Waiting, Hoping and Expecting - A Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent

Fourth Sunday in Advent
December 18^th, Year of Our + Lord 2022
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Waiting, Hoping and Expecting 
Matthew 1:18-25, Psalm 130, Isaiah 7:10-17

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope.  

   There’s an odd thing in Spanish having to do with waiting and hoping and expecting.  They are all the same word in Spanish.  “Esperar” means to hope, and to wait, and to expect.  Of course, just like English, Spanish has other ways of expressing these concepts.  But the most common, basic way is to use the same verb for all three: waiting, hoping and expecting, all “esperar”.  Like we do in English with a bunch of other expressions, knowing which sense applies depends on context, and construction of the sentence.     

    Are waiting, hoping and expecting really the same thing?  It depends on the object, the future action, thing or event upon which our mind is set.  

    My desire, my hope that Santa Claus will bring me an official Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas is quite different than me standing on the side of the street, waiting as I see my school bus rounding the curve a quarter mile up the road, which is again different than my mother expecting that I will indeed clean my room, because she knows I want to go out to play.   

    Waiting, hoping and expecting.  Our psalmist this morning employs all these concepts.  Our degree of peace and confidence while we wait, hope or expect depends on the object. In our Psalm and generally in the Church, the object of our waiting, hoping or expecting is the Lord God Almighty.  As we wait, hope or expect the Lord and His promises, our peace and confidence depend upon what we believe about Him. 

    King Ahaz struggles with faithfully waiting, hoping and expecting.  Ruling over half the divided Kingdom of Israel 700 years before the birth of Christ, Ahaz is an unfaithful king of an unfaithful people, who mixed worshiping idols with partially following the word of Moses.  Ahaz rules over Judah, the largest tribe of Israel, from the capital city, Jerusalem.  The king and Judah are waiting for an attack from the rest of the tribes of Israel, now allied with a pagan neighbor against their brothers.  It’s a mess. But the Lord sends the prophet Isaiah with a word of promise, of hope.  God invites Ahaz to ask for a sign, so that the Lord can convince Ahaz to trust. 

   But Ahaz, out of unbelief or fear or who knows why, refuses.  He does not expect that the Lord will do good things for him, perhaps because he knows how unfaithful he and Judah have become.  God through Isaiah invites Ahaz to ask for a sign, as high as heaven or as deep as Sheol, or hell.  Whatever sign you’d like, to be convinced of the Lord’s protection, go ahead.  But Ahaz refuses:  "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test."

    Bad move, for Ahaz, for Judah and for Israel.  Foolish, and tragically unnecessary.  Because the Lord has promised good to His people.  But if we reject His promises and refuse to ask Him for good things, when He invites us, well, then eventually the Lord will comply with our wishes, and instead give us what we deserve.  For Ahaz and Judah, that meant Assyria.  The enemies at Jerusalem’s gate that day when Isaiah went out to find Ahaz were bad enough, but they were not Assyria.  Assyria was the superpower of that day, a mighty empire that nobody could resist.  Because Ahaz refused to ask for help, the Lord would use them to punish God’s people.         

    And yet, the Lord did not entirely abandon His divided, unfaithful people, Israel.  He would not.  He could not, for the Lord had staked His Name on them.  He had promised to be their husband, their shepherd, their loving God, forever.  And so, along with the warning that Assyria would come and conquer Israel, God also doubled down on His promises, in the hope that hardened hearts would believe and wait in confident expectation for the Lord’s deliverance. 

    Essentially, the Lord said this:  “So King Ahaz, you don’t want a sign?  Very well, have it your way.  But I will still give a sign, the biggest and best sign yet.”

     The Lord had done many amazing things for Israel through the centuries, including plagues of rescue in Egypt, parting the sea to protect them from Pharaoh’s chariots, manna from heaven, and the great kings David and Solomon.  But now there was something even more amazing to look forward to, to wait for. “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” 

 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope. 

    What is harder to believe, that a virgin girl would conceive and bear a son, or that this child would be Immanuel, which means “God with us”? 

    Who would expect a virgin birth?  For all our 21^st century surrogate mothers, petri dishes for in vitro fertilization, and whatever other unnatural ways we modify the natural act of conceiving a child, still, one thing remains the same:  a seed from a man needs to implant in the egg from a woman.  That’s where babies come from.

   Unless God says otherwise.  And in this one instance, He has said exactly that.  Remember, God is the all-powerful Creator.  After forming our first parents, Adam from the dust and Eve from Adam’s side, God has graciously chosen to involve us in the creation of new souls – through procreation, that is a man and a woman conceiving and bearing children.  But the God who formed Adam from the mud and breathed life into him could do it that way again, or He could do it a different way.   

    Immanuel, God with us, is the virgin born Son of Mary, who is also the eternal Son of God.  I think the greater miracle is that God would even want to be with us.  You know how people are.  King Ahaz is our bad example today, but unfaithful sinners are everywhere.  You know how you are, how far short of God’s expectations you fall.  So do I.  So, why would God want to be with you and me, so much so that God would become a human being and be born?   

   Because He loves us.  God is love, and the greatest sign yet of His love for us sinful creatures, who have ruined His good creation, was revealed in the Son that Joseph cared for, even though Joseph was not the Child’s father.  This was the highest sign so far: God being truly with us.  Immanuel, the Son of God becoming our in-the-flesh brother, is the sign as high as heaven, come down to earth and joining us in our struggle.  The King of heaven slept in a feed trough and accepted the care of a newlywed couple who clearly could not have known what they were getting into. 

    We might say that the virgin birth of Jesus is the sign as high as heaven.  But what then is the sign as deep as hell, as deep as Sheol? 

    Wait for it.  Wait for the final sign, with hope.  No matter what Mary expected for her newborn baby, what happened 33 years later was also foretold in His Name, His given Name, which was Yeshua, Joshua, or Jesus.  A very common name among Israelites.  I wonder if they always remembered that Joshua or Jesus means “the Lord saves,” “the Lord is salvation?”  And so, to fulfill His Name, to save sinners, to assault the gates of Hell and set all its sin-prisoners free, the final and greater sign would be the lifting up of Immanuel, God with us to fight and die, and win forgiveness for all. 

    This too, was the expectation of the Psalmist:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;  my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.  O Israel, hope in the LORD!  For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.  And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities, from all his sinful rebellion.  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? ⁴ But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. And hoped for.  And loved. 

    Waiting, hoping, expecting.  In our day to day lives, these are very different activities.  But with Immanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ, they are the same.  The Child whose father is God the Father has come, and has finished His course.  His mission of gaining forgiveness is finished, once and for all.  All that remains is to daily receive His love, and to share His love, to play our small part in the extension of His kingdom, and then to wait.  This is the obedience of faith, the spontaneous action of the heart that is at rest, because all its hopes and expectations have been fulfilled, in Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.    

   In perfect hope, we expect each day that Immanuel will return soon, to make the promised future joy
of heaven a present reality.  He is your hope.  Whether today is full of joy, or whether the struggles sin causes in every life are weighing you down, you can and should expect every good thing from the Lord.  Put Him to the test.   Bring your sins and sorrows to Jesus, He wants to take them from you and give you His victory.  Wait for Him with great expectations, and rejoice, because God has loved you perfectly, and will bring you through to be with Him.  God is with you, Jesus, Immanuel, your sure and certain hope, today, and forever and ever, Amen.