Jesus: Our Hope Set before Us

Text: Hebrews 6:11-20

A Shortage of Hope

Verse 11 encourages us to show the same diligence mentioned in vs.9 &10

The Jewish Christians who are the recipients of this letter HAVE been diligent in several areas:

In the area of working for the Lord

In the area of love shown towards Jesus

In the area of ministry to the saints (other Christians)

The exhortation is to show the same diligence in “realizing the full assurance of hope.”

With the implication that these believers lack “a full assurance of hope.”

They have done well to do the other things, but they need to also cling to hope.

Hope is the anchor of our souls of verse 19

It is sure and steadfast

Implying that our world may fall apart around us, but because we have the “full assurance of hope” we are not swayed or dismayed.

Let us be careful to define hope the way the Bible wants us to understand it:

The Holman Bible Dictionary says that hope is a:

Trustful expectation, particularly with reference to the fulfillment of God’s promises. Biblical hope is the anticipation of a favorable outcome under God’s guidance. More specifically, hope is the confidence that what God has done for us in the past guarantees our participation in what God will do in the future. This contrasts to the world’s definition of hope as “a feeling that what is wanted will happen.”

We have that confident expectation because as:

1 Peter 1:3 (NASB) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

We have been born again into a LIVING hope because Jesus rose from the dead

We have hope because the Holy Spirit puts that hope within us:

Romans 15:13 (NASB) Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, do we have that hope that the writer of Hebrews admonishes his readers to have?

I tend to wonder since there seems to be so many who are redefining, recanting, renouncing their faith in Jesus.

Worship leaders, pastors, authors, song writers and others are walking away from Biblical Christianity

One has to wonder what they had to begin with.

What about us?

What do we have?

Will it sustain us as our world crashes in on us?

We Need Hope

As the Complete Biblical Library says:

Hebrews–Jude The Epistle to the Hebrews

It is imperative that believers display the same careful concern and painstaking effort in the development of full assurance in regard to the Christian’s hope—the victorious reign of Jesus Christ at the end of this age. There is high emotional intensity in the words “desire” (epithumoumen) and “diligence” (spoudēn). The latter term indicates that believers are to make every effort to display their confidence in the promised but as yet unrealized subjugation of the universe to the Son (2:8,9). Apparently some of the Christians at that time had begun to waver in their “full assurance of hope” concerning the glorious second coming of Christ to rule over His kingdom. The display of confidence in the Lord’s second coming is a hallmark of Christian maturity.

We need to turn to God with a whole heart crying out to Him for hope.

Jesus is our LIVING Hope

I believe that what God will give us is a fresh revelation of Jesus.

He is our living hope.

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises.

The proof that God doesn’t lie — He always tells the truth.

Just as was promised hundreds, sometimes thousands of years before it happened, Jesus:

Was born of a virgin

He lived a sinless life that accomplished the will of His Father.

Died a horrible, painful, disfiguring death for our sins

Sandra told me Tuesday that she came to church listening to a new Casting Crowns song that reminds us:

The only scars in heaven, they won't belong to me and you There'll be no such thing as broken and all the old will be made new And the thought that makes me smile now even as the tears fall down Is that the only scars in heaven are on the hands that hold you now

Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Father when He rose from the dead

Jesus is literally our living hope.

Let’s cling more tightly to Him tonight.

Even as He holds us in trying, painful times.

Let’s Pursue Prayer in Hope of Jesus

Vs. 18 tells us that we who have taken refuge in God have taken hold of the hope set before us.

It is a hope so strong and powerful that it will take us within the veil.

It takes us into the Holy of Holies where we can ask for grace to help in our time of need.

Let’s avail ourselves of that Hope tonight.

Let’s go behind the veil into the very presence of God and present our needs.

Let’s pray for Europe and the U.S.

Prayer need

We have a prayer list and we have burdens the Holy Spirit has put on our hearts.

Let’s take them all to our living Hope, let’s take them to Jesus.