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What Can One Say About Hope?
That to have a healthy outlook on life, and any sense of excitement or
anticipation about the future, hope is absolutely indispensable? That every
lifeless face; every disheartened soul; every gloomy gaze; every pessimistic
outlook; every discouraged tear and lethargic spirit is in some way the result
of a loss of hope?
The loss of hope evidences itself in many ways—when you find yourself depressed,
listless, or adopting somewhat of a “whatever” or “who cares” attitude toward
things in general; when you find yourself ready to give up on some life-long
dream, or some important relationship, or in the worst case scenario, when you
find yourself wanting to call it quits, entertaining suicidal thoughts, or
thinking about “throwing in the towel,” as they say. Suicide is the ultimate
expression of the loss of hope.
Dear friend, do you display any of those symptoms?
Have the things of life got you down? Do you feel like a sandcastle on the beach
where each successive wave of despairing circumstances just continues to hit you
and erode your hope more and more?
One of the oldest symbols for hope was the anchor. It’s an appropriate symbol
since an anchor fixed to a rock solid object on shore would hold a vessel fast
even when the ship was beaten by the winds or waves of a storm. Hope that is
solid and sure must be grounded in something equally solid and sure. An anchor
set in nothing but sand will pull loose, but an anchor hooked around an
outcropping of bedrock will hold firm!
So what is that rock solid object around which we need to hook our anchor? How
do we gain the hope we need and desire?
1.) The Infinitely Strong and Rock Solid Object We Call God.
Three times the despairing Psalmist preaches to himself in Psalms 42-43 and
tells himself: “Put your hope in God…” And he does so because he knows that God
and God alone is the source of all true, solid, stable hope! Hope comes as we
fix our eyes of faith upon the mighty and unchangeable God who is the
well-spring of all hope. “You are my God and Savior and my hope is in You all
day long,” says the Psalmist elsewhere (25:5). Hope, then, comes from having a
right perspective and a right perspective comes from focusing our attention on
God and not on the things that are getting us down. Hold a tiny object like a
dime one eighth of an inch from your eye and it totally blocks your ability to
see anything else out of that eye. But hold that same dime out at arms length
away from that eye and you can see it and nearly everything else as well.
Focusing on God instead of our troubles is like moving that dime an arms length
away from our eye. We get a clearer and more objective picture of things.
“Blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord
his God” (Ps. 146:5).
2.) The Divinely Inspired Word of God.
Five times Psalm 119 repeatedly declares: “I have put my hope in your Word…”
(119:49, 74, 81, 114, 147). This is good advice to us. Sometimes we make the
mistake of letting our feelings or our present circumstances be the gauge of
what we think will continue to come our way in the future. We let doubt and
despair get the best of us, and unwisely become our own “prophet of doom.” We
let those things rather than God’s promises to us in His Word be the indicators
of what God must surely have in store for us in the future. Yet those who “build
the house of their hope” on the shifting sands of their present feelings, or
circumstances; on speculation and probabilities, will not see it stand when the
hardships of life beat down upon it like unrelenting torrential rains, or the
floodwaters of despair rise to engulf it. But those who hear, believe, and set
their hope upon God’s word and His promises is like a man who builds his house
on solid rock. Neither flood, nor storm, nor wind, nor rain can bring it down!
(Matt. 7:24-27)
“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. My eyes
stay open through the watches of the night that I may meditate upon your
promises.” (119:147-148). One such promise for me has been Jeremiah 29:11: “For
I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not
to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” They were words spoken to
Israel, but words that we too—who by faith in Jesus Christ have become part of
the “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16)—can also take as words spoken to us. “In His
word I put my hope.” (Ps. 130:5)
3.) Not Just God, and Not Just His Word, but Also His Love.
Psalm 147:11 says: “The Lord delights in those who fear Him; who put their hope
in His unfailing love…” It isn’t enough during difficult times to merely hope in
God and His word, because for hope to grow it also needs the assurance that the
God who is, and possesses all power, and has spoken His promises to us also
loves us—strongly, unfailingly, everlastingly, incomprehensibly. The knowledge
and assurance that God loves us purely and passionately is absolutely essential
to the cultivation of hope. We can believe in God, and even believe He gave us
His word and His promises, but if we don’t believe He loves us our hope will
soon fade. How can we know God loves us in that way? The Bible tells us so. “God
demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners Christ died
for us” (Rom. 5:8). “Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). “I pray that you…may have power
along with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, and to know this love which surpasses knowledge—that you may be
filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19). God’s
love is sacrificial, profound, and proved by His actions. And most mind-boggling
of all, God’s love was not only given to us while we were yet sinners, it was
given to us in the same measure that it was given to Jesus!
If I may quote J. I. Packer in speaking about the Christian doctrine of
adoption: “God receives us as sons, and loves us with the same steadfast
affection with which he eternally loves his beloved only begotten. There are no
distinctions of affection in the divine family. We are all loved just as fully
as Jesus is loved. It is like a fairy story—the reigning monarch adopts waifs
and strays to make princes of them. But praise God, it is not a fairy story: it
is hard and solid fact, founded on the bedrock of free and sovereign grace.”
4.) Faith in the One Who Died For the Weak, Despairing and
Heavy-laden!
Sometimes our problems seem to come on us out of nowhere as was the case with
Job in the Bible. Other times we bring them on ourselves, consciously or
unconsciously, either by sinning outwardly or feeding the appetites of sin
inwardly until they become compulsive urges or full blown addictions that send
us in a downward death-spiral. Either way we need the grace, faith, hope, and
love that God holds out to us at all times and on all occasions. That’s the way
of God in the Gospel: The favor He gives comes to us by grace alone, through
faith alone, in Christ alone. We don’t have to earn it or work for it. We need
only receive it as a gift and take it from His out-stretched hand by faith. He
achieved it all for us! In His LIFE of perfect obedience to all the commands of
God (which we’ve repeatedly broken) Jesus Christ the God-man purchased for us—in
our place and as our righteous substitute—the flawless obedience to God’s
commands that the Law demands. That’s the saving life of Christ. And by His
DEATH on the cross He then made atonement for all our sins (all the times we
broke those same commands), securing for us a complete forgiveness, pardon and
reconciliation with God. That’s the saving death of Christ. And we lay hold of
all those Gospel blessings by nothing other than faith in Him who lived, died
and rose again to purchase our “justification” or acceptance with God. Christ
doesn’t make us righteous and therefore acceptable to God, Christ Himself is our
righteousness, holiness and redemption. God credits His perfect righteousness to
us when we trust in Him. That (and that alone) is why we can have peace in the
midst of any storm, and hope even when we mess up badly.
So what is the most important ingredient for hope and salvation? Faith in Jesus
Christ! Trust in Him and His totally-sufficient and 100% completed work on our
behalf! All we need do to be saved is believe the promise of God that whosoever
believes in Jesus “will not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
That’s why Horatius Bonar could write: “Nothing except a believed Gospel can
give us hope… A believed Gospel brings us peace; and, with the peace, it brings
us hope. The peace is sure and steadfast, and so also is the hope.”
A heathen jailor once asked the Apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?”
“Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved,” was his reply, “you
and your household as well.” The jailor was looking for something he must “do”
to earn God’s saving favor. He was thinking he must do some good deed or perform
some good work to appease what he perceived to be an angry deity. “Just
believe,” was the Apostle’s response. “You don’t have to “do” anything worthy or
meritorious. Just lean upon Jesus in faith, cast the whole weight of your lost
soul upon Him, and trust in what He did to save you. Stop striving to “do”
something and merely trust that Christ did everything that was necessary to
secure your full acceptance with God—a gift that can now be yours if you’ll just
believe in the One who secured it for you.”
That’s the Gospel. Out of love unspeakable but true, Christ died to purchase our
salvation for us, so that we might simply receive it by faith as a gift! Jesus
paid the infinite price to purchase the salvation of fallen people, that He
might then take it and offer it to them free of charge (Isaiah 52:13-53:12—the
infinite price paid / Isaiah 55:1-7—the gift freely offered to all).
And what Paul said to that jailor, dear friend, I say to you:
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Then, “The God of all
hope will fill you with joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may
overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13). It’s a gift
that comes as you simply believe. Horatius Bonar was right: “Nothing except a
believed Gospel can give us hope…”
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