Hopeology, Part 2

If you have your Bible, turn me to Hebrews chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 6 says we look at God, our anchor of hope. You know, as a pastor, my dealings with people center more around the the hurts and sadness of their lives more than more than anything else. And this past week, I had the opportunity to go and visit Susie Phillipson and to pray with her before she went home to be with the Lord this past week and ask the Lord to do a great and mighty work in her life.

You know, and when you walk into a room that in the midst of thanatology, you magnify hopology. Thanatology is a study of death because death is permeates the scriptures. And so in the midst of death, thanatology, you magnify hope, hopology.

And you walk into a room with someone who is just about to enter into eternity. And you pray with that person knowing that they know the Lord. And Susie knew the Lord.

She loved the Lord. She served so faithfully in our church. She loved to serve in the nursery, hold our babies and to take care of them and to make sure that the things in the nursery ran in an orderly way.

She was just a beautiful person. And yet when you look at someone who's about to pass into eternity, you're reminded of the brevity of life. We hold a little Andrew in our arms and realize that his life is all before him.

He's just a young baby, but it's so short. Life is but a vapor, right? And so I was with Susie and reminded of just the brevity of life. And then when you look at her, you're reminded of the iniquity of man and the consequences of sin and how sin has deteriorated everything.

And you're reminded of the reality of death. It's eminent. It's ever present before us.

You know, when I watched my father deteriorate from where he was going to work every day and serving the Lord to going through ALS and losing the opportunity to speak and then the opportunity to use his motor skills until he was bedridden. You're reminded of all those things, but you're always reminded of the certainty of hope. Hope is a sure thing.

And we have the opportunity in the midst of a world that's dying to give hope. We know hope because we know the God who is hope. And the writer of Hebrews wants this Jewish audience to understand the anchor of hope.

They need hope. They need to know for certain what will happen when they die. So he beckons them to come to a full realization of their hope.

And then he beckons them to understand how they can rest in the anchor of that hope. And so we thought that it would be good for us to understand our hope. So we began last week by talking to you about how hope is rooted in God.

He is the God of hope. Romans 15, verse number three. He's a God who's characterized by hope.

First Timothy chapter one, verse number one tells us that Christ Jesus is our hope. Colossians chapter one, verse number five tells us that the gospel of truth is our hope. Because hope is rooted in God, the gospel he gives is all about hope.

That's why over in Jeremiah 17, the Lord God says to the prophet Jeremiah, Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when prosperity comes, and will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.

For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream, and will not fear when the heat comes. But its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit. What a tremendous, tremendous promise God gives to the man who hopes in him, trusts in him, and believes in him, and does not trust in mankind, does not trust in circumstances or things round about them.

For their hope is rooted in the God of hope. And my prayer for you is that your hope is rooted in God. That hope that's rooted in God is received, that's point number two, by grace.

It's received by grace. We read to you last week, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse number 16, Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort, and good hope by grace. He gives us good hope.

That hope comforts and strengthens your hearts in every good work and word. So the hope that God gives, because he is a good God, is nothing but a good hope. And it's received by, you don't earn hope.

You can't work for hope. Hope is granted to you. It's a gift given to you by God, like faith is a gift, like grace is a gift, like hope is a gift.

Everything about salvation is a gift from God. And so the hope that's rooted in God is received by grace. And that's what we left off last week.

And point three is very strategic, very important. If hope that's rooted in God is received by grace, listen carefully, is ratified in the resurrection. It's confirmed in the resurrection.

It is solidified in the resurrection. Our hope is ratified in the resurrection. If you got your Bible, turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1. Let me show you something.

1 Peter chapter 1. Peter is writing to people who are experiencing enormous pain, persecution, all kinds of problems. And maybe you're here today and I don't know what's happening in your life. I don't know what kind of pain you're going through, what kind of turmoil you are experiencing in your own family, in your own personal life.

I have no idea. And that's why God uses his word to touch our hearts. But when Peter spoke and wrote this letter, 1 and 2 Peter, he was writing to people who experienced severe pain because Nero was killing Christians.

He was setting them on fire to light his gardens at night. He was wrapping them in pitch or pitch is standing on fire. He was wrapping them in animal skins and sending them to the lions.

And the loved ones would hear their family members and friends being tortured in the screams at night and throughout the days. So they lived their lives. They were in pain.

So how does Peter infuse hope into a company of people filled with pain who are going through severe persecution? What does he do? What does he say? What he says is so significant because it helps us understand how we deal with the pain and the problems we face every single day. And while they're not nearly as severe as these people's pain, we didn't know how to deal with pain. So Peter says this in 1 Peter 1, verse number one, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the saint to find the work of the spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood.

May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. Okay, how's that going to happen? How is peace going to be mine in the fullest measure if I could be the next one being persecuted? How can peace be mine in the fullest measure when I've lost my entire family to persecution? Peter tells us, blessed be the God and Father, speak well of God, praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That one verse is power-packed with theological truth.

Peter says you need to bless God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy. You know, listen to Psalm 33. Psalm 33 verse number 18.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him. Now, this is very important because Peter will pick up on this in chapter 3 of his epistle. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope for his mercy.

The eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, and to those who hope in his mercy. Peter says, I want you to bless God. I want you to praise God because of the great mercy in which he has bestowed upon you and me that comes, that grants us a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.

So he goes back to the Psalm, Psalm 33 and Psalm 34, and helps you understand that the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him and for those who hope in his mercy. Let me tell you something. You don't want anybody's eye on you except the eye of the Lord.

That's the eye that you want. It's called the eye of observation. The eye of observation.

You can be looking at something and not see it. My wife tells me this all the time. Honey, do you see that? I'm like, no, I didn't see it.

How could you miss it? It's right in front of you. Sorry, I didn't see it. But see, she has an eye for observation and mine's not.

See, our Lord has the eye of observation, which is always on his people. When you go to work during the day, the only eye on you is the eye of the Lord. When you send your kids off to college, I know you want your eye to be upon them.

It's not going to be. But the eye of the Lord is upon them. See, when you go off to Russia, when we send Tom and his team to Russia and we send Roger and Esteban off to Ecuador this summer, our eyes will not be on them.

But the eye of the Lord, it will be on them to those who fear him and to hope those who hope in his mercy. It's called the eye of observation because the Lord doesn't miss anything. He sees everything.

He knows everything. His eye is constantly upon those who fear him and hope in his mercy. His eye is called the eye of observation, but it's also the eye, the eye of compassion, the eye of pity, the eye of mercy, those who hope in his mercy.

Peter is saying, I want you to understand that you need to bless God because of his great mercy. What mercy is that? The mercy that is bestowed upon those who understand that it's a gift from the living God whose eye is upon them, the eye of observation, the eye of compassion. Think about it this way.

As a parent, you have an eye of compassion towards your children when they're in pain, do you not? Of course you do. You have an eye of compassion, an eye of pity where you want to scoop up your child and nurture your child and care for your child and love your child when they go through painful circumstances, right? I remember when Anna was two, just about three, and she had gone through some severe pain and couldn't walk. And some of you who were around 23 years ago, I don't know how many, Jack, you were here 23 years ago, but when she went through all the things that she went through and all the tests, they thought that she had leukemia and we had no idea what was happening with her.

We were in the hospital with her, couldn't find out she had a thing called discitis, which was something that she had come because of infection, and we had to put her in a body cast. And so some of you remember that we wheeled her into church in a wagon. Remember that, Mary? We wheeled her into church in a wagon.

We took her to the movie theater in a wagon. We took her everywhere in a wagon. We still have that wagon in our backyard today because that's how we get around because she was in a body cast.

And yet we realized that there was such compassion shown toward her by those in the hospital, but by her mother, by her father, by her siblings, because there was an eye of compassion toward the one who could not walk, praying that once she got out of the body cast, she would have to learn to strengthen her legs and walk once again. And she was able to do that and praise be to the Lord for that. But the fact of the matter was is that there was this eye of compassion upon her, like you have for your children.

You have that. But the compassion and eye of God is so much greater than our eye of compassion. And that's the eye that he has to protect his children, which leads us to this point.

Not only is it an eye of observation on those who fear him and those who hope in his mercy, an eye of compassion, it's an eye of provision. Listen to what it says. To deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine.

Isn't that good to know? That the eye of the Lord is on those who hope in his mercy. It's an eye of provision. But it goes beyond that to be an eye of protection, because it says our souls wait for the Lord.

He is our help and our shield. Okay, so this eye that God has is not only an eye of observation, he misses nothing, he sees everything. So therefore, he can be an eye of compassion on those who go through difficult circumstances, but it's an eye of provision and protection because his people need to be protected and they need to be provided for.

It's also an eye of retaliation because it says this, for our hearts rejoice in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your loving kindness, O Lord, be upon us according as we have hoped in you. In other words, the eye of the Lord, as the psalmist says in Psalm 34, the eye of the Lord in verse 15 is toward the righteous and his ears are open to the cry in the face of the Lord is against evildoers to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

All that to say is that Peter in 1 Peter 3 or 1 Peter 1 would help us to understand that we need to rejoice in the great mercy that God has given to us because everything about that mercy stems from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. That's our hope. Our hope is based on the fact that Jesus lives.

He gives us a living hope, not a dead hope. It's a living hope. Think about this way.

In 1 Peter 1 23, we're born again by the living word, right? Everything about God's alive. Nothing about God is dead. It's all alive.

It's called the living word, 1 Peter 1 23. Well, if you go to 1 Peter 2, verse number three, knowing that we are born again by a living word that makes us living stones, we're living stones being built up together in the household of God because we are living stones in the living church of the living God. 1 Timothy 3 verse number 13.

So everything about God is alive. He has a living church built based on living stones born again by the living word of God because we have a living hope. And so everything about God is absolutely alive.

It's filled with energy. It's filled with vigor. It's filled with life.

It's filled with joy. It's filled with excitement. Everything about God is alive.

Nothing about God is dead. So Peter is trying to instill in the lives of people who are dying physically, who are being persecuted physically, that they might experience the great joy of life that comes because of the great mercy of God that's caused us to be and have a living hope because of and according to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. How great is that? And so we gather together.

That's why we're here today. That's why we're here today is to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. See, that's, see, have you ever noticed that the resurrection today is minimized by Saturday evening worship? Who knows that? All these churches have a Saturday night church.

And all that does is minimize the effect of the resurrection life that God gives on the first day of the week. Some people say, well, you're just, you're getting a little too far there, Pastor. Maybe a little too legalistic.

And we have Saturday night church because people can't make it on Sunday because they've got to work. It's more convenient for them. Yada, yada, yada.

But the bottom line is this. When you have Saturday night church, you minimize resurrection Sunday. We want to maximize resurrection Sunday because our hope is ratified, confirmed by the resurrection of Christ.

We joy in the fact that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead because I live. Now you live everything about the resurrection. Everything about the gospel is based on the resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the crowning event in human history. It's the cornerstone of Christianity. It's the foundation of the gospel.

It's the guarantee of heaven. The message of the Bible simply is this, that man lives forever. He will either live forever in hell or live forever in heaven.

He will live forever in judgment or will live forever in joy. He will live forever experiencing the blessed hope or burning with no hope. That is the message of the Bible.

It's all about where you will spend eternity. And the only hope we have is based on the fact that Jesus Christ came, lived, died, rose again, that we might experience true life in Christ. And so our hope is based on that.

So Peter is going to take his people who are suffering back to that one solid ironclad truth that Jesus is risen from the dead. The resurrection is not a fraction of the gospel. The resurrection is the gospel.

It's called the gospel of truth. And the whole point of the gospel is to deliver souls from hell. The whole point of the gospel is to give dead men hope, right? To give people who are dying in their sins hope that comes to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

If there's no resurrection, there is no gospel. If there is no gospel, there is no salvation. If there is no salvation, there is no hope.

That's why we worship on Sunday morning, not on Saturday night. Because we want to exemplify, we want to exaggerate, we want to do all we can to help you understand hope. And it's ratified in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That's why we celebrate his resurrection every Sunday, on the first day of the week, because it's the resurrection that gets us through the end of the week. So incredibly important. Listen to what Peter says.

He says in verse number 13, therefore, gird your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

When you see him face to face, I want you, Peter says, I want you to prepare your minds. I want you to gird your minds. It's an oriental term that talks about, remember in those days they wore skirts, they wore dresses.

And so for them to get along or to get someplace fast, they had to pull it up and wrap it around them and through their legs so that they could run. It's to gird them up, to tie them all together. All right.

He says, gird your minds. Take all the dangling thoughts that you have in your mind and wrap them all together, tie them all. Paul talks about in Ephesians to gird your minds with truth, right? Truth is that one thing that ties all the dangling thoughts that you have in your mind.

I know a lot of you out there are dangling thoughts right now. You're dangling thoughts about lunch this afternoon and about the game with the Warriors this evening and how much they're going to get beat by the Raptors one more time and it's going to be over and the dynasty will be done and all that kind of stuff. And your minds are dangling.

I know that. Okay. Well, Peter says, gird your minds.

All the dangling elements you have. How my kids do in a nursery. Are they behaving in a nursery? Are my kids going to mess up and lick the knife in the bigger room? What's going to happen over here? And we have all these things in our minds, all these thoughts.

We have them all the time. And Peter says, gird your minds. Take all those dangling thoughts and wrap them all together with truth.

Keep sober in spirit. In other words, don't be intoxicated by the world system because you can be. And then he says, simply fix your hope completely.

You can't do it if you have all these dangling thoughts in your mind about everything that doesn't matter because they're thinking about, am I going to be next? Am I going to be persecuted? Is one of my family members going to die? And so all these thoughts are in their minds. What's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? What's going to happen? And Peter says, gird your minds. Take all those dangling thoughts, bring them all together.

Don't be intoxicated with the things of the world. Keep sober in spirit and do one thing. Fix your hope.

The certain future upon the revelation of Christ when you see him face to face. That's all that matters. That's all that matters in life.

Remember, hope is the anticipation of the promises of God. Okay? Remember, hope is the anticipation. It's going to happen because God promised it.

The writer of Hebrews says God cannot lie, right? So whatever God promised is going to happen. So hope, my hope is the anticipation. Listen carefully.

The anticipation of God's promises. Faith is the conviction of God's precepts and love is the manifestation of God's person. Remember, faith, hope, and love, that great triad of Christian virtues.

And to be able to understand them, hope is that anticipation that's based on God's promises. Faith is that conviction of God's precepts that God has already said. And love is the manifestation of the person of God.

I live out those promises. I live out those precepts because of God, of who God is. And faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.

But you got to have hope. And hope is an anticipation of what's going to happen. So Peter says, I want you to anticipate what's going to happen, the revelation of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

I wonder if that's how we live our lives. That's how we need to live every single day. See, everything about the resurrection proves everything.

It proves everything. I was thinking about this this past week. I'm trying to gear my time here in terms of what I have.

But, you know, I was thinking about the resurrection of Christ proves the veracity of the Word of God. Does it not? It proves the veracity of the Word of God. All you can do is read Peter's sermon in Acts 2, Paul's sermon in Acts 13, Paul's sermon in Acts 26, where they take you back to the Old Testament to prove that everything that Jesus said was true because the prophets of old spoke about the death of the Messiah and the resurrection of the Messiah.

That's why in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says simply this, that Christ died according to the Scriptures and was raised according to the Scriptures because everything in the Old Testament pointed to the death, burial, and the resurrection of the Messiah. So when he rose from the dead, it proved the veracity, the truth of the Word of God, that God's Word is absolutely true. Okay, so the resurrection proved the veracity of the Word of God.

So my hope is ratified in that resurrection because what God has said is going to happen. That's why I can live in anticipation of all that God says. So it proves the veracity of the Word of God.

It proves the deity of the Son of God. It proves the deity of the Son of God. We know that the demons believed that he was God in the flesh because they would call him the Holy One of God, right? We know that all of his works were works that proved his messianic credentials when he raised people from the dead and caused the blind to see.

And the blind man in John 9 claimed that he was the Son of God. And so we know that there were people who claimed that Christ was God. Peter said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

So we know that. But it was the resurrection that proved, without a doubt, the deity of the Son of God. Romans chapter 1, verse number 4, says it this way.

Romans 1, verse number 4. Paul says, A bond-servant of Christ Jesus called that an apostle set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised before he entered through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. He was declared by power to be the Son of God through the resurrection of the dead. And so the resurrection of Christ proves the veracity of the Word of God.

It proves the deity of the Son of God. It proves the finality of the salvation of God. The finality of the salvation of God.

We have been saved. We are being saved. One day we will be completely saved.

We will be glorified once forever because of what God has done through the resurrection of Christ. Because he lives, we live, and everything about the forgiveness of sins, everything about new life in Christ, everything about the future of our lives stems from the resurrection of Christ. So because he lives, we will one day live.

So Peter says, fix your hope on the revelation of Jesus Christ, because your salvation is yet to be completed. So the finality of our salvation is proven through the resurrection of Christ. If you go on and you look through the scriptures, you realize that the nativity of the Church of God is proven through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the birth of the Church, because Christ is the head of the Church.

Ephesians 1, 20, and 21, and 22 talk about how Christ is the head of the Church, and because he is the head of the Church, we are his body. And the only reason he can be the head is because he rose from the dead. He ascended into glory.

He was exalted. He was exalted to the throne of the Most High God. And therefore, the nativity of the Church of God is that which is proven by the resurrection.

We are here today because we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. But it goes on, and know this, that the resurrection of Christ proves the inevitability of the judgment of God, the inevitability of the judgment of God. Paul says in Acts chapter 17, these words, therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having first proved to all men by raising him from the dead.

In other words, the resurrection of Christ proves the inevitability of the judgment of God. It's coming, because God is going to judge every man through his Son, whom he raised from the dead. On top of that, the resurrection of Christ proves the ministry of the Spirit of God, the ministry of the Spirit of God.

Over in John 16, the Lord speaks over and over again, verse number 16, a little while, and you will no longer see me again, a little while, and you will see me. And some of his disciples then said to one another, what is this thing that he is telling us? A little while, you will not see me, and again, a little while, you will see me. And because I go to the Father, so they were saying, what is this that he is says a little while? And Jesus said, are you deliberately together or deliberating together about this, that I said a little while, and you will not see me, and again, a little while, and you will see me? Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.

You will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy. Why is that? Why is that? Not only does the resurrection prove the ministry of the Spirit of God, but the ecstasy of the people of God, the ecstasy of the people of God. Where is our joy? In a little while, you will see me again.

That's the promise. Earlier in John 16, he talks about, I got to go away, because if I go away, I will send another comforter to you, right? And the Spirit of God is going to come because of the resurrection of Christ. He has to die.

He has to rise again, then send the Spirit of God, another just like him, who will reside in us. That's the ministry of the Spirit of God. But the ecstasy of the people of God is the fact that you see me now, but you won't see me a little while.

But a little while after that, you will see me again, because he speaks to the resurrection of the body in the hope that we have in Christ, the ecstasy of the people of God. And the resurrection proves the certainty of the return of God. He's coming again.

Acts 1, 9 to 11, O men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? Do you not know that this same Jesus will return in the same manner in which he left you today? There is a certainty of the return of the living God. You see, everything about our pain, everything about the problems that we face, the hardships we go through, the joy is found that in a little while we will see the one whose eye has always been upon us because we fear him and we hope in his mercy. The Bible says in the book of Jeremiah, these words, Jeremiah 17, 17, Thou art my hope in the day of evil.

Jeremiah says that, Thou art my hope, O Lord, in the day of evil. Listen to words of Charles Spurgeon. He says the path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine.

He has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's word, her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. And it is a great truth that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above.

But experience tells us that at the course of the day, the sun will just be as a shining light that shineth more and more to the perfect day. Yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods, clouds cover the believer's son and he walks in darkness and sees no light.

There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season. They have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career. They have walked along the green pastures by the side of the still waters, but suddenly they find the glorious skies clouded.

Instead of the land of Goshen, they have to tread the sandy desert. In the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste. And they say, surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen.

Oh, say not so, thou who are walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood. The dearest of his children must bear the cross.

No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity. No believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path because you were weak and timid.

He tempered the wind to the shorn land. But now that you are stronger in spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bow of self-dependence, and to root us firmly in Christ.

The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. And that's why Jeremiah said, thou art my hope in the day of evil. What you experience today or tomorrow or in the future, you only have one hope.

And that's a hope rooted in God, received by grace, and ratified in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Let me pray with you. Father, we thank you for today.

Our time in the Word is so precious. It's a time in which we are able to understand the beauty of your holiness and the greatness of your person. My prayer is for those who are here today who are experiencing pain and loneliness and heartache, that Lord they would truly trust in you in the day of evil.

They would see that your eyes upon them because they fear you and their hope is in the God of mercy. And that Lord, you will be their shield and their protection. You will be the foundation of their souls.

You are the anchor for their soul. May they cling to you, trust you, believe you, knowing that because the eye of observation, compassion, protection, provision is upon them, they need not worry because there's a hope in the living resurrected Christ who one day they will see face to face. In Jesus' name, amen.