Where is your Hope?

Introduction

Where is your Hope?

It is all to common today to pour our hope into things of the world that pass, we seek joy in friendships, wealth, money, fill in the blank..

When we do that we set our self up for suffering, when God and his ways, while you will still face persecution and suffer, are the only way you will ever find true hope.

Our suffering is not worthy the name of suffering. When I consider my crosses, tribulations, and temptations, I shame myself almost to death; thinking what are they in comparison to the sufferings of my blessed Savior Christ Jesus.

Martin Luther

Body

1 Peter 2:18–20 CSB

18 Household slaves, submit to your masters with all reverence not only to the good and gentle ones but also to the cruel. 19 For it brings favor if, because of a consciousness of God, someone endures grief from suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is there if when you do wrong and are beaten, you endure it? But when you do what is good and suffer, if you endure it, this brings favor with God.

Be Obedient Slaves

In this passage and throughout Peter, Peter talks about the gloomy situation that Christians in Northern Asia Minor were facing, they were being treated as outsiders, their names were being slandered, they were being persecuted in ways we don’t fully understand in our comfy American churches today.

Peter is telling us in this passage to pursue the ways of Christ and live a life that glorifies him, even in the intense persecution that they face in this world.

He explains that in this life, living in a world full of sin, we are bound to feel grief and pain and suffering, and that in our pain and suffering we should not sink to the ways of the world, but suffer for Christ, because it brings favor with God.

The bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31

1 Corinthians 10:31 CSB

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.

Whatever you do, from the way you act in class, to the way you carry yourselves at work and home, in every situation, in both good situations and bad should bring glory to God.

When we are led by our fleshly desires in the way we suffer, we begin to blame God. We try to accuse God of being the one to cause pain in our lives and by doing so we miss all of the great things God will do and has already done for us.

In the gravity of the sin that has overtaken our world and the pain that exists within the world that we live in, we have no room to blame God, but all of humanity and the devil for the pain that we face. This passage says to act honorably in suffering, suffering in the trials of this world, as that brings God the glory that he deserves.

Transition

In the heaviness of the weight of the world that every human must hold on his shoulders because of our sin, God in his goodness, sent Hope to us, in the suffering that we face in our lives on earth, God sent one that would suffer to points we cannot fathom, and all of this occurred because of God’s great love and mercy for all of us.

Here is our Hope

1 Peter 2:21–25 CSB

21 For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth; 23 when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Jesus Christ who came to the earth and lived a perfect, sinless life, suffered the death that you could not suffer on the cross, so that you could be healed. I’ll say it again Jesus Christ who came to the earth and lived a perfect, sinless life, suffered the death that you could not suffer on the cross, so that you could be healed.

Jesus came to the earth for each of us, with the way he conducted himself he set an example, that we should strive every day to follow. He did not get hung up over earthly arguments and distractions, but lived with a focus on heavenly things and an eager desire to glorify God.

We as Christians, should not get hung up on earthly distractions, our mission is far greater than that, God has commissioned each of us into the world with the soul saving news of the gospel and set the example for us to set our eyes on heavenly things. God has made us to have eternal vision for our lives.

Transition

Jesus broke the stereotype that many of the Jews had on the messiah they thought would come, many thought that the messiah coming would to help Israel gain back their control from under the harsh oppression from the Romans that they were facing. Jesus instead came not for earthly glory and victory, but he sacrificed for the kingdom of God, so that God could receive glory. Jesus came to set the example of the Eternal vision that we are to live with in our life on the earth.

Eternal Vision

Remember Jesus Sacrifice - It is the only way that we can experience pure hope in our trials. John 15:18

John 15:18 CSB

18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.

tells us that the world hated Jesus before it ever hated you and if you continue reading the verses following that verse, it goes on to say that if we were of the world the world would love us. American Christianity has blinded us to the sacrifice it means to be a follower of Jesus, to have the world hate you.

Today it means that you wear a funny Jesus t-shirt and throw Phillipians 4 :13 in your insta bio, but during this time it meant living every day knowing that you could be beaten, imprisoned, or killed for your faith and doing it anyway.

When we set our eyes on Jesus and his sacrifice for us, we begin to see the world through the eternal vision that God desires us to see it through. A vision that isn’t hung up over the problems of this world, but sees their mission on the earth and wakes up everyday to live it, to glorify Christ and to make disciples.

Transition

In the midst of our broken world, God gave us Jesus as the hope that humanity needed....

to be the example for us of how we should carry ourself in the way we live our life and to give us an eternal vision for our purpose.

Conclusion

So how is your vision?

Are you living your life trying to find pleasure in things of the world?

Are you trying to fill a void with the things of the world that you know in your heart will never fill you

or are you seeing your life through the eternal vision that God calls you to live your life through?

A vision that doesn’t get hung up on the ways of the world, but sees the eternal mission God has set out for you.

A mission to reach the world with the good news of the Gospel, a vision to live a life that glorifies God, and to live a life that is fully surrendered to Christ.

Perhaps, you have been living your life with a focus on things of this world, friends, the prettiest boyfriend or girlfriend, money, or whatever else it is for you, fill in the blank and all you have gotten is the feeling of being empty.

God loves you, he paid the ultimate price on the cross and paid the price for your sins, all you have to do is put your faith in him. Jesus is the only thing that will ever give you total fulfillment.

Will you put your faith in his Holiness or keep looking toward the world for the hope that God already provided?