This year I began trying to memorize two verses of scripture a month. Somehow the word “hope” kept coming to mind so I decided to look up some verses on hope.
Afterall, with a new year we always hope we will be better people and things will get better etc.
But right away the hope I had began to vanish as the stock market plunged lower and lower taking our retirement savings along with it.
I heard of a friend’s infant son hospitalized and put on a heart-lung machine in intensive care.
I heard of a family member’s husband fearing loss of his job.
Everywhere I turned it seemed that “cope” would be the word for the year instead of hope.
But then I remembered the words of an old black preacher, Jessie Winley who used to say, “My God is not in any trouble at all.”
You see, it all depends upon where your hope is placed.
I was really intrigued when I looked at the scripture for this weekend when I realized it was my turn to speak. There was that word “hope” in Romans 4:18 used in a most unusual way.
It says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed…”
There was my answer. God is looking for his children to have a different kind of hope from the world.
Ours is to be a believing hope.
When God first told Abram that he would have a son and he waited 10 years and nothing happened, Sarai began to think she should help the Lord out. She offered her maid, Hagar to conceive the child through Abram.
Now it has been thirteen years and they have heard nothing more from God.
So is that it? Did Abram and Sarai miss out or misunderstand or mess up?
They must have wondered many times why their life seemed muddled and meaningless.
Then when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him.
He said, “I am God Almighty,”
This is the first time God has introduced Himself this way, as El Shaddai…the all-sufficient one.
What he is going to ask Abram to do will require absolute faith in the one who calls him to do it.
So it wouldn’t matter if Abram was nine hundred and ninety nine, because it’s not about him, it’s about God.
“Walk before me and be blameless,” God tells him. (Well, that would be an impossible assignment, wouldn’t it?)
But God says “I will confirm my covenant between me and you” and He goes on to say “I will” 7 times concerning the fruitfulness of Abram and Sarai and the generations to follow.
It is all possible by the name of God, the Almighty.
Abram is bowled over by this news.
God isn’t finished with him or disgusted with him.
He hasn’t missed out on the promise!
He falls flat on his face in awe before God.
Furthermore, God says he will give Abram a new name.
The name Abram means “exalted father.”
This must have proven to be an embarrassment many times over the years to Abram whenever he met someone new, and was forced to introduce himself.
“Oh, your name is Abram, exalted father. Congratulations! How many sons do you have?”
And the answer was so humiliating:…”none.”
How he must have hated the question.
Now he was the father of one and that was by a servant girl. (Still nothing to be exalted over.)
But God is ready to change all of that.
In Hebrew God added one letter to Abram’s name, the letter formed by the “H” sound of breathing out. The word for spirit, which means breath, is ruach in Hebrew, which is pronounced by expelling air.
God was adding His Spirit, His breath, to Abram and this would make all the difference!
The name Abraham means “father of many” and God promised to multiply him greatly so that he would become the father of many nations.
“Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.”
Sarai means “contentious.”
This speaks volumes about the home life of Abram.
He may not have lived up to his name around the house yet, but I’ll bet Sarai had lived up to hers!
She certainly was contentious instead of content when Abram did exactly what she told him to and slept with her maid servant, Hagar. The years after Ishmaels’s birth had been marked by contention in this household indeed.
But by God’s grace Sarai is also given the breath of the Holy Spirit to change her name to Sarah which means, Princess!
What a difference! Now Sarah would be honored in her household and loved by her husband and have a son of her own.
This kind of happy ending happens only in the realm of the Almighty God. The all-sufficient one.
They needed to get a new perspective of who God was and who they were, and it started with a name change….and the fresh breath of God on their lives.
Now if we had time this morning we would follow the whole story there in Genesis chapter 17 and see that God promised that by the same time the next year Sarah would bear a son and they would call him Isaac
The idea seemed impossible.
Abraham was 99 and Sarah was way past her child-bearing years.
But Gen 18:14 asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
And sure enough, one year later Sarah was rocking little Isaac, the child who was promised, and the bloodline through King David all the way to Christ had begun.
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations just as it had been said to him. “so shall your offspring be.”
The term hope is not the same as faith, although they are related.
Hope is the desire for something to be true or to happen, whereas faith is the firm confidence that something is true and it will happen.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
This is the kind of faith that Abraham had.
Hope is future. Faith is now.
Faith and hope work together to bring about a desired outcome.
To believe God and place our hope wholeheartedly in Him, we must do the same 4 things that Abraham did:
1. Consider not
2. Stagger not
3. Give glory to God
4. Be fully persuaded
Abraham knew his age and the condition of his body and Sarah’s too. But he chose not to consider those things but instead to consider what God said.
He didn’t stagger at the idea that Almighty God could overcome any obstacle.
He was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.
He was fully persuaded that God would perform His word
to him, that he had the power to do what he had promised.
The scriptures say in Genesis 15:6 “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Abraham’s obedience wasn’t what made him righteous.
It was his belief.
He had not followed through with any covenant sign and it was 400 years before the law was given when God said he was credited with righteousness.
So he is found to be the father of all those who down through the centuries have also believed God’s promises.
There are people from every tribe and nation on this earth who believe in God and have placed their faith in him to save them.
That is how he is the father of many nations and we are “Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”
We are those who believe in the promise of God to reckon to all of us the righteousness that comes through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
Romans 4:25 says that he was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
It is impossible to be good enough long enough to save ourselves through our own righteous acts or obedience.
The impossible things are left up to the Almighty God…the God of all possibilities who has promised to justify us freely by his grace.
Abraham believed when, from a human point of view, there was no basis for hope at all.
The object of Abraham’s faith was God.
His faith grew from the consideration of God’s sufficiency.
The object of your hope and faith must also be in God.
We do not “hope” we will be saved.
We believe in the promise that God will save us because he said he would based upon the sacrifice of Christ.
Look at what I Thessalonians 5:23 and 24 tells us:
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”
Did you notice the word is exactly the same word God used concerning how Abraham was to walk with Him?
By faith, you and I are blameless in His sight, and therefore welcomed into His eternal presence.
The one who calls you is faithful and He will do the saving… declaring that you are righteous and blameless.
Believe in Him.
And oh, yes, put your hope in Him.
No matter what is going on in your circumstances right now.
Say to yourself as the psalmist did,
“Why so downcast, oh my soul
put your hope in God.”
We have his word to us, too,…
When the stock market falls…
He said,”I will supply all your needs according to my riches in glory. And “I am the one who giveth thee the ability to get wealth.”
When sickness comes….
He said “I am the Lord that healeth thee.”
“He sent his word and healed them.”
When jobs are lost, remember He said,
”I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”
And it is written, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.”
You see, ours is not a blind hope or a wish like the world has.
We have a firm foundation for placing our faith in a known God who is loving and good and faithful.
So, like our father Abraham, against all hope, we in hope believe….that nothing is too hard for God.
Babies come off of heart/lung machines and go on to live healthy lives.
Jobs are saved …or if lost, a better one is found.
Cancer is healed.
Survivors are found after plane crashes and boating accidents.
Hold on to hope.
Listen to the “h” sound.
It is full of that ruach wind of God!
So my prayer for you this year is from Romans 15:13:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him so that you might overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Amen
