Hope
One of my sermons from a previous life:
It’s 10:00 am on Black Friday; that’s the nickname that retailers have given this one day out of the year that is often the make or break day for their annual sales. It’s the day after Thanksgiving and of all the more sane places that I could be right now...I’m sitting at the mall. God told me to come here and watch people while I transfer the Sunday morning message from my mind to paper.
To my left there is an older gentleman with gray hair and a beard, wearing a white sweatshirt, eating a sandwich. He just looked my direction and I wonder if he’s hoping that his wife will quickly find everything she’s looking for and for the first time in his 40 years of black Fridays with her he’ll be able to escape the mall by noon and get back to the quiet of his study where he can sit by the fire, smoke his pipe, and engross himself in his book about sub-Saharan anthropology. He looks like an anthropologist.
A family just walked behind me with a small kid screaming at the top of his lungs. Apparently his hopes of obtaining a cool new toy have been dashed and his parents hopes of a scream-free day have come to a quick, ear-shattering demise. They were walking toward the exit. A scary looking guy just walked in front of me. He had to be 6’5”, looked like Abraham Lincoln only more muscular and not as friendly, and was wearing all black with lot’s of metal stuff hanging off of him. I’m not sure what his hopes are, but I find myself hoping that I don’t have anything he wants.
A young boy is sitting at the table just to my left. We just made eye-contact. I smiled...he didn’t. What are his hopes, his dreams, the longings of his heart today? Oh. An older woman and child just walked up, sat down, and put a piece of pizza in front of him. There’s the smile. He looks satisfied now.
She can’t be more than 16 or 17. She’s sitting directly in front of me with an older woman, maybe her mother. She’s been up walking around and it’s pretty easy to discern her hopes. Her shirt and jeans are tighter than any I think I’ve seen. Her stomach is bare. Her jeans barely come up over her hips. And the way she’s walking leaves no doubt that for reasons buried deep in her heart she is hoping for, craving the attention of men. I wonder what’s been missing in her life?
Two tables over from pizza boy is a very pleasant looking older, gray haired lady. She’s sitting alone, I see money folded up in the hand that is propped against her cheek. She’s smiling and making conversation with a little girl next to her. I think they may be related. I wonder if, behind the smile, grandma is remembering Christmases gone by and hoping that she can make it through another holiday season without her husband.
The food court cleaning lady has walked by me several times. Each time I have made eye contact and smiled, but of all the people around me right now, I don’t see anyone who looks as sad, depressed, and empty as this woman looks. She even looks irritated that I have my laptop plugged into the electric pole next to the trash can. Maybe she hates this job. Maybe she hates having to work at the mall on this day. I certainly would. Or maybe 50 years of shattered hopes and dreams that never come true have brought her to the place that life is no longer an adventure, but is simply a matter of endurance.
Pizza boy just went back to get another slice.
It’s getting closer to noon and the food bar is really starting to fill up. I’m totally surrounded on all sides by all kinds of people who have all sorts of different stories. Some are stories of laughter and happiness shared with a loving family. Some are stories of struggle and conflict. Some are stories of devastating trauma. Some are stories of renewal, the breaking through of the sun after a storm, the beginnings of the restoration of a broken relationship, the early signs of stability after years of poverty. But there is one common theme in all of the stories around me right now. They all involve hope. In some stories, hope is abundant. In some of the stories hope is vanishing quickly. In some, hope was totally snuffed out years ago. And then there are those stories that are experiencing the dawn of hope after a long, dark night of it’s absence. What is hope?
Quite simply, hope is the anticipation of something pleasant. Hopelessness prevails when we no longer have any reason to think that anything pleasant will ever come our way. Someone once said, “It is possible for a person to live up to seventy days without food. It is also possible to exist for nearly ten days without water. And one can live for up to six minutes without air. But there is one thing it is impossible to live without—hope.”
Because of this, it shouldn’t be surprising that God has offered to every person who will draw near to Him through Jesus Christ a 3-point anchor to stabilize their life with one of those three points being “hope.” Paul says to us in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “Now these three things remain: faith, hope and love.” A life of hope—the anticipation of something pleasant—should be the expectation of every person who allows Jesus Christ to become the centerpiece of their life. It is a piece of the picture of the life that God desires for you to experience as His child, his friend.
The first thing that our Father wants us to hope for is The hope of righteousness. There are those who have been stripped of their hope by the guilt of their past. Do you know anyone like this? They have made terrible mistakes with their life. They’ve hurt people. They’ve hurt themselves. Through their actions they’ve brought about consequences that may follow them as long as they live. They’ve ruined their reputation. The things they have done have caused others to lose respect for them, to avoid them, to ostracize them. They have things hidden in their life that the would never want anyone to discover. And they fear the very idea of ever having to stand before God and give account for those things.
Galatians 5:5 says “But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.” There’s a theological word for what he’s talking about here, and that word is justification. Justification is a legal term which simply means that you are innocent even though you did everything you were accused of doing. This passage of scripture is saying to you and me that if we approach God through faith in Jesus Christ who was convicted, sentenced, and executed in our place—then we can fully expect to come into God’s presence, be greeted, embraced, declared innocent, and welcomed into His eternal Kingdom. With the wisdom of Linus, life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the day that the mistakes of our past are eternally forgotten.
Our Father also wants us to know The hope of His calling. Now often, when we hear the word “calling” we think of what we’re supposed to do with our life; the tasks we will accomplish for God. This isn’t what we’re talking about here. To understand, we need to read Ephesians 1:18-21. The word calling can also be interpreted here invitation. What this passage is taking about, the hope that Paul wants to open they eyes of our heart to is this: We have been invited into a family and as part of that family we will share in an inheritance. A multi-billionaire walks into an orphanage, comes to the room of an 8 year old boy who has nothing, and invites him to come home with him and become part of the family. The moment the paperwork is signed and the adoption is legal, the boy who was in one moment a penniless orphan is the next moment part of a family and the heir of billions.
God, who owns everything and loves us more than any human ever could, has invited us into His family. The adoption papers were signed in blood. And now, if we’ll respond to His calling, His invitation, we will instantly in this life and in the life to come have all of the rights and provision that come along with being part of the family. Linus would say, “life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the love, acceptance, and provision there is in being part of a family.”
The hope of salvation is another expectation that God wants those who are His to understand. I have known and do know today Christians who begin every day anticipating defeat. They know that the enemy and the circumstances of life in a messed up world are going to leave them feeling defeated at the end of the day. In the two places where Paul talks about the hope of salvation is talking about assurance of victory.
Let’s look at two passages, beginning with 1 Thessalonians 5:8. “But let us who live in the light keep sober, protected by the armor of faith and love and wearing as our helmet the hope of salvation.” In this passage, Paul is repeating what he said to the Ephesians when he said, “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.” When we talk about the hope of salvation, we’re talking about living our life each day with the assurance of victory. Why does Paul use the illustration of a helmet for our hope of salvation? The idea is, that a well-founded hope of salvation will preserve us in the day of spiritual conflict, and will guard us from the blows which an enemy would strike. The helmet defended the head, a vital part; and so the hope of salvation will defend the soul, and keep it from the blows of the enemy.
A soldier would not fight well without a hope of victory. A Christian could not contend with the enemy, without the hope of final salvation. If you engage in life each day anticipating defeat, then that is what you’ll have. If you’ll engage life with the hope of salvation, the enemy of your soul has no power over you. What would Linus say? “Life is more pleasant when we can look forward to victory instead of defeat.”
The hope of glory brings us to another theological term, which is glorification. Paul talked to the Colossians about the mystery of Christ being in us, which is the hope of glory. The mystery that had been revealed to Paul was that Christ died for the whole world, not just the Jews. The result was that by placing our life in Christ, Christ is in us and that is the source of our hope of glorification. In other words, because Christ lives in us, we can hope, expect, anticipate this thing called glorification. So what is it? Paul’s words to the Corinthians hold the answer. 2 Cor 4:16-18 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Quite simply, as Christians, we can anticipate the day when we will be freed from this earthly body that gets sick, breaks down, and eventually dies. Everything in creation, including our bodies hope for the day of glorification when everything will be made new. Much of the despair and hopelessness that we face comes through bodies that don’t work, through illness, through chronic pain, through terminal disease. As believers, our hope rests in the promise of glorification. Linus would encourage us by saying, “Life is more pleasant when we can look forward to the day when there will be no more suffering or pain.”
Finally, one last reason for hope that I want to share with you, and that is The hope of eternal life. I feel very sorry for the atheist. Since he believes that there is no God and there is nothing after this life, he has no reason to hope. This life is all you get and frankly, this life isn’t all that great much of the time. Paul wrote a letter to Titus, whom he left behind on the island of Crete to oversee the church there. In that letter, Paul made a statement that summarizes everything we’ve said this morning. He said in Titus 3:4-7, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”
Everything we’ve said today comes down to this. Jesus Christ came to give us hope eternal life. Life...not just existence—life that is fuller, richer, more meaningful than we can comprehend. Life that will go on for eternity, without end, in the presence of God and in the presence of all the loved ones who have died before us. When we grieve over the death of loved ones, we grieve with hope...the expectancy of being reunited with them in a new life that will never end.