one  hope v2 (720p): All to be with all of you. I love you. Thank you for being here. Those who are tuning in online as well, we appreciate you worshiping with us this morning. We are in a series. If you're visiting with us, we are looking at the ones that are found in Ephesians 4. And we've been going through them systematically. A couple weeks ago, we looked at one body. Last week we looked at one spirit. This morning, we're looking at a topic that thrills my soul. Looking at hope. Because we all need hope. Hope is a difference maker. And without hope, life gets pretty dim. And there's not much to look forward to. But as Christians, we can handle life differently and whatever it throws at us because of this hope. Back in the 50s, there was a town in Maine called Flagstaff. And officials decided that they were going to dam up one of the rivers close by. which would turn Flagstaff into an underwater city. They were just gonna flood the city and make it a lake. And so obviously residents were giving given notice that they needed to evacuate because this was gonna happen and the problem is that it didn't happen for several months. And during those seven or eight months, everything in town kinda stopped. They didn't pick up trash, they didn't do road improvements or Or anything like that, and why would you? I mean, the town is going to be destroyed. But morale was low, and one resident said this where there is no faith in the future, there's no power in the present. How true is that? How you view the future directly affects how you live life in the present. Maybe you've heard of Bertrand Russell. He was a famous atheist that lived many years ago and When he was eighty-one, he was on a radio talk show, and the host has asked him, So you're an atheist? And he said, That's right. And he said, Well, what do you have to hang on to? And he said, This I have nothing to hang on to. But unyielding despair. How brutally honest and deepening, deeply saddening, isn't it? That you have nothing to hang on to? That you have no hope in anything after this life? I want to ask you, what do you hang on to? What do you hang on to? How do you view the future? Outside of Brinkley, Arkansas, where my my dad's side of the family is from, there is the McCurley Cemetery. It just sits off the family farm in that area. And right next to the McCurley Cemetery where most of my relatives are buried, there's an old white clapboard building that essentially was the McCurley Church of Christ. That's where all my family went to church growing up. And it sounds odd, unusual to have a a church building and then a cemetery, but that used to be the norm. It used to be that churches would have a cemetery right next to it because the idea was we did life together on earth and we're going to do life together in eternity. Together in life, together in death, together in resurrection. We no longer think that way. Death is often viewed as a loss. In fact, we use what I call loser language. So-and-so lost their battle with cancer, so-and-so lost their battle with Alzheimer's. But as children of God, we don't lose anything at death. We only gain. When you lose something, you don't know where it's at. And we know exactly where our loved ones are that have died in the Lord. We know where we will be when we die in the Lord. That's our hope. But death is scary. It Should be, it's the enemy, right? And so because death is the enemy, we're afraid and we don't we don't necessarily want to face it. I mean, we we sing about it and we talk about it and we get excited about it, but then we realize that the prerequisite for for for heaven is is death. And seems like everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die, right? And all these sentiments are totally reasonable. Because death is the enemy and enemies are to be feared. Death was not a part of the plan originally. It came onto the scene, as you know, in the Garden of Eden because of the sin of our parents, Adam and Eve. And we are humans. And humans wrestle within themselves. We we have this battle within ourselves between the longing for home and the desire to stay here in the flesh. And we're in good company because many biblical writers shared in this tension. Once you notice what is written in Psalm 42, you see this tension starting in verse 5. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hoping God. For I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me, and therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon and from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep. At the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me. While they say to me all day long, Where is your God? Why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. You feel the tension in that? The psalmists often dealt with this tension because they knew that death was not a part of the original plan. And they saw death as an interruption to the plan. They saw death as an opportunity to not be able to fulfill the reason that they were created. And so you see this tension. And we see it too. No, we see it, we we feel it. But it's like the psalmist is talking to himself. He's preaching to himself here and and and he's he's weighing it out and he's he's trying to balance the discussion. Why God? Why is this happening to me? What is happening within me? yeah, hope in God. For I shall again praise his name, my salvation and my God. I love how The psalmist balances the conversation within himself, to himself. He doesn't let the negativity win. His soul is cast down. But but I hope in God. I'm torn up on the inside. But you're my salvation. This is a normal Christian experience. We all feel the tension. We all wrestle with it. We've constantly got to remind ourselves that we have a future because hope is not something that comes naturally to us. Naturally we're scared of death. It's far too easy to be weighed down by present circumstances. I think Jeremiah illustrates this for us beautifully. If you look at Lamentations chapter three, beginning of verse one, it reads like this I'm the man who has seen affliction. Because of the rod of his wrath, he has driven me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely against me. He has turned his hand repeatedly all the day. He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away. He has broken my bones. He has besieged and encompassed me with bitterness, hardship. Skip down to verse 15. It says, He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drunk with wormwood. He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has made me cower in the dust. My soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness, so I say, My strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. So Lamentations is Jeremiah's diary, and he is recounting that God has given him a message and a mission, and all that message and mission has brought to him is pain and heartache and turmoil and tribulation. If you look at Jeremiah chapter 20, you find that that Jeremiah finds himself in stocks. He's being punished for this message and this mission. And do you know who put him in stocks? A guy by the name of Pasher, who was a priest. It wasn't the pagan people. That that Jeremiah had to worry about in that day and age. It was the religious people who were persecuting him. And he looks around and he and he sees all of this turmoil that's been caused by what God has given him to preach. And he thinks, what's it all for? He finds himself in this tribulation thinking, I only did what God told me to do. And this is what it brings me? In other words, Jeremiah looked at his present circumstances. He looked around at the horizontal aspect of his life, and he determined that it wasn't good. In fact, it was far from good. But Jeremiah pivots. He shifts. Notice verses 19 through 24 of Lamentations chapter 3. Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and the bitterness of the Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope. The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in him. Jeremiah looked around at the horizontal and he saw nothing but a hopeless, helpless situation. And so he went vertical. He looked up and he found hope. He wrestled mightily with his present circumstances, but he found hope when he looked to the future. And we see the same thing with Paul. You'll look at Romans chapter 8 with me. How you view the later affects how you handle the now. How you view the later affects how you handle the now. Look at Romans chapter eight, verse eighteen. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to re be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing 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 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Paul is struggling to stay focused on the future. Like Jeremiah, he had received the lashes and the beatings, and he's imprisoned. Present circumstances were anything but ideal. And so Paul does his best to remind him and the people that this isn't all that there is, that this isn't as good as it gets. He's encouraging them to go vertical. Don't get lost in the horizontal. You get lost in the horizontal, you're never going to see what God can do with your present circumstances. You go vertical, you look up, and you see that God is in control. And that there is hope for something better. That in the horizontal there's corruption and there's there's there's turmoil and there's tribulation. But in the vertical, there's so much more. That beats all of it, right? Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time. I consider, in the original language, consider as logomitsoe, and I'm sure I pronounced that right. Logitsomai. Logizoma is a mathematical term. It it's literally numerical calculation. Paul is saying, I've done the math. I've done the calculations. I've sat down and I've run the numbers. And it turns out that that God's people have a huge positive balance in their account. So don't get discouraged. You can take God's promises to the bank. You may be defeated now, but you're winning. What's most important? Look at verse twenty five again. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Now there are two primary Hebrew words for hope. There is Yakal, that's how that's how the Hebrew would say it, Yakal, and there is kabah. Yakal means simply to wait. It's like when Noah was stuck on the ark and he had to wait for the floodwaters to subside. Kaba means to wait, but it's more about tension. It comes from the word kav in the Hebrew, and kav is a rope or a string, and when you pull a rope or a string, you have tension until it is released. And so kava hope is about that tension as we wait, that tension between what is happening in the horizontal and what we have to look forward to in the vertical. The question becomes, what are we waiting for? If you call and Kava mean to wait, what is it that we're waiting for? Well, notice what the prophet Isaiah says. Isaiah chapter 8 and verse 17. You don't have to turn there, I'll just read it. I will Kavah. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. And I will hope in him. So Isaiah is facing a dark time. It was a dark time in Israel's history. And Yet Isaiah says there's there's still hope. Right? This isn't all that there is. You find that same hope brought forth in the Psalms. There's darkness and despair. Yet I will wait, I will hope. Psalm 130, verses 5 through 7 reads, I will kavah, I will wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, Yakal, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and within him is plentiful redemption. So, back to that question, what are we waiting for? Or the better question is who are we waiting for? Who were they waiting for? That kind of gives it away, doesn't it? Biblical hope is always wrapped up in a person. Understand that. Biblical hope is always is always wrapped up in a person. The people were waiting on God. They were waiting on God to fulfill his promise. No matter how bad things got, they believed that God could step in at any time and fix it, that he would bail them out because he'd done it before. They always played off their history. They always look back mainly at the Exodus and said, God saved us then, He can save us now. He can bail us out. In the end, their waiting would be rewarded. That's what they believed. God's done it before, He will do it again. We have a history with God, and God has shown us through history that He will bail us out, that He will take care of us, that He will sustain us, that He will do it again, even in our darkest time. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Do you believe that when the cancer returns? Do you believe that when your when your spouse leaves you with with three kids, you're alone? Do you believe that when your Your spouse of fifty years takes their last breath And for the first time. In a long time you have to go to bed by yourself. Do you believe it when the tears won't stop? When the pain won't subside? When all hope seems gone? Do you believe that your waiting will be rewarded? What do you do? What do you do when everything in the horizontal seems to be crumbling down around you? You wait. And you say, Chris, is that all you got? Yeah, that's all I got. And I think that's enough. We wait. We wait on God. Because He will reward our waiting. It may not be in our own timing. It may be that we want it immediate and it doesn't happen immediately. It may be that we want God to step in and do something right away and He doesn't. But at the end of the day, you just have to trust that your waiting will be rewarded. Have you noticed how the Bible doesn't sugarcoat anything? It's very upfront and honest. The biblical writers don't blow smoke. They don't skirt the issue. They don't act like everything is fine when it's not. They weren't optimists. Optimism is is is hoping that things will turn out, and even in the the worst circumstances, you you you kind of think positively, right? The biblical writers were not optimists. They didn't have a positive outlook when their circumstances weren't ideal. Biblical hope isn't focused on circumstances. In fact, we find folks in the Bible who often recognize that their predicament wasn't going to get better, and yet they still hoped in God anyway. In Hosea chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, we read these words. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Akor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Again, these words reflect a dark time in the history of Israel. Because of their blatant disobedience, their rebellion, their idolatry, they are going to be punished, and this punishment's going come in the form of an oppressive nation. But Hosea looked past the circumstances, and he found hope. There was a door of hope, the prophet says. Like in the days when God rescued his people from Egypt. God rescued his people before, and Hosea believes that he could do it again. God's past faithfulness motivates the hope for the future. Hope is always dependent on the reliability of the one we're counting on. Hope depends on who's making the promise. When you read through scripture, you'll notice that hope is never pulled out of thin air. It's based on logic, it's based on reason. It's not it's not irrational. There is a history with God. And his people believe that whatever he promises, they can take it to the bank. They can trust God with all their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength because there is a real God making real promises. who gives real reasons as to why we can trust him. The people believed you you looked forward by looking backward. You look backward to what God has done. You see how He has operated in the past. And that gives you hope for the future. And the same is true with us, isn't it? All of us can point to a time, probably more than once, in our lives when God has been so good to us, when He has rescued us, when He has taken care of us, when we prayed and He answered that prayer. So we know He can do it because He's done it before. And therefore He gives us real reasons to trust Him. And if he's promising to right all wrongs, then we can take that to the bank. And that hope drives us. I love the way Psalm 39 and verse 7 presents it. And now, O Lord, for what do I cava? My Yakal is in you. My hope, my yakal is in you. You God, because you can be trusted. And this is not merely an Old Testament concept. We find it throughout the New Testament as well. New Testament Christians cultivated the same type of hope: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's what they are playing off of as their past rescue operation. For the Israelites, it was the Exodus. And for the New Testament writers, when they spoke of hope, it was in relation to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He came back from the dead. Certainly, he's going to come back for us. Certainly, we can take his promises to the bank that we are going to rise from the grave just as he did, and we are going to enter into the promised land for all eternity. The empty tomb is a door of hope. The word that they used to describe this anticipation of this day is El Peace. It's the Greek word el peace. Peter describes it this way. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul often talked about good news, the El Peace of Glory. And this El Peace, this living hope, always referred to a person. Not an event. It always referred to a person. The risen Jesus was the hope that God's people were longing for. That was their future glory. What happened with Jesus and the resurrection was foreshadowing to what God had planned for all of creation. And so what is this one hope that we are all anticipating? What is this one hope that Paul is making reference to when he talks about? Hope in Ephesians chapter four. What is this unified hope that we all are waiting for? It's waiting for humanity and the whole universe to be rescued from evil and death. Remember, death was not a part of the original plan. And death is an interruption to the original plan. The original plan is that you would rule and reign with God in this paradise, that you would be image bearers of him, that you would bear his image to the world around you. Death interrupted that. But for the child of God it's just a temporary interruption. Everything that's wrong will be made right. That's what Paul's talking about in Romans chapter 8. You see, biblical hope isn't optimism based on the odds. It's not like you're looking around at the horizontal and thinking, okay, well, I'm going to choose to take on a positive attitude. That's not what this is. It's a choice to wait for God to bring about the future that He has promised. It's looking backward as we look forward. We see what God has done for us in the past, and therefore we look forward to what he will do in the future. It's looking back to the risen Savior in order to look forward to his second coming. How you view the future, how you see the hope that is on the horizon, is all going to be based on how you view the first coming. How you see the first coming is going to affect how you see the second coming and where you invest your hope. I've said this before, but as as Christians, we are like expectant mothers. Right? When a mother is pregnant, she is with child, she starts making preparations, gets the nursery ready, she packs a a go bag to take as soon as you know you have to go to the hospital, you just grab the bag. She's expectant. She's waiting. There is a promise inside of her waiting to be born, and she will wait as long as it takes. Maybe miserably, but she will wait as long as it takes, right? She is expectant. She knows that it's coming. So she waits. But not only are we expectant mothers, we are also food service employees. What do you call the person who who comes and fills your drinks and brings you your food and brings you the tab? What do we call those people? We call them waiters or waitresses. They wait on us, but they also serve us. And that's exactly what we are. We are waiters. We we wait, and while we wait, we do what? Just hunker down? Wait for Jesus to come back. No, we be Jesus. Until Jesus comes back. And finds us being Jesus. That's who we are. We're expectant mothers. We're we're waiters. We get to work. We make things happen until what we're waiting for does happen. Waiting is not about passivity, it's about preparation. And we wait together. We prepare together. We we hope together. It's been a while back that I was at a a funeral for one of our beloved members here. And we we sang songs. I'll fly away. Mansion over the hilltop. Steve Baggett said some kind words about the deceased and also talked about how this isn't all that there is, that there is something better. And and and I looked around. Probably ninety-five percent of the people that were there that day were members right here at Walnut Street. And I looked around and there were some teary eyes. But by and large, everyone was smiling. The whole tone of the occasion was celebration. Why? How can you celebrate in that moment? Death has won. How can you celebrate at that moment? You look at the casket and you look at the flowers and you know you you you see the funeral procession, you get to the cemetery and you look at all those headstones. Death's won, right? Death has been victorious. How can you celebrate? because Death is far from one. We celebrate because we know that that child of God has attained the reward that we all hope for. That blessed life in eternity with the Heavenly Father. And therefore, we can be sad and yet we can we can laugh, we can cry, and yet we can celebrate. Because we know that this isn't all that there is, that our hope is in something bigger. And I believe that right there is exactly what Paul is talking about in Ephesians chapter 4. The one hope that we all have that we can gather together to celebrate the life of someone who Who has passed? That we can all come together and we can sing about heaven and we can talk about them receiving their reward and that we can celebrate, knowing that this life isn't all that there is. That there's something better. I've asked Steve to to lead us in a song. This song is one this tells you how dense I am. We sang this song about five times at Oldham Lane until I figured out what it was about. The song is one you're familiar with. It's called There's a Stirring. And I request that Steve sing it at my funeral, hopefully not any time soon. Because that's what it's about. There's a stirring, it's about it's about death. It's about dying. It's also about living. Living on. Dying to be somewhere greater. As we sing this together. Let's sing it at one, as one. Let's in unison. Let's Let's sing it as people who have one hope. How about that? Focus on the words, focus on on what is being said and what is being spoken in this song and sing it as one body who has one hope. Can we do that? And if you need to come forward, if you need to answer the invitation this morning, it is always open. We'd love to help you, whatever your need might be. Why don't you why don't you stand as we sing this song together?