uh imagine imagine a courtroom on one side is the jury making observations on the other side is the prosecution arguing against the one who was on the stand and on the stand next to the judge is hope hope is on Tri because stuff like the flesh the world and Satan have made it where hope is no longer trusted we look at Hope and we we despise it we hear its arguments and we suck our teeth and roll our eyes because truth be told when we needed hope to do what we thought it promised us it
would do it let us down it failed us so instead of asking for Hope to help us hold its hand just a little bit longer we let it go and we refuse to believe that maybe the problem isn't actually hope it's us I've titled this talk in defense of Hope I've personally struggled with the idea of Hope more than Faith Christians we love talking about faith about belief belief about trust we know that without faith it is impossible to please God we know that faith in Christ is what saves us and keeps us we know
that with faith we can say to this mountain be moved and it will but hope I I feel like we don't discuss that enough and we should since the very definition of Faith involves hope faith is the substance of things hoped for meaning Faith and Hope are not the same thing but you cannot have faith without having hope for example when you ask God to forgive you when you placed your faith in Christ you had and now have the hope that when you die when you meet the judge of the universe that he will pardon
you your faith is a confident expectation that the blood does actually work it is it is Hope because you can't see it no one hopes for what he can see you you haven't died yet you haven't met the judge yet and yet you live with this this assurance that one day you will see God and there will be no condemnation that is Hope John Piper said that hope is that part of faith that focuses on the future faith that is directed toward the future is what you could call Hope but why do we struggle with
it hope seems to have benefits like how y'all Assurance forgiveness confidence peace seems like hope should be every Christian's best friend and yet how many of us are sitting here actually hopeless singing songs that we don't actually believe are real to put it simply our struggle with hope all comes down to our struggle with God it is hard to have faith for the future when you don't know how to trust God today in Psalm 42 verses 10- 11 the psalmist said this why are you cast down oh my soul and why are you in turmoil
within me hope in God for I shall again praise him our struggle with hope is in fact a struggle with God even if you consider the times when your Hope was disappointed what did your thoughts about God start to sound like how did your thoughts about God start to change and to shift I hope God would heal my mother from cancer and he didn't he must not listen to my prayers I hope God would deliver me from the sin and he didn't so he must not love me I hoped God would deliver me from this
thing or I hope God would give me a husband by now and he hasn't so he must want me to be lonely when our hope in God does not produce the results that we hope for we put God on the stand alongside hope and accuse him of not being himself our disappointment starts to change our mind about God where he must not be faithful he must not be good he must not be kind he must not be compassionate if you listen really close to your own thoughts sometimes you might discern how similar they sound to
the serpents the serpent who is fundamentally hopeless in Genesis 3 the Temptation Eve was confronted with was if she would believe an accusation against God if she would believe that he was different than what he actually revealed Satan said that God is a liar and what do you think is happening when we entertain IDE is about God that aren't true just as a way to cope with our disappointment Satan is not just an accuser of the Brethren he is first and foremost an accuser of God and if you are anything like me you have had
Seasons where it is easier to believe what Satan has to say about God than what Jesus has revealed Satan and and the flesh cuz the flesh loves to believe him cuz it feels safe Satan isn't the only source of our struggle with hope for some of us hope is difficult because of experiences we've had with people where our Hope was put to shame I remember I had a conversation with my therapist some years back where I was telling her how I have very low expectations of people I expect people to fail me I expect people
to leave me I expect people not to love me and my therapist showed me that that was actually a hope problem she asked the question she said do you remember the first time you had a hopeful expectation in somebody and they let you down I thought about it for a minute and I remembered when I was around 8 or nine and my mother told me that my dad was going to come to the house and pick me up take me somewh me and my dad had very inconsistent relationship he would be in my life for
6 months gone for two years be there for a year gone for 6 months but I still had hope that that one day he would come and stay so I'm I'm over there by the door all dressed up got vaseline on My Face coat on my back waiting by the door excited to see him excited Ed an emotion produced by hope and he did not show up I think that was the moment I made the conscious decision to never let anybody let me down again even now if you've been around me enough you will hear
that anytime anybody asks me Jackie are you excited for this are you excited for that excitement is a trigger word because it implies that I actually have hope it will work don't assume that the experiences you've had with people that have let you down your mother your father your friend your pastor your leaders don't don't think that these are not also showing up in how you do life with God because truthfully most of us have been so trained by our history to protect ourselves from disappointment that hoping in God can feel as if it might
have the same results he might just fail you like your father or so you think but do you know what's threatened when we refuse hope this is the key do do you know what's threatened when you refuse hope your endurance and do you know what inevitably will happen to you if you refuse hope you you will become an idolator hope don't seem that deep do it until you realize that the essence of idolatry is hope it's just misplaced do you remember the golden calf in Exodus 32 y'all remember that seven of us okay we need
to get in our Bibles do you know why they did it do you know the motive well Moses is on the mountain with God for a long time the people get anxious because Moses is their leader and Moses is the mediator between them and God so not being able to see Moses tempted them to believe that if Moses is gone if Moses isn't with us then God isn't with us either meanwhile they are still in the wilderness they are they are still in between Egypt and the promised land and they know they don't have the
resources to get to where they got to go they don't have the insight to get to where they got to go they don't they don't have the the Warfare to get to where they go they need guidance and protection those are very natural desires very human desires that when anchored by hope in God would have helped them to persevere would have helped them to be patient would have helped them to know that you know God isn't a liar so if he said that he will go before us we can wait and trust that he will
show up but as Adam's blood in us always causes us to do it drives us to quench our thirst with insufficient sources of water we get so scared that God will let us down that we turn to his creation to do what he said that only he can do we exchange the Creator for the creature by exchanging our Our Hope when they made the golden calf they made it with an expectation that it and not God would go before them that it and not God would protect them that it and not God would fulfill a
promise that only God can make and we do the same thing I do the same thing every Idol you have ever constructed is because you hoped it could be God for you so to defend hope this morning is a serious matter because it is so easy it's an Impulse actually when you're not near him naturally your heart goes towards things unlike him it's so easy for us to make Idols out of things you know some of our idolatry is because we are really uncomfortable with moving at God's pace you ask God for Comfort but it
seems like the bottle answered your prayer quicker than the spirit did you ask God for insight and Direction but divination and psychics and Witchcraft gives you insight about your future that you didn't have to T for in this life we are are going to have to come to terms with the fact that we have a world of desires and a world of needs in a world of feelings inside of us that we might have to just wait for God to satisfy but the question is as you wait will you love him if he never removes
The Thorn will you stay if he does not answer the prayer that you think that you need will you hope in him still these tests are revelatory these tests remove or revealed to us more often than not that we leave God so quickly we leave him I do the same thing we leave him so quickly because we want his hand more than his face but God in in his wisdom uses this to bring to the surface Idols that you would not have seen if he gave you what you wanted when you wanted it I think
of Hannah I think of Hannah first Samuel read it who year after year just wanted a baby that's all she wants she just want to change diapers just wanted a child was vexed depressed and Afflicted because God had closed her womb and this Point there's this point in the text where she gets real desperate and she goes to the temple and she says something kind of crazy she says God if you look on the Affliction of your servant and and give to your servant a son I'll give him back you've been wanting this for so
long what happened to you that now you don't even want what you wanted I think it's because she stopped hoping in what her life would be with a child and started hoping and what her life was with God see the thing with misplaced hope with misplaced hope you will always miss God but great is thy faithfulness morning by morning new mercies we we see that every trial in your life where your hope is being tested the Lord is creating an environment for you to see him the Friendship got rocky because he wants you to see
him the money got funny because he wants you to see him they left you because they were in the way of you seeing him the difficulty in many of our situations is God's kindness because he has to show us the fragility of our hope so that we will see him and when you see him you will see that he is the safest place for your hope to hide so there is a relationship between refusing hope and idolatry but what about endurance how does hopelessness affect my ability to stay Christian how does hopelessness hinder me from
running the race that is set before me so many of God's promises require hope for us to apprehend them and by promises I'm not talking about the word that somebody gave you when you were seven that you would be the next Carri job that's not what I'm talking about not saying it one word from the Lord I'm saying this is more steadfast I'm talking about promises in scripture promises in Scripture that we are commanded to trust because there are some disappointments in your life that came by way of you expecting stuff that scripture never told
you you could be entitled to so when I talk about God's promises in scripture they require hope for us to apprehend because God says things about himself about our future about our world about our state about the church about Christians about Satan about Sin that require hope for us to actually imagine and to believe and it is our hope in these promises that help us keep running in the right direction for example real easy one what about when God through Paul in Philippians when he said the work that I started in you I'mma finish we
love that text we preach that text we put that text under pictures that ain't got nothing to do with Philippians we we we know that scripture we know that promise but when shame comes that sentence right there don't hit the same all the time because for me I am so aware of myself I know not fully the Lord has to reveal what I know my Temptations I I know my failures I know my inconsistencies and it can sometimes it can sometimes feel like the work might have started but it stopped and the Temptation that comes
with feeling as if God will not finish is that you will tell yourself I will always be the same there is room for healthy introspection in the Christian life but when it is done without the presence of hope you will descend into shame and pride in such a way that you will believe hell before you believe scripture and that mindset will hinder your endurance because if growth and maturity and freedom and deliverance is not possible then what is the point of any of this what is the point of passion what is the point of preaching
what is the point of reading and doing devotionals and praying and meeting in community what is the point if I can't actually change and so if you start to believe that you cannot actually change you know what you'll do you'll say you know what I'll just be the person that I think I actually am I know you got Christians who are not Christians because of that same unbelief you have friends that left the faith for that reason because their struggles with sexual sin their struggles with doubt their struggles with greed were so persistent so so
so loud so seemingly unwavering that they went back to their vomit just because their appetite didn't change quick enough some people are no longer Christians not because of some intellectual Discovery or some exegetical flaw that they think they found those are arguments they use to distract themselves from the real reason the real reason people stop enduring is because their depravity LED them to reject hope do you hear what I'm saying has he started or finished has he finish the work that he started in you now we are all in the process of being Sanctified of
being made to look like Christ and being made to look like him and being made to to be like him and think like him and just because though you can't see the finished proc it doesn't mean that there isn't one I think of Peter who was warned by Christ that he would fail and he did he denied Christ three times but do you know that right after Jesus says hey bro with the roots to Crow you going to deny me three times Jesus turns around in the same breath and says but when you turn back
strengthen your brothers because Jesus knows himself Jesus has more hope for our future than we do which is to say your F your failure does not have to have the final say over your future since since Jesus is at the right hand of God interceding for us I cannot fathom I cannot fathom up there talking to y'all too I cannot fathom any other reason not to have go hope in God's ability to finish what he's stared in us when I remember Christ or imagine Christ at the right hand of God saying my name out loud
father keep her father protect her mind father fill her with compassion father help her love her husband help her love her kids help her love this city keep her from her idolatry help her love your lord more than she loves Fame help her this is what it means by to him who is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless and blameless before his glorious presence with great joy if there is any prayer that the father will always answer it is the prayers of his resurrected son so if you are in Christ
and God is interceding for you then you have hope another reason why we struggle with hope is that we have a memory problem and not just forgetting where you put your keys or your mom's birthday we we struggle with simply remembering who God is and what God has done because hope moves in two directions if hope is faith that focuses on the future it is hard to trust that God can do a thing tomorrow or next year or next week when you don't remember what he did yesterday or last week or last year I I
told this story before you probably heard it but there's this man named Henry mesen in 1953 Henry had a surgery on his brain to in an attempt to treat his epilepsy the doctor made a mistake during the procedure and ended up removing a piece of Henry's brain that actually affected his short-term memory because of this Henry he just couldn't remember nothing so much so then when somebody said hey Henry what' you do yesterday he he said I don't I don't know and he didn't know cuz he had a memory problem what's interesting is that when
they shifted the questioning to the Future by asking Henry hey Henry what you GNA do tomorrow you think hry be like I'm get up get some coffee watch a podcast you know run on the peltin that I ain't never used I bought it last year use it twice you know something like that but when asked Henry what are you going to do tomorrow Henry said whatever is beneficial he couldn't give him a clear answer on what would happen tomorrow because he could not remember yesterday see Henry had no idea of what happened in the past
and therefore his inability to remember the P me means that it it it it affected his imagination hope is an imagination that is Sanctified and by hindering his imagination regarding the future it means that Henry had no expectations because Henry could not remember Henry had no hope might that be why scripture uses the word remember 250 times because God knows if we just rehearsed his faithfulness more than our circumstance say if we just thought about what he used to do instead of what it feels like he's doing now if we just maybe then we have
a little more hope I think of 1 Samuel you ever read that before she said hey he laughed nobody else said anything else um 1 Samuel 17 I use these these illustrations on purpose because I want you to know your word in 1st Samuel 17 David was about to fight Goliath he about to fight a giant that everybody's scared of everybody scared of the giant because the giant is a giant okay even King Saul wasn't about that word but David says hey say man I I will fight the I'll fight him bucko no worries King
Saul was confused because he looking at David he like you a boy you ain't never fought nothing like this before like you you haven't had any battles like this like you don't have that much history so you shouldn't really be that hopeful you shouldn't really have that much confidence and some of that is legitimate this boy David this David ain't defeated Goliath yet th this David hasn't defeated whole Philistine armies yet this David hasn't been delivered from Saul's hand yet this David hasn't been delivered from Absalom yet this this David is just a shepherd boy
so from the outside looking in it can look like his hope is is silly like like he should not be that that that confident but I think I think David's confidence makes sense when you listen to how he responds to Saul he says the Lord who delivered me past tense from the Paw of the lion and from the Pew of the bear paw of the bear will deliver me future tense from the hand of this Philistine I'll say it one more time cuz maybe you needed an organ to pick up what I just said he
said the Lord the Lord who delivered me past tense from the Paw of the lion and from the Paw of the bear will deliver me future tense from the hand of this Philistine now you C it it it looks to me like David had hope in God for a battle that was actually too big for his britches because he did not have a memory problem he considered and meditated and thought about and rehearsed and reflected on his history with God so as to stir up hope you know the same mechanisms you use to obsess over
your fears are the same things the enemy doesn't want you to turn towards God it looks to me some of you some of you might be feeling like you are too young to have a mature hope some of that is humility because you recognize that you don't have the history with God that your leaders have or your parents have you haven't fought the same battle so you can think in your mind I can't have as much hope as they do because I haven't lived enough life but here's the thing David was a Shepherd boy who
hoped in God by virtue of reflecting on only two memories you don't need much to stir up hope especially when the Lord of hosts is the one who is involved and truth be told our particular histories with God is not really the primary source by which we glean from to have hope it is the history of God that has been collected in that book that's on your phone or in your lap that will do the heavy lifting that book that is authoritative that book that is God breathed that book that is a sword and a
bomb that book that began with god making everything and ends with god making everything new that book that you hold in your hands guess what has 66 books worth of memories that will help your hope when Life Starts life because life in this world isn't easy we exist in a world that has not yet been set free from bondage and therefore even if you're a Christian or not everybody going to struggle everybody's going to experience disappointment and when it comes by way of someone you love dying or by a difficult marriage or a Barren womb
by a thorn in the flesh by a season of deep loneliness and mental illness by slander and betrayal by financial difficulties when the disappointment comes when it knocks you across the side of your head what will you do who what will you hope in I will be honest and tell you what I've done I have spent weeks meditating on my shame more than the cross I have ignored the scriptures because it felt like a foreign language to my circumstances the scriptures that I had to preach and while I preach I didn't believe it I have
sat in church while every one around me is lifting their hands and singing and rejoicing and all I felt is numb I have let loneliness lie to me I have let the darkness of Despair comfort me more than Christ and do you know what it changed not my circumstances but my soul it did not deliver me from anything until I remembered I remember that the Psalms were written by by people like me people who know God people who have experienced God people who have written and preached about God but people who have times where they
don't even like God where they don't understand what he is doing or where he even is people people like us like David the boy who defeated Goliath many suspect that he wrote Psalm 42 but the thing is Goliath was the first giant he had many other Giants to fight after that one depression and despair being one of them in Psalm 42 he talks about how his tears have been his food day and night have you ever been so sad that you can't eat he talks about how he remembers when he used to be glad with
praise have you ever been so discouraged that you're not as joyful as you were when you first met him where you just don't know how to get back to the place where worship is easy but now there is turmoil in his in his soul and David questions himself he asks himself about himself and he says why why are you cast down oh my soul why are you in turmoil within me see when we are struggling with hope it is not as though you're not listening to yourself it is not as though there isn't a conversation
it is just that you talk to yourself about things that aren't true so David recalibrates the same technique by preaching to himself instead of listening to himself so why are you C cast down why are you in turmoil and make pay attention to the fact he doesn't wait on the soul to answer the question because the cause the reason for our hopelessness will never justify our hopelessness I'll say it again he asks his soul a question and he does not wait for his soul to respond because even if the soul had what might seem like
legitimate reason to be sad legitimate reason to have unbelief the legitimate reason to be hopeless there is no legitimate reason to ever distrust God so the reason why we can speak to ourselves and preach to ourselves and not give our flesh any room to make excuses for the place we are in is because Christ rose from the dead Paul said if Christ has not been raised from the dead then your faith is in vain if there were no Resurrection from the dead everything you are believing in God would be an absolute waste of your time
Our Hope completely hinges on the fact that God is able to make dead things alive again Lazarus Lazarus is not the only body that God wants to resurrect it's also you it's also your mind it's also your heart it's also your relationships when you get older it's also your marriage is also your pastoring it's also your your your parenting skills and your failures like like do you know what happened when Christ rose from the dead when people die the heart stops pumping blood to the brain the brain shuts down the lungs lungs stop working the
heart stops beating the body the body gets cold and the limbs stop moving and they eventually stiffen as decomposition the breakdown of the body starts to happen and not too long after that the flesh breaks down and turns back into dust I remember when I attended my father's funeral I I remember when he was in that casket and I put my hands on his chest and I was shocked by how it felt like nothing the only thing I could feel was the paper they put under his suit to accommodate for how his chest had caved
him because he was dead I felt nothing I felt no activity I felt no life I felt no warmth I I had this expectation in a weird way that he would somehow respond to my touch but he could not why because he was dead that is what death does and it's always work that way until God sent his son into a world where death has always Reign because of Sin from the rich to the poor to politicians to entertainers to the king to the prophets everybody dies and they do and when they do there is
no coming back until Christ came in that tomb on the third day that dead body actually came back to life the heart started pumping the brain started working his lungs started breathing his heart pumped blood through that body and whatever decomposition there was reversed his limbs started to move why because after 3 days it was time to get up so you can can I possibly think that the dead things in your life can't breathe again can these Dry Bones live yes yes if if Christ is alive then you have hope the resurrection is the reality
from which we draw Our Hope Tim Keller said if Jesus Christ really got up if he really rose from the dead everything will be all right those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength they will soar on wings like eagles they will run and not grow weary they will walk and not be faint and to this I say why are you cast down oh my soul why are you in turmoil within me hope in God why for I shall again praise him Lord we thank you we love you we need your power to
Hope in you again we need your strength to trust you when we are weak we need your Holy Spirit to teach us what is true train Us in what is right we need the self-control that he embodies to help us discipline our [Music] minds God I I I believe that as long as we engage in a casual Christianity we will struggle with our hope as long as our spiritual discipline feel optional we will struggle with our hope as long as prayer isn't as desperate or as needy or as consistent or as honest we will struggle
with our hope so make us Christians not American Christians not College Christians not gifted make us Disciples of Christ who take us our cross daily and die meaning we die to shame meaning we die to fear meaning we die to anxiety meaning we die to drunkenness meaning we die to debauchery meaning we die to addiction meaning we die to fornication meaning we even died of self-righteousness strengthen our [Music] resolve so that when death comes we trust you so that when depression comes we trust you so that when failure comes we trust you so that when
loneliness comes we trust you help us trust you help us trust you help us trust you I pray that as we read your scriptures they would be alive to us I pray for those of us that read your scriptures and all we feel is knowledge but not power I pray that it would be alive to us I pray that your word would be a sword that is piercing through soul and Mar revealing the intentions of the heart and I pray we won't run from what you show us because it's in that place that we will
find [Music] you give us a community of hopeful [Music] people some scoffers have been planted some people have been planted by the enemy to Hinder your ability to have hope he don't want you just be in sin he wants you to be hopeless so put us around people that are committed to trusting you when everything is dark when everything is Bleak when nothing looks good hope hope hope will keep us going I love you father for your grace for your kindness may this word be watered and may when the enemy comes to snatch the seed
that has been sown May our trust keep the soil soft in Christ's name amen [Applause]
