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Dec 01, 2019

Out of Hopelessness - Advent Week 1 - Hope

Passage: Isaiah 11:1-12

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Isaiah

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: story, hope, rescue, despair, misfits

THEMES & NOTES: Advent is where we begin to incorporate the anticipation and preparation of the Coming King into the service. This week is the First Sunday: HOPE. Hopelessness permeates our society, hearts and relationships, coming in the form of abject despair to the “false-hope” of self rescue, both leaving us alone and distant. In this darkness and hopelessness, with no conceivable rescue, God does the inconceivable by being born out of the dead-stump of humanity, rescuing us from destruction and renewing us back into his family. When we are utterly hopeless, our “trees” fully cut down, God does something shocking and miraculous: a spout of life comes out of death.

Order of Worship

PRELUDE: Music Special - Rea Sea Road

CALL TO WORSHIP: Galatians 4:4-5 & Luke 2:12-14  

READING: John 15:4-5

MUSIC: 

  • BAND: Stu Nelsen, Heather Compton, Don Briola, Dakota Chapman, Gina Malefyt 
  • SONGS:
    • Hark the Herald
    • Cornerstone
    • Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
    • Is He Worthy?

CONFESSION / PRAYER / GRATITUDE: 

  • Silent confession.
  • Prayers for one another and community
  • Thanksgiving
  • The Lord’s Prayer
  • Offering

MISSIONAL LIVING:  Advent Reading 

  • ADVENT CANDLE: “HOPE”
  • Readers: Taylor & Josiah Weeks

MESSAGE: “Out of Hopelessness...”

CENTRAL TEXT: Isaiah 11:1-10, 12

ILLUSTRATIONS: 

RESPONSE: Revelation 5:8-12

BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 5:17

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Isaiah 4:2
  • Isaiah 7:14
  • Isaiah 53:2-3
  • Zechariah 3:8
  • Zechariah 6:12
  • John 2:24
  • John 15
  • John 18:36-37
  • 2 Corinthians 5:16
  • Galatians 5:22-23
  • Romans 5:6
  • Psalm 72:2, 4
  • Psalm 87
  • Hosea 2:18
  • Matthew 11:1-6
  • Mark 2:8 
  • Luke 1:32
  • Luke 4:1-13
  • Romans 15:12
  • 2 Thessalonians 2:8
  • Revelation 19:15, 21

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1) Stump:

The end of Isaiah 10 reveals the destruction sin leaves us in...it tells about God clear-cutting a forest down to the stumps.

Talk about why God did this,

    and how your heart engages this kind of Divine Judgement?

What are ways you feel this in life?

    Destruction --

    Hopelessness --    

2) Branch / Shoot:

When all seems hopeless, God shockingly springs forth life.

Firstly in Jesus himself. Talk about how shockingly and impossibly Jesus came to be born...God as a child; of a virgin; in Bethlehem.

Reflect how Jesus’ very birth is symbolic of God doing the impossible in order to bring us freedom and life.

Secondly Through and From Jesus. Talk about how Jesus himself makes these 4 transitions in and for us in real life:

-- Slavery to Freedom

-- Futility to Fruit

-- Despair to Joy

-- Death to Life

3) Fruit:

This “fruit” is what Jesus himself produces.

    What does Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection “produce”

The “fruit” that we produce is really an extension of Jesus’ fruit.

    What is that?

    How is it really HIS fruit?

    How is that actually MORE hopeful than if it were “ours”?

QUOTES:

  • “We tell stories because we are broken people hungering for redemption” - Mike Cosper (The Stories We Tell)
  • "The Gospels contain a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories...But this Story has entered History and the primary world...There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits." - J.R.R Tolkein (On Fairy Stories)
  • “Christians also need to be reminded...that what became fact was a myth, that it carries with it into the world of fact all the properties of a myth...We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "pagan Christs": they ought to be there - it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. . . . For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.” - C.S. Lewis
  • “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.”― Thomas Merton
  • “It is now, at Advent, that I am given the chance to suspend all expectation...and instead to revel in the mystery.”― Jerusalem Jackson Greer“
  • In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time… The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.” - Fleming Rutledge
  • “Christmas means not just hope for the world, despite all its unending problems, but hope for you and me, despite all our unending failings.” - Tim Keller 

    BOOKS / ARTICLES

    Myth Became Fact by C.S. Lewis (Essay)

    The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent by John Piper (Book) 

    Hidden Christmas by Tim Keller (Book)

    SERMONS / TALKS

    The Shoot from Jesse, the Nations, and Israel by John Piper (Sermon)

    The Humble Beginnings of Christ’s Glorious Kingdom by Andy Davis (Sermon)

    Healing From Decay by Tim Keller (Sermon)