Sermon Tone Analysis

Our english language can seem strange at times.

Have you noticed that look at a word, spelled the same way, and it has two totally different meanings.

For example, I am a fan of baseball.

Now when my favorite player comes out of the dugout to go to the plate to hit the ball that comes from the pitcher…grabs a bat.

Wait, not this bat, but that bat.

Now my favorite baseball team is the Texas Rangers, and last year, maybe they were trying to hit with these.

I don’t know.

But our language is filled with words when used it different contexts can mean different things.

It depends on whether it is being used as a noun, verb, adjective, or another way.

Another word we tend to use from time to time in different ways is the word HOPE.

I hope I get that promotion.

I hope my team wins the championship.

I hope I get a good grade on my exam.

Or I hope that it won’t rain tomorrow.

When we use the word HOPE this way, we are simply desiring an outcome that could or could not happen.

But as we look to the Scriptures, we see the word hope used, not as a possibility or happenstance, but as a promised future event.

One commentator put it this way:

The confidence that, by integrating God’s redemptive acts in the past with trusting human responses in the present, the faithful will experience the fullness of God’s goodness both in the present and in the future.

Let me read that again...

The confidence that, by integrating God’s redemptive acts in the past with trusting human responses in the present, the faithful will experience the fullness of God’s goodness both in the present and in the future.

For the believer in Jesus Christ, we don’t just hope that we will experience God’s goodness and grace…we have confidence…we know that he desires to give us his goodness, not only now while we live in this broken world, but in the future when we shall see him as he is.

What is teh basis for this: God’s redemptive acts in the past along with our trusting human response in the present.

So our hope is not seen in a wishful desire that an event will come true, but rather we know it will come true, it’s just a matter of time.... his time.

The Apostle Peter explained this concept of the HOPE we have.

If you would, open your Bibles this morning to 1 Peter 1.

As you are turning there, Peter is writing this letter to encourage believers who had encountered some persecution and wanted to remind them where they should fix their eyes and their minds.

Hope is possible only because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The very idea of something other than