1st Advent Sunday Worship Service November 30, 2025

Prelude
Call to Worship Proverbs 23:18
Lighting of the Advent Candle
Hymn JBC # 146 Com, Thou long-expected Jesus
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymn JBC #554 All the way my Saviour leads me
Remembering the World Baptist Prayer Week – Special Hymn
Offering
Scripture Romans 5:1~11
Prayer
Sermon “Hope in the Glory of God”
Prayer
Hymn JBC# 40 O Thou, in whose presence
Doxology JBC # 676
Benediction
Postlude

From today the Christian church enters the season of ‘Advent’. This is a special period where we look forward to the birth of Jesus Christ.
Advent is an approximately four week period, including 4 Sundays before Christmas on December 25th.
This year in 2025 from today (November 30th) until Christmas Eve on December 24th (Wed) is Advent.
Jesus Christ was born as a man approximately 2025 years ago. It is a historical fact that Christ was born into this world.
However, Christ is also the Son of God, equal with God, and is God.

Therefore, such a person being born into this world holds a completely different meaning than the birth of any other ordinary person throughout history.
The infinite, eternal, and limitless God was born as a man, and this special event is continuing even now.
The reason the Christian church celebrates Christmas every year as such a special day is that we believe Jesus Christ came to this world is the eternal life and Christ lives through the Holy Spirit and He is with us even now.

Approximately 2025 years ago in what is now Palestine and Israel, Jesus Christ was born. Jesus was raised as a Jew and lived a human life.
　Jesus Christ was born into this world to give us immesurable grace and gifts. In order to do so, He offered His own life.
As a representation of the grace that Jesus Christ has given us, we light four candles in Advent, which represent hope, peace, joy, and love.
In today’s Bible passage (Romans 5:1-11) this grace is shown in a concentrated manner.
If we can receive Christ’s blessings of hope, peace, joy, and love, our lives will be blessed and fulfilled beyond anything else.
The first candle of Advent which we lit today represents hope. Let’s listen to what the scripture has to say about hope today.
Hope gives our mind, heart, and soul strength and gives us strength to live.
However, if that hope is built upon our own thoughts and desires, then it is merely temporary and will fade away.

As we live there are things that we want to achieve, objects we desire, and standing we want. The desire for these things can become our hope for a time.
These hopes are not necessarily bad, but if our hopes are based on our own desires, they will not become a proper foundation for supporting the most important part of our lives: our souls.

　We need hope that is not of our own making and is unshakeable.
It is a hope that even if times and place change, even if we are put into difficult circumstances (failures or setbacks), it does not change.
This type of hope (a certain hope) is called “the hope in the glory of God” in today’s Bible passage.
The hope of the glory of the eternal Lord who created the world is what we have been given through Christ.
People were originally created to live under the glory of God. However, the Bible teaches that we let go of that through our own volition (sin).

Romans 3:23～24
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

“All have sinned”. In other words, we have separated from the God whom we were supposed to be with and serve in order to live self-centeredly.
In ‘Genesis’ in the Old Testament, the first people, Adam and Eve, in defiance to God’s commandments, ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which was the beginning of sin.
Human history since then demonstrates that people began living by the principle that “what is right is what I decide for myself,” “pursuing the hopes and glory they themselves created, and living to attain them.”
To us, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to return to the way of hope—the way that enables us to live within the true glory that only He can give.
Even though we became unable to receive God’s glory of our own will due to our sin, God forgave our sins through Jesus Christ and gave us a second chance to live in His glory.
We can partake in the glory given by the eternal God, demonstrated clearly through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us believe in that hope.
Reading today's Scripture passage carefully, we see that the hope of sharing in God's glory presupposes (requires) suffering.

In order to arrive at true hope which does not falter, we must endure suffering (hardship).
It is said that the experience of suffering gives us the “perseverance (endurance)” to endure any circumstance, and perseverance builds character, and character leads to hope.
I believe that here “perseverance” and “character” are a deepening of faith in the Lord due to relying on Him more in the midst of difficulty.
We all would desire to avoid suffering if possible. However, the Bible says that through after hardships we will be given true hope.
In verse 3 Paul, the author of this letter, even says “we glory in our sufferings.”
We may think that someone who can say such a thing may have an incredible fortitude (strength) of mind and heart.
However, this is not the case. Saying that we also glory in our sufferings is something only someone who understands that we cannot face suffering or overcome it of our own strength.
Only people who understand the truth that we have no strength to overcome, but our Lord is bearing this suffering with us can say such a thing.

Jesus Christ is the one who bears our suffering with us.
Christmas is a time when we give thanks for the birth into this world of the God who became man and shared our burdens.
In our lives we may have to deal with sickness, separation, lifestyle worries, and many other difficulties. Family and relational problems are also painful.
Let’s remember that we do not face these things alone.
The Lord walks with us, and through our faith that the Lord walks with us, we can grow in perseverance, character (learn more and more and experience that God is living with us and supporting us), and unshakeable hope.

Advent and Christmas is a time that we remember the birth of Jesus, who is our Savior and true companion (who lives with us).
The Bible tells us that, form the time He was born, Jesus experienced suffering.
When Jesus was born, the Bible says that Jesus and His family were only provided with a manger where livestock like horses lived.
In a sense, Jesus experienced rejection from the moment he was born and was treated like an outcast. Jesus’ life was far from glorious.
After beginning his public evangelism after turning 30, there times Jesus received praise and honor from people.
However, Jesus never sought such praise from man as true glory.

Through His own way of life and his words, Jesus showed that true glory is only in the Lord God, and that in God’s glory there is true and certain hope.
Jesus told us to live seeking true glory (not uncertain and fickle glory from people).
As written in verse 6 of today’s passage, Jesus died at His appointed time “for the ungodly (people)”.
If now anyone is thinking that they do not understand who they are, what the meaning of their life is, or what the value of their life is, let’s look together to Jesus Christ who died on the cross.
Let us take joy in the birth of Jesus who was born into this world to give His life for us sinners, not for the good and the righteous.
In Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, our purpose in life and worth and God’s limitless love are all clearly shown in.

　In living together with the Lord God Jesus Christ, we will certainly experience various suffering. Through enduring that suffering with the Lord, and receiving strength from the Lord in those experiences, we are promised a great and certain hope.
Just as written in verse 5 of today’s passage, that hope does not put us to shame. It is an eternal hope that never ends.
If we surrender ourselves to God and acknowledge that we have nothing of our own worthy of pride or glory, and only seek God’s glory, then God will generously let us live in that glory.
We have various failings each day. There are also many things that may depress us.
However, God richly gives (gave) us glory in Christ and that hope supports us.
Let us partake of the glory of the hope of God which is unchanging and walk in faith daily during this Advent season.