Recovering All the Hope Available in the Age of Advantage! Biblical hope is a future certainty grounded in a present reality and the present reality is the indwelling, infilling presence of the Holy Spirit who is the Other Jesus without a body. The Text for our Recovery of Hope: Rom 15:13, 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. The Confession for Our Recovery of Hope: I am Recommitting myself to Father God in order to be Reawakened by the Spirit of God to Rediscover the Supremacy of the Son of God for the Recovery of ALL the HOPE Available in this Age of Advantage! Discipling a Houseful of Hopefuls 1 Peter 3:13-17 Intro In John Bunyan's classic allegory The Pilgrim's Progress we meet a character named, "Hopeful". Part of the way through his journey, the main character, Christian, loses his first traveling companion Faithful to martyrdom in Vanity Fair. However, he soon finds himself joined by Hopeful. And for the remainder of Christian's adventures, Hopeful provides a constant companionship of expectation, encouragement, and counsel to him. Hopeful helps Christian defeat Giant Despair, survive a stint in Doubting Castle, discover the Key of Promise, and fight off corrupting creatures like Ignorance, Little-Faith and Flatterer. It is Hopeful who proclaims such a hope-filled message for Christian that the pilgrim is able to progress (as Bunyan puts it) "from this world to that which is to come". Hopeful's mission is a total success. During World War I the U.S. Government trained a houseful of hopefuls and unleashed them throughout America in a massive public speaking campaign known as The Four-Minute Men. In an 18-month period, in order to promote patriotism and commitment to the war effort, and hope in its outcome, nearly 75,000 were recruited and trained to deliver four-minute talks at every opportunity. Their missions took them to sporting events, movie theaters or just standing on the sidewalks of major cities. In less than two years, more than seven million speeches were delivered to an aggregate audience estimated to be 300 million. As a result intensified hope about the outcome of the war filled America. Wow! What would happen in America if we could flood our churches with battalions of soldiers of the cross who are hope-filled heralds, or Messengers of Hope! Well, for starters, the people of God would get filled with all joy and peace in believing by the power of the Spirit, and would so abound in hope that they will be constantly prompting people to ask, What makes you so different? How can you be so positive about the future when the present is so negative? What is the reason for the hope that you have within you? 1
This is one of the greatest needs of God s people today, i.e. discipling a host of Hopefuls to fill our churches, to fellowship with us in our daily lives, and then flow outward, making His Presence known by our presence to the ends of the earth and in every area of our assignment! I. Discipling Hope-filled Christians Begins by Sanctifying Christ as Lord in Our Hearts 1 Pet 3:15a The model prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer, teaches us to pray first: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." That word "hallow" is the same word that Peter uses in verse 15 of our text when he says, "Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts." Hallow Christ as Lord in your hearts. Because Jesus is God-with-us, He and the Father are one, and so when we hallow the name of God the Father, we are also hallowing God the Son. A. Christ is Hallowed in our Hearts when Our Hearts are Hopeful in Him! So then what does it mean to hallow, sanctify, or set Christ apart in our hearts as Lord? To hallow Christ in our hearts means to regard Him as the holiest, the most unique, one of a kind, without peer or rival in purity, integrity and goodness. The NIV translates 1 Pet. 3:15 as : "Set apart Christ as Lord," This means to place Him in a category all by Himself the highest place, the greatest value, the most supreme treasure, the greatest admiration, the most cherished prize, the one you esteem and honor and love the most out of all persons and all things in the world. It means to fear, to favor, to follow, to stand in awe of His lordship over the universe. Bow before his sovereign rule. Tremble with joy and gladness at the majesty of the Lord. B. When Christ is Hallowed in Our Hearts His Hope In Us Frees Us from Being Terrified with Terror! 3:14b This expression in verse 14 literally says, Fear not their fear : or, Be not terrified with their terror, that is, with that which they try to strike into you, and which strikes themselves when in adversity. This verse and 1Pet 3:15 is taken from Isa 8:12-13, "Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. God alone is to be feared; he that fears God has none else to fear. Fearlessness when others try to fill us with fear sanctifies Christ as Lord. How so? Because fearlessness shows that our hope is real and unshakable. And since Christ is central in our hopes; the ground and the goal of our hope, fearlessness honors him sanctifies him, hallows him, shows his unique worth and strength in our lives. C. When We Hallow Christ as Lord in Our Hearts, We Transfer Our Focus from Fear to the Father who is the Source, Sum and Secret of True Hope! Rom 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace ; Cols 1:27 Christ in you the hope of glory; 1Tim 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope; 1Tim 4:10 For to this end we toil and strive, 2
because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. For the Christian, hope never resorts to the attitude of -- I wish, perhaps, maybe, who knows, or, We just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best, or a well, we ve got to just keep hoping that things may get better. Christian hope says, rather, Things very well may get worse: anything may happen; my friends may forsake, and my foes may fight against me, my finances be depleted, my fredoms taken from me BUT GOD! IS OUR HOPE! Biblical hope is steadfast and sure, an anchor of the soul, because it is not grounded in fluctuating and uncertain circumstances, or the way others treat us, or in the moods of our own fickle hearts, but in Christ, who does not change and who is the same yesterday, today and forever! Peter says in I Pet 1:13, "hope fully in the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. By this he means be intensely desirous and fully confident that Jesus Christ is going to come into the situation you are in with sufficient grace for his people. Hebrews 6:11 where it says, "We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope to the end." Hope, in the New Testament sense, is the full assurance, or strong confidence, that God is going to do good to us in the future. One of the verses we don t usually sing in the hymn Amazing Grace says, The Lord has promised good to me; His word my hope secures;he will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. II. Discipling Hope-filled Christians Builds on Showing Confidently the Logic Behind the Hope in Our Hearts 1 Pet 3:15b KJV and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: ESV, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; The word "answer" is the Greek word "apologia", from which we get the word apology. Be ready always to give an apology! This doesn t mean that we re to go around apologizing to everyone; saying "I m sorry" to them. The Greek word "apology" means to give a defense, a reply (literally "to speak back"). The word reason is the Greek word logos from which we get our word logic. In other words, What s the logic behind your hope? A. There must be an Attention-getting Life-style of Abounding Hope What is Peter calling us to do or say? Is he saying that we all need to go to seminary so that we become rhetorical warriors, people skilled in debating strategy, scholarly in the fine points of philosophy, adept in the forceful use of logic. No, if you can argue someone into the faith, then eventually someone with better arguing skills will come along and argue them out of their faith! What then does it mean to be an apologist for the Christian faith? The answer is found in 1 Peter 3:15. What he says implies that before we can defend the faith, we must first have 3
contact with someone who needs the hope that we have and then whose attention has been aroused by the obvious, visible way this hope works in our daily lives. John Piper, Why would people ask about our hope? What kind of life are we to live that would make people wonder about our hope? If our security and happiness in the future were manifestly secured the way the world secures its future, no one would ask us about it. There would be no unusual hope to see. What Peter is saying is that the world should see a different hope in the lives of Christians --not a hope in the security of money or the security of power or the security of houses or lands or portfolios but in the security of "the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:13). Pastor Grover Gunn sums up the imperativeness of livng in the power of Christ as he writes, Beloved, if we are not living in the power of Christ, then we can have the most intellectually sophisticated arguments for Christianity which the world has ever heard, and the world could not care less. Apart from a Christ honoring and Christ empowered life, our intellectual arguments for Christianity will be like those scholarly articles buried in academic journals which no one reads. The Christ honoring life is the cutting edge of apologetics. The Christ empowered life is the foot in the door. It is the necessary price we must pay if we are to earn a hearing. 1. The Manifest Presence of Christian Hope is Normally Demonstrated through Physical Persons Filled with Christ as their Hope! While moving through the line at a college cafeteria, one guy spotted a note stuck in a bowl of apples. It read, Please take only one apple per student. Remember, God is watching! When, with, one apple in hand, he got to the end of the line, he spotted another hand-written next to a bowl of cookies. It read, Take all the cookies you want! God is watching the apples. Just as we tend to try and compartmentalize God, so many Christians likewise try and do the same with their daily lives. What happens when we compartmentalize Christianity? What happens when we consign our faith to Sundays, but refuse to let it permeate our lives the rest of the week? A compartmentalized faith becomes like an addendum to a book or a postscript to a letter. When professing Christians fail to flesh out their faith into the whole of their lives and maintain a presence in the neighborhood, the school campus, the factory, and the marketplace, the church loses its influence and none sees what real hope looks like! Consequently, the world recognizes Christianity as just one minority among many. We are tolerated and sometimes defended, just like any other minority, but not really taken very seriously. B. There must be Assurance-based Learning that Shares the Message of Hope Clearly, Confidently, and Humbly 1 Pet. 3:16 Christ is not honored by groundless hope, or merely saying, Well, I just feel and know that Jesus lives in my heart. If someone asks you, "Why do you hope in Christ for forgiveness, for help, and for future and final eternal life and joy," and you answer, "I don t know, I just do! or No good reason, I just sort of grew up this way," Or, "It just seemed like the best deal out of all the other options." Or: "Well, where I come from, just about everybody's got religion, and since most of my family members are 4
Christians, I decided to choose Christianity" if I answer these ways, then Christ is not sanctified in my heart. He is not shown to be the most valuable person in this universe; instead, He is made to look like just another religious guru, or a good man that is a model that we should follow. We say He is our hope, but we do not know why He's our hope. Christ is not honored by groundless hope. We need to be able to share that by nature we had false hopes -- We had false hopes based on how we felt that we were pretty good, or at least not bad enough to deserve hell. We felt that God was all mercy and would somehow let us in to heaven if we were sincere in what we were doing or trusting in as our hope of salvation. We need to be able to tell how we were made ashamed of these hopes; and how when we were made realize that we were destitute of all hope, that we were led into the faith of the truth of the gospel, to lay hold on the hope there set before us. We need to be able to share how that free grace captured our hearts -- We must show that our hope is no mere imagination, but is founded on the most certain truth; We must declare that it was not by works but by God s free grace, that was shown in a manner consistent with God s righteousness, through the work of His Son Jesus Christ, who according to 1 Pet 3:18 -- suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. This is the gospel, and when relied upon and its promises believed, lays a firm foundation for all the great and glorious expectations which we entertain. We need to be able to share the fullness of this hope that we have in Christ -- Hopeful Christians are filled with a strong confidence that God is going to do good to us in the future. Their hope is a hope is the hope that justification by faith brings ; "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access to that grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Roms 5:1-2). We are confident that He who has begun a good work" in us, "will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ;" that He will "preserve us from every evil work, unto his heavenly kingdom;" that He will "make his grace sufficient for us;" "strengthen us with all might, unto all patience and long-suffering, with joyfulness;" "supply all our needs according to his glorious riches;" that he will "never leave us, never forsake us;" that he will make "all things work together for our good;" and even our afflictions, however severe and long they may continue. We have hope in life, hope in death, and hope after death. We have hope that when our spirit becomes " absent from the body," it will become "present with the Lord;" being with Him where He is, and, beholding and sharing His glory. And our "flesh also rests in hope." Our hope is the hope of the resurrection to life; "the blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." He looks for Him from heaven, "to change his vile body, and fashion it like unto his own glorious body." Our hope causes us to be looking for Him to come "the second time without sin for our salvation;" and our hope is, that when He shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory and we shall for ever be with the Lord." The Christian has certain hope for the ultimate triumph of Christ s kingdom over all its opposers, all the powers of darkness, all the forms of evil, ignorance, error, superstition, fanaticism, idolatry in all their endless diversities and depravities. We have hope for a 5
period when the idols shall be utterly abolished, when "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ," when,"men shall be blessed in him, and all nations call him blessed." This is the Christian's hope. John Piper, The great central heartbeat of Christianity is that Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord, is exalted and hallowed and sanctified by the happy hope that his people put in him. And he shines all the brighter when our hope is fearless and well-defended and meek and zealous for good deeds. Our presence and our message as we come alongside others shouldn t be, "Was my message impressive. Logical correct, or relevant; was it practical and useful; or was it encouraging to them?" But instead, to the best of my ability, have I helped my hearers leave my presence with a deeper understanding of the glory of Christ and of an available, abounding, overflowing hope that is seen, shaped, and shared by the supremacy of Christ in all things for the joys of all people? Have you and are you daily setting apart Christ as Lord?" Is he savored, seen and shown in your life as the greatest value, the most supreme treasure, the greatest admiration, the most cherished prize, the one you esteem and honor and love the most out of all persons and all things in the world? Are you fearing Him only, favoring and following in awe of His lordship, bowing before his sovereign rule and trembling with joy and gladness at His majesty and glory? 6