LET THERE BE HOPE

Kremenchutzky & Kamenetzky Joke

Definition

As we already know the topic of this day is hope. Before I dive in the message let me share a couple of definitions. According to the Google's dictionary, provided by Oxford Languages, hope means,

noun 1. A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

verb want something to happen or be the case.

Here you are some examples about hope as we usually understand it, "I hope I will win the Powerball," I don't know about you but have you ever made a promise such as "God, if you allow me to hit the jackpot I will definitely tithe 10% of it to my church." Yet one never wins, right? How come? I am a man of God!

Let me be real, I think the answer is God knows my heart so well that he already knows the minute I hit the jackpot the last thing I will think about will be either Him or my church! Just saying.

Here goes another one, "the new elected authorities will fix all these issues we are facing." Truth is, more often than not, once the new authorities begin their tenure almost nothing seems to change, at least for the rest of us.

When I was in my twenties I used to tell myself "I will be a famous rockstar one day!"

As I kept growing older my hope aimed at other subjects such as getting a degree, at getting the dream job, at meeting the perfect girl (whatever that might mean to you), at getting married, at building a family, at buying that Tesla's latest model car, at owning a beautiful house by the hills.

As you can tell the list can go on and on and on. This makes sense right? After all, I am a child of the Most High and a favored American citizen so I should be living as such! Just kidding...

On a serious note, let me ask a question: Where was God in all these hopes and wants I just shared with you? The answer is NOWHERE.

Interesting because you know what ? God is the only author of true hope. And I want you to pay attention here. God can be in the past, in the present, and in the future simultaneously, that means nothing can take Him by surprise right? This attribute makes Him omniscient (all knowing) because He is not tied to time, like you and me, he owns it. Revelation 1:8

Revelation 1:8 NRSV

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Yet He has so much hope that knowing beforehand about Adam & Eve's fall and the many ordeals He will experience with human beings he still created the Universe, the stars, the planets, animals and humankind.

As the author of all hope, He relocated Himself from heaven to earth, in a mortal body, suffering and dying, and coming back on the 3rd day for the sake of accomplishing the promise of salvation which entails forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. All this by grace alone or sola gratia if you prefer it in Latin.

Church, we need to have a broader understanding about life, hope, and the future to come as individuals and as a community. These "10 minutes on earth" are just bliss, our hope needs to aim for the long shot of eternity. Jesus will surely come and we will be raised again. We will spend eternity in His presence, worshiping Him.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary Hope

HOPE—one of the three main elements of Christian character (1 Cor. 13:13). It is joined to faith and love, and is opposed to seeing or possessing (Rom. 8:24; 1 John 3:2). “Hope is an essential and fundamental element of Christian life, so essential indeed, that, like faith and love, it can itself designate the essence of Christianity (1 Pet. 3:15; Heb. 10:23). In it the whole glory of the Christian vocation is centred (Eph. 1:18; 4:4).” Unbelievers are without this hope (Eph. 2:12; 1 Thess. 4:13). Christ is the actual object of the believer’s hope, because it is in his second coming that the hope of glory will be fulfilled (1 Tim. 1:1; Col. 1:27; Titus 2:13).

People out there might say that hope is not an exclusive attribute of Jesus' followers. And this is true to some extent. In fact,

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Hope

The Greeks recognized that human beings expressed hope by nature; however, this kind of hope reflects both good and bad experiences. The future was thus a projection of one’s own subjective possibilities (Bultmann, “ἐλπίς, elpis,” 2.517).

But

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Hope

Biblical hope avoids this subjectivity by being founded on something that provides a sufficient basis for confidence in its fulfillment: God and His redemptive acts as they culminate in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In other words, our hope shouldn't be based on our own "limited" wishes and desires, but it must be based on God and His redemptive work as its source and object.

Psalm 33:20–22 (NRSV)

20 Our soul waits for the Lord;

he is our help and shield.

21 Our heart is glad in him,

because we trust in his holy name.

22 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,

even as we hope in you.

Hope in God is more about waiting on the completion of Jesus Christ's revelation (second coming) than seeing things happening right away.

You see, when our hope doesn't point to God's work we might be disappointed more often than not. It was my hope that my parents would live a long and peaceful life. Reality was cancer took them away too soon and they passed away only 3 months apart. Out of ignorance, my hope was based on a temporary scale of time. Human beings live an average of 70 to 80 years. However, my mother accepted the Lord and my father asked Jesus to please heal my mother as they both were suffering the pain inflicted to people going through cancer.

Today, my hope is in Jesus' promise of salvation and eternal life to those who believe in Him, hence I am positive that I will see my folks again, and thanks be to God, this time will be for eternity.

Thanks for letting me share! God bless you all.