Hope the Two Sides of Hope 1980

The last verse of one of everybody's favorite chapters of Scripture, 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13. So faith, hope, love abide. These three.

But the greatest of these is love. Who can argue against that statement, that the greatest of these is love? But it's also true that the power to love will soon be gone if faith withers or if hope dies. Faith, hope, love abide.

If the greatest of these is love, most of us tend to think that the least of these has to be hope. Surely in most of our lives, the most neglected of these is hope. It's almost as if hope is considered to be a luxury.

Good thing to have if you have it. But if it should happen to evaporate, then you just have to get along best you can without it. Many of us are quite serious about trying to exercise faith and manifest love in our daily lives, while the hope in God, which was once our constant companion, has shriveled to almost nothing.

We've resigned ourselves to a kind of vague depression, a dull spiritual headache that gets up with us every morning, and we hope will wear off as the day wears on. And so we do our best to take care of business, look after the children, pay our bills, eat, sleep, talk about babies and cars and hockey and politics, watch some TV, and wait for something to happen to lift the monotony. See, but if we don't have hope, then we have no purpose, no goal, nothing to look forward to.

And once we had a vision of the kingdom of God and truly had some taste of the reality of Jesus, to sink back into that aimless drifting is like going into the very vestibule of hell itself. And if we continue in that state of hopelessness for very long, then our faith and our love, whatever of it we have, will be gone too. Now the same Holy Spirit who brings us to faith in Jesus, and the same Holy Spirit that causes the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts, also fills our hearts with hope.

And this gift of hope in God is essential if we are going to fulfill our purpose in this world and remain alive in God on through into the next. Hope has two sides, God's side, our side. God's side is to give us hope as a gift and continually renew it to us.

Our side is to make sure that this gift of hope we now have is always aimed at him and at nothing else. From his side, God gives us his son to be our hope. The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles.

In him shall the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Why do you think Peter left his fishing? And everything really that was familiar to him, forsook all to follow Jesus.

Peter's first response to Jesus was not faith, and it surely wasn't love. It was hope. Jesus was the first real hope Peter had ever seen.

Peter knew there was more to life than catching fish and sitting around at night swapping stories. Don't be afraid. From now on, you're going to be catching men.

Now Jesus brings Peter into a hope in him that will enable him to enter into a life of purpose and meaning, a life that will be burning with really God's life, such as he's never known before. Everywhere Jesus went, he gave people hope. He gave hope to the lame, hope to the blind, hope to the hungry, hope to the dead, hope to the most hopeless sinner.

And those of us who have in any way come into the knowledge of Jesus have tasted that hope. It was like walking through a door into a totally new life, like having a fresh beginning. It was like falling in love.

Now we begin to walk with Jesus, and every day with him becomes, in fact, a glorious adventure, a real joy. We're going down this road looking forward to the city of God waiting for us at the other end, and every day we're looking forward to participating in the work of God which he allows us to be part of every single day. And all along this road with our Lord, he renews this hope to us, refreshes it to us.

But then, for some strange reason, our eyes of hope, which at first were fixed only on the Master, begin to turn and look to other things as well. Now I begin to put my hope not only in Jesus, but in some person who has become very important to me, my friend, my leader, my wife, my husband, my child, or some enterprise I'm part of, like my church or my business or my career or my dream of success. And see, what I've now done is exactly what the people of Israel did.

The God of Israel had lifted these people out of Egypt, through the waters of the Red Sea, and had been their hope. And all along that wilderness journey, as they followed that cloud by day and that fire by night, God was their hope. And now they take this hope and just shove it aside for the golden calf.

When we mix our hope in God with hope in a golden calf, we always end up with a disappointment of some kind. Things just don't work out the way we hoped they would, yet we keep trying and trying, and we deceive ourselves. Yeah, I know I can do it.

It'll work out. Here I go again. Mixing the golden calf in my Lord.

And after two or three of these disappointments, or maybe 50, or if we're really hard-headed, as most of us are, it takes maybe 100 or two, we finally develop a fear of hoping in anything at all. It's kind of like a superstition. You know, that I just can't afford to even get my hopes up.

Because every time I hope that something good is going to happen, it always turns out rotten. Doesn't pay to hope. See, but it isn't because... I didn't make the mistake by hoping.

I made the mistake by misdirecting my hope away from my God to my golden calf. Our side of this business of hope is to make sure that it always remains focused on Him and never slips off to that golden calf. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my confidence and my God.

Why art thou cast down? To be cast down, disquieted, upset, depressed, is all part of this weird network of superstition that just chokes our souls. You know, the fear that... it doesn't pay to hope in anything. And pretty soon, that fear of hoping in anything undermines our hope in God.

But it wasn't God who let us down. It was that golden calf. It was that twisted, warped concept of God which we knew was distorted when we took hold of it.

We knew it. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God. If there is any exhortation we need to hear and act on, it's this one.

Hope in God. Hope in God for the unfolding of His purpose in each day. You finally get yourself together, the alarm went off and you know, you took another 15 minutes and finally, you're out of bed.

First thing you do is look out the window. Ugh. Another day.

No, and maybe sometimes in the spring when the birds are singing, we feel a little bit better. But whether the day looks good or bad, what a difference it makes if we enter into that day rotten as it may look, hoping in God. He made the day.

He gave it to us. He's in it. And His desire toward us in that day is nothing but good.

The fruits of our Lord's death and resurrection wait to be gathered in that day. And even the disruptions and the disappointments and even the tragedies which will come on some days will be somehow turned into friends if we approach the day always hoping in God. We need to hope in God for the outpouring of His good will in answer to our prayers.

You know, we're praying about that wound, that heartache, that person we love so much and we're worried and troubled about them. What a difference it makes when we pray for that person in hope. How can you pray in faith if you have no hope? See, but when you pray in hope, even if you don't have any faith, if you pray in hope, the faith will soon be there.

We need to hope in God that we will soon reach the end of our journey and see our Lord face to face. We're not going to sit here very long. This building's going to be gone and so are we.

Praise God. Now we see through a mirror, dimly, then face to face. Now I know in part.

Then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. A prophecy given to a French poet around the turn, well, about just before the First World War, Charles Pegley. I am, says God, master of the three virtues.

Faith is a faithful wife. Charity is an ardent mother. But hope is a tiny girl.

I am, says God, the master of virtues. Faith is she who remains steadfast during centuries and centuries. Charity is she who gives herself during centuries and centuries.

But my little hope is she who rises every morning. I am, says God, the Lord of virtues. Faith is she who remains tense during centuries and centuries.

Charity is she who unbends during centuries and centuries. But my little hope is she who every morning wishes us good day. I am, says God, the Lord of virtues.

Faith is a soldier, a captain holding a fort, one of the king's cities in the borderland of Gascony, in the borderland of Lorraine. Charity is a physician, a little sister of the poor, who nurses the sick, who nurses the wounded, the king's poor, in the borderland of Gascony, in the borderland of the Lorraine. But my little hope is she who says, how do you do to the poor and to the orphan? I am, says God, the Lord of virtues.

Faith is a church, a cathedral rooted in the soil of France. Charity is a hospital, an almshouse, which gathers up all the miseries of the world. But if it weren't for hope, all that would be nothing but a cemetery.

I am, says God, the Lord of virtues. Faith is she who watches during centuries and centuries. Charity is she who watches during centuries and centuries.

But my little hope is she who goes to bed every night and gets up every morning and really sleeps very well. I am, says God, the Lord of that virtue. My little hope is she who goes to sleep every night in that child's crib of hers, after having said her prayers properly, and who every morning wakes up and rises and says her prayers with a new look in her eyes.

The Spirit of God is among us now. And along with his many gifts, he brings to us today, especially straight from heaven, the gift of fresh hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

Now that gift is given and it's ours right now. But we have to do something. If we will take all this superstition and this ridiculous fear of expecting anything good from God, which has choked off our spirits and our minds, take all that and shove it out of our hearts.

And if we will take this gift of hope and fix it on God alone and keep it fixed right there, that hope will be followed by love and by faith to a degree we have never known. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. Now today, let's not jump right into prayer.

Let's just take some time quietly before God. And I'm going to reserve the right today to break the silence. So let's just wait on God in silence, shall we? And just pray before him in our hearts.

Lord God, you know the disappointments which have wounded our souls in the past year, perhaps even in the past week. And we pray, Lord, that you'd help us now to get our hearts off every golden cap and restore them purely, totally to you. Help us today, by the grace of your Spirit and by the power of the blood of the Lamb, to just discard all the broken hopes and all the disappointing golden caps and all the pursuits we've tried again and again, banging our heads against the wall and fix our hearts, O God, just on you.

And help us to dare to just believe that you're going to enable things to work out the way they ought to for us and take our hands of the things which belong only to your hands. We ask it in Jesus' name.