Make Way for Hope

Isaiah 12:1-6 "..with JOY shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation..."

Romans 15:4 "Now the God of HOPE fill you with all JOY and PEACE in believing, that ye may abound in HOPE, through the power of the Holy Ghost."

(Introduction:) " We've all heard the innocent expression, 'Thank God It's Friday!' But that innocent statement is really a confession! A confession about the quality of HOPE! The idea of 'hope' for many people is limited to something on the level of a WISH that the weekend weather won't be too bad."

I. LIFE WITHOUT REAL HOPE IS LESS THAN LIFE! IS INTENDED TO BE

  1. We might be so bold as to speak of 'The Curse of TGIF!' It is a confession of failure when a person really comes to live by a TGIF total mind-set. It is a tragedy when people only are alive part of the time. It is a tragedy when people are only alive when they are being excited or thrilled or somehow escaping the life sentence of eternal boredom.
  2. What TGIF really is is a kind of HOPELESSNESS! It is the confession that life, for the most part, is a dead end street. It is saying that all of life does NOT have meaning. HELL IS LOOKING FOR A BREAK ON THE WEEKEND THAT NEVER REALLY COMES!

    The saddest fact I know is that people can live out their lives in an empty "Thank God it's Friday" mind-set, and go out into an eternal night and never have known the joy real HOPE can bring!

[Transition: But a change takes place when people meet the Lord Jesus Christ! Same old job— same old "personality traits"— same old situations, perhaps. But somehow everything is different!]

II. SALVATION BRINGS WITH IT A MEASURE OF HOPE

  1. Grace opens the eyes of HOPE

    Salvation changes the WAY we live, but salvation also begins to change the way we LOOK at living! We not only receive adoption and regeneration and justification, we have the makings of an entire new OUTLOOK ON LIFE! We start with the persuasion deep within that somehow life in Christ Jesus is worth the living!

  2. But HOPE must be deliberately pursued, developed!

    There is the possibility of a full assurance of hope! In Hebrews 6 there are verses which read: "And we desire that every one of you show diligence... to the full assurance of hope ... that we might have a strong consolation ... to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us." We need diligence in pursuing hope to a full assurance!

  3. God's grace will naturally lead us into HOPE if we diligently endeavor to walk with God.

    Romans 5:2-5: "We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

III. MILLIONS ARE WAITING THIS FOR WORD OF HOPE!

  1. A world in darkness is waiting for a word of hope.

    Born-again Christians need hope for themselves. They need to recover the joy and the power that come from living in full assurance of hope.

    But beyond this basic selfish reason for the need of hope, there is another powerful, compelling reason why we must lay hold of hope! We don't dare leave the Advent-type HOPE to the faithful of the Old Testament! Our God is coming again light and in power— and He wants us to be beacons of His light!

    "The people who sit in darkness" are not just those who lived in Isaiah's time! And all those who don't know Christ and salvation would love to be convinced that there really is HOPE in THIS dark hour! The unsaved world is waiting for a word of hope.

  2. But, sadly, even a great segment of THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST is living far below the level of HOPE that our text calls us to! There are many Christians, born-again believers, who would love to think that there is more to being saved than just hanging on by our teeth and our toenails until Jesus returns to bail us out of this mess. Especially new converts, instead of hearing older Christians take a defeatist attitude, would like to hear a genuine note of HOPE sounded!

    William J. Abraham, in a challenging new book, The Coming Great Revival, says, "There is a vast army of new Christians hungry for initiation into a modern version of the Christian faith that will integrate DEEP PIETY, SOCIAL ACTION, and CLASSICAL THEOLOGY in a penetrating expression of the Christian gospel. A renewed evangelical tradition that holds in tension both its unity and its diversity can provide exactly this." (p 112)

    All the world would like to hear a genuine word of HOPE!

IV. HOW DO CHRISTIANS 'LAY HOLD' ON HOPE? (HOW MAY WE BECOME PEOPLE OF HOPE, AND THEN, EXPONENTS OF HOPE?)

  1. First: HOPE is NOT dependent on the size of our talent, OR the happy circumstances of our situation. Hope has to do with saying "YES!" to LIFE!

    Listen to these words from Howard Thurman:

    "Granted that the daily routine is monotonous, that the personal equipment is extremely limited, that all the options were frozen long ago, that there is nothing on the horizon that sounds the trumpet call to the great adventure or the high demand— granted all of this. But there is always available to the individual another alternative even where options are frozen. One can make an offering of the self to God... to respond to life where I am without bargaining or bartering."

    And somehow a life deliberately given to God gathers HOPE like a magnet gathers iron filings! CAN GOD HAVE YOU JUST NOW? WILL YOU SAY YES TO LIFE! ?

  2. Second: Saying "YES!" to LIFE must be on God's terms, and must be HOLISTIC. We cannot start out by "knowing in advance everything God wants us to do!" But we may be certain that our response to LIFE must involve EXPERIENCE, and PRACTICE, and also CREED or DOCTRINE! ALL THREE FACETS OF LIFE IN CHRIST!

    Too often we see a part of this truth— and think the answer is DEEPER PIETY, or BETTER SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. But we must be open to the possibility that our DOCTRINE, our UNDERSTANDING, has limited both our faith and our hope. In a large measure, all throughout the evangelical church— we Christians are more involved in defending a particular position than in opening our hearts to the power of God's truth!

  3. (I know I am prejudiced, but) I BELIEVE WE WESLEYANS HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE A CATALYST IN A REAL RENEWAL RENEWAL OF HOPE!

    We stand (in a sense) between the extremes in doctrine and practice— between fundamentalists and charismatics. If somehow as a CHURCH we could recapture the genius of Wesley in his deep reverence for scholarly theology and ecclesiology and couple that with his sacrificial dedication to the poor and needy, the orphan and the prisoner, and put that together with his God-given gift for folding each and every convert into a spiritual-life group— we would be a powerhouse of HOPE in a dark and needy world!

    William Abraham said:

    "Wesleyans need to recover not just the genius of the Wesleyan heritage in its theology, they also need to recover its genius for organization, social involvement, ecumenical action, and world mission. For example, the single greatest loss over the years within Wesleyan circles has been the abandoning of the pattern of pastoral care established in the class meetings. Unless this or a modern equivalent is restored within Wesleyan circles, renewal will be mostly cerebral and cosmetic. Without this, young converts will not develop the spiritual stamina needed to survive in the modern world."

    I am praying that in some measure we here can catch this vision.

  4. But sermons are not just to churches, they are to individuals, too. And each one of us needs to be 'taking hold on HOPE!'

    We need to have the same kind of Advent-type hope the faithful men and women of God in the Old Testament had as they looked forward to Christ's coming!

    1. We personally need to recover the reality of the experience of a clean heart. We dare not settle for shibboleth or second-hand assurance here. But we also need to go into the Word in a measure that we have not commonly done:
    2. We personally need to recover the disciplined and methodistic love of creedal, scriptural truth and doctrine! And all this time...
    3. We, each one of us dare not neglect the debt that all Christians have to society!

[Conclusion:]

Maybe I haven't convinced you that "Thank God it's Friday!" is the major curse of the world today. But just maybe I have been able to challenge you not to wish your life away, and seek to escape from the boredom of life, but instead to decide to live by HOPE, hope that makes life worth the living!