Misplaced Hope

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Introduction

Have you ever placed your hope in something that didn’t pan out? Have you ever hoped for something, only for it not to work out?

In Proverbs, the Bible says that Hope Deferred makes the heart sick. I don’t really like this proverb, mainly because what it implies. It implies that hope will be deferred from time to time. We have some different words for this idea of hope deferred, we might say disappointment or grief. When we are disappointed in something, it can make us sick. Grief can be similar. Sometimes we grieve over unrealized hopes.

Story -

For a long time, I’ve had this issue. Here’s what I believe. I believe in me. Throughout life, I’ve experienced a ton of disappointment in others. Disappointment in my parents, they got a divorce when I was young. Disappointment at work, I knew I was worth more and could do better. Disappointed in church, too many hypocrites. Disappointed in life. But through it all, the one constant in my life has been my undying belief in me. I can do it. Whatever it is. I can do it, I can get through it. I can get it done.

Now, this line of thinking has some obvious benefits. When my world falls apart, I don’t give up. That’s a plus. When I’m struggling, I tend to find ways to persevere, so that’s good. But here’s where it’s not good. It’s hard for me to rely on God in all things. That’s a fight. No matter how deeply I confess that it’s not by works, but its all by faith, something deep down inside of me keeps fighting against that.

Here’s how this works out for me, because I’ve put my hope in the wrong place (my ability to make it happen), whenever I fail, I get depressed. Anyone else struggle with this? Ok, let me go a little deeper. This is one of the biggest struggles I have, this is a root struggle. This isn’t a symptom, this is part of the disease if you will. One of my biggest root struggles is that I struggle to fully trust and believe that I cannot earn God’s favor. I feel like I have to work for it.

Like trying to please an impossible father, I feel like I have to do more, achieve more, work more to get him to truly be pleased in me. Anyone with me here? My life is marked by what I can do for the Lord, not what he has done for me. My hope is in the wrong place. My hope is in me, when it should be in Him.

Thank you for joining us today at Cornerstone Church. We are continuing a new series today called Hope. Mark Faggion was kind enough to kick this series off last week. I really appreciated his honesty and vulnerability in sharing last week while I was away. This is our Christmas series, so we will continue with this theme of hope through Christmas Eve. Today’s sermon I’ve named Misplacing Your Hope.

Here’s my big thought for today - His Grace Is The Only Place For Our Hope

If we put our hope in anything other than the grace of God. We’ve missed it. His grace is the only place for our hope. We cannot put our hope and faith in anything else. Nowhere else is safe and the scary part is we have a tendency to put our hope in all the wrong places.

That’s what we are going to look at today, hope misplaced.

Psalm 33:13–22 ESV

The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

To start this off today, let’s do some define hope. Hope is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for certain things to happen.” I have found through my life, most of my disappointment and depression has come from putting my hope in the wrong places. When we misplace our hope, when we have a desire for one thing to happen and in the end something else does, we tend to be heartbroken. Our hopes and dreams are crushed.

In this Psalm, the psalmist outlines three areas where people tend to put their hopes and how those things will not fulfill us. In other words, if we put our hope in any of these three areas, it is a false hope, our expectations will not be met and we will be crushed.

Let’s look at the first one today.

Do Not Hope In Government

The first misplaced hope the Psalmist identifies in this passage is a major issue in our culture. This is the idol of putting your hope in the government. The King is not saved by his great army. America will not be saved by its great army, neither will the president save you. Don’t put your trust in kings or armies or presidents or congress. Every time elections roll around, the rhetoric surrounding this false narrative creeps back into our vocabulary.

Listen, I’m not saying don’t vote. Please don’t hear that, please go vote. Do your part. Don’t lose hope that God will put a righteous person in office. We want God-Fearing people elected into every level of government. Just don’t put your hope in that.

In fact, if you find yourself getting too anxious about an election, that’s a sign that you have been duped. You have put your trust in the wrong things. You cannot put your trust in the next election or the next president.

Some people put their trust in government. Some people put their trust in money and the economy. Many people put their trust in religion. The Bible teaches that none of these will meet your expectations.

Daniel L. Akin

The only true place to find salvation for this country is not in the ballot box but on our knees. Until the people are ready to repent, there will be no salvation for the United States. Our country will only turn around if it turns to God.

And to be honest, this has to be more than lip service. It must be real repentance. This has been the issue since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That was a historic moment, but here’s the issue. The hearts of the people have not changed, which is why, like in Ohio, voters have voted against abortion restrictions when put on the ballot. They are not repentant. They don’t want to bend their knee to King Jesus. So even when the government does something right, like Roe v. Wade, if the people haven’t repented, it’s not going to amount to much.

His grace is the only place for our hope, not the government.

Do Not Hope In Your Strength

The second half of that verse says that a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The psalmist uses the world delivered. Hope always looks for deliverance. We want to be delivered from peril and sometimes the thing we think that can deliver us is our own strength.

Like I said about myself earlier, I believe in me. I think I can pull myself up by my bootstraps and get it done. That leaves little room for God to move in my life. Think about Abraham. God had given him a promise of a son, but what does he do…He doesn’t wait on God. He gets anxious about the promise and tries to bring it about himself with Hagar. He put his hope in his own strength.

Whenever we hope in ourselves, we are putting our hope in the wrong place. Regardless of how talented we are, how smart we are or what, God wants us to wait on him, to trust in him.

When God is our strength, it is strength indeed; when our strength is our own, it is only weakness.

Augustine of Hippo

Now for a lot of us, this might manifest itself in a ways like perfectionism. If you are a perfectionist, you likely don’t trust others and you certainly struggle with trusting God. Perfectionism says that only you can do it right and even you get it wrong most of the time. Most perfectionists that I know really struggle to put their trust in God. And part of the the problem relates to the grace part of our my main point today. We must put our trust in his grace. Grace overlooks our shortcomings. It overlooks our imperfections. Grace is the love language of God. He speaks to us in grace and asks us to trust in his grace.

Think about it this way. God is the ultimate perfectionist and he has grace. He is the only one who can do everything perfectly, yet he gives us grace in our shortcomings. This is the only place we can put our trust. We can’t do this in our own strength. We can’t. We have to have grace for ourselves and others. We have to trust God and put our hope in him.

The other way this shows up is in workers. We might not be perfectionists, but we are gonna work hard to get it done. Our trust is in how much we do for Jesus not in what he has done for us. This pits us in a works versus relationship battle. We feel like we need to work for God’s approval, rather than trusting that when he says we are loved based on our identity, our relationship, he really means that. He really loves us based on who we are, not on what we do. And most of us struggle with that because every other relationship we enter into tends to be based on what we do.

Our spouses love us because we serve them well or we say nice things to them, any of the love languages. Our children love us because we provide for them or because we bought them the toy they wanted. Our parents love us when we do as they wish. Our boss loves us when we put money on the bottom line. All of our relationships tend to be transactional rather than relational.

God loves you not based on what you do for him. The only transaction that took place was Him taking away your sin and giving you His righteousness at the cross. But that transaction took place based on the relationship…he demonstrated his love for us by sending his son to die for us on the cross. His love was already present. It was just demonstrated or revealed on the cross. There is nothing that we offer in this equation. We can’t earn his love. Our strength is not the place to put our hope.

His grace is the only place for our hope.

Do Not Hope In Your Stuff

Finally in verse 17, the Psalmist declares that the war horse is a false hope of salvation. He says that even though it has great might, it cannot rescue. The way I’m looking at this is that it’s what you possess. If the government can’t save you and your own strength can’t deliver you, then naturally, you might be tempted to think that the thing that can save you is the things you own.

In one sense, this is the “try that in a small town” mentality. I’ve got guns, I’ve got my possessions, I’ve got rations, I’ve got what I need, I can save myself with my stuff. As Hank Williams Jr. used to save, I’ve got a shotgun, rifle and a four wheel drive, a country boy can survive.

The problem is this, your stuff can’t save you. There will always be someone with a bigger war horse than you. There will always be someone with more war horses than you. And this isn’t an excuse to buy more guns. This is simple fact. Our stuff, no matter how many bullets we own, will not save us.

Let’s get a little deeper than just thinking about guns and ammunition. Most of us put our trust in our money. We are rich. We have it all. We don’t need anything. And that’s the most dangerous position to be in when it comes to the kingdom of God. Jesus says it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom. No matter how you interpret that, that’s scary.

Trust in riches prevents trust in God.

Leon Morris

When we put our trust in what we own, we are on thin ice. Look at Job. He was likely the richest man to ever live and yet he lost it all in a single day. Your wealth will not save you. You cannot be delivered, you cannot pay off the debt that you owe, there is nothing your money can do to rescue you. Your war horse isn’t strong enough. If your hope is in your money, your guns, your survival rations, you will be let down. Whenever we put our trust in the things of this world, we are removing our trust from God. God is able to deliver us from every peril that we may face, but only when we are fully trusting in Him.

His grace is the only place for our hope.

Application

So what is the cure that the Psalmist offers for a misplaced hope? What do you do if you’ve placed your hope in things that don’t pan out? What’s the application point for this passage?

It’s simple. It’s found in verses 20-22. Our soul waits for the Lord. We trust in his holy name (v21) and his love will be upon us as we hope in Him. In other words, his grace is the only place for our hope.

So what’s the answer? Put our hope where it belongs. If you have found yourself disappointed, depressed, grieved, brokenhearted, because you put your hope in your spouse or in your money or in your family and they failed you. Guess what? You misplaced that hope. Put your hope where it belongs. Put your hope in God. Put your trust in Him!

Next Step

So here’s where I want us to end. I want you to take a moment right now and think about a misplaced hope you have. Where did you put your hope that you shouldn’t have. Was it in your job, but then you got fired? Was it in your spouse, but they betrayed you? Was it in your money, but the stock market wiped all that out? Close your eyes and think about it. Let God remind you of it. Maybe it’s a misplaced hope that you have right now. Maybe right now you are thinking about some places you have your hope that you know are wrong. You know this isn’t where your hope should be, but you just can’t help it. You think you can do it all by yourself. Your hope is in you.

Now is the time to repent. Now is the time to change your mind. Put your hope in Jesus. Put your hope in his grace. His grace is the only place for our hope. With every eye closed, I want you to repent. Give it to Jesus. Let him know you are in a place of disappointment or discouragement and even perhaps that your heart is sick. Unload that on him. His promise is that he came to heal the brokenhearted. He wants to heal you today. He wants to heal your disappointments. Give it to him while we sing.