Where our hope lies

In the July holiday period, I had some time to spend with the family, which is always fun. Unfortunately Fiona had to work for much of the week, so we didn’t go far, but on one particular day I decided to take my three young daughters for a day around Newcastle.

So, as you do when you’ve got young children, you pack well to cater for all situation. Now while I try my hardest, sometimes I don’t always think everything through as well as I should, so when Josephine (my youngest) decided that she wanted to take Sophie, her pink little teddy (or Beanie Boo for anyone who is familiar with kids toys).

At the time I didn’t see any problem, and so Sophie joined us on our day trip.

And it was a really fun day. Sophie, the pink little teddy came with us as we drove to Stockton. She had a ride on the ferry. We then caught the new tram into the beach, where we walked to Fort Scratchly and did the tunnel tour.

She ate fish and chips and Nobby’s, and then went with us to the Museum. The whole time because I had agreed to letting Sophie come, I paid extra care to make sure she never got left behind - after all, she was very precious.

Finally we made it back to the ferry and after a long day we were all very exhausted. We’d had fun, but I think we were all looking forward to getting home.

We got in the car at Stockton, drove half an hour home and pulled in the garage.

It was as we were getting out of the car that I heard the words that made my heart skip a beat:

“Have you got Sophie?”

At this point, I somehow know the inevitable, but I will it not to be true.

I won’t recount the following traumatic moments as we confirm Sophie has gone missing.

But we all desperately try to remember when we last saw her. But as tensions rise, questioning became a useless exercise. Somehow I seemed to think that if I just asked the question a bit more forcefully, there would be an answer, but no.

We’re now all very tired, and getting increasingly upset, but I made a decision. It might be slim, but I decided to grab a hold of the tiny little bit of hope I had in me, and we jumped in the car to go find it. I didn’t really have a plan. We weren’t quite sure whether we had lost it in the ferry, or whether we had lost it before we got on the ferry.

The hope left in me wasn’t very strong, but there was still a little bit.

Finally, we get to Stockton and I first got to where we parked the car in the thought that maybe she was dropped as we were getting into the car. But nothing.

I then drove closer to the ferry were I could now get a closer park. As I was parking, the ferry was in the terminal on the Stockton side. But then I realised that it was about to depart for the Newcastle side. So I got out of the car, telling the girls to wait in the car. I then sprinted as fast as I could to the terminal.

As I got there they were just pulling up the ramp and untying the rope. But I was desperate. That tiny bit of hope was pushing me.

So yelled to the lady pulling in the ropes - “Is there a pink teddy about so big?”

If the answer was ‘no’, I had absolutely no idea what I’d do next.

She looked up… “yes”

“Really”

The relief was amazing - except now the boat was pulling out.

Thankfully, at that time of day, the ferry crosses are frequent, and she told me she would be back in about 7 minutes.

That hope that I clung to was realised, and it was amazing.

Hope for the church

You know, sometimes I think our hope for the church is a little bit like the hope I had of finding that lost little teddy.

We’ve been doing church for a long time. For that long time we’ve been careful to hold what is dear to us close. But in recent times, society has changed far quicker then we’ve realised, and we’ve got to that point of asking - where did everyone go?

In some ways, it’s like we’re left with a choice like I did as I stood at home exhausted and realised teddy was lost.

On the one hand, I could throw my hands in the air. Teddy is lost. You are just going to have to accept it.

In our case - the people are gone, we’re just going to have to accept it.

Or the alternative, we’re going to cling to some form of hope that God isn’t finished yet. That his church isn’t just going to die a slow natural death, but that new life is there, ready to be taken hold of.

Now if we accept the first option - that is, to accept all is lost, then the strategy is clear. Let’s just minimize the tears as we except the inevitable. Sure we had good times, but as they say, all good things must come to an end, so let’s just accept it.

But what if we don’t accept it? What if we think there has to be more?

The question then becomes, not about how we are going to comfort one another, but about where our hope lies.

And this is the key. Because we’re we put our hope is going to determine where things end up.

You see, there are a number of different things we can put our hope in.

We can put hope in clever marketing.

We can put hope in strategic planning.

We can even put a Christian spin on these things. You see, our hope can be in things like evangelism, or good preaching, or sincere worship.

Now don’t get me wrong, all those things are very important. We should be engaging in evangelism, and doing all we can to encourage sound preaching and inspiring worship - but these are the means. If our hope is in the means, then we have to put up with the fact that were going to stuff things up.

Our evangelism will be ineffective. Our preaching will either be too long, too short, too dull, too complicated or whatever.

We need something beyond these means… something which is not going to disappoint.

Hope

Well, in the passage that was read to us a moment ago, we actually saw the word “hope” turn up in both of the passages that were read, but I’d forgive you if you missed the references.

If you have the passage open, then if you look at verse 5, while Paul is complimenting the Colossian church for their love, he specifically makes note of the fact that there faith and love have sprung from their hope… the hope that has been stored up for you in heaven.

That little indication there is of a very deep hope that affects us in the here and now.

But there is another mention of this little word found down in verse 23. In this verse Paul is talking about our reconciliation with Christ, but he clarifies in verse 23 that this reconciliation happens, when we continue in the faith… and do now move from the hope held out in the gospel.

Again we see this hope as being something to secure us to where we are headed.

So, just from these two verses that I’ve just highlighted we can see that the hope is not some flimsy wishy washy fantasy, but is something we can root everything into.

It is something that should drive us into action and keep us on track.

But what is it?

Who is it?

Well, I want to suggest that rather than ask, what is the hope, we should instead be asking who is the hope?

You see, as we go through these passages that were read a short while ago, what is clear is that everything is not based around a ‘what’ but around a ‘who’.

And that ‘who’, of course, is Jesus Christ!

You see, for Paul, everything rises and falls on Jesus Christ. Paul famously said in that if Christ did not raise from the dead, then we are to be pitied more than all others.

The Colossians situation

But before I explore what it means for us to pin our hopes on Jesus, let me just take a brief moment to explore the situation of the Church of Colossae in which this letter was addressed.

Now I should point out that much of the background is actually inferred by looking at what Paul says in his letters. But what seems to be evident is that there were people that were coming into the church and leading them astray.

Now I don’t want to get too caught up in the finer details of all this - after all, there are many pages of writings that have been devoted to thinking about this and now is not the time to get into it.

Except to point you to chapter 2 verse 8, where Paul warns against becoming captive to hollow and deceptive philosophy depending on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces, rather than on Christ.

You see, it would seem that there were these people, probably well qualified and eloquent, who took them away from the rock solid hope, and into fancy thinking.

And so it would seem that a significant reason that Paul wrote this letter was to bring them back to the hope that they first found in Jesus Christ. It is this hope that will not let them down. And as the letter starts, Paul wants to make it clear the power that is in this hope.

Paul’s prayer

You see, even in the first reading we had which looked at verses 3 through to 14. At first glance it looks like this is just the pleasantries that we like to add at the beginning of letters. You know, the sort of things we add to butter people up. But when you start to study Paul’s letters, it becomes clear that the starts of these letters actually have a purpose.

You see, verses 3 to 8 start with Paul giving thanks to God because of what is happening in this Church at Colossae.

And the basis for his thanks is there faith and love resulting in fruit. But if you look in verse 4, it is specifically their faith in Christ Jesus.

From verse 9, Paul then starts talking about the contents of his prayers for this church. There are lots of components to this prayer, but I want to draw out two.

The first component (which we see in verse 9) is for knowledge, wisdom and understanding. But note that it is not just knowledge or wisdom for the sake of it, but as he goes on to explain, knowledge and wisdom that will help them live lives worthy of the Lord.

But the second component of the prayer, which we see in verse 11, is to be strengthened with the power of his glorious might. And it is this glorious might that Paul is about to expand on in the next section.

It is this power of Jesus that we have that will work through us, and it is this power that will give us the hope that what is before us is all.

The nature of Jesus

In verse 15, Paul then moves into a very powerful part of scripture. He describes for us Jesus and his great power. So let me take a few moments looking at this description, because at the end of the day, my argument is that this is where we are to find hope, so it’s important to understand it a bit better.

Paul starts in verse 15 by declaring him to the image of the invisible God.

What this statement is getting at, is that while God the Father does not have a body in the sense that you and I do, (in that regard, invisible), but through the person of Jesus Christ, we can see all the attributes of God the Father.

So right from the start, we get one of the key planks in the theology of the Trinity, that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Christ role in creation

Paul then goes on to describe his role in creation.

Now when it says he is the firstborn, that was not to suggest Jesus was created, but rather his position over creation.

You see, this God-man - the one we are to put our hope in, was the one through whom all things were created.

And just in case you didn’t get the implication of this, Paul spells it out even clearer in verse 17 - “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together”.

If you want to pin your hopes on anyone, then dare I say it, but the one who is before all things and holds all things together sounds like a pretty good bet to me.

Christ role over church

But Paul then goes on to describe not only his supremacy over creation, but also his supremacy over the church.

Now sometimes when we talk about various church governance structures, we’ll talk about the various chain of command. We’re here in a Baptist Church, and we have what we call a congregational form of government. Without getting into all of the theology behind it, but basically in crude terms, you could say it’s power from the bottom up.

Others of you are from what we can an episcopal form of government. Now people will argue what the more biblical approach is to church governance, and I won’t get into that argument now, but what the Bible makes very clear, is that regardless, if you are following the Bible there can only be one true head of the church - and that is Jesus.

Verse 18 clearly says as much. We need to remember what the church is. Well, Paul essentially tells us, in verse 18 - it is his body.

If we take Jesus out of the church, we’ve essentially got nothing left.

God with us

In verse 19, Paul essentially explains how through God dwelling in Christ, we can be close to God. Jesus is God incarnate, and by doing so, we can know God on a level that people before Christ could never have known.

Reconciliation

And in verse 20, Paul describes the reconciling work of Christ. This is something that Paul goes on to describe in more detail from verse 21.

And I’ll just take a moment here to offer an invitation. If you don’t know about this reconciling work of Christ, then I would urge you to speak with someone who does. Christ takes our sinfulness, and through his death and resurrection, wipes it all clean. By this work he has the power to redeem anyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

What does this mean?

Well let me start tying this all together.

You see, I’ve argued that the when we look at the state of the church and feel despair, instead of throwing in the towel we cling to Jesus as our hope. He is the one who will not let us down. And I’ve just briefly looked at just how powerful and effective he is.

But what does that actually mean in practical terms? It’s a lovely thing to say in theory, but does it mean anything in practice?

Prayer

Well, coming back to the prayer we saw Paul describing from verse 9, is a good start.

You see, if we truly are going to be pinning our hopes on Jesus - and I truly believe this is the only real hope we have. Then we need to be praying for understanding and wisdom. And we should be praying for Christ power to be working in us.

You see, as we do, we see something truly remarkable happen.

I mentioned earlier about evangelism, preaching and worship suffering because of our own failures.

Well here’s the thing - and as someone who preaches frequently, I am very grateful for - though we stumble and make a big mess of things (in my case, on a frequent basis), Christ works through us and makes our pathetic attempts effective.

But this has to start with a recognition that it is not about us.

Example of youth group

Many of you will know about the youth group that we run here that attracts a large number of youth each Friday night. Well, I can tell you that the effectiveness of this ministry is not due to my clever strategy or abilities.

I think by rights, the whole thing should have fallen in a big hole a long time ago. But it is sustained and protected by the power of Jesus.

The future

Now this isn’t to say that any ministry will work if you just hand it over to Jesus. Various ministries will come and go over time, which means, from time to time, a particular ministry will come to an end. But what it does mean is that if we allow Jesus to take control, we can not just have a slim hope of a bright future, but a sure and secure hope.

I can’t tell you exactly what that will look like. It will highly likely involve difficulties and struggles. But in God we have a very secure future.

Ultimately that secure future will be fully realised in the age to come, but with Jesus as the head of the church, we can know some of that blessing even today.

Conclusion

As I said at the start, when we look at the state of the church we have a choice.

We can either throw our hands in the air, say it’s too hard, and just mourn the slow death.

Or we can be part of something amazing that God is doing in this world still today.

God is still active, and when individual churches put their hope in the right place, amazing things happen. I believe that we will see some of this amazing work of God right here on this peninsula in the not too distant future, and I’m excited to think of the possibilities.

But know this, no matter what the future holds, if you cling to Jesus, your future will truly be secure in Him.