What Are You Afraid To Hope For? (Retreat Version)

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Intro

The question I want to put before you today is “What are you afraid to hope for?”

President Snow (the villain) and Seneca Crane who was the head gamemaker for the 74th hunger games. They were talking about the Capitol’s strategy for the Hunger Games, which pits tributes against each other in a televised battle where there is only one victor.

It was a tactic to keep the 12 districts in line

Snow: “Seneca, why do you think we have a winner?,”

“Hope. Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous,”

“A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

There is something very true about that. A little hope, keeps us from utter despair, but if there is too much hope....it changes how we live.

That’s what President Snow was afraid of…he was afraid that this hope, that was being embodied by Katniss Everdeen, would lead to a rebellion against the capitol, which it ultimately did.

So his solution was to contain hope.

I think there is a very real spiritual correlation in this movie scene and our spiritual lives.

THE DEVIL IS REAL

THE DEVIL WANTS TO DESTROY YOU

THE DEVIL WANTS TO STEAL YOUR HOPE

Our adversary, the Devil, is like President Snow, in that…he wants to contain your hope.

Because there is something powerful about hope.

Often what anxiety and depression, and discouragement will do, is drown out any sense of hope in our lives, and that is where the devil wants to keep you.

Because He knows that HOPE changes how we live.

What are you afraid to hope for?

Specifically in your Christian life?

Where has the enemy tried to contain your hope?

I’m believing God for a release of that today

We are going to shut our ears to the lies the devil wants to perpetuate, and we are going to look at what God tells us about hope!

We are going to be looking at the life of the Apostle Thomas.

Thomas was a disciple of Jesus and followed him during his earthly ministry

But before we go there, firstly, lets define hope.

HOPE

So what is hope?

General definition: A desire for something good in the future and the motivation to persevere towards that good thing. It is accompanied by a reason for thinking our desire will be fulfilled.

John Piper points out that “Biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future.

What differentiates Biblical hope and how we usually use the word is confidence or certainty

When we generally use the word hope, we express uncertainty rather than certainty.

EG. Hope my team will win (nuggets)

Hope the weather will be nice

Hope Josiah’s sermon won’t be too long, because I’m ready for lunch

Hope for the Christian has to do with certainty!

Hope is looking to the reality of the future, in faith

Hope in Christ is based in eternity, its based in heaven, it’s based in a God who eternally loves us and who defeated sin and death!

Why would we be afraid to hope?

That’s where the story of Thomas comes in.

I believe his story gives us some answers.

Thomas

Thomas is often known by the nickname “Doubting Thomas” and it comes from our text in John 20

John 20:19-29.

This is the story that has defined Thomas, but I think there is more to his story

This scene is taking place shortly after the resurrection of Jesus

John 20:19–29 (ESV)

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Doubting Thomas: Let me tell you why, although doubt may have played a role, I believe that this story is not just about doubt.

I believe Thomas was afraid to hope

Thomas is only mentioned a little over a dozen times in Scripture, and there is only a handful of direct dialogue between Thomas and others

You can get a little bit of a picture about Thomas when you look at these other interactions.

Let’s look at the other two interactions Thomas had in Scripture that can paint us a clearer picture concerning the type of person Thomas was.

Interaction 1 - John 11:1-16 Summary

In this passage Jesus is with his disciples outside of Judea, when he receives this message from Mary and Martha (close friends of Jesus) that their brother Lazarus is sick, and they are calling to Jesus for help.

So Jesus tells his disciples in verse 7 “Lets go to Judea again.”

The disciples push back and say, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”

But Jesus insists they are going to go back to Judea

Then comes verse 16 where Thomas chimes in, and this is what he says:

“So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.””

Thomas was sure that they were going to die, because there was so much tension between Jesus and the religious Jews there, yet he still went with Jesus

It’s a little ironic that later on when Jesus was arrested, all the disciples were scattered, including Thomas

But here he would rather die with Jesus, than be separated from Him

He didn’t want to be separated from Jesus

You can see this thread continue in the next passage.

Interaction 2 - John 14:1-4““(Jesus) Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

This is where Jesus gives one of the most profound sayings in the NT

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Heres what we get out of this interaction:

Thomas wasn’t satisfied with Jesus expression “you know the way I am going”

This was about being with Jesus, and Thomas had to be sure he knew what He was talking about.

He didn’t want to leave any room for ambiguity

He had to know where Jesus was going, so that he could go there with Him.

You can see in Thomas a desire to be with Jesus

It’s almost like there is this sort of separation anxiety

This man had a deep respect and love for Jesus

In the Shoes of Thomas

Now, lets return to our original passage of Thomas refusing to believe that Jesus had resurrected…I want you to put yourself in the shoes of Thomas leading up to that point

Imagine your life before Jesus…its believed that Thomas may have been a fisherman before Jesus called him because he was with the disciples who returned to their former occupation in John 21.

Imagine your life as a fisherman

Then this man comes onto the scene and calls you to follow Him

You don’t know why you would leave your job and follow this man…but there is something in his voice that beckons to you.

And so you leave everything to follow him.

Over the course of the next 3 years, you see:

People healed of all kinds of infirmities

People delivered from demonic possession

Bread and fish from heaven distributed to over 5000 people

The wind and the waves calmed by the word of this man

Jesus walked on water

You hear teaching that is unlike anything you have ever heard before

You’ve spent three years with a man that:

Loved so deeply he embraced a leper

Served so humbly he washed your feet

Spoke so powerfully, he raised the dead

A man so impactful, that nothing in your life will ever be the same again!

And you want to know where he is going so you can go with him

You are willing to die with him, than be separated from him

And then all of sudden, HE IS TAKEN FROM YOU

He is arrested before you very eyes

He’s falsely accused and slandered

He beaten to pulp and then hung on a cross where he dies and is then buried in a tomb

And you are left to pick up the peices…to try and make sense of what has happend.

What is life after that?

How do you go back to the way things were?

How do you go forward? How do you hope again?

This is where Thomas is at…you have a man that is overcome with sorrow in a room where the rest of the disciples are claiming to have seen Jesus alive again.

Thomas wasn’t just filled with doubt, he was afraid to hope

John MacArthur, “what set Thomas apart from the other ten was not that his doubt was greater, but that his sorrow was greater.”

He wouldn’t allow himself to hope, lest he be disappointed again. Lest he be plunged into an even greater sorrow.

Someone once said: The higher you go up the hill of hope, the farther you could fall

So in that room Thomas isn’t doubting as in “feeling uncertainty,”…no....unless he can touch the very wounds of Jesus, he is refusing to believe

Application

Maybe you feel like or have felt Thomas in that moment

You’ve repeatedly experienced disappointment in your life which leaves you feeling helpless.

Failed relationships

Failed expectations

Shattered dreams

Poor personal choices

Abuse at the hands of othersa

Hope to you isn’t a confident expectation but rather just another possibility for disappointment and loss.

You can’t risk hope and so you shut down, and live in a bunker of numbness.

Perhaps it manifests in things like:

Being afraid to fully surrender to God

What if His path doesn’t look the way I want?

What if his good is different than my good?

What if God becomes just another “program or promise” of something better, but that doesn’t deliver.

To fully believe that he loves you

You’ve been disappointed enough by love, and failed relationships and friendships, and you can’t take another disappointment, so you want God, but you won’t let Him get too close.

You come into a relationship with Jesus with the mentality:

If I expect disappointment, then I can never really be disappointed.

Maybe it manifests in living in constant anxiety and fear for the future

Nothing has ever worked out the way you hoped in the past, so why would God’s promises about the future be any different.

Your story is not over, and neither is the possibility of hope.

In the midst of Thomas’ refustal to believe.....Jesus came to Thomas.

He held out his hands and said touch my nail scarred hand and feet, and the wound in my side, and don’t disbelieve, but believe.

Thomas responds: My Lord and God

He addresses Thomas and said, “Have you believed because you have seen me?”

But then in John 20:29 Jesus addresses you (sitting here in 2022) - Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

YOU CAN HOPE AGAIN!

Hope in Christ is based in eternity, its based in heaven, where moth and rust don’t destroy, it’s based in a God who eternally loves us and who defeated sin and death!

What are you afraid to hope for?

That God can actually bring healing in your life?

That God can bring victory to your bondage?

That God can keep you and sustain you?

That your past is gone, and God has a purpose for your future?

That God can free you from your depression, or give you the strength to walk through it?

Jesus isn’t holding out on you…don’t hold out on hope.

I once heart this WW2 analogy, that was first suggest by a New Testament scholar named Oscar Cullman

This paints the picture of the ultimate confident expectation we have in Jesus Christ.

This speaks to all of us that is in the midst of a life that doesn’t seem to be getting any better, despite the promises of God towards you.

Maybe this can help you understand why it is worth the fight…why it is worth hoping again.

Story

It was D-Day, June 6, 1944. An unbelievable price was paid to gain just a toehold, just a few feet of Omaha Beach in Normandy and that price was paid in blood.

At the end of D-Day, in one sense, really nothing had changed. The vast majority of the continent of Europe was still as it had been the day before, under the power of the swastika. Evil reigned through the whole continent. There was only this one little plot of ground, a few feet of sand on an obscure stretch of beach in one lonely country, that was not under the domination of the enemy. But that one tiny stretch of land, that one tiny little beach, that was enough.

The truth is, at the end of that one day, everything was changed because now there was an opening, just a crack -- a tiny little crack at first. But it would get a little larger the next day, and a little larger the day after that, and a little larger the week after that. And the forces would get stronger every day.

There still was a lot of fighting to do and a lot of suffering and a lot of dying. But from that day on it was just a matter of time.

Then the day came when Paris was liberated. And then the day came when all of France was liberated. Then the days came when the concentration camps were overrun and prisoners got set free.

Then the day came when Hitler destroyed himself in the bunker. And judgement came to that particular beast as it always does, as it always will. And then victory in the Pacific and the soldiers could come home. The war was over, and the enemy was defeated. But the truth was -- that really victory was sealed on D-Day. It just took a while --- the battle raged for a long season.

But after D-Day.........victory......that was just a matter of time.

John reminds his readers and us -- this earth has fallen under a dark power, and then one day a woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Then one day, at a cost that none of us will ever fully understand, He took upon himself, on the cross, all the brokenness, all the suffering of D-Day, and all the suffering and all the sin and pain of every other day of the history of the human race since the Fall.

And on the first day of the week, when his friends went to care for his body, the stone was gone. And in one sense, nothing had changed. Pilate and the chief priests were still in charge. Caesar still reigned in Rome. He didn’t even know the name of this obscure Messiah in some remote country.

The Herods and the Neros and the Hitlers would come and go, and pain and suffering and death go on today as they went on then, and nobody knew at first except a couple of women. Nobody knew it, but that was D-Day. Now there was an opening in this fallen world, tiny at first, no bigger than the entrance of an empty tomb.

But now there was an opening, and the truth is, every time you resist sin, every time you proclaim the Gospel, every time you give a portion of your resources for the spread of the kingdom, every time you offer a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name to the poor, that opening gets a little larger, and the darkness gets pushed back a little more, and the light gets a little stronger.

That’s why we exist as a church. That’s why we are called to struggle and pray and work and suffer and labor because one day liberation will come. In the meantime -- there will be a lot of fighting and a lot of suffering and a lot of dying, but D-Day already happened when hardly anybody was looking. And at the end of that one day, everything was changed, and now it’s just a matter of time. So John encourages his readers, "Hang on."

The old age remains, but it has been dealt a death blow. The final consummation of the new age still awaits us.

Paul’s Prayer

Ephesians 1:16-19 - I pray...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might

The HOPE to which he has called you (Hope)

Future Hope

Hope of a future with God, free from pain, sin, and death

Heaven is spending an eternity in the presence of a Holy God, free from the clutches and consequences of sin that we all deal with on a daily basis

When I am grounded in this hope, things may be hard, but Hope keeps my head up…it keeps me looking to God

Present Hope

Sometimes the future just doesn’t seem real....it’s too far off.

We can tend to be more concerned about our present rather than the future.

But God does supply his power and grace for you now

He is active in your life now through purpose…we’ll come to that in a moment.

The riches of his glorious Inheritance in the Saints (Value)

This word saint is basically referring to those who are placed their trust in Christ

Those who have commited themselves to be a Christ follower

Not only do we have hope, but we have ultimate purpose in the fact that God loves us, wants us, and considers us to be His inheritance.

It doesn’t matter what happens or happened in your life....God values you.

You may not see your own value at times, but God does.

The immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe (Purpose)

God has endued you with a power to make a difference in this life.

We are his body here on earth

We represent Him, and so He wants to fill us with his power

These things were already true, Pauls prayer was that they could see it..Hope…Value….Purpose.

Closing

This is my prayer for us:

Whether we are filled with disappointments or unmet expectations or not:

Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Where do you need to reach out like Thomas...metaphorically speaking, and touch the wounds of Jesus, the reminder of the high price that was paid for you and me....the hope of humanity?

Lets spend a few moments in prayer together.