Sermon: We Are Saved in This Hope
#1693
Martin G. Collins
Given 11-Feb-23; 63 minutes
description: The Scriptures (particularly the Epistles of Peter and Paul) assure us that by combining God's redemptive acts from the past, we are through faith to have an ardent hope in the future, anticipating eternal life in the family of God. Without the gift of God's Holy Spirit, it is difficult to look at the decay and decline around us without feeling discouraged or depressed (Romans 8:22). But by reflecting on the cumulative past dealings with God's promises and deliverance, we can endure multiple obstacles and trials with godly hope, decidedly not a watered-down faith. Hope is an active anticipation of being resurrected to the Kingdom of God as a member of the God family. Godly hope is not passivity, but vigorous waiting—waiting in eager anticipation for the wonderful World Tomorrow, realizing that when compared to our ultimate destiny, our present trials are comparatively light. We learn with godly hope we can be victorious on three fronts—Satan, the world, and our own carnal nature, with its enmity toward God and His Law (Romans 8:35-37). We have God's immutable promise (Hebrews 6:13-17) that He will never go back on His promise to His called-out ones and will continue to work with us until His purpose for us has been completed (Philippians 1:6). Like Our Savior, we are obligated to learn character and conviction through the things we suffer (Hebrews 5:7-8). The testing of our faith produces patience and wisdom (James 1:6). Human intellect, will power, and optimism are insufficient as the apostle Peter discovered, but the hope of our calling, the riches of God's glory, and the greatness of God's power (revealed through incremental, intimate knowledge of Him) will keep our eyes riveted on the goal of seeing Him as He is (I John 3:2-3).
transcript:
The average person expresses hope at a level reflecting good and bad experiences. Consequently, our hope for a future outcome is a limited projection of one-sidedly imagined possibilities. We cannot look at it completely and fairly, can we? As human beings we do not have that perspective. Thankfully, Christian hope avoids this one-sidedness by being founded on something that provides a sufficient true basis for confidence in its fulfillment.
The foundation of this hope is God and His redemptive acts as they culminate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, if we were to use a more technical definition of Christian hope, it would be the confidence that, by integrating God's redemptive acts in the past with faith responses in the present, the faithful will experience the fullness of God's goodness, both in the present and in the future. That is a little confusing because it is a definition. In other words, thanks to the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are, through faith, enabled to hope about the present with God's blessings and also to hope about the future of eternal life in God's Kingdom.
In everyday conversation people often say hope when they mean wish, and when they say, "Let's hope it all works out for the best," it sometimes means we are afraid it will not. That is the way the human mind works. When a person is given the opportunity to know God's truth and fails to act on this hope, he becomes like the individual described in the Parables of the Talents in Matthew 25:25, who refused to produce with the one talent given to him to justify his failure. He replied, "I was afraid." He possessed no vision for the future and he had no hope.
It has been said that as human beings, "we hope vaguely and dread precisely." Is that not accurate for us? It seems we put more effort into dreading than hoping, does it not? Though we realize that God's Kingdom will be set up on earth and we desire to be part of it, there are still times when we despair over it with fear and self-doubt. These hopeless attitudes come from Satan—who knows God's Kingdom is coming and that he has no hope whatsoever—and our own human nature. And he tries to transmit that to us.
Jesus Christ's return will be a time of judgment for the sins of demonic rebellion. James writes in James 2:19, "You believe that there is one God. You do well, even the demons believe—and tremble!"
The nature of Satan and the demons is set and they will not change and submit to God's direction in their lives. They are arch enemies and rebels against God and us. And we share in this, as you know. On the other hand, humans caught by sin because of weakness or ignorance have hope, unlike Satan who has none.
Please turn with me to Acts 2. Now some of those listening to the apostle Peter's preaching on the Day of Pentecost had called out just short weeks before for the death of the Savior Jesus Christ. And Acts 2, verse 37 records that when convicted of sin, they cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They were afraid and they were hopeless at that point. And then Peter, preaching hope through repentance of sins and the mercy of God said,
Acts 2:38-40 Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. [We could even call that Spirit the Spirit of hope.] For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call." And with many other words he testified [that is, Peter] and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse generation [this hopeless generation]."
According to I Timothy 2:4, God created all people to qualify for His Family but will be called at the right time.
Please turn with me to Romans 8, which will be an early pivotal chapter for us. No matter what the obstacles, the apostle Paul was not afraid. He understood it was God's will that he be in the Kingdom and he always had this in mind on that goal.
Now, after Paul writes about the glory of adoption into the Family of God, he returns to the subject of the troubled state of the world. He paints a picture of what he sees as all nature waiting for the glory that will come in the future. At present, creation is in subjection to decay. Deterioration and decline are all around us. It is a dying world, but it is also waiting for its liberation from all of this and the coming state of glory. Someday, the day of judgment, the Day of the Lord will come when the world will be shaken to its foundations. But out of it there will come a new world under God's benevolent government. And that does give us hope.
Romans 8:18-21 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits 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; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
So in a poetic sense here, Paul endows creation with consciousness. He pictures it longing for the day when sin's dominion will end, death will not exist, and God's glory will come. And sadly, he depicts the condition of nature as even worse than the condition of humanity. In a sense, people sin deliberately, but nature is involuntarily subjected to it. Paul sees nature waiting for deliverance from the death and decay that humanity's sins have inflicted on the earth. If creation longs for liberation, how much more necessary is it for humanity?
In experiencing the power and mind of God through the indwelling of His Spirit, the faithful will have received awareness of the glory of God and hope for spiritual deliverance in the present and glorification in the future. It is essential to understand what hope is not. It is not watered down faith. Speaking generically of hope, it has been observed that the hopeful man sees success where others see failure, sunshine where others see shadows and storm.
In our own observation, we can say they are optimistic and they look at the good that will eventually come from the object of their desire. But even an optimistic attitude is not enough. True godly hope is confident. It is powerful and it is bold. It is not afraid and it casts out fear and doubt. It is positive, assured, and looking ahead to the future, but also realizing that the present is a wonderful hope as well. Because from this day forward, we live by hope, in one sense, and partly so.
But even an optimistic attitude is not enough. True hope sees God's plan at work now and ahead.
Romans 8:22-23 for we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.
The word groan here is interesting. It is used for the creation, ourselves, and also the Holy Spirit. The usage we understand best is our own groaning since we groan in our bodily weaknesses and fleshly sins, our aches and pains and so on. But groaning is not the only thing Paul says we do. He says that we hope and we wait, adding that when we wait, we do it both eagerly and patiently. Paul goes so far as to say that we were saved in this hope.
Romans 8:24-25 For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.
Hope is one of the most wonderful words in the biblical vocabulary, occurring in such important phrases as "our blessed hope" in Titus 2:13 and the "hope of glory" in Colossians 1:27. It is one of the three great virtues listed in I Corinthians 13:13 as you well know, "These three remain, faith, hope, and love." Interesting. Faith, joy, perseverance, and love are four spiritual qualities that harmonize with hope. They are interwoven with it very tightly.
Faith, hope, and love require both thought and action. Faith without works is dead; love is the keeping of the commandments; and hope requires rejoicing and building character. So there is thought and action involved in all three. But I asked my question in putting the sermon together. Why do we almost overlook or overshadow hope? We talk about faith and we talk about love, but hope is in there and just as important.
So why do we overlook it so often? Is it just because it is such a future thing that we cannot quite wrap our minds around it? Paul also wrote about faith, hope, and love in our sanctification process.
Romans 5:1-5 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into His grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. [So from hope comes character, partly.] Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Just as faith is given to us and hope is given to us and love is given to us.
The word hope has two senses: an attitude of hopefulness and the second is the content we hope for. Both uses of the word occur in Romans 8. The idea of content in verse 24, "In this hope we were saved," and then the attitude of hopefulness in verse 25 where it says "we hope."
Let us flip back to Romans 8. What is significant about the Christian attitude of hopefulness is that it is a sure and certain hope. It is a sure and certain hope and not merely wishful thinking. And what makes it sure and certain is the content. The specific content is the return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the body, the adoption of God's children, and the gathering of God's harvest. These things are all promised to us by God and form the content of hope.
From now on, we hope in confidence, grounded not in the strength of our emotional outlook, but on the sure Word of God, who cannot lie. So if God says these things are coming, it is reasonable and safe for us to hope confidently in and for them.
Now, let us analyze the individual phrases here in Romans 8:24-25 because there is a tremendous amount of insight, I believe, in here. In the beginning of verse 24 says "for we were saved in this hope," the Syriac renders the first part of verse 24 "for by hope we live." So you see the action in that statement. The Arabic translate it, "We are preserved by hope." So not only is it an action, but we receive the result of the action as well. And that is even on a daily basis starting with now, not just in the future. We are in an attitude of anticipating our resurrection into the Kingdom of God and meanwhile, we are preserved and sustained through our trials in this hope.
Hope is not the instrument or condition of salvation. We have arrived only at a condition in which we hope for future glory and are waiting for the future state of adoption. But perhaps the word saved may mean here simply we are kept, preserved, sustained in our trials by hope. Sometimes our trials are so great that nothing but the prospect of future deliverance would uphold us and the prospect is sufficient to enable us to bear them patiently. And that is a key: waiting patiently.
This is the meaning of the word save and it is often used this way in the New Testament. Let me give you three examples.
Matthew 8:25 Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!"
Matthew 16:25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."
Mark 3:4 Then He said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they kept silent.
So hope sustains the soul during trials and enables it to bear them without complaining. So you see how hope is actually very important for us on a daily, even an hourly or minute-by-minute basis. It is just not something far in the future. It is that, but it is much more than that.
Romans 8:24 But hope that is seen is not hope; . . .
Hope is a complex emotion made up of an earnest desire and an expectation of obtaining something. That is in its general sense. It refers to something anticipated in the future, yet unseen. But when the object is seen or in our possession, it is no longer an object of our hope. Why hope for something that is in your hand? That is the meaning of that.
For example, we may hope we get a job, but when we get it, we can no longer hope to get it. Moffatt renders this phrase: "Now, when an object of hope is seen, there is no further need to hope."
Romans 8:24 . . . for why does one still hope for what he sees?
What we possess we cannot be said to hope for or look forward to with anticipation.
For example, when we find something we have lost, we have been known to say, it was the last place I looked. Is that not what we do? If we do not say it, we think it of course, but who keeps looking after they find it. Right?
Romans 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not see, then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.
Hope is not something that is only in the future and that we wait for. But we have to work at waiting for it. Coneybeare, author of The Life and Epistles of Paul puts it this way. "But if we hope for things not seen, we steadfastly endure the present and long earnestly for the future." So we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." And the point is that we wait. That is the point. The ESV renders perseverance with "patiently," we wait patiently.
Biblical patience is not passivity. It is not something we are not doing anything about. We do not just stand and wait or sit and wait for something to happen. This is active, but patient, waiting. It expresses itself in vigorous service for Christ, even while we wait for His appearing. So we can never let up our efforts to do what we are to do to live God's way of life. Ever. Not any time.
The word "eagerly" makes us think of the creation waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, which Paul introduced in Romans 8:19. Though the Greek words are different in verse 19, Paul pictured creation standing on tiptoe, in a sense, looking forward with an outstretched neck in eager anticipation of the completion of God's plan. Are we that desperate for it? Are we that anxious for it? If we are just on our tiptoes in anticipation, that is the way we we should be.
Hope is the measure of true Christianity. Pseudo Christianity always looks primarily at this present world, but true Christianity has its focus mainly on the World Tomorrow and our responsibility in getting there, which means the present.
We are not primarily concerned with deliverance from the grave, punishment, and all the things that trouble us and weary us. Yes, that is a concern, but it is not an overwhelming concern or should not be. That belongs to the past. We set our affection on what Paul says.
II Corinthians 4:17-18 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
That is why Christian hope or biblical hope or godly hope has lasting effect. Barnes' Notes explains patiently waiting in this way:
Where there is a strong desire for an object and a corresponding expectation of obtaining it, which constitutes true hope, then we wait for it with patience. Where there is a strong desire without a corresponding expectation of obtaining it, there is impatience. As we have a strong desire for future glory, and as we expect obtaining it just in proportion to that desire, we may bear trials and persecutions patiently in the hope of our future deliverance. Compared with our future glory, our present sufferings are light, only for a moment. In the hope of that blessed eternity, which is before us, we can endure harsh trials and bear tremendous pain without grumbling.
I thought he put that so well.
Romans 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not see, then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.
If it is read with God's promise of eternal life as the emphasis, then patiently is appropriate.
Still, if our future hardships and sufferings are the emphasis, then endurance is appropriate. The context of this section of Scripture emphasizes suffering and future glory, and therefore, the meaning here is that we wait with patient endurance, which the word perseverance in the New King James means.
Now, God has our back, as He always does. And He has given us the most powerful of all things: the conquering mind of His Spirit.
Romans 8:26-30 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Can anything defeat God's plan for us or harm us? Anything at all? There is nothing that can have this effect whatsoever, nobody and nothing can harm the faithful people of God.
Now, let us continue with verse 31.
Romans 8:31-34 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? [It is a rhetorical question.] He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
Do we have a hope that stands firm from this second forward and is already for us when we were called?
So Paul asked, "who can be against us?" Many people and many things of course, and not only can they be against us, they are. We speak of our three great enemies: Satan, the world, and our own human nature. Satan is a powerful enemy, like a roaring lion which is hard to repel and has many stealth deceits. The world is against us because we are offensive to it and opposed to its God-rebelling ways. The world tries to entice us to conform to it. And when that does not work, it will try to discredit and destroy us.
We have those enemies but they mean nothing in one sense because God has our back. He has control over our lives and nothing can happen to us no matter what it is unless He allows it as God's people.
And as if that were not enough, our human nature is also an enemy because it contains the sinful seeds of enmity within it. So for nearly 6,000 years, God the Father and Jesus Christ have endured the sins of the rebellions of humanity committed against God's government and His way of life. Soon God's deliverance to this earth will come.
Romans 8:35-37 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter." Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Paul concludes Romans 8, which we could rightly call the Hope Chapter of the Bible, with this:
Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That is our hope described. Even though all these things may be against us and we have serious trials along the way, we have that hope to hold on to. God does not change His plans or His actions because these rest on His unchanging nature. He does not lie or change the standards of righteousness. And if he says He will do something, He does it and it always produces and ends in good.
We hate the answer "no" to our prayers. I do not know, hate is a strong word. I would not necessarily want to use that. We dislike the answer "no" to our prayers, or no answer at all. But we must patiently wait for good to come of what we are asking God for us.
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make good?"
I Samuel 15:29 "And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for He is not a man that He should relent."
Our hope of salvation and eternal life is well established because His purpose is immutable.
Hebrews 6:13-17 For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you." And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise [that is you and I] the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, . . .
The immutability of His counsel refers to His fixed purpose. Immutability is the excellence of God because He does not change in character or will or purpose. He confirms by an oath to His followers that His will is immutable because He cannot lie. And this is spiritually supportive in helping us to lay hold of the hope set before us.
The English word immutability in verse 17 is translated from the Greek word ametathetos, which includes unchangeable, the unchanging nature of His purpose. This Greek word is a technical term connected with legal wills, meaning unbreakable. The truth of God never changes.
Hebrews 6:18-20 . . . that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
So if nothing were fixed and established, nobody would know what to believe. We have God's guarantee and His Word showing us what He believes, wants us to believe, and is guaranteed to us. Everyone would do "what was right in his own eyes." If God arbitrarily changed His truth and commanded His law be kept at one time, but not at another, we could not have hope and confidence in His promise of salvation.
Mainstream Christianity changes things. They add their traditions, they give partial truths, they do not have hope, they do not have the hope that God's people have. They have a hope, but it is a human hope because they do not have the truth complete. And we must be profoundly grateful that God has an immutable will. It would be tough to honor a God who did not have such immutability of purpose.
It is comforting to have this confidence in Him that He is unchanging and that His counsel and plans stand forever. Isaiah records God's guarantee in that He says, "Indeed, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it, I will also do it." God repeats His promise over and over again in how immutable His truth is and how immutable His statements are.
Hope is not watered down faith, as I mentioned before. And one of the essential things about Christian hope is that by faith, it must be based on something that guarantees a good outcome. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
Faith and hope, though distinct, are vitally united. They come from the same source, are sustained by the same evidence, and are exercised by the same works. Faith is the perceiving, hope is the anticipation. Faith comes by hearing, hope comes by experience. Faith has respect to the truth of the word, hope has respect to the truth's fulfillment.
It rests on the trustworthiness of God to keep His promises. And this trustworthiness implies that God is unchanging in His nature and His character. And this includes God's being (that is, His essence), perfections, purposes, and promises. Although He acts in response to different situations, He feels and has completely controlled emotions.
One crucial characteristic of faith is that it persists steadily and patiently in looking to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
What God has begun to do, He can continue to do. The beginning of the work of calling us was a miracle. So if He can initiate a miraculous work, He can keep it going; what He has already begun, He can continue and finish. And that is exactly what He is doing with us. He is continuing to work with us until we come to that point of completion, of perfection that He is satisfied with.
Paul encourages us with this in Philippians 1:6, "Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." So if we are clear about God's plan of salvation for each of us, we should have no doubt. Without Christ, we can do nothing and are hopeless.
We conquer our doubts by submitting to Him and by obeying Him. We stop doubting when we look at God and Christ, not down at the raging waves of trials. We cannot live on an initial flash of faith. That is what Peter tried to do. He started off with great human faith. And then instead of continuing in the faith of Christ, he tried to continue on his own faith. You remember when God commanded the children of Israel to collect manna each day except on the Sabbath. God often gives us only what we need. He does not necessarily give us enough for an extended period, but just enough to satisfy our needs so we can learn vital lessons before we receive more.
So He allows us to learn to use what He gives us before giving more. And God works the same way when giving us other spiritual gifts. If we do not make good use of them, He does not give us more power to do them. We need a fresh supply every day of spiritual power.
Peter's serious error was that he looked away from Christ and at his physical surroundings. It is the "fight of faith." Metaphorically, we are walking on turbulent waves and the only way to keep walking forward is to keep looking at Him. Peter had faith to step over the side of the boat, but when he began to realize the consequences of what he had done by stepping out on faith, his own human faith dissipated. Jesus showed Peter that he only had little faith because he had doubted.
Energetic Peter needed something besides his own faith. A different kind of faith was needed that would not break down in the face of adversity or in the face of the waves hitting his ankles. And this is not a faith that he would work up himself. Some people excuse themselves by saying they just cannot work up enough faith. And what they mean is they do not believe in God's promises in His inspired written Word.
In Romans 10:17, God says through Paul, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." So when Jesus ministered as the Son of Man, He said, "I can of Myself do nothing." Even Jesus could not without God. "The Father that dwells in Me, He does the works." Jesus had, by the Spirit of God, the gift of healing, as mentioned in I Corinthians 12:9. Peter had it. Paul had it. Only a few had it.
God wants us to believe Him, to believe what He says, to believe He is willing and able. And He wants us to believe it is His will to do what He promises and believe He will do it. That is the problem that we have. When we get into trials and tribulations and things go wrong for us, we end up not completely believing that God has our back.
Now, Paul tells us that true believers walk by faith, not by sight. What we see or feel has nothing to do with it. Jesus said, "According to your faith, let it be to you." Hope works the same way. Jesus knew that humanly speaking He could not do what He had to do in His life without having more than simple human faith. He had to live without sinning even once, something even the most enthusiastic, energetic, zealous human had never done—and never could with his own resources no matter how hard we try. Jesus prayed earnestly to His God and Father for the faith He needed to live a life that would qualify Him as Savior.
Hebrews 5:7-8 Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.
So although He had the right of the firstborn Son, so to speak, under God the Father as His Father in this terminology, still He had to suffer things, and if He had to suffer things, we have to suffer things. But God always watches out for what we are suffering in and makes sure that we do not suffer more than we can handle, and whatever we have to suffer He gives us the strength to bear up under it.
Jesus knew that without the faith that could come only from God, He could no more live a life free of sin than He could walk on water. He was flesh and blood and His weight and the force of gravity made that impossible too. But Jesus did walk on water. Jesus had the kind of faith that could overcome impossible odds and the kind of faith that could move mountains if need be.
Matthew 17:20 So Jesus said to them [that is, His disciples], "Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."
Of course, we must ask in a way that is according to His will. To know His will we must faithfully seek and obey Him. We must know God, we must know the mind of God. By letting Peter fail, He was not treating him lightly. He wanted to teach him a lesson because he had so much more going for him that God could use in leading the first century church. The other disciples learned about His power over the elements and His compassion and love for them.
The words that Jesus spoke to Peter as He walked him safely back probably remained ringing in Peter's ears for the rest of his life. "Oh, you of little faith! Why did you doubt?" Peter doubted because his human reasoning told him he was in an impossible position and that even extraordinary human faith could not sustain him.
Over the years and after many more well-intentioned mistakes, Peter grew to understand this even more. As the leading apostle, he often found himself in seemingly impossible positions where his human faith and patience would have been stretched beyond the breaking point. Peter was often in trouble with the authorities. He was thrown in jail. He had to spend years countering the influence of false teachers and eventually he suffered martyrdom, but he had learned where to go to get the strength he needed. We can see from his two epistles that he had become the epitome of faith and patience.
Those early years of the church must have tried even Peter's energy and enthusiasm to the extreme. God used Peter's strong personality and leadership to encourage the church through some anxious and stressful times, times that threatened to drown the faith and hope. This man who nearly drowned in the Sea of Galilee had learned that his best was not good enough, just as our best is not good enough. He had learned to go to God to seek that kind of faith and hope only God can give.
Paul succinctly put what Peter had learned in Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." Faith, hope, and love are gifts of God. God helps us to develop them because He has placed His mind in us.
Please turn to James 1. God often tries our patience but He never fails us. If an answer seems delayed, remember that James said the trying of your faith works patience and the development of patience is required for hope.
James 1:2-6 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing [that is, not even hope]. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
So when God puts us to the test and tries our faith, rejoice. Rejoice, praise Him for using the experience to create in us greater and enduring faith and patience, which are necessary for hope.
Please turn back to Ephesians. That God has promised is all we need to assure us that we can be hopeful of a wonderful future. Great faith is built on God's promises. It laughs at impossibilities and raging waves. Psalm 119:166 says, "Lord, I hope for Your salvation, and I do Your commandments." The quality of hope begins immediately at our calling by God. It is connected to our immediate future and our distant future.
Ephesians 1:15-19 [By the way, this is a prayer that Paul is praying for the church to have spiritual wisdom.] Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.
So Paul prays here for spiritual knowledge for us. He shifts his focus slightly, turning from knowledge of God Himself to knowledge of those elements of salvation He has achieved for us. Paul makes three requests to God in his prayer for us. He says 1) that you may know "the hope of His calling, 2) that we might know "the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints," and 3) that we may know "the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe."
Let us take a look at request number one. In this phrase, the hope of His calling, it is significant that Paul links the word hope and the word call together. In Scripture the word hope usually looks toward the last things or to the completion of what has already begun by linking the idea of the call to hope. Paul is saying that the calling of God, which he wrote about extensively in the opening half of chapter 1 of Romans, is not without a context as if God were merely calling us in a fog. God has called us to something and for something.
Earlier in verse 4, he said that God chose us to be holy and blameless in His sight. In verse 5, he said to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ. And in verse 12, to be for the praise of His glory. That calling is part of our hope along with our hope of seeing God and being made like Jesus Christ. So hope is something we should always have going for us. And when we understand this great knowledge, it inevitably transforms how we look at this world with its sin and suffering, and how we look at others who by the grace of God also share this destiny.
In God's church the worth of a person is not determined by his or her background (we all have been sinners, we are all in the same boat) but by where we are going. We are going to be like Jesus Christ in every way. And God is going to make sure that we get there. Knowing this gives us confidence. It assures us that we are God's children and that His hand is on us, leading us to a certain and blessed destiny.
In common speech, we generally hope for uncertain things. In the Bible hope is used for that which is certain because it is grounded on what God has done for us in the work of Christ. And that is why the Bible speaks of a living hope in I Peter 1:3; he speaks of a blessed hope in Titus 2:13; and a hope which is sure in Hebrews 6:11.
Now the second request that Peter made in his prayer. In considering the context, the Greek behind this phrase, "the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" refers to our inheritance of what He has given to us in salvation. Paul is praying that we might know our call and destiny because of a parallel text in which he prays in Colossians 1.
Colossians 1:10 That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; . . .
Over and over and over again Paul emphasizes knowing God and the knowledge of God and how important it is. We think of it in general terms. He thinks of it as personally, intimately knowing God.
Colossians 1:11-12 . . . strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy [we are to rejoice in our trials]; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
In other words, we might share in the inheritance of the saints in the Kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of God.
If the riches of our inheritance involve the future realization of what we already have in part, what is the difference between this prayer request and the first request in which Paul asks that we may know the hope to which we have been called?
Well, the answer is in the difference between the words hope and riches. In the first case, the emphasis is on hope, which is a sure thing. The issue is assurance, freedom from doubt, certainty about something. In the second case, the emphasis is on riches. And here the issue is the scope of the blessings God has for us. We often do not recognize those blessings, blessings like prayer and Bible study and joys of fellowship, meaningful work and services. And even Paul wrote in I Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am also known."
So we know little at this point in our lives. We know more than we did and we know imperfectly, but we should know more, and will, as we pray for one another and progress in godly character. We know what we are to become. So we live differently here at this point than the rest of the world. We even live differently now than we did previously in our life.
It is the citizens of heaven who make the most significant differences on earth and paradoxically, of course, it is only godly-minded people who can make any real lasting difference in the world. And you think of the world, think of your own life, your way of life as a microcosm within a larger world. So your world in one sense is a microcosm around you and the influence you have on yourself, your family, and your neighbors, and the people in your nation, in the world. No matter how great your impact is on how many people, you are still to start there and make the greatest impact you can on the world, make the greatest difference in your own microcosm, so to speak, your own family and then broadening out from there.
So anyone sitting at home and maybe some widow somewhere that is alone needs to understand that, even in that case, in her small section of the world, that she can make a difference by living God's way of life. Because God will make sure that it is noticed and is useful. And it is important that we remember that even when we are not being seen, we are being seen by God.
Request number three by Paul is that we must "know what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe." Please turn with me to Ephesians 1, verse 19. We live in the present and the question for the present is how we are to live as God's children. How can we live as citizens of heaven in a world whose citizens do not acknowledge God's sovereignty? I just explained that some. Paul's answer is to know God's power by experience. And this is so important to him that he picks up on this idea in Ephesians 1.
Ephesians 1:19-21 And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.
So the crucial idea here is that this is to be experiential knowledge, just as in Paul's opening request, the knowledge of God must be observed and applied. So Paul was not going to be any more satisfied with an intellectual knowledge of God's power on the part of the members of the church than he was going to be satisfied with a mere intellectual knowledge of God. It is essential to know these things intellectually. That is the starting point. But beyond this, Paul wanted them and us to know God and the power of Christ's resurrection in our personal lives.
How are you and I to experience that power? If we are to live in the power of Christ's resurrection, we must come to know God. And that is what Paul prays for first. And if we are to know God, we must spend time with Him in Bible study and prayer and meditation. You cannot get to know someone without spending time with him or her. We know that by our own experience. It is impossible to get to know God without spending time with Him either. The secret is that it is not intelligence, outstanding instruction, or academic degrees, it is time spent with God.
There is nothing weak in true Christian hope. It is positive, assured, and anticipates a tremendous eternal life in the future. Hope lifts our thoughts beyond the immediate trials and problems of the present. Hope sees God's plan at work now. It sees God's producing His character in us now by what we experience in preparation for eternal life. Titus 1:2 and 3:7 speak of the hope of eternal life.
We must have a strong desire or hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Yes, it is afar, yet the promise is now, but many people have a false hope, believing they can solve their own problems without God and extend their own life through medical means such as drugs or vaccines or cloning and stealing body parts from others. Humanity's hope is misdirected, therefore it is not truly beneficial hope. To live in sin, disobedient to God's commands, abandons hope in God and removes any chance of it unless there is conversion, unless God calls them.
Biblical hope involves far more than most people realize. It is interesting to see the connections with the prepositions (in, on, and of), with which hope is linked in the Bible. We read that people hope in God and Christ, in God's steadfast love, in God's Word, and in the promise of God. The Book's writers set their hope on God and Christ, on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when He is revealed. And we also read about the hope of God, of the resurrection of the dead, of sharing the glory of God, of glory of salvation, and of eternal life. So hope, in one sense, is multifaceted. It is very involved, just like faith and love are—faith, hope, and love.
When we are filled with genuine hope in, on, and of God in Christ, we have immediate eagerness and purpose. It makes us feel alive with spiritual energy. It drives us to keep overcoming and growing no matter what negative factors and influences are at work to discourage and frustrate our progress toward God's Kingdom.
For a final scripture, please turn to I John 3, verse 2. True hope means looking forward confidently with faith from this moment forward to the fulfillment of God's glorious plans for us. This hope is received through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. Hope serves to purify us in righteousness. It is the pure in heart who will see God.
And now finally, the apostle John describes what knowing the glory of our future should do in giving us hope and inspiring us to overcome.
I John 3:2-3 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Christian hope is the confidence that, by integrating God's redemptive acts in the past with faith responses in the present, the faithful will experience the fullness of God's goodness in both the present and in the future.
May God bless you with all hope in Him!
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