Hope. The expectation and desire that
something will happen. But not just anything. Something good. Something we really want. Hope is a
belief that things are going to get better.
No matter how things may look now, even when it seems like things have
hit rock bottom, hope is a belief that somehow, in some way, things will get
better again.
Hope is an important part of Christmas. When we’re
little kids, we hope we’ll get the toy or the game we want. As we get
older, we hope for time with family and friends. Sometimes, we hope for a few days to just
relax and rest and not have to do much of anything.
Hope is very important to our Christian faith as
well. In fact, in First Corinthians we read that hope is one of the three
most important things, along with faith and love, that God has given us.
We sometimes refer to Advent and Christmas as a season of hope. And in fact, we sometimes refer to God as a
God of hope. Hope is very important to
us in our lives and in our faith.
But the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, does not
refer to God as a God of hope. Hope is involved with God, certainly. But listen to how Paul describes God. He describes God as a God of endurance and
encouragement.
Endurance and encouragement. That’s how we get hope,
according to Paul. He tells us that everything that was written in the
past, all the words of the prophets, all the words of the law, everything that
appears in the scriptures, was written to teach us. And it was written to
teach us endurance.
Do you ever think of the Bible that way? Do you ever
think of God’s Word as having been written to teach us endurance? That’s
what Paul says.
But when you think about it, it does kind of make
sense. Because endurance is one of the things that helps us keep our
faith. We could not have faith if it was not for endurance.
Because the truth is that life throws a lot of hard things
at us. You don’t need me to tell you that. Everyone here has experienced plenty of hard
things. Things that discourage us.
Things that knock us down. And it
can happen in all kinds of ways. It can be material setbacks. It can be health setbacks. It can be things that damage our
reputation. It can be things that cause us to lose friends and feel
alone. Sometimes it might be our own
fault, but sometimes it’s not. You know, they say everything happens for
a reason, and maybe that’s so, but there are plenty of things that happen that
I’ll be darned if I can figure out what the reason might be. And I
suspect that’s true for you sometimes, too.
And when those things happen, we make a decision. We
either continue to believe, we continue to have faith, or we don’t. And
that’s why the Bible was written to teach us endurance. It was written to give us examples to
follow. It was written to give us guidelines and rules to live by. And it was written to show us and tell us
that, no matter how bad things get, God will always be there. And God
will, eventually, make things get better.
If we did not have those examples, if we did not have those guidelines,
if we did not have those rules, if we all we had to rely on was ourselves and
our own ability to hang on to faith, we’d never make it. It’s those
examples and guidelines and rules that were set down in the Bible that give us
the ability to hold on through those tough times. The Bible was, indeed, written to teach us
endurance.
Paul says it’s the encouragement that those passages
provide that gives us that hope. Think about all the people, all the
great heroes in the Bible, who had times when things went against them.
Joseph--the Old Testament Joseph--was sold into slavery in a foreign
country. Job loses everything for no
apparent reason. Daniel was thrown into a den of lions just for
worshiping God. Jesus himself was killed
even though he had done nothing wrong.
But God never left them.
God stayed with them, and God saw them through their bad times. Joseph
eventually became the number two man to the great Pharaoh and saved his people
from starvation. Job kept his faith and got everything back and more
besides. Daniel not only survived the
lions’ den but was able to bring many people to faith. And of course,
Jesus rose again, conquering death itself.
All those people, and many others, endured. They kept their faith no matter how bad
things got. Their endurance teaches us to endure. Their endurance encourages us to stay strong
in our faith in bad times, too. And that
encouragement gives us hope, again, that things are going to get better if we
just stay faithful to God.
But is that all we get?
Just this vague hope that somehow, sometime, in some way, things are going to
get better if we just stay faithful to God?
No. We get more than
that. Because remember what we said hope is at the start of this
message. It’s not just some vague wish.
It’s an expectation. It’s confidence.
It’s trust. We trust that our faith in
God will be rewarded. We are confident
of that. We expect that. We don’t
just wish that things will get better.
We know things will get better. We know that because we know we
can trust God.
Now, as we’ve said before, that
does not mean we’ll get everything we want. Things will get better, but
maybe not in the way we wanted or expected.
In fact, it’s my experience that God quite often acts in ways that never
even would have occurred to us. But of course, God’s ways are always
better than our ways. And sometimes I
think that God enjoys surprising us, making things work out for the best, but
in a totally different way than we ever would have thought of.
And as we’ve also said before,
we don’t know when things are going to happen. That’s another way
endurance comes into this. We’d love it
if God worked on our time schedule, but of course God never does. But
again, God’s time is always better than our timing. And again, I think God enjoys surprising us,
making things happen at a time we were not expecting.
But what we get from this
endurance and encouragement is more than just hope. If, because of that
endurance and encouragement, we really do trust God, what happens? Paul
says it this way: “The God of hope
[will] fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may
overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
What an awesome thing! If
you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will be filled with joy and
peace. If you and I trust God, if we truly trust God, we will overflow
with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It’s not always easy to have
that much trust in God. But again, that’s why the Bible was written. We have all these examples of people who held
on to their trust in God, even when it was not easy. All these examples
of people who endured in the faith, and whose endurance was ultimately
rewarded. We’re shown that endurance to
encourage us in our faith.
But we have other examples,
too. I suspect we all know people who had or have a strong faith, who
held onto that faith no matter how many times life knocked them down.
Their endurance is an example to us as well.
And that endurance can encourage us in our faith.
But we also have the example of
our own lives. As I said earlier, I know that everyone here has gone
through some hard things in your lives. Think about the times that those
things happened, and yet you remained strong in your faith. Think about the times you endured, despite
everything.
What happened as a
result? How did things work out?
In some case, of course, things have not worked out yet. You’re
still waiting to see how things are going to work out. But the things that have worked out, what
happened? Do you feel like it was worth it? Do you feel like your endurance was rewarded?
I suspect the answer is yes, or
you would not be here. And the result of that endurance can give you
encouragement that it will happen again. Whatever it is that you’re still
waiting to see how it works out, be encouraged.
Know that God has been there for you before. And let that
knowledge encourage you to know that God is there for you now, too, and will
see you through whatever you’re going through.
The endurance taught in the
Scriptures, in the lives of people we know, and in our own lives gives us
encouragement. That encouragement gives us hope. May that hope fill us with the joy and peace
that comes with trusting God, not just at Christmas time, but all the time.
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