Hope

It's going to be back in Indianapolis. It'll be good to be back home and be with so many of you here today. Some of you down from Fort Wayne and this being the first Sabbath for the official uniting of the two congregations here in Lafayette in Indianapolis. It's nice to be here and to be a part of that as well. So you have a nice facility here and a nice location over here. After all the years for the Indianapolis congregation on the south side of town, to be here is quite a change, obviously, for Lafayette. Quite a change, too. I certainly hope it works out to be a long-term situation for you here to serve your needs in the congregations and everything else that goes along. We're doing fine. Debbie and I are still alive and still married together and doing well. We love living in Cincinnati. I still like working at the home office. I don't feel like I'm going to work. I feel like I'm going to something with purpose and meaning. Every day is good to work in the media department. In terms of the media department, we're moving along quite well there. Beyond today, still continuing to build an audience on the change that we've made to the ION network this past year. Turning out programs, we actually came back over to Indiana this summer to do on-location filming down in New Harmony, Indiana. Those of you who should know where New Harmony is, know your Indiana history. Down just near Evansville in the southwest corner of the state is this little town that was built 200 years ago this year as a kind of utopian community by a group of German fundamentalist Christians who came over and bought the acreage and carved out a very, very nice self-sustaining town down there in 1814. And after 10 years, they sold it to another utopian idealist from Scotland. And his idea failed, but the town lives on and is still a working town, a quaint little town, a very nice, pleasant place to visit. We've never been there, but I was doing a program on – started out with the idea of the millennium and kind of morphed into the idea of utopian societies. And I thought, well, there's New Harmony just a few hours away. And so Debbie and I went over to New Harmony and scouted it out in July. And then in August, we went back over there and just did a full day of on-location filming within the city, turned that into a program which will air, I think, the Sunday – the week we're all at the Feast of Tabernacles will be the first time. The Feast of Tabernacles will be the first airing of that program. It turned out quite well from a technical point of view and we hope from a response point of view as well. We just created a new booklet, one of our special booklets, to offer on that particular program that deals with the Kingdom of God, the world tomorrow. And we're doing several of those as we do certain programs. So that's – those are some of the projects that we're working on there. We are evaluating the public appearance campaign that was recently held in Cincinnati that Gary Petty conducted. And we're conducting – or evaluating that and thinking ahead as to what the next phase of that will be, perhaps by next year, in terms of using that to preach the gospel. So we have a number of things that are working quite well there for us.

I did want to make one other comment. I know when Debbie and I left here three years ago that several of you handed me Indianapolis Colts paraphernalia, just to make sure that we would not forget our loyalties. And, of course, about the same time you'll recall, Peyton Manning left town. He left Indianapolis at the same time we did.

And that's about the only connection we've got with Peyton Manning, is that we left town at the same time together. But I have assiduously endeavored to remain a Colts fan. I want you to know that and understand that. Although we don't get the Colts feed on the CBS network every Sunday like you do here, we get the Bengals – Cincinnati Bengals feed. And I'm sorry to have to tell you that as I walk through the house on Sunday afternoon, I hear the Bengals football game on. And my wife is actually starting to cheer them on. And we've had a few discussions about that as to what that would mean. But she hasn't reached the point where she's saying, who day yet? But she is developing an affinity for the Cincinnati Bengals. And I'm still trying to hang on to the Colts. And I watch Peyton Manning every chance I get and keep that connection alive there. But my wife is turning into a Bengals fan. So I guess there's counseling for that. But 3-0, she says. Yeah, I know. Somebody here that they said that don't get excited about 3-0 for the Bengals that they've been there before and disappointment springs eternal there for them. But with football, there's always hope. With baseball. With your affinity for any particular team, hope is something that we might all regain year by year as we start with a fresh slate, whether it's baseball, football, basketball, whatever it might be, and our favorite sports team. Which is not a bad segue to get into the topic that I want to talk about here today, which is hope.

If you will turn over to Acts 3. We're here on the Feast of Trumpets, and as we know, and this was brought out this morning, there is one event that the entire creation needs, and that is the return of Jesus Christ.

We're to point to one single event that this world direly needs, and that is the return of Jesus Christ. And in Acts 3, there's a very well-known passage where the Apostle Peter, in his second major sermon that is recorded here, pointed his listeners to that very hope and that event. Beginning in verse 19 of Acts 3.

Some have called this the benchmark verse of the entire Bible. That Christ would be received into the heavens until the times of restoration of all things. A restoring of God's way, of God's peace through the kingdom of God. A restoration of something that was removed at a far, far distant point from this earth and within the creation of this world. And this scripture is really a great deal of hope, which is what I'd like to talk about today.

There's one thing that this day gives to not only us who wait for the coming of Christ, but for all the world. Whether they realize it or not, it is hope. And this day holds that promise. And without that, life would be extremely difficult.

Even though for us, at times, it can be rather challenging, it would even be more so without this particular hope. In the last year, I've been doing some reading in the area of cosmology, physics, not heavy physics, but someone gave me a list of books that I... He felt that I would do well to read about a year ago, and I've been going through several and adding others into the mix that I have run across in the readings that deal with the universe and the vastness of it. And what science and physics and cosmologists who peer out into the heavens with their telescopes have studied, discerned, and discovered in the recent years with the more powerful telescopes, particularly the Hubble telescope, and the probes that have been sent to the various parts of our own galaxy, sending back data and information, and what science has found out and has come to know, and to just dip into a portion of that study, of the works that are out there. And there are a lot of them. There are some very well-written ones. They're very accessible, I think, many of them, to an average person's mind, that you don't have to have a Purdue education to understand any of them. As to what is out there in this universe and what we do know about it. And to dip into that has broadened my understanding of a field that I had just not looked at for quite some time, frankly, at no previous time in my life to the depth that I have in recent months.

And in reading books by physicists who are agnostic or atheist, or physicists who are believers in their own way, in a God and a creator, as they all peer out and they look and see in terms of the origins, the direction of the universe, and what they can understand, there is a great deal there. And if I could sum up two points to make about what they have observed in terms of the future of the universe, it kind of comes down to two large overall scenarios. There are variations of it, and there are even some scenarios that actually are quite fascinating, but there are two basic ones that you keep finding over and over again.

The first one, and of course everyone starts from the point of view, that the universe is about 15 billion years old. Give or take a few hundred million. Alright? 15 billion years ago, with what has been called the Big Bang, and pretty well accepted by the majority of scientists as the point of the origin of the known and observable universe.

With a bit of compressed energy and matter smaller than a fingernail, as they figured, everything that we see came from it in a moment, in an instant, in a Big Bang. And the universe has been expanding ever since. And no matter what direction they look in from Earth, they see galaxies and universes moving away at light speed.

As they observe them. Now, one view is that the universe will continue to expand.

Subsequent changes will take place that they can observe as they look at what is happening in the formation of various Nova, Supernova, other galaxies and observable phenomena.

The universe will keep moving outward, and these changes, based on their observable understanding of physics, will continue to move on. But in time, it will even change the ability for life on Earth, as we know it, to change. Because in a few billion years, as they say, the sun, which is our source of life on this planet Earth, will expand. It will grow it in. It will develop into a larger star than what it is. The sun is nothing more than a star. Strategically positioned in just the right spot, and with our orbit around it and our tilt of our Earth's axis in its rotation, just in the exact manner and way to allow for life on this planet, as we know it, to exist.

And so far, they have found no other planet, no other galaxy, with life that we can recognize and that we know. As far as we know, what's on this pale blue dot, at this point, is what there is. And we are here, and we know it, and we observe it ourselves. But in a few billion years, they think that the sun will expand to the point where it will make conditions even on Earth uninhabitable.

And if man has not figured out some way to get into a spacecraft and journey someplace else, it's more habitable. Human life, and all life, all carbon-based life will cease to exist.

That's their plan. That's what they see, based on what's happening now in the universe. A few billion years from now. We won't have to worry about that, will we?

But this is one scenario. Now, that's not very hopeful, is it? But it is one. Now, there's another one that many have. You will run across this.

And that is that gravity will eventually overtake this expansion that has been going on for the last 15 billion years, and it will begin to draw the planets, the galaxies, all the universes back into another super-compressed form.

And then it will start all over again.

The force of gravity, inexorable, unchangeable, and it will bring it all back in.

And possibly another big bang that would start it all over again. But again, you and I don't have to worry about that, because we won't be around. But as they observe what they do and determine what they do determine, based on the known physics and science and observable data today, those are the two of the ideas that they have. Not much hope there, is there? Not much hope.

But Scripture shows us there's an entirely different scenario. Scripture shows us that there is a scenario that is filled with hope.

And we read about that in Romans chapter 8. So let's go to Romans chapter 8 and look and see what the Apostle Paul, writing 2,000 years ago, with the ancient science that he had. The term ancient science is not mine. It's what some apply to the ancient world. They know that they had science.

They were able to observe and make calculations in the ancient world on their environment. Certainly nowhere near what we were able to do in our time with the knowledge that we have. But ancient science isn't something that you can see in the Bible here and there. And what Paul wrote here in Romans chapter 8 about the creation, as he observed it from his point of view in the Mediterranean, as a first century Jew with whatever physical knowledge was extant at that time as he studied it and wherever he studied it at the feet of Gamali or anywhere else, and with what he and they knew, and most importantly with what he wrote here in Romans under the inspiration of God's Spirit, he came up with some interesting observations that we often read and maybe just pass over and not fully understand exactly what it implies here. But look at verse 20 here of Romans 8 and what Paul says about the creation here. For the creation was subjected to futility. That's a pretty good description, quite frankly, of a lot of what I read by eminent physicists today, that they see a creation that is few.

If all that they can determine is that it will either expand to the point where what life we do know cannot exist, or gravity will bring it all back into another big bang scenario, that's pretty futile. And even as science looks out and observes Mars and the planets and galaxies beyond ours, they see no life, and they certainly see no conditions where carbon-based life as we know it can exist. And if you were to sum up what they observe and they write about, it's futile. Because what's the purpose of it? Why is it the way that it is? And why life on this one planet do we have? Those are the big questions that science can't understand because they're beyond science. That gets to the question of what was before the big bang. You can only go to Revelation to find that understanding. And to understand why the futility of the observable universe is as it is, and why there is life on this planet. Again, it has to go to Revelation to fill in what science cannot. But Paul writes here that the creation is made subject to futility, not willingly. It was by God's will that this was done. It was not creation's purpose. And even though the theories of Darwinian evolution are what they are, and that aside, that speaks nothing to this particular verse. But he says it was made subjected to futility because of Him who subjected it in hope. The universe, creation, was subjected to futility by Him, by God, who did it in hope.

I just kind of a mumble-jumble. What is Paul trying to say here? Because he uses this theme here. Verse 21, he says, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. In two verses, Paul sums up what science knows today and can't know unless they go to Revelation. That it is a rather lifeless, uninhabitable, futile, vain universe that is observed. But why it was there, of its own order or whatever, I get some scientist Stephen Hawking has come up with the idea that even life, as human life, could have happened based on the principles of physics and science without a creator. That's one of his latest ideas. But Paul shows here that futility has been there, and it has been subjected in this particular way because of God's purpose and because of His plan. And yet, Paul is showing in a sense that he knew that there was hope, but it's hope that is based in Revelation. If you go back to verse 19, he says here in verse 19, The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. The creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

Typically, we will always read this on the Feast of Pentecost. And as it talks in this passage here about the firstfruits who wait eagerly for this event, which indeed it is. And it does add a great deal of understanding and dimension to the Feast of Pentecost, but it also attaches itself to this day because in this gap between Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets, we do have this whole working out of the firstfruits.

And those who are the sons of God who will be revealed, which is the sole purpose for the creation as we have it.

Paul here, in essence, shows that to look just at science or observable reason offers very little hope. There is none. He came to that conclusion 2,000 years ago. And without knowing all the details of the universe, Paul came to the conclusion that it was futile, except for the manifestation of the sons of God. And so today's world, if you look at it in that light, on that largest scale, offers very, very little hope.

But Paul here is showing us that because of God's plan in bringing to pass many sons to glory, there is hope.

And when this day is fulfilled, when Christ returns, the trumpet sounds, and the dead in Christ rise incorruptible, then the sons of God will indeed be brought to their fruition and their manifestation.

And the hope of this world and the time of the beginning of the restoration of all things will take place. Let's turn to 1 Thessalonians 4. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 14.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means proceed those who are asleep.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with the shout, the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.

And the dead in Christ will rise first. The sequence is put down here in Paul's own writing as to how it will take place. The dead in Christ rising first, those who are alive at that point, rising to meet Him in the air. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words. Indeed, these are words of comfort and encouragement that speak to the hope of the resurrection of the dead. But at the same time, what Paul described back in Romans as the manifestation of the sons of God, which is what the whole creation is waiting intensely for at this particular time. Not knowing, not understanding even what Paul writes, and yet that being the great need. Because it will move then to that phase of the plan of God, the purpose of God, when God Himself will intervene in a supernatural manner to bring the kingdom of God to this earth.

And then to move creation into that next phase of God's purpose that has been planned since before the foundation of the world. To be brought into the glory of the sons of God. And what we have been involved with and what we have known in our time, what we have believed and have given our life to, well then we will see the fruit of that. We will see it. And if we don't live to that point in our next waking instant, we will know it. Without even knowing that any time has passed, no matter how much time might pass from the time of one's death until the moment when that trumpet sounds.

That's the beauty of God's purpose. That death, the dead know nothing. And that the dead in Christ will not be preceded by those who are alive. In other words, it's really describing and telling us that we'll all be there together. No matter if one died in Christ in the first century or the 19th century or the 21st century, we'll all be there together at the same time.

It really is what I think is being said there, how we should understand it. And no time will have passed for those who have been dead in that sense, even though in human history, yes, time has passed. But we will then enter into a period, I should say, when there is no time for those who are spirit beings. There's a thousand years to take place called the Millennium and the rebuilding of the earth in preparation for another resurrection that will then join and give opportunity to those who are the dead, small and great, that Revelation chapter 20 talks about, who live after the thousand years are finished.

But that's getting a little bit ahead of the story. We'll delve into that more. All that is the package of hope that we have. That we have believed and motivates us and has defined our life. And to which we regularly come back and return because there is no greater source of hope.

Paul, in just a few words, sums it up. He says, the creation is a lot of futility. In one verse back there in Romans 8, Paul says what Solomon took a whole book called Ecclesiastes to say. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, remember? Solomon writes back there. Paul summed it up. Maybe Paul gave short sermons. I don't know. When he really set his mind to it, he probably could have preached a short sermon.

The creation is subject to futility. And I'll tell you, pick up a few books on the subject today and look into them and see what they say. And it's a vast, detailed universe. It's a marvelous study. But you come back from it and you realize this is where life is, in this earth. And what's the rest of it for? One would wonder without an understanding of what God gives us in the Scriptures. And He doesn't give us all that we would like to know.

When, how, where, and in what way will the sons of God interact in the family of God and extend the kingdom of God, the family of God, throughout eternity, we don't know. We would like to know those things. But this is all the package of, again, of hope that we have. And whether we look out in the broad macro scale of the universe and cosmology, I love to throw that word out there, as you can tell.

It's big. But we all, we live on a smaller scale, don't we? We have our lives. We go to work. We have our neighborhood. We have our school. We have our church. We have our friends and our families.

And we live life on a much, much smaller scale. And as we venture out and look at the world today, we, you know, we sometimes get a bit frightened by what we see out there. And we kind of ignore it, go back into our own little world, and ignore Fox News. Or other individuals who they might be that can sometimes scare the devil out of us when you really listen to them.

We're living in some dramatic and significant times right now. It's a time of aggression. You know, what happened in Ukraine a few months ago with Russian troops crossing that border, it was the first time since 1945 that a European state, a line drawn that delineated a country, was crossed by an aggressor nation. Not since 1945 as that happened in Europe.

And it was done and nobody did anything. And it was done by the world's largest nation, state, Russia, because they were afraid of this little bitty place called Ukraine. Nobody has done anything except talk. It's a time of aggression. It's a time of weakness. We have dithered to the point of some action in the Middle East and against a terrorist state, or self-declared state, but nothing but a group of thugs that have not been seen in that neighborhood since the days of Genghis Khan and the Mongols.

And people are scared when heads start to roll on television. And what that might happen, especially when they hear that they could spring up in your own neighborhood. And it's frightened the nations into some action right now. It's a time of hatred because of what Israel did in the Gaza Strip this past summer.

Anti-Semitism lurched forward in Europe once again. Largely anti-Israelism, but Jews in Europe began to get scared. Many are moving out, and they're moving to Israel. So it's an interesting period of time. It's almost even a time of separation. Some people at least tell their breath about a week ago when Scotland voted, and they were going to leave the Union of the United Kingdom, or were they going to stay? There was a great fear because of a poll that came out a few weeks ago that they would go and break up a 307-year-old union.

It didn't happen. But the very fact that a group of people, my own ancestors, the Scots, would want to leave the world's most successful union of nations, the United Kingdom. And in world history, what the United Kingdom did after 1707, when they became the United Kingdom of Britain, Ireland, and Wales, and Scotland, has been remarkable in human history, what the English-speaking peoples did. And for no reason other than that they could, they almost came to the point of leaving it. There's no other reason. There was no, you know, any strong compelling abusive type reason to divorce in that situation.

And it didn't happen. But these are the times that we live in. And we swing back and forth within that to the time. So as we look around today, we don't see a lot of hope. But it's also a time for the preaching of the Gospel. For the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God. It may be a time in our world of weakness, of terror, of hatred, but it's also a time to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

In Matthew 24, this is one of the signs of Christ's coming that He gave to His disciples. They asked Him, what would we look for? In the age just prior to Your coming, Lord, in Matthew 24, verse 3, they asked Christ this question. Tell us what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age. This very time that we look forward to, that we read about in Romans 8, where there will be this transition, and the ending of an age and the dawning of a new age and of a new world.

We're at that point, and there are certain signs that Christ gave, one of which is, in verse 14, this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. So it's also a time for the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. And that is a very powerful message, especially when you understand it as the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, which is what the Apostles took to their own world in the first century.

As we read in the book of Acts, they took that Gospel. And it's two sides of one coin. It's the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. They cannot be separated. Take a coin out of your pocket, and you've got Jefferson on one side, and I don't know what's on the other side these days, if our coins are still like that. Lincoln, and then his memorial. Take a penny, which is an endangered species these days, I think. Two sides of one coin. Inseparable. Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. It's one message with two dimensions to it.

And because we can understand it in the fullness of its biblical expression, then we open up the full understanding that God is bringing about the building of a divine family. Many sons to glory. And we can then understand what is our purpose in life. Come to appreciate it and recognize it. Because it is through Jesus Christ. His life, His death, His resurrection. That you and I have the hope of attaining to the resurrection, or to glory, through a resurrection. The fact that He came down as God, lived in the flesh a perfect life, died for our sins, and then was resurrected after three days and three nights, by the same power that resides in us, God's Spirit.

We then have that hope of entry into the Kingdom of God, the family of God. And we can live with that hope today. And it can make all the difference in our life, certainly by giving us meaning and purpose. In a world that can be rather futile-looking. If we look out into the universe to try to understand the purpose of life, or if we look across the ocean, or deep into some philosophy or religion or other ideology to try to find purpose and meaning.

There's only one source that can give us that. And it's Scripture. And when we understand it in the fullness of what God is doing, that the Kingdom of God is a spiritual family that God is creating through the work of His Son, through Jesus Christ. And Christ will bring that to pass because this was the plan laid out before the foundation of the world. And it's being brought to pass today. And ultimately, in time, Christ will hand it all up to the Father.

But we can submit today to the rule of Christ in our life and understand this glorious truth. We can begin to understand and experience the life of the Kingdom today and begin to receive its benefits in our own life and allow the fullness of the Kingdom of God to be brought through the time of the Second Coming and to change the immortality at the coming of Jesus Christ. But we can begin today to live with that understanding, the power of God's Spirit within us, and the hope that we have, that life is not futile, and that there is great meaning to what we have.

I take a lot of interest in reading what some of the best minds of science know and can write about our universe and about our world. And I think that's a fascinating study. It's also a fascinating study to at times read some of the ideas of people who are also people of faith.

Maybe not the same faith that I have, but to see that they ask and search for the same questions. And what's the same answer? What's the meaning of it all? What's the purpose? And to see at times that they come right up against the face of the answer, but they can't get a toehold and climb up to the full understanding of it. God has to provide that. But it is interesting, as well as encouraging, when I read...

Because some of the readings that I do, they are physicists that are men of faith. They believe in God, but they're also eminent physicists in their own right, and they marry faith in reason. Now, they don't understand the fullness of the gospel that God has given to us, but they labor with some of the same questions. And when I see that they do, it encourages me because it shows me just another form of affirmation that what God has called us to, and what God has given us as knowledge and understanding through His Scriptures, and the revelation of our time and the work that God has been doing in this age is indeed that of God, and that we're on the right track.

In spite of all the other issues and challenges that can cause to come up in our own internal issues, in terms of the truth, we're on the right track. God has given us that understanding, and He's given us answers that are rock-solid sure from His Word, and that are compatible with even all known science. There is a compatibility there. I tell the students at the Ambassador Bible College, I tell them, don't be afraid of reading a textbook on physics or biology or studying a course in that.

Get your grounding in the Bible, which is why they come to ABC. But don't be afraid of some professor. Don't be afraid of someone who might challenge you with an alternative idea. Know where you stand. Just keep reading. Keep studying.

The honest ones out there, the honest ones, know there's something beyond what they're able to observe. Because I've read what they say. It's only the dishonest ones at times. I shouldn't say they're dishonest, but let's just say they're blinded. They can't see it for whatever prejudice or other reason. But they look at it strictly from the standpoint of reason. But there are those that look at the whole world from the point of view of faith and try to understand it as well, and at least acknowledge some form of Creator or some form of God that is there.

But as we come back to our knowledge and our calling and our understanding, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God is indeed the one true hope of human life. Let's go back to Romans 5 this time.

We know that hope is one of the three great principles that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13, where he talks about faith, hope, and love.

And the greatest of these is love. He goes on to talk about that. Faith, hope, and love, three great spiritual truths and principles. And hope is right there in the middle of it. And talking a little bit about hope here today with us. Because if we look at...let's go back to Romans 8. I said 5. I'm sorry. Let's go back to Romans 8.

Let's read verse 18.

For I consider Paul writes, as he starts off this whole passage, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. This is what he prefaced in his earlier comments that we read about the creation, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared. He didn't dismiss those. He acknowledged that life involves suffering. But he talks then to the glory, speaks to the glory that will be revealed within us. Go down to verse 22. He says, We know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Indeed it does. All of creation is waiting for something. This is what Paul wrote 2,000 years ago. It's waiting for something that it doesn't even know. And we've had 2,000 additional years of experience to verify what Paul writes here in verse 22. Verse 23, The redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hoped. For why does one still hope for what he sees? We still hope for something that hasn't yet been brought in its totality, the Kingdom. The appearance of Jesus Christ, of harousia. And that time when God intervenes, the Kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of this Christ that Revelation 11 talks about. That's what we hope for. We haven't seen it. And so we exist in this tension called life, in which there is suffering, as he said back in verse 18. And yet we live with hope. We live with that hope of the resurrection, of the coming Kingdom. And we live with a hope within our own daily lives that God is with us and that the suffering, the trials, all that we have to deal with, do mean something. There's a purpose to it. There's a reason for it. Peter said that we are not going to be removed from the other sufferings that everyone else in this world has. And indeed we have it. And that can be a challenging concept for those of us in the faith. Why me, Lord? Why do we have to suffer? Why do your good people come down with cancer, labor with challenges, labor with what they do? Accidents happen. Tragic accidents happen. Just like they do to everyone else. They happen to us. Someone a few months ago, laboring through something very severe, traumatic, made the comment to us about how they were working through it. And she made the comment. She says, I finally came to the point, as I kept asking, why me? Why me? And she said, I finally came to the point where I said, why not me? Why not me? That's a hard point to come to. You don't come to it overnight. You don't come to it without a lot of soul searching. Why not me? I don't always come to that conclusion. It's really another question, isn't it? Why not me? It happens to others. Good neighbors, not in the faith. Good friends, in the faith. Why not me? It is when we come to that. We are at a point where there is a level of acceptance, and hope has taken us to another level. The hope that we live with has taken us to another level, but not just acceptance, but understanding, as to what God is doing with us in our life. Now let's go back to Romans, chapter 5.

Hope is a very important thing. Faith is an important thing. And certainly love. Faith, hope, and love, Paul said. The greatest of these is love. But we're talking about hope today. In verse 1, Romans 5, he says, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We rejoice in hope. We have peace. We have the great...we stand in this grace, which is an awesome concept to understand. We stand in grace. We don't stand in condemnation. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. He will write later on in this same book. We stand in His grace. And that is a relationship of God's favor through our repentance and acceptance of Christ's sacrifice in faith and forgiveness of sin, which brings about the peace that he talks about in verse 1 through faith. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God that has begun to work in our life. And will ultimately result in the fullness of our lives being transformed into that of a Son of God and the glory of the Sons of God. But it goes on to verse 3 and he says, not only that, but we also glory in tribulation. Sometimes. Well, maybe we never do. Each of us has to ask ourselves, is there ever been a time we glory in tribulation? Thank you, Lord, for the trial. Thank you for this slap up to the back of my head. We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character, hope, character. Trials bring perseverance, which leads to character, a change of how we react, and even how we are perhaps a bit more proactive in our life. We don't walk down that street with that big gaping hole in it. We choose another street, ultimately. It changes our character. We become a changed person. We're a bit more patient. We're a bit more understanding. We keep our mouths shut. One-third, as much as we used to, whatever it might be, whatever it is, it leads us to. And through it all, we learn what hope is. Now, hope does not disappoint, verse 5, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Hope is poured out in our hearts. The love of God has been poured out in our hearts, and hope doesn't disappoint.

Hope, and what Paul is really giving us here, is a very interesting message. It is not a message for someone who is just an onlooker.

Chaitri Christian, sitting in the stands, watching others.

This is a message for somebody who is in the arena, a combatant, actively engaged, mixing it up. That's what Christianity is. That's what our calling is all about.

That is the hope that we have. And it begins to bring about changes in our life.

And it builds an understanding for us. You know, we go back to faith, hope, and love.

Faith and love, someone wrote, faith and love are disciplines that can be developed as we read the Bible and as we pray in our world today.

When we made sense that we're not quite strong in the faith, maybe a good friend at Sabbath at church, trips to the Feast of Tabernacles, an inspiring sermon will build our faith for a season.

We can learn love in any number of ways. We can study the Scriptures on it. We can be constructive in it by another person, by an experience that we go through.

There are a lot of things that we can do.

But have you ever examined what you should do if you don't have hope? If your hope begins to wane, when you lose hope, you're expecting and you're hoping for a raise, for a new job, for something beyond us that we're hoping for and it doesn't happen, we might be down for it a period of time. Life goes on. You never want to lose hope in God. You never want to lose hope in the resurrection. You never want to lose hope in the kingdom to come.

You never want to lose hope of the meaning of this day, the hope that this day offers, of a time of restoration of all things.

I've seen people lose that hope through the years.

A lot of people live today, just in the world, they live life without hope.

I gave you five minutes of news summary here a few minutes ago.

We went from Ukraine to the Middle East to Scotland.

And I don't think it's been fully appreciated how hopeless people can be by just looking at the world today.

You know what the world's solution for hopelessness is? It's antidepressants. It's antidepressants.

When you lose hope, that's a big loss in life.

God gives us hope. And these scriptures are what Paul is talking about.

Anchored in the bigger things of this life of peace with God. Faith. That sin is forgiven.

That God knows us. That we do have a relationship based in grace. We stand in grace in a relationship with God.

That means that He doesn't yank us around. He doesn't take it away at a whim.

We are in a relationship with God through baptism and the Holy Spirit based on repentance. It is one of unyielding, unvending, undeniable grace.

We may sin. We will repent. We will sin and we will repent.

But God never removes that umbrella, that relationship, that covering of grace that He gives to His children when He begins that relationship with us.

That is our blanket. That's our security. That's hope.

And as we understand that relationship is in Christ, then we can understand that the power by which He raised Christ from the dead is the same power that is within us as the first fruits.

And gives us a hope of salvation. And it is there. We can draw upon it. We should, will continue to draw upon it in our life. To allow it to change us and to develop us into sons of glory.

Because that's what He's talking about here. That the trials will produce perseverance and lead to character. And the end result is hope. Unbending, unyielding hope. That does couple then with faith and love as well.

I'm not trying to say that hope is greater than love. Paul's words stand on their own. The greatest of these is love.

But we have to have hope. We can never lose hope. Because that's the undergirding confidence.

How many of you have ever been in an earthquake? Felt the earth shake beneath you. It is frightening.

Wind and storms are bad enough. Tornadoes, hurricanes, awful. Awesome.

When the ground shakes, you have a different feeling. There's just a different feeling when that ground shakes. And I've been in one very severe earthquake in Southern California.

And there's a fear there that you don't have in a tornado, perhaps. Well, maybe you do.

But hope is what keeps us anchored way deep when the earth moves under us. What might come upon us.

This is what God has called us to. And this is what keeps us moving toward that time of the restoration of all things.

Spoken out by all the holy prophets in the Word of God.

And that's why when we go back to Romans 8, we can read.

In verse 18, the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

And then in verse 24, we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope.

For why does one still hope for what he sees? That if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He searches the hearts, knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He 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, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

We've been called according to His purpose, and that purpose is being brought to pass.

God speed the day when blowing of that trumpet is a reality.

May we all pray, by kingdom come.