Nothing False About Hope.

This one is a bit long, but here is the sermon that I preached this past Sunday. If it sounds a bit more preachy than usual, that is why.

read and discuss.

Isaiah 40:26-31

26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.

27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and complain, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD;
my cause is disregarded by my God"?

28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Romans 8:18-28

18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. 28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Over the past year, we have been held captive. Politics have taken control of us on a level that many of us have never experienced before. Not only were there 24 hour news channels for news junkies, but there also ads on regular television, robo-calls, and placards and signs all over the place. You couldn’t get away from it even if you wanted to. Politics took over and seemed as if it was never going to let go. It even changed the way that we think about certain words: RED; BLUE; LIPSTICK; PLUMBER; CHANGE; HOPE. If you are like me, you are probably tired of hearing most of these words by this point. One of these words, though, is a word that we hear a lot in the church, a word that we shouldn’t grow tired of – HOPE.

Way back in January, at the beginning of the primary season, when there were still dozens of potential candidates for president, one of them said an interesting thing that caught my ear: "We have been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope...but in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." Now again, in the months since then, the word “hope” has become a buzz word tossed about in all directions, so much that it seemed to lose nearly all its meaning, but that last bit of the quote still sticks with me: there is nothing false about hope.

What is hope? What are we saying when we “hope” for something? Often times, we use it as we would the word “want” or “wish”: I hope that is doesn’t rain today. I hope that we have steak for dinner tonight. I hope that I don’t get a ticket for driving too fast.

That isn’t hope; that is desire – this is how I would like things to be. Hope is something grander than that. Hope is more like “trust,” but even greater than that, it is complete and utter trust, to fully put yourself into something. The passage in Isaiah points to this. For Isaiah, hope is not an uncertain word, it is a firm word, a word that gives us both confidence and comfort. In a more basic sense, hope is the horse you hitch your cart to.

The Apostle Paul sees hope in this same way. In Romans, Paul is writing a letter of great comfort and joy. He has so much hope that he cannot stop saying it. In the book of Romans alone, he mentions the word “hope” over a dozen times.

Paul is excited for the future, not lamenting in the “present sufferings” that he mentions in verse 18. He does not fear the present because he trusts in something better. His hope is not in his own ability to save himself, but in God’s ability to make everything work out in the end. To understand what Paul means, it helps us to look at another one of his letters, 1st Corinthians, when he is talking about our present state or understanding. He says, “when I was a child, I thought like a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me,” and “now we see dimly, as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.” What Paul is saying here is that we don’t get it yet. We can’t see the whole picture, we can’t yet see the great things that God has for us in his salvation, and that all things are working toward that end – for good.

It’s almost as if we went to a movie with Paul, and half way through the movie, we start leaning over to him and saying, “this movie is confusing, and to hard to understand.” Paul is saying, wait until you see the ending, it will all make sense, and it will be worth it. Trusting in that, that things will make sense, that the ending will be worth it, requires hope in God’s plan, and trust that God is in control and knows what he’s doing.

Having hope means something more than just believing, though. The word hope is forever connected to the word faith. We often tend to use the two words as synonyms, though – to have hope in God, the kind of hope that we have been talking about, is the same as having faith in God, right? Not quite. In youth group over the last few months, we have been talking about what faith means. In the language that Paul was writing in, the word faith wasn’t a noun, it wasn’t something that you could have or achieve, it wasn’t a goal to attain. It was a verb, it’s something that you do. You don’t “have faith,” or “get faith,” you do it. In a sense, you “faith” something.

Confusing isn’t it? Here is a story that we told in youth group that I think makes it a bit easier to grasp:

There was a world famous tight rope walker who claims that he is going to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. No one can believe that he will actually be able to do it, so the go out to watch, partly expecting to see a tragedy. After all, it's so misty up there that the tightrope is bound to get precariously slippery.

Much to everyone's surprise, he is able to go back and forth with ease. Everyone is amazed and claims that sure the man was lucky. He then says that he will go back and forth along the tightrope pushing an empty wheelbarrow. The crown urges him not to do it, shouting that it is too hard, and that he shouldn't press his luck, that the wheelbarrow will throw off his balance. The man ignores their calls, and calmly and confidently pushes the wheelbarrow across the tightrope, and then back.

Again, the crowd is amazed. Then the man says that he can cross the tightrope again with the wheelbarrow, but this time with 150 pounds worth of stones in the wheelbarrow. Again, everyone warns him not to attempt it again, saying that surely his luck will run out. Again, he rebuffs their comments, and calmly and confidently strides across with the full wheelbarrow, and safely back.

Now the people are truly amazed. The man empties out the wheelbarrow and says that he can do the same feat with a person in the wheelbarrow instead of rocks. This time, the crowd finally agrees with him. They have seen him go back and forth numerous times, and figure that he knows what he is doing, and that there would be little difference between a 150 pound person and 150 pounds worth of rocks. Everyone is certain that he can do it.

"Okay," said the man, "I need a volunteer."

Hope is believing that the man can get across the tightrope safely with the person in the wheelbarrow. Faith is actually getting in the wheelbarrow.

In that sense, hope is what you firmly believe, faith is what you do because of it. You need to have hope in order to have faith. The two go hand in hand. All too often, though, it becomes easy to put our hope in the wrong thing, which makes it harder to actually live our faith.

What is it that we are hoping for? A nice house? More time off? Less work? More stuff? Paul tells us that this is not what the limit of what our hope should be. If we all that we care about is simply the here and now, to stop our present sufferings and replace them with simple comforts, Paul says that we are missing the point.

We should hope for something much bigger than that. God has promised us something MUCH bigger than that.

If we simply put our hope in our own human abilities to make everything turn up alright, we will fail. We cannot do it on our own. As the hymn says, “our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” We need to put our hope in Christ, who worked out our salvation on the cross. Not in political leaders, denominational leaders, or even ourselves. Our human nature means that we are bond to screw up somewhere along the way, that we won’t be able to make it on our own. The good news that Paul is telling us, though, is that God works IN SPITE OF all our failings. Even in the midst of tragedy and suffering, in the midst of all the brokenness of this world, God is working all these things to an eventual good.

As we look out at the world, we can see a lot of uncertainty. The economic break down; energy crisis; health care costs; war and terrorism; cultural and moral disputes. In the midst of all this, who do we put our hope in to make it all turn out well in the end? In leaders? In denominations? In our own hard work? Or in God? Again, our hope should be built on nothing less.

But what if in the face of all that hardship, we still struggle to completely have hope? What if we can’t get in the wheelbarrow, because we aren’t sure if we will make it? Paul again gives us comfort, that in our weakness, when we struggle to find hope, we should pray. Prayer is a sign of our humility. It’s our way of saying that we can’t do this on our own. Prayer in and of itself is a sign of our hope in God, of our willingness to ask for God to help us in ways that we cannot help ourselves. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit will help us in our weakness, even to the point of helping us to pray when we don’t know how.

The greatest thing about hope is that it points us to God. It helps us to look beyond ourselves and our failings, and the failings of those around us, and to see God’s providence working through everything. As Isaiah said:

Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

If we truly are to believe in the power of God, we have to have hope that God is in control and working for good in all things. As Paul says, in this hope we are saved.

Someone told me once that, “part of being a Christian, of trusting in God, means believing that everything will turn out well in the end. If things aren’t well yet, than it’s not the end.” That is a statement of hope. Not of false hope or mere words to comfort us in our troubles, but of a true hope that points to God’s promised intention of good. Our hope leads us to this conclusion, to turn everything over to God and trust in his promise for us. Our hope makes us recognize that we can’t fix things on our own. Our hope makes us realize that if we are going to get across that tightrope, we are going to need help. More than that, though, our hope give us faith to act on it. We can’t get into the wheelbarrow if we aren’t confident we will make it safely to the other side. Why would we get in the wheelbarrow if we don’t have faith that we are going to be safe? Why would we surrender our lives to Christ if we didn’t have a true hope that Christ is the way to salvation? How can we have faith if we don’t first have hope?

Hope is a humbling thing. It puts us in the hands of something greater than ourselves. It points us to God. When we see hope this way, the way that Paul sees it, hope is not a gamble – it is a comfort, a gift from the Holy Spirit. And in that sense, there is nothing false about hope.