Hope – Sermon 17 August, 2014

“Hope”
Romans 5:1-11
Hope, simply defined, is a positive attitude toward the future.
Many people buy lottery tickets hoping that they will win a prize. Most know that they will not, but they buy tickets anyway, hoping that they will cash in big someday.
Their “hope” of winning is just for hope’s sake and it is not always healthy – our hope should be in the right thing.
And many people just hope that whatever comes is better than what is happening today…
Hope is so powerful that it can make the difference between living and dying.
The difference between life and death is nothing more than hope.
To the Christian, hope is central to the faith. And as Christian we live with a hope that is secured by no one less than God himself, and his Son Jesus Christ.
What do we hope for?
1. Eternal life
God has promised that those who love him will live with him for ever – and that the life we spend with him will be free for all the things which cause us pain and suffering now.
2. The coming of our Lord
Jesus, when he left the earth weeks after his resurrection, made a promise that he would physically and personally return to bring his children home. We do not place our hope in a mystic idea or a set of ideas – we place it in a real person – Jesus Christ – who has promised to make our hopes reality, in person!
3. The Resurrection
We can look forward to this resurrection with hope, because we know that when it comes that we, as God’s children, will be found righteous because of the work of Christ for us on the cross.
As Christians, we live in hope – not just hoping for good things in the future, but living with hope as an ever-present reality in our lives.
Today’s passage is a strong treatment for hope – God’s way.
Hope is repeated three times…
1. The first time, in verse two, we read that “…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God”.
The first two verses explain that as a Christians, we have been made right with God. This is the simple meaning the phrase ‘Justified by faith’.
Our belief and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour has brought peace between us and God.
Being in this state of peace has many benefits, we can look forward to the future with confident expectation that God will keep his promise to take us to live with him for eternity.
Our “hope of the glory of God”, is knowing that God will be faithful to us, and that no matter what may happen in the present, our hope for the future is secure.
This security leads us the second occurrence of the word hope.
2. The second time, in verse four, we find that hope is at the end of a chain of events that begin with suffering and ends with hope.
You would think that suffering and hope didn’t have much in common with each other. In fact the only connection we would naturally make is that people hope that their suffering will eventually end, somehow!
The words in verse three, “we rejoice in our sufferings”, are not meant to portray Christians as people who go looking for ways to get hurt.
They actually compliment the words that come just before them, the words that we’ve just looked at in verse two ‘we rejoice in our hope”, and together they paint a picture of Christians rejoicing in their hopes for the future and also rejoicing in their present sufferings.
Which brings the question “why would anyone rejoice in suffering?”
Again, this is not a call to pretend we’re not suffering, or ignore the painful parts in our lives.
It is a call to accept the reality of suffering in our lives, trusting that God will help us through them.
God can do amazing things in the lives of those who trust him through the hard times as well as the easy ones.
Suffering doesn’t disappear from our lives when we make a step of faith toward Jesus, but it does become less powerful.
Our faith will help us to persevere, and as we learn to persevere our character is strengthened. And as our character, strengthened not by our own devices but by our faith in God, grows, we look to the future with more and more hope.
3. And the third time, in verse five, we read “… hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
This verse brings up the grounds for hope we have – we are not disappointed in hope – our hope is well grounded – because God has already shown us what he can do for us by giving us his Holy Spirit to help and guide us until our ultimate hope is realized.
The Holy Spirit in our lives is like a deposit made by God – a guarantee – that one day all he has promised and much much more, will happen.
Many people live with hope which they’ve generated themselves
Our hope has a foundation
a. It is built on the trustworthiness of God’s Word
b. It is built on the love of God in our lives
c. It is built on the undeniable existence and work of Jesus Christ
We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our passage in Romans also declares, our hope is also built on the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The author of Hebrews uses the image of a boat at anchor or tied up at pier. As followers of Christ, we are anchored to nothing less than Christ himself – so may we as his children live lives that show this hope to be alive and real.
When we’re hit by tragedy, may we realize that no matter how severe it is, that there is nothing that can extinguish the hope that God gives, and that with God’s help we can even make tragedy work for us, and lead us closer to lives full of hope.
May the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives lead us to live lives full of hope.
Hope that steadies our hearts in the present and prepares us for the future, and leads us to do things for God which would be “hopeless” without Him.

Krikor Youmshajekian