Hope - Seven Virtues #6
Romans 5:1-5 and various scriptures
By James Galbraith
Bethel First Baptist Church
June 24, 2001
Romans 5:1-5
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Hope Springs Eternal
The English poet Alexander Pope wrote, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest." But where does man turn when hope dries up?
The director of a medical clinic told of a terminally ill young man who came in for his usual treatment. A new doctor who was on duty said to him casually and cruelly, "You know, don’t you, that you won’t live out the year?"
As the young man left, he stopped by the director’s desk and wept. "That man took away my hope," he blurted out.
"I guess he did," replied the director. "Maybe it’s time to find a new one."
Commenting on this incident, Lewis Smedes wrote, "Is there a hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian hope, for in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise."
Hope, simply defined, is a positive attitude toward the future.
Some hopes are based on nothing more than a wish for greener pastures.
Many people buy lottery or raffle tickets hoping that they will win a prize. Most know that they will not, and the odds are always on the side of those hosting the raffle or lottery, but people buy tickets anyway, hoping that they will cash in big someday.
For some buyers hope is little more than a silent wish, unspoken at the time of purchasing the ticket. They may even pretend to not care if they win or not - they call their purchase an act of charity or goodwill.
For others, their hopes in winning consume their thoughts and their pocket books - I’ve seen people buy hundreds of dollars in tickets on a regular basis, and win little to nothing consistently.
The wishful thinking can all too easily mutate into a driving obsession - especially when the thirst for winnings leads the ticket buyer to try other forms of gambling.
Their "hope" of winning becomes their noose for hanging, so hope just for hope’s sake is not always healthy or productive - you have to place your hope in the right thing.
Other hopes are based on our own efforts to improve our lives.
People of all ages take classes at the local college, in order to learn new skills and ideas. Their hopes are as many as those who attend.
Some hope that their studies will translate into marketable job skills,
Some hope that they will find a new hobby or recreation,
and some simply hope to expand their knowledge and appreciation for life.
Students have hopes for the future they want to fulfill, and they are willing to work towards seeing them come to fruit.
Some will find that the skills they learn are indeed useful and productive, others will learn that they’ve spent a lot of time in school without gaining much for their time.
The hope they place in their own efforts is certainly valid - why go to school if you do not hope to learn and grow - but sometime hope placed in our own efforts does not bear the fruit we "hope" for.
And many people just hope that whatever comes is better than what is happening today…
Psychologist William Marston asked three thousand people, "What have you to live for?" He was shocked to discover that 94 percent were simply enduring the present while they waited for the future--waited for something to happen--waited for "next year" --waited for a "better time" --waited for "someone to die" --waited "for tomorrow," unable to see that all anyone ever has is today, because yesterday is gone and tomorrow exists only in hope.
The ancient philosophers debated the merits of hope as a virtue - to many it seemed to make men wish for things rather than work for things. Seeking wisdom and courage would make a man smarter and stronger, but trusting in hope rather than effort would make a man wishful and wimpy.
Yet for all this, I still believe that hope is so powerful that it can make the difference between living and dying. Listen to this story…
The Dying Boy
The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals.
One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. "We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now," the regular teacher said, "and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind."
The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, "I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs."
When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much. But the next day, a nurse asked her, "What did you do to that boy?"
The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize.
"No, no," said the nurse. "You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live."
Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: "They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"
Sometimes, the difference between life and death is nothing more than hope.
To the Christian, hope is central to our faith. And as Christian we live with a hope that is secured by no one less then God himself, and his Son Jesus Christ.
What do we hope for?
Eternal life - Titus 1:2
a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,
- Col. 1:5, 23, 27
- 1 Peter 1:3, 13
God has promised that those who love him will live with him for ever - and that the life we spend with him will be free for all the things which cause us pain and suffering now.
The coming of our Lord - Titus 2:13
13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
Jesus, when he left the earth weeks after his resurrection, made a promise that he would physically and personally return to bring his children home. We do not place our hope in a mystic idea or a set of ideas - we place it in a real person - Jesus Christ - who has promised to make our hopes reality, in person!
The Resurrection - Acts 24:14,15
14 However, I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
We can look forward to this resurrection with hope, because we know that when it comes that we, as God’s children, will be found righteous because of the work of Christ for us on the cross.
- Acts 23:6; 24:14; 26:6; 28:20
And finally, as Christians, we live in hope - not just hoping for good things in the future, but living with hope as an ever-present reality in our lives.
Listen to Ephesians 1:18
18 I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
The hope to which we have been called is
The passage I read at the beginning of this message is a strong treatment for hope - God’s way.
Hope is repeated three times…
The first time, in verse two, we read that "…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God".
The first two verse explain that as a Christian, we have been made right with God. This is the simple meaning the phrase ‘Justified by faith"
Our belief and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour has brought peace between us and God.
Being in this state of peace has many benefits, not the least of which is that we can look forward to the future with confident expectation that God will keep his promise to take us to live with him for eternity.
Our "hope of the glory of God" is knowing that God will be faithful to us, and that no matter what may happen in the present, our hope for the future is secure.
This security leads us the second occurrence of the word hope.
The second time, in verse four, we find that hope is at the end of a chain of events that begin with suffering and ends with hope.
You would think that suffering and hope didn’t have much in common with each other. In fact. the only connection we would naturally make is that people hope that their suffering will eventually end, some how or another!
The words in verse three, "we rejoice in our sufferings", are not meant to portray Christians as people who go looking for ways to get hurt.
They actually compliment the words that come just before them, the words that we’ve just looked at in verse two ‘we rejoice in our hope", and together they paint a picture of Christians rejoicing in their hopes for the future and also rejoicing in their present sufferings.
Which begs the question "why would anyone rejoice in suffering?"
Again, this is not a call to pretend we’re not suffering, or ignore the painful parts in our lives.
It is a call to accept the reality of suffering in our lives, trusting that God will help us through them.
God can do amazing things in the lives of those who trust him through the hard times as well as the easy ones.
Suffering doesn’t disappear from our lives when we make a step of faith toward Jesus, but it does become less powerful.
Our faith will help us to persevere long past our own ability to endure has been expended. And as we learn to persevere our character - who we are as people - is strengthened.
And as our character, strengthened not by our own devices but by our faith in God, grows we look to the future with more and more hope.
God Ain’t Dead!
I am not a connoisseur of great art, but from time to time a painting or picture will really speak a clear, strong message to me. Some time ago I saw a picture of an old burned-out mountain shack. All that remained was the chimney...the charred debris of what had been that family’s sole possession. In front of this destroyed home stood an old grandfather-looking man dressed only in his underclothes with a small boy clutching a pair of patched overalls. It was evident that the child was crying. Beneath the picture were the words which the artist felt the old man was speaking to the boy. They were simple words, yet they presented a profound theology and philosophy of life. Those words were, "Hush child, God ain’t dead!"
That vivid picture of that burned-out mountain shack, that old man, the weeping child, and those words "God ain’t dead" keep returning to my mind. Instead of it being a reminder of the despair of life, it has come to be a reminder of hope! I need reminders that there is hope in this world.
In the midst of all of life’s troubles and failures, I need mental pictures to remind me that all is not lost as long as God is alive and in control of His world.
The tragedy that man and child faced was very real, but the man knew that God could and would see them through what was ahead, and because of that, he did not lose hope.
And the third time, in verse five, we read "… hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
this verse brings up the grounds for hope we have - we are not disappointed in hope - our hope is well grounded - because God has already shown us what he can do for us by giving us his Holy Spirit to help and guide us until our ultimate hope is realized.
The Holy Spirit in our lives is like a deposit made by God - a guarantee - that one day all he has promised and much much more, will happen
Many people live with hope which they’ve generated themselves
Famous Athiest
A little over a month before he died, the famous atheist Jean-Paul Sartre declared that he so strongly resisted feelings of despair that he would say to himself, "I know I shall die in hope." Then in profound sadness, he would add, "But hope needs a foundation."
Our hope has a foundation - it is built on the trustworthiness of God’s Word - Romans 15:4 - For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
it is built on the love of God in our lives - Psalm 33:18
18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
it is built on the undeniable existence and work of Jesus Christ - 1 Thessalonians 1:3
We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
and , as the end of our passage in Romans declares, our hope is also built on the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The writer of one more New Testament letter, the letter to the Hebrews, describes hope as "an anchor for the soul"
Listen to this account of how one person found this image come to life -
On a recent cruise I had an opportunity to get close to the ship’s mooring lines. The ship itself weighed in at 70,000 tons and was almost 900 feet long. Alongside the pier in Quebec, Canada the ship had thrown out a number of mooring lines; eight fore and eight aft. The circumference of each line was a big as a man’s arm, each was tied to a cleat the size of a small automobile! In calm waters the ship was secure and wouldn’t drift away from the pier.
The author of Hebrews uses the image of a boat at anchor or tied up at pier. The immutable promises of God, when held in faith, are like a huge mooring line that snakes its way up into the throne room of heaven where it is wrapped and tied securely around the immovable Throne of Christ!
As followers of Christ, we are anchored to nothing less than Christ himself - so may we as his children live lives that show this hope to be alive and real.
When we’re called to task for our faith, may our hope leave our critics silent, even wanting.
When we’re hit by tragedy, may we realize that no matter how severe it is, that there is nothing that can extinguish the hope that God gives, and that with God’s help we can even make tragedy work for us, and lead us closer to lives full of hope.
and may the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives lead us to live lives full of hope,
Hope that steadies our hearts in the present and prepares us for the future,
and leads us to do things for God which would be "hopeless" without Him.
