In This Hope We Are Saved

In the 14 years or so, I don't know exactly how long it's been, that we've been conducting services down at the Bancroft Convalescent Home. I can't remember a time when the spirit of God was shining on the faces of the people the way it was this past Wednesday. The room was filled with souls who had long since been bypassed by the mainstream of life in this city.

Women without legs, men with palsy, folks with twisted minds. There was a relatively young man there who had been crippled by a stroke and could hardly enunciate words. And he prayed at the top of his lungs, God bless my wife and six kids.

As we sang Amazing Grace, there wasn't a mouth in that room that wasn't wide open. I heard voices that I had never heard before. And they sang with such joy, it just made you wanna weep.

With their natural eye, all they could see was confusion and loneliness and chaos. But somehow by the grace of God's wonderful spirit, these forgotten souls were able to penetrate through into the realm of the unseen and take hold of the coming glory. And as they sang God's praises Wednesday afternoon, they were no longer in that stuffy, confused, noisy, chaotic warehouse for broken bodies and shattered minds.

But they were standing on the banks of the Jordan, looking across to the promised land which they knew was theirs. They were crowded at the doorway of God's banquet. And they were looking into the future where they could see the woman with no legs leaping for joy in a glorified body.

And the man who could no longer support his wife and six children standing once more with transfigured arms raised toward the throne. And the little lady who won't let anybody touch her running around, hugging everybody. And the man who never smiled, beaming with the smile of a son of God.

For a few minutes, Wednesday afternoon, these people were permitted to see and look beyond this valley of pain to the high plateau of glory toward which they knew they were going. They were lifted up out of themselves by hope. They were having renewed to them the only vision in this world that makes life worth living.

The vision of the new creation, that sweet and blessed country toward which these people are moving through every weary day. Don't pity those people. These people know something that many of us have yet to learn, that this world has been subjected to futility by God.

And that everything in this world is vanity. And that if we sink our hearts in anything this side of heaven, sooner or later, they're gonna be broken and undone. These people know, they've learned already a lesson that many of us have not yet learned, that in order to pass through this world without losing the blood-bought joys of the next, we not only have to have faith and we not only have to have love, we also have to have hope.

Without God-given, God-inspired hope that reaches out and gets hold of the coming glory, that sees the city of God afar off and settles for nothing less and keeps going no matter what, I say without that hope, we're forever being distracted by joys that burn right out as soon as we get them in our hands. Or we're forever being defeated by despair. Look at all the wrecks that are strewn along the road that leads to God's city and ask yourself, what made them turn aside? What caused them to give up? Why did so many of them just plain lie down and die? And the reason is that they let go of the hope that was planted in their hearts when God called them to follow his son.

They turned aside from that blessed hope that God gave them and began taking hold of lies which seemed closer, more attainable, and more real. Man, the hope of glory is burning in every star, glistening in every drop of water, whispering through every blade of grass, thundering in every ocean wave. There's not a living creature, not even a stone that doesn't already have throbbing in itself the knowledge that the best that we now see is nothing but a shadow of the glory which is waiting for those who are ready and who are waiting and who have their eyes set and their hearts fixed.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay to obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now. Not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the spirit groan inwardly as we wait for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved.

Now, hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Now, we wouldn't be stumbling into the errors and the vanities and the sins and the slaveries that we get ourselves into and that beset us all the time if we would obey our God's command, not only to have faith and not only to love, but also to hope.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. Now, the hope that we're talking about is not wishful thinking, not self-deception, not some little game that we play with our minds to keep them from falling apart. The hope that we're talking about originates not with man, but with God.

For the creation was subjected to futility not of its own will, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope. So that when God subjected this sin-stained corner of his universe to futility, when God permitted man to reap the consequences of his rebellion and the universe with him, he did it in hope, did it knowing that out of the ashes of this ruined world would rise a new creation bought by the blood of the land. And when it says that God hoped, it doesn't mean that he bit his nails and paced the floor and wished.

It means that God knew. Things look bad now, but there will be an end to this valley of shadow. Out of this darkness, I will bring forth light.

Out of this race of rebels, I will bring forth a race of sons. And it will be. I will bring it to pass, says the Lord.

Now, when a man or woman is born of God, he is saved in that hope. He reaches out and takes hold of a reality which he cannot see. It's up the road, but which he knows is there better than he knows his own name.

By faith, he takes hold of a day still to come when the mourners will be comforted and the meek shall inherit the earth and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled and the merciful shall obtain mercy. And those who are pure in heart shall see God and the peacemakers shall be called the children of God. He reaches out with his heart, with his hope and takes hold of that hour when the Lamb of God who has already taken away the sins of the world will come back from the Father's throne and judge the nations and destroy every lie and the fruit of every lie and will raise his beloved ones out of their graves and out of their corruptible bodies into incorruptible glory.

And then he will take the creation itself out of its bondage to decay into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. And when we say we have that hope, it doesn't mean that we wish, it means that we know, therefore we anchor our lives in this. Now, if we do that, if we live and die for the hope of coming glory, if we indeed live that way, then how in the world can we let ourselves be caught up and dragged down in the temporal, passing, superficial goodies of this world and all those lies that Satan keeps jingling and jangling off to the side to distract us? Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God! For I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God.

Now, what does it mean to hope in God? It means three things. It means, first of all, to hope in God means to take hold of God's future, not my future. My future is a dream that can be smashed in a minute.

It can be snuffed out with an accident. A war, an earthquake, or even one false step at the wrong time. But God's future, the thing God promises, the kingdom which God reveals, that thing is solid.

If God says that Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, that's what's gonna be. And if God promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled, if he promises that there's coming a day when every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus, so it will be. If he offers a kingdom to those who really trust him and obey him, that's what will be.

Now, as we reach out and take hold of those promises, with our hearts, with the hope which God has put in us, a stream of blazing light flows back from that coming glory and fills the present moment with eternity. And the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. If we take hold of that glory by hope, then the signs of God's kingdom come back from that glory into this moment and touch our lives so that the alcoholic among us today, if we take hold of that hope, quits drinking.

And the addict is set free, and the troubled conscience is given peace. All we have to do is take hold of that hope now, and we change now. Secondly, the hope in God means to let go of the visible.

For who hopes, it says, for what he sees. If you can see it with your natural eye, whether it's a thunderbird, or a mansion, or a new career, it's not worth having, not worth hoping for. And so we deliberately begin to let go with our hearts of all those vanities that we've been holding on to and reaching out for, and thereby we make room for our hope in God to vastly expand within us.

Our Lord tells us the same thing. Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. That which is visible is temporal, it's gonna pass away.

Only that which is unseen is eternal and will remain. And so we deliberately, we discipline ourselves to let go with our hearts of the things that we can grab hold of and see. And as we do, the things which are unseen and eternal come rushing in and fill us and change us.

And finally, to hope in God means that we wait for that thing we're hoping for with patience. He says, if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience, patience that never gives up, patience that gets up every morning and glorifies God for his wonderful promises no matter what we see, patience that keeps fighting its way right through the lives of the enemy to God, patience that keeps moving toward that glorious city of God no matter how rough it gets. And we can be patient and we can wait with patience because we know that what we're waiting for is in no way tied to the things that are visible.

So that no matter what the visible tells us, if everything we can see and touch and hear and feel screams at us that there is no use, we still wait because our hearts are fixed on the unseen. Because we know that there is a day coming soon when the light which already shines in our hearts by the spirit will be blazing around us and those things which always seem so solid will just be gone, vanishes in a dream. And the unseen glory of the unseen God will break forth as the dawn of a day that will never end.

God blames that we may be found worthy by the blood of his son to enter into that day. And may he keep us in this hope until it comes. Good Lord, deliver us from our bondage to the temple, especially Lord God, from our bondage to the religious things and apparently spiritual things that are not eternal and not right.

Help us this day, Heavenly Father, with an act of our own hearts and wills to let go of those things and take hold of your truth and of the promises that you have given us through your son. And Heavenly Father, to make whatever changes in our lives need to be made this day. This day also, Lord God, we just pray that you'll help us to get our minds off our brothers and sisters and take care of the inward business that you've been trying to get us to look at in ourselves.

Should there be any among us, Heavenly Father, that are now at the doorway of the kingdom or now ready to make that new start, help them to do this. Help them to just throw themselves at the foot of the cross and be given life. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.