Last Sunday I mentioned that I would
this week begin a brief series of messages based on the Protestant
Reformation. October 31st
is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which was an historical
event of immense importance. After
the events of the past week in Las Vegas, however, I decided to delay that
series of messages by one week.
The violence inflicted upon so many people leaves us, once again,
wondering what is happening to our country. In spite of the fact that many good things take place, I
think that many of us have this disturbing feeling that something deeply wrong
is happening to our culture.
Wherever people stand in terms of political, social, and religious
beliefs, I believe everyone feels this sense of unease.
How
many of you listen to less news today than you did a year or two ago? And how many of you, if you listen to
less news, do so because it seems as though the news gets continually
worse? I heard part of a radio
program recently about the psychological effects of hearing such a steady
drumbeat of bad news, and I believe it makes a valid point. But it seems more and more that the bad
news is inescapable. We receive a
constant diet of news that makes us very uneasy about the present and the future. What will happen with North Korea? Is war inevitable? What about the ever-present tensions in
the Middle East? What will happen
with the economy? It’s working
very well for some, but not all.
Not everyone is benefitting from the stock market boom. Will the opioid epidemic end, or
continue to grow? The list of bad
news can go on and on. There are
so many concerns looming large these days it is easy to feel very hopeless
about what is ahead. As people
worry about the large events happening in the world there are also those on an
individual level – what is going to happen to my family? What kind of future will my children
face? Is there any way to find some
measure of certainty in a world that seems to grow more and more uncertain?
Political campaigns consistently promise hope but fewer and fewer
people seem to have hope. In 1999,
85% of Americans said they were hopeful about their own future and 68% said
they were hopeful for the future of the world. About ten year later only 69% were hopeful for their own
future and only 51% were hopeful about the future of the world (from a CNN
opinion poll). It’s probably
dropped even more since then. In
one poll, taken earlier this year, only 36% of people felt hopeful about the
future.
Considering this continual assault
on our sense of hope, I felt moved to offer a message about hope, titled,
simply, Hope. The Scripture text comes from Paul’s
letter to the church at Rome, where, among other theological matters, he writes
about hope. This particular
passage might not be one that is overly familiar to many, but it is,
nonetheless, a very significant passage.
In these verses Paul writes with the same sense of troubled spirit that
many of us feel today. He
writes of how the creation itself will be
liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of
the children of God (verse 21) and of how the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth
right up to the present time (verse 22).
Follow along with me, please, as I
read Romans 8:18-25 –
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the
glory that will be revealed in us.
19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to
be revealed.
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice,
but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay
and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of
childbirth right up to the present time.
23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,
groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption
of our bodies.
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?
25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Of the many affirmations we can make about
hope, the first I will offer this morning is this –
1.
Hope is an affirmation of belief in God’s promise of the future.
Hope, we must note, is much more than wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is to say something
such as I
hope the Steelers win the Super Bowl this year. I hope UK wins the NCAA this year. I hope UofL doesn’t win anything this year.
If you’re a golfer you understand hope. I am not a very good golfer. I may have 17 terrible holes – and usually do – and on the
18th hole I may hit my only good shot, and I think, I believe I’m starting to get the hang of
this. That is wishful thinking!
What would you consider to be the essentials of
life? What are the absolute,
essential requirements in order for people to live? There are the tangibles, such as food, water, shelter, and
clothing, but there are also intangibles as well, and one of those is hope. Where would we be without hope? Hope has
empowered people since the beginning of time. Hope is a belief in the promises of God for the future, and
those promises have for millennia compelled people to move forward.
Abraham was told he would be the father of a
great nation. Though he never saw
that hope fulfilled in his lifetime it was a hope that carried him forward in
faith. That promise seemed
threatened when his descendents became captives in Egypt, but they continued to
have the hope of the Promised Land. For centuries they endured slavery in
Egypt, but they had hope in the promise of the future that one day they would
not only have freedom but a home as well.
That hope is what enabled them to endure through the many years of
struggle and despair. Moses
was called to lead his people out of captivity in Egypt and to the Promised
Land. He never stepped foot into
the Promised Land but the hope that his people would enter the land carried him
forward.
Job, a towering figure when it comes to
hope – perhaps the greatest example of hope in the entire Bible – clung to the
promise that God was with him and had not turned against him. I read several passages of Scripture
regularly, and one of them is Job 13:15, which says though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. Nothing could cause Job to lose hope,
not even his friends who came to him and encouraged him to give up. They saw no reason for hope, but Job did.
The early church had hope for a future free of
persecution. As the mighty Roman
Empire put many to death in horrific ways – as fodder for the animals and the
gladiators in the Coliseum, as human torches lighting Nero’s gardens at night,
and in countless other types of persecution – instead of losing hope their hope
grew and with it grew the church.
When Paul writes of
hope he is writing from very deep experience. It’s not an academic treatise; it’s real life. Paul suffered in so many ways, as he
details in II Corinthians 11:23-28 – I have
worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely,
and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the
forty lashes minus one. 25 Three
times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was
shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I
have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my
fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the
country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often
gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without
food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily
the pressure of my concern for all the churches. In spite of what he suffered, Paul was able to write in Romans
5:5 that hope does not disappoint. After all of
his trials, Paul was eventually imprisoned in Rome, where he was eventually
executed. Paul was a person who
really understood hope. In the
midst of his greatest trial – awaiting his execution – he writes the letter to
the Philippians and they are beautiful words; they are words of hope.
I believe the first – and perhaps most
important – lesson of uncertainty and difficulty is that God can use that uncertainty
and difficulty to bring transformation to our lives. How many of you, looking back on difficult times, have said,
I would never want to relive that
experience, but having survived it, I can now look back and see how God brought
something good and something positive from those circumstances. That is a triumph of hope, and is one
of the great gifts of hope – even our most difficult times can become moments
of transformation.
Our circumstances often dictate how we feel
about life, and circumstances will often dictate fear and anxiety, but Paul,
amazingly, was not controlled by his circumstances in such a way. Paul’s
circumstances were anything but hopeful.
When he was in prison, when his execution was close at hand, he wrote
these amazing words – I have learned to
be content in whatever circumstances I am (Philippians 4:11). Paul’s hope was built not in changing
external circumstances but upon an unchanging God who is an anchor of hope to
carry us through the most difficult of circumstances.
Verse 18 of today’s
Scripture text says I consider that our present sufferings are
not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. It is Paul, who had such a strong sense
of hope, saying to us, It’s going to be
better! Don’t quit! Don’t give up! Hold always to hope!
2. Hope
is what allows one to look at the terrible circumstances of the world and say
things can be better.
Hope is what allows us to face our struggles,
to look them straight in the eye, and say I
can do this; this is possible; the Spirit of God will provide the strength to
endure and His promise of a better future is true.
Verse 21 says, that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay
and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Victor Frankel learned that hope. He was a prisoner in Auschwitz
concentration camp during World War II, at the entrance of which was a sign
bearing the words abandon all hope ye who
enter here. Those words are the
inscription Dante uses in his classic The
Inferno as the sign at the entrance of Hell, an apt inscription for
Auschwitz. Victor Frankel lost
everything in that concentration camp.
Every possession was taken from him, and he suffered from cold, hunger,
brutality, and the constant fear of death. While in the camp he lost his father, mother, brother, and
his wife.
He later wrote of one of his darkest
moments. He was digging in a cold,
icy trench, and at that moment felt the
hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the
enveloping gloom. I felt it
transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a
victorious “yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate
purpose.
At that moment a light was lit in a distant
farmhouse, and upon seeing that light, hope was kindled in him, and his words
at that moment were et lux in tenebris
lucent – and the light shineth in the
darkness. John 1:5 says the light shines in the darkness. Hope is the light that shines in the
darkness of life. It is a light
that illumines this life.
Hope, then, is not just about the future, but
is also about the present, which leads me to my final point this morning –
3. Hope becomes something that moves us to make a difference in this
world and in this life.
Christians have sometimes been accused over the years of
concentrating so much on eternal life that the problems of this life are
overlooked. But genuine hope never
forgets this world. In fact, C. S.
Lewis says that it is when Christians have most thought of the next world that
they have worked to improve this world.
(Mere Christianity, p. 118)
Having hope for the present and the future, searching for certainty,
is not just a pie in the sky
attitude. It does not mean we
should ignore difficult circumstances and the call to help others in the midst
of their difficulties. Hope
changes things in this life. Hope
does not ask people to simply endure this life while they are awaiting the
next. A hope that sees something
beyond this life sees how things should be, and when we see how things should
be we work to make them that way. People
need hope not just for the future; they need hope now! That is why the church has stood with
the hopeless, the homeless, the outcast, the downtrodden, and the victims of
injustice. That’s why most of the
great social movements in history have come out of the church; because the
church saw how things could be and should be, and they worked to make it so. It is what compels our church to move
out into our community and to work to improve the lives of others through the
ministries of Operation Care, Awake Ministries, Arriba Ninos, God’s Kitchen,
the Diersen Center, and many more.
Yes, where would we be without hope? Hope for the present, hope for the future, and hope that
compels us to make a difference in this troubled world.
A few years before the end of my tenure in my
previous congregation I was asked to serve as the chaplain for the local nursing
home. I was pleased to be able to
do so and twice a week I went to the nursing home to visit with the
residents. One afternoon I walked
into a room and asked one of the residents are
you doing all right today? It
was really more of a rhetorical question, because in my mind she had no reason
to be doing all right. At that
point in time she had been a resident of the nursing home for ten years, her
eyesight was almost completely gone, and she was rarely able to get out of
bed. Those are not good
circumstances, but you know how she answered my question that day? Of
course, I’m doing all right; why wouldn’t I be? I could have given her a list of reasons why I thought she
shouldn’t be doing all right, but her perspective was very different.
I often think of her answer to my question. One any given day I can provide a list
of reasons why I may not be doing all right. And some of those reasons might be pretty good ones, but I
also know my focus is better served by asking what can I learn through this experience rather than by asking why me? It’s not wrong to ask why
me, but the transformation, brought about by hope, is more important than
the answer to why.
May
hope live in us always.
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