A man had not been feeling well and went to his doctor for a check-up. After the examination, the doctor left the room and had the nurse call the man’s wife into his office. She came in and the doctor said the husband was going to die, but there was hope.
He said, ‘Your husband needs constant care. If you cater to his every whim for about six months, he might live.’
On the way home, the husband asked her what the doctor told her. She said, ‘He told me you’re going to die, Honey.’
The trouble here was that she took all hope away from him. Christians always seem to talk about having hope, but we don’t always show it in the way we live, do we? And sometimes, we talk about it so much; we sometimes forget what having hope actually means. And in some cases, it gets even worse; we forget how much we need to have hope.
Let’s start today’s message by talking about;
1. THE TRUTH OF REAL HOPE
The dictionary defines hope as; to look forward to something good with great anticipation; and to confidently and fully expect to obtain that which we desire.
I like the second definition, or the one that says we ‘confidently expect to obtain that which we desire’. That should describe what we have found in Jesus, which is spending our eternity in Heaven with Him; confidently and fully expecting it to come about.
The Bible gives us many references to hope.
1 PETER 1:3 tells us why believers can have hope; because of the resurrection.
‘Let us thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was through His loving-kindness that we were born again to a new life and have a hope that never dies. This hope is ours because Jesus was raised from the dead.’
1 PETER 1:6 tells us what hope does for us, even during the bad times.
‘With hope you can have joy, even if you experience occasional sorrow and tests.’
Everything that God does, or everything God offers, the devil tries to copy. The key word here is ‘tries’. That is why we find true hope, which is found in Jesus Christ, and there is false hope, which is found in the world and is always offered by Satan.
When a Christian thinks about hope, it is very important that we remember how hope is described in;
TITUS 2:13-14
‘Hope teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ’
Now, let’s talk a bit about;
2. THE LIES SURROUNDING FALSE HOPE
Here are just some of the false hopes that are given to us through the world.
··· People will like you if you drink this brand of alcohol
··· You’ll look beautiful if use our brand of make-up
··· You will lose weight & be healthy without exercising if you just take these pills
And if we don’t have the truth of Jesus Christ in our hearts, we succumb to those lies and false hopes. On most of these commercials, in very small print, you will notice it says those results are not common. That is your first clue that it is probably a lie.
PROVERBS 10:28 describes true and false hope.
‘The hope of those who are right with God is joy, but the hope of the sinful comes to nothing but eventual despair.’
All we need to do is look at what’s going on around us in the world and we will see just how much we need to have true hope. The Israeli-Palestinian War looks as if it has the potential of actually turning into WW3; the economic woes in our country alone could drive our taxes up to where 75% of everything we earn could be taxed away; and absolute godlessness can be seen lurking around every corner.
Old Charlie Brown looks to Lucy and says, ‘It’s no use. Our team has no hope of ever winning a game.’ Lucy replies, ‘Well, Charlie Brown, you win some and you lost some.’ Charlie’s eyes brighten up and he says, ‘That would be great!’
It seems Charlie had run out of hope, and without hope we are destined to have continuous failure in our lives. It is like the two construction workers who ate lunch at the job site every day.
The one guy opens his lunch every day to a cold meat-loaf sandwich. And with each passing day, he complains more and more about having the same thing for lunch. Finally, his co-worker tells him to just tell his wife to make a different kind of sandwich. The first worker says, ‘I’m not married. I make my own lunch!’
Each day, the worker made his own lunch and each day he would complain about what he ate. We do the same things with our lives. We choose how we live, and then we gripe because we have so many problems. Just as the coworker suggested different kind of sandwiches, let me suggest that we make different choices for our lives. That will be the only way we see different results in our lives.
Hope and hopelessness are more than opposites. They are as different as night and day. Anyone who has ever experienced true hopelessness can easily attest to how oppressive and soul shattering it can be.
On the other hand, those who have drank from the well of hope, that can only be found through Jesus Christ, know that nothing can put out the fire of eagerness this hope can give you.
It was false hope that kept a young man drowning in drugs until he was so miserable that John Tankersly saw no other way out that to kill his wife and two young sons before killing himself. What was the original false hope? It was the promise that drugs would make him feel better than ever before. That drugs would give him that extra edge in life to be a winner. And it made him one of life’s biggest losers.
It was a false hope that led a very aggressive man into the path of Richard Nixon. This man saw a chance to reach a higher plateau in life by becoming one of President Nixon’s right hand men. He was known as the ‘Hatchet Man’. His name was Chuck Colson.
And it was this false hope that he would become greater than he had ever been that led Mr. Colson to prison for committing crimes during the Watergate Burglary.
But Jesus always gives us nothing but true hope, even to those like Mr. Colson.
ROMANS 8:28 promises us;
‘God will use everything for the good for those who love Him and are called according to His will.’
And God did that with Mr. Colson. Mr. Colson is the founder of an international ministry called, ‘Prison Fellowship.’ And because Mr. Colson found, and believed in, the one true hope that is found in Jesus, he has reached tens of thousands for Christ over the last 20 years. Instead of spending the rest of his life in a prison, Mr. Colson is now speaking from a pulpit.
It is the same true hope that that caused a woman injured in a diving accident, and sentenced to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, to end up writing many books that have inspired millions to faith. Her name is Joni Erickson Tada.
In every story of true hope, there is one thread that can be found tying everything together. It is the belief in Jesus. It is not a general ‘hope everything works out okay’ or a Cinderella story of wishful thinking, but an unexplainable knowledge that Jesus came to us and died, just to rise again, and because He did, He gave us the true hope of knowing we can too!
True hope is truthful because it is from God. False hope is full of deceit because it is from the devil.
Let’s spend a few minutes talking about;
3. GETTING THE RESULTS OF THE DECISIONS WE MAKE
There is a small passage of Scripture that will actually help us live a life of hope and fullness in God’s promises.
1 JOHN 2:28-3:3
‘And now, my children, continue to live your life with the help of Jesus. Then when He comes for us, we will be glad to see Him and not be ashamed. You know that Christ is right with God. So you should know that everyone who is right with God is a child of God.
‘See what great love the Father has for us, that He would call us His children. And that is what we are. For this reason the people of the world do not know who we are, because they did not know Him. And if they do not know Him, they will not know His family.
‘Dear friends, we know now that we are God’s children. But it has not yet been shown to us what we are going to be. We know that when He comes again, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. The person who is eagerly looking for this to happen will always live a life that will let him try to keep himself pure - all because Christ is pure.’
In these five short verses, we are shown why we should live a life of promise and hope and vision; so that when Jesus comes back, we will be ready to go with Him. If we, on the other hand, live lives that are thoroughly entrenched in the world, we will not be going with Him.
And this, once again, proves the truth in the illustration I used about the man who made his own sandwiches every day, but then griped what he had to eat for lunch. Let me say this once again: We make choices every day about how we are going to live our lives. Most of the time, we make those choices on our comfort level, or our worldly desires, and these choices create problems in our lives. Problems such as unhappiness and hopelessness.
Now, we can blame everybody else for these problems, but in reality, we have those problems because we chose to live the life that created those problems. If we want a different life; a happier life, then we need to start making different decisions. Decisions based on a true hope in Jesus.
So what exactly must you do to have that happier and more fulfilled life? It is very simple, really. You need to spend some time actually thinking about Jesus. Talk to Him and tell Him that you are not a happy camper and that you really need to find the joy that other Christians talk about. And then ask Him what you need to do to get it. And then you need to do something very hard; you need to be still and listen to what He whispers back to you.
What you will hear is Jesus telling you that you really need to fully receive Him enough to make Him the center of your life – every day, all the time, no matter you go.
And then, you need to follow verse 28;
‘And now, my children, continue to live your life with the help of Jesus. Then when He comes for us, we will be glad to see Him and not be ashamed.
We are to receive Christ fully, and then be devoted to Him enough to stay in Him. Jesus said, ‘If you are in me, I will be in you.’ We are not to lag behind Him or get in front of the Lord. We are to listen to Him with focused intensity. We are to continually follow His leadership over our lives and not our own leadership of our lives.
In 2 JOHN, verse 9, it gives us a Godly truth.
‘Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ, does not have God: Whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.’
So why do we have such a problem letting the Lord lead us? That, too, is very simple. We hate change. It is uncomfortable. It is much easier for us to do what we have always done. And that attitude makes us rebellious. God calls us to get up and do His will, and it is so unfamiliar that we would rather keep sitting down and continue to do our will.
What do you think a rubber band’s one purpose in life is? It is to hold things together, isn’t it? But how can it hold things together? It is made from a flexible material called rubber. Rubber stretches to a much bigger size. The more you stretch it, the larger it becomes. A tiny rubber band can be used to hold a plastic liner inside a fairly large trash can if you stretch it enough.
But if that rubber band had feelings, what would it be telling you? It would be telling you to leave it alone and stop stretching it because it is not comfortable to be stretched.
But without stretching, the rubber band is completely useless. And without stretching ourselves, we are also rendered completely useless in God’s kingdom.
Here is how you can tell if you are obedient or rebellious. If something comes up that you don’t want to do, ask yourself two questions.
··· Why don’t I want to do it?
··· Will it do anything to help build God’s kingdom?
If you don’t want to do it because you would rather stay where you are, then you can pretty well trust that you are rebellious. If you can see any area where your doing it could help God’s kingdom, and you still choose to stay where you are, then you are openly being rebellious to God.
God does not reward rebellious people. That is what I was talking about earlier when I said that we make selfish and poor choices and then we complain because of the results that we get.
There are several well-known Christian leaders in the world who openly denounce Jesus as the Savior, and even say that the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the Rising from the Tomb are all nothing more than myths, perpetuated to help us believe in God.
These folks probably started their religious careers focused on Jesus, but somewhere along the way, they either started lagging further and further behind Jesus, or they ran way out in front of Him. In either case, they ended up walking away from Him.
We are told to continue in Jesus, to abide in Jesus. We must have the faith to do what these men cannot do; and that is to simply trust Jesus. It is imperative that you and I seek with all of our hearts to remain in Jesus every moment of every day. We must discipline ourselves to study God’s Word daily. We must listen closely to the Lord’s leading as we go throughout our day.
In MATTHEW, we are told to seek first the Kingdom of God above all else, at any cost. And if we do these things, God promises that everything else we need will be given to us.
Because of Jesus death and resurrection those who trust in Him enough to stay in Him are saved, it is a done deal. You and I don’t have to worry if we are being good enough, because we know we haven’t been. We don’t have to worry if we have sinned too much, because we know we have. All we have to know is that we are children of the Most High God simply because we choose to remain in Christ every day.
Again, let me reiterate: Those who choose to be obedient to God, through His Son, will be blessed by God. Those who choose to be disobedient by putting their desires first will not be blessed.
Throughout Scripture, God is constantly reminding us that His love for us is infinite, provides all that we need in this life, and that His love will sustain us when nothing else will. Paul reminded us of God’s great love by saying, ‘God chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight ,’ and in return for our receiving Jesus Christ, He will bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.
None of our troubles in this life are as huge as the blessings God wants to give you. But you have a choice; you can choose to live away from God and only have troubles, or you can choose to live with God and receive a multitude of blessings. It’s your decision.
When the people around you who do not know Jesus think you are odd because of your commitment to Him, know that they are right. We are called to be different from the standpoint that we are no longer living for ourselves but for Him. We no longer live our lives just seeking those things that make us happy, but for those things that bring us closer to God.
The town of Port Hope, Canada built a monument for a man names Joseph Scriven, who was born in 1820. He was not a rich or famous man, but a servant to others. Here is his story.
As a young college graduate, he showed great promise of having a very rewarding future. He was also engaged to be married to a beautiful young lady. The night before the wedding, she was taking a stroll around a pond and accidentally fell in. She drowned before anyone could help her.
Mr. Scriven never overcame that shock. Instead of pursing the business career he had studied for, he found himself becoming a wonderer, trying to find a place that would help him to forget his great sorrow. This eventually led him to Port Hope, Canada.
During his years there, he became a very devout Christian, and began to help widows and sick people. Often, he would work for no wages, just to be able to help them. Shortly before his death, a friend was visiting him and happened to see some poetry Mr. Scriven had written. Since he was not known for any poetic talents, his friend became quite interested.
His friend discovered a poem that Mr. Scriven had written to his mother in a time of sorrow. His poem was later set to music and has since become one of the most popular Gospel songs throughout the world. What was his poem? Here is how one stanza goes:
’What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer.
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh what needless pain we bear;
All because we do not carry,
Everything to God in prayer.’
My prayer for you today is that you see your options. You don’t have to carry your burdens by yourself. All you have to do is go in prayer and ask Him to. God will gladly take them from you. All you have to do is ask Him to.
But before you can go to God in prayer, you must do something else first. You must take His Son as your Savior. May I ask you to do that today? Let us stand as we sing our invitational song.
INVITATION
