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The Hope of Heaven
1 John 2:28-3:3.
1 John 2:28-3:3, “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
29If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.
3:1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
And that is what we are!
The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.
But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
3Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”
NIV
In that passage John touches upon one of the great themes of the Bible, the subject of hope.
The word occurs over 50 times in the New Testament.
Our strength to live healthy, godly, productive lives depends greatly on this element of hope in our hearts.
Without hope there is really no reason to expend effort that is why people suffering from depression have no energy.
A state of hopelessness is closely akin to a state of death.
Hope is as essential to the human soul as water or food is to our physical bodies.
A life without hope is a living hell.
In fact, one thing that will make hell so unbearable is the absolute absence of hope.
The Devil was having a yard sale, and all of his tools were marked with different prices.
They were tools like hatred, lust, jealously, deceit, lying, and pride all carrying a high price tag.
But over to one side of the yard on display was a tool more worn than any other tool.
It was also the most expensive.
The tool was labeled Discouragement.
When asked why this tool was so costly, the Devil answered, “It’s more useful to me than any other tool.
When I can’t bring my victims down with any of these other tools, I use discouragement, because most of them don’t even realize it belongs to me.”
Have you ever had that tool used on you?
Have you ever lost your joy because you lost your hope?
Have you ever lost your will to go on because you lost your hope?
Paul wrote in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
NIV
Have you ever been around someone who was overflowing in hope?
That’s good kind of person to be around.
When I’m around a person like that I want to get all the overflow of hope I can get.
A person who is overflowing with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit is also full of joy and peace.
Those are the kinds of things that accompany hope.
It’s amazing what a person full of hope can accomplish.
But the Devil also knows that godly hope is a powerful thing.
That’s why he will do everything he can to rob you of your confident expectation in God.
In the New Testament the word translated hope means “confident expectation.”
In our society hope often carries the weak idea of wishful thinking.
We say, “I hope so” and often mean “I doubt so.”
But when you read that word in the New Testament understand that we are talking about a firm expectation.
That kind of hope has a profound influence on the way we live.
In the Bible God gives hope as a preparation for great things?
There is Abraham in Ur of Chaldes.
He is surrounded by idolatry and wickedness.
God gives Abraham a very special promise.
Genesis 12:1-3 Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, from your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
NKJV
Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was barren.
And God begins by offering to Abraham the impossible.
“I will make of you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great.”
How many think you might be excited about life if you had just gotten a promise from God like that?
It gave Abraham the strength to do what God told him to do.
But, as Abraham proceeded in his journey he encountered some discouragements.
When he got to the land God had promised him he found that there were already people there.
The Canaanites were occupying the land.
I don’t think Abraham was expecting that.
Guess what God did?
He gave Abraham a “hope boost”.
Those of you who get flu shots know that sometimes you have to get a booster shot because what you got in the past is no longer sufficient for the present.
Well there are some of us here today who need a shot of hope, a booster shot of hope.
And God wants you to have that this morning.
He told Abraham in no uncertain terms that his descendants would have that land.
Then there came a famine in the very place where God had led Abraham to go.
I doubt that made a lot of sense to Abraham.
If God led me somewhere I would expect abundance, not scarcity.
Abraham goes down to Egypt and has a moral failure by telling Sarah to lie about her being his wife.
Have you ever been discouraged about your own failures?
I think those can be some of the greatest discouragements of all.
That wasn’t the last of Abraham’s discouragements.
There was the conflict between his herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen.
Then there was the conflict with the kings who captured Lot and his family.
I want you to remember that Abraham’s journey of faith encountered a lot of discouraging circumstances, not to mention the 25 years that passed before Abraham began to experience the blessing of his son Isaac.
What did God do to help Abraham succeed in his journey?
On a number of occasions He fed Abraham’s soul with reminders of His promise.
Why?
Because hope is what will empower Abraham to do what is to be done in the now!
This morning we learn from our text just how essential hope is to our success now.
If I were to ask you the question this morning, “What are you looking forward to?” how would you answer?
If I were to strengthen that question by asking, “What are you living for?”
I would be touching on this issue of hope.
John addresses The Subject of Our Hope
\\ 1.
We Need to Know What We Are Now.
In I John 3:2 John says, “Now, we are the children of God...” John 1:11-13 “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God- 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” NIV
I am not a child of God because I am better than any sinner out there.
I am only a child of God because I receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ.
But if we are to succeed in our journey of faith, we must know who we are.
“Now, we are the children of God...”
This is not just something that will happen someday in the great beyond.
This is a present reality.
As a believer, say it with me, “Now I am a child of God.”
This is something we can know in the here and now, in this life.
I have asked people, “If you were to die today, do you know for certain that you would go to heaven?”
An answer that often comes is, “I hope so.
I’ve tried to live a good life and I would hope that God would accept me.”
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