Because God is Great, We Have HOPE
A couple of years back, we did a sermon series called God is: Four Kingdom Truths for Everyday Life, where we focused on four key attributes of God: God is Great; God is Glorious; God is Good; God is Gracious. With each of these truths, we attached a “so we don’t” phrase explaining how we are to live our lives in light of the truths about who God is. Here’s what I mean:
God is great, so we don’t have to be in control.
God is glorious, so we don’t have to fear others.
God is good, so we don’t have to look elsewhere for satisfaction.
God is gracious, so we don’t have to prove ourselves.
If you have not heard the sermon series or need a refresher, I recommend you go back and listen here.
Understanding these four eternal truths about God helps battle unbelief in our lives and helps us reorient our heads, hearts, and hands around some of God’s fundamental and powerful truths.
As we look forward to Christmas in this season of Advent, I want to briefly explore how these “Four Gs” help us move away from unbelief and self-centered focus and instead center on Jesus.
This week, we’ll consider this: Because God is Great, We Have Hope.
Advent reminds us of the coming of Jesus, the Son of God, who took on flesh and made his dwelling among humanity to save them from their sins and to destroy the works of the devil. The incarnation of Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a Messiah who would reign forever and set his people free from the bondage of sin and set his people free to live in flourishing God-exalting life.
Jesus’ name means “the Lord of salvation,” he is also called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” What does this mean for us? It means that Jesus is not distant. He is not aloof or detached from us — from our cares, concerns, and conflicts. Jesus is present and powerful and greater than we can imagine. Because this is true of Jesus, we need not fear when our lives’ cares, concerns, and conflicts try to overwhelm us.
How do they overwhelm us? It happens when we place our hope in anything other than God. Here are some examples:
Placing our hope in our careers instead of God.
Placing our hope in money or possessions.
Placing our hope in our marriages, children, or friendships.
Placing our hope in ourselves.
Let me take that last one and dig in a bit more. Often, we find ourselves overwhelmed, worried, or anxious because we try to be in control. We want things to go our way, so we manipulate or orchestrate people and situations to work as we desire. We try to control people’s behavior or micromanage every little detail according to our preferences.
You can probably think of several more. But all of our desire to be in control comes from not believing that God is great and that he is in control. When we try to wrestle control from God, we struggle to find hope that sustains us. We stress out, freak out, and burn out because we are not resting in God’s greatness.
But we have a genuine and lasting hope found in God because he is great, and he demonstrated this most perfectly in sending his Son, Jesus, to be our great Savior. Jesus saves us from our sins, and he continues to save us from trying to be in control of our lives instead of letting God lead us.
What are you placing your hope in this Advent? Are you trusting in people or things, or are you trusting in God? Are you trying to be in control of your own life or others? Where do you need to let the greatness of God overwhelm you instead of cares, concerns, and conflicts?
God is great, so we don’t have to be in control. And because of this, we have great hope!
–Pastor Wade
