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These Three Remain: Hope

Pastor Rollan Fisher

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Focus: We will experience the resurrection life of God as Jesus remains the foundation of our hopes.

The Reason for Hope
Hope in the Midst of Suffering
Why Hope Springs Eternal

The Reason for Hope

The reason that we can have hope in life is because we have seen and trust the goodness of God.

Definition of Hope

Hope is Biblically defined as an often pleasurable anticipation and a confident expectation of good.

Hope is the internal desire for things to be better and the spark that tells us that things can, in fact, be different.

Hope is based on the good that God has shown of Himself in the world and has been testified to in Scripture.

Jesus let us know that God is a kind miracle worker and that all things are possible to those who believe.

When you have seen the goodness of God in one area, you can have hope for it in another, even if you’ve only experienced it through the testimony the Scripture or others offer.

These testimonies invigorate hope:

FOR HEALINGS

FOR DELIVERANCE FROM OPPRESSIVE SPIRITS

FOR GOD TO GIVE YOU A FAMILY OR ADD TO THE ONE YOU ALREADY HAVE

FOR MIRACLE PROVISION

FOR A REDEFINED PURPOSE AFTER ALL THAT YOU’VE BUILT HAS BEEN SHAKEN OR ALL THAT YOU’VE PURSUED HAS FEELS LOST

FOR RENEWED STRENGTH AND DIRECTION

FOR THE SALVATION OF FAMILY MEMBERS, FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS and BELOVED CO-WORKERS

These are all things worthy of Biblical hope based on the track record of God.

Benefits of Hope:

Hope stabilizes

Hope energizes

Hope gets us out of bed with expectation in the morning.

This is why King David, knowing God as a faithful, loving shepherd would speak,

Psalm 23:6
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This phrase “follow me” literally had the implication that God’s goodness would find and chase down the one who was submitted to the Lord as one of His beloved sheep, because of God’s goodnesss, not our own.

Yet interestingly this terminology also followed the fact that David, and those who would follow, would

“walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4)

and that God would

”prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” (Psalm 23:5)

Thus the hope that God intends for his people to have is not in the absence of suffering, but in the midst of it.

Hope in the Midst of Suffering

Hope can be challenged, but God can meet us there.

Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

*SUFFERING COMES IN MANY FORMS, AND SOMETIMES, AS IN THE CASE OF ABRAHAM AND SARAH, THE SUFFERING WAS IN THE WAITING.

The fact can not be ignored, but needs to be highlighted - that between God giving Abraham the promise and Isaac, the son of the promise, arriving on the scene, there would be a period of twenty-five YEARS.

THIS IS WHERE TO MAINTAIN CONTINUED HOPE, WE MUST LEARN TO LEAN, NOT ON OUR OWN STRENGTH, BUT ON THE STRENGTH OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WHOSE FRUIT PRODUCES THE POWER OF LONG-SUFFERING (PATIENCE) WITHIN US.

This is how Abraham and Sarah learned endurance connected to the promise of God.

Though they took detours along the way (Egypt, Hagar and Ishmael), the long process of waiting on Isaac would eventually develop the character (the quality of being tried, tested and found usable) needed in them to walk in the purposes of God.

And so their journey would become the bedrock for living a life of hope in God.

It offers encouragement to us today as we wait on such things as:

Marriage

Children

Provision

Promotions

Healings
Salvation of family, friends, classmates, neighbors and co-workers

The return of Jesus Christ

On what things are you waiting in hope today?

In what ways do you need help enduring?

In what ways is God using this waiting to produce character in you?

How is Biblical hope exercised?

Whether it’s true or not, while we wait in hope, it can feel like the lament of Psalm 88

Psalm 88:1-18
O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry! For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.

*When you have no other place to go and you still keep coming back to the place of worship and back to the place of prayer, this is Biblical hope being expressed in Christ.

Hope was expressed on the part of the Psalmist because despite their FEELINGS, they kept going to God and calling Him the God of their salvation.

When we put our hope in Jesus, we are putting our faith in El Roi (Genesis 16:1-16) “The God Who Sees”

This is because he is a compassionate God and never forgets your pain.

God sees us when no one else does and brings redemption out of our suffering.

God is also Jehovah Jireh “My Provider” (Genesis 22:1-19)

God is always looking to redeem, meaning buy back, what was lost.

God saw our deepest need (sin), he provided the solution (the perfect Lamb), and now we can be at peace when we ask for our daily bread (daily needs).

*Into the isolation of the pandemic God wants to pour His love.

What is our hope in the midst of suffering?

God Sees the Unseen

God Calls Us Into His Purposes

God Gives Us Sure Promises

*This is why we, like the Psalmist, can continue to seek God even when it seems like the current end of our song is darkness.

Condemnation tries to creep in when you don’t feel right.

The devil, the accuser, tries to weigh you down.

The Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, lets us know that we can be both honest with God about our condition because of the state of our sufferings and filled with a hope that God sees and acknowledges at the same time.

Why this process?

God uses our sufferings to produce endurance, character and true hope within us.

God utilizes our sufferings to help us cement us in the fact that He, through His Son Jesus is the source, guardian and fulfillment of all truly satisfying and enduring hope.

“God can not give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

-CS Lewis in Mere Christianity

This of course is not speaking of the fact that you can not find joy in things outside of God, rather, that you won’t find the ultimate, enduring joy and happiness for which we all long outside of him.

Every attempt to do so is a fleeting quest.

This is the message of Ecclesiastes.

God, in His love, will allow whatever is necessary to help us realize this.

We rediscover a capacity to hope again through meditating on God’s great love for us expressed in Jesus.

NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCE, IN CHRIST, RESURRECTION LIFE IS ALWAYS PART OF THE STORY, WHETHER PRESENTLY OR IN THE LIFE TO COME.

This is why hope springs eternal.

Why Hope Springs Eternal

The hope that God gives is one that never ends.

The only hope that ultimately fulfills is found in the life eternal that Jesus offers.

Hope can be challenged, but hope can also be renewed.

The gospel of Christ gives us the context for all of human suffering and ultimate glories in Him.

We begin with God’s design and our initial invitation to a blessed life.
We encounter the consequences of sin and fallen humanity (Jesus enters into this with His earthly life and ministry).
We go through the stages of grief and loss responding to what could of and should have been (Jesus comes alongside of us, keeping us afloat by teaching us the endurance of Gethsemane).
Christ comes to our aid restoring our hope in the midst of suffering, while building our character (Jesus became our salvation at the cross of Golgotha).
We reengage the mission of God with the hope of our resurrection from the dead (following in the train of Christ at the empty tomb).

Because of the ultimate glories for which we are destined in Christ, the love that God pours out in our hearts gives us hope for our situations and gives us strength to once again engage others with the same hope.

“The glory of the Christian life is that we have a hope that overwhelms grief. It doesn’t eradicate it. It sweetens it. It overwhelms it.”

-Timothy Keller

“The happy ending of the Resurrection is so enormous that it swallows up even the sorrow of the Cross.”

-Timothy Keller

This means for the Christian, no matter how dark it gets, you are always on a trajectory for things to get better as you stay grounded in the hope of Christ and His resurrection life.

Even as we know that things sometimes get worse (the cross) before they get better (the empty tomb), because we know the culmination of Christ’s story, we also know the end of ours.

Let’s once again meet Jesus at the cross to receive the hope of his resurrection life as we wait on Him to fulfill all of God’s good promises.

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

-unknown

Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2021