The Assurance of Hope - Bishop Noel Jones

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hebrews chapter 6. I'm going to begin reading at verse 11 even though I pointed out that we would start at 13. Hebrews chapter 11 verse no verse 11 of chapter 6 says and we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full Assurance of Hope unto the end that she be not slothful but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises for when God made promise to Abraham because he could swear by no greater he swear by himself saying surely blessing I Will Bless

thee multiplying I will multiply thee and so after he Abraham had patiently endured he obtained the promise for men verily swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife wherein God oh yes willing more abundantly to show unto The Heirs of Promise the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by and Oaths that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie we may have a strong consolation who have fled for Refuge to lay hold upon the Hope set before us which hope we have

as an anchor of the Soul both sure and steadfast and which enter it into that within the veil whether the Forerunner is for us entered even Jesus made in high priest Forever After the order of Melchizedek I want you to look at somebody like you're angry with them and say I still expect my promise look at somebody like him mad with them on the other side and said it's got to come to pass got to come you may be seated in the presence of the Lord after listening to all of the marvelous hymns that we

heard today I am now at the age where I take a seat and I do a little lecturing you know after a while I look back at the days when I was crawling and [Applause] and I said to myself oh my God who is that person but as life goes on we evolve and very definitely I am passing out of this generation there's a time when all of us were Optimum within the parameters of the generation that God placed us in and then as time goes on we become less connected to the Contemporary environment that

we used to be so significant in you know you move from the Baby Boomers to the exes and now you've got Millennials and Z's and the only thing that really keeps us everything has every Everything has an expiration date but the only thing that keeps us connected is dealing with these young men and young women who are connected to the Contemporary environment that we are passing out of and so as mentors we listen to the mentees and we begin to extend our shelf life because now we get a better understanding of what's going on in

a contemporary environment that we are passing out of so the mentor is being mentored by the mentee as it relates to the Contemporary environment that we no longer are connected to see what they did a while ago was they took us back to the hymns see it used to be somebody hemmed it then somebody gospelled it then somebody wrapped it aha and as we well I got a young wife so I'm connected but anyhow [Applause] so what happened today [Music] was they began to sing the hymns and the hymns threw me so far back that

it took me out of the lecturing chair and it says maybe Reverend you met a hoop today [Applause] so I don't know what will happen but when you look at the Hebrew Church there is something significant about them because of the writer's writing to a group of churches and it's what they called a circular letter and what's going on in the Hebrew church is that Judaism and Christianity was clashing and it was clashing very poignantly among the the Hebrew Christians because being a Jew is not only related to their nationality but it's also a part

of their religious belief and the religion and the political aspects of their lives were intertwined so completely and so totally that if you were to move from the religion you were literally moving from the very place of your ethnicity and racial Foundation so they were having difficulties because now they are following the Carpenter's son from Nazareth and nobody is actually acknowledging except those that are Christians that he is the messiah if you check Even in our contemporary World you'll find that the Jews as a whole the Jewish people as a whole don't believe that Jesus

is or was the Messiah so give some consideration then to those who had initially began to follow Christ and when you initially do something that is opposed to everybody around you have a proclivity or a pension to want him to respond quickly to show you that you were right I don't know if you've ever had a vision and God has shown you and given you certain direction and before it came to pass you articulated it and others around you thought that you had lost your mind because they evaluated your circumstances or your situation and they

concluded that based on what they are looking at we cannot understand how you could even think that you could overcome what we're looking at for what it is that you declare God is going to do for you really want God to instantly show our critics that what I am telling you he's going to do he's going to do it but the problem comes when he doesn't do it right away so now you have to deal with the yeah the naysayers and all of those who have an opinion about where you're going and what you're going

to end up with simply because they can't see it well they're not supposed to say and really for the most part I don't think we should be upset with people who doubt what God is saying because if the promise was so magnanimous even when he gave it to you you had to [Music] um you had to figure it out yourself [Applause] so if he gave it to you and you had a little difficulty getting up to it then understand that the neighbor who didn't hear from God is going to have a little trouble getting it

so don't you let that discourage you but use it as a stimuli oh stimulus rather to realize that it's really God yeah yeah can I just say this and I might have to you know we might have church after a while uh if you have no haters you're not that gifted it is significant then that the battle is is constant because those who should know tend to struggle against falsity particularly when they had previous traditional associations that are always beckoning as you walk with God you will find that the world is always beckoning the flesh

is always pulling on you and the devil is always seeking you out but add to that the fact that sometimes God is moving you beyond your tradition and because of that relationship with tradition you have to many times fight the people who are closest to you in order to move away from what they have decided is the norm for the way your life should go so you're not only finding the outside force that you're finding the inside forces because many people have decided that this is the way your life should go because everybody else's life

is going this way and you have to decide that the battle is not only for those on the outside but I've got to deal with those on the inside and so because he did not come as quickly as they wanted him to come God now has to move in a way that he motivates those of us who follow him it is an interesting thing that oftentimes he gives us and he strengthen us here yes with groanings that cannot be uttered that God begins to move into your spirit can I can I take a little deeper

you see the relationship with God my relationship with God is Not sensual my sensual perception does not connect me to anything that is spiritual and my eyes my nose my mouth my ears my hands connect me to my world but they don't connect me to God because of that Jesus is never recognized he's always revealed oh yes and many times we look at people and we say well he or she is Anointed you cannot assess anointing cognitively or intellectually because anointing has to be revealed [Applause] and when God has revealed something to you you cannot

allow yourself to talk your way out of it because you don't see it because it's not about seeing it it's about it being revealed can I go deeper before I go higher uh there were two boys in their mother's womb they were separated by two Thin layers of cutaneous tissue when the mothers came together one was married the other was Elizabeth and there were two boys in their mother's womb now in the end this was not reading the Jerusalem Tribune in his mother's womb he is totally unconscious in his mother's womb they're connected umbilically but

there is no intellectual cognitive Aristotelian reasoning while he is in his mother's womb the Bible said when the two mothers came together that the child John who is unconscious in his mother's womb the Bible said that the child left in his mother's womb John had a revelation of Jesus while he was unconscious in his mother's womb now a few years later the conscious John sent word to Jesus to ask are you the one or should we look for another now the unconscious John knew who Jesus is but the conscious John had trouble figuring him out

don't ever let your mind talk you out of your Rebel so the struggle then is when you're seeking it to come into the realization of your perception God promised it and because God understands the human behavior he has to motivate us and the primary motivation that God gives and extends to us is love but the truth is that Faith worketh by love so Faith then becomes the functional becomes functional because faith is the hupastasis the substance of things hoped for it is the Holocaust or the evidence of things not scene the etymologists Moulton and Mulligan

they say that Faith then becomes a deed it becomes a title deed and when you study the etymologist to the point what he's saying is that faith is a title for things that you have not seen I buy real estate and I have bought some real estate and I never saw the property I heard it was a good deal and I bought it and somebody said well have you seen the property I said well I don't really need to see the property because I have the deed you see uh I feel like preaching uh all

right hold it I broke a fuse uh you see it was the deed that Caleb had for 40 years and he held on to the deed because faith is the title deed of what God has promised you you have the deed in your spirit and as long as you have the deed in your spirit the land is already yours and all God wants you to do is trust him wait on him because he knows when to bring it to your sight I feel like preaching here but before he brings it to your sight he's going

to build you in your spirit so that when he releases it you will have the power to keep it because he has already built you up for the that he's about to give you I want you to touch your neighbor I'm only going to do it seven times touch your neighbor answer neighbor the gift is already yours you ain't ready for it yet uh-huh just wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait is building you up to the level of what he's going to release so that when he

releases it your mature enough to keep it and give him the glory for it I feel like shouting here so then because of that they're now abided Faith and Hope and charity and if you understand that then he declares the greatest of these of course is Charity because charity becomes this yeah the substratum of everything that's going to keep you and hold you together it's one thing when somebody says I don't love God and that's a terrible thing but it's more terrible when you say God does not love you you see it's an awful thing

not to love God but never accuse God of not loving you because the basis of everything that happens within the Paranormal parameters of The Human Experience is the love of God not the love for God but the love of God he watched over you when you didn't love him he allowed the rain to fall on the just and the unjust so your praise is not because you love God your praise should be because he loves you and when you could bring nothing to the table ah nothing to the table he made an arrangement so that

you're nothing becomes your contribution and we call that Grace when you couldn't bring anything to the table he says all right what you're going to bring nothing okay I'll make nothing a prerequisite for our relationship so my strength is made perfect with somebody giving some praise it ain't because of you it's all because of him and because of this then he has said to us and he's shown us so you all sit down for a minute that Faith and Hope hang on love as branches on a tree hope seems then to be shrouded into the

very base of love and faith so what hope becomes then is the Workhorse of distress hope becomes that Workhorse of tired patience or tried patience that expectation hope then becomes contradistinctive to apathy anytime you're around somebody who says I don't care I suggest that you get away from them as quickly as you can because you don't want to be around somebody who has stopped caring if you understand then the psychology that goes with this theology then whenever there is no hope there is apathy and then wherever there is apathy then the next step is violence

oh yes indeed when people don't care they either homicide or suicidal and one of the problems then with our world is it leads the majority of the people to a place where they feel hopeless and when people feel hopeless they get violent ah stay with me you see you so hope then is contradistinctive to not caring and hope is contradistinctive to backsliding because whenever I have no expectation I stop operating within the parameters of my ability because it goes like this no matter what I do nothing comes to pass and so if nothing has come

to pass why should I keep doing it you see you can't stop me from hoping I can go into a room and my loved one is awfully sick and it looks every time I look at the doctor's face he has a frown and it seems to me that he he sees that she or she is not going to make it but you you can't from hoping I hope you're with me because if I don't have any expectation then I can't have faith because faith is the substance of things hoped for when I walked into this

church today I didn't walk in with apathy I walk in because I had an expectation that God is going to bless me can I take it from the theology to the the sociology I'm going to take it to relationship you see oftentimes when you have been hurt you have a pension to lower your expectation [Music] that's why you ought to get over your pain before you try again because many times you go into a new relationship because you figure you you need to do it for whatever reason but you haven't gotten over the old relationship

so you're going into the new one and what you do is you lower your expectation um ain't no man good anyway ain't no good man no way so I'm gonna check him out but I ain't looking for too much because he ain't now you're on the side of the table with lowered expectation I'm on the other side of the table and what's coming across because I don't know your history what's coming across to me is suspicion so now I came to the table with everything that I had and I was willing to put it on

the table but all of a sudden I'm feeling some negative Vibes of lower expectation and then I say oh oh well I'm getting some some suspicious Behavior so I say well maybe I ought to hold on to my stuff until we can check this out now what happens is you end up getting exactly what you expected uh how what God is saying is don't approach me like that because I'm not such a one as thyself if you come to me don't come to me wondering whether or not I will keep what I said because if

I said it get over the pain and come to me expecting me to deliver what I said I feel like having church here [Music] I'm just going to digress for a minute and let's run to Jesus making a statement that I could not do many mighty Works in Nazareth because of their unbelief now I want you to understand this very carefully it's you not believing God does not limit God from doing what God does understand that so what does he mean when he said I couldn't do many mighty works you see Mighty Works only become

Mighty when they're received uh can you put another way Paul uh Paul tillich puts it like this Paul tillick says Revelation must be given and Revelation must be received or it's not Revelation you see the problem is when Nazareth God gave it but they didn't receive it so it didn't consummate the relationship so you see God has given but we have lowered our expectation and we have resisted what is all ready ours if you expect it you get it and whatever level you expect is the you will get because God has already released it everything

you will ever get from God has already been released it's up to you ah I feel like shouting here give somebody a high five second time and said I was chosen in him or the foundation of the world I was his before I got here it ain't up to God it's up to me because I have everything that God has given before I even got here that's why the devil can't stop it because God gave it to me before he created the devil the devil King stop it that's why the devil doesn't mess with my

gift he messed with my character because if he can pollute my character he can take me from getting my I feel a breakthrough coming I feel it coming I'm almost there and so now hope keeps you calm and hope stems the violence in us and this is why the times of waiting on God and here's what he does now because in the book of Hebrews he is using admonition he is using warnings he is oh I mean he threatens them he said oh it's terrible to fall in the hand of the Mighty God I mean

he just threatens and he encourages and he's he's gone into his spiritual psychological book and he's trying to get them to understand that you need to stay where you are hold your place don't you go back because everything you're going back to is less than what you have right now uh can I talk to you for a minute who is it that you feel like you need to go back to after you have met God when you meet God everything that kept you down you ought to get rid of because God has something better for

you who you going back to I'm gonna get bought down there I'm gonna leave that alone because God has brought you out of something and you want to go like a dog back to its vomit no what what never again God has taken you out of a situation why are you trying to go back into what God took you out of I starve first I'll sit over here and wait on God until I stop but I ain't going back because he said once you take the plow don't even look back when God is in your

life you're a movement when you look back you become a monumenter I'm trying to be a monument in a moving world where God has taken me higher well I expect it I'm almost there he tells them now he takes Abraham and he uses Abraham for an example and it's the time now of waiting on God it is now 20 years after the promise and here is I said God calls him he is 75 when God calls him and of course his wife is is a beautiful 60 year old and I mean she's fine she's so

fine at that age until Abraham is worried that everybody is going to grab her and kill him ain't that something now you gotta understand that age has no sets on what God is going to do in your life well I'm too old The Devil Is Alive the same God that promised you when you were young can keep you healthy to enjoy it when you're older I'm a witness uh the promise then move us uh that Abraham was to become the father of many nations and the promise was that the Earth through Abraham was to be

blessed so then God in his greatness has promised Abraham that the world through him would be blessed now when is he making the promise he's making the promise when Abraham is an old man of 75 and his wife 10 years younger is it 65. it seems now that God would hurry up and bring this thing to pass why because God do the math Lord the man is 75 the wife is 65 what you're going to do well god holds back you see when God gives you the first promise things are difficult he promises you in

a difficult situation but because we have a proclivity to take our praise to ourselves he takes the promise from difficult to Impossible you see what I'm saying but see anytime you're dealing with God and the promise he gave you he gives you is difficult and then it moves to Impossible then the next step can only be Miracle you see he's not going to take it from difficult to Miracle he's going to take it from difficult to impossible to Miracle so that when he brings it to pass there is no debate as to who did the

work I feel like preaching here give somebody a high five third time and it's a neighbor what you're going through is you simply waiting for God to do the work I will not give my glory to another uh-huh I'm gonna bless you but I want my glory uh Jesus declared that Abraham saw my day and rejoiced which means Abraham had to see Jesus even before he had Isaac are you with me because Isaac now represents the Fulfillment of the promise that means then that Abraham would not be around physically to see Jesus so we had

to see Jesus in spirit it so once I know that I have Isaac I know I've got Jesus you see Jesus is the very core of Every Blessing can I take it further don't you think you're blessed if what you have Jesus isn't in it because if Jesus isn't in it it ain't a blessing don't worry about the size of the blessing because if Jesus is in it the blessing can't be small because you can't have the Mighty God in anything that he promised and you walk away from this area that ain't much no no

no no Jesus is in it if it's a pinto Jesus is in it if it's a Rolls-Royce the issue is not whether it's a Rolls-Royce or a pinto the issue is is Jesus in it I'd Rather Have Jesus in a pinto than the devil in a Rolls Royce [Applause] uh something pushing me here and so at best he could only have see Jesus in the eyes so the writer now says he patiently endured until he obtained the promise this is his encouragement but he doesn't stop with encouragement he has to move now from Theology and

he bridges into man's yes world he says now he's trying to convince the individual that I'm going to do what I say so I'm going to bridge from the theological presentation that may be stressing your intellectual cognitive energy and I'm going to come down to where you are so what he does now is he illustrates the security of the Divine Promise by an analogy of human practice he goes into human practice and here's what he says he says when anybody makes an oath it stops all the conversation I said to my daughter I'm going to

take you I'm going to take you to Paris and she said well are you really Daddy I said yes I said what Daddy are you really going to do it yes I I said it didn't I uh then two weeks later uh daddy when are we gonna do it are you really gonna do it and then I might say something well I crossed my heart and I hope to die and then she says okay Daddy okay it's gonna be all right what God did was he looked in human practice and he says anytime you start

making oats it stops the debate uh anytime you say to somebody on my children's grave they begin to say well he must mean it now because he's calling judgment on his children so The Confident hope then which God he now he now moved to the place where he is saying you have not taken my word you have come to church after I have given you a promise and you've sat in the church like a sad sack you come complete and you come wondering and you come asking everybody to pray you know how we do it

we have one prayer partner and if it doesn't come to pass quickly enough we say well she don't have no power so you get another prayer partner and if it doesn't come to pass he said well he don't have no power some people leave their churches because they say well my charity and Obama Pastor is not close to God but what they don't realize is the one who gives the promise is the one who operates the timetable of the promise nobody can move God quicker than God wants to move and nobody can stop God from

moving when he gets ready to move so all you gotta do when you have expectation is wait on him but don't wait on him like you're in a raggedy room uh you know okay can I preach like I feel it you see there's some kinds of waiting some of you will sit in a doctor's office with the right kind of blue and he's playing the melodious you phoniest music that is designed to therapeutically calm your spirit and you still impatient with all of that God has spoken to you over and over and over again he

has shown you testimonies of people who have been blessed and you're still impatient and you come into church and you can't wait and you come in complaining what is he gonna do it and when is it you know the people are looking at me like I'm crazy I've told everybody you you know you know that's a problem when you tell somebody you getting married and the man ain't moving and you doing everything to prove to everybody so you showing yourself out you making it look like you with him all the time and he ain't moving

but if he made the promise you gotta wait on it you can't make him and he is a mere man you can't make God and let me tell you something sometimes God gets more relationship out of you when you're waiting on him then when you get something I feel it and sometimes he's just sitting there enjoying how you coming to him early in the morning you never went early in the morning until he made you a promise now you come in early in the morning you ain't never been to a prayer meeting until you got

a promise now here you're coming you're the first one there you're the last one you speaking in other tongues and you're getting real close to him and God knows once you get the gift it's going to be Baba I see you later so he's enjoying the moment while he's building your character and I got new for you sometimes God delivers the gift when you decide you can live without it go back to Hannah go back to Hannah when Hannah decided she'd give it to God that's when God gave it to her I don't want to

give you a gift that causes you to walk away from me I want to give you a gift that gets me more praise gets me more Glory gets me more determination gets me more work and more faithfulness out of you ah give somebody a high five third time fourth time and said neighbor he's enjoying you right where you are he's enjoying your praise he's enjoying just seeking him early he's enjoying you creating other people together to call on his name I'm almost there I feel something pushing me now oh it's critical now because the Bible

says we're in God in accordance then with the universal custom God disregards the insult you insulted me when you wouldn't take my word you insulted me when you wouldn't believe that I do what I said so the Bible says his willingness and it's not from the word fellow which is a desire based on emotion but it's from the word balama which is a desire based on reasoning in other words God came by The Potter's House and he looked at everybody in the house who was not feeling like he was going to deliver and he said

this is not emotional with me I've got to do something for my children I can't allow them just to sit here and act as if I'm not the god God that I said I'd be so I'm going to do something that's going to make them understand that the c-o-u-n-c-i-l is the immutable God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and the c-o-u-n-c-i-l had a meeting about your life and they came up with the c-o-u-n-s-e-l and said I gotta talk to these children I gotta show them that the c-o-u-n-s-e-l is as immutable as the c-o-u-n-c-i-l

I might promise it's just immutable as me being God but I've got to get that child Off the Bench I've got to bring that child to the place where they understand that I'm how to turn cold if I said it I'll do it we might as well have church fat huh if I said it I'll bring it to pass because I am not a turncoat I promised it in eternity and I really didn't promise it can I preach like I feel it I really didn't promise it because I'm omniscient and I am Eternal and what

does that say I already know everything but when did I know everything I always knew everything because I am Eternal so as Eternal as I am is as Eternal as my promise is and there is no devil that can stop me from bringing it to pass I just need you to relax give somebody a high five for the time answer relax just relax because it's coming to pass relax because God is getting ready to show his hand his promise then is from the Greek word a metaphatan and that is it's untransposable I feel like preaching

can't nobody get what God has I promise you can't nobody get it if you see him Roll by in a Rolls Royce that ain't yours that's his yours is on the way and when you see somebody blessed you begin to praise God because you just moved up in the line when somebody's dream has come to pass you just took another step in the line as long as I'm in the line I can wait on it pick him up give somebody 105 for the second to the last time say I'm in the right line I'm in

the praise line I'm in the Holiness line I'm in the love of God line I'm in the fasting line I'm in the line where God operates cause I feel his presence can I preach like I feel it every now and then in the middle of your distress he comes in the room and gives you a consolation that everything is going to be all right I think I'll preach the rest of it another time I feel like lifting him up but I just come to tell you where is your anchor your anchor it's hope and where

is it it's in side of the holy of holies that's where it's anchored My Hope Is Anchored in the holy of holies where Jesus has entered Cain no devil get into the holy of holies so there is no devil that can loose the promise that God has given me because of my hope is anchored in the holy of holies it's behind the veil can I get some help somebody bring me a my chord bring me a cord I feel like preaching in here when I felt like walking away my hope I feel like preaching I'm

on the top of the water I'm in the middle of a storm the winds are blowing trials are every side but my hope hold on to the other hand can I feel like preaching anymore I feel like lifting him up I said I'm gonna walk out the church I was getting ready to walk out but my ink hell I was going to leave I'm sick and tired of folk talking about me I sing it will not come to pass I'm leaving what my hell I said I was gonna leave the church and I ain't going

back to the house of God I was walking out I said I'm going back to the old boyfriend I'm going back to that old woman I'm going back to the drugs and the cult but when I walked out [Music] [Applause] [Music] get some money high five for the last time say neighbor I can't leave it's got to come to pass [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it it's Gotta come to pass he said it I believe it [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]