What Jesus wants for Christmas!
Preparing to receive the lost!
Week 4 (hope)
And today we talk about Hope!
Worldly Hope
An optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large. As a verb, its definitions include: "expect with confidence" and "to cherish a desire with anticipation."
Biblical hope
Is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness.
Here is the way I see it:
Worldly hope can and usually leads to destruction
· Worldly hope rarely turns out good
· Because the chances are, it won’t happen
· And we can easily turn hope into expectations!
· We say things like:
o "I don't know what's going to happen, but I hope it happens."
o Or “when I walk in that room, I hope it’s clean”
John Piper:
hope, as we typically think about it, is a desire for some future thing which we are uncertain of attaining.
And thinking like that sets us up for false hope!
False hope: is hope built entirely around a fantasy, a hope that has no knowable chance of coming to fruition.
· False hope is devastating
· It causes us so much pain
· False hope leads to false expectations
o And that leads to all sorts of problems
o It is a major reason for depression
o For mental issues of all kinds
o I see it in marriages
o I see it with parents
o I see it in life in general
I would say the biggest issues I see today are built around false hope and unrealistic expectations!
Biblical expectations lead to healthy hope
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
· God is the God of hope.
· He is the foundation on which our hope is built
· He is both the object of our hope and the author of it.
· Any hope will deceive us if it is not tied to God
John Piper: “Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future, it expects it to happen.”
· All of our hope is tied to the word and promises of God
· When we anchor to that we start to get healthy expectations
And healthy expectations allow us to be so much more!
· We start to see things through a clear viewpoint
· We understand that things are not always going to be perfect
· That we will suffer
· And that we will wait
· And that we will get through it
· That there is a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how long the tunnel is
· We start to get healthy hope and healthy expectations!
How do we build our hope in God?
1 Timothy 1:1 (NIV)
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
· Hope is a portion or part of faith.
· Faith and hope, are overlapping realities:
· hope is faith in the future tense. So most of faith is hope.
JP: The Bible says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). This implies that hope, like faith, is also strengthened by the word of God. Hope comes from reading His precious and very great promises and looking to Christ who purchased them.
· Hope comes from the promises of God rooted in the work of Christ.
So, we:
· We stay in God’s word
· We stay around God's people
· And we live life together leaning and clinging to the promises that God has made
· Putting all our hope and faith in that!
And our hope is not just in this life!
1 Corinthians 15:19 (NLT)
19And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.
C.S. Lewis says:
Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.
· Sometimes all we have to hope for is what awaits us on the other side
· And when we don’t see light at the end of the tunnel, we know there is hope, there is peace, there is joy waiting on us in Heaven
· And when we cling to that hope it allows us to persevere today!
Our Peace is in Jesus!
Hebrews 6:19–20 (ESV)
19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,
20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever.
· When we get a hope that is anchored in Jesus, we are anchored to a rock that does not waver
· And when we have hope we have an inner peace
· And when we have inner peace, we find Joy in this life
· And when we have joy in this life during all circumstances, we are free to love others completely!
· And when we have some of that going on, we will be a light to a dark world!
Communion!
If you look back over the last 3 weeks our hope should be grounded in the birth, life, and death of our savior and big brother Jesus!
And so today we will take communion!
1 Corinthians 11:23–26 (ESV)
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread,
24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way, also He took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.
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