physical locations, and what a privilege to minister the Word of God to you today.

I decided just to use one verse.

It's completely coincidental that this is my eleventh Christmas sermon as the pastor

of Elevation Church and my text happens to be Isaiah 11.

This is the coolest Christmas Scripture you've never heard.

You've probably never heard this little verse of Scripture, and I know you've never heard

it in a Christmas sermon.

I had not either, so I decided to preach it.

The Lord has really been using it.

I want to read you this verse.

Don't worry if you don't see what it has to do with Christmas right when I read it, but

you will in a minute.

Isaiah 11:1: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will

bear fruit."

It is a very promising prophecy that Isaiah delivers to a people who have been cut down

and reduced to almost nothing.

One of my favorite country preachers used to have a saying.

He would say, "When you're down to nothing, God is up to something."

Elbow your neighbor and tell them, "God is up to something in your life."

Even if you can't feel it, even if you can't see it, even if you can't discern it with

your natural senses, I want you to know that God is up to something in your life.

If you've had a banner year or a barren year, God is up to something in your life.

He was up to something in the nation of Israel.

They had placed their hope in other gods, and yet the promise of redemption echoes over

700 years before the birth of Christ through the prophet Isaiah.

He says, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear

fruit."

Let me back up and read that one more time, because I think I see Jesus in this text.

"From his roots a Branch will bear fruit."

Could it be that the branch Isaiah speaks of is the baby that was born in the town of

Bethlehem?

Could it be that the eagle-eyed prophet is seeing through seven centuries into our present

hope?

Peter calls it a "living hope."

The author of Hebrews calls it an "anchor for our souls."

We celebrate this season that hope has come.

Somebody shout, "I have a hope!"

Let the Devil hear you say it, because he's been messing with you and you've had a hard

year, but let him know you're still standing by the grace of God and you have a hope.

Somebody shout, "I have a hope!"

It's a certain kind of hope.

It's not a floating hope.

I saw Holly watch a movie a few years ago.

It's been quite a few years.

They called the movie Hope Floats.

I didn't watch the movie.

Holly had it on.

I don't know anything about the movie, but I know the title isn't accurate, because real

hope is like an anchor.

It doesn't float on the surface of your situation, but it gets down to the bottom and holds on

tight while you're going through hell.

When you get Paul involved...

Paul is the New Testament apostle who took the gospel to the Gentiles.

He says something instructive in Romans, chapter 8.

He wants to talk about the nature of hope.

When he goes to talk about it, he says in Romans 8:24, "For in this hope we were saved.

But hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Who hopes for what they already have?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have..."

If we can hold on and hold out and hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently,

and patience is the proof of hope.

My subject for this Christmas is Learning Hope the Hard Way.

What Isaiah's stump that has been cut down and Paul's theology, Christology, and pneumatology

of the Spirit of God that lives on the inside of you all have in common is they describe

a certain kind of hope.

Not the kind of hope that you might have as a Panthers fan.

I hope the Clemson Tigers beat the Ohio State Buckeyes, as do all Christians.

I toss it around like that.

The word hope means very little, because the fact of the matter is it won't bother me much

if they don't.

A bunch of boys in some Spandex aren't going to keep me up at night.

I am not so worried as to really say, "I hope."

All I really mean is it would be nice.

My mom went to Clemson.

It would be nice if they got a win.

I don't care.

I don't really hope for that.

I didn't come to talk to you on Christmas Eve, when you could be doing a lot of other

things, about that kind of hope.

I'm talking about a certain kind of hope, a hope that has to be learned the hard way.

How many have ever had to learn something the hard way?

If your husband isn't raising his hand, maybe you could raise it for him, if he doesn't

want to be honest.

Some things you have to learn the hard way.

Some things can only be developed the hard way.

I was talking to a campus pastor, and they asked me about my preparation, and I told

them a story.

I said, "I prepare a lot before I preach.

I over-prepare."

The reason I over-prepare is because one time 13 years ago I went to speak at an event.

I got lost on the way, so I started getting angry.

I was a little flustered when I got there, and I got up in front of the event, and it

was a mother/daughter banquet.

I've never been more unprepared for anything in my life.

I didn't know it was a mother/daughter banquet.

I had prepared for something different.

I thought it was a youth service.

I didn't have anything to say to the mothers and daughters.

I learned the hard way that day.

I hated how that felt so much, being up in front of people with a microphone and a Bible

unprepared, I resolved in my heart, "I will never stand in front of people behind a pulpit

unprepared again."

It took the experience of embarrassment...

You know, my mouth is going dry and my face is turning red.

I stood there and promised myself, "I will never be in that situation again."

It doesn't mean all of my sermons are going to be great, and it doesn't mean all of my

sermons are going to be funny or equally inspiring, but they will always be my best.

I decided that day, but I had to learn it the hard way.

Those of you who come to the church know we have three kids.

The only reason I keep them around is for sermon material.

The oldest one is 11.

His name is Elijah.

He gave me a good line the other day.

I was taking him to school, and I said, "Who is your favorite teacher you've ever had?"

He's in sixth grade now.

(That's not a prayer request, but if you want to throw us in on your list, that's okay.)

He said, "It depends what you mean by favorite.

Do you mean the one I had the most fun with or the one I learned the most from?

Because those answers would be different depending on what you mean by favorite."

How did he understand that about school as an 11-year-old and we don't get it in our

Christian life, in our spiritual life?

The seasons of our lives that are the most fun aren't necessarily the most fruitful,

and the seasons of our lives that we get the most out of aren't necessarily the ones we

would choose to go through.

There are some seasons of your life that will cut you down and take off your branches.

We call them pruning seasons.

Even in the pruning is a promise.

Isaiah said, "I see a stump cut down to nothing, but I see a shoot coming forth from the stump."

God is up to something in your life this Christmas.

We celebrate this season that hope has come into the world, but we have to remember not

only that it has come or who it came through but how it came.

It had to be hard.

That's kind of left out by the time you see our modern interpretation of the nativity.

It had to be hard for Joseph to really believe that his wife, who had not had sex with him

because they were not husband and wife yet, but they were what the Bible calls betrothed...

That his wife, being a virgin, was pregnant.

It had to be hard for him to really take that at God's word.

It had to be hard for Mary to have to look people in the eye and convince them that what

she was carrying was from the Holy Spirit.

Forget about even that part, because it had to be hard for them to believe.

I know that, but just physically.

The way God chose to come into the world shows us something about the nature of the way he

works, and I think we should look at it.

If you sanitize the Christmas story, you strip it of its significance.

To miss the struggle of the Christmas story is to miss a window into the way God works.

When God wanted to come into the world, not only did he pick a virgin, not only did he

pick a womb that represented impossibility so that he could bring forth infinite potential,

not only did he pick the hardest situation to bring forth his Son, but he didn't even

make hotel reservations.

When it came time for them to stay in Bethlehem, they didn't even have a room at the Ritz.

Wouldn't you think if God was coming into the world he would Airbnb or something to

make sure this couple had a place to stay?

We miss it, because we think when God says he's going to do something in our lives it's

going to be easy, but it's not.

It has to be hard.

A quick look at the history of the Bible shows you that God likes to do things the hard way.

It is his preferred method of carrying out his purpose.

Don't think you're weird if your life has been hard, and don't assume that you're doing

something wrong, because God will often allow life to cut you down to the stump.

He did it to Moses.

Moses was called to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt.

I won't take you through the whole Bible, but I do want to go to Exodus, because there's

this interesting Christmas verse that says, "Out of Egypt I have called my Son."

Jesus had to go with his parents to Egypt when he was very little, because Herod wanted

to kill him.

God doesn't birth his Son into the world into ideal circumstances but into a very chaotic

environment where Roman oppression was so common to the people they feared for their

very lives under the madman named Herod.

We think we have bad presidential candidates.

I mean, this guy was killing babies in Bethlehem when he heard Jesus was born because it represented

a threat to the throne.

So Isaiah is prophesying to a people who are under Assyrian oppression, and Jesus comes

into the world under Roman oppression, because God likes to come into hard situations.

He's not scared of that.

When he picks Moses he says, "Go to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, and tell

him to let my people go, and when you tell him to let my people go, he's going to say,

'No.'"

Why would God tell me to do something and in the next breath inform me that it won't

work?

Because it had to be hard.

If it was easy for Moses, if he just walked up into Pharaoh's court and said, "Let my

people go" and Pharaoh said, "All right," Moses would dab on Pharaoh, walk out, and

think he was convincing.

Pharaoh had to say, "No," so that God could...

This is God's own wording.

I didn't make this up.

He said, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart so that I can gain glory."

In other words, if it wasn't hard, you would think it was you.

If it wasn't hard, you would trust in yourself.

You are not an adequate support system for the glory of God, so he has to allow some

things into your life that are impossible for you so you can know what Mary knew, that

nothing shall be impossible with God.

It had to be hard.

By the time the Israelites came out of Egypt...

They come up to the Red Sea, and instead of taking them around the body of water, watch

what God does.

God is kind of crazy.

God says, "I'm not going to take you around it.

That would be the normal way.

That would be the human way.

Let's do it the hard way.

I'm not going to take you around it.