What Is Hope?

Passage: Acts 24:15, 1 Corinthians 15:19

Main Idea:

Message Goal:

Introduction: The Role of Death and the Anticipation of Hope

I initially began constructing this lesson by asking the question, “Understanding Death…As Much As Possible.” However, I soon realized how dark and ineffective such a study would be. After much digging, I decided to focus on hope, which is a response to the question of death. However, in order to focus on and study hope, we must consider death. Death is the catalyst that makes hope appealing and quite frankly, necessary. So, what is death?

Lexham Survey of Theology Sin and Death

Death is the unnatural divorce of the immaterial soul and the physical body, resulting from the separation between God and humanity, brought about by sin.

Die: to pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life.

What brought death to us? Well, first we must understand that death is a consequence. When my son does something wrong we given him what we call a consequence. Though it is a possibility, it is never a reality until something is done to warrant the impending or possible action.

Now, we know that death is a consequence because of what happened early in the biblical narrative. It is recorded in Genesis 2:15-17.

Genesis 2:15–17 CSB

15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

Now, death is the antagonist of mankind. It is the event and experience that was imposed onto the lives of all men by the rebellious action of Adam in the garden. However, hope is what holds us together as we anticipate redemption from man’s ultimate consequence.

Hope is the expectation of fulfillment of something desired or promised.

N.T. Wright in Surprised by Hope offered two unique questions, which we will use to continue our study tonight:

What is the ultimate Christian hope?

What hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present?

Wright posits that we have thought about hope incorrectly, and I believe he’s right. Our idea of hope is too narrow and “out of this world” to serve as the consoling truth it was for the primitive believers. The central idea of hope in the Bible is that it breaks through in this life as it brings us into a more beautiful and real life of eternity.

Interestingly, hope is concerned with ideas such as resurrection, the “end” or beginning of the world, and new creation. Hope is Christians response to what is God making of the world, the cosmos. This answer does not concern itself with simply the church or our individual salvation, but rather, the reconstitution of the world.