INTRODUCTION
• Picture if you will a young couple. They have been dating for a long time. The man is thinking about asking this young lady he has been dating to marry him. The young lady is wondering if the young man is ever going to ask the question.
• Finally the question is asked, “Will you marry me?” Of course the young lady answers yes!
• Now comes the fun part, planning the wedding.
• The young lady and her mother and every other significant female in her life get together to plan it all out. For many, months of coordination and planning happen, all for a date in which a wedding will take place.
• When this young couple says, “I do”, they have plans for a bright future full of hope and fulfilled dreams. They do not think about the possible tough times, the future is bright. They anticipate a great life together!
• Because of what has taken place in their lives, the young couple will initiate the wedding plans. If they felt the marriage would crash and burn, they would not go through the trouble and expense of a wedding.
• The letter to the Thessalonian church was written to help people to live with a sense of anticipation and hope. People were dying each day and those who were still alive were afraid their deceased loved were going to miss out on the return of Jesus.
• Paul wanted to reassure them this was not the case and he wanted to reinforce reasons for them to have hope.
• If we are living life as if there is no God or no eternity, we will have a sad hopeless existence. Having hope for the future can change a person’s life.
• Let us look at the hope we have for eternal life today!
SERMON
I. FOUNDATION OF OUR HOPE 13-14
A. What is the basis of our hope for eternal life?
1. As we live our lives we all place our hope in something for our salvation.
2. Many people place their hope in their goodness. Some people place their hope in their position in life, and some people hope that once we die, we just die. Some people place their hope of eternal life in false religions.
3. What is the foundation that these are built on? Goodness? According to a 2004 Barna study, 54% of all adults believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven. (2004). Goodness is relative, what standard are you going to use to determine if your goodness is good enough? The bible tells us ROM 3:10 as it is written, "There is none righteous, not even one.
4. What is the foundation for the person who is going to rely on their position in life? ACT 10:34 Opening his mouth, Peter said: "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality.
5. What is the foundation for the one who puts their hope in material things? Can you take your stuff to the grave; can you buy your way into eternal life of God?
6. What is the foundation of false religions? It is a bunch of baseless empty promises. ACT 4:12 "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."
7. I have been a part of a lot of weddings, but I have yet to sit down with a young lady or young man who came to me to plan a wedding that did not have a date set and a person who had already agreed to marry them. I have not had anyone come to me and tell me they wanted to plan the wedding they might have a few years from now with an unknown person. The plans start when we have a ring and a date!
8. What kind of foundation are you building your hope for life after the grave?
9. Are you planning a wedding when there is no hope to have a bride or groom?
B. The Object of your hope will dictate your pattern of life.
• From Parade magazine comes the story of self-made millionaire Eugene Land, who greatly changed the lives of a sixth-grade class in East Harlem. Mr. Lang had been asked to speak to a class of 59 sixth-graders. What could he say to inspire these students, most of whom would drop out of school? He wondered how he could get these predominantly black and Puerto Rican children even to look at him. Scrapping his notes, he decided to speak to them from his heart. "Stay in school," he admonished, "and I’ll help pay the college tuition for every one of you." At that moment the lives of these students changed. For the first time they had hope. Said one student, "I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling." Nearly 90 percent of that class went on to graduate from high school. http://www.christianglobe.com/Illustrations/theDetails.asp?whichOne=h&whichFile=hope
• These young people for the first time in their lives had some sort of hope of getting out of their terrible circumstances. With hope, they studied, stayed off drugs, worked hard.
• When we decide to marry someone, it should change the way we act, we are to no longer run around like we did when we were single, we quit chasing others because we have found the one we want.
• Throughout this letter Paul reminds the reader that the anticipation of Jesus returning should have an affect on how we live our lives!
C. Jesus is the foundation of our hope.
1. Jesus is the reason that we can have hope.
2. Romans 8:18-25 NLT 18Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later. 19For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse. 21All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24Now that we are saved, we eagerly look forward to this freedom. For if you already have something, you don’t need to hope for it. 25But if we look forward to something we don’t have yet, we must wait patiently and confidently.
3. Our hope is rooted in what has been done and promised in Jesus. Our hope is in our confidence in what God will do; it is rooted in what He has done! These elements of the Christian’s hope are missing from all other religions. EPH 2:12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
4. Paul wants us to remember that if you have Jesus, you have a solid foundation for your hope. This foundation can give us peace and it can comfort us when we lose a loved one before the return of Jesus.
5. Verse 14 tells us that if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we too will be apart of the celebration! This does not mean that if we do not believe it, that it will not happen, it just will not happen for us!
II. EVIDENCE OF OUR HOPE 14-15
A. For hope to be real, for hope to be able to bring comfort, there should be some evidence to give us confidence.
1. What evidence do we have that our own goodness will get us to heaven? NONE!
2. What evidence do we have that the false religions will give us eternal life? NONE! Has Buddha defeated death? Has Mohammed defeated death? Has John Smith defeated death? Has Jesus defeated death? YES!
3. If a person comes in and says they are marrying some Hollywood starlet we would want to see some basis for their claim.
4. In the early Church, the resurrection was the centerpiece of the teaching of the church. In 1 Corinthians 15, we have a list of those who viewed the risen Jesus.
5. READ ROMANS 6:3-10
6. Since Jesus was raised from the grave, so shall we who believe and are faithful to Jesus. Jesus defeated death for us, that should be cause for celebration and it should cause us to act like we are going to be going to heaven.
7. READ 1 Corinthians 15:51-57
8. If a person asks another to marry them, it would not be proper to run around on them would it. When we belong to Jesus, it is not proper for us to run around on Him either!
III. REALIZATION OF OUR HOPE 16-18
A. For hope to be real there must be a day when we will be able to cash in on our hope.
1. The day that we will receive what we hope for is when the Lord returns, in one sense those who have already died have had their hope realized in the fact that they are with Jesus now! Notice that verse 14 tells us that Jesus will bring those who have died in Him with Him. Verse 17 says that we will always be with the Lord.
2. I remember as a 16-year-old, I had hoped for a NEW car for my birthday. I KNEW that I would not get one so my hope was not based on reality nor was my hope realized. Our hope in Jesus is not that way, we WILL receive our FULL reward in Jesus when He returns. We have already received it in part now. The bible tells us that we have received eternal life NOW. 1 John 5:13.
3. I knew that on June 8, 1985 at 2 pm, I was going to have a wife!
4. My hope for a wife was going to be realized!
5. When my parents knew I was wanting to ask Robyn to marry me, they asked me to wait until I was 21. I got close. The time I gave her the ring in October of 1984 to June 8, 1985 seemed like it would never come!
6. When I started going to college, I really never thought it would end in a degree until I got through the second year of going full-time. Once that happened, I knew I would one day receive my degree!
7. JOH 14:3-4 "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. "And you know the way where I am going."
8. PHILIPPIANS 3:20-21, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”
9. READ 1 JOHN 3:1-3
10. Isn’t this a great promise, we will always be with the Lord! Our hope is not some carrot that we will never reach.
CONCLUSION
• Paul finishes this chapter with the words, “comfort one another with these words.”
• These words are a comfort to those who belong to Jesus. For those who do not belong to Jesus, there is not real hope for them.
• I have had people come to me wanting me to give them some assurance about their unsaved loved one. I cannot do that. The Bible tells us that eternal life only belongs to those who are faithful to death to Jesus. Revelation 2:10.
• I want to be able to give you comfort and peace today, it can only be found in Jesus. In Christ alone do we find our hope and salvation.
• Do you want to have hope for the future? Have you said “I do” to Jesus?
• The Bible tells us the church is the bride of Christ, the bride that He is coming back to claim! (Ephesians 5:27)
