Hope Amidst Hopelessness
Notes
Transcript
I just found out that the muppets from Sesame Street have X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts. Elmo the red muppet posted a simple innocuous question about two years ago.
It stated, “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
Thousands of people responded, pouring their hearts out to Elmo.
“I’m tired, Elmo,” said one user.
“The world is burning around us, Elmo,” said another.
“Elmo I’m depressed and broke,” one wrote.
Author Hanif Abdurraqib replied, “each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror, one that was previously unfathomable in nature. However, I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thanks for asking.”
After about nine thousand responses in nearly 24 hours, the account posted again. “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked!”
We are living in a time where a lot of people have lost hope. Maybe even some of you are in that boat.
So what do we do when our situation seems hopeless? What do we do when there seems to be no way out of the mess we’re in? Especially when we are the reason we’re in the mess in the first place!
If you have your Bibles and you want to follow along, we’re going to be in Ezekiel chapter 36 today. In chapter 36 the prophet is speaking to Israel during some of their darkest days.
Jerusalem was destroyed, their temple was no more, the Jews were living in captivity in Babylon, and hopes were shattered. Their unfaithfulness profaned God’s name and is what led them there.
Spiritually speaking our society is in some of its darkest times right now. And the unfaithfulness of the church has profaned God’s name and led us here.
Despite Israel and the churches profaning God’s name, He faithfully promises to restore glory to His name through His people.
Restore Glory to His Name
Restore Glory to His Name
Look at Eze 36:22-23
22 “Therefore, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Lord God says: It is not for your sake that I will act, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you profaned among the nations where you went.
23 I will honor the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations—the name you have profaned among them. The nations will know that I am the Lord—this is the declaration of the Lord God—when I demonstrate my holiness through you in their sight.
God’s promise to intervene isn’t for Israel’s sake, they didn’t deserve it. God intervened to restore His glory in the world. It’s the same today.
You see, God’s action is rooted in His character, not in our merit. Otherwise our situation wouldn’t just SEEM hopeless, it would BE hopeless. Our merit is sinfulness deserving much worse.
Tim Keller often said, “here’s the gospel: we’re more sinful than we ever dared believe; we’re more loved than we ever dared hope.”
We are created in God’s image. We are a reflection of His image, to reflect His character, like a mirror reflects our image. Sin broke the mirror, leaving a cracked, broken and very distorted image.
God entered His own creation to fix the mirror, so to speak. Jesus died on the cross and rose again restoring the mirror without the cracks (our sin) that defaced the mirror and distorted His image.
Despite our sin, our disobedience to God, through our faith in Jesus Christ, God restores the glory of His name in us. In 2 Cor 3:18 Paul says,
18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
For anyone who truly believes in Jesus, our bodies become the temple filled with God’s presence. The Holy Spirit moves in, takes up residence, and begins doing some major spring cleaning.
God, the Holy Spirit, begins repairing the cracks in the mirror so that we start reflecting His character better and better. God transforms our character so that mirrored image becomes less distorted and resembles His character more clearly.
This is how God promises to bless us by using us to restore His glory to a world that far too often questions His character.
What do high-end clothing manufacturers do when they discover a defect in one of their products coming off the production line?
Well, they used to send those pieces to a landfill or overseas. But now, they send those pieces to Jeff Denby and Nicole Bassett.
Denby and Bassett are the founders of The Renewal Workshop, a factory that specializes in repairing irregular or defective clothing.
Client apparel firms send their defective pieces to the Renewal Workshop where they are restored to like-new condition, then resold on what they call “recommerce” websites affiliated with their original manufacturer brands.
Bassett said, “It is unique for brands to allow someone else to fix their products. We invested a lot into developing repair standards so that brands could feel confident in the quality of the work we do so that they can stand behind their products being sold as renewed.”
Those high-end clothing brands have to protect the reputation of their brand name. So they only use the best people to restore their products.
In a similar fashion, God’s glory, His character reputation is perceived through our lives. God knows we’re broken images of His character, so He sent Jesus to restore His glory.
You see, God isn’t finding the best people to repair His reputation. Through Jesus Christ He provides His people with the Holy Spirit to do the repairs in our lives that are marred by sin.
We may feel like we’re in a hopeless situation or are in a hopeless state of being. We can trust God’s promise to restore His glory in and through us. He promises to do that by giving us a new heart.
Give Us a New Heart
Give Us a New Heart
We must rely on the Holy Spirit to transform us from the inside out. In verses 24-27 God promised Israel that He would replace their rebellious heart with a heart of respect and love for Him. It’s the same promise we have today.
24 “ ‘For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.
God’s plan to restore His glory in the world is to unite His people and transform them from the inside out. The transformation God promises in us is so radical that it will present His glory, His character to the world through us.
In Zec 12:10 God says it this way,
10 “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a firstborn.
The Jews and “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (God’s referring to the Gentiles here) will realize that they crucified their own Messiah. They will sorrowfully repent and the result is best described by Paul in Rom 11:26-27
26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, The Deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. 27 And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.
That is what God promised Israel and what He promises us today. All that is required is for us to recognize Jesus Christ as our Messiah, our Lord and Savior and trust His work on the cross is enough.
Trust that Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension are enough to cleanse our sins. 1 Jn 1:9 says,
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
All we have to do is trust Jesus Christ, confess our sins and repent from those sins.
Pastor Steve Brown put it this way:
Have you ever watched a little girl get her new dress dirty just before church?
Little girls get their dresses dirty sometimes when they really don't mean to, and then they're faced with a number of options.
They can try to hide the dirt by folding the dress over and walking close to their mother. Or they can pretend that they don't know about the dirt: “Dirt? I didn't know there was any dirt on me!”
Or they can just try to stay away from mother so that mother can't see the dirt. If mother comes into the living room, the daughter goes into the bedroom. She'll try to get in the car before her mother gets in.
Or she can do what she ought to do if she has a mother who reflects the grace of God. She can go to her mother and say, “Look, my dress is dirty.” If her mother is right on, she does something about the dirt but not the daughter.
God promises that He WILL transform us. He doesn’t say He already HAS transformed us. For too long in America the church has portrayed themselves as being perfect.
They tell the world to stop sinning and pretend their lives are without sin. We have tried to hide it from the world and even more so to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Is it any wonder why the world calls Christians a bunch of hypocrites?
We need to stop trying to hide our sin and just be honest about our sin. Admit our lives are dirty and marred by sin. Confess our sins, repent from those sins, and place our sins at the foot of the cross.
Temptation is just as strong as a giant mud puddle is to little girls in their Sunday church dress. We may have to keep confessing the same sin and give it to Jesus over and over.
If we trust Jesus Christ to cleanse us, He will slowly and eventually remove that sinful nature from us and replace it with God’s character. That’s what God means when He says He will give us a new heart, a heart of flesh.
That inward transformation, the change in our character, shows on the outside and reflects God’s character to the world around us. Just trust Christ to give is a new heart.
We will never be perfect in this life, but we can trust and rely on Jesus to transform us from the inside out. We can trust that in Jesus we stand before God Holy and blameless.
Paul says in 2 Cor 5:17-18
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! 18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ
Ezekiel in verse 26 says,
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
God doesn’t promise to just clean us up, He promises to make us a new creation. Our heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh, our spirit is replaced with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit causes us to follow God’s statutes and observe His ordinances.
The Holy Spirit seems to be described as a tour guide for our lives. He does way more than just guide us and point us in the right direction. He literally changes our nature, our character deep down in the core of our soul.
We might be in a situation that feels hopeless in our lives, in our society, in so many ways. We can trust God’s promise to restore Glory to His name by indwelling us with the Holy Spirit, giving us a new heart and transforming our character deep down in our souls.
We can also trust God’s promise to restore glory to His name by giving us a new hope.
Give Us a New Hope
Give Us a New Hope
Have you ever noticed that we tend to appreciate what we receive much more when it is what we desperately need. It’s the same scenario when we look at God’s promise of our restoration.
We only appreciate God’s promise to restore our relationship with Him and our salvation when we realize how desperately we need Him and His intervention. God makes sure the exiled Jews know how desperately they need Him to restore His glory in them. Look at Eze 36:31-32
31 “ ‘You will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and detestable practices. 32 It is not for your sake that I will act—this is the declaration of the Lord God—let this be known to you. Be ashamed and humiliated because of your ways, house of Israel!
This same applies to us today. God’s glory shines brightest in those who humble themselves before God. He restores His glorious name through those who are willing to admit their sinfulness, repent from their sins and allow the Holy Spirit to transform them.
God promises to restore the relationship with His people and return them back to the promised land. We see that in verses 33-38.
33 “ ‘This is what the Lord God says: On the day I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the ruins will be rebuilt. 34 The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of everyone who passes by.
35 They will say, “This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and demolished are now fortified and inhabited.” 36 Then the nations that remain around you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt what was demolished and have replanted what was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken and I will do it.
37 “ ‘This is what the Lord God says: I will respond to the house of Israel and do this for them: I will multiply them in number like a flock. 38 So the ruined cities will be filled with a flock of people, just as Jerusalem is filled with a flock of sheep for sacrifice during its appointed festivals. Then they will know that I am the Lord.’ ”
God glorifies His name through His people by fulfilling His promises to them. In Ezekiel’s day this would have been unimaginable. Jerusalem was in ruins, their land and crops destroyed, their population was either dead or in exile. Faithful Jews who trusted God were filled with hope.
All too often, hope is pessimistically defined as the little boy did when he said: “Hope is wishing for something you know ain’t gonna happen.”
The definition of biblical hope is a confidence in regard to a good and beneficial future; to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial.
God promised to restore His glory through His people by returning them to their land. Israel ceased to exist for 2.700 years, then on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel came into existence.
Israel was reborn in one day and tens of thousands of Jews are filling the ruined cities every year. Biblical hope isn’t wishing upon a star or tossing a coin in a wishing well. Biblical hope is assurance in God’s promises.
God promised Israel He would restore them to the promised land. And God promises us now that we will one day be fully restored to God’s perfect creation.
It may seem as though we’re living in a hopeless time. We might feel distant from God or think He’s abandoned us. Our world and for some our lives feel like it’s a hopeless situation.
Our hope is the assurance in God’s promises. He will restore glory to His name through those who are faithful. He does that by replacing our spirit with the Holy Spirit that transforms our character to be like His character.
In that we have a new hope in God’s sovereignty over His creation and His promised restoration with all who believe.
So if your life is turned upside down, or your worried about the state of the world around us, trust in Jesus Christ to bring you peace in the present and eternal grace in His presence.
