Northside Church - Sydney
God's Promise of Hope
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church, three scenarios for you. Here's a young lady and she's really looking forward to the date with her boyfriend on Saturday night. It's their second Christmas and they're pretty much in love and she's just wondering if this might be the year that he pops the question. And her anticipation is heightened because she has seen him during the week with a little leather box that he put in his pocket at one point. So that's the first scenario. The second one is a young student who's just pressed send on his application for his dream job. If he got this job, if he even got an interview, he'd be stoked. He's not a believer, but as he presses send almost instinctively he goes, looks heavenward, just a really strong desire that will be successful. The third scenario is a middle-aged couple and they're sitting in the waiting room of a specialist suite and it's just those two and all they can hear is the ticking of the clock on the wall as they hold each other's hands, very tense, very apprehensive because in just a few moments they'll know the results of the test, test that have been carried out on that man's heart and it's just a little bit anxious. Now what are these three scenarios have in common? The big yellow lettering gives it away. They all involve hope. The young lady is really hoping that this will be the time when the man she loves will ask her to marry her. The young student is really, really hoping that he'll get, at least an interview for this prize position following his graduation. And of course the couple, and I know some of you have been in this scenario, that couple is really hoping that those results will be positive and not mean any further surgery required. So the common link is hope. And friends, hope is a word that figures prominently, really prominently in the vocab of most people all the time. Hope is going to be fine for the picnic. Hope the traffic is not too heavy on our drive up north. Hope there'll be enough money in my account to cover this transaction. Is that anybody this year? Hope you, I hope my, you know, what doesn't look too big in these genes. That sort of, you know, and I hope my footy team wins and so on. Like most of us say at scores of times every week, sometimes every day, and the meaning is clear, hope in these instances relates directly to the outcome we expect. The way we want to see things turn out, hope is a word that features prominently at Christmas in the Christmas carols. You know, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in the tonight. It's on our Christmas cards. I check the few of our cards and the word hope is there. We may find it hanging from a Christmas tree as a word, you know, hope. A lot of a banner in the shopping centre, I saw that yesterday. And why wouldn't we use hope at this time of the year to highlight the truth of Jesus, the hope of the world, the Savior of the nations? It's very appropriate, it's biblical. The friends, you know, there are very few words in our language where the common meaning is so far removed from the biblical Christian meaning. I mean, the common usage rather can be very light, can be very superficial as people glibly talk about what they're hoping for without any real thought given to the implications or the cost of that which they desire. But when the Bible talks about hope, and it does, a lot, and when Christians talk about hope, it evokes a depth of meaning and a richness of meaning that is at the very heart of the Christian gospel throughout the Old Testament. Writer after writer refers to the hope which is only found in God. And almost always, it's in the context of some sort of personal or national crisis. And the psalmist are the most prolific in this area. They mention hope all the time. And normally it's against the backdrop of a political turmoil or of some personal distress. For instance, Psalm 33, verse 18, "The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him. On those whose hope is in his unfailing love." Psalm 42, verse 5, "Why my soul are you downcast? Why so distracted within me? Put your hope in God, for I will get praise him, my Savior and my God." Two more, Psalm 62, verse 5, "My soul finds rest in God. My hope comes from him." And that very long Psalm 119, verse 114, "You are my refuge and my shield. I have put my hope in your word." They're friends in these and in so many other references in the Old Testament. Hope is far more than some kind of vague, wishful thinking. It's a conscious resolve. It's a decision to put one's life to entrust one's life into the hands of Almighty God, believing that he will guide, he will strengthen, ultimately he will save. Now in the writings of the New Testament, of course, in the period following the Christ of it, hope takes on an added dimension, let me put it that way, an added dimension. And it largely revolves, of course, around the person of Jesus Christ, who is portrayed as the source of our hope, the reason for our hope. And Paul is one writer who contributes greatly to all the references to hope. And Romans, in fact, the book of Romans from which Richard read earlier, that's one book where hope features prominently, it's in Romans 5, we have some of Paul's strongest references to hope. Look at these verses three to five. We also boast of our troubles because we know that trouble produces endurance. Endurance brings God's approval and his approval creates hope. This hope does not disappoint us. Guys, if you forget everything else I've said this morning, I hope you remember that verse, hope, this hope, this hope, this hope, this hope does not disappoint us. Now Paul is not boasting about his troubles out of some kind of weird persecution complex. You know, that kind of person is always rejoicing in their crises because they need a crisis to get through. He's more talking about it, this is sort of a confidence. It's a confidence and a certainty despite his problems. And that's the point. His hope and ours is not dependent or not born out of any everything going as planned or as expected, it was born out of struggle and hardship. And friends, here's the main point of difference between hope as it's used in popular culture and hope as it's used in the Scriptures. Here it is. Look at this. Our hope in Christ is not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that things will necessarily turn out well. But the certainty, we will be victorious regardless of how things turn out. You could dwell on that for a long time and probably not plumb the full depths of its meaning. That's at the core of what we're talking about today. It's more than just optimism or hope it's all going to be okay. That's a hope in the worldly sense. But this is a certainty that we'll be victorious irrespective of how things turn out. This is the hope we celebrate at Christmas. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into a politically and socially unstable world. His arrival caused no end of distress to parents at the time with that edict from Pharaoh that all the children should be killed, all those under two. But His ministry, Jesus experienced all manner of opposition and criticism and was ultimately betrayed of course and hung on a cross. And yet He is the personification of hope. Because hope is not the conviction things will turn out well. Rather, it's the certainty we will be victorious no matter how things turn out. And victorious Jesus was miraculously raised of course on the third day living today through the power of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of His believers and His followers worldwide. Friends, that resurrection represented the ultimate victory. And that's the ultimate victory for you and me. The belief that death is not the end but merely the beginning. Jesus Christ said, "I'm the resurrection and the life those who believe in me, though they be dead, yet shall they live." That's our eventual destination, eternity. Meantime, we journey through this life as agents of love, mercy, justice and hope. That's our calling in Christ. Hope that burns brightly, even when circumstances are difficult and adverse. I can think of a million ways to illustrate this point, but let me just give you several. The level of poverty and deprivation in most developing nations is something that tears their heart out, right? And you can take a country like Madagascar, rack with poverty and injustice and you place a group of young people from a church and lower nor sure. And they partner up with other Christians who are already working in that environment. And these young people start sharing and start talking and teaching and helping in practical ways. And all of a sudden you've got an injection of hope into that seemingly hopeless situation. You hit it five, six years ago with Uganda on a much bigger scale, 35 people went from this church. Build a kitchen dining area which to this day is being used every day by hundreds of people in that Watoto mission. You take what we do with Hope Street here and numbers of you are here this morning and you go into that setting which is a setting in many ways of there's evidence of hopelessness and in a concentrated way an injection of hope happens for those people when we go a minister in that way. And you see, I mean this is where the circumstances don't necessarily change. The circumstances don't necessarily change. But into those circumstances comes life and life and love. Into those circumstances even if only for a short time comes hope. And as we reflect on the events of that first Christmas we can see how those who desperately need hope today can find it in the experience of those original players whom we saw portrayed in that very cute little video clip earlier on. You see every homeless person desperate for a bed for the night finds hope and encouragement in the experience of Mary and Joseph desperately looking for a bed for the night. Every frightened teenage girl who finds herself pregnant and alone and misunderstood can identify with the experience and the bewilderment of Mary. Every small business person trying to reconcile commercial reality with moral imperatives discovers a little bit of hope in the experience of the innkeeper at that first Christmas. The Bible says of Jesus the common people heard him gladly. Why? Because he gave them hope. Not necessarily the promise of changed circumstances but the promise that they would be victorious despite their circumstances. They could rise above their circumstances. That's why the common people heard him gladly. In Romans 12 verse 12 Paul says, "Let your hope, let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles and pray at all times." Bear's further evidence, if we needed it, that Paul believed and in fact had experienced the reality that one's hope in Christ is not the absence of trouble but it's joy, patience and ultimately victory in the midst of trouble. If there's one component of the Christian faith that energizes me, excites me, motivates me more than any other, it's hope. That deep-seated hope through Christ that nothing that happens to me whilst some of it may be very, very tough and very hard to take and very hard-going and it may not be able to be solved but there's nothing that can happen to me that I will not be able to manage in his strength. That just means the will to me and I know to so many of you and I'm at an age where I've just had to put that to the test so many times and you just know that that's the way it's going to be. Nothing will happen. It might not be able to be solved. That's a very shaky theology that tells you that God will solve everything. He says not reality, may not be able to be solved but it will be in his strength managed. The other thing that I love about hope is the absolute certainty that my death whenever that happens won't be the end of the road, it'll just be a bend in the road and at that bend there'll be a sign which says this way to eternity with Jesus Christ and there'll be amazing reunions taking place. I mean this is where the rubber meets the road, I've seen this when people are passing over. I've seen the difference between people who know where they're heading and those who think they're going to hit a brick wall. It's just palpable, the difference is unbelievable. That's the hope we have in Christ. You know on the surface, on the surface it might appear very bad timing that we should be speaking on hope. On a weekend when once again we have been stunned and shocked almost beyond the boundaries of our endurance by yet another senseless act of terror in a U.S. school. And people could be and doubtless are asking well where's hope and all this crime? I mean it's okay to talk about hope but I mean like where's hope in all of this madness? Well let me give you a preview of what will happen in some of the people who are grieving over the loss of loved ones today in the United States. This won't happen to everybody but there is a preview of what will happen to some people and I need to tell you about a man whom I've referred to before from this platform and I would love to meet him one day, I haven't yet but I've read a lot about him. His name is Keith Molten and Keith Molten for many years lived in Tasmania near a place called Port Arthur and Keith was a former Baptist minister in semi-retirement. One of the things he was passionate about was going to the jail, the prison, the Port Arthur researching some of the history of that area and his wife lived with him and his daughter. His daughter was also a resident of that area, her name was Nanette, two children, Alana, six, Madeline, three and her role, she worked also at Port Arthur, she was a tour guide and used to specialise in ghost tours of all things, well on April 28, 1996, she found herself with her two little children on a roadway having heard some sketchy reports of something shocking that was happening in Port Arthur and she found herself on a road where the two little girls wanted to get out of that area as quickly as she could. She hailed a Volvo wagon and in the most terrible example of wrong place, wrong time, the person driving that Volvo was a man called Martin Bryant. Within seconds of that encounter, she and her three-year-old had been shot dead. The little six-year-old were told and came out in the records, had tried to escape and this man stalked her and shot her more than once. So, this man Keith Molten as a grandfather, as a resident of that area, as a Christian, he knew he would have to dig really deep into his hope in Christ to get him through this. And you know what he did? He actually made himself available to the New Bina Church of Christ, one of our churches where the minister only lasted about six months after the crisis, he couldn't keep going. The pressure was just too great. Keith stepped forward to look, "Okay, I'll do it, but I'll just do it for six months. I'm not going to do it forever." He did it for six years, ministering to the people who had been affected by this tragedy in that immediate area. He continued his work at the jail. He drove past the spot where his daughter and two grandchildren had been shot. He drove past that spot every day for seven years. Now, he was interviewed many, many times around Australia and in an interview with, of all people, Maxine McHugh, the ABC journalist, in 2006, she talked about his journey and this is what he said. He said, "When I got to a stage of talking to myself," and he humorously said, "which is a bad sign," he said, "I said to myself one day, this was over a long period, " Keith, are you prepared to forgive Martin Bryant if he came to the door and said, "Would you forgive me?" He said, "One day," I love those two words. Can you imagine how long it took to get to one day? Can you imagine the pain and the digging deep into his hope in Christ to get to that point? He says, "One day, I said, 'Yes, I could.'" And it was as though a weight lifted off my shoulders. I don't carry that burden like many do of being angry and bitter. Like I said, some people, not all, some people who have a hope in Christ after this tragedy in Connecticut were reached this point. It took him years. But that's the point he eventually came to, Keith Molten, what a hero. I love the verse in Hebrew 6, verses 18 and 19, two verses. We who have found safety with him are greatly encouraged to hold firmly to the hope placed before us. We have this hope as an anchor for our lives. Friends, what is an anchor? An anchor is something that holds something firm when the storms hit. That's our hope in Christ. That's my hope. I really hope and pray that is your hope today. Let's be honest, shall we? Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for the hope we have in Christ. We recognize, Lord, that hope is not just a word on a page, it's a living reality. It's born out of pain, it's born out of suffering. But it's as real as anything we can touch and feel and know. Lord, we thank you that sometimes the journey to find that hope is a long one. It's a bit meandering. It was for Keith Molten. It has been for numbers in this church and is proving to be so for numbers of people in this church. God, Lord, may the delays and the stalling points in the journey not in any way diminish our belief that this is our calling, our hope in Christ, the belief that nothing will happen to us, that even if it can't be solved in your strength, it will be managed. We praise you for that reality today in the strong name of Jesus, amen.