Chapter 15, I'm going to read beginning in verse 4.
And if you don't have a Bible with you, by the way, there's probably one right in the
back of the pew in front of you.
You can find the book of Romans in the content and turn to that book and then to chapter
15, verse 4.
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through endurance
and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves
as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In verse 13, he says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust
in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In our venture values, we state the value this way.
We look forward to the future with hope and are rooted in a relationship with God, the
God who speaks to us here and now.
We honor the past, yet believe that God has a kingdom appointment for our congregation
and our individual lives in this generation.
We seek His direction daily with the hope that His love will be demonstrated through
us.
Let's pray together.
Whether this is a holy hour as we come together to worship and in this holy hour, no moment
is more important than this time that we spend focused upon your word.
And so, Spirit of God, who inspired these words through the hand of Paul, our brother,
the apostle, would you now be our teacher in this generation and create within us a sense
of the hope for which Christ died for us.
And I pray this in His name, amen.
There was a man who approached a Little League baseball game one afternoon.
He asked the boy in the dugout what the score was.
The boy responded, It's 18 to nothing.
Well, the spectator said, Young man, I'll bet you're a little bit discouraged, aren't
you?
The little boy looked up at him and said, No, sir, I'm not discouraged.
We haven't even gotten up to bat yet.
My friend, that's hope.
Hope.
No one can live happily or healthily or even very long without hope.
The greatest enemy of mankind is not disease or poverty or conflict and wars.
The greatest threat to mankind is despair.
Despair is a state of the soul.
It is a barren state.
It produces passivity within or possibly even furious reactions outwardly.
Someone has said, Take hope from the heart of man and you will make a beast of him.
You think about that.
A man who sees nothing to lose and feels he has nothing to gain, nothing to hope for
can easily become a monster.
The loss of hope makes for desperate people.
But hope gives reason.
Hope boils up the soul with expectancy.
The presence of hope should not be taken for granted in our world.
It does not universally exist.
Typical of inscriptions on graves in the day in which Paul lived are these words, on the
grave of a pagan, I was not, I became, I am not, I care not.
That's very hopeful, isn't it?
Isn't that exciting to have that for your epitaph?
That's why the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers who lived in that kind of a culture,
people who had lost their loved ones already after they had become believers.
And he said, We sorrow, but not like those who have no hope, for we believe that Jesus
died and rose again.
Thanks be to God that we who are the followers of Jesus Christ never have cause for despair.
Hope is at home in our hearts.
First Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 13 says, And now abide these three, they remain
faith, what's the second one?
Hope and love.
They exist together, these highest of spiritual values that belong to God's children in the
world.
Because God calls us to be a people of hope.
Hope belongs to us above all others in the world.
The followers of Jesus Christ can honestly, honestly look at the future and be confident
of its outcome.
We are optimistic because we know that God is for us.
I remind you of David who in Psalm 56 remembers a time in his life when he was in danger.
He was held and seized by the Philistines in the city of Gat.
Reflecting upon that time, he said, When I am afraid, I will trust in you.
In God I trust, I will not be afraid.
My enemies will turn back when I call for help.
This I know, God is for me.
What can man do to me?
Hope.
Like sunshine in a prism.
The New Testament breaks apart the light of hope and gives us the full spectrum of its
glory.
The New Testament speaks about the hope of righteousness, the hope of the gospel, the
hope of glory, the hope of salvation, and the hope of eternal life.
A little bit of a quiz.
If I were to ask you which book in the New Testament speaks more about hope than any
other, what would you say?
Any guesses?
You probably would be a guess at this point.
Someone might say, Well, I think it's the book of Revelation because it's the last book
of the Bible and it's where it all comes together and we see Christ coming and His
kingdom established on the earth.
Do you know that the word hope is not even mentioned, not even used in the book of Revelation?
The word hope is found 13 times far more than any other of the epistles in the book of Romans.
13 times that noun is used.
When the Bible speaks about hope, it's not using hope like we often use it.
Well, I hope to be able to take a vacation next year.
What does that mean?
Well, I would like to do it, but I'm not certain about it.
I hope to recover from this disease, but we don't know for sure if we will.
That is not the meaning of hope in the Bible.
When the Bible talks about hope, it's talking about a confident expectation.
It's something about which you are absolutely sure.
Even the Pope agrees with this.
Perhaps you read in the paper yesterday that he has issued his second encyclical, which
is entitled Saved by Hope.
Interesting.
He's on the same theme we are this weekend.
In this encyclical, he puts forth a basic question.
What is the hope that can give meaning to life?
Without some form of hope, Benedict argues, life becomes tedious and potentially burdensome.
Even if it is marked by material affluence and technical progress, he's absolutely on
target.
A person without hope finds himself in an existential difficulty.
For what enduring purpose am I clinging to this life that I love and do not want to lose?
I quote him.
He says, here we see a distinguishing mark of Christians.
The fact that they have a future.
It is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms
that their life will not end in emptiness.
Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live in
the present as well.
Christians look at the future and we are certain about it.
Not that we know all of the details, but we know that this life is not lived in futility.
That's what hope is all about.
I want us to think about our hope this morning.
We're going to have to do this very, very quickly.
We're going to discover eight facts about our hope in the book of Romans.
We're going to begin in the text that we've read already this morning.
We see first of all in verse 13 that hope originates in the character of God because
God is called here the God of what?
The God of hope.
Our value statement says, we look to the future with hope and are rooted in a relationship
with the God who speaks to us here and now.
You see, our God is a God of hope.
The hope is much more than unfounded optimism.
There are people who are optimistic, but they don't have any reason for their optimism.
They're naive and they have no grounds.
They live in a fantasy world of optimism, but not the Christian.
Hope that is worth the name has a trustworthy foundation and the foundation of our hope
is God Himself.
He is the source of our hope.
He is the only unfailing, unchanging cause for bona fide eternal optimism.
The Apostle Paul says as he writes to Titus, I'm writing to you about a faith and knowledge
resting on the hope of eternal life, remember the expectancy, the certainty of eternal life,
which God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time.
My friends with God, there is always hope because He is a hopeless God.
He is a hopeful God.
He is a God of hope.
I better get that one right.
We have feelings of hopelessness ourselves, but God is a God of hope.
The second fact that we see in the book of Romans about our hope is this.
It comes to us through the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit.
Notice what it says in verse 2.
God wrote the Old Testament Scriptures so that by our reading them and learning from
them we might have hope, we might be a people of hope, and He says that He prays in verse
13, in fact, that we may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
How do we get hope?
Is it by osmosis?
Do we sleep on our Bibles, put our Bibles under our pillows, and somehow we're going
to get hope because we have a Bible under our head?
Is it because we have a Bible on our coffee table in the living room when the preacher
comes over?
Is it because we own a lot of Bibles in our library?
No, none of that.
It's as we meditate upon the Scriptures, as we take it into our minds and our hearts
that the Holy Spirit then takes the Scriptures, He teaches us so that He fashions hope in
our hearts.
Hope comes to us through God's Word as the Holy Spirit makes it real in our lives when
we spend time meditating upon it.
Third fact about hope, it accompanies faith.
In verse 13 it says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in
Him.
Do you notice that?
As you are trusting in Him, as you are believing Him so that you may overflow with hope.
We see this in a life, and it's mentioned in Romans chapter 4, and I invite you to turn
back there with me.
It is the life of Abraham.
You know Abraham's story, how the God appeared to him and gave him the promise of a land,
but also the promise of a seed, a sun, through whom he would bring blessing to the world.
But Abraham and Sarah were old, and they grew even older.
And no sun had yet arrived.
It says in verse 18, Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed.
And so became the father of many nations.
Notice there the relationship of hope and believing, hope and faith.
These two are companions, they go together.
Abraham took a hold of the hand of faith, he took a hold of the hand of hope, and with
them he journeyed as a child of God and inherited the promises of God.
The same is true with you and me.
Sometimes there is tension in our lives between the circumstances of what we see and how we
feel.
And yet we know what God has promised.
What we need to do is emulate Abraham and believe God, and therefore we will have hope,
and we will journey with God and realize the promise that God has given to us.
When we invite faith into the house, hope comes along.
In Hebrews 11-1 it says, faith is the what?
The substance of things hoped for.
Faith and hope go together.
If I am lacking hope in my life, it may be that I am not trusting God because the two
are partners, faith and hope.
Back number four, hope culminates in sharing the glory of God.
Turn over page to chapter 5 and verse 2.
Backing up to verse 1 Paul says, since we have been justified through faith, notice
that not by our works, not by being good people or kind people or trying to do our best or
being baptized or doing something ourselves, except believing it says, being justified
through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have
gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we rejoice in the
hope of the glory of God.
Paul says we have this relationship with God that has come to us by faith, and as a result
of that we have peace with God.
God is no longer offended by our sin because our sin has been taken away.
It's not an issue any longer.
We also have a standing with God, an access into His presence, and He says in addition
to that we have hope, and we rejoice in that hope, and that hope He says is the glory of
God.
All aspects of hope will eventually culminate in God giving us what He has promised, a
share in the personal glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the heir of all things.
All glory and honor is His, and we who are in Christ share that glory and that honor.
We will never be God.
We will never share in His deity, but God intends to give us the glory of Christ that
we might share it with Him.
Romans 8 verse 24 confirms this.
He says in this hope we were saved.
What is that hope?
Of our coming redemption, when our bodies will be changed, these bodies that we live
in now that decay and grow old and get sick and eventually die.
He says there is a day coming when God is going to finish what He has begun in us, and
even our bodies are going to be redeemed, they're going to be adopted, they're going
to experience change, and we'll be like Christ in His glorious body.
He says for this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all.
Who hopes for what He already has, but if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait
for it patiently.
The hope that you and I have in Jesus Christ as the children of God is absolutely out of
this world, literally.
It is that one day we will share in the glory of Jesus Christ Himself through all of eternity.
Chapter 5, there is this fact about hope, it is enhanced by hardships.
Go back now to chapter 5 again, because after Paul says we rejoice in our hope of the glory
of God, he goes on to say, not only that, he says we also rejoice in our sufferings.
Now I can understand rejoicing in hope, but he says we rejoice in sufferings too, because
we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character, what?
Hope and hope does not disappoint us.
Paul is saying here that our hope is actually enhanced by our hardships.
There's a process that is involved.
Our suffering produces perseverance.
It gives us muscle, because we face pressure and we resist that pressure and it builds
up our strength.
And that perseverance, he says, produces character, tested virtue inside of us, qualities of godliness.
And he says those qualities of godliness, that character produces hope.
What he's saying is that when we suffer and become more godly, what God has for us in
the future becomes even more defined for us.
It is more desirable, it's more radiant, it's more attractive to us.
Hardships cause us to anticipate the glory that is to come.
In fact, Paul says in chapter 8, what is to come is not even worthy to be compared to
the sufferings we have in this world.
Our hope is enhanced.
It's better defined for us by the hardships that we pass through in this world.
Fact number 6, our hope never disappoints, as Paul says in verse 5.
Now if our hope is misplaced, if our hope is not placed properly, we can certainly be
disappointed.
One writer named Nancy Misler is very honest about this as she relates a time in her own
life when she went through a dark period.
She says, one of the emotions that I experience more than any other going through my own night
season besides the feeling of abandonment was the feeling of disappointed hope.
When everything around me crashed and totally contradicted all that I thought the Lord had
promised, instead of my faith being sighted and giving me hope, I became disappointed,
resentful, and then even bitter towards God.
It's a horrible place to be.
And I may be talking today to someone who feels bitter toward God because you look at
this verse and it says, hope will not disappoint you, and yet you feel very disappointed, disappointed
in God.
Perhaps you have made the same mistake that Nancy Misler made, and that is that she was
placing her hope in what she thought God should do and would do instead of placing her hope
in God himself.
The hope that God has given us will never disappoint.
Is your hope in what you think God should do or will do for you, or is your hope in
the person of God?
She goes on to say, our hope as Christians can only be in God and His Word.
We must constantly have hope in God even when it contradicts all that is happening in the
present moment.
What is the encouragement that you and I have that God is going to keep His Word and fulfill
the hope?
Well, Paul explains it in the last part of this verse.
He says, hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts
by the Holy Spirit whom He's given to us.
You and I can be confident about what we hope in God for two reasons.
Number one, God has already poured out His love in our hearts.
We've seen that.
Furthermore, He has given us the Holy Spirit to live within us as a down payment, as a
guarantee, as a deposit of what He has promised in the future.
Therefore we need not fear that somehow our hope is going to be unrealized.
God will never abandon His own.
Hope that God gives you will never disappoint you.
Next fact, number seven, hope extends to the entire creation.
Romans chapter 8 verse 20.
Turn there quickly with me please.
Romans chapter 8 verse 20.
Paul says, for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but
by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated
from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
What is Paul saying here?
He is saying that we live in a creation, in an environment that is frustrated.
It has been subjected to the results of humankind's fall into sin.
Animals did not disobey God, but they experienced death.
They experienced suffering.
The created world did not fall from its relationship with God.
We in Adam and Eve, our great-grandmother and great-grandfather, we are in the midst
of fear the ones.
The human race is what has disobeyed God.
God in His wisdom therefore subjected all of the creation that was underneath Adam
and Eve and the human race to the same frustration and death and suffering that we experienced.
But He did this in hope that someday even the creation itself will be delivered from
the decay and the frustration of human sin.
Paul says, not only will we one day experience the glory of God, but so will the very creation,
the very environment itself be delivered.
Our hope extends to the entire creation.
Act number eight, our hope causes joy in every circumstance.
Romans 12-12 says, be joyful in hope.
It doesn't say be joyful in hope when things are going great.
It simply says, be joyful in your hope.
A missionary was sitting in her second-story window one day when she was handed a letter
from home.
She opened the letter and a crisp $10 bill fell out of the letter.
Of course, she was pleasantly surprised.
As she read the letter, her eyes were distracted by the movement of a shabbily dressed man
who was leaning against a post of the building down below her on the ground floor, and she
couldn't get him off her mind.
Thinking that he might be in greater stress than she was, she slipped the bill into an
envelope and penned on it, don't despair.
And she threw it out the window.
It landed at the foot of the stranger.
He picked it up.
He looked inside.
He smiled and tipped his hat to her and went his way.
The next day, she was about to leave the house when a knock came at the door.
There she found that same shabbily dressed man smiling as he handed her a roll of bills.
When she asked what they were for, he replied, that's the 60 bucks you won, lady.
Don't despair, won, five to one.
Rejoice in your hope.
It's a choice.
It's an attitude about life and about others, about circumstances and prospects in your
life.
With hope in God, you can always choose to have an inner delight that God is bigger than
anything that can come against you.
God is for me.
Is always the stand of the believer.
What does this look like in a church?
What does this hope that Romans describes for us look like in a church?
Number one, a positive way of thinking and relating.
A positive way of thinking and relating.
While we honor the past, we don't live in it and we don't long for it.
We honor the past yet believe that God has a kingdom appointment for our congregation
and our individual lives in this generation, says the statement.
We look to the past with gratitude, but we do not dwell on the past because we are called
by God to be future-oriented people who are trusting God for what he has promised yet
to come.
And dear friends, that's what Venture Christian Church is about.
It is about what God is yet going to do.
God sees the possibilities.
He knows the opportunities that he has for us and he calls us to enter into that future
in a positive way.
Secondly, a church that is filled with hope is a church that has an expectation of the
best in others.
That is, there will be hope that knows that people can change, that people can do better.
The hope that says people can learn new things.
You see, hope knows also that people will be people.
And they do sometimes fail and they sin and they mess up and they don't listen and they
don't follow through and sometimes they have bad breath and body odor and sometimes they
disappoint you.
But hope says things can be different.
Hope chooses to put the other person in the best light and gives benefit of the doubt.
It looks beyond the surface to see the potential that lies hidden within the other one.
Hope interprets words with consideration.
Hope interprets actions with patience.
Hope expects the best of others, not the worst.
A church that is filled with hope is a church that has confidence in the face of trials.
Number three, confidence in the face of trials.
Hope faces realities head on.
It's not blind.
But neither is it lost in a fog of gullibility.
It sees God's providence in all of the problems and it's confident in light of the problems.
It's confident in the face of the trials, just as the friends of Daniel were as they faced
the possibility of the fiery furnace.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need
to defend ourselves before you in this matter.
That is to worship the image.
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it
and he will rescue us from it and from your hand, oh king.
But even if he does not, we want you to know, oh king, that we will not serve your gods
or worship the image of gold you have set up.
My friends, that's hope.
That's confidence in the face of trials.
But let me quickly go on to number four.
A church that has hope is one that has an influence that attracts the spiritually lost.
Because you see my friend, we live in a hopeless world.
People have lost hope in our government.
People have lost hope in politicians.
People have lost hope in programs.
People are losing hope in the stock market.
People are losing hope in the housing market.
And so when you and I are people of hope, it is like a magnet that draws people in.
It makes us people through whom God's love can be demonstrated to them.
Let me close by saying God calls you and me to be people of hope.
That is a value of our church.
It's an attitude.
It's a mindset.
It's an outlook.
It determines how we frame what we see, how we react to what happens, how we feel about
things, how we choose to go forward.
A people of hope.
The Bible speaks about hope.
And it calls it an anchor to the soul.
In Hebrews chapter six it says, because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His
purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised.
He confirmed it with an oath.
God did this so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie,
we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where Jesus who went before us has
entered on our behalf.
Now, I'm not a sailor, but I know enough that when you throw an anchor out, you expect
it to go which direction?
Down.
Because you want to anchor into some rock or into some seabed of some sort that will
hold your ship fast.
But you see, you and I who are believers in Jesus Christ throughout our anchor, and it
goes up.
It goes up all the way behind the veil in the temple of God in heaven.
And it is anchored to the mercy seat of God.
It is there anchored to Jesus Christ.
He is there appearing in the presence of God on our behalf.
That is why it speaks here of hope being the anchor for our souls.
Do you have that hope, my friend?
Can you face the future with certainty?
Oh, not just tomorrow or next year, but eternity.
Do you have hope?
Do you have the expectation of heaven?
Do you have a certainty built into you that one day you will be resurrected and be in
a glorified body and share in the glory of Christ?
You see, that's what God wants you to have.
Christ died that you might have that hope.
By receiving Him as your Lord and Savior by faith, believing that He died on the cross
and paid for your sins and doing that, and that He rose again from the dead, you can
have this hope that we've been talking about this morning.
Do you receive Christ and possess the hope for yourself?
Father, I pray for some friend who is here who perhaps came this morning in a hopeless
state.
I pray that you will draw that person to hope in God.
First of all, to receive Christ as Savior and Lord.
To know the hope that comes through salvation, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal
lives.
But I pray also, Father, for those who know you, but who came without hope, that they
may today find hope bubbling up anew in their lives.
Father, I pray that whatever we do as venture Christian church, that it will be as a people
of hope, and that we will shine as a beacon in this community to those who are hopeless,
that they may come to know Jesus.
And I pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.