What is hope? The Hebrew word for "Hope" in this text is "Yachal". It means to have a sense of expectation that God's answer is coming, based on what God has promised in his word. I want to say that again. It's very important. "To have a sense of expectation of God's answer that is coming, based on what God has promised in his word". Listen to this: hoping is not wishing. Wishing is based on emotion. And emotion has no chance of becoming reality. God's law for controlling your future and achieving your dream is contained in the four words of king David, "Hope thou in God". "Hope thou in God".
Hope is God's gift to the believer. Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you... They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope". That's God's word to every person reading this today. God put you on this earth with a specific purpose. God has an exact plan for you. He has a divine destiny for you. He has unlimited potential for you. Have you underestimated your potential?
Listen. God gave Abraham hope for his future. Romans 4:18 says, "Who contrary to hope, yet he believed". Contrary to all hope, he believed. Hope birthed Abraham's potential. Abraham became the father of all who believe. Abraham, at a hundred years of age, sired a son, Isaac, who was beyond all hope, his potential. Abraham's children, the Jewish people, came from Abraham's hope. And the Jewish people have given to the world the written Word of God. Every book in the Bible, written by Jewish people under the anointing and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 2 Timonthy 3:16-17, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Abraham's children gave us the patriarchs. They gave us the prophets. They gave us the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. They gave us the apostle Paul, the father of the New Testament church. They gave us the 12 disciples.
God said, "In you (Abraham), all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. And I will make your name great". Abraham changed the world forever by hope and by not underestimating his potential when he acted on the hope that God gave him. My question to you, have you given up hope? Have you surrendered your potential? Jesus Christ is presented in the Bible as "Our blessed hope" and "The hope of glory". When there is hope, hope generates enthusiasm. Hope generates excitement. What in your life is exciting? What in your life determines your dream for tomorrow? When you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done. And for some of you, that's hoping in God. Romans 5:2, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God". Romans 12:12, "Be joyful in hope". Say that with me. "Be joyful in hope".
The first recorded promise in the Bible is that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent: that was God's word of hope from God the Father to you that Christ on the cross would crush the head of Satan. I want you to know that when Christ won that victory, it was a total victory. He is victorious over death, hell, and the grave. He is victorious over sickness and disease. He is victorious over the depression that follows you like a black dog. He is victorious over every battle you're in. Lift your head. Square your shoulders. Look in the mirror and say, "I am the winner through Christ the Lord". Satan cannot defeat you. He cannot intimidate you. He cannot manipulate you. The victory is ours through Christ the Lord. Hope thou in God. Hope thou in God. Give him praise for His victory today!!!
Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for". "Faith is being sure of what we hope for. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". Take away hope, and life with all of its fascinating opportunities is reduced to a mere existence. Without hope, your life is bleak. It's drab. It's joyless. It's a burden. It's a never-ending treadmill of suffering. People without hope sink into depression. They're always filled with despair. People without hope have a life that's meaningless. In the life of every person here, there is hope for tomorrow.
There is hope for a supernatural breakthrough with the crisis that you're facing. There is hope that the darkest midnight in your life will have to surrender to a glorious dawning. There is hope for a miracle. Do you need a miracle in your marriage? Do you need a miracle in your business? In your body? There's a miracle for one of your children. There's a miracle for everything that you can think of, because the God that we serve is totally victorious over all things. Give him praise for that today!!!
Some churches get nervous when you talk about miracles. But the Bible is a book of miracles. Jesus had a ministry of miracles. No place in the Bible says miracles ended. People probably stopped asking for them. But we are still a miraculous church with a miraculous Bible who serves a miraculous Jesus Christ. You don't have to understand miracles to have one. I don't understand how a black cow can eat green grass, produce white milk, and yellow butter. But it happens. Do you need a miracle? Hope thou in God. Nothing is impossible. At the end of this message, we're going to have a prayer to Almighty God to give you the miracle in your life that you need to make your life complete, because God answers prayer. You may not believe it, but I believe it: therefore, through faith in Christ, it's going to happen. How can you say that? Because the Bible says, "Whatsoever you ask the Father in My Name, He will do it".
Now that's either true or it's not. I think it's true and we're going to prove it. Isaiah 55:11, "So shall my word that goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return void. But it shall accomplish what I please. And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it". It means that God's spoken word in the mouth of a believer is not a wish: it is a divine command backed up by the spiritual authority of the living God himself. That's what it means. It means there's a miracle in your mouth just waiting to happen. Open your mouth, pray the scripture, read the scripture, and it will happen. Turn it loose! John writes in the New Testament church in Revelation 12:11, "And they (the church) overcame him (Satan) by the Blood of the Lamb and the spoken word of the their testimony". You should put that verse on your refrigerator, Revelation 12:11. Before that spoken word of faith, angels bow. Winds and waves cease to blow. Depression becomes joy unspeakable. Poverty is crushed. Darkness is defeated, because you have the power through this word to pray it in the authority of Jesus' name, and walls of impossibility come crashing down! Hallelujah to the Lamb of God!!!
Let me ask you a question. What role does the Word of God play in your life? What role does the Word of God play in your life? If you don't know it and know it enough to pray it, you are defenseless in warfare. The devil is not afraid of a believer whose Bible has dust on it. The person who has a Bible that's falling apart has a life that's not. Think about it. The reason some people are down on the Bible is because they're not up on the Bible. Other books are given for information. This book is given for transformation. People do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself. They reject the Bible because the Bible contradicts them. They don't want to read it because they see themselves. No one ever graduates from Bible study until you meet the author face to face.
Horace Greeley said, I want you to listen to this, "It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people," end of quote. The fact is America as a whole is no longer a Bible-reading people. We've kicked the Bible out of the schools years ago. We've kicked prayer out of the schools years ago. You want to know why our schools are going to hell in a hand cart? Because God is gone, and he's the source of knowledge and wisdom and understanding. He is education! Ericans are becoming slaves to the state, because they are mentally brainwashed with political correctness, brainwashed to believe that Washington, D.C. has the answer. Wrong! Wrong! Washington, D.C. is the problem. Christ is the answer! Sin will keep you from the Word of the Living God. And that Word will keep you from sin. On this rock I stand, and the anchor holds. I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation. Hope brings joy and peace.
Romans 15:13, "Now may the hope of God fill you with all joy and peace: that you may abound". Now sometimes the old English words simply don't get down to it. It really translates that you may overflow in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Before you read on, get an empty glass and a pitcher or a bottle of water. Leave the glass empty until I say. Now, look at the empty glass sitting in front of you.) Let's say this is you, and you are as dry as a powder house, because you haven't carried your Bible since you brought it to church last week. Uh-uh-uh. You can't believe I said that, right? (Now, pour just a little bit of water into the glass. About a fourth of the way full and stop for a moment.) And then you've just read it enough to make your conscience go to sleep and that's about where you live. (Now, fill the glass the rest of the way with the water and think about this;) But when your prayer life and your Bible study really begin to make progress, you begin to fill up, and then you literally overflow with the richness of the power of God's word. This is when you speak to mountains and mountains disappear. It's not you. It's the power in you by the presence of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Joy is not happiness.
People run around and say, "I'd like to be happy". Happiness comes from the Scandinavian root word "Hap" from which we get the word "Happenstance". Happiness depends on happenstance or what happens to you. God's joy is with you no matter what happens to you. That's the difference between happiness and joy. We live in a world searching for joy. America's searching for joy with drugs, and alcohol, and pornography, and materialism, anarchy, and Satanism. Our joyless state has produced a nation where psychiatrists say one in four Americans has a serious emotional problem. That means if you get in a group of four people, and the other three look alright, it's you. Peace can only happen in an atmosphere of hope.
John 14:27 says, Jesus said, "My peace I give unto you, not at the world gives. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid". Let not your heart be troubled over what you can control: you control it. You have heard me say in this pulpit many times, "You cannot change what you will not confront". And confrontation solves 90% of your problems. Don't let them fester, thinking they'll get better. They won't! Hit it in the head at daylight and enjoy breakfast! Well, I don't know if I can do that. Yes, you can. You're a child of God. You should never let anyone's opinion about you shape who you are. Don't let their thoughts about you control your future. Don't let your past control your future. Lift your head. Square your shoulders and declare to the world, "I am a child of God. I believe in the authority of God's word. I have absolute control over my own destiny". Hallelujah.
Hope produces action. Hope produces action. 1 Peter 1:13, "Therefore, prepare your minds for action". This is the Word of God. "Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ". What is "The revelation of Jesus Christ"? "The revelation of Jesus Christ" is the rapture. It's the rapture. Why is that about to happen? One, because Israel has become a state in 1948. That is the cardinal indicator of the end of days: secondly, because Jerusalem has been reborn and connected to the Jewish state in 1967. The Bible says, "When Jerusalem is no longer trodden down by the gentiles, the time of the end has arrived". That happened in 1967. Because this is, the third reason, this is the reason, Daniel 12:4 says that "There will come a generation when knowledge shall increase, greatly increase. Shut up the book until that time of the end". We are that generation that has knowledge that has greatly increased. Just a few years ago, people were going to church in a horse and buggy.
Now, we've gone to the moon. We've had to redefine death because of medical science's ability to keep someone alive. We are that generation. Hope produces action. Therefore, prepare your mind for action. I can tell you the billionaires in America are taking action. They're searching out space for another planet to live on so they can get away from the America they've screwed up. They see America and the world spinning out of control. They're afraid of a nuclear war. And so they're getting ready to leave the planet. It's costing them billions to create a special space vehicle for them to fly away. Church, we're getting ready to fly away too. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we're leaving here! We're not going to a dead rock spinning in space! We're going to paradise created by the King of kings and Lord of lords, to mansions, to robes of righteousness, to the greatest celebration you've ever seen or recorded in the Word of God! Hope thou in God! Hope thou in God! Give the Lord praise today!!!
Paul says, "I have a mystery that I'm going to tell the church". This is in the Bible. "I have become a servant". I'm reading what Paul said. "I have become a servant of the church by the commission God gave me to present to you the Word of God in its fullness". Listen. "The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people". That's the saints. That's the church. "To them, God has chosen to make known among the gentiles, the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory". Now what does that mean, "Christ in you, the hope of glory"? Now what does it mean by "Mystery"? The Greek word "Mystery" does not mean something that cannot be understood. It means that something is about to be revealed that God has kept secret until right now. And it's important for you to know it right now.
What is the mystery? Paul doesn't write endless pages of theological drama to reveal the mystery. He said the glorious mystery is revealed in three words, "Christ in you", say that with me, "Christ in you". Follow. When Christ was on the earth, the power of God could only be released through him. Wherever he was, there's where the healing services happened, because he was the source of that power. But on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the God head, Christ in us, filled 120. And that 120 walked out into the street speaking multiple languages of the people who were there. It was the greatest evangelism explosion in the history of the world. Think about it. "Christ in you" is the power of the Holy Spirit. You have awesome power to lay your hands on the sick and they shall recover. You have the power to command demon spirits. You have the power to speak the word of faith and watch mountains of impossibility be cast into the sea. You have the power to speak a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, a word of healing, to experience miracles in your life.
"Christ in you" means you have the hope of glory to give to other people! "Christ in you" means you have an unlimited future! You have no limitations! The holy angels and the redeemed of all ages, "Christ in you", hallelujah, gives you courage, gives you confidence. You have the power to change world history! Do it, in Jesus' name! Remain standing. Is there something in your life, in your family, in your business, in your health, in your marriage, that you're hoping for but it has never happened? To those of you who are reading this today, there's something that you want God to do for you that's very special to make your life complete. If that defines you, I want you to say this prayer with me.
Heavenly Father, in the authority of Jesus' name, I come before the throne of grace with the Word of God in my mouth. Nothing shall be impossible to you. Whatever you ask the father, in my name, he will do it. Heavenly Father, in the authority of your name, I ask you (now you fill in the blank what you want God to do for you) to heal my marriage, to heal my body, to help me in this business matter, to help my family get through this crisis together. You fill in that blank.
And now we continue. And now, in the authority of Jesus' name, and by the Holy Spirit that's living in me, I receive this answer. It will come, because the Lord never fails. Hallelujah. Give the Lord a shout of praise for victory! For answers to prayer! And for the blessed hope we have in Him!!! Bless his holy name. Bless his holy name. Come on now: give him a shout of praise where you are today! It's going to happen! It's going to happen! Victory is not coming! VICTORY IS HERE!!! REACH OUT AND TAKE HOLD OF IT TODAY!!! HALLELUJAH TO THE LORD!!!
