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Something, something, and love: the Christian Virtue of Hope Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, AMEN Main Theme: In 1st Cor. 13, Paul tells us there are three “Christian Virtues” – Faith , Hope, and Love. He goes on to concentrate on the greatest of these – love. But what of faith and hope? They are, in fact, presuppositions of love, God’s love. It’s a love you come to know through faith and hope. Today we seek to discover “What is hope?” It is not worldly optimism that ignores the brokenness around us. Hope is a gift – from God. It is faith applied to the future! It’s trusting that God can take the brokenness and make it serve His purposes. Hope does not ignore pain and suffering, but opens us to 1) honestly acknowledge the bad things in the world, and 2) helps us believe they are not meaningless but may even be the bearers of ultimate good. It frees us from anxious concern about tomorrow and enables us to enter more freely into life today. It is the Spirit of God that fosters hope in our hearts! 1) THE RIGHT THINGS! Larry and Elmer were out hunting when they realized they were lost in the woods. Elmer looked concerned, so Larry said, "Don’t worry. All we have to do is shoot into the air 3 times, stay where we are, and someone will find us." They shot in the air 3 times, but no one came. After a while, they tried again. Still no response. When they decided to try once more, Elmer said, "I hope it works this time. We’re down to our last 3 arrows." Hope, we all need it – but not all of us put our hope in the right things! 2) THE WRONG PLACES! It’s been said that hope is as NECESSARY to the human spirit as oxygen is to the physical body. We’ve all seen, and perhaps even experienced, what happens to those who lose all sense of hope: we are overcome with feelings of senselessness, purposelessness, and despair! Lack of hope can destroy our very lives. As important and vital as hope is to our lives, too many of us end up looking for it in all the wrong places! We look for it in ourselves, in knowledge, in our neighbors, spouses, and experts. We seek hope at the lottery counter as we pay the poor man’s tax. We seek hope in our jobs, in our doctors, in our retirement plans. But if we look around and are honest about what we see – we realize that all these people and things can fail! And when the sources that we put our faith into fail, our lives begin to unravel! Far too often we put our hope in the wrong places! 3) LIFE, EASY? Part of our confusion comes from the fact that too many of us have based our whole lives on a philosophy that says life should be easy! I once had a person who eventually left this church say, “If pastor mentions that we are broken people in a broken world one more time I’m gonna scream!” But I will never apologize for trying to break the “illusion” that keeps people from seeing the truth! Every person struggles! Including Christians! We too have financial struggles, health problems, relational problems! We too have people who break their promises or act terribly toward us. We too fret over our kids. We too face death! There are no exceptions! If things are going well for you now – praise God! But understand, you are NOT the exception to the rule! We all ARE broken people living in a broken world, and life is NOT easy! If you are not struggling – wait a bit! It’s coming! Pretending it won’t happen to you – is naïve and will lead you to despair!! What keeps us from despair and keeps us going during times of struggle, is HOPE! 4) OPTIMISM? But, caution; Christian hope is not “blind optimism”! I’m talking about the kind of optimism that is unconvincing and deceptive because it comes from a feeble attempt to “think positively.” That’s just people gritting their teeth and insisting that that everything will work out, by trying to forget something, or overlook something, or erase something from their thoughts. “If I stick my head in the sand and don’t acknowledge the bad things around me, these negative things don’t exist – and I can stay positive!” Psychologists call this “repression”! It’s a way of carrying on without having to face reality! And if blind optimism becomes a habitual way of coping, it’s not only ineffective, but it can lead to even bigger problems in life down the road! 5) FAULTY CONCLUSION! Every commercial on TV usually leads us to a faulty conclusion: that we should all be living in a grand house, with 2.4 perfect kids, great jobs, the ideal spouse, a luxury car, an SUV, a boat, a travel home, great vacations, and a wonderful stock portfolio that’s gonna make retirement a breeze! How many of you have seen people spend all their energies on pathetic attempts to make everything in their life conform to this faulty conclusion? But all they experience is complete frustration, because why? Reality will simply not conform to their great expectations! Their clothes are always going out of fashion, the house is never big enough, there isn’t enough money, the kids are never successful enough, their spouse is not living up to expectations! And usually, the greatest single reason for the unhappiness of the whole family is because of one or more member’s refusal to allow any unhappiness in to affect their little chunk of heaven! The refusal to see anything but the “sunny side” of the street, ends up destroying the very thing we claim to treasure. “Having it all” is an illusion – and leads us to a faulty conclusion! Not facing the negative side of life, is never life-giving. It sucks the joy out of life. 6) HOPE! So what can help us face the truth, and keep us going when storms threaten to wipe everything away? HOPE! Without hope, life itself cannot be sustained for very long, and civilization is impossible! If any of you ever read Dante’s “Inferno” in school, you may remember that he was trying to help his readers understand the depths of evil. So the gate to hell had the following words written over them: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” No, I think humanity instinctively knows that without hope, life itself will wither and die. But for Christians, hope is not something we can manufacture out of shear determination! Hope is a gift! 7) FAITH IN FUTURE! Last week we discussed how “faith” was indeed a gift from God! So naturally, when the Apostle Paul talks about “faith, hope, and love” in 1st Corinthians, he knows they are intimately connected and come from the same source: God Himself! In fact, faith is the mother of hope! Because basically, hope is just faith applied to the future! Face it, faith is trust in God! If you have faith in God, trust in God, then you confidently believe He is ready and capable of caring for you in the future as well as the past and present! You don’t trust your future to yourself, to humanity, to the government, to the church, or to anything else – you trust the future to God! As a result, when brokenness falls like rain, when the terrible things knock at your door, when bad stuff happens, you don’t freakout, or stick you head in the sand in denial – you honestly face the hopeless things that happen to you and keep going because of your trust in God! As your past has revealed, God is greater than the bad things in life, and so the fear is replaced with faith. When you are convinced that God can take all of the bad things meant to destroy us, and instead, make them serve His purpose, then we can “keep on keeping on”, trusting in God! Fact is, faith in the future is called hope! 8) SUFFERING! The Bible is filled with examples of folks that struggled and suffered! Some deserved it, and others did not – but suffering came anyway. Take Job or Joseph in the Old Testament. Did Job bring his troubles upon himself? No – but almost everything was taken from him: his family, his wealth, his lifestyle, etc… And did Joseph deserve to be sold into slavery in Egypt, or thrown into prison there? No! But bad things happened to them both – and yet, as the stories revealed – God brought life out of terrible suffering in both cases! Until God stepped in, most who knew these two suffering men, considered them failures! 9) PAIN AND DESPAIR! Likewise, some would say Jesus was a failure: dead at only “thirty-something!” So why then, as his followers told His story, didn’t the Gospel writers leave out or minimize the “pain and despair” of Jesus’ life? Because God, in fact, is revealed on the cross! There are churches (I call them “glory” churches) who only want to focus on the “raised again” portion of the Easter story! Their crosses are always empty – and they never celebrate Lent, because they only want to focus on the positive, victorious portion of the Easter story. But hope comes to us, only when we see the darker side of the story; the part of the Savior’s life, that those of us who have experienced pain and despair, can relate to! It is our connection to the broken Christ, that makes the risen Christ such Good news! Easter is not just about Easter lilies and “feeling good”, it is about hope in the midst of the pain and despair into which life often leads us! 10) GOD IS GREATER! The nails, the crown of thorns, His scarred and bleeding flesh – we cannot dismiss the suffering because of what happened three days later. Let me ask you; did the resurrection cancel out the cross? Hardly! It revealed that Jesus is present in the cross! And it is in facing of the reality of Christ’s pain and suffering that makes the empty tomb have meaning for us! Because? …as the past has revealed: God is greater than sin, Satan, and death! So as we face the same things now, we do not have to wonder if God is capable of being victorious over our pain and suffering. God’s acts, in the past, inform our future. Knowing God is greater… means we do not have to despair – we can keep on going in Hope! Trusting in God! 11) DIFFERENCE? So what difference does “hope” make in our life? It makes all the difference in the world! Last week, almost all of us raised our hands when I asked if there were any “worriers” here. We worry mostly because we are anxious about the future! If life has taught us anything, it is that the future always seems to be gathering itself for an attack! The hope that God gives us (as He lives in our hearts), does two amazing things for us: 1) It allows us to be as truthful as possible about the “bad things” that can and do happen, and 2) it helps us believe that those same “bad things” will not have the last word in our life! Or to put it another way: the Lord’s gift of hope makes a huge difference in that it frees us enough from our anxious concern about tomorrow, so as to enable us to enter more fully into life today! 12) SERVE! Now remember, this is hope “IN God” and not in us. And our hope should not make us feel smug, nor think it frees us from the responsibility to love and serve Christ and our neighbor! Hope is not automatic! There is no “scientific law” of nature that says “Good will always come out of evil, or that rejoicing will always come out of suffering!” It is God breaking into the brokenness of our lives, that brings us hope! So, we cannot use hope as an excuse for “doing nothing!” The Spirit of God breaks in and fosters hope in your heart, not to preserve you from planning and hard work! On the contrary, He creates hope within you to give you the courage you need to believe that your work, your service, is actually an important component in the bigger work of God “mending” our world! 13) GET ON WITH IT! Some of you know how easy it is to get discouraged when you labor to feed the hungry, or clothe the homeless. The world resists any person or church that attempts to make a difference! The battle of good verse evil, often tires us and wears us down, and we begin to despair, thinking that the little things we are doing are not really making a dent in over all scheme of things! The suggested futility of our efforts, along with self-doubts make us wonder if it’s worth it! The Angels’ Network, missions to Mexico, the Latte Ministry idea, the starting of an adult education task group, the new Outreach Committee, starting a third service to reach our Latino neighbors… Satan will fight us “tooth and nail” on every one of these attempts to build God’s kingdom, and bring Christ’s light and love to others. And as we struggle to hurdle the challenges that Satan places in our way, we may get discouraged and begin to suspect that our small part it all adds up to every little. But God’s Spirit whispers into our hearts today and tells us that it is never-the-less the work to which you have been beckoned. God inspires it, encourages it, empowers it, and will take what we offer, bless it, multiply it, and do with it what He wills! “Don’t despair”, says the Spirit, “Get on with it!” 14) CONFIDENCE! This confidence that empowers us to “Get on with it” is a gift that I admit requires a greater leap of faith for people who have just started their faith walk than for those who have been at it for a good long while. Some of the church’s family are further along in their spiritual journey and have developed a track record with God that helps them learn from the past, examine their present struggles, and adjust to the future with hope somewhat “quicker” than they did years ago, …and with less anxiety and more confidence in God’s ability to come through! 15) SCRIPTURES! Why so? Because our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ! As we mentioned last week, these three gifts “faith, hope, and love”, are not the result of believing in a set of religious ideas or theologies. Hope comes from having experienced a living, loving, growing personal relationship with Jesus Christ! When we pray, when we allow Him into our hearts, when we focus on His “Living Word” as found in the scriptures – hope comes. In Romans 15:4 Paul tells us “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have HOPE!” 16) YOUR WORD! Psalm 119 reinforces this truth:
We can obtain hope FROM His Word. For the scriptures are full of stories giving examples of God’s faithfulness and the way in which He can and will work in our lives! That’s why they say, “Show me a person whose Bible is worm out, and I’ll show you a Christian who isn’t!” Are you tapping into the gift of hope through devotions, reading scripture, Bible studies, small groups, and so forth? Hope comes from God’s Word! 17) ENDLESS! As someone once said, "Life with Christ is an endless hope, life without Christ is a hopeless end." Through Christ we receive a living endless hope! A life-giving hope! It’s a hope that is sure and steadfast, because it is rooted and grounded in a living, personal relationship with God! Hebrews 6:19a “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” See, it’s a hope that is firmly anchored in heaven in the person of Jesus Christ. The fact is, we don’t know if we will live a long life, if our health will hold, if our money will be sufficient for retirement, but the Spirit has led us this morning to the one thing that He wants us to know beyond a shadow of a doubt: we are safely and endlessly anchored in Jesus! And He will never fail us nor forsake us, either in this life or in all of eternity. Our relationship with the Lord brings us endless hope! 18) JESUS CHRIST! Friends, there aren’t many of us here who aren’t struggling in this broken world. And if you aren’t struggling right at this moment, wait a while! Your turn is coming. So ask yourself, “As I reach out for hope – what source will I grasp at?” Larry and Elmer sadly put their hope in shooting three arrows into the air when they were lost in the woods. When we are lost, will our hope be found in money, other people, experts, a job, knowledge, or retirement plans?” Remember, all of those can fail us! But rest assured, there is no need for despair! There is hope available! True hope! And that hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ! 19) GOD OF HOPE! Friends, 52 times the New Testament talks about hope, and always that hope is tied in some way to God! … to the God that truly has the greatest power in the Universe, and will NOT let sin, Satan, or death have the final say in your life! Despite our inability to see the future, we’re empowered through the Spirit to trust in Him who does see the future! And may our hearts be open this morning as Paul closes our message with the revelation that God is the author of hope; (Romans 5:13) “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit!” Praise God! AMEN Sermon/Confessional Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, we confess that often the future makes us anxious. Often we doubt that the right solutions to our problems will come. And rather than trusting in you, we have turned to ourselves, worldly wisdom, other people, money, and things – leaning on them to bring us hope! Forgive us for not learning from our past experiences in which you, and only you, faithfully provided us with what we needed. Help us now to turn our present worries and struggles completely over to you – empower us to put our hope in you! Lord, forgive us for buying into the illusion that life should be easy, and for despairing when it is not. Help us to truthfully accept the reality of this broken world, while facing it fearlessly, filled with hope! Forgive us when we forget that your power is greater than the power of sin and evil. Inspire us to focus daily on your life-giving message in the scriptures, and to receive the blessed gift of hope! Help us to apply our faith to the future, and no matter what this broken world brings us – enable us to lean on the endless hope that the Spirit brings us through our relationship with you!! And now Lord, although you know us better than we know ourselves, listen as we share in a moment of silence, those other parts of our lives that need to be forgiven, washed clean, healed, and recommitted to you! (made anew.) (Silence) Lord, when the world brings our spirits down, when despair begins to fill our hearts, we pray you will break in with the precious endless gift of hope! Let nothing from our past or anything in our present get us down for long – but instead lift up our heads that we might see in your precious face, the divine love that keeps us going on – faithfully, obediently, and joyously. In Jesus Name We Pray. AMEN Assurance of Forgiveness: Friends, listen to the good news: The Lord, whose Spirit provides the precious gift of hope, …that Lord has mercifully heard your confession and eagerly forgives you all your sins. Go now, head up, confidence high, trusting in the Creator of the Universe to provide what is not always visible now. Let the God of hope live in your heart, and walk you boldly into the future - unafraid of what ever tomorrow brings! Praise God! AMEN Opening prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, not a single person here this morning has come for exactly the same reason. Some of us come mad, some glad, others sad. Some come eagerly, some automatically, some deliberately, some expectantly, others reluctantly. Some of us come not really expecting anything to happen, while others hope everything will happen. Some of us come bored with the familiarity of it all, while others of us are scared by the unfamiliarity! Some of us come to give praise for the victories we have experienced this week, while others of us come with guilt and burdens and heavy hearts. We come as mixed bag of sinners and saints, and yet, for whatever reason, we have come. Do not, we pray, leave us as we have come. In this hour of communion with you, touch us, transform us, and fill us with your amazing and life-giving Spirit. Do for us what we cannot do ourselves: forgive and wash our sins, heal our wounds, and bring us hope! Lead, teach, and guide us – fill us with the gifts of faith, hope, and love. As we praise you, draw us near, and perform miracles in our hearts! In Jesus Name We Pray! AMEN! |
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