5 Elements of Hope

Well, Sabbath day. Want to say a special welcome to the guests that we have with us today. We're always happy to see new faces and enjoy the fact that we've got new people coming by to visit us just about every week. So welcome and nice to have you here. It's a beautiful day outside. Nice to see that we're going to have a warm and sunny day today and hopefully a little bit into next week as well as we get ready for the fall and all the things that fall and then winter after that, bring with it. I just need to make a setting here. All of us this time of year, of course, are looking forward to the Holy Day season that Mr. Thomas referenced briefly in the announcements.

Of course, we have the Feast of Trumpets coming up that we're keeping in this coming week, actually, on Thursday, and then the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. And as he mentioned, a time that really, for us, pictures the fulfillment of God's plan from the time that he'll send his son Jesus Christ to return to the earth, Satan being bound and put away, and then God's kingdom arriving so that we and all humankind can receive the inheritance that's waiting for them.

There's a concept that binds that all together, which Mr. Thomas also referred to in the announcements that I'd like to talk about today. So when we talk about the word hope, what is it that you hope for? If I walked up to you before church on the street and just simply asked you that question, what do you hope for? What would your answer be? It's one of those kind of hard questions, really, because it's pretty nebulous. So I don't know if you've ever walked up to someone and just asked them, how are you doing? We probably do, because at least as Americans, it's kind of a throwaway line whenever we see anybody, right? And of course, the expected answer is, oh, I'm doing great. Or things are good, or whatever. But have you ever had somebody actually tell you how they're doing after you ask them that? It feels a little uncomfortable sometimes, doesn't it? Because after the second or third minute of listening to all of the difficulties that they're struggling with, you say, you know, really, I was just hoping you'd say, everything's good, and we could move on with our conversation. What do you hope for is a bit of that question, isn't it? Because hope is a bit of a nebulous concept. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

And we use it in all kinds of ways when we think about it. Everything from the trivial, like, I just got a new pair of shoes, I hope I don't step in a mud puddle on the way in the building, to critically important things, like, I hope my car is going to keep running for another year because I can't afford to replace it. Or, if you're in college, I hope I can get a job when I finish college and support myself so I don't have to live in my parents' basement, all the way through to the foolish, like when I was a child and thought, I hope my sister will be abducted by aliens.

But what does hope mean in a Christian context? That's what I'd like to spend a bit of time talking about today. And what role should it play in our Christian lives? Is hope specific?

Is it certain? Is it ethereal? Is it conceptual? What is it? I'd like to bring that concept, the thought, the word down into more specifics for us today so it has more meaning, especially as we move through these upcoming days in our calendar of Christian observances. So I'd like to look today at five elements of hope. First of all, the importance of hope, looking at what the Bible says about it and why and how it's important. Secondly, the certainty of hope, the fact that hope is more than just an ethereal wish that we might have. Third, our specific hope.

Fourth, the centrality of hope. And then lastly, the transformative power of hope. So hopefully, as we move through these points, we'll get a little more of an understanding and ability to take the somewhat loose concept of hope and tie it down a little bit more. So to start with, first of all, the importance of hope. Hope is one of the most important Christian attributes.

So when you think of the attribute of hope, what passages in the Bible do you think of?

We're going to turn to one that, if you're like me, you probably didn't think of.

So let's turn to Ephesians 4, and we'll read the verses 1 through 6 in Ephesians 4.

Talking again here about the importance of hope as a Christian attribute. Ephesians 4, and we'll start in verse 1. I think we know this as a chapter in the Bible that talks a lot about unity and oneness in the Christian faith. Ephesians 4, starting in verse 1, Paul writing, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling to which you are called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, and bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Verse 4, there's one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

So how many times have we read through this passage and not really focused on the fact that it tells us here there is one hope of our calling? If you're like me, I really only noticed that as I was looking through and preparing this message and looking at the different places where hope comes in the Bible. But it says here that just as surely as there is one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have only one hope as Christians. What is that hope?

That's what I hope to talk more about today. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 13, we know this as the love chapter, where it talks about all of the attributes of love, which is an incredibly important Christian attribute. 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 13.

This chapter, if we recall at the end, and we'll read that verse in a moment, talks about three of the most important Christian attributes and lists love as the most important of those three.

1 Corinthians 13, 13. Now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

How often have we thought about the fact that hope ranks up there with love and faith in its importance as a Christian attribute? We think often about faith in God. We heard in the sermonette about the fact that as Christians, we do put our faith in God in the things that are written in the Bible. I believe 100% that there is plenty of other evidence that those things are true that goes along and strengthens our faith, but in the end, belief in God is a matter of faith.

Incredibly important. We can't come to God without faith. We can't live Christian lives without exuding love to other people. It's just not possible because God is in us and God is love, and if we're living His way of life, that love will come out in the way that we deal with others.

But as it points out in this passage in terms of these three important attributes, hope is right up there with them. And just like we need faith to be Christians, just like as true sons of God, we can't live without showing love to others, as Christians, we can't walk without hope.

It's that important as an attribute of our Christian lives.

Let's turn to one other passage in 1 Thessalonians.

1 Thessalonians 5, and we'll read verses 1 through 10, I believe.

1 Thessalonians 5. Now, this is a passage that we often look at at this time of year.

Again, at the Feast of Trumpets coming up this week, we look to Jesus Christ's return, and it talks about that here in 1 Thessalonians 5. But I want to also point out how the concept of hope, again, weaves into it. 1 Thessalonians 5, and we'll start in verse 1.

Let those of us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love.

Again, we see those two important attributes of faith and love.

And as a helmet, the hope of salvation. That's in verse 8. I just realized I pasted things a little funny here. So let's start in verse 1. Concerning the times and the season, brethren, you have no need that I should write you. For you yourselves, in verse 2, know perfectly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. For when they say peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pangs upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore, in verse 6, let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. It's talking about the fact that we're not to live our lives the way the rest of the world lives their lives. We can't spend all of our time in pursuits of just having fun, things that are not serious. We need to think about the salvation and the calling that we have, and be sober and not sleep in that sense. For those who sleep sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night.

But let those of us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. So interesting, again, that we see those three attributes pulled together, and this time hope being talked about as a helmet. What guards our minds, everything that we're thinking, our heads, and when you think of a soldier out there, all of these things are important. The breastplate of faith and love to protect the heart from that stab of a sword that would kill you, but just important, a club to the head, protected by the helmet of hope, the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live with Him. So here we see, again, hope being so important, part of that breastplate and armor, that armor that we have on as Christians to protect us and to protect our very center of thought, our minds, and tied also, in this case, to salvation, which comes through Jesus Christ. And we'll see more how that ties into hope as we move on through the message. So we see in this section that hope is one of the most important attributes of Christianity. Have we recognized it as being that important?

Have we thought about hope and its importance right up there with faith and love in how we live our Christian lives and its importance to us? Let's move on to the second section of what we'll talk about today, and that is the certainty of hope. When you think about hope, what kind of a concept is it to you? Like I mentioned before, in today's world, we use the word hope, and in the English language, I think to talk more about things that we wish for, don't we? It's very common to hear people say, well, I sure hope I win the lottery. I hope the Browns win tomorrow. Certainly not a lot of definite faith in some of those statements, especially with the Browns.

But we think about hope a lot more these days when we talk about it as something that might or might not come to pass. We don't talk about it when we say, I hope something happens. I think nobody really interprets that as meaning, I know definitively that this will happen. It's only a question of when. But let's see what the Bible says about it in terms of how certain hope really is.

Let's turn to Hebrews 6. And maybe just an example, first of all, an interesting story I found online, a little dialogue between a young person named Jamie and God, talking as well about how hope can sometimes be like a wish. And Jamie asks God, how long is a million years to you, God?

God answers Jamie, it is but a second. Jamie says, God, how much is a million dollars to you?

God says, it's but a penny to me, Jamie. Jamie thinks hard and says, God, can I have a penny? God says, just a second.

All right, Hebrews 6. We'll start in verse 10, talking again about the certainty of hope.

For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and you do minister. And we desire that each of you shows the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promise. In verse 13, for when God made a promise to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, in verse 17, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, how definite it is, how sure it is to come to pass, he confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope that is set before us. This hope we have is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.

So, what does God say to us here about hope? Is it ethereal? Is it something that might happen?

What he's saying is, if you believe in God, if you believe in the certainty of his purpose and the fact that he cannot lie and he performs what he says he performs, just as certainly as that, we can count on the hope that we have in him. It's that certain, so much so that it's to be an anchor to our soul. We see things written in the Bible about the winds of doctrine and being buffeted around by things that happen out in the world, that we have to be strong. And this anchor of hope, it's like a boat, when you think about it, that's out there in the water during a storm that comes up. And what do they do? Even in stormy weather, when they're sailing, they'll drop an anchor, because that anchor will help to hold the ship in place, so it won't get blown all over the place.

It'll remain on center, it'll remain where it is, and not go into the rocks. The same way we're given hope as an anchor, so that when all of these things that happen around us in the world today, all of these things that happen in our lives that can take us off track, distract us, move us in a different direction than what God has laid before us, it's hope that's supposed to be there as an anchor, holding us down and holding us fast and holding us into place, in the place that God wants us to be. Let's turn to Psalm 118. You know, nowadays we see so many things, especially as we get into political season, where people make all kinds of promises. And we can read these passages in the Bible where God says He will perform the things that He's done, but the fact is, as human beings, the examples that we see around us don't give us so many things that we can count on in our everyday lives. We hear promises that are made by politicians, we hear promises that are made by people at work, people in other places of authority sometimes, and they might come true and they might not, but we don't always know. We can't count on it 100%. In Psalm 118 verses 9, 8 and 9, we're reminded it's better in verse 8 to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It's better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. When God says something, He performs it.

Even though we don't see that example necessarily among all of the human leaders that we've seen in our lives and in our world, we can count on it happening. So the thing that we want to take away from this section is that hope is certain. The Christian concept of hope, true hope, is certain.

It's not something where we have any question about whether it will happen or not, because God is promised by His very name at the center, as we'll see later, of His very plan that the things that we hope for as Christians will most certainly happen. So let's talk about what's at that center now. In the third point, our specific hope. Our specific hope. Because, like I mentioned at the beginning, we can hope as humans for a lot of things. But as Christians, God gives us one thing to hope for. Remember, we read in the beginning in Ephesians 4, just as surely as there's one God, there's one hope. And so we have to be centered on specifically what that one hope is. It can't be an anchor for us if we don't know what it is. So let's focus now on what it is.

King James Bible has a hundred and three, thirty-three instances of the word hope in it. Eighty-nine of those are in the New Testament. If you look at the new international version, 174 locations, eighty of those in the New Testament, the rest in the Old, and that's according to BibleGateway.com. So we'll read through a few of those to talk a little bit more about what the concept of hope focuses on. And in general, what it does focus on, as we'll see in these next few verses, relate to the resurrection from the dead and the related rewards that God holds for mankind with the coming of His kingdom, all of which are bound together in Jesus Christ.

So it's the hope and the resurrection from the dead and the reward that God has for His people all through Jesus Christ. And let's start in Colossians 1, verses 24 through 27.

Colossians 1, verse 24 through 27. Here again, Paul writing, at this point in prison, and he says in verse 24 of Colossians 1, I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what's lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.

The mystery in verse 26, which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

There's one way of looking at it. We're looking at a single hope. We're looking at some verses that come around it from different angles, in this case talking about the hope of glory. As we know, what that's talking about is the fact that when Jesus Christ returns, that we, His people, those who are His true people, will be glorified, will become like Him.

And that's a hope that we have, resurrection and a glory like the glory of God. Let's turn to Acts 24, which looks at the same single hope, specific hope, again from another angle. Acts 24, and we'll read verse 1, and then we'll read verse 15. Now, what's happening in Acts 24 is the process of Paul going through the Roman legal system. So, if we remember, Paul came onto the Temple Mount.

He was offering some sacrifices there. There was a big outcry among the Jews. There were clashes between different people. The Romans came out of their garrison, which they had overlooking the Temple because they saw the trouble down there. They whisked Paul away, and they punished him, after which they suddenly realized he was a Roman citizen. Oops. So now he has recourse through the Roman legal system as a citizen, and he begins this process of moving through that system.

So, now there's evidence being given to the governor with the high priest giving some of the evidence against him. So in verse 1, we see, after five days, Ananias the high priest came down with the elders and a certain orator named Tertullus, and these gave evidence to the governor against Paul. So the governor had to make some decisions about Paul's guilt or innocence in this matter. And we won't read through all the proceedings, but I'd like to focus on verse 15, when it's Paul's turn to speak. So, you know, look at this as a court-type proceeding, right? We've all seen Perry Mason or Law and Order or some of these different shows. It's a court-type proceeding.

Same thing that happens today. Slightly different rules, but actually our legal system is very much based on the old Roman legal system. So in a lot of ways, very similar, where everyone gives their testimony. In this case, the person who's in charge judges. And Paul there says in verse 15, I have hope in God, which they, talking about the high priest, themselves also accept that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both the just and the unjust. So we're triangulating around this concept of hope, looking at the different facets of this one specific hope. Here it's referred to as the hope of the resurrection of the dead. Previous passage talked about the hope of glory.

We can see how these things hang together, right? Because when we're resurrected, we know what we were resurrected in spirit form that happens to have a glory like the glory that God has. Okay, let's look at another section, this time in Titus 1, again written by Paul. And we'll read verses 1 and 2 of Titus 1. Titus 1 verses 1 and 2. Paul, in verse 1, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with God in godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie promised before time began. So again, this concept is very similar to what we read about earlier in Hebrews, right?

The fact that God cannot lie. He makes promises which he absolutely will keep. In this case, talked about as the hope of eternal life. Okay, so now we've seen three different angles of this, right? The hope of glory, hope in the resurrection, hope of eternal life. And we know when we're resurrected in glory that we will have eternal life because we are no longer humans but become spirit beings.

Okay, so we see very much that that specific hope that we have has everything to do with the fact that we will be resurrected, become spiritual beings, be glorified, and have the opportunity to live forever. That is our specific hope. Now it's interesting when we read things, because today, you know, there's so much of the belief in heaven and hell, the fact that when we die we'll immediately be up in heaven, and people have different views about even how certain that is, when we'll read about that in a little while. What I'd like to talk about, though, briefly is, what did resurrection mean back in these days? Okay, because one of the debates that goes on in theology is, well, when people were talking about resurrection back then, they kind of meant different things, and they didn't really mean true, coming back to life, but it was more of this concept of passing into another world.

And there's a man out there named N.T. Wright. He's a doctor of theology, used to be a theology professor at St. Andrews University, and a bishop in the Anglican Church. He wrote a book that I found very interesting called Surprised by Hope. He's actually one of the most prominent writers in mainstream Christianity in favor of the idea of a resurrection rather than heaven and hell, and his writings from that standpoint are very interesting.

In this section of the book, he says, belief in bodily resurrection was one of the two central things that the pagan Dr. Galen noted about the Christians. So remember, we talk about hope being central. What he's talking about is those original Christians back right after the time that Jesus Christ died, they believed in the resurrection.

That was the hallmark, this pagan doctor who wrote this history. This was the hallmark of the Christians. And Professor Wright goes on to say, take away the stories of Jesus' birth, and you lose only two chapters of Matthew and two of Luke. Take away the resurrection, and you lose the entire New Testament and most of the second-century Church Fathers as well. So what he's saying is, from a biblical perspective, take away the idea of resurrection, and much of the New Testament will be gone. You simply cut it out of your Bible.

And even in the thinking of the New Testament Church and what they referred to as the Church Fathers in the second century, so much of what they wrote centered around this specific idea of the resurrection. Now, nowadays, it's difficult to conceive of that because the idea of heaven and hell has moved very much into mainstream Christianity. But the point that I want to make here is the specific hope of a resurrection is something that starts in the Bible, and it was a central concept to the early Christian Church before things moved away into other types of beliefs.

So that's the third point about our specific hope. And again, this time of year, when we celebrate the Holy Days, we think about the things that those Holy Days signify, the return of Jesus Christ, the putting away of Satan on the Day of Atonement, and the fact that we'll be able to live in a world that's no longer corrupted by his influence, and then the coming of the Kingdom of God.

All of those things are, encompass that hope. They all hang together in the different facets of that specific hope. So let's go on to the next point and talk about the centrality of hope. Okay, we know now it's important.

We know it's specific. Let's talk about the centrality of hope. I'd like for this to turn to 1 Corinthians 15. So when we read that last quote from the book, we talked about the fact that we would lose much of the New Testament if the idea of the resurrection was taken away. What does that mean? Let's look at 1 Corinthians 15 and let's challenge ourselves in terms of whether we've thought of this doctrine as being so central to belief in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 12. And Paul, in his masterful way, takes us through a logical progression here of what happens if we don't believe in the resurrection.

And he's talking with some of his detractors, and we'll read him here starting in verse 12. Paul says, if Christ has preached that he has been raised from the dead, how is it that some among you say that there's no resurrection of the dead?

If there's no resurrection of the dead, then Christ didn't rise. If Christ didn't rise, then our preaching is empty and your faith is in vain. And yes, we've found false witnesses of God because we've testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn't raise up if, in fact, the dead don't rise. So if there's no resurrection, if there's no ability for the dead to rise, then it's impossible that Jesus Christ rose. That's what he says in verse 16. If the dead don't rise, Christ isn't risen. And in verse 17, if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile. You're still in your sins, because if Jesus Christ didn't die and be raised again, there's no forgiveness from our sins. And then those also who have fallen asleep, who are dead in Christ, in verse 18, have perished.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we have all men the most pitiable. So I think this points out exactly what was being said in that quote in the book in terms of how much of the Christian belief in everything ties around the concept of resurrection. Right? That hope, that's an anchor. And what Paul's laying out here is that it holds down all of our basic Christian beliefs. You know, you think about the solar system, right? And you've probably heard people talk about this before in the force of gravity, and we have all of these planets that are revolving around the sun, right? And you take away the force of gravity and what happens? Those planets just go spinning off into space, never to be seen again, to drift away forever in an endless universe. And that's exactly what's being pointed out here in terms of this idea of the resurrection.

Because when you read these verses and what Paul says there, he says, look, it's the idea of resurrection being raised from the dead that holds all of this together. Because if it didn't happen, then Jesus Christ wasn't raised. You're in your sins. All of our Christian faith is worthless.

You might as well just go on and do whatever you want to do because it doesn't matter.

It is that central to the entire system of belief. So without that understanding, our entire belief system falls apart. But do we understand, and how often do we think about how revolutionary the idea of resurrection is? I mean, somebody being literally raised from the dead.

Now, if you think back into the Bible, how many instances can you think of of somebody being resurrected, raised from the dead in the Bible? How many would say 25 or more?

10 or more? 5 or more? Okay, looks like we're trending under 10 here. Okay, so the answer is 9 or 10, depending on how you cut it. We'll get to that in a second. So let me tell you about the ones that are in there. Number one, Elijah and the widow's son. So I think we remember that one.

The widow's son, he, I think, had like a stroke, a sunstroke, brought up to the upper room. Elijah laid on top of him, prayed three times. The breath came back to him. He was raised from the dead.

Elijah, the son and the son of the Shunammite woman, somewhat similar situation. One of my favorites, when the bones of Elisha raise a man. Do you remember that story? There's a battle going on. People have been killed. They didn't have time to dig graves or to build new sepulchers.

So said, well, there's one over there. I think Elijah's buried in there, but that was long ago.

They rolled away the stone, take the man killed in the battle, put him in there. When he touches Elisha's bones, he comes back to life. Pretty incredible. Jesus raises the son of the woman from Nain. Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus. Jesus raises Lazarus. I think we all know that one quite well. One that we don't often focus on, a multitude of people who were in the graves, raised from the dead at the time that Jesus Christ was crucified. An incredible sign of all these people. I mean, you know, it still brings chills to my spine when I think about it. I mean, we've all had people that we know and loved ones who've died. And just imagine, because it doesn't say when these people had died, it just said, and it doesn't give the number either, but it says that there were many of them. So imagine you're there in your house, there's this strange darkness that comes across the land that afternoon, and suddenly you've got one of your old, dead, loved ones who comes knocking on the door and says, hey, I'm back. I mean, how incredibly amazing would that be? The power of that sign. And a few more after that. Peter raises Tabitha.

Paul, another favorite of mine, raises Eudicus, who fell from the window. Does anyone remember the circumstances of that one? So having a church service, Eudicus is sitting back because it's kind of a warm day. He's sitting in the window enjoying the breeze. He falls out of the window, falls down, you know, one or two stories, hits his head, and he dies. Paul goes out, raises him from the dead. So I guess that means God understands if you fall asleep during a sermon, so it's okay. And then the last one, which is why I said nine or ten, is that some say that Paul was raised from the dead in Lystra. So if you go back, we won't read the passage today, but when they were in Lystra, I forget if it was him in Barnabas or who he was with, they were stoned.

And there would be some indication that would say, that would lead people to say that Paul was actually stoned to the point where he died and was raised from the dead, but the Bible does not make that clear. The point that I want to draw out here is nine or ten people in the Bible. This is a rare occurrence even in all of the miracles that were done by Jesus Christ, all of the powerful signs and wonders that he did, whether it was through the prophets or through the apostles. It is an extremely rare thing, and we all often think about how incredibly amazing it is as a witness, the magnitude of that miracle. Now, we often tend to romanticize the Bible, right? And we think about, you know, the times being different and people walking around in robes and all the rest, but the fact is people are people. All of the things that motivate people and the way they act and the drives that they have and the sins that they have have generally been the same all through history, but the way in which they get acted out are differently. But the way that people would have reviewed a resurrection at that time would have been with just as much astonishment as how we would view it today if one of our relatives or loved ones who'd passed away suddenly showed up in our living room. Absolutely incredible and life-changing as an event. And again, going back to the book that N.T. Wright wrote, underscoring the fact that it was being what was talked about here was literally people being raised from the dead, not some ethereal event. So he writes here that when the ancients spoke of resurrection, whether to deny it as all pagans did or to affirm it as some Jews did, they were referring to a two-step narrative in which resurrection, meaning new bodily life, would be preceded by an interim period of bodily death. Resurrection, then, was not a dramatic or vivid way of talking about the state people went into immediately after death. It denoted something that might happen sometime after that. So when the early Christians said that Jesus had risen from the dead, they knew they were saying something, that something had happened to him, that had happened to nobody else, and that nobody had expected to happen. They were not talking about Jesus' soul going into heavenly bliss. They were saying, nor were they saying, confusedly, that Jesus had somehow now become divine. This is simply not what the words meant. There was no implicit connection for Jews or pagans between resurrection and divinization or becoming divine.

While the ancient Romans declared that the recently departed emperor had gone to heaven and become divine, nobody dreamed of saying he'd been raised from the dead. So we think of the concept of resurrection in that time period. What it's saying is that, yes, there are all kinds of beliefs, like when the emperor dies, he passes into another sphere, and he's divine. But nobody ever dared to say that he'd actually been raised from the dead, and he would come walking down the street and walking back into his palace. Two completely separate ideas, and the fact that the idea of resurrection really and truly means coming back to life. And now, when you look at this in terms of a proof of Jesus Christ, even, and his existence and the truth of his resurrection, and again, the writings that Dr. Wright put together point this out further, he talks as well about these ideas that are out there in some of modern scholarship that have now mostly been debunked, saying that the resurrection was a fake and it never happened. And what he points to is that back in this time in the first century when the Romans were ruling the Judean world, it was very normal that every three, four, five years you'd have some Jewish leader rise up, and he'd say, follow me, and we're going to destroy the Romans, and we're going to take back the Jewish kingdom.

And what would happen? The Romans would marshal the forces, centurions would come out, and all the legions, as many as they needed, they'd kill the person.

As soon as the leader was killed, the followers would just sort of melt away into the hills and not be seen again, and the movement was over. Okay? Why did that not happen when Jesus Christ was killed and resurrected? It's because it really happened, and you can't deny it. And the fact is that when you're there and you're living, and the leader of this movement is killed, and he's risen, and he's walking down the street, and he's talking with his disciples, and he's appearing in public, you cannot deny it. You can't fake it. Okay? And that's why this story and the idea of resurrection, all these things, that's why Christianity grew. Because people at that point in time, they lived it. They knew it. They saw it. They saw people who'd been dead for who knows how many years, raised when he was crucified. They knew that he was raised. And again, as Dr. Wright points out in his book, how preposterous would it be for a group of followers of one of these other Jewish revolt leaders who'd been killed the next day after the guy had been killed or a week later to say, by the way, he's been resurrected, so let's all revolt some more. And what would his followers say?

He'd say, forget it! The Romans stomped on us once. He's dead. I haven't seen him. I'm not going to do this again. Right? That's the way the world was at that time. I mean, the Romans had a boot on the throat of these people. We throw around the term decimate sometimes, right, to talk about when something is totally destroyed. The word decimate, deca, means ten. What would the Romans do if there was a village, for example, that would rise up? They'd line the men up. Every tenth one, they would take and they'd kill them. They would decimate the village or the town, and that would teach the people less, and they wouldn't rise up again. So why was it after Jesus Christ was killed that not only did people claim he lived again, but they claimed that he forgave them of their sins, that their sins were gone because of his resurrection? It's because it really happened. Historically speaking, there just is not a way that you can fake that. There isn't. Let's turn back to 1st Corinthians 15. Let's read on verse 20. But now Christ has risen from the dead, and he's become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For in Adam all die, even so in Christ all will be made alive, and each one in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, and afterward those who are Christ at his coming.

Verse 24, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and all power. For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet, and the last enemy that will be destroyed is death. In verse 58, therefore my beloved brethren be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. How much does verse 58, again, pull together the themes that we've talked about before, the certainty of hope, the anchor that it is? So we see these themes coming together with the idea of hope and the resurrection, all to a central point. One more quote from Surprised by Hope from Dr. Wright. The point of the resurrection, he says, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the re-description of death, it's its overthrow. And with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it, depends on death. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. So again, saying that the idea of the resurrection was central in believing Christians in the early New Testament church. And the fact that they believed it not as some re-description of death. And when they talk about the power of death being put away, think today about how much power people hold who threaten with death. We see what's going on in the Middle East right now with ISIS. And we go through our trials as Christians, and I don't want to belittle any of the things that we suffer. But the fact is that we don't sit there in our village with an army of armed men 50 miles away, knowing that when they come in our village, they will ask us to recant or kill us. Okay? That's the power that's taken away through a belief in the resurrection. To know that even though physical death can be imposed, there's a hope that's so much greater than that, that God holds in us that's certain, that's an anchor, that is what we have and what we can hold on to.

So let's move on to the fifth point and the final point and talk about the transformative power of hope. Like anything that God gives us, He gives us for a reason, and He gives us to encourage action. I think we all know that Christianity is not a spectator sport.

It's not for us to sit back and simply read our Bible until the time comes, but it's meant to be active. And all of these things that we believe, if they don't work their way into our lives and cause actions in our lives, are of limited use. So we've read that a hope in Jesus Christ that omits the resurrection and God's resulting kingdom is limited, and an understanding of the resurrection has to be and should be transformative in our lives. But there's a couple of things that form barriers to this transformative power that can come into our lives. The first one is this belief that it's all automatic. It doesn't really matter what we do. We're all going to inherit heaven or eternal life or whatever it is. And the second one is simply forgetting about this hope altogether, because we get so busy and wrapped up into other things that are going on around us.

I'd like to read an article from the Christian Telegraph that was written back in 2011. It was written shortly after some recent research came out from Barna talking about people's belief, in this case, in heaven. It makes an interesting point that we'll underscore here after I read through it. This article says that according to Barna group research, most Americans believe they're going to heaven. Some believe that everyone's going to heaven. Others have a more exclusive view on the afterlife, suggesting that only the good will go to heaven. Barna recently explored whether Americans embrace inclusive or exclusive views of faith, as well as how they operate within the context of religious pluralism or the multi-faith nature of U.S. society.

Universalism is the belief that all human beings will be saved after death. However, American evangelist Sammy Tippett says there's a problem with universalism theology.

Quote, if you believe that everyone ultimately is going to go to heaven, then why did Jesus have to come to the earth? Why did Jesus have to die? Who is Jesus Christ?

Why did he have to go to the cross? There was no need for the cross if universalism is true.

Tippett suggests that many seeker-sensitive churches in the U.S. today tend to stay away from talking about sin, the holiness of God, or anything else that might be considered offensive.

When the focus gets there and you lose that central core focus on who Christ is, then you start teetering, he says, in what you believe. This kind of preaching will ultimately be bad for the church. Quote, it might be popular and you might have some temporary growth, but ultimately there will be a very fast decline in the church because there's no motivation to reach out to other people. Why share that message if everyone's going to heaven anyways?

Barna reports that 43 percent of those responding agreed, while 54 percent disagreed with this statement. It doesn't matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons.

However, seven out of ten Americans agreed with the idea in life you either side with God or you side with the devil. There's no in-between position. Half of Americans believe if a person is generally good or does enough good things for others, they will earn a place in heaven.

Wrapping up the article says, if the evangelical church gets sucked into this mindset, it's doomed, according to Tippett. The church will be powerless to affect the culture and transform the culture if we don't have a strong message that Christ is our only hope, that there are eternal consequences to our sin in what we do and how we live, and that Christ can change that and put us in a totally different direction. So it's interesting that even in mainstream evangelical Christianity there is this recognition and understanding that if you simply believe that the reward, which they define as heaven, is going to come automatically, then the rest really doesn't matter so much anymore.

And similarly, as we understand with our very specific hope of the resurrection, we have to watch for this in terms of this hope acting in our lives and having an effect on how we act and what we do. If we end up believing, which is not in the Bible, the common view nowadays that, you know, it doesn't really matter what you're going to do. God is a kindly grandfather in heaven. He can't possibly do anything but say, you're fantastic. Come and inherit eternal life.

We're not going to really care about how we live our lives, aren't we? We're not going to give the same diligence to having God's Spirit live in us and come out through our actions. The other enemy these days is distraction. And I'd like to turn to Matthew 13. We won't read the whole parable of the sower in the interest of time here, but I think we're all familiar with this passage where the sower sows seed and the seed falls in different places. And I believe very much that the seed falling among the thorns, where the thorns grow up and choke out that seed, is the thing that we need to be aware of more than anything else in today's life. Because our world is so full of distractions. Distractions that are just tailor-made for the way we are as people. And there's one for all of us, isn't there? Whatever it is that we're after, right? If it's sports, if it's money, if it's gambling, whatever it might be. And some of these things might be good things, right? But because they just fill up our time and they distract us from our view on God, His way, the hope that He's put within us, it distracts us from living our lives the way that we should. Matthew 13.22 addresses that. Now, he who received the seed, in this case among thorns, is he who hears the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful.

So we have to be careful of both of these things, the distractions that can come, as well as just this prevailing idea that, you know, doesn't really matter so much what I do, because in the end everybody's going to inherit the reward in the same way. So, you know, can kind of slide a little bit here, give a little less diligence there and not really worry so much about living a godly way of life every minute, maybe every couple hours, maybe every other day. But we need to be careful of those things. So let's read another passage then that I think sums this up as we work towards the end of this sermon. And let's focus on the fact that this belief in a literal existence that transcends death, and a focus on it as the center of our Christian faith brings a completely different motivation to our Christian lives. And this section of the Bible that I think really sums all of this up is in Romans 8, and we'll read verses 10 through 30. This is one of my favorite passages in all the scriptures is Romans 8, and especially the last half of it. But I think it sums up so many of these concepts and what hope should do in our lives in terms of changing and transforming the way that we live. And again here, Paul lays out some of his style of arguments and discussion. Starting in verse 10, if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin.

But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you. And therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you'll die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you didn't receive the Spirit of bondage to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by which we cry out, Abba, Father. And the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we also may be glorified together.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed within us. Verse 19, for the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know, in verse 22, that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. And not only that, but we also have the first fruits of the Spirit, we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly awaiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we are saved in this hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For why do you hope for what you already see? But if we hope for what we don't see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we don't know what we should pray as we ought, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that can't be uttered.

Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because it makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. For who he knew for knew he predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined these he also called, whom he called he justified, and whom he justified these also glorified. It talks very much here about the way that we need to live our lives, groaning within ourselves, looking forward, having perseverance because of the things that we know and that we see are out there ahead of us as that one single hope.

So as we've gone through the message today, my wish is that we've all got this idea of just that one word, hope, and a greater understanding of what it means. And I think if we keep that word in our minds and in our thoughts, especially as we go through this next set of holy days, the observances, and everything that it holds for us, that we'll focus on the fact that it's important. It's one of the top three Christian attributes it's talked about in the Bible.

It is certain. It's very specific. It's central and should have a transformative power in our lives.