Growing in Hope

Back last spring, a friend of mine’s son, Jacob Rogers, was involved in a horrific motorcycle accident. Tim and his wife(Jacob’s parents) were both right there with him when it happened. On the side of the road, he had to work on his own son to save his life. The months later proved to be some of the hardest months that anyone could imagine. Living here in Albemarle while their son is sitting at the hospital at the University of Tennessee. Spending months there, then being transferred to a specialized facility in Atlanta where they would stay until January of this year. Now having him back at home, wheelchair bound with the effects of the wreck and the traumatic brain injury that occurred. Going to therapists on a daily basis whether it be physical therapy, occupational therapy, or even speech therapy.

You would think that this would be too much for someone to go through. But when you look at the last several years in Tim’s life, God was preparing him for such a hard journey. Around 5 years ago, they discovered that his youngest son had cancer in his leg. Because of the form of cancer it was, they had to amputate his leg. Then about a year later at a regular check up, they ran some tests and discovered that Tim had prostate cancer. And then while he was going through the traveling and rehabilitation with Jacob, he lost his job.

But he never lost his hope. I share this because many of you may even know Tim and his family. You may know these things that he has went through and you may know how joyous he is every time you see him, despite all of the circumstances that the world would declare to be negative.

This is why the church should be a home for hope. For people like the Rogers. But it should not take a tragedy to draw us into the church. A church should be something that is constant. I have heard it described as a hospital before. As a place for people to come to when they are hurting or in distress. But why wait?

If a church is only a place where you go when things aren’t good, when the situation gets resolved, where do you go?

The local church should be a mainstay. A place that we can come to for comfort when we experience death and a place that we can come to and celebrate with when we experience a birth. A place where you can be apart of when you are financially strapped and a place you can be part of when you are overflowing with abundant finances. A place where you can come and be comforted and prayed over when you are going through medical issues and a place where you can come when the doctor has declared that you have a clean bill of health.

The local church, Immanuel Baptist Church, needs to be a home, not a vacation house. You shouldn’t only come when it is convenient. You need to be here consistently so that you are constantly being filled with the hope of Jesus Christ. A place where we can all come and be growing in hope.

Now, we are getting to the time of year around here where people are starting to work on their gardens. I look forward to this time of year. Pretty soon, I am going to be able to reap the benefit of some home grown vegetables. There is a picture of the local church as a garden. One of planting and working and seeing things grow and reaping. All of the aspects of gardening are transferable to the church. Just like the farmer, we have to put in the work to see production, but we ultimately know that God is the one who initiates the growth.

If you have experience growing food or plants, you have probably realized the benefit of planting things together as a means to spark growth. There is actually scientific evidence that plants grow better when they are with other plants.

Microclimate Protection: they create a better environment that protects each other; reduce wind stress, retain soil moisture, moderate temperature with each other.

Resource Sharing: stronger plants are able to assist weaker plants by sharing nutrients

Pest confusion: when different plants are planted together, they are less vulnerable to pest invasions

Think about how this carries over into the life of a church and particularly, a church that is continually growing in hope. The best way for a church to be growing in hope is if the plants(the people) are planted there. Coming once every 4-6 weeks is not a way to facilitate growing in hope. We need to be together. We grow from protecting each other, from sharing with one another. The church is a living organism that is made up of individuals.

I want us to imagine for a moment 6 months, a year, 3 years down the road. We are here at Immanuel Baptist. The neighborhood around us knows that we are here for them. We are doing things in the neighborhood for them. We have grown, not just for numbers sake, but for the sake of the hope of the gospel.

And this isn’t about having a big church. As the pastor, if I find my value in how many people we have coming to church, then I need to resign because I have then made it about my success and my glory. As the pastor, I would serve here till the day I die with a congregation of 30 people if we are committed to being a home for hope in our neighborhood. If we are getting outside of these doors to reach others for the hope of the gospel. If we are welcoming people into our doors who are looking for hope.

It isn’t about a statistic, it is about commitment.

But for us to be effective, we must be growing in hope. Hope is not something that should be stagnant. If you are a follower of Jesus, then your hope should be growing. But just like a plant, unless you are planted somewhere that you receive nutrients and are surrounded by other plants, then it is much harder to grow.

For this idea of growing in hope, I want us to look at Romans chapter 5. In this passage, I am going to point out how hope grows in our individual lives. What I want us to do as we go through this text though is to read it and understand that all of these things are amplified through being involved in the local church.

As was my point in last weeks sermon, the local church is the hope of the world. I want us, Immanuel Baptist Church, to be a home for hope. And for each of us, the best way that we are able to see ourselves grow in hope is to be as involved as we can in the local church.

Romans 5:1–5 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

There are some things that I want to point out about our text here.

Hope Happens Through Peace

This text provides us with quite a few words that seem to be part of what you might call church language. Words like hope, peace, faith, glory, and grace. What I don’t want us to do is avoid these words but actually lean into them. How can we take them and learn what is actually being said here.

Romans 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The person writing this is a man named Paul. Now, if you don’t know who Paul is, he is one of the primary people in the New Testament. He used to be a man named Saul. He was a religious scholar, but with that, he had a different understanding of religion. Because of that, he became one of the primary opposers of Christianity, to the point where he was ordering and overseeing the murder of Christians. But then, one day, he was going down the road and God basically smacked him over his head. He got knocked blind and then believed that Jesus was really God. In that moment, Saul became Paul and Paul became a believer and follower of Jesus.

Saul was not a man of peace. He was a man of hatred and murder. So how was Paul now a man who is talking about having peace?

He says that because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Here is another one of those church words, justified. What does it mean to be justified? Justification is a fancy word for salvation. See, we have simplified the life of a Christian into this idea of salvation but it is more than that. There are 3 clear stages of salvation. Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification.

Sanctification is the process you go through after salvation where you are becoming more and more like Jesus. You are killing sin and falling more and more in love with God. You are loving the things that God loves and hating the things that God hates. But then we have glorification as well. That is when you are made perfect completely. This happens when a Christian takes their very last breath here on Earth and they are then in the presence of God.

But, Paul is talking about justification. This is salvation. This is when Jesus went to the cross for the sins of man. He died the death we deserve. He was put in a tomb and 3 days later he rose from that tomb. But that doesn’t mean that all people are justified through this. Only those who believe. Believe that Jesus did that for you.

I know that we all know a lot of people who say that they believe, but going back to this idea of plants, you will know someones salvation through the fruit that they bear. Belief leads to change. Justification brings sanctification which leads us to an eventual glorification.

But through salvation, we have peace. Hope happens through peace. This peace that we get from Jesus. This is the first observation from our text. We are focusing on growing in hope. So Paul establishes first of all where hope comes from. It comes from peace through Jesus Christ.

Hope Grows Through Grace

You have heard me say that everyone receives some level of grace, but followers of Jesus have received a different level. A good example I give is the grace of God’s favorite bean, the coffee bean. I live off of coffee. I drink about a pot and a half a day. I know people say that I need to drink water, but I just want to remind you that you need water to make coffee.

But the grace that Paul talks about isn’t the grace of coffee.

Romans 5:2 ESV

2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

We have obtained access into grace. What grace? The grace that is salvation. We get that because of our faith. You cannot have salvation without faith. Grandma and grandpas faith has never saved a grandchild.

But think about what he is telling us here. He talks about standing in this grace. (talk about difference in standing in the flesh and standing in grace)

And when we do that, we rejoice in what? Hope of the glory of God. Are we rejoicing in the hope of God’s glory?

Week in and week out, I try to rack my brain with things that we can take and apply from the text. Right here, how do we grow in hope? We rejoice in God’s glory! When do we do this. Well, when we are not standing in God’s grace, it is really hard to rejoice in God’s glory.

To rejoice in the glory of God, we must be standing firm in the grace of God. And when we are doing this, our hope grows.

I don’t know about you, but I want to notice day after day after day how my hope is growing. Some times, it may not seem like it is going very far. But there are times when I look at how God is working in my life and I see that my hope in him is growing exponentially.

I also know that when I am not near the flock, that my hope diminishes. So, when we come together and celebrate the grace that we have all been shown, it helps each and every one of us grow in hope.

Not only does hope happen through peace and it is grown through grace but…

Hope grows through trials

Life is hard. Life is less hard when we share the burden with others, but the suffering is still there. And when we are close together with one another, we will often know each others trials. But I know that no matter how close we are, there are things going on in our lives that we do not want to share with each other. It is in times like this, we must be grounded in our hope and make sure that we are growing in that hope.

Romans 5:3 ESV

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,

What do you mean that we are to rejoice in our sufferings? Has Paul lost his mind? Does Paul even know what it means to suffer? I am glad you asked.

2 Corinthians 11:24–28 ESV

24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

For most of us, the closest thing in what Paul says that we can identify with is the sleepless nights and anxiety. (talk about the reality of trials but also the fact that we, as Christians, have gotten soft)

We need a change in perspective, not only of what a trial is, but of the trial itself. Instead of lamenting a trial, Paul tells us we need to rejoice in the trial. And why would we rejoice in our trials? Because God is glorified. Our strength to get through trials does not come from us and when we are weak, he is strong. So we joyfully going through trials. Because our trials are nothing compared to what Jesus went through for us.

Going through trials should help us to grow in hope. But there is one last piece to this in our passage that will tie this all together.

Hope grows through endurance

I want to look at what Paul says about endurance and then look at a wonderful example of what endurance is.

Romans 5:3–4 ESV

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

He lays out this progression here. We suffer. Suffering produces endurance. Endurance builds character. And character is what leads to hope. I don’t think you should read this and think that there are years that go on in between each step here. No, sometimes it happens almost simultaneously.

When our faith and hope is in Jesus, each and every trial will grow our endurance. So, if we were to take an 18 year old and an 80 year old and put them next to each other in the same situation, naturally they will react differently. The 80 year old has went through 80 years of trials. His level of character is naturally higher, so hope may come a little more natural to him. But that doesn’t mean the 18 year old cannot understand.

I have met some spiritually mature 18 year olds and at the same time some extremely immature 80 year olds. Age isn’t always the factor. The most important factor in all of this is perspective and opportunity. How will you see your trial and how will you react to it. That is what is going to determine whether or not you are growing in hope.

I think a good example of endurance is the OT figure of Daniel. He was taken during the Babylonian exile. They tried to integrate him into the culture going as far as changing his name and making him speak their language, but he was steadfast. As an 18 year old boy, he was steadfast in his devotion to God. He refused to bow down to their gods and their culture.

Fast forward to Daniel at 80 years old. Still steadfast and still devoted to God. Some people had enacted a law to trap Daniel. They made it illegal for anyone to pray to a god other than the king would be punished. Daniel did not waver. He went to his home and prayed and did it in a way that everyone could see that he was faithful to the God of heaven. So what did they do? They took him and threw him into a den of lions to be mauled. An 80 year old man thrown into a pit of death. And he stayed faithful.

Faithful at 18. Faithful at 80.

Growing in hope at 18. Growing in hope at 80.

Peace, grace, trials, and endurance. All of which are characteristics of a true follower of Jesus. Is that you?

If we truly believe that Immanuel Baptist is a home for hope and that we are growing in our hope so that we can bring hope to others, then are these things being embodied?

Just as Daniel has given us an example of what it means to grow in hope, just as Paul has given us an example of what it means to grow in hope, and just as the Rogers family are giving us an example of what it means to grow in hope, I ask the question “Are you growing in hope”?

Maybe you need to take the first step today of receiving the hope that is only found in Jesus Christ. (gospel presentation)

Maybe you have received this eternal hope and you need to grow in it. We should all be looking at our lives and seeing what we need to do to grow in this hope. Is it the fact that we never have time in God’s word outside of church? Is it that we don’t dedicate some time each day to prayer? Is it that we have not made gathering with the saints a priority? (this is not about padding the numbers on a roll book at church or trying to raise money or anything like that) This is all about growing in hope.

We are all struggling with something. Hope helps the struggle.