Hope Wins - 3

Hope Wins - 3

Introduction

Several years ago the leadership of this church began to deeply evaluate the inner workings of Broadway, to assess where we were and how to move forward, and make some necessary changes. There had been an almost decade-long season of decline in attendance, giving, energy, and excitement. That season had been going so long and so slowly, it wasn’t even felt by many in the church. But it was there. And its cumulative effect was felt deeply by the staff and elders, and many of you.

So they set about working to identify the issues and deal with them accordingly. That process was challenging. It has led to Broadway looking and feeling very different than it used to. It led to staff transitions and additions, up to and including me joining the team, closing in on two years ago.

Together, as the Elders and I (Jared joined in later) began to dig deeply into assessment and evaluation, we have been working to uncover the foundation of this church. Upon looking at the very foundation of Broadway, what we found delighted us. This church is built on strong biblical theology, great and godly Elders, staff that love this church and serve it tirelessly, and a large group of dedicated, godly people who call this church home. You love the Lord, this church, and serve and sacrifice for it.

We also found some weak spots in that foundation, as any church has. Some outdated models and ways of ministering to people. Some areas that were not organized, instead chaos reigned. Some staff that had grown tired or toxic. So we set about strengthening the solid parts of the foundation, and fixing the parts of it that were in disrepair.

And God has been faithful, and you have been patient and gracious. This isn’t an easy process to endure. But you have and we are grateful. I am thrilled to report that it seems the foundation building is finished and now it’s time to build for the future. Attendance is up 15% from two years ago. Giving is stronger than its ever been. Energy and excitement have returned. While we still have a long way to go in becoming the church God wants us to be, those foundational issues are settled. Now it’s time to move forward. What we are going to talk about today and next Sunday are going to show us exactly how we are going to go about that, and where we are headed.

- 3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, 5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.

We anchored in this text two weeks ago when we began this Hope Wins series. Our faith in Christ, and our love for people, come from…are motivated by…are fueled by…our hope in Jesus Christ. Hope is the driving force of the Christian life. Hope is the foundation for who we are as Christians and what we do as the church. Hope defines the Christian, and drives the Church. All that we are and all that we do come from our hope in Jesus.

Since that is true, we are going to structure this church around this truth. If Hope really defines us, if Hope really drives us (as the NT says), then let’s let it do that. So Broadway, who we are and what we do as a church is all going to center around, be guided by, and be driven by Hope. We are summarizing all of this into two statements: Be Hope and Give Hope. We are called to be people who are defined by hope, and who give hope to those around us. Each of those has three very practical action steps to accomplish them, serving as pillars that solidly hold up the church. Today we are going to cover Be Hope and how to do that, while next Sunday is devoted to Give Hope.

TS - let’s anchor today in one of the greatest passages in all the Bible, that shows us what a life marked by hope, defined by hope, looks like.

- 3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, 4 and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. 5 And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. 6 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

8 You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. 9 The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.

Three Characteristics of a Life Marked by Hope:

HOPE LOOKS FORWARD

This is really the no-brainer part when we think about hope. Hope leans forward, sets its sights on what will be. But, as Paul did in , Peter reminds us that while hope looks forward, it is firmly anchored in a past event.

- 3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation…

By his mercy, God has given us new birth by the resurrection of Jesus (NT image of becoming a Christian). Now…we live with hope. But hope isn’t just the result of becoming a Christian, it is the reality in which the Christian lives. The verse literally translates, “God has given us new birth INTO a living hope.” When we are ‘born again’ we are born into the reality of hope. It’s the air we breathe. It’s in our DNA. Hope defines us.

And this hope looks forward. Look at the phrases Peter uses here: great expectation, inheritance kept in heaven, ready to be revealed, reward will be…Hope lives on this day, but it longs for another day. The last day. Hope looks forward to something better.

People have the tendency to look back and idolize and glorify their good old days. And what is true for us individually is true for us corporately as the church. The Church’s best days are always ahead. Again, there is the tendency in churches to get nostalgic about the past, to idolize traditions. “This church was better when…so and so preached here, when we did so and so program, when we sang such and such songs.” On and on the list can go. Listen, the best days of this church are not behind us. They’re not today either. That’s not going to happen on my watch either. Our best days as a church are always ahead of us because the church never stops moving forward. We are firmly anchored in the past, tethered to the cross of Jesus Christ and his empty tomb, but we do not live in the past. We look forward.

2. HOPE ENDURES TRIALS

- 6 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

Hope doesn’t live with blinders on. Hope is not ignorant of reality. We will suffer. In fact, 1 Peter is written to Christians who were actively suffering, primarily in the form of persecution from Rome. They were being hunted down and murdered, alienated from their families, jobless and homeless. And Peter doesn’t shy away from their reality. Suffering is brought up 15x in the letter and he uses 8 different Gk. words to describe it. So to directly address their painful reality, he begins his letter with hope.

v. 6 “for a little while.” Hope reminds us that trials are temporary. Your suffering isn’t terminal.

, - 8 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. 9 We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. 10 Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies…16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

While trials are not terminal, Peter tells us they are a test. Not like a pass/fail test, but a testing/refining of our faith. Like gold that is refined/purified in the furnace until all the impurities are burned out, trials help solidify our faith. They help us know our faith is genuine. You don’t want to wait until you stand before God in judgment to see how strong your faith is.

ILL - 8th grade had to build a bridge from wooden dowel rods. Jeffrey and dad helped me design and build. Had to hold weight for the grade, so we tested it. I hung from it. Proud to say I got an A on that bridge, because they build a great bridge.

Warren Wiersbe - “A faith that cannot be tested cannot be trusted.”

Hope reminds us that suffering isn’t terminal. Because of hope, suffering doesn’t define us, it can refine us.

3. HOPE PRODUCES JOY

, - 6 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead…8 You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.

If all this hope stuff is true (and it is!), if all my best days are ahead (and they are!), if all this is true, then hope will absolutely produce in me a joy that cannot be contained. Joy is the natural byproduct of hope. The assurance that hope brings helps us look forward when things seem dark.

Notice how Peter put it at the end of verse 8, “glorious, inexpressible joy.” Does that describe you? We must recapture our sense of joy. Hope demands it. We’ve joked before…we may sing I’ve got the joy, joy, down in my heart…well, your heart needs to tell your face. And I am one of the worst violators of this. I have a condition known as ‘resting jerk face.’ Even when I’m not mad, I can look mad. I can be too serious. But we can’t be afraid to let hope show. Hope produces joy, and that not only changes my outlook, it changes the way I look.

TS - this is what it means to “be hope,” to have a life marked by hope. You look forward, you endure trials, you produce joy. But for many of us, we have to truthfully acknowledge…my life doesn’t look like that. We know it doesn’t match up to where we are. How do we get there? How can we let hope change us, define us?

Warren Wiersbe - “This confident hope gives us the encouragement and enablement we need for daily living. It does not put us in a rocking chair where we complacently await the return of Jesus Christ. Instead, it puts us in the marketplace, on the battlefield, where we keep on going when the burdens are heavy and the battles are hard. Hope is not a sedative; it is a shot of adrenaline, a blood transfusion. Like an anchor, our hope in Christ stabilizes us in the storms of life, but unlike an anchor, our hope moves us forward, it does not hold us back.”

Peter agrees. If hope is real, it changes things. It propels us forward into action.

- 13 So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.

TS - hope requires action. If hope is going to define us, individually as Christians, and corporately as the church, how are we going to do that? Here are three practical action steps to have hope define you, the first half of the pillars that hold up the church:

WORSHIP FAITHFULLY

By this, I mean attend church faithfully. Attending church anchors you in the hope given to us in Jesus Christ. Corporate worship is designed to:

—remind you of what is true

—focus on gospel

—hear Bible preached and taught

—lift voices together in worship

—equip you to serve and share faith in the world

—encourage you to persevere

This truth is what prompted the writer of Hebrews to declare in - “23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”

Here is why this seemingly simplistic step is so important…the average church attender (regular church attender) in America attends church once a month. Ironically a ‘regular’ church attender is the very definition of ‘irregular’ in their attendance. Listen…being a Christian is more than attending church on Sunday, but it is not less than that.

I meet so many Christians who want to do hard things, big things, for God. Yet they neglect one of the easiest, smallest things to do for God. Show up. There are any number of things to do on Sunday mornings. And if you want your life to be defined by something other than hope, do those things. But if you want your life to be defined by hope, go to church.

2. GROW SPIRITUALLY

- 5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

If hope looks forward, growth moves us forward. And those who fail to grow, Peter says, are “shortsighted.” They can’t see forward to what God has for them. They are only looking at now. Do you know what we call people who do that? Hopeless.

People who attend church 12x a year also don’t pick up their Bible to read it regularly, they don’t pray often, and they wonder why their life doesn’t look like this description in . Many of you have taken the step across the line into faith, but you haven’t taken a single step since.

Growth is an investment in eternity. Spiritual growth is an act of movement forward. As we say it around here, “Wherever you are, God doesn’t want you there.” Keep moving. How often are you sitting in front of an open Bible? How often are you in prayer listening for guidance? As you look back over your life, do you look more like Jesus today than you did a year ago? A decade ago?

3. CONNECT RELATIONALLY

Peter, who writes this great text about hope in , will write this application just a few verses later:

- 21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.

22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.

Hope declares that you are not going through life alone. The trials are too tough, temptations too difficult. If you attempt this life alone, it will only lead to despair.

The church is the living lab where you learn how your faith works. You learn what hope is and how to live with it. When someone encourages you through a trial, it gives hope. When someone pushes your forward toward more Christlikeness, it gives you hope. One person singing worship songs in this room is sad. But when we all come together, it brings hope. This is why says that when we come together it is encouraging. Because coming together creates hope.

This is why we gather here. This is why we do classes and groups and ministries. Those help develop new relationships, and helps existing ones to flourish.

Conclusion

These simple, practical steps are what we build our lives upon, what we build the church upon. For some, they seem too easy, too simplistic. Really basic. And that’s the point. They seem simple and easy, but are they really?

—average church attendance 1x a month

—read bible a few times a year

—more people than ever in LifeGroups, but still under 50%

If you are frustrated in your faith…this is why. And if you are regular in these things…keep going. These foundational things never stop.

ILL - best baseball teams are those, not with the most all-stars or highest paid players (Yankees). The best teams are those that consistently execute the fundamentals for 162 games.

These things seem simple and basic. But you never graduate from the basics. 1000 page novels are built on ABC’s. Complex calculus is built on 0-9. This is the foundation. Everything we do is built upon them. Together we will build our lives here.

COMMUNION -