Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth but the most important title he was given is Jesus the Christ.
Christ was the name given to Jesus to show He was the long awaited king and deliverer. For centuries the Jewish people had looked for a prophesied Messiah. The Christ was to be their deliverer who would usher in a kingdom of peace and prosperity.
As we in the church know, the Jews denied their Messiah and after He was crucified and arose, the message of salvation was preached to the Gentile world. This is why we, who have been adopted into God’s family by believing in Jesus, are known as true Jews that have been circumcised of the heart.
Romans 2:28-29
28 For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. 29 No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.
Paul, who was a Hebrew of Hebrews, penned this passage. For Paul to have written this passage was truly a miracle of change brought on by God Himself.
1 Peter 2:9
9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
So as you can see we have become the world’s hope. We have the message of salvation. We have the knowledge of the truth that comes from knowing Jesus Christ. We are the one’s who must make this understandable to the man on the street in the 21st century.
Many people within the church wonder why the church has lost its place of significance in our world. The reason why has to do with how little the church knows about the message they have been called to spread.
It is a foreign message. It is a strange message. To talk to a 21st century man on the street about a 1st century message has a tendency to make you look like some sort of an alien.
But we must remember that this message is the way God has decided to save the world.
No one can come to the Father except by way of the Son. Our only hope of salvation is in coming to grips with Jesus the Christ. We must believe in the Son. We must proclaim the Son. And most of all we must understand the true meaning of Christmas if we are going to be the hope of this world.
Let us Pray!
